Rumeysa Kalin, 22, essentially grew up with Erdogan. Her father, Ibrahim Kalin, is the president's spokesman and she can't remember a time when Erdogan didn't determine the day-to-day life of her family. "He is a strong leader, a man who gives people direction," she says. One year ago, Kalin completed her legal studies at a Turkish elite university and now works as a clerk in a law firm in addition to being active in the AKP's youth organization. She speaks perfect English, but refuses to shake men's hands.

Kalin belongs to a generation of young, devout Turks who venerate Erdogan. When the first news of the possible coup reached her last Friday via Twitter and Facebook, she was doing laundry in her parents' house in Ankara. She immediately went to the local mosque to pray for a rapid end to the uprising. Her fiancée, meanwhile, a student of molecular biology, made his way to the city center to offer resistance against the putschists. He tried to reassure Kalin on the phone, saying: "Don't be afraid. We have God on our side."

A Mood of Vengeance

A few days later, the couple joined a pro-government demonstration on Kizilay Square, which people are now referring to as the "center of the national uprising against the traitors to the fatherland." Kalin says the failed coup is a "wake-up call" for her generation. "July 15th has brought Erdogan and the people of Turkey closer together," she says.

For those who harbor doubts about Erdogan, such statements sound threatening. In fact, Esra Can, the graphic designer from Ankara, is even thinking about leaving the country. In the last week, bearded men carrying baseball bats have been patrolling her neighborhood at night -- to intimidate dissenters, she says. "I no longer feel safe in this country."

Human rights activists have warned that a "lynch-mob sentiment" is spreading in Turkey. At the funeral of a victim of the coup, guests chanted: "We want the death penalty!" In Istanbul, Islamists assaulted people who were drinking beer in public while in several cities and towns in Anatolia, Muslim extremists have attacked churches and Alawi settlements. The deputy head of a large Turkish basketball club said of those involved in the coup: "The property and women of these sons of bitches are now the nation's spoils of war."

According to the wife of a military captain, people waving Turkish flags and showing their middle fingers now regularly pass through residential neighborhoods for soldiers and their families in Istanbul. The baker where another officer's wife regularly shops has suddenly begun refusing to sell her bread.

The worst, says one woman, who asked to remain anonymous, is the uncertainty about the future. One of her husband's comrades, she says, was arrested and his family still didn't know why, even days later. Allegedly, weapons had been found in his car, the woman says, and he is now suspected of having participated in the attempted coup.

She says that last weekend, police appeared in their neighborhood with lists of names and arrested several soldiers. "What if they suddenly come to arrest my husband?" the woman asks.

It is now up to the president to pacify the conflict and calm Turkish citizens. But Erdogan is anything but a mediator, preferring instead to divide and polarize. He calls the opposition a "cancerous growth" and promises a "bright future free of traitors." A leading advisor is in favor of loosening the country's gun-control laws so that the nation can "arm itself."

Erdogan's Archenemy

Erdogan wants revenge. More than that, though, he wants to use revenge to tighten his grip on Turkey. The autocrat Erdogan could now turn into a full-fledged dictator. He appears to have the necessary ambition and he has definitely always been a fighter.

It was, in fact, ambition and a lack of scruples that propelled him to the top in the first place. His worldview has always been "us against them," and along the way, he has crushed several adversaries, including the secular elite, who disdain him as a devout outsider, and military generals, who threatened way back in 2007 to oust him with a putsch. When Erdogan had his police force brutally crushed the peaceful protests of environmentalists in Gezi Park in 2013, many observers thought that his career would not last much longer. But he survived the crisis, just as he did the corruption scandal one month later, in which his son was implicated.

But with every battle Erdogan has won, the ranks of his enemies have grown. Until their dispute two years ago stemming from the Gezi protests, he still considered Fethullah Gülen, who he now accuses of having orchestrated the July 15 uprising, a friend.

He has now become his archenemy, and he isn't easy to find. Gülen lives in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, a small two located two hours west of New York by car. Visitors to his complex are checked by a security guard dressed in black who wears a revolver in plain sight on his belt. Behind the gate lies an idyllic and expansive property. The grounds are well cared for and the buildings are modern.

Like Erdogan, Gülen is an Islamist and he poses as a reticent cleric who lives humbly before God in American exile. This modesty, however, is nothing but a façade: His movement is rich and powerful. His followers have founded newspapers, hospitals, insurance companies, universities and schools in 140 countries, including Germany.

Gülen claims that he seeks to spread a modern version of Islam. But critics say his community is a sect, just as secretive and difficult to penetrate as Scientology or the Catholic movement Opus Dei.

When Erdogan's Islamic-conservative AKP party rose to power in 2002, the Gülen community initially seemed a logical ally. Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, appointed Gülen followers to key positions in the judiciary and administration. With the help of show trials, the Islamists aided the premier in sidelining his critics in the military and civil society.

Poisoned by Power

Hanefi Avci, once a leading official in the Turkish police force's intelligence service, watched closely as Gülen's men then proceeded to infiltrate state institutions. He warned Erdogan's government of the movement's secret power grab -- in vain.

It was only in 2013, when Erdogan and Gülen had their falling out, that the prime minister began to take an interest in Avci's findings and started speaking of Gülen's "parallel state." The cleric's followers in the police and judiciary opened a corruption investigation into Erdogan's son Bilal and officials close to the prime minister. Erdogan responded by closing down schools operated by the Gülen movement.

Gülen is nestled in a beige-colored armchair in his home's reception room and he talks about the political situation in Turkey for a good two hours. "It is absurd, irresponsible and erroneous to claim that I had anything to do with this appalling coup attempt," he says. Gülen describes Erdogan as a tyrant seeking to brutally sideline his opponents and says his political style has pathological elements. "Erdogan comes from a poor background and now he lives in many palaces. Success and power have poisoned him," he says.

Few in Turkey doubt that the Gülen movement has managed to infiltrate the military. But thus far, the government has produced no strong evidence that Gülen's people were responsible for the July 15 coup attempt. Close observers of Turkey tend instead toward the belief that a coalition of various power centers within the military prepared the uprising.

But Erdogan is now using the coup to try and crush Gülen and his movement -- in addition to his critics in the military high command and his political adversaries -- and he is demanding that the US extradite Gülen to Turkey. US Secretary of State John Kerry has said his government will examine the request, but added that Ankara must present solid proof of Gülen's involvement in the putsch.

Erdogan, it has become clear, wants to avoid showing any weakness. He prefers, it seems, to risk a worsening of relations with the United States. Indeed, his followers have spent the last several days stoking anti-American sentiment and his labor minister even suggested that Washington was behind the attempted coup -- a crude provocation. Prime Minister Yildirim said that every country that supports Gülen is at war with Turkey.

EU Accession Unlikely

Erdogan's open aggression, though, is creating problems with the West far beyond the Gülen issue. The refugee deal with the European Union is also now in danger. The deal calls for Turkey to both prevent refugees from traveling onward to Europe and to readmit those who make it to EU territory in exchange for money. But the EU also promised to introduce visa-free travel for Turks  heading to Europe and to speed up European Union accession negotiations. In the wake of the coup attempt, however, visa-free travel isn't likely to happen. One important criteria laid out by Brussels was that Turkish parliament change a law allowing Erdogan the ability to take rigorous measures against his opponents. Even before the coup, Erdogan was unhappy about the demand.

Furthermore, accession negotiations -- already protracted -- aren't likely to speed up again soon. And they might be stopped altogether. The introduction of the death penalty would mean an end to Turkey's EU aspirations, said Johannes Hahn, the commissioner in charge of enlargement, during a special session of the Foreign Affairs Committee in European Parliament on Tuesday.

Germany's European commissioner, Günther Oettinger, says he is opposed to stopping Turkey's accession negotiations because the talks allow the EU to exert pressure on Ankara. "In this decade and under the leadership of Erdogan, there won't be an accession anyway," he told SPIEGEL. But doubts are growing inside the European Commission. Formally, the refugee deal is still valid, but why should Erdogan stick to it if all the promises made by Europe, aside from the money, are reneged?

Criticism of the deal was already intense in the months before the coup. Europe, it was said, had sold out its values so that Erdogan would stop the stream of refugees coming to the continent. Now, many are having an "I told you so" moment. "Erdogan is now doing exactly what many had warned of when the refugee deal was made," says one high-ranking EU diplomat. "He is cashing in the blank check he got from the EU."

NATO Fears and Nukes

The German government is viewing developments in Turkey with great concern. The biggest question is the direction in which Turkey will develop. Chancellor Angela Merkel telephoned with Erdogan over the weekend and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke with his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Even if there have so far been no signals from Ankara that the government there might revoke the refugee deal, most assume that will happen sooner or later. Similar fears are plaguing NATO at the moment. Last Friday night, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke with the Turkish foreign minister and then on Monday with Erdogan. In those conversations, Stoltenberg made clear how important it is that Turkey respect democratic principles -- as he did in a SPIEGEL interview  a few weeks back. "NATO is based on shared values," he said in June. "Democracy, individual civil liberties and the rule of law."

But Turkey is too important to the alliance, both strategically and geopolitically, for Western politicians to be able to do all that much to counter Erdogan. In addition, Article 13 of the NATO Treaty states that a member of the alliance can leave voluntarily. "NATO has no mechanism with which to impose sanctions against its members," says one NATO official.

NATO partner Turkey had already become alarmingly unstable even before July 15. In the southeast of the country, the military has rekindled fighting in a hopeless war against Kurdish guerrillas. And the putsch attempt has now further weakened the state and the army.

In recent days, Erdogan has had around 100 generals and admirals arrested, about one-third of the military leadership. Many of those suspected to be behind the putsch held important positions within the armed forces, including Adem Huduti, the commander of the Second Army, who coordinated the deployment against the Kurds in southeast Turkey, and Bekir Ercan Van, chief of the Incirlik Air Base, which is used by the US and Europe in the fight against Islamic State.

That is not welcome news for the Pentagon: The US holds NATO's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons at Incirlik. Indeed, the putsch attempt in Turkey underscores the risk of storing weapons of mass destruction in an unstable country. In the US, too, more and more people are demanding that the US withdraw from Incirlik. "America's Nukes Aren't Safe in Turkey Anymore," the magazine Foreign Policy declared in a recent headline.

'Broadly Defined, Well-Planned Operation'

In early April, the Americans demonstrated just how uncertain they consider the situation in Turkey to be. Washington flew out family members of US soldiers for security reasons and at the same time reinforced its own units by deploying hundreds of additional Marines there.

To tighten his control over the army, Erdogan can now swap out the military leadership, but he cannot replace all of the soldiers. He doesn't even know how many conspirators still remain among the ranks of the armed forces. In contrast to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Erdogan is not a man of the apparatus. He's an outsider who has never been entirely recognized by the military. The army has always viewed itself as the protector of the country's secular tradition, as the heir to the political legacy of modern Turkey's founder, Kemal Atatürk. They're suspicious of Erdogan's Islamic fervor.

Istanbul-based political scientist Sinan Birdal, who has worked for the Turkish military for many years, contradicts the theory that the putsch was staged by a small group of people with connections to the Gülen movement. He says the group was composed of soldiers from a variety of different units and bases. "This was a broadly defined, well-planned operation," he says. Birdal believes there was and still is a lot of pent up frustration over Erdogan within the military. He considers a second putsch to be an "entirely realistic scenario."

But as much as Erdogan distrusts his soldiers, he is also just as reliant upon them -- at least for as long as he continues to refuse to find a peaceful solution to the conflict with the Kurds.

Diyarbakir, the most important Kurdish city in southeast Turkey, is severely damaged. The military and special police units have engaged in bitter street fighting there with YPS, a PKK-aligned youth organization. In many parts of the historic city center, entire streets are blocked off.

Gray plastic tarps block views of the areas where the fighting is taking place and police monitor the entrances to the town. It has been reported that there are still corpses lying inside, and residents are unable to return to their homes. Business used to flourish here and tourists also visited, but residents now say that Diyarbakir is a "dead city."

Fierce Fighting

No one embodies the dashed hopes of Kurds as much as Selahattin Demirtas, a chairman of the pro-Kurdish HDP party. One year ago, his party landed seats in the national parliament for the first time, leading many in Turkey to hope for an end to the confrontation between the Turkish state and the Kurdish minority. But Erdogan, who had once pursued the peace process with the Kurds, felt that HDP's success was a threat to his power and reverted to the 1990s policy of confrontation. He began fomenting hatred against the Kurds in order to profit politically.

On Erdogan's orders, more than 10,000 soldiers attacked cities in the country's southeast, imposed curfews and engaged in fierce urban combat with the PKK youth. They erected trenches and barricades and declared "liberated zones." The youth reacted with brutality, killing around 500 police and soldiers, most of whom were shot by snipers. More than 1,000 people were killed and several hundred thousand were forced to flee.

Demirtas sits inside his party headquarters in Ankara. He is besieged by friends and looks pale, but he still takes time to talk. Demirtas believes the war against the PKK fueled the July 15 insurrection. He says it was Erdogan who equipped the military and gave the generals free rein in the country's south. "The armed forces no longer felt bound by any laws," Demirtas says. He warns that, following the military coup, there could now be an Erdogan coup -- and possibly even a civil war in its wake.

Some observers fear that the crisis in Turkey could prompt Kurdish separatists to push for the secession of the Kurdish southeast, an idea that appears to be gaining popularity among Kurds. Ibrahim Halil Baran, a prominent Kurdish intellectual, says he thinks the putsch wasn't necessarily a bad thing for Kurds. "The Turkish side is now occupied with itself," he says. "We Kurds should take advantage of Turkey's weakness in order to achieve our aims."

Dictatorship? Putsch? Civil war? The Turks appear to be cursed by violence, and only a few appear to have the strength to look ahead to the future.

'Not as Simple as That'

Lawyer Osman Can agrees to meet at the Divan Pub on Baghdad Street, one of the best-known shopping streets on the Asian side of Istanbul. "When the first tanks rolled into the neighborhood, people in the restaurants applauded," Can reports. "They said, this is a rescue. But it wasn't as simple as that."

A 48-year-old Kurd, Can grew up in eastern Turkey and would later write his graduate thesis on freedom of opinion at the University of Cologne in Germany. From 2002 to 2010, he served as a judge on the Turkish Constitutional Court in Ankara. He describes himself as being secular and liberal -- and yet he nevertheless allowed himself to be persuaded by Erdogan in September 2012 to join his conservative-Islamic AKP. Only five days later, Can was elected to join the party's 50-member executive committee.

Can says he had never intended to go into politics, but at the time he felt AKP was pursuing a liberal brand of politics. Erdogan's government had reformed the constitution in 2010 and strengthened the rights of women. "Those reforms of course didn't go far enough," Can says, "but they were an important step."

Erdogan also seemed prepared to accept advice from a person like him. "I told him that I would be critical of him," Can says, "and he said that was OK." At the time, an AKP constitutional commission was considering the question of what a presidential system might look like. Can studied the proposals and became alarmed. The president, for example, "was to be given the right to dissolve parliament," he says.

Few listened to Can's objections until he complained directly to Erdogan. "Afterwards, we created a new commission and worked for six months on proposals -- for a parliamentary, but also for a presidential system that assured democratic structures." In April 2014, Can's commission presented its work. Erdogan reacted positively.

Unacceptable Disgrace

But then he was elected president and Can's proposals for greater democracy weren't released, Erdogan apparently preferring to avoid a public debate. A short time later, Can's AKP career came to an end: When the next parliamentary elections came around, his name no longer appeared on the party's list of candidates. "Erdogan didn't call me, nor did I go to him, he says. "I had seen that I could no longer be effective."

Does Can's story affirm the interpretation that Erdogan has let his power go to his head and that he is now unscrupulously clearing away any form of opposition on his path to autocratic rule? Can shakes his head. "I can understand this European view," he says. But if the West sees only Erdogan as the bogeyman and disregards the Gülen movement, it won't be seeing the whole truth, he adds. "The more powerful Gülen got, the tougher Erdogan became," he says, and this conflict triggered a wave of irrational political actions.

And the putsch attempt? "I have no proof," Can says, "but I am convinced it was initiated by the Gülen movement." He says he didn't applaud when the tanks rolled in on Friday. "My reaction was: Even if democracy in Turkey is in a sorry state, such a disgrace is unacceptable."

According to Can, the only way out of the crisis for Turkey is through deeper democracy. "Without a democratic constitution, our system will remain vulnerable to further putsch attempts -- and to populism."