July 24, 2026 · Analysis
The President, minute by minute: a timeline of the night of 15–16 July
Where was the President that night, when, and according to which source? We line up open sources and the case file, hour by hour.
On the night of the coup attempt, President Erdoğan was in Marmaris. From 00:04 he made a series of live television connections from the villa where he was staying inside the Turban Hotel; at around 01:15 his official helicopter took off for Dalaman, and from there the TC-ATA aircraft carried him to İstanbul; at 04:16 he made a statement at Atatürk Airport. The times below are the matters fixed by the documents in the case file and by open sources.
During the night, hour by hour
- 00:04 — press statement in front of the villa inside the Turban Hotel.
- 00:24 — connected to CNN Türk from the villa by FaceTime.
- 00:33 — spoke against the coup on A Haber, connected from the villa by FaceTime.
- 00:44 — spoke against the coup on NTV, connected from the villa by FaceTime.
- 00:50 — spoke against the coup on TGRT Haber, connected from the villa by FaceTime.
- 01:15 — the official helicopter, with its identification information switched off, took off for Dalaman from the airstrip of the Marmaris Palace Hotel; the camera footage shows an official car leaving the hotel with escorts at around this time.
- 01:30 — the official helicopter landed at Dalaman airport.
- 01:43 — the TC-ATA aircraft took off for İstanbul with Erdoğan and those with him.
- 02:10 — the TC-ATA, while over Biga, waited in the air for about 50 minutes for the helicopters carrying the soldiers to reach Marmaris.
- 03:20 — when the news that the soldiers had reached Marmaris reached Erdoğan, the aircraft landed at İstanbul Atatürk Airport.
- 04:16 — at Atatürk Airport: "They bombed the place where I was staying in Marmaris; they came to get me."
Source and caveat
The press statement, the live broadcasts, the camera records and the flight times are matters fixed by the documents in the case file. As the book's chronology sets out, alongside these material findings, matters such as inferences as to by whom and with what motive an act was carried out are not established determinations but possibilities arrived at from the evidence as a whole, and should be read with this reservation.
Why the departure time is disputed
In their statements of 16 July, the bodyguards — İrfan Paksoy among them — gave the President's departure time as 23:30. The bodyguards' joint record dated 18 July states that he "was evacuated at around 01:00." Yet Erdoğan was connecting live to television channels at those very hours, and the security-camera records from the Turban Hotel show an official car leaving with escorts at around 01:15 — which, with the flight times, places the actual departure at around 01:15.