All of us sometimes face a crisis. It’s important to be prepared – including knowing when to act, and when to do nothing.
When to act and when to freeze
Sunday 13 March 2016 was my birthday. To celebrate, my partner Gözde and I spent the weekend in Agva, a small resort on the Black Sea coast. As we drove back over the Bosphorus Bridge into Istanbul, my phone rang.
“A bomb has exploded in Ankara. A big one. City centre.” My colleague from the British embassy in the capital of Turkey, five hours’ drive to the east, sounded shaken. “Should we declare a crisis?”
Beneath the bridge spanning Europe and Asia, waves sparkled in the dusk. A sense of calm descended on me. I was chargé d’affaires in Turkey. It was my responsibility to decide what to do. But we had all trained for this, and I had managed crises before. A ‘first 15 minutes’ crisis plan lived in my wallet for precisely such occasions.
“Yes,” I said. “Declare a crisis. Call the core team in to the embassy.” I listed some people. “Check everyone is accounted for. We’ll hold a crisis meeting in an hour.”
Laying flowers for victims of Ankara bombing, March 2016
Few of us face crises every day. But all of us sometimes have to cope with disaster. It’s important to be prepared. That means having the training and experience to know when to swing into action – as we did that day in 2016 – and when to take a deep breath and adopt a policy of masterly inactivity.
An unexpected crisis
When the putsch against Yeltsin kicked off in October 1993 or when the bomb exploded in Ankara in March 2016, all of us caught up in the crisis knew we must act quickly. Doing nothing was not an option. The same was true four months after the Ankara attack, when a new emergency struck Turkey.
On 15 July 2016, four days before the end of my posting to Istanbul, we planned to mark my departure at the annual British Chamber of Commerce summer party, complete with food stalls, music and, later, dancing, at which I would DJ. The evening began with speeches, networking and Pimm’s. As guests chatted and swapped business cards in the balmy evening, the buzz of the city rose around the walled compound of Pera House.
Pera House, the British Consulate-General in Istanbul
Those sounds included helicopters. Istanbul is tumultuous 24/7, and no one paid them much attention. At 9.30 we moved inside and I started up the music: ‘This was all excellent,’ I wrote later, ‘and we succeeded in getting a large group of people dancing in the Palm Court. Unfortunately, during this time news began to come through that something strange was happening on the Bosphorus bridges, or that a coup might be taking place.’
The initial response of party guests to the reports of a coup d’état was incredulity. President Erdoğan had led Turkey since 2003, and had purged the armed forces. How could they lead a coup against him? Then, at 11 p.m., Prime Minister Yildirim announced that the military were trying to seize power.
Stop this party
Ambassador Richard Moore, in Istanbul for the event, at once stopped the party and declared a crisis, setting up arrangements to report back to London and to establish if any British citizens were affected. The experienced crisis team moved smoothly into operation and worked in shifts throughout the next three days.
The coup leaders sought to foment uprisings in cities across the country. They tried to seize Erdoğan, who was on holiday in Marmaris. Tanks and soldiers occupied key locations in Istanbul, including Taksim Square, a few hundred metres from Pera House. When the authorities declared a curfew, dozens of party guests were trapped in the building overnight. Most kipped on the floor in designated safe zones away from doors and windows. Sonic booms from low-flying military jets rang out like explosions in the night. In Ankara, aircraft bombed the parliament and police headquarters. Three hundred people were killed and many more were injured.
Among the guests at the consulate was a journalist, Laura Pitel, who later published a piece in The Mail on Sunday headlined ‘Diplomats danced as putsch began’. The subtitle, ‘Turner played DJ until coup began and staff went into crisis mode’ was accurate. The tenor of the piece was that we had responded well in difficult circumstances. The fact that all our staff knew exactly what they had to do and were ready to do it – even in the middle of a party – made all the difference.
Moscow: the 1993 putsch against Boris Yeltsin
Lessons in Diplomacy: how to survive a crisis
I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from my book Lessons in Diplomacy: Politics, Power and Parties (Bristol University Press, 2024). It’s available from bookshops or via Amazon. There’s more about the book, including testimonials, photos and two more excerpts, here on this website.
