In Ankara, a night of fear as battling Turkish jets screamed through the skies
For The Los Angeles Times:
It is dawn and the streets of Ankara’s Kizilay district are empty, strewn with rubbish and glass. A man casts a solitary figure, sweeping shards into piles after a night of bracing violence. Little else moves.
On Ankara’s main boulevard, mangled cars sit at intervals. Some trees have been uprooted and shattered by the force of the previous night’s brutality.
There is the vague howl of a jet high above. Gunfire occasionally rattles.
Only a few hours earlier, fighter jets were screaming at supersonic speeds through Ankara’s skies in aerial dogfights that shook the city with sonic booms. Police and dissident soldiers were locked in gunfights around key state institutions.
But by morning, an eerie quiet hung over this city of 4.6 million people. The normally bustling streets in Kizilay slowly came back to life, people returning to its broad boulevards dotted with cafes and bars.
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