The U.S. Embassy in Ankara at first described the failed coup attempt by a Gülenist fraction within the military as an "uprising," and then changed to using the word "coup" to describe the events unfolding.



The U.S. Embassy in Ankara informed U.S. citizens about the failed Gülenist military coup with a message titled "Emergency message for U.S Citizens: Turkish Uprising." The message, published on the embassy's website and posted to the U.S. State Department Twitter account on July 16 at 2:53 a.m., said: "Shots fired and explosions have been heard in Ankara and both bridges in Istanbul, the Bosphorous and Fatih Sultan Mehmet, are now closed."

The following day the message was removed from the embassy website, even though it remains available on the official Twitter account. Asked why the U.S. Embassy called the coup attempt an uprising, a senior official from U.S. Embassy in Ankara said that their information was based on Turkish news and the first Turkish word used by Turkish officials to define the incident was "uprising." A senior U.S. official said: "Our information was based on Turkish news and the first word given in Turkish was 'kalkışma,' and we translated this word to English as 'uprising.' We did not use the word 'coup' until Turkish people started to use the word."

Asked why this message is not still available on the embassy's website, the U.S. official said that this is because of technical issues, rather than any intention to hide something. "There is no intention to try to hide something. There is a part of our website which is run by Washington, and most of the things that we publish remain on our website for a certain amount of time until somebody goes through and cleans them out. When we have a limited time to publish new things, the new entry takes priority and modifies the older entry."