• As France reels from Nice terror attack 

Thousands of soldiers and officers purged from the military. A helicopter shot down over the capital. Hundreds of people lying dead on city streets.

As dawn broke Saturday, the citizens of Turkey emerged sleep-deprived and angst-ridden after a night of violence that felt more like life in war-stricken neighbors like Syria or Iraq.

And trying to assert control was President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, targeting plotters in the previous night’s coup and other perceived enemies of the state.

The embattled president, after a confusing absence in the early hours of the coup, appeared to speak to the nation early Saturday. He exhorted his followers with the FaceTime app from his cellphone, resorting to the kind of medium he has long sought to suppress.

That stunning scene, televised nationwide, at first seemed an embarrassment for a leader who presents himself as all-powerful and suggested his end.

But it was actually the turning point, as Mr. Erdogan called on his followers to take to the streets and gather at the airport in Istanbul, which the military had shut down, to resist the coup.

By the afternoon, after a standoff in Ankara, the capital, the government had wrested back an army headquarters building held by coup plotters. Mr. Erdogan, who had frequently talked of conspiracies afoot to undermine his power, was back in control, seemingly as powerful as ever, and perhaps even more paranoid.

The attempted coup, as it unfolded, suggested an alarming unraveling for a country that is seen in the West as a crucial partner in the fight against terrorism and an anchor of stability in a region full of trouble.

The United States has sought close cooperation with Turkey in the fight against the Islamic State, while Europe has relied on Turkey to help stem the flow of refugees from war-torn countries of the Middle East to the Continent.

“The whole night felt like doomsday,” said Sibel Samli, an independent film producer in Istanbul. “People flocked to the markets to get bread, eggs and water. People were going to cash machines to draw out cash.”

A steamy Friday was just getting going when the first hint came that something was not right: The military sealed off two bridges across the Bosporus.

Then, fighter jets and helicopters began flying low over Istanbul and Ankara, rattling residents enjoying a night on the town, and sporadic gunshots rang out.

Suddenly, Turks were transfixed by their cellphones, or the televisions in bars and restaurants, trying to figure out what was going on.

No one seemed to know where the president was.

As rumors swirled that the military was maneuvering to thwart a terror plot, or that a hijacked airliner was in the sky, many Turks, given their nation’s history of military meddling in politics, began to wonder if a coup was afoot.

Soon enough, they had their answer: The prime minister, Binali Yildirm, spoke on television and said a renegade faction within the military was trying to mount a coup.

And a military group, later calling itself the Peace at Home Council — a reference to a mantra of Turkey’s secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — issued a statement saying it had seized control of the country.

In the meantime, French prosecutor Francois Molins said Friday that the driver of a truck that plowed into a crowd of seaside spectators in Nice, killing 84 people, was a Tunisia-born Frenchman who had a petty criminal record but was not known to any intelligence services, local or national, as having links to radicalism.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said later Friday, however, that  the attacker was “probably linked to radical Islam,” AFP news agency reported.

“He’s a terrorist who is probably linked to radical Islam in one way or another,” Valls told French television.

Molins, the anti-terrorism prosecutor, identified the suspect, who was shot and killed by police during the attack, as Mohamed Bouhlel, 31, a local delivery man. He said Bouhlel’s house had been searched and that his wife was detained for questioning. In Tunisia, Bouhlel’s parents, sister and close friends were detained for questioning, according to the BBC.

Speaking to reporters hours after an update by French President Francois Hollande, Molins said 202 people were injured in the melee at the Bastille Day celebration Thursday evening, and that 52 remained in critical condition, half of them still in a coma and 25 on life-support. He said 10 children were among the dead, which included two Americans.

Molins said Bouhlel, driving a large, white refrigerated truck, mowed down scores of people along a one-mile stretch of the Promenade des Anglais during an annual fireworks display. He said police eventually shot and killed him in the truck’s cab as he continued to run down people along the walkway.

Molins said police recovered a cellphone, identification papers, and a bank card in the cab of the truck along with a handgun, ammunition and a gas grenade, along with replicas of other weapons.

He said Bouhlel was identified through his fingerprints and was known to local courts and police. He had been convicted on charges of theft and making violent threats between 2010 and 2016, and received a six-month suspended sentence in March on a weapons charge.

Molins said suspect, who was born in Tunisia, was “totally unknown to intelligence services … and was never placed on a watch list for radicalization.”

The prosecutor said surveillance video showed that the truck had been parked on a Nice street on Wednesday and that Bouhlel, arriving on a bicycle, picked it up on Thursday, putting the bike in the back.

He said officials were investigating how Bouhlel obtained the truck and whether he had any accomplices in the attack.

President Obama, addressing the Washington diplomatic corps at a reception Friday, said he faced the group with a heavy heart.

“Overnight in Nice, we witnessed another attack, an appalling attack on freedom and the peace that we cherish,” the Voice of America quoted the president as saying. “Today, our hearts are with the people of France and all the innocent men and women and so many children who were hurt or killed in this sickening attack.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, speaking to reporters Friday evening, said the administration is still working under the theory that the rampage was a terrorist attack.

President Obama spoke with President Holland earlier Friday and members of the administration, including Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson, spoke with their French counterparts, Earnest said.

Thursday’s situation was the worst terrorist attack in France since 130 people were killed in Paris in November and is likely the deadliest rampage ever by a lone attacker.

Hollande, who flew to Nice on Friday, said earlier that the attack was carried out “to satisfy the cruelty of an individual, maybe a group” and called on the French people to maintain their “unity and cohesion” in the face of the tragedy.

“We are dealing with a struggle that will take a long time, because we have an enemy who will continue to strike all peoples, all countries that have freedom as a fundamental value,” he said.

Hollande, who described the attack as “despicable,” extended the nation’s state of emergency, due to expire this month, for another three months, and will supplement the 7,000 troops securing critical sites around France with a call up of reserves tasked with tightening border security.

“We can overcome this evil because we are France, as one,” he added.

Prime Minister Valls has announced three days of national mourning, starting Saturday.

“We will not give in to terrorist threats,” he said. “We are in a new era. France has been struck once again in her flesh. They wanted to harm the very idea of national unity.”

The U.S. State Department confirmed that two vacationing Americans were among those killed. They were identified as Sean Copeland, 51, and his 11-year-old son, Brodie, of Austin.

“We are heartbroken and in shock over the loss of Brodie Copeland, an amazing son and brother who lit up our lives, and Sean Copeland, a wonderful husband and father,” the family said in a statement, the newspaper reported. “They are so loved.”

In Washington, President Obama, addressing the diplomatic corps at the White House, said he spoke with Hollande Friday and pledged “to stand with our French friends as we defend our nation against this scourge of terrorism and violence.”

“We cannot give in to fear,” he said. “That’s what terrorists want. We should never do their work for them.”

On Friday morning, a huge section of the famous promenade in Nice was closed off, and victims and families of the dead who came to pay their respects to the fallen were unable to access the scene to lay flowers, light candles or mourn there.

Off the promenade, police ships stood as a reminder that this city is under partial lockdown: City officials advised residents to stay home.

Tourists, here on the French Riviera during its busiest season, were unsure what to do, milling around, wondering what would actually be open – the beach was closed. Police officers in boats were stopping along the shore to tell them to leave.

Some like Ruth Tobassen of Norway who arrived Thursday with her husband decided to switch hotels after the attacks the night before.

She and her husband decided against attending the fireworks because “we were so hungry” after we arrived. Because it was too windy, they also decided to avoid the terrace and sit inside the restaurant.

“A bunch of people ran in, in panic,” she recalled. “They were looking for people they lost, couldn’t find them. A grandfather sitting with a child in his lap on the floor just cried. It was tragic.”

Honest Reporting