[glass_of_water]

It's possible the coup was staged as an excuse to purge the opposition and seize more power.

Edit: changed "quite likely" to "possible" to address valid criticism.

[imartin2k]

In my book, "quite likely" would be, say, 80-90 %. And that is absurd.

It is imaginable that the coup was staged, but it is not more likely than the other, more realistic explanations. In fact, it is still rather unlikely, even if one cannot rule it out completely.

That being said, as another commentator mentioned: These lists have existed before, since tensions have been going on for years. So now Erdogan just had to pull them out of the drawer.

[AndyNemmity]

Agreed. There are 3 possible options in my view, and any of them could be true. There just isn't enough evidence for any of them to be likely.