26Turkish Coup
Turkey became an official ally of the U.S. after the CIA backed a right-wing coup there in 1980.
27. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was so unliked by senior members of the army and MI5 that there allegedly were discussions about a military coup against the government in 1974.
28. The CIA orchestrated a coup in Syria in 1949 so that it could freely build an oil pipeline. The overthrow launched decades of counter-coups and CIA further tried on multiple occasions to orchestrate coups throughout the 1960s until the Assad family rose to power in 1970.
29. The only attempted coup by a radical Islamist group in the western hemisphere occurred in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in 1990. During the attempted coup d'état Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister A. N. R. Robinson was held hostage for days. When instructed to order the army to stop firing where they were held hostage, Robinson instead instructed them to “attack with full force,” which earned him a beating. He was also shot in his leg.
30. José Sanjurjo, a senior leader of the 1936 coup that started the Spanish Civil War, died at the start of the coup because his plane, which was dangerously overloaded with his luggage, crashed. When warned of the danger he said, “I need to wear proper clothes as the new leader of Spain.”
