After the Coup: How Intelligence Services Survive (or Collapse) in Political Upheaval
08/30/25
By The Security Nexus
After the Coup: How Intelligence Services Survive (or Collapse) in Political Upheaval
In the wake of political earthquakes—coups, revolutions, or mass uprisings—few institutions face stakes as high as a nation’s intelligence services. Tasked with safeguarding the regime and the state alike, these shadowy entities often find themselves at the very epicenter of disruption. Whether they are purged, realigned, or absorbed into new power structures, intelligence agencies in autocracies don’t just observe political turmoil—they live and die by it.
The Coup Survival Playbook
Globally, leaders in authoritarian regimes follow a chillingly consistent pattern after a failed coup attempt: they consolidate power by purging disloyal elites. Aksoy and Carter (2022) provide compelling statistical evidence of this phenomenon, showing that failed coups increase cabinet instability by 8–11% in the following year. Intelligence officials, given their proximity to coercive power and secrets, are among the first targets. Loyalty tests, reshuffles, and outright dismantling of agencies are common, often replacing competence with compliance (Sudduth 2021).
John A. Gentry (2021) categorizes purge motivations into five overlapping fears: ideological disloyalty, rival power bases, foreign contacts, internal ambition, and excessive institutional autonomy. Leaders must walk a fine line—eliminating threats while preserving enough capability to govern and survive the next crisis.
Egypt: Pragmatism in Revolutionary Purges
The 1952 Egyptian revolution exemplifies the threat-competence dilemma. The Free Officers, led by Nasser, sought to break the monarchy’s grip while transforming Egypt into a developmental republic (Ketchley and Wenig 2023). They targeted loyalists of King Farouk, especially within the Ministry of War and municipal affairs, but pragmatically retained technocrats in finance, industry, and diplomacy. As the regime’s leader, Nasser even embedded officers into bureaucratic roles to “learn the secrets of government.”
This balancing act—purging for control while retaining expertise—was far from seamless. Administrative inexperience led to early inefficiencies and corruption. Yet it allowed Egypt to maintain internal stability while radically reorienting its political economy.
In contrast, Egypt’s 2011 uprising revealed the limits of coup-proofing. Mubarak’s reliance on military patronage backfired. According to Albrecht (2014), the army’s economic autonomy and professional ethos, coupled with Mubarak’s failure to cultivate personal loyalty, led the military to discard him in order to preserve the regime itself.
Turkey: From Guardian Coup to Ontological Crisis
Turkey presents a starkly different arc. In 1960, U.S.-backed anti-communist interests tacitly tolerated a “guardian coup,” which resulted in executions of civilian leaders and entrenched military dominance (Gunn 2020). But it was the failed 2016 coup that led to perhaps the most extensive intelligence purges in modern history.
Erdoğan’s AKP used the traumatic event to restructure the state along a rigid nationalist narrative: “one nation, one state, one homeland, one flag” (Adisonmez and Onursal 2020). Over 150,000 civil servants were dismissed and more than 50,000 arrested, many with no direct ties to the coup (Esen and Gumuscu 2017). The intelligence services were gutted and rebuilt in the AKP’s image, sidelining residual Kemalist influence in favor of personalist loyalty.
These moves aligned with Gentry’s warning that large-scale purges often cripple operational effectiveness. In Turkey’s case, the purges had both ideological and ontological aims: to erase rival state imaginaries and reforge the deep state in Erdoğan’s mold.
Thailand: Royal Realignments and Silent Shifts
Thailand offers a contrasting model. Following coups in 2006 and 2014, the monarchy-aligned military quietly but decisively reshaped intelligence bodies. Rather than mass purges, the Thai approach focused on bureaucratic layering, creating parallel agencies under royal or military command while sidelining existing civilian institutions. This “dual sovereignty” model suppresses opposition without overt bloodletting, though it breeds inefficiency and institutional confusion.
Purges Are Not Panaceas
As Gentry and others warn, purging intelligence agencies is a dangerous, often self-defeating tool. It may eliminate dissent, but it also risks:
• Operational gaps (e.g., Myanmar 1984 or Peru 2000);
• Politicization of new staff (e.g., Albania post-1990);
• Institutional sabotage via leaks or bureaucratic resistance;
• Residual cultural rot from partial purges without deep reform.
Sudduth (2021) adds that leaders with military or rebel backgrounds are particularly prone to violent purges, especially if they’ve ruled long enough to develop both paranoia and power.
Conclusion: Intelligence in the Crucible
Regime change turns intelligence agencies into battlegrounds. Whether through violent purges, careful realignments, or institutional bifurcation, their fate often mirrors that of the state. Egypt and Turkey reveal the spectrum: from pragmatic reshuffling to ontological warfare.
But the question lingers: Can an intelligence service ever truly escape the political DNA of the regime that created it? Or are they forever shadows of their sovereigns?
⸻
Sources:
• Aksoy, Deniz, and David B. Carter. 2022.
• Albrecht, Holger. 2014.
• Adisonmez, Umut Can, and Recep Onursal. 2020.
• Esen, Berk, and Şebnem Gumuscu. 2017.
• Gentry, Caron E. 2021.
• Goldring, Edward, and Sheena Chestnut Greitens. 2023.
• Grimm, Sonja. 2017.
• Gunn, Eric C. 2020.
• Ketchley, Neil, and Steven C. Wenig. 2023.
• Sudduth, Jun Koga. 2021.
