Critics argue that his Putin-like shift from the office of Prime Minister to the presidency is a threat to democracy in Turkey. But the failure of the coup likely will cause Erdoğan to redouble his efforts, which he will parse as an essential antidote to instability.

And for all its criticism of Erdoğan's conduct, the West probably will turn a blind eye or pay lip service to the crackdown because the Turkish leader has it over a barrel – the Europeans, because he has taken $US6 billion of their lucre to stem the flood of Syrian and Iraqi refugees to the Continent; and Washington, because Turkey is strategically vital in the war against the so-called Islamic State in the region, which has spawned a new wave of terrorist attacks globally.

But as world capitals focus on their own national interests, divisions in Turkey will deepen.

Even before the attempted coup there was rising secular anger over Erdoğan's abuses of human rights – purging the judiciary, jailing journalists and forcing media proprietors to toe his line in the wake of sensational corruption scandals and his ferocious response to the Gezi Park protests of 2013.

But in the midst of this new crisis, supporters in neighbourhoods like Kasimpasa, his birthplace in sprawling Istanbul, were chanting: "Erdogan is the honor of Turkey! Revenge! We will take our revenge!"

In two national elections in 2015, Erdoğan failed to win the parliamentary support necessary to ram through the constitutional changes necessary to formalise a grab for power that the president had already executed unilaterally.

But what now? Predicting that Erdoğan now will have the political capital to crash through, Dogu Ergil, a political scientist at Ankara University, warned: "[His] ambition to create a one-man government with a union of the executive and legislative, is now much easier to accomplish."

Erdogan and his supporters quickly accused the followers of the self-exiled and hermit-like Fethullah Gülen, who lives in Pennsylvania in the US, of masterminding both the protests and the bribery scandal.

And despite the US rebuffing all Erdoğan efforts to have the Pennsylvania-based cleric and scholar deported, it would have been music to his ears when US Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Saturday that Washington would entertain an extradition request for Gülen – even if Kerry added a rider that Turkey would have to present convincing evidence against Gülen.

Given what's at stake for Washington in roiling Middle East conflicts and it's need for access to Turkish bases to keep pressure on IS, Washington will probably see handing over Gülen as the price of keeping the truculent Erdoğan on side.

The stakes were raised in the struggle to repatriate Gülen when Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned that any country, by which he meant the US, that that stood by Gülen, would be considered an enemy of Turkey.

Failure to anticipate the coup against such a vital NATO ally is another intelligence failure for Washington – reliable Turkey has been revealed to be anything but and Erdoğan's presumed control of the military has been revealed to be a mirage.

Further, at a time when Turkey's full attention is needed in a fraught game geopolitical brinksmanship, its government and security services will be consumed and distracted by these incendiary developments.

Positing the coup attempt as "a dilemma to the United States and European governments," Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, posed this question to The New York Times as the drama unfolded: "Do you support a nondemocratic coup [or] an "increasingly nondemocratic leader?"

Military coups were supposed to have been consigned to Turkish history and there was a consensus that for all of Erdoğan's human rights failings and his insufferable need to be seen as a regional strongman, that he was in full control of his security apparatus and other agencies.

In power since 2002, Erdogan's AK Party has governed with the support of about half the electorate. He was supposed to have effectively defanged the military of its historic interventionist bent and to have installed his own handpicked men to the judiciary, the prosecution service and the police in the wake of what he believed were Gulenist plots to destabilise his government.

Repercussions from the failed coup will be severe. The expectation of analysts is that Erdoğan will be stronger and more determined to have his way – and that means an inevitable crackdown on all who he perceives as his domestic opponents and that crackdown will be sold to a divided people as an authoritarian Erdoğan being preferable to returning to the dark days of military rule.

In that equation, there could be more bloodshed. Even though the coup failed it could well represent the start of a new struggle for Turkey's democracy – and in that, it could well be that democracy will be the victim.

An embarrassed Erdoğan will obsess about restoring his reputation. To have been missing in action as the coup bid erupted looked unseemly and there was great irony in the fact that a leader who shuts down social media at the slightest hint of a crisis, had to resort to using a mobile phone and FaceTime to announce to his people that he was still in the game in the early hours of Saturday.

With a mobile phone held up before a CNN Turk camera, Erdoğan declared: "I urge the Turkish people to convene at public squares and airports. There is no power higher than the power of the people."

The people came out in droves, some heroically lying on the road in front of the tanks, and the rebel military slunk off – with some officers flying a helicopter to Greece, where the pleaded for asylum.

Mosques were mobilised too, but in Saturday's pre-dawn, it was social media that saved Erdoğan.

In a defining 4am speech to the nation, the president declared: "Turkey has a democratically elected government and president. We are in charge and we will continue exercising our powers until the end. We will not abandon our country to these invaders. It will end well."

Denunciation of the attempted coup by the combined opposition political parties further strengthened Erdoğan's hand and at lunchtime on Saturday, Yildirim announced that the death toll was a shocking 161 civilian 'martyrs' along with more than 100 rebel members of the military; and that another 2,839 rebels had been rounded up.

The post-coup crackdown was going at full throttle - 10 members of Turkey's highest administrative court who were accused of being in league with Gülen were reportedly in detention; arrest warrants had been issued for almost 200 more judges of the administrative court and of the country's appeals court; and thousands of others were reported to have been dismissed from their posts.

And with Erdoğan declaring the coup bid to be a "God-given" opportunity to cleanse the ranks of the military, it was clear that a cleanout had only just begun. There's talk of reinstating the death penalty, so expect the punishment to be harsh.

Will Erdoğan have a free hand?

He is an essential ally to the West, but he is far from popular with his allies. He's at odds with them on the fate of the Kurds and the conduct of the war in Syria; he has been heavy-handed with Europe over the migrant crisis; and relations with his Arab and Israeli neighbours and with Russia are tense.

Yet any criticism likely will be muted, because however much they dislike the man, he and the democracy that he continues to squeeze will be judged to be more preferable that a military junta.

A smart leader would be wise to be measured in his response, but while Erdoğan is wily and manipulative, he's not known for his smarts. Democracy and the Kurds will suffer.

And it could be much worse than that. As Erdoğan fought to regain himself, Eric S. Edelman, a former American ambassador to Turkey and former leading Pentagon official under President George W. Bush, cautioned: "The danger here is this could spiral out of control and turn into a full-blown civil war."