A foggy and surreal calm descended across Turkey’s major cities of Ankara and Istanbul yesterday as Maltese living there tried to come to terms with the aftermath of a failed military coup.

“Today, the morning after, it sort of feels like the day after a terror attack,” Erika Borg, 28, told the Sunday Times of Malta from her apartment in central Ankara.

“In Turkey, you’re always on alert because of possible terror attacks. So as soon as I saw a military force I thought they were reacting to a threat of some kind. When I realised that the forces meant to be protecting us were actually attacking the State, it was difficult to come to terms with.

More than 160 people were killed, including many civilians, on Friday night after a faction of the armed forces tried to seize power using tanks, fighter jets, and attack helicopters, many of which flew past Ms Borg’s balcony firing rockets and letting rip heavy machine gun fire.

“I was just out on my balcony with friends and then this jet flies passed us, almost at street level. The shooting and the explosions went on all through the night,” she said.

Forces loyal to Turkey's government yesterday fought to crush the last remnants of the failed military coup attempt which collapsed after crowds answered President Tayyip Erdogan’s call to take to the streets in support of the government.

READ: A coup straight out of the 1970s

Ms Borg was almost lost for words, after having spent a night in what felt like a war zone.

“You obviously can’t sleep through something like that. The whole house was shaking and the planes were right above us. As soon as you hear a helicopter you hear shooting and then when you hear a plane you hear a bomb, it just went on and on,” she said.

Ms Borg said the country was already on edge because of the constant threat of terror. “So something like this, it’s weird, sort of exhausting, mentally,” she said, adding that she would sit things out at home until instructed otherwise.

The Maltese consul to Turkey, Franklin Aquilina, on the other hand, had spent much of yesterday touching base with other Maltese in Turkey from his home in central Istanbul.

“The situation now is relatively quiet, it’s the calm after the storm. The government is back in control,” he said, when contacted yesterday. The problems that remained for Maltese were mostly related to people in transit who were stuck waiting for connecting flights out of Turkey.

“The airport was closed and staff only just started showing up at the airport this afternoon. So I dealt with some Maltese who were concerned about the situation,” he said. As of noon yesterday there were only four people still waiting to catch flights out of Istanbul.

Despite the coup coming to an end, Mr Aquilina said getting around Istanbul was tricky. “The highways, particularly the one leading to the airport and back into the city are full of abandoned cars and debris. The traffic was incredible and there was general confusion this morning,” he said.

As for Maltese who call Istanbul home, Mr Aquilina said he had spoken with a few of them and all had spent the night indoors and as far from harm’s way as possible. No Maltese, to his knowledge, had been injured or involved in any way.

“Luckily, the few Maltese that are here, mostly live away from the centre so they were safer. They all avoided dangerous areas such as bridges and main roads,” he said.

WATCH: 'Helicopter was shooting outside my window'

Julian Vassallo, the political counsellor to the EU delegation to Turkey and the former head of the European Parliament in Malta, said the drama of what had happened was all too real for him and his family. His apartment, just 300 metres from the Turkish State broadcaster TRT, came under heavy attack through most of the night.

“Things started happening very, very quickly. We started hearing blasts. For a while it seemed at arm’s length, but at one point we had attack helicopters outside our window,” he said.

The next morning, he said things had calmed down, with only some pockets of remaining violence.

Mario Garrett, a Maltese professor of gerontology at San Diego State University in California, who is on a temporary summer teaching visit in Istanbul, told the Sunday Times of Malta that as he was staying a kilometre away from Fatih Bridge, which was taken over by the military tanks, he had thought he would have to evacuate.

“In Istanbul, they didn’t deploy their weapons. But the sonic boom of fighter jets was enough to persuade people that this was serious. When I finally couldn’t drink any more tea, I fell asleep, to wake up to a very quiet and peaceful Istanbul,” he said.

The Maltese government yesterday urged its nationals to avoid travelling to Turkey. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has set up a crisis centre which can be contacted on Freephone 8007 2203 (for local calls) and +356 2124 2191 /+356 2204 2200.