In reality, it is not only the army that will be cleansed “with God’s gift” to Recep Tayyip Erdoðan, it would be the ordinary Turks that will face the brunt of his revenge and wrath. How far a standing army can be cleansed? Some of the officers involved in the coup were his advisers and trusted men. There is no guarantee that the new ones he appoints shall be loyal ever after. The root causes of the conflicts that led to this military coup will be very much there. After all, Fethullah Gulen whom Erdoðan used as the main orchestrator of the coup-attempt was once a very close ally of his. Now he is his archenemy.
Erdoðan has become more and more authoritarian in the past few years as he purged his government colleagues, his own appointed top officials and even his loyalists. To further intensify his personal authoritarianism he could use this failed coup to the extreme. Turkey analyst of The Guardian, Andrew Finkel wrote, “Many would argue that Turkey was already in the throes of a slow-motion coup d’état, not by the military, but by Erdoðan himself. For the last three years, he has been moving, and methodically… to take over the nodes of power.”
The rise of Erdoðan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) also indicates the failure of the Turkish ruling classes to create a modern industrialised society and carry out the tasks of the National Democratic revolution. With the decline and crisis of the socioeconomic conditions in Turkey, the much-flaunted secularism of the Turkish state has dwindled. In the first nine years of Erdoðan’s regime the murder rate of women shot up by a huge percent as Islamists and conservative male chauvinists in this increasingly patriarchal society committed these heinous “honour” crimes with impunity.
Since 2002, Erdoðan has infiltrated the bureaucracy and other institutions of the state with Islamic bigots. It was similar to the role Jamaat-e-Islami played during the 11 black years of Zia-ul-Haq’s vicious dictatorship. The stark legacy of Zia continues even today with the obscurantism of the judiciary and other institutions in the “democratic” Pakistan. Similarly, in Turkey the AKP regime has introduced religious and metaphysical syllabus in education to indoctrinate generations to come. The BJP regime in India is practising the same in the name of Hindutva. It is also being done by the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province under the rule of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.
The Turkish Communist Party (TKP) was founded in Baku in the Soviet Union in June 1919. As the Turkish communists moved to join the liberation war and participate in the shaping of the new state, it proved fatal. Almost the entire leadership of the Communist Party was annihilated immediately after entering Turkish territory in Trabzon, a city in the northeast, in January 1921.
For almost a century, in spite of all the brutalities, repression of the state and ideological betrayals and mistakes of the left leaders, generations of youth and workers have continued their struggle to put an end to this cruel system. There is much talk of military coups and civilian democracy, but what it conceals is the history of class struggle and the innumerable left uprisings of the workers and youth in Turkey. For military dictatorships and bourgeois democratic regimes, their foremost targets have been the left, trade unions and the communists. Even in the movements of 2013 and several others that erupted from Istanbul’s Gezi Park and elsewhere in Turkey against Erdoðan, the communists and trade union activists were in the forefront. Red flags decorated with hammer and sickle symbols are there to be seen in most protests.
Although Erdoðan is being portrayed as a strong man and a popular leader by the reactionary media, however, this whole episode of the failed coup is a pyrrhic victory for him. His acts to purge the military would ultimately have a backlash. His repression and intensified authoritarianism would inevitably provoke the masses sooner rather than later. The economy has already shrunk to 3.8 percent from a growth rate of seven percent a few years ago. This means worsening of misery, deprivation and poverty.
In his desire for eternal power Erdoðan is even challenging his bosses — the US imperialists — by closing their bases and accusing them of hosting Gulen. He has gone even to indirectly accusing the US for a role in the putsch. He reminds one somewhat of a megalomaniac Zia, who was driven with religious hegemony shortly before his death. Erdoðan has, in fact, become a liability for his imperialist bosses. At the moment, the imperialists are worried. The Economist wrote, “Unrestrained, he will lead his country to more conflict and chaos. And that, in turn, poses a serious danger to Turkey’s neighbours, to Europe and to the West.”
But the real force that can overthrow this regime and the system it represents is not a military coup but a massive class struggle from below. Several uprisings have erupted in the last few years of Erdoðan’s rule but those were limited and sporadic. Military regimes have inflicted the Turkish masses with tyranny and oppression, and the moneyed democratic regimes have ended up with the outcome of Erdoðan’s despotic rule, severe exploitation and deprivation of the workers and the poor.
The future of this regime is bleak. In such conditions the role of the communist forces to build a revolutionary Marxist alternative is crucial. Once the Turkish workers and youth enter the arena of struggle and a movement erupts, a revolutionary situation can rapidly ensue. With a Marxist leadership a socialist transformation would be entirely possible in a country like Turkey. That is the only way forward for the Turkish people. The Bosporus strait divides Asia and Europe. A revolution in Turkey shall give an impetus to the class struggle on both sides of the divide, uniting the revolutionary masses of the two historic continents of Asia and Europe.
(Concluded)
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]