Confessing to Hasan Cemal, Süleyman Demirel said, “I was physically abused by the army twice. One cannot do anything without them.” Süleyman Demirel was seven times Turkey’s prime minister and president from 1993 to 2000. His confession appeared in Hasan Cemal’s seminal work on Turkey’s politics, Turkey’s Military Problem. Hasan Cemal, a respected journalist and a grandson of Kemal Ataturk’s close associate Cemal Pasha, analysed events spanning from 1920 to 2007. Cemal concluded that throughout its 86-year history, since 1920, Turkey never escaped living under the weight of the military as “saviour” and “guardian”.
The Turkish Republic started out with the potential to inspire a wave of modernisation in the Muslim world under Kamal Atatürk. By 1960, Turkey had become just another country where civilians and the army were always at loggerheads. Atatürk, in 1924, declared, “The religion of Islam will be awe-inspiring if it ceases to be a political instrument.” He viewed the religion as a significant impediment in Turkey’s progress. He set out to shrink religion’s reach in Turkish society.
Atatürk’s reformist agenda had broad support in the European capitals. Europeans, however, cautioned him over setting up a one party system. They were also critical of implementing secularism as the state’s ideology. The Europeans argued that secularism had never progressed as state ideology. It evolved as the “unwritten promise” of western democracies.
Atatürk ignored European views. An immensely popular leader, he believed that he needed to push his agenda uninterrupted. He succeeded in all major reforms yet he failed to reform the army in any meaningful manner. Turkey’s army under him did not change much from the theocratic Caliphate era. Atatürk passed away in 1938. Ýsmet Ýnönü, an army general, became Turkey’s president. Kemal Atatürk’s successors lacked the zeal to continue the reforms and commitment to secularism that Atatürk had. To them it was the army’s right to rule the country as the army under Atatürk launched the Republic. Secularism over the ensuing years was to flagellate the civilian governments and to keep them under the army’s thumb.
The US Marshall Plan’s support brought some economic relief to Turkey after the Second World War. The US also pushed for genuine military and civil partnership much like the one the US supported in Pakistan between 2007 and 2008. The elections in 1950 saw a landslide victory for the Democratic Party defeating the Kemalist Republican Party. The Democratic Party under Prime Minister Adnan Menderes worked with the army. His government rolled back many Atatürk secular initiatives. The urban middle class and the army viewed the developments with unease. The Democratic Party won another election in 1955. Army and civilian relations began to sour immediately after. The army’s intelligence wing, Milli Emniyet Hizmeti (MAH), which later became Milli Ýstihbarat Teþkilatý or MIT, started to influence Turkey’s politics by penetrating the political parties and often orchestrating political actions. The constitution placed the MIT under the prime minister but, in effect, the intelligence agency never considered the prime minister as its superior.
The first coup in 1960 was the fiercest. The courts hanged 12 politicians, including the civilian prime minister, Adnan Menderes. The military restricted the space for civilian politics a little more with every subsequent coup and intervention. The political system in Turkey became militarised. A businessman once commented, “The army owns the majority stocks in a company called Turkey.” The analogy aptly summed up the decades-long battle and ensuing suffering for democracy in Turkey.
Despite the horrendous treatment meted out to the politicians, the intelligentsia, the trade unions, the liberals and the left supported the coup. The army and intelligence agencies destroyed the Democratic Party by eliminating its top ranking leaders and buying off the secondary leadership. The army presented a new constitution that strictly forbade the exploitation of religion for political gains under the threat of penalties. Later, the Turkish intelligentsia concluded that the Democratic Party was never against secularism or modernisation. Adnan Menderes occasionally drifted away from secularism for political capital. Within a short period after the coup, the Turkish intelligentsia and the people realised the error in judgment and the opposition to army rule grew.
The struggle for power between the army and the civilians intensified. The army backed off on many occasions to launch yet another coup soon after, claiming that civilians had faltered. After 1960, the army intervened and staged coups in 1971, 1980, 1997 and the last failed attempt in 2007. During this period, the Turks often complained, “Whenever civilian politicians and the military faced each other, the media always — without exception — chose the side of the military and not that of democracy.”
The last attempt for a coup in 2007 was thwarted by the combined efforts of political parties after the army stage-managed a crisis. The political scene was first shaken by the “Republican rallies,” supported by former Gendarmerie commander retired General ªener Eruygur and other retired military personnel. The political scene became rife with rumors of a coup. The goal of the rallies was to derail democracy from its ordinary course by creating a chaotic environment. The judiciary, working in tandem with the military, put forward the “367 formula”. A constraint required a two-third majority of votes for the election of president. This was nothing more than a legal stunt. The Republic People’s Party (CHP) accepted the challenge. Turkey went towards a snap Presidential election.
The military published a memorandum online right after the first ballot in parliament. The midnight “e-memorandum” concluded with the words: “The army is the absolute defender of secularism. The army possesses an unshakable resoluteness to continue protecting secularism.” The explicit threat of a coup by the army was taken head on by the civilians.
The civilian politicians responded to the military’s challenge. Government spokesman issued a statement condemning the e-memorandum. The statement was the turning point. It was the first time an elected government had managed to take a firm position against the threat of a military coup. The media turned its back on the military. Hasan Cemal wrote a hard-hitting article titled ‘No’ on that day. He wrote, “We reject the military’s midnight memorandum. Military interventions or coups have had no benefit for this country and will not have any in the future.”
Turkey’s military problem ended that night.
The writer is a management consultant based in the US. He is a freelance writer and tweets as @HarPasha