PRAYING FOR THE IMPERFECT STORM: THE IMPLICATIONS OF A COUP D’ETAT IN TURKEY
Barin Kayaoglu

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Dec 3 2006

What are the chances of another military coup in Turkey? Impossible?
Unlikely? Imminent? According to Turkish analyst Zeyno Baran, who is
currently a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Hudson
Institute, "the chances of a military coup in Turkey occurring in 2007
are roughly 50-50." Based on her recent conversations with unnamed
senior officers, Baran argues that Turkish Armed Forces might decide
to step in to avert Turkey’s perceived march toward Islamism under
the Erdogan government next year. [1]

In similar exchanges, claims Baran, she had seen the previous "coup"
back in 1997. According to one of Baran’s contacts, who had "asked the
Iranian generals after the 1979 [Islamic] revolution why they had done
nothing to stop it," their Iranian counterparts responded that by the
time they had realized what was going to happen, it was too late to
stop it. "We will never let that happen in Turkey," vowed the Turkish
generals. Perceiving the current situation in Ankara in similar terms,
Baran informs us that the 50 percent prospect is more likely than not.

Coup-mongering is as old a problem in Turkish intellectual circles as
coups themselves. Turkish political history has been marked and marred
by varying degrees of military interventions. The first one was in
May 1960, when a junta led by junior-ranking officers overthrew the
democratically elected but inept government of Adnan Menderes. The
next one came in March 1971, when the Chief of General Staff sent
a memorandum to Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel that the military
was not happy with the ongoing political turmoil and "advised" the
formation of an "above-party" government to bring order. Following
the memorandum, Demirel got the message and resigned. Less than a
decade later, Demirel, together with the late Bulent Ecevit, failed
to stabilize the country and was once again ousted by a military
coup in September 1980. The subsequent plebiscite in 1982 produced a
constitution which had to be amended more than a dozen times to fit
the needs of a rapidly transforming Turkey. Finally, in February 1997,
mounting pressure against the coalition government led by the Islamist
Necmettin Erbakan culminated in a standoffish National Security Council
meeting with the military top brass and led to Erbakan’s resignation
a few months later. That move also failed to bring about economic
and political stability to Turkey since then.

This synopsis tells volumes as to why another military intervention
in Turkey is a bad idea. The first reason is that not a single coup
has attained its goals. None of military coups have resulted in
bringing long-term political stability to Turkey. The most common
word in Turkish political lexicon is still "crisis" and not "merit"
or "success." On the contrary, many of the times those who were
ousted came back even more strongly. The Ecevit-Demirel-Erbakan trio
came back in the 1990s and did their thing, arguably leading to the
economic crisis of 2001. In that regard, coups have been an assured
way for those incompetent politicians to ultimately keep their clout,
the exact reason why those coups are carried out in the first place.

Coups are also bad for business. Turkey is still on the economic
margins of Europe, in stark contrast to where it could and should be.

In living standards, Turkey still fails to provide its citizens
adequately. Public education is a mess. Those who wish to remain
healthy try to avoid hospitals. Roads, electricity and water grids,
and urban planning fall quite below public needs. Unemployment cannot
be pulled down and direct foreign investment does not go up. Research
and development is still not a sector in and of itself.

Coups do not address any of these problems. Worse yet, they produce
setbacks through their own devices. The most dangerous of these is the
negative impact on the military’s professionalism. The primary duty of
a country’s armed forces is not to run that country but to defend and
promote its political interests in the international realm. In other
words, the best military is that which does not govern at all. When
an officer corps that is trained to lead infantry charges, fire
artilleries, fly airplanes, and command naval vessels are asked to
do myriad things such as running municipalities, inspecting schools,
prosecuting criminals, conducting diplomacy, setting agricultural
policy, and writing constitutions – all at the same time – the result
can be anything but satisfactory. The military’s energetic and vibrant
officers, who are well-trained in martial affairs, will only not be
successful if they assume control over matters that are not a part of
their training. Consequently, that can have adverse effects on their
professional self-esteem and would certainly hamper on the Turkish
military’s effectiveness as a fighting force and Turkey’s security
and defense policy.

Coups are self-fulfilling prophecies. The more likely they get, the
more insecure that civilian politicians become. The more insecure they
become, the deeper their ineptitude gets. Even though popular belief in
Turkey maintains that military "oversight" helps to "straighten out"
politicians, a good deal of the time the result is the opposite. In
terms of civilian control of the military, this is pretty bad. The
Turkish military’s professional attitude is that (as it is true with
all respectable militaries around the world) they dislike weakness in
superiors and subordinates. Professional soldiers do not like personal
weakness; they respect strength, character, and expertise – qualities
that Turkish civilian leaders lack most of the time. Yet overthrowing
democratically-elected governments, no matter how tempting, is not
a remedy but a guarantee for the perpetuation of strained relations
between the civilian and military wings of the government.

Another reason why a coup d’etat is a bad idea is because Turkey
has changed too much for that. Twenty-six years ago, Turkey
was not integrated to the global economic system. There were no
private television or radio networks. Mass communication was not
as ubiquitous and society was not as open as it is today. It was
easy to talk down to the public, implement massive curfews, and
streamline a poorly-written constitution. Today, doing those things
are nigh-on-impossible. Administering the required discipline and
regimentation on a society that has enjoyed the blessings of greater
openness is not that easy and would create insurmountable tensions
between the idolized army and the Turkish people.

In as much as they believe in their duty to protect their country
from internal and external enemies, Turkish officers also know
that they have a standing order from Ataturk not to get involved in
politics. Ataturk’s vision for Turkey was not a place where those
who wake up earlier have a better shot in staging a coup. Even though
he failed in his life-time to consolidate a liberal democratic form
of government, Ataturk was a democrat at heart and he was aware
of his country’s shortcomings. He firmly believed that Turkey’s
problems of backwardness and democratization could only be remedied
by modernization. Democracy, Westernization, and modernization meant
more or less the same thing. He reportedly said in the mid-1920s that
"Turkey is going to build up a perfect democracy." U.S. ambassador
Joseph Grew observed Ataturk’s failed attempt to commence multi-party
democracy in 1930 as follows:

Ataturk began to think the single party as a sign of Turkey’s
inferiority in comparison with Europe and the West. American and
European writers have in recent years devoted much space to the
Turkish dictatorship which has often been described as Western in
form but Oriental in fact. These descriptions have been brought to
the Gazi’s attention and he has not been pleased.[2]

A coup d’etat would only affirm that Turkey is indeed a dictatorship
that is "Western" in outlook but "Oriental" in essence. Zeyno Baran
would probably disagree with my statement, as her concluding remarks
reveal:

If a coup were to happen, it would not necessarily translate to a
non-democratic Turkey. More likely, it would simply mean the end
of Turkey’s current "Islamist experiment" and a return to a more
conservative government-stalwartly secular, yes, but a democracy
nonetheless. Ironically, this Turkey might ultimately be seen to be
a better member of Europe than today’s.

This is too serious a joke to warrant laughter. It is an indisputable
fact that democracy cannot exist without secularism. Religion plus
politics equals disaster. On the other hand, a "stalwartly secular"
system does not automatically guarantee the stature of democracy to
a political regime. A coup d’etat would only demonstrate that, in
the face of the perceived Islamist challenge, Ataturk’s principles
are ineffective in modernizing Turkey and need to be defended by force.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Turkey will not turn Islamist
as long as variables operate in the realm of the real. The previously
quoted Iran analogy is therefore extremely ill-suited in explaining
Turkey’s position. The problem with Iran during the 1970s was the
irresolvable conflict between its socio-economic structure and its
political system. Mohammed Reza Shah’s feverish modernization policies
which started in 1963 resulted in a country that had the best shot
in becoming the industrial, commercial, and military center of the
Middle East by the late 1970s. The Pahlavi monarch’s insistence on
maintaining a firm grip on political power, however, coupled with
mistreating Iranian citizens at the hand of his infamous intelligence
agency SAVAK, destroyed whatever support there was for the Shah’s
regime and led to his ultimate downfall.

For all its faults, lack of heeding popular will is not a deficiency
on the part of Turkey’s political system. Elections happen regularly;
they are contested fairly; and result in a change of political
leadership. Turkish people might still be frustrated with the slow
pace of improvement in their lives, but there is a lot of room for
optimism. Freedom of expression, notwithstanding the hideous article
301 of the penal code, is light years further from what it was just
ten years ago. Turkey is discussing its touchy Armenian and Kurdish
issues with an unprecedented amount of maturity. These advancements
might be the first losses in the face of a coup d’etat and it therefore
eludes reason as to how that course would "not necessarily translate
to a non-democratic Turkey."

Looking at this picture, what are the chances of a coup d’etat in
Turkey next year? 5 percent? 50 percent? Less? More? One cannot know.

That is not even the point. Meteorologists are more equipped in
predicting actual weather patterns than political analysts who quite
often fail in foretelling the political climate. Maybe Ms. Baran
is right and I am wrong. But before praying for the imperfect storm
that would damage Turkey’s political landscape, it is necessary to
consider what the implications of a coup might be for Turkey.

Patriotism dictates that the Turkish High Command and Mr. Erdogan’s
government need to think about that before making their next move.

2 December 2006, JTW

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Barin Kayaoglu is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of
Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia and a regular contributor to
the Journal of Turkish Weekly.

E-mail: kayaoglu@virginia.edu

[1] Zeyno Baran, "The Coming Coup d’Etat?" Newsweek, Dec. 4, 2006;
available from .

[2] Grace Ellison, Turkey To-Day (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1929),8;
quoted in Ertan Aydin, "The Peculiarities of Turkish Revolutionary
Ideology in the 1930s: The Ulku Version of Kemalism, 1933-1936"
(Ph.D. diss., Bilkent University, 2003), 8; Joseph C.

Grew, Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904-1945,
(London: Hammond, Hammond & Co., 1953), 869.

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