GRANADA – Military coups –
successful or otherwise – follow a predictable pattern in Turkey. Political
groups – typically Islamists – deemed by soldiers to be antagonistic to Kemal
Atatürk’s vision of a secular Turkey gain increasing power. Tensions rise,
often accompanied by violence on the streets. Then the military steps in,
exercising what the soldiers claim is their constitutional power to restore
order and secular principles.
This time, it was very
different. Thanks to a series of sham trials targeting secularist officers,
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had managed to reconfigure the military
hierarchy and place his own people at the top. While the country has been
rocked by a series of terrorist attacks and faces a souring
economy, there was no inkling of unrest in the military or opposition to
Erdoğan. On the contrary, Erdoğan’s recent reconciliation with Russia and
Israel, together with his apparent desire to pull back from an active role in
the Syrian civil war, must have been a relief to Turkey’s top brass.
No less baffling was the
almost amateurish behavior of the putschists, who managed to capture the chief
of the general staff but apparently made no meaningful attempt to detain
Erdoğan or any senior politicians. Major television channels were allowed to
continue to operate for hours, and when soldiers showed up in the studios,
their incompetence was almost comical.
Planes strafed civilians and
attacked the parliament – very uncharacteristic behavior for the Turkish
military outside areas of Kurdish insurgency. Social media were full of
pictures of hapless (and apparently clueless) soldiers being pulled out of
tanks and disarmed (and sometimes much worse) by civilian crowds – scenes I
never thought I would see in a country that has come to hate military coups but
still loves its soldiers.
Erdoğan was quick to blame his
former ally and current nemesis, the exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, who leads
a large Islamic movement from outside of Philadelphia. There are obvious
reasons for taking this with a grain of salt, but the claim is less outlandish
than it may seem. We know that there is a strong Gülenist presence in the
military (without which the government’s earlier move against senior Turkish
officers – the so-called Eregenekon
and Sledgehammer cases – could not have been mounted). In fact, the
military was the last remaining Gülenist stronghold in Turkey, since Erdoğan
had already purged the movement’s sympathizers in the police, judiciary, and
media.
We also know that Erdoğan was
preparing to make a major move against the Gülenists in the military. A few
officers had already been arrested for fabricating evidence in earlier trials,
and it was rumored that a large-scale purge of Gülenist officers was in the
works for next month’s meeting of the Supreme Military Council.
So the Gülenists had a motive,
and the timing of the attempt supports their involvement. It is a supreme irony
that the coup Erdoğan long feared from the secularists may have eventually come
from his one-time allies – who themselves were responsible for fabricating
myriad coup plots against Erdoğan.
Yet a bloody military coup
lies very much outside the traditional modus operandi of the Gülen movement,
which tends to prefer behind-the-scenes machinations to armed action or explicit violence. The coup
may have been a desperate last-ditch effort, given the prospect that they were
about to lose their last stronghold in Turkey. But, with so many unanswered
questions about what took place, the emergence of many strange twists and turns
in the coming weeks would be no surprise.
There is less uncertainty
about what is likely to happen next. The coup attempt will add potency to
Erdoğan’s venom and fuel a wider witch-hunt against the Gülen movement.
Thousands will be sacked from their positions in the military and elsewhere,
detained, and prosecuted with little regard for the rule of law or the
presumption of innocence. There are already alarming calls to bring back the
death penalty for putschists, which recent experience shows is a very broad
category for Erdoğan. Some of the mob violence against captured soldiers
portends a Jacobinism that would jeopardize all remaining due-process
protections in Turkey.
The coup attempt is bad news
for the economy as well. Erdoğan’s recent, somewhat skin-deep reconciliation
with Russia and Israel was likely motivated by a desire to restore flows of
foreign capital and tourists. Such hopes are now unlikely to be realized. The
failed coup reveals that the country’s political divisions run deeper than even
the most pessimistic observers believed. This hardly makes for an attractive
environment for investors or visitors.
But, politically, the failed
coup is a boon for Erdoğan. As he put it while it was still unclear if he was going to emerge
on top, “this uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason
to cleanse our army.” Now that the coup has failed, he will have the political
tailwind to make the constitutional changes he has long sought to strengthen
the presidency and concentrate power in his own hands.
The coup’s failure will thus
bolster Erdoğan’s authoritarianism and do little good for Turkish democracy.
Had the coup succeeded, however, the blow to democratic prospects surely would
have been more severe, with longer-term effects. That provides at least some
reason to cheer.
No comments:
Post a Comment