Turkey’s failed military coup
wasn’t in service of democracy — but neither is Erdoğan’s countercoup.
On Friday, July 15, at about
10:15 PM, units of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) shut down the two main bridges over the Bosphorus in
Istanbul. Others, patrolling on the coastal line, announced that people should
leave the streets — a state of emergency was to be declared.
Istanbul’s Atatürk airport was
captured and closed by the military, which also began disarming police units in
the city. At the same time tanks moved into the capital, Ankara, over
which fighter jets were flying low. Heavy shelling and fighting broke out.
The Coup Unfolds
It slowly became clear to
everybody that parts of the military were attempting a coup. Yet it took the
putschists more than an hour and a half before they made an official statement.
Long before that Prime
Minister Binali Yıldırım of the ruling Justice
and Development Party (AKP) made a hasty comment on television announcing a
coup attempt by a minority within the military and calling on the people to
fight back.
Soldiers did eventually storm
the state television and radio broadcaster and read out their own declaration.
A “Counsel for Peace at Home” (a reference to Mustafa Kemal’s anti-expansionist
slogan “Peace at home, peace in the world”) said that it had taken power in order to restore democratic
and secular rule of law, which had been eroded by President Erdoğan’s
government.
All the while Istanbul and
especially Ankara, where state institutions are located, erupted in fighting.
The headquarters of the General Staff of the TSK was occupied by plotters only
at around midnight and the chief of the General Staff, Hulusi
Akar, was taken hostage together with other top commanders. He was forced
to endorse the coup statement, which he did not.
The parliament, the
headquarters of the intelligence agency, the presidential palace, and several
other state institutions were fired at from helicopters or fighter jets, while
tanks patrolled in critical areas. The attack concentrated on the intelligence
agency and police special forces headquarters in Ankara — two of the
institutions considered most loyal to Erdoğan and the AKP.
It quickly became clear that
the coup was not planned by the General Staff itself but took place against the
chain of command. The plotters came mainly from the gendarmerie and air force
and were assisted by some parts of the armored forces. It doesn’t seem to be
the case that high-ranking generals were actively involved in the beginning,
indeed many were taken in custody after the coup failed.
When the tide of battle was
becoming clearer, many other senior generals, such as the First Army’s Ümit
Dündar, slowly began phoning into CNN Turk to condemn the coup, declaring it
illegal and traitorous and commanding the involved military units back into the
barracks.
Meanwhile, statements of the
opposition and other important political figures were pouring in. The
fascist-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP), the pro-Kurdish Peoples’
Democratic Party (HDP) all condemned the coup attempt.
Former president Abdullah Gül,
often rumored to be close to former imam and onetime AKP ally Fethullah Gülen and a potential rival to Erdoğan, strongly
condemned the coup, as did former prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who had been
sacked and removed by the president just a couple of months ago.
Half an hour after midnight,
Erdoğan himself managed to connect to CNN Türk through FaceTime from a secret
location. He accused the “parallel structure” and “Pennsylvania” of plotting
against him. Those references are well-known in Turkey and refer to Gülen — who
has resided in Pennsylvania since 1999 — and his religious community.
Erdoğan also called his people
to flock to the streets and airports to fight back. Thousands of civilians did
just that. Similarly, on the direction of Mehmet Görmez, president of religious
affairs, mosques all over the country implored people throughout the night to
take to the streets.
By now government forces —
police special forces and loyal military units — began engaging the choke
points that the putschists were still holding. They were assisted not only by
thousands of civilians, but also by AKP-aligned paramilitaries with light
weaponry, who have been frequently seen over the last years in action against
mass opposition demonstrations.
Outside of Turkey, it took the
international community some time before it commented on the unfolding events.
While the first US statement via Secretary of State John Kerry was ambiguous,
saying that he hoped for “stability and peace” to prevail, eventually President
Obama came out to declare his support for the elected government.
The more statements of this
sort that came in from various countries and international agencies the more
things started to change in favor of the government. When Erdoğan eventually spoke at
Atatürk airport at around 4 AM, he and his supporters could all but
definitively claim victory. Fighting was still continuing, particularly in
Ankara, but the coup was clearly a lost cause.
Why Did the Coup Fail?
What unfolded over the weekend
showed a coup attempt that was disastrously planned and executed. It was hard
not to wonder how anybody thought it was a good idea.
1. The coup was poorly planned
and lacked legitimacy.
To begin with, there was no
political or ideological preparation for the coup. No military coup can take
place without it, especially not a coup such as this one, which anticipated
broad support on the grounds of anti-AKP sentiment in society and state within
the first hours. Although there is a widespread opposition
to Erdoğan, there is by now also public opposition to putsches.
For a military coup to be
accepted and defended by large parts of society in Turkey today, it would have
to be seen as an effective and transitory procedure that would immediately pave
the way for a viable democratic civilian alternative to the AKP. There was no
alternative built up and no other preparations of any sort.
The coup was a surprise, even
for those who should have supported it. Many people were confused about what
was happening or apathetic, for they could see no sense or meaningful direction
in the coup, merely a repetition of an old nightmare.
That the putschists had no
visible face to be identified and associated with (even their broadcast was
made by a public television anchorwoman, not by a participant) only added to
the alienation of the people from the plotters.
2. It was politically
isolated.
The coup was also immediately
isolated in the political arena. All central political and even economic actors
condemned the action: the AKP and all oppositional parties (CHP, MHP, and HDP)
made declarations one after the other doing so and the leading business union —
the representative of the leading factions of Turkish finance capital, the
TÜSIAD — joined them. Without this support, it was easy to see why the rebel
units were overrun by police and civilians.
3. The soldiers involved
weren’t committed participants.
For being such a contested
action from the outset, the coup was not executed as brutally as would have been
necessary in order to gain the upper hand. The putschists would have had to
fire with heavy guns and artillery into the crowds to hold their ground but
fortunately they didn’t do so and many soldiers just gave in into the police
and let themselves be taken in custody.
From pictures even from
central locations of the coup such as the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge in
Istanbul, one could see the manpower behind the attempt: low-ranking,
non-committed young soldiers who would quickly waver.
Many soldiers, who were
supposed to gain control on the streets, later on said that they were told that
they were sent out for training missions and were surprised the moment they
realized they were part of a coup. Some of them even began to desert when the
situation came into view.
4. They didn’t act decisively.
The putschists couldn’t even
defend their strong points: they had momentum in Ankara initially and were at
first able to dominate the capital’s air space. However, they were not able to
execute decisive strikes: they were not able to neutralize the central
institutions of their perceived enemy, such as the intelligence agency or
police special forces headquarters in the city. They only succeeded in taking
the General Staff building. The prime minister and president were safe from the
plotters as well, and able to rally opposition to an unpopular coup.
5. Without this early success,
leading officers didn’t support the attempt.
It became clear that the
General Staff was not involved in the coup planning — but many high-ranking
generals would have supported the coup in a stronger and more decisive way if
it had been better executed.
As in any coup that begins
against the chain of command and does not have revolutionary aims, but merely
seeks to change power relations between elites, senior officers tend to join
the coup only once it becomes obvious that it will succeed.
A Premature Coup?
All the weaknesses and obvious
organizational and procedural deficits of the coup make it plausible that the
action was launched prematurely (we dismiss the view that the coup was
orchestrated by Erdoğan himself).
President Erdoğan, in his
“rallying speech” delivered at Atatürk airport on Saturday morning, called the
coup attempt a blessing of Allah for it created the opportunity to “cleanse”
the military from cancerous elements. Erdoğan was waiting to do this for
quite some time but wasn’t able to do so — the Turkish military remained the
last state apparatus somewhat autonomous from the AKP.
As pointed out by journalist Ahmet Şık,
as well as many others, there is information indicating that police and
juridical operations planned to commence action against anti-AKP elements
within the military on July 16. It is also said that those elements were
preparing for a coup in advance of the central meeting of the Supreme Military
Council (YAŞ) in August, in which assignments within the military are
undertaken and all central issues related to the army are discussed with the
involvement of the civilian government.
In other words, after the
planned operations on July 16, the anti-AKP elements within the army were
supposed to be kicked out of the army and replaced in the YAŞ meeting. Fear of
these unfolding actions may have forced these officers to stage their coup much
earlier than planned.
Though this seems to be the
most plausible explanation for recent events, it still remains unclear who exactly
those anti-AKP elements were. What is sure is that they were a minority and not
supportive of the course of events unfolding since the late 2015 escalation of
the war
in North Kurdistan.
Since then, the Turkish
military which has gone years without being a political actor, came back to the
foreground as organic ties between the military and the rest of the (mostly
AKP-dominated) state were forged.
All top military commanders
and allies of the military who had been arrested in the AKP’s struggle against
the military beginning in 2007 were released from prison, and all cases against
them dropped. Erdoğan even declared that the government was misled and deceived
by Gülenists, who were responsible for the mass arrests of commanders.
The military’s reputation got
reconstituted. Just a couple of days before the coup attempt, the army was even
granted, through new legislation, substantially increased
authority and legal cover for all its bloody war crimes in North
Kurdistan.
This did not mean that the
military was being subsumed under the AKP. On the contrary, the AKP was forced
to reconstitute the military and go into an alliance with it since it lost its
deeply seated partner in the state, Gülen’s religious community, and it became
clear that it is not possible for the (AKP-dominated) special operations forces
to fight against the Kurdish
liberation movement on their own. They needed heavy artillery and commando
units to do so and these were (as yet) only available to the military.
The General Staff itself was
quite happy with this new alliance and was planning to use it to massively
strengthen its position within state and society again. It seems certain that
they were not involved in the coup.
However, there were tensions
within all sections of the state and within society since the 2013
Gezi uprising. Since then, political and economic instability, a permanent
state of social upheaval, and one foreign policy crisis after the other have
been taking place all of which are rocking the social and political order in
Turkey and risking systemic breakdown.
The latest developments of
this crisis consisted of the ouster of ex-prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and an
ideologically and politically costly and risky total war in North Kurdistan.
Averting the perceived
systemic risk caused by these actions, and stabilizing the bourgeois order,
were surely among the main motivations of the coup, especially for those
high-ranking commanders who were supposedly assisting the coup or began
assisting it in the course of its implementation.
The fact that some higher
commanders may have conspired in the coup or joined it in after it was
underway, or were at least unsure on which side to position themselves for some
hours, points to the fact that the situation within the military is far from
clear.
It is likely that some of them
only began siding with the government once they saw that the putschists were
about to fail. And there is a chance that the difficult and pyrrhic
advance of the Turkish military in North Kurdistan was a main element in
the discontent within the military.
It seems probable that cadres
of the Fethullah Gülen community entrenched within the military were involved
in the coup. Although the Gülen community is more known to prefer civilian as
much as juridical and police institutions as fields of activity and
organization, there is no reason why they should not also have been organizing
within the military other than the fact that traditionally the military is a
stronghold of Kemalist elites. And if they were organized within the military,
chances are high that a standoff could take place between the AKP and Gülenist
elements, for that would have then been the last stronghold of the Gülenists
within the state.
While it does not seem likely
that any of the top commanders allegedly involved in the coup are Gülenists, it
is plausible that the two could tactically cooperate: they might not share the
same ideology, but they would share a common enemy and a foreign policy
perspective (strongly pro-NATO, vaguely anti-intervention).
In any case, the majority of
the military and especially the General Staff did not support the coup after
all. For them, the current balance of forces was still working in favor of the
military’s position within state and society, and they were willing to operate
in alliance with the AKP.
The military has already been
successful in somewhat forcing the AKP to take on a foreign policy stance that
is closer to the military’s classical line (NATO cooperation, but wary of
intervention in Syria and hostilities with Russia).
However, both sides still
remain partly independent from each other and follow their own agendas. The
“cleansing” of the military of the current putschists will not eradicate the
possibility of future, more serious, military coups in the near future. That
will be determined by the ability of the AKP to control the crisis it has
produced.
Erdoğan’s Countercoup
The battles on Friday and
Saturday left over 300 people dead and around 1,500 wounded. After the coup
was essentially defeated, the countercoup of Erdoğan and his clique started
immediately. A wave of repression against people somehow involved with the coup
or otherwise on a “black list” was initiated.
As of Monday, almost eight
thousand people have been detained with the accusation of involvement in the
coup attempt. Of these, more than six thousand are soldiers; seventy being
high-ranking officers, generals and admirals; around 750 from the judiciary;
thirty being members of the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK); two
are members of the constitutional court (AYM). 316 of the detained have been
arrested as of Monday. The operations are continuing without pause, and the
number of detainments is expected to rise, as the minister of justice stated.
Since Friday night, Erdoğan
and the government keep calling on people to occupy all major places during the
night in order to manifest the “national will.” No other incidence could
provide him with the opportunity to mobilize his people on this scale,
consolidate mass support, and represent his power as materialization of
democratic forces in Turkey. Although the crowds on streets have — after the
very first day — remained below expectations, some small but well-organized,
militant radical Islamist groups succeeded in capturing parts of the mob.
Many young soldiers who did
not even know that they were part of a coup attempt have been beaten, tortured,
and almost lynched by the crowd. Systematic beating and torture is still going
on in custody as hundreds of videos on social media reveal. Slogans such as “Ya
Allah, Bismillah, Allahu Ekber” (“With the name of Allah, Allah is one”) have
been echoing in streets and places since Friday.
It swiftly became clear what
this all was supposed to be about: Saturday night, some of the groups started
to attack Alevi and Kurdish neighborhoods that are well known as being leftist,
such as Gazi or Okmeydanı in Istanbul, Tuzluçayır in Ankara, and Armutlu in
Antakya. One group also attacked Moda in Istanbul, a hip neighborhood well
known for bars and cafes, shouting slogans against drinking alcohol and the
like.
Police supported some of these
attacks, particularly as the people in the left neighborhoods fought back. Gazi
experienced a violent conflict as left-wing forces took the streets armed to
fight back the fascist mob.
As of now, these attacks have
been unsuccessful and were resisted everywhere, yet they highlight an aspect to
the mobilization of masses to streets by Erdoğan. He does not just want to
eliminate the coup plotters; he wants to strengthen his grip on all defiant
oppositional layers of society, and reestablish his broken hegemony through
right-wing mass mobilizations.
The same mobs interrupted
Erdoğan’s speeches over the weekend time and again with one very specific
slogan: “We want execution.” Erdoğan’s response was almost affirmative: “It is your right to demand it.” Obviously, if
the death penalty is reintroduced for “terrorists” and “traitors,” it will not
be difficult to find victims. The Turkish government is an expert in
classifying almost any oppositional act as a terrorist one.
What Next?
For now, Erdoğan appears to be
the clear winner. An event like this was exactly what he needed to regain
credibility and the initiative. It is no surprise that he called the coup
attempt a “blessing from God” that would allow them to purge the army.
Yet more importantly, he
appears to be a democratic hero now, capable of rallying the people behind his
administration. The initial countercoup signifies just that. The government is
now firmly insisting on Gülen’s extradition to Turkey, while US secretary of
state John Kerry emphasized that the Turkish side has to provide them with
legitimate evidence proving the imam’s involvement.
Moreover, there is no doubt
that he will use this opportunity to push even harder for the presidential
system. Since his popularity seems to have peaked, it is probable that he will
want to have a snap election or referendum in late autumn or winter.
In the meanwhile, in the
twinges of his distrust of the army, he will try to build up an even
stronger department of police and special forces totally faithful to himself.
Yet in terms of “material” strength he made no significant gain.
On the contrary, many leading
generals of the war in North Kurdistan were arrested. This included most
notably a high-ranking general who was hailed as a hero just a few months ago,
because he had led the operations in Cizre and Sur, two bedrocks of the Kurdish
movement, where violent clashes between the Kurdish militias and the state
forces took place for months.
Having successfully “cleansed”
Cizre and Sur — which makes him responsible for numerous crimes and violations
of human rights — he is now declared to be a traitor. Additionally the
highest-ranking officers in Hakkari and Şırnak have been detained. Those two
provinces are among the regions where the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is at
its strongest and the de facto dominating force in many areas.
The fact that
factions within the air force rebelled is also important, as fighter jets
are an important advantage for the state in the war against the PKK. It is
interesting, to say the least, that so many of the soldiers waging the war in
North Kurdistan were among the rebels and it might indicate that the war is
going rather badly for the Turkish state.
The PKK released a statement early in the morning on July 16,
claiming that the coup attempt is a fight between rivaling forces within the
state and that the Kurds and all democratic forces should stay out of this
conflict.
It would be more than
surprising, however, if the PKK did not immediately take all measures to use
the situation for its own gains. There are other units on the ground such as
police special forces and even private armies, but without the heavy weapons of
the army the balance of forces shifts significantly in favor of the Kurds.
We cannot know what the PKK
will do on the battlefield, but it appears as if it is approaching the
situation calmly without hesitation. It might also survey how Erdoğan proceeds.
If he will intensify the war, they will respond in fashion.
However, there is the
possibility of a new opening for solution talks if the military balance of forces
has shifted to such an extent that continuing the war is no longer feasible for
the Turkish state.
Additionally, while there were
large crowds in the streets in support of Erdoğan, it appears as if more were
expected. In other words, while there were many celebrating, many more stayed
home. Probably because they did not believe the AKP’s warnings about a
persisting threat, as the coup attempt was defeated so easily. But surely also
because the AKP still not as strong as it would like to be.
Whatever happens, the next
days and weeks are crucial. Erdoğan might use the impetus of his countercoup to
not only eradicate the putschists themselves but push forward for a stronger
mobilizations and an intensified attack on the entire opposition accompanying it.
This is so obvious that US
secretary of state John Kerry explicitly expressed his concerns that Erdoğan will use the failed
military coup to crack down on democracy. That for sure would be an
overstretching of his capacities triggering another severe crisis, maybe even
another, this time more serious, coup.
Similarly, European Union
foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned the Turkish government on Monday that the coup
attempt is not an excuse to abandon the rule of law. She also added that the
introduction of the death penalty would pose problems in terms of Turkey’s ties
with the European Union. In the same press conference, Kerry followed her
warning, saying
that the violation of democratic governance would put Turkey’s NATO membership
at risk.
All in all, what happened
within the last days and what is to follow in the next days was neither a
military coup for democracy nor democracy against a military coup.
It was and remains a war
between coup and countercoup, developments that will further
authoritarianism and deepen instead of solve the hegemonic crisis. What
seems to be a massive comeback of Erdoğan might prove to be a poisoned chalice.
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