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FOLLOWING Turkey’s recent bungled coup attempt, I was reminded of an earlier, even more farcical, power grab on May 20, 1963. I was a student at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University in its early days when its campus was being built outside the city, and classes were held in temporary barracks, while the hostel was located in an apartment building. Both were close to the city centre.
Late in the evening, some of us were drinking tea in the cafeteria when the regular radio broadcast was interrupted by a voice announcing that the ‘General Headquarters Armed Forces Revolution’ had seized control, a curfew had been imposed, and the assembly stood dissolved. Instant pandemonium in our cafeteria. Students rushed to call their friends, and soon the room was full, with all of us crowding around the radio.
The director of the hostel soon appeared to announce that he was locking the doors to the building, and students were prohibited from going out. An hour or so later, another announcement was broadcast, this time informing us that the government was in full control, but that citizens should stay indoors until further notice. Of course, these contradictory announcements caused loud speculation among the students, with the overwhelming majority opposing an army intervention. All this while, we could hear sporadic bursts of gunfire.
Just as dawn was breaking, Suleiman, a Turkish friend, asked me if I wanted to come with him to have a look. Being young and foolhardy, I readily agreed, and we lowered ourselves from the first-floor balcony and dropped to the ground on a brisk Ankara morning. We could hear firing not too far away from us, so we walked towards the assembly building, and ducked behind a car when bullets whizzed past. A soldier was crouched close by, and he suddenly doubled over, clutching his chest. I never found out if he survived his wound.
In Kizlay Square, we saw a large number of soldiers in full battle gear. We later learned that they were pro-government troops, called out in a show of strength. Overhead, fighter jets were circling, and some of them swooped low, firing just as they pulled up from their dives. One pilot mistakenly pulled his trigger too early, and I saw several soldiers collapse where they stood.
Later that day, we discovered that the entire episode — it was too minor to call it a real coup attempt — had been triggered by Aydemir, an ambitious ex-colonel who, apart from commanding the loyalty of the cadets of Ankara’s Military College, had no other troops under him. He had persuaded a couple of other officers to join him on his madcap venture, and perhaps others who had agreed backed out at the last minute. It did not take long to crush the attempted coup. Aydemir and several others were given the death sentence, while all the cadets were either jailed or dismissed from the Military College. I felt sorry for them as I had once visited the college to play a table tennis match.
In the history of Turkish coups, the 1963 attempt is a mere footnote. The country’s powerful military has always seen itself as the guardians of Kemalist thought and ambitions for Turkey. Generals and admirals have always been suspicious of politicians who they consider to be backsliding from the secularist ideals of modern Turkey’s founding father. So for decades, they — together with the constitutional court — have blocked any attempt to bring religion into politics. Thus, the ban on headscarves on university campuses was rigidly imposed, and the country was relentlessly westernised.
However, Turkey’s Anatolian hinterland has remained resolutely conservative; until the rise of Erdogan’s AK party, it was the country’s urbanised elites who were in charge with the backing of the military. But with the rapid rise of the Turkish economy, Erdogan’s popularity soared, and in his first few years in power, he was widely seen as a moderate who had transformed the country. Gradually, the army was pushed back into the barracks. Next, Erdogan used a military plot to seize power to arrest several senior generals, but to this day, many say the whole thing was a fabrication concocted by intelligence agents.
When a series of tapped conversations purporting to reveal massive corruption in Erdogan’s close circle including his family members surfaced, Fehitullah Gulen was suspected of a power grab. This modernising cleric — now living in exile in the US — has established a formidable network of schools, businesses and media groups. In Turkey, he had thousands of followers in every institution of the state.
But Erdogan and Gulen, once allies, now fell out, and the latter’s followers came under suspicion. This has now hardened into a firm belief that they were behind the recent coup. Some 60,000 have been arrested, suspended or sacked. This dragnet has swept up military officers, policemen, judges and university staff.
Given the scope of this purge, some suspect intelligence agencies of having instigated the coup so they could use it as a pretext to crack down on the government’s political opponents. But this seems farfetched, given the number of casualties that have occurred. On the other hand, the government has not provided any proof of the involvement of the Gulenist movement. Given Gulen’s antipathy towards the military, it is hard to imagine he would attempt to seize power through them.
Erdogan’s sweeping purge, and his suspension of human rights, has alienated many abroad. Whatever sympathy he might have garnered has quickly evaporated. Many increasingly see him as an autocrat with little regard for democratic norms. More crucially, his value as an ally is now suspected.
Erdogan, despite his undoubted popularity with his base, is piling up problems for himself. Although he has tried to mend fences with Russia and Israel, relations with Turkey’s traditional Western allies are under strain due to his anti-Kurd policies. Increasingly, he is seen as the problem, and not part of the solution.
Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2016
