Such an answer does not explain the situation at all. Yes, there is a power struggle, but the sides in this are not as said. I would even argue that the government, which is not Islamist and cannot afford to be Islamist, is not at the center of one end of the current power game. If it were left to the government, it might in fact choose to settle the issue and reach an agreement with the military. One side, the pushing side of the “struggle,” is a broad coalition of democrats in the media, academia and business as well as in the military and the judiciary. The government is just responding to the ever-growing social and political pressure, and is not the most important actor. For instance, the latest detention of generals came out of the Taraf daily’s publication of the Sledgehammer coup plan, which government circles said they had known of before the publication, but they had done nothing. This indicates that the dynamics of the process are not tied to the government alone but to a social and intellectual movement.If we go back again to the “power struggle” argument: the critical question is, in a normal democratic regime, who is legitimately engaged in a power struggle? Organized social groups and political parties within an established democratic order are entitled to take part in activities to have a say in the redistribution of tangible and intangible resources.
We should note that in the current power struggle in Turkey, something goes fundamentally against the rule of the democratic game: the struggle does not take part in a democratic setting and with democratic actors. The military, the other end of the “power struggle,” cannot be a legitimate actor of a political process to acquire power. In a democratic country, the military, with its arms in hand, cannot be a political power seeker. It is not an equal to a civilian political actor that competes for power.
Besides, the military’s political ambitions have nothing to do with its “secular” credentials, nor with the identity of the party in government. In the last 50 years, the military has staged three military coups. During none of these coups was an Islamist, Islamic or moderately Islamic government in power.
It is therefore a grave mistake to think that the military is intervening in politics simply because the government is Islamist. Such reasoning does not explain the reoccurrence of military interventions for last 50 years. For example, when the military took over the government for the first time in the republican period in 1960, there was a center-right political party, called the Democrat Party (DP), in power. The junta took over the government, tried all members of Parliament from the DP and hanged the prime minister, the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of finance. The DP had nothing to do with Islamism. Those politicians who were hanged were known for their liberal private lives. Besides, the DP that was deposed by the military junta was the government that brought Turkey into the NATO membership in 1954 and made an application for European Economic Community (EEC) membership in 1959. That is to say that the government that anchored Turkey into the West was overthrown by the military junta in 1960. The same was repeated in 1971 and in 1980, when the military deposed the government of Süleyman Demirel, the leader of the Justice Party (AP), representing the center-right political spectrum.
So the military’s interest in governing Turkey had nothing to do with the identity of the government in office. Regardless of who is in power, the military intervenes in politics either directly by staging coup or through legal and institutional mechanisms that were created during the military regimes after each military coup. The military has the power, mental disposition and ideological and institutional mechanisms to intervene in politics in order to expand its power into the social realm.
After the 1960 coup, all presidents elected by Parliament until the election of Turgut Özal in 1989 were ex-generals. There was even a common saying that a young officer who has just enrolled in the War Academy thinks of becoming the president one day as the final destination of his military career. So interest in politics is structural.
In this “power struggle” between the broad democratic coalition and the military, imagine if the latter arises victorious. I cannot think of the problems an undemocratic Turkey will cause at home and in its neighborhood. Turkey’s Western friends should support the consolidation of democracy in this country. To start, some Western journalists should stop misrepresenting what goes on in Turkey. The struggle is not between an Islamist government and the secularist military. Such a description of the sides is too simplistic to be true, and it only serves to justify undemocratic interventions in politics.
A democratic Turkey is the key to regional peace, stability and security.
