An overbearing state mentality that has prevailed for decades is now being dismantled, brick by brick. The importance of this fundamental shift toward ending immunity for illegal forms of social engineering cannot be underestimated. But nor should the amount of work still needed, beyond the arrests of alleged coup plotters, to ensure that Turkey really develops the vibrant and inclusive democracy all its citizens, irrespective of belief, political affiliation or ethnic background, deserve. To get a sense of how much Turkey has changed already, it is worth looking back at the Feb. 28 process, which, thirteen years ago, ushered in Turkey’s first “post-modern coup” and led to the fall of the Erbakan government. In many ways, the country is still grappling with the aftermath of these events.
Recent arrests of high-level officers and the deep divisions that have emerged within the judiciary have focused attention on two state institutions that have been key in maintaining an ideological stronghold over the population.
But for Turkey to be able to move forward decisively, it needs to acknowledge the role played in past coups by an army of civilian supporters who committed no crime but unquestioningly accepted the reading of current events that was served up to them by the state institution. The education system, which taught young Turks not to challenge authority and promoted a martial approach, played a role as did the paternalistic, top-down approach to governance that until recently was accepted as the norm.
In the months that followed Feb. 28, 1997, army officers conducted countless briefings, dutifully attended by members of the judiciary, academics and media editors. Double-page spreads would inevitably appear the following day in newspapers, repeating almost word for word doomsday reports warning of impending fundamentalism.
It can’t have been a coincidence that the news agenda changed almost overnight in early 1997 from the Susurluk investigation -- a precursor to the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer scandals, which implicated officers in murky business -- to the imminent threat of Shariah. As fear of religious fundamentalism was whipped up, the parliamentary report on Susurluk was largely left to gather dust on the shelves of Parliament, and only a token few conspirators were charged.
Today, Turkey is in a very different place as evidenced by the recent arrests, and it has a stronger government well integrated with the world. The results of the 2007 elections, a direct response to the army’s e-memorandum, also showed that Turkish voters were no longer ready to be dictated to.
New evidence is slowly eroding the skepticism of those who did not believe in the coup attempts, even if the judicial process is somewhat flawed and marred by the lengthy detention of some defendants.
The role media organizations played in the recent past may explain Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s frustration with news reports he believes are distorted. But the Turkish media today is far more diverse than it was 13 years ago, and newspaper readers can turn to a variety of sources to understand what is going on.
State institutions never fully trusted Turkey’s citizens and sought to “guide” them. Politicians must not fall into the same trap. What the country needs is a broad democratic framework. Maintaining editorial independence, allowing criticism and a wide range of views to be expressed and, above all, trusting the population to come to conclusions that will serve its interests as well as those of the country as a whole are key elements of the functioning democracy that Turkey is in the process of building.
