Several first-hand witnesses and role players of that era disclosed their memories only this year. Erbakan, the prime minister of the Refahyol government, has until Sunday kept silent about what forced him to resign.Professor Mümtazer Türköne and Hüseyin Kocabıyık, advisors to Deputy Prime Minister Tansu Çiller, spoke to a TV channel about their counter-plan against the memorandum. Their plan never materialized, though.
Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputy Ömer Çelik spoke to journalists underlining the decisiveness of the currently elected government over the fate of a coup plot.
Former Mayor of Kayseri Şükrü Karatepe ended his 13-year silence about the memorandum.
All the revelations are helpful in understanding the dynamics of a military intervention into the running of civilian politics. Çelik cleverly observes that it is the willingness of the civilian government to give in to the pressure of the army, or its determination not to do, so that decides the success or failure of a military coup plot. “The fact that the AK Party government didn’t bow in the face of the April 27 memorandum turned that declaration into a piece of paper,” Çelik said. This is not only praise for the AK Party government; it is also a criticism of the Refahyol government.
Despite the rightfulness of this criticism, Türköne and Kocabıyık revealed that they had advised Çiller to do what the AK Party did only 10 years later. Advisors to the deputy prime minister had interpreted all the indications well and foresaw that on the day of the National Security Council (MGK) meeting, on Feb. 28, the army generals would present the government with a harsh warning. They suggested that such a warning would primarily target Çiller, whom the soldiers accused of betraying the secular cause and that Çiller should have resisted such a warning with a call for the resignation of all the force commanders and the army’s chief of General Staff. According to the well-detailed plan, Çiller would accuse the army commanders of perpetrating a constitutional crime and send their letters of resignation to President Süleyman Demirel. Türköne and Kocabıyık were well aware of the fact that Demirel would side with the soldiers. Hence, they devised a “civil disobedience” plan. Accordingly, Çiller would leave the MGK and go to her house, wear an all-white dress and walk to Parliament, where she would declare that she wouldn’t leave the assembly until the president approved the resignations of the commanders. “They cannot deter this woman!” she would say.
None of this happened. Both Erbakan and Çiller signed the “strongly advised” decisions of the council. Consequently it was the resignation letter of the prime minister and not of the commanders that reached the president’s desk. It was approved immediately, and despite the fact that Erbakan managed to build a new coalition, Demirel asked the minority leader, Mesut Yılmaz, to set up the new government.
We don’t know why. But, today we know at least that there were democratic reflexes within the coalition that wanted to resist the military intervention into civilian politics. It is most probable that before the 15th anniversary of the Feb. 28 memorandum we will know more about who and what convinced Çiller not to wear that white dress, which, by the way, would be the symbol of Turkish democracy forever, if it had been worn.
