But the critics are wrong. What is happening in Turkey is neither a showdown between “Islamists” and “secularists” nor a campaign to discredit the Turkish army. The “Islamist-versus-secularist” framework is misleading, to say the least, in the context of Turkish society and politics. First of all, the AK Party is not an Islamist party. Since it came to power in 2002, the AK Party has respected the secular principles of the Turkish state and has never attempted to change the laws to establish a Shariah state. Contrary to Turkey’s old-fashioned militant secularists, however, it has sought to widen the sphere of civil liberties for everyone including the Kurds, the Alevis, the non-Muslim minorities of Turkey and college girls who want to wear the headscarf.Secondly, the Turkish secularists have never had any love for democracy and opposed all reform attempts in the name of protecting the secular legacy of Atatürk. Their extremely narrow Kemalist ideology has led them to support military coups since 1960 and eschew most attempts by various center parties to carry out reforms. It is no surprise that many of them oppose Turkey’s European Union membership.
But if Turkey is to be a full-fledged democracy and a member of the EU, it cannot live under military tutelage. Nor can it tolerate this ever-present “coup culture.” According to the Turkish Constitution, it is illegal to try to topple a democratically elected government. The vast majority of Turks are against military coups. Polls show that the Turkish public respects the army when it remains in its military barracks and stays away from politics.
Despite the catastrophic results of the four military coups of 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997, this “coup culture” rarely goes away. It reappears in the name of protecting Turkish secularism, Atatürk’s legacy and so on. At the end, it all comes down to a farce democracy under military tutelage. But it is against Turkey’s aspirations to become a full member in the EU. The EU progress reports on Turkey over the last years have consistently raised the military’s disproportional powers in Turkish politics as an impediment to Turkish democracy. Many of the reforms required by the Copenhagen criteria and the acquis communautaire call for reforming the political and judicial structures to allow civilian oversight and curb military control.
But the realities on the ground are different. Since the AK Party came to power in 2002, at least four major coup-like plots were concocted. They were named “Sarıkız,” “Ayışığı,” “Yakamoz” and “Eldiven,” and all sought to weaken and eventually overthrow the democratically elected AK Party government. We all know what happened on April 27, 2007, when the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) issued an acidic statement against the candidacy of Abdullah Gül, the current president of Turkey and then the foreign minister, threatening that if Gül was elected, the army would step in. Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt, the chief of general staff at the time, admitted last week that it was he who wrote the April 27 memorandum. Then on March 14, 2008 came the closure case against the AK Party, a case that was clearly motivated by political and ideological considerations.
The fact that these plots have been uncovered and that their plotters are being tried is a good thing for the maturing of Turkish democracy. Contrary to what some critics say, this is not a showdown between “Islamists” and “secularists” or a campaign to discredit the Turkish army. It is a process of normalization in the fullest sense of the term and an affirmation of the fact that no one is above the law. In the 21st century, Turkey will have to overcome military tutelage and become a fully democratic country. To that end, all of us need democratic therapy, and no one should be disturbed by it.
