Gen. Evren was chief of general staff from March 1978 until July 1983. In this capacity he was the team leader of the military junta that masterminded the 1980 coup d’etat. This made him the de facto head of state from September 1980 to November 1982.During this time Parliament was annulled along with all the existing political parties. The Consultative Assembly was called to duty as it devised a constitution according to the junta’s preference of a powerful state apparatus and a subservient body politic that went into effect in 1982. It is the same constitution that Turkey is trying to presently shrug off because the nation has been turned into an apolitical amorphous mass to be ruled by bureaucracy with the help of political parties that were reduced to be extensions of the central authority.
The fact that one-third of the 1982 Constitution has been altered in the last few years to adapt the Turkish legal system to that of the EU has not really touched the authoritarian spirit of the military-inspired constitution.
Gen. Evren got himself elected the seventh president of Turkey as the sole candidate in the same referendum held for the adoption of the 1982 Constitution. He held the presidency of the republic from November 1982 until 1989.
In all of these capacities he was the guardian of the staunch statist system that stifled all basic freedoms and centrally managed society. During his rule, the position of the military as the tutelary power that oversees politics, controls change and filters decisions from to bottom was firmly established. An ethnic nationalism reinforced by religion that was thought to be subservient to the state was imposed on society, suffocating all political movements that could lead to the burgeoning of pluralist politics.
Hundreds of thousands of people were taken into custody and interrogated. Ten thousands were prosecuted and systematically tortured. Thousands of democratic and progressive government employees and academics were dismissed. Hundreds of people were deprived of their citizenship. Thousands fled the country. Several dozen young people, especially leftists were executed. During this havoc, Evren maintained his honesty. He believed he was doing what was right for the country, which is typical of tyrants who love their country while they exterminate its citizens. He is on record as having responded with “What should we do, feed them instead of hang them?” when asked why he endorsed executions of political activists.
The Kurdish language was officially banned, the existence of Kurds denied and a ruthless campaign of repression of everything that was Kurdish was set into motion. Many of the problems emanating from Turkey’s Southeast today are products of the junta’s heavy-handed politics of nationalism that coined the ingenious term of “mountain Turks.”
In spite of the fact that putsch leaders in many countries are prosecuted, sentenced or at best isolated, Evren and his teammates enjoyed their spoils and lived as prominent members of society since their coup. He was never tried for being a dictator or for his dictatorial deeds. But now, Turkey is getting ready to prosecute its old dictator for his democratic statements. How bizarre!
High positions, whether they are held as a result of an election process or appointment, are generally occupied by people who are inexperienced and quite unaware of global realities, let alone national issues. They may be likened to novice barbers who learn how to shave on the face of others. By the time they are out of office or reach the age of retirement they are much wiser and experienced if not visionary. Evren is no exception.
While he was in office President Evren declared more than once that he “will not allow holes punched in (his) the constitution,” meaning that no one should dare to change it. He is also on record for ordering the removal of a nude painting from an international art exhibition on the grounds that the portrait was “immoral.”
As a Turkish expression goes, “many waters have passed under bridges” since then. He has taken up the hobby of painting and now paints nude figures himself. But lately he realized that the Turkish political system was too centralized and dysfunctional. As always, he was honest, like all naïve people. It seems he felt the urge to warn his countrymen concerning the entropy of the system, which no longer delivers what is expected of it. He even worries that the sustainability of the regime was becoming questionable. For the 90-year-old ex-dictator, the present structure of the state and the political system that it oversees is stifling local initiative, retarding development and limiting political participation to the degree of alienating the people from the government.
He proposed organizing Turkey into eight administrative zones and devolving the authority of the central government, just as France did a quarter century ago. After all France is the source of our administrative system; however, we have preserved it since the early 20th century while France decentralized it.
He gave simple but convincing examples as to why this was necessary and added that such a development “will take place anyhow, whether I see it or not.” All hell broke loose, blaming the old dictator for his democratic revelation. He has been insolently called a traitor, senile and subversive, etc., by the “yes men” of yesterday.
Two prosecutors initiated a legal interrogation process against their old master who abandoned them and converted to democracy. What can this be called other than the “revenge of history”?
What these “knights of the ghost temple” are not aware of is that Turkey signed the European Agreement on the Autonomy of Local Governments in 1988. Ten of its 11 articles were approved by Parliament (Act #3723) in 1991 and were endorsed by the Cabinet in 1992, becoming law on April 1, 1993. This is another ironic fact because all this ado is for a law that is already in effect, but those who oppose it are ignorant of the fact that it is. Is this what is called the “ostrich syndrome”?
