Apart from EMASYA, Feb. 28 legacy in full force

    The Feb. 28 coup bore tremendous effects and influence on Turkey’s legal system and politics. The chief of general staff during the coup, Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu, had triumphantly pronounced that “Feb. 28 will last 1,000 years” -- and aside from the abolishment of the Protocol on Cooperation for Security and Public Order (EMASYA), it seems that in 13 years Feb. 28 has not loosened its grip on Turkish society. There were 18 articles in the legal changes that then-Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan was forced to sign by the National Security Council (MGK) -- and while EMASYA has been recalled, the other 17 are still in place. As Turkish jurists work to reform the country’s Constitution, itself the product of a coup, they continue to run into a wall constructed on Feb. 28.

As Turkish jurists work to reform the country’s Constitution, itself the product of a coup, they continue to run into a wall constructed on Feb. 28. As the conservative Welfare Party (RP) was in power during the coup, secularism became a central point in the coup process. In order to distance the RP from power, the General Staff hosted informational briefings on religious extremism for members of the judiciary, academia and the media. The effects and influence of these sessions are still strong in the judiciary, politics, media and Turkish universities.

Feb. 28’s greatest legacy: inability to amend Constitution

Undoubtedly, the most important remnant of the Feb. 28 coup d’état is that it has jammed the process of Turkey creating a new, civilian constitution. Even though Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who left the RP and established the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), and his colleagues prepared a constitutional amendment package in 2008, they were unable to bring it into effect. The reason? The ban on headscarves at Turkish universities instituted during the Feb. 28 process would have been reversed by one of the constitutional amendments that the AK Party and the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) had included in the package.

When the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) filed an appeal with the Constitutional Court to cancel the implementation of the amendments -- which had been approved by 80 percent of the deputies in Parliament -- the Constitutional Court repealed the amendments, evaluating the changes as an indirect violation of the principle of secularism enshrined as unchangeable in the first three articles of the Constitution. Not stopping there, the Constitutional Court ascribed to itself a new duty of protecting the law, saying that it could cancel amendments violated the principle of secularism even if nobody applied to the court with such a complaint. Since this decision, no constitutional amendment has been realized in Turkey.

Judiciary gained power on Feb. 28

One of the most important decisions made during the Feb. 28 process was to ensure the more effective functioning of the Turkish judiciary and bringing judicial independence under the military’s tutelage. Accordingly, the judiciary began to amass power after the RP-True Path Party (DYP) government was taken out of the picture. Many justices and attorneys who opposed the undemocratic nature of this change were banned from practice by decisions of the HSYK, bans that are still in effect today.

Following this period, accusations against the government of allegedly trying to influence the judiciary increased. The tension that can be seen today between the judiciary and the government over the investigation and trial of Ergenekon -- an alleged criminal gang nestled within the military and bureaucracy that plotted to lay the grounds for another coup d’état in Turkey -- is in a sense also a product of Feb. 28. The Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Appeals and the Council of State have signed off on a number of politically motivated rulings since the AK Party came to power. The most important of these are the infamous 367 decision during the 2007 presidential election process, the ruling that cancelled amendments made to the Constitution and a ruling on the coefficient formula used in university admissions.

Police-military tension, restrictions on civil servants

The military said on Feb. 28 that provocations targeting members of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) had increased, requesting that the MGK put an end to these provocations. It is well-known that in the current period, Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ has been voicing the same criticism with great frequency. The resistance of the Feb. 28 commanders to providing testimony to the prosecutors of the Ergenekon case over all manner of illegal activity takes on extra meaning against this background.

Tension between the police and the military had reached a high point during this period, when the military leaders in charge of the coup decided to make some important decisions regarding the National Police Department. Upon the military’s request, many police chiefs and police intelligence officials were removed from their posts. Following this period wherein intelligence agencies had become rivals to an extent, the influence of these changes and tension can be seen in the ongoing Ergenekon investigation. The military has always been the first to express opposition to the police-run operations.

The proposed weapons law, which is still in Parliament, would allow the National Police Department to procure its own weapons, but faced the greatest opposition from the military. The military refuses to allow the police independence in this regard, keeping firmly within its own hand the monopoly on arms imports.

During the Feb. 28 period, the military decided that there was a deep-rooted presence of religious workers employed as civil servants in state and municipal institutions and that these needed to be “cleaned up.” At the Ministry of Education, teachers wearing headscarves were fired, resulting in hundreds of applications to the European Court of Human Rights. Though decisions were later made to allow them to be employed once again, they were never reassigned. During this period, a law was instated that prevented workers from transferring from state institutions to local administrations -- designed to prevent civil servant supporters of the RP from working in municipalities. This ban is still in effect today.

Effects on the economy still strong

Not only politics, but the Turkish economy as well has been dealt a blow by Feb. 28 that it has yet to recover from. Power players discomfited by up-and-coming Anatolian capital in Turkey’s heartland also took measures during the Feb. 28 process to stem this growth. To avoid any changes in the balance of power that could result from the accumulation of wealth and prosperity in Anatolia, a new concept -- “green capital” -- was conjured up to bring institutions operating based on Islamic financial principles under tight observation and regulation. Due to this, many such institutions went bankrupt.

Similarly, many foundations were shut down, accused of being controlled by religious orders. Though in 2008 the AK Party made some amendments to the Foundations Law regarding property owned by minorities, it has been unable to affect change with regard to the foundations that were shut down and seized by the state during the Feb. 28 process. The effects of the Feb. 28 process also extended to the media, with a decision of the MGK used as a basis to shut down a number of publications. The military made good use of media outlets during the Feb. 28 process and has ever since continued a tradition of biased accreditation according to the tone of publications with regard to the military and its actions. Alleged military coup plans that have emerged one after the other in recent months have also revealed that the military has created “good” and “bad” lists of journalists, with some journalists to be jailed in the event of a coup, while others are referred to as likely sources of aid and support during the coup process.