Remember Gen. Kıvrıkoğlu, who declared then that the process will continue for another thousand years. This was in fact a brave and bold statement declaring some military elite’s opposition to democratic rule in Turkey. It was also a testimony that they do not respect the republican principle that the right to rule belongs to people. Instead the choices of people are viewed with suspicion, which turns, in their eyes, democracy into a threatening practice. What did happen in the February 28 process? The whole process was staged by a few strong generals with political ambitions. The military, led by this group, aligned with some sectors of civil society in launching a campaign inflaming fears that secularism was under “threat” in the face of the “Islamist challenge” as represented by the Welfare Party, then the greater partner in a coalition government. Within the General Staff of the Armed Forces the “West Working Group” was formed to investigate “Islamist activities,” as a result of which thousands were unlawfully “filed” as threats to the Republic. Not only were Islamic groups so designated, but wider democratic sectors were targeted as well. Proofs of the “threat” were documented with newspaper reports that had in fact been delivered to newspapers by the military-staffed West Working Group.
Numerous “briefings” were organized by the General Staff of Armed Forces where judicial personnel, journalists and other professionals were asked to “submit” to the “threat definition” of the military headquarter, which they did. As a result the ruling government was forced to resign, the biggest political party in the parliament was closed down by the constitutional court, the popular mayor of Istanbul Tayyip Erdogan was imprisoned, private companies described as “Islamic capital” were investigated, and hundreds of NGOs were shut down.
The February 28 was a typical case where unlawful rule was justified by fear. At that time, it was the fear that “Islamists” would take over the country. Earlier in the Cold War years, it used to be the Communists. “The fear factor” has always been a dynamic and convenient mechanism through which the authority of the security establishment could be imposed on the national will. During the February 28 process, the “fear factor” was used in order to rally the support of the secularist institutions, intellectuals and societal groups against the conservative and Islamic periphery. The same “fear factor” is used today to rally the support of conservative and Islamic periphery through exploitation of the issues to which these groups are sensitive, like the dangers of missionary activities, the influence of Sabataists -- a crypto-Zionist cult, founded in Ottoman Salonica in 1666 by the eponymous Sabbatai Sevi -- in Turkey, or the plots of western powers to divide up Turkey, etc. Through such a language of “fear” the same power centers are still trying to acquire the power that the conservative and Islamic periphery now claim from the center. Giving in to the fear pumped up by the “security community,” means giving up the rights to self-rule for the wider public. Let the conservative and Islamic periphery not forget this “golden rule.”
In short, the February 28 experience shows that the greatest obstacle to Turkish democracy lies in the form of civil-military relations. Unless the military is confined to its barracks, and disabled from interfering in politics, we can not establish a working democracy. And the key to this is that the conservative periphery should not submit to the “security discourse” which strengthens militarism and not democracy, and it should not forge an alliance with the “security community” which exploits the “fear factor.”
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