Of course, what is mildly unusual in the Turkish case, and what has been occupying the front pages day after day, is that the military has extended its brief to anticipating threats from its own elected politicians. It has established, so it would appear, a dedicated agency whose lone purpose has been to devise ever more ingenious strategies to replace the democratically formed government with one of their own choice.There is a great deal of smoke surrounding the details of this plot. There are any number of questions which demand answers -- who authorized the Action Plan to Fight Reactionaryism, how near did it come to being implemented, who authorized it and who can be relied upon (the civilian or military court) for investigating these issues. It is the duty of the press not to speculate but to press that investigation forward. However, with the exception of the Taraf newspaper (again, punching above its weight), this is not really being done. Indeed much of the press coverage has been speculation about Taraf itself -- how it got the story and whether it timed the publication of the story to distract from other issues. However entertaining this may be, it is something of a distraction from the main event which is that parts of the Turkish military still see the world through the optic of a cheap airport thriller and feel that somehow, in this day and age, it can pull the rug out from beneath the civilian government.
If this seems bizarre, it is stranger still that this attitude is not unique. Consider the following quotation which invites the reader to “imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation.” The author goes on to confess that while it would not be practicable to lead the president and Cabinet away in leg-irons, they could be reduced to figure heads while the real decision making could go on behind the scenes. It is not from yet another document leaked to Taraf but a column in the American hard right news portal, Newsmax. “Skilled, military-trained nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars,” writes John L. Perry, conjuring up his own political nirvana where US President Barack Obama’s powers would be limited to the odd ceremonial speech. “Unthinkable?” he has the graciousness to ask, before inviting his readers to engage in a bit of lateral thinking to what he calls “the Obama problem.” Urgency is of the essence. “Just don’t shrug and say, ‘We can always worry about that later’,” he warns.
This incitement to treason attracted a fair amount of adverse comment from the “accountability-challenged” members of the US Fourth Estate who still cling to the quaint notion of a democratic process and the rule of law. Sensing it had gone too far, Newsmax removed the article from its Web site (although its electronic shadow lingers on http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909290042 ). Wishing for a military take-over is one thing. Threatening a coup is something else altogether. The Newsmax hissy-fit contrasts with the far more earnest e-memorandum issued by Turkey’s General Staff in April 2007, which advised Turkey’s politicians against not so much shrugging their shoulders as shrugging their soldiers by electing as president the current incumbent whose patriotism, they implied, was in doubt.
What seems shocking in the American context -- that the American right can have such visceral hatred toward an elected president that they would countenance anything a hair’s breadth short of a military coup to see him removed -- once seemed business as usual in Turkey. Now what comes as shocking is not that the military tried to undermine the civilian government, but that anyone finds it unusual. It was only two years ago that the military posted its warning. Now it is the military itself that is being warned.
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