A prime heir to these values among political party leaders is none but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. I do not nurture the tiniest bit of doubt about this.That’s why when during a meeting, titled “A Tribute to 40 Men of High Stature,” held on Saturday by the Historical Heritage Protection Foundation (TMKV) on the 40th anniversary of its establishment, Prime Minister Erdoğan said, with some reproach for intellectuals: “I believe that the effort to boldly defend today after a long interruption from the values and ideas the late Özal advocated with courage deserves support. The responsibility that falls on us politicians is equally the responsibility of intellectuals and scholars.” I fully agreed with him.
However, this does not mean that I did not like the exquisite remarks uttered during the same meeting by my dear friend Bekir Berat Özipek, who voiced them looking into the eyes of Erdoğan, who was in the same hall. In his speech, Associate Professor Özipek implicitly cautioned Prime Minister Erdoğan, who proudly declared himself as an heir of Özal’s legacy, that he should have the courage to adequately represent this legacy, saying: “If the late Turgut Özal had been in office today, he would not wait for the chief of general staff to do whatever he could do in regards to the ‘Plan to finish off the AK Party and Gülen’ but would remove him from office immediately. And the chief of general staff would learn this from TV.”
Just like the people in the audience whose love and respect for Erdoğan I do not doubt a bit, I heatedly applauded Özipek’s words. Yes, but if Özal had been in Erdoğan’s shoes, would he really remove from office the chief of general staff and all the other commanders who betrayed their own nation and who plotted conspiracies against innocent people so to falsely accuse them and who resorted to controversial acts and lies that aimed to render the ongoing investigation dysfunctional? Like Özipek, I do not doubt this as well, and you can be assured that he certainly would. During the most repressive period of time Turkey had ever seen, i.e., in the aftermath of the military coup of Sept. 12, 1980, the late Özal had come to power by popular support, and despite the efforts to block him made by the generals who held the absolute power at the time, he immediately removed from office the army commanders who were behaving stubbornly against the government while the presidential post was being occupied by Kenan Evren, the leader of the pro-coup generals.
As a short reminder: Then-Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Üruğ and then-Land Forces Commander Gen. Necdet Öztorun were supposed to retire simultaneously on Aug. 30, 1987 under normal conditions. According to the established practices, Gen. Necip Torumtay would be appointed as the next chief of general staff. However, Üruğ did not like Torumtay and told the government that he wanted to retire in the first week of June in order to leave his place to Öztorun. In the face of this move, done without a Cabinet decision and without discussing it at the Supreme Military Council (YAŞ), then-Prime Minister Özal immediately removed two generals from office.
After being elected president, Özal faced a similar situation and forced the same Gen. Torumtay to resign. During the first Gulf War, Gen. Torumtay started to oppose and resist the civilian government’s decisions and preferences, and Özal had urged him to resign on Dec. 3, 1990, although there was much time before the end of his term in office.
Given these moves by Özal, we can safely assert that today’s generals, who are shown evidently to have been neglecting their duty, busying themselves by plotting against democracy and the nation, would not have any chance against Özal. Having displayed the necessary democratic courage against the generals and the army under conditions that were much more adverse than today’s, Özal would not hesitate for a moment to remove from office all the commanders who today perform scandalous acts, actions or omissions under today’s much more favorable conditions.
In the final analysis, during the time of Özal, the democratic political consciousness was not as advanced as today, and there were not as many civil society organizations as today to assert the democratic principles of pluralism and participation. In contrast to the current practice, capital owners consisted only of big businesses of İstanbul, which were in a symbiotic relationship with the army-centered state and which were therefore monolithic and oligarchic at the time when Özal removed generals from office. Özal was deprived of today’s capital structure that also spread to Anatolia and of the media structure which today represents all the diversity and colors of political culture. In his time, the media organizations were exclusively supportive of the army and İstanbul’s big corporations. In other words, all of them were like today’s Doğan group. And the opposition was much stronger than it is today. Compared to Erdoğan and a left-wing Republican People’s Party (CHP), which cannot steal votes from the AK Party’s voter base irrespective of whatever they do, and Deniz Baykal, who has lost his persuasiveness, Özal had to compete with the True Path Party (DYP), which was a center-right party with a voter base that largely overlapped with Özal’s Motherland Party (ANAVATAN), with the likelihood of stealing voters from it and its leader, Süleyman Demirel.
To cut a long story short, if Özal were in Erdoğan’s shoes, he would have acted accordingly, and we would have been saved from discussing this boring issue. So it is better said than done to claim to be an heir of Menderes, who sought democracy at the expense of being executed by generals, or of Özal, who showed the generals their place. The AK Party government and Prime Minister Erdoğan, who proudly claim to be the heir of this legacy, are expected to deserve it by being bold and dignified in doing what is required to make that claim.
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