|
|
Follow the Middle East Forum
|
|
|
|
Related Articles
Turkey's
Absurd Coup
|
|
|
Share:  
|
  Be the first of
your friends to like this.
Originally published under the title "Turkey's
Schizophrenic Civil War."
|
Turkey's
July 15 coup, as cartoonist Assad Binakhahi suggests, was a gift for
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
|
It is amazing that the Crescent and Star never ceases to shock with
the most unexpected insanity. The capacity to shock is a feature most
observed at times of war. And Turkey is at war – a schizophrenic civil
war.
The May 1960 coup was a conventional coup d'état but, like July 15,
was outside the chain of command. So it was simply called a coup d'état.
March 1971 was called a "soft coup." September 1980 was a
conventional coup – this time inside the chain of command. Some called it
the "people's coup" after more than 90 percent of Turks
approved its constitution and generals as their leaders.
Turkey had a "post-modern coup" in February 1997 and an
"e-coup" (in reference to the anti-government, pro-secularist
memorandum posted on the military's website) in April 2007.
If history will have to name the failed coup of July 15 the best way
to recall it would be as the "absurd coup." The events of July
15 looked less like a coup and more like a Turkish opera buffa, a tragic
one though, with the curtain closing with more than 200 people getting
killed.
Fortunately, even an absurd coup can give an unruly nation a temporary
sigh of unity. Pro- and anti-president Turks seem to have united - which
is great - probably until they start firing at each other again, which is
not so great.
With or without unity against any military intervention in the
democratic system, absurd or not, the great Turkish divide is there and
will probably deepen, exposing Turkey's hybrid democracy to further risks
of "road accidents" of this or that kind.
The crowds that stood against the
soldiers mostly chanted not pro-democracy slogans, but the words
'Allahu Akbar.'
|
Turkey's "war of religion" will not disappear just because
the pro- and anti-president forces of the country have united against a
coup attempt. It is a war of religion between the adherents of the same
sect of the same religion.
It was not without a reason why the anti-coup crowds that bravely
stood against the troops and their commanders did not mostly chant
pro-democracy slogans when they took to the streets but rather
passionately chanted "Allah-u Akbar" (God is the greatest).
They were there not to defend democracy in the word's liberal meaning.
They were there to defend the man whom they view as the guardian of their
faith, hence their readiness to kill or die, or to lynch the pro-coup
troops, and a journalist who was just photographing the scene. Willing
lynchers who defend democracy chanting Islamist slogans? Nice one.
Whether the perpetrators belong to the clandestine Gülenist terror
organization or were a bizarre coalition of secularist and Gülenist
officers, they were simply moronic thugs in military uniforms. Speaking
to a "pro-democracy" crowd of fans who interrupted his speech
with the slogan "we want the death penalty [back]," President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that the Gülenists had been secretly – and
illegally - trying to capture the state over the past 40 years. And now
they finally staged a coup.
The president was probably right. But he did not explain why he allied
with them during the 37.5 years of the Gülenist campaign to capture the
state – until he and the Gülenists broke up in December 2013. Remember
his famous complaint: "Whatever they [Gülenists] wanted, we gave
them."
This is the last act in the hundreds-of-years-long opera buffa of
in-house fighting between various Islamist factions, not just Turkish.
Despite the bloodshed and tragic scenes, like in any other Turkish opera
buffa, it often can be amusing, too.
Newswires dispatched a story that said Saudi King Salman congratulated
President Erdoğan for the return to "normality" – normality
here must mean the defeat of undemocratic forces and return to the
democratic regime. Hybrid or not, Turkey at least features a ballot-box
(head-count) democracy. Let's hope one day King Salman's Kingdom too
returns to normality.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based
columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum.
|
|
|
|
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment