Henri Barkey on Turkey’s descent into dictatorship
On the evening of July 15, 2016, the Turkish public were faced with an event that most had thought was a relic: an attempted coup. In the ensuing hours, the putsch disintegrated and the would-be plotters were rounded up. In the subsequent months, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan went on a rampage against some real but mostly imaginary enemies, arresting tens of thousands and dismissing more than 150,000 from the public payroll without any semblance of due process.
Turkey was thus transformed. It has become a republic of fear. In most instances, individuals who have been detained have yet to see a judge. An arrest has, therefore, become a prison sentence.
The government claims that almost all those who have been detained are followers of Fethullah Gülen, a cleric ensconced in Pennsylvania who was once Mr Erdogan’s closest ally. In fact, Mr Gülen and Mr Erdogan together helped the ruling AKP consolidate its position. Starting in 2003, the two men worked assiduously to contain opposition from the country’s elites, civilian and military. Mr Erdogan introduced impressive reforms, including paradoxically the lifting of restrictions on free speech, transforming the distribution of state services to a population long ignored by Ankara and successfully stewarding an economic boom. In 2007, the military tried to rein in Mr Erdogan. The latter called their bluff and called elections that proved to be the death knell for the military’s political influence.
Ten years later, the Erdogan-Gülen alliance collapsed simply because they were the only ones left standing; all other sources of opposition had been emasculated.
In 2013, secret recordings of government ministers, and more troubling of Mr Erdogan himself, allegedly engaged in corruption were leaked to the press. The suspected culprit was none other than the Gülen organisation that had built a formidable base within the police and the judiciary. Mr Erdogan successfully fought the allegations by arguing that this was an attempted coup.
For Mr Erdogan, the best defence is offence. He demonstrated this amply last year’s failed coup. He used the public’s revulsion against the plotters and the death of 260 people to initiate a complete cleansing of state and society institutions. The Gülen organisation, identified as the main culprit, was declared an armed terror group. There are, however, numerous questions about the coup, its orchestrators and implementation. Given the size of the Turkish military, only a handful of soldiers participated and many seemed to be just following orders. At first, people’s initial reaction to the events was that the security services were conducting a drill. In the most visible action, soldiers took control of one of the Bosphorus bridges, but then, inexplicably, they only occupied lanes going in one direction and allowed traffic in the opposite direction to flow unhindered.
In an atmosphere of complete chaos, aircraft buzzed the capital and the government claimed that these had also bombed the parliament building. Surprisingly, the damage appeared light. Soldiers who were sent to look for the president at his vacation residence did not have the proper address and most stupefying of all was that the plotters went to the state television station, the leastwatched channel, to make their pronouncement.
There has been no independent assessment of these events. Mr Erdogan directly or indirectly controls most of the press today, who simply repeat the pronouncements of the leadership or invent salacious conspiracy theories. Was the coup concocted at the last moment by some officers? Was it a conspiracy hatched by a coalition of opportunists? There are those who think that it was all a government-induced false flag operation.
One thing that is clear is that this attempt did not fit the pattern of previous coups in Turkey; four successful and two unsuccessful ones since 1960. Some 149 generals and admirals, 46 per cent of the Turkish general staff, were sacked overnight. Persons accused are subject to the forfeiture of their financial retirement, bank accounts and housing and given a life ban from working for the public sector. The accused have no hope of a fair trial. The judicial system has not only been decimated, but the president has complete control over judicial appointments. In other words, separation of powers no longer exists in Turkey.
To give you a sense of the absurdity of the charges levelled at people consider this: then a Woodrow Wilson Center member, on the night of the coup I was running a workshop on Iran and its neighbours on an island 45 minutes from Istanbul. Once we realised the coup had failed we went back to our business. A few days later, we were all surprised to find out that I had organised this secret meeting to coordinate or lead the coup. This was an effort to link the US to the coup attempt and I was a convenient target as a former state department official.
The stories they concocted were truly fantastic, including the presence among us of Scott Peterson, a death row inmate in California condemned for the brutal killing of his wife. Apparently, the US government had sent him to assassinate people. We had a Scott Peterson among us, the Christian Science Monitor correspondent, who had come as a guest. The wonders of Google.
Despite Mr Erdogan’s attempts to control everything and dictate the discourse, there are signs that Turkey is deeply divided. The April constitutional referendum demonstrated that half the population voted against the president. With reports of unprecedented irregularities it barely passed. Difficult days await Turkey.
On the night in question I was running a workshop on an island 45 minutes from Istanbul. imagine my surprise to find that I had apparently organised this secret meeting to lead the coup!