In Military Hands; How the Turkish Army Is Dealing with Democracy

For better or worse, the Turkish Army has always played a prominent role in the political stage of Turkey. The army in Turkey is a united, corruption-free institution that considers itself guardian of the security of the nation, plus safeguarding the doctrines of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

 

This kind of role for an army is worrisome, and the question that emerges is that can Turkey become a modern constitutional republic as long as the army assumes the responsibility to safeguard the constitution?

 

To answer this question, we should first study the history of Turkish Army in the modern Turkey. After the Second World War, Turkey experienced free, democratic elections. During these years, the Army launched coups roughly every ten years. But each time, it handed power back to civilians. So it may be untrue to say that the army has been an impediment to democracy in Turkey, since after each coup it has insisted that the democratic process continues.

 

The coup d’etat by the army was staged by in 1960s when a group of young army officers formed a national unity committee and arrested Adnan Menderes, then the president of Turkey. However, instead of forming a junta, they drew up a new constitution and established full civilian rule again in 1961, though the presidency was in their hands up to 1989.

 

The second coup, known as the coup by memorandum, was launched in 1971 and the junta urged the parliament to vote to a cabinet of bureaucrats loyal to the junta.

 

The third coup was staged in 1980. The army intervened to stop street violence and the impasse in parliamentary lections. By revising the constitution and creating two political parties led by a retired officer and an opposition bureaucrat, the army tried to form a sort of guided democracy. This led to democracy again.

 

Although it seemed that after the second half of the 1980s the army has decided not to intervene directly in the political stage. But in 1997, when the Islamist Welfare Party of Necmettin Erbakan was in rule, the army forced it to resign.

 

During the twentieth century, most of the developing world has witnessed military interventions in politics. A common condition in these countries has been a high degree of political incompetence and the failure of the civilian government to restrain the army. This has led to a situation called praetorianism (Perlmutter cited in Chetna 1999). The military is prone to intervene in political life in modern praetorianism.

 

According to Rustow and Huntington the motives which lead to military interventions are not to be found in "the historical background of the armies," but in the nature of the army’s interaction with the "political structure" in the context of political modernization (Rustow, 1967 cited in Chetna 1999). Countries that undergo political modernization move ultimately and ideally towards a system where, on the one hand, the government is able to solve the social, economic and political problems effectively, and on the other hand, the people regard the government as a legitimate source of authority, thus respect and obey it.

 

Military interventions are a result of a particular aspect of modernization that is "the general politicization of social forces and institutions" in the absence of effective political institutions that could coordinate their interactions (Huntington, 1968 cited in Chetna 1999). The increasing, unrestrained involvement of agencies such as religious institutions, universities, bureaucracies, corporations and, of course, the army with overall political problems and not specific to their interests is due to the lack of "autonomy, complexity, coherence, and adaptability" of political institutions (Huntington, 1968 cited in Chetna 1999). Development of political participation that usually accompanies economic and social reforms in praetorian societies adds to the chaos, since more social actors are added to a stage that lacks any director/mediator. In such an institutional vacuum, the social groups enter the political stage, and as each of them deploy its own device, the military resorts to the device of a coup (Chetna 1999).

 

The praetorian army can assume two different natures: that of a "ruler" or an "arbitrator" (Perlmutter, 1977 cited in Chetna 1999). Since Turkey is our case of study in this article, we focus on the rule of the army as an arbitrator, since the Turkish Army has always handed power to civilians after staging each coup.

 

 

The increasing social complexity prevents the army "to exercise power effectively and to seize power successfully" (Huntington, 1968 cited in Chetna 1999). With the increasing number of social groups becoming more visible and participatory in political affairs, manipulation of the society for the military becomes more difficult. Thus, the degree of physical violence involved in a coup decreases (Huntington, 1968 cited in Chetna 1999).

 

The Turkish army becomes a guardian institution. In Turkey coups seemed puzzling at first glance; though even in the 1960’s the country was not an institutionally weak state. Turkey has had a long tradition (since 1950) of multi-party politics, and its political parties are "certainly well developed for a developing country" (Dodd, 1969 cited in Chetna 1999).

 

As to Turkey, the military has intervened not only when a political crisis occurred in the form of a political impasse, but also when Kemalist principles, most important of all secularism, have been threatened. In fact, when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk included in the country’s constitution the military’s role as the sole "defender and protector of the constitution and of republican and honest civilian rule," he basically legitimized the military’s intervention in politics (Perlmutter, 1977 cited in Chetna 1999).

 

The praetorian army can decide among four courses of action regarding the future of the civilian government after it has seized power. It can withdraw from the political scene, but refuse to allow new groups to become involved (the "return and restrict" option); stay in power and keep social groups involvement at a distance (the "retain and restrict" option); or remain in power and allow for broad participation on behalf of social groups (the "retain and expand" option) (Huntington, 1968, p. 233 cited in Chetna 1999).

 

The fourth option is the one the Turkish military has followed by giving power back to civilians and allowing them to return to power with new rules which they have to comply under new leadership (the return and expand" option) (Chetna 1999).

 

The attitude of civil government in Turkey towards the army has been diverse. Some have wanted to remove them from the political stage, while others have tended to pay attention to its role. The second option has been mostly favored by Turkish politicians. The most recent example is provided by Erbakan who both granted an increase in the salary of the Armed Forces and praised them as "the apple of the Turkish people’s collective eye" (Bruce, 1996 cited in Chetna 1999).

 

In November 1997, Turkey’s public prosecutor brought Refah to the Constitutional Court, charging the party with "a rallying point for antisecular activities." According to Chetna (1999), although the evidence presented was criticized as "pretty thin," on January 16, 1997 Erbakan, five of his cabinet members and one mayor were removed from politics for the next five years (p. 14). The Turkish High Court banned the Welfare Party judging that it promoted a "subversive agenda," and was aimed to overturn secularism and introducing Islam, thus going "against the principles of the secular republic" ("What’s the Turkish Struggle?", 1997 cited in Chetna 1999).

 

The Turkish army demonstrated its unusual attitude towards democracy once again. Although its measures are considered undemocratic by many countries, but the Turkish Army has been earnest in establishing democracy.

 

Currently secular parties in Turkey believe that the AKP party is threatening the country’s constitution. The Constitutional Court of Turkey is going to shut down the party, but the current circumstances can’t be compared with the Erbakan era, since the power wielded by AKP is not comparable with that of the Welfare Party.

 

The Army doesn’t play an active role in AKP’s lawsuit, but some believe Turkey is witnessing a judicial coup and the Army is orchestrating the whole case. At any rate, the army today is awaiting the court’s verdict to carry out its measure in Turkish political scene. We have to wait and see what the army’s next plan for democracy is.