Can An Unprecedented Act Of Non-Violent Protest Help Restore Turkish Democracy And Justice?

During the stale pageant commemorating the first anniversary of the failed coup attempt, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan and his acolytes demonstrated once again their ability to turn reality on its head. George Orwell would be proud of this very, very cynical performance.

            He hailed the failure of the coup as a victory for Turkish ‘democracy’ and yet another  demonstration of Turkey’s ‘unity’ and indomitable will to resist all enemies – foreign and domestic.

            Even conceding that the followers of the cleric Fethullah Gülen – who now lives in the United States -- were behind the coup, one wonders how Erdoğan can talk about unity when his actions for the past 12 months have done nothing but widen the existing deep divisions in Turkey and destroy his already slim credibility abroad. He is furious that no foreign leader is willing to give him the credit he thinks he deserves for ‘saving democracy’ in Turkey. He fails to appreciate that replacing the democracy that existed in Turkey with one-man rule is not the best way to get the appreciation and applause he thinks he so richly deserves.

Under the state of emergency that has been in place since the coup attempt – and just extended for another three months -- thousands upon thousands of people have been fired and the jails have been filled with people accused of being part of a ‘terrorist’ organization. It’s important to understand that Erdoğan’s definition of ‘terrorist’ is wide indeed. The ever-widening list of ‘terrorist’ organization includes the followers of Gülen, the Kurdish guerrilla group PKK, the Kurds in Syria and Iraq who are effectively fighting ISIS, and many others. The list also includes all those such as Amnesty International and opposition politicians accused of ‘aiding’ terrorist groups.

 

President Erdoğan at the anti-coup rally

            Erdoğan’s claims of national unity were also shown to be hollow when at least half the voters rejected the controversial referendum giving him absolute, dictatorial power. His narrow victory, marred by serious claims of fraud, was much closer than he anticipated.

            Then there was the 250-mile march from Ankara to Istanbul led by the opposition leader Kemal Kɩlɩçdaroğlu and joined by thousands who marched under banners emblazoned simply with the word Justice. This unprecedented example of non-violent civil disobedience was in protest of the arrest of an MP from Kɩlɩçdaroğlu’s party who, as a journalist, had the temerity to publish a story with pictures about Turkey smuggling weapons to radical groups in Syria.

            The odd thing about the failed coup, as one European journalist said, is that it was more like a family feud than the traditional military coups that Turkey had become accustomed to. After all, Gülen and Erdoğan were Islamic soul mates for decades. Gülen’s followers had been infiltrating government agencies and the military for years, and Erdoğan did nothing to stop this when he came to power 15 years ago. In fact, according to Murat Yetkin – one of the few remaining respected journalists in Turkey -- the cooperation only grew stronger as the Foreign Ministry ‘ordered diplomats abroad to give full assistance to Gülenist institutions and schools opened in remote corners of the world, think tanks in influential places like the U.S. and European capitals, and institutions in world-renowned universities.”

            When Erdoğan was warned that Gülen’s people were taking over the judiciary he said that was no problem because they ‘shared the same qibla’ – the same religion. In 2008 it was Gülenists (many of whom are now on the run or in jail themselves) in the judiciary who fabricated evidence against current and former army officers, journalists, academics and others who were thrown in jail on charges of trying to overthrow Erdoğan’s government. This so-called evidence was later shown to be merely a figment of someone’s imagination. Again, Erdoğan did nothing to stop this abuse of judiciary power.

            It was only in 2013 when the Gülenists began probing serious corruption charges against certain cabinet ministers and Erdoğan’s own family that relations between the two began to sour. Gülenists in the police released several deeply embarrassing tape recordings of the ministers and Erdoğan’s family discussing all the money they had amassed. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the final split came when Gülen opposed Erdoğan’s bumbling intervention in the Syrian civil war.Now, of course, the former close ties and cooperation are being swept under the rug as hapless AKP spokespeople are going around saying ‘Fetullah who? Never knew the guy’.

 

Kɩlɩçdaroğlu leading the Justice march from Ankara to Istanbul

            Erdoğan’s commemoration ceremonies rang hollow with the same stale rhetoric and the spontaneity of a Stalinist politburo address. Same old, same old. The real star of the summer political season was Kɩlɩçdaroğlu’s march, a truly spontaneous example of non-violent protest in Turkey. Many people equated it to Gandhi’s Salt March in India in 1930 in protest of the British tax on salt. Erdoğan was at times dismissive and then furious at his inability to stop this powerful demonstration of civil non-violent disobedience. How do you arrest a 69-year-old man marching 250 miles in the heat of the summer during the Holy Month of Ramadan carrying a one-word banner Justice? Many thousands joined this march that ended July 9 with a massive rally in Istanbul.

            It took another 18 years from Gandhi’s Salt March before India gained independence. We can only hope it doesn’t take that long for Turkey to regain real democracy and justice.

Coups Are The Wrong Solution To Turkey's Woes

It will be a long time, maybe never, before the real story of the attempted coup in Turkey emerges. What we don’t know far exceeds what we do know. The only thing that is clear at the moment is that the one person to benefit from this farce is President Tayyip Erdoğan. Even if the coup had succeeded it was the exact opposite of what Turkey needs.

            Well-armed with a full magazine of self-righteous, theatrical anger he now has the perfect excuse to eliminate anyone who might conceivably oppose him in purges that would make Joseph Stalin blush. Erdoğan loudly proclaimed that he is protecting his version of ‘democracy’ which probably doesn’t vary much from what the military would have imposed.

            The conspiracy theorists in Turkey are having a field day with such claims as ‘This is nothing more than Erdoğan’s Reichstag fire’ – a reference to the 1933 burning of the German parliament building, started by the Nazis but blamed on some hapless Dutch communist, that presented Adolf Hitler with the perfect excuse to move against all his opponents. It seems a little far-fetched to say that Erdoğan was actively behind the attempted coup, but it is not inconceivable that he had some prior intelligence about such a move and that he  knew it would fail. He was not slow to take advantage of this golden opportunity to grab the small bit of power that still eluded him.

The coup that turned into deadly farce

            It is the sheer incompetence of the plotters that generates some questions. The Turkish army is fairly skilled in coups, but apparently the plotters missed the course called Coup Making 101. The first step in any successful coup is to arrest the civilian leadership as was done in 1960 and 1980. This was not done. As soon as I heard that Erdoğan was making public statements I knew the whole thing was over. The effect Erdoğan’s broadcast was the same as Hitler announcing he was alive after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944. Anyone even thinking of joining the plotters had a sudden change of heart and did absolutely nothing. It is fair to say the same thing happened in Turkey. Who knows what would have happened if the plotters had been marginally more efficient?

            In a final tragi-comic step a group of eight plotters swiped a helicopter and flew to Greece to ask for political asylum. This is just what Greece needs. The Greek authorities must be groaning and asking why, oh why, couldn’t they have just flown a few minutes more and landed in Bulgaria. As of Sunday night the helicopter has been returned, but there has been no decision announced on the men.

This is not a problem the Greeks need

            As far as Erdoğan is concerned the real culprit is clear – his one-time ally Fetullah Gülen who now lives on a farm in Pennsylvania in the United States. Erdoğan has long accused Gülen of setting up a ‘parallel’ state structure in Turkey to challenge Erdoğan’s government. According to Erdoğan, the tentacles of the Gülen organization reach deep into the military, judiciary, police and administrative institutions of Turkey – all the organizations now being ‘cleansed’ by the thousands. In addition, I would not be surprised to see him build up a strong para-military force answerable only to him to counter any future discontent with the military ranks.

            But the real victims in this idiocy that cost too many lives are not the plotters who deserve every punishment they get, but the long-suffering people of Turkey. Yes, Tayyip Erdoğan is a typical autocrat who has absolutely no regard for individual freedoms or respect for the incredible diversity of Turkey. But the solution is never going to be replacing one autocrat with another – the army. Too many of Erdoğan’s opponents think there is only a binary choice in Turkey -- an oppressive, Islamic Erdoğan or an oppressive, secular army. They are missing the point.

            Perhaps Erdoğan’s biggest fault in his long period in power is to strengthen the already dominant tendency in Turkey to revere the ‘strong man’ the ‘man on a white horse’ who can solve all the country’s problems with the stroke of a pen. Instead of building up and strengthening governing institutions like the judiciary, the central bank, the security services or police he made them subservient to his will. Consequently, very few people, if any, have the least bit of faith in the institutions that define a modern political entity. No one in any political or administrative position wants to make a decision without consulting the ‘reis’ – the chief to see which way he is leaning.

            Many of Erdoğan’s opponents fall into this same trap. Instead of the hard, time consuming process of building an alternative political movement stressing process and institution-building they, too, look for a simple answer – a charismatic hero to challenge Erdoğan. This latest farce of a so-called coup attempt only shows that that simply isn’t going to happen. Far from removing what they perceived as a ‘threat’ to Turkey the coup plotters only succeeded in strengthening Tayyip Erdoğan’s iron control of the country.