Political violence in pre‐coup Turkey

Abstract

Abstract The long‐standing and pervasive patterns of political violence in Turkey, which were only abated by the military coup of September 1980, are examined in terms of their historical and sociopolitical antecedents. The paper concludes that political violence in Turkey is the result on the one hand of the specific forms of Kemalist modernization to which the country was subjected from 1920 to 1945. Kemalism led to modern political and legal institutions, but left much of Turkey's cultural and economic life subject to traditional values. In addition, Kemalism bequeathed a legacy of political parties that saw the national good identified solely with each political organization's success, which in turn subjectively legitimized violence against political opponents as acceptable in the struggle for the national welfare. After 1945 the legacy of Kemalism was joined by severe developmental problems in the area of economics and social welfare, a resurgence of hyper‐nationalism over the Cyprus issue, and an anti‐modernist backlash through a revival of Islamic traditions. The results were conflicts in a society already strained by the symptoms of second stage modernization that could not be compromised within the parameters of the Turkish political system.