The Failed 2016 Coup d'état and the Birth of Post-Modern Turkey

Abstract

Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XL, No.4, Summer 2017 The Failed 2016 Coup d'état and the Birth of Post-Modern Turkey Uzi Rabi* Ben Mendales* On 15 July 2016, elements of the Turkish armed forces [Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri or TSK] staged an attempted coup d’état against the elected civilian leadership headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, and their ruling party Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP).1 Despite some initial momentum, the coup quickly disintegrated in the face of massive civilian protest and effective resistance by loyal security forces, and had been decisively put down by the following day. This was not the first time that the Turkish military has moved to act against the elected civilian leadership. Between 1960 and 1997, the Turkish armed forces successfully intervened four times in national politics—either by coup, as in 1960 and 1980, or a threatened coup, as in 1971 and 1997. Each intervention was justified by the military’s self-defined mandate as the guardian of the Turkish Republic, a central tenet of which was Mustafa 22 *Uzi Rabi is the director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, a senior researcher at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies, and the former Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History, all at Tel Aviv University. His fields of specialization include Middle Eastern Geopolitics, the modern history of states and societies in the Persian Gulf, state formation in the Middle East, oil and politics in the Middle East, Iranian-Arab relations, and Sunni-Shi'i tensions. *Ben Mendales is a junior researcher and program officer at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. The authors would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak in the preparation of this article. 1 Known in English as the Justice and Development Party, the AKP is a socially conservative , Islamist-oriented party, which has dominated Turkish politics since its overwhelming victory in the 2002 elections. Erdoğan, as Prime Minister and later President, has served as the dominant political figure in Turkey and within the Party since 2003. 23 Kemal Atatürk’s legacy of secularism. Turkey became therefore an almost prototypical example of a praetorian state.2 The coup attempt of 15 July 2016 certainly bore a resemblance to those that preceded it. It also echoed the successful 2013 Egyptian coup, where the military stepped in to oust the popularly elected Islamist government of Mohammad Morsi. Yet, despite such cosmetic similarities, the 2016 Turkish coup attempt is distinguished most prominently by the extent of its failure. For the first time in Turkish history, the civilian government proved its overwhelming dominance over the military, put paid to the 20th century paradigm of civil-military relations in Turkey, and paved the way for the institutionalization of a new, hybrid model of governance in Turkey— neither Islamist nor secularist—but incorporating both to the political benefit of President Erdoğan. The Turkish Military’s Instrumentality in Turkish Politics Following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of an independent Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk offered an “explicit rejection of the Ottoman model.” He abolished the role of religion in the governance of the modern Turkish state. Instead he promoted the six principles of his Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi [Republican People’s Party], or CHP: “nationalism, populism, republicanism, revolutionism, secularism and statism.”3 During the single-party era, the Turkish military was inextricably linked with the state, and the regime, itself. While the CHP was not able to maintain an electoral majority following Turkey’s transition to multi-party elections in 1950, Atatürk’s legacy, and the military’s place as its guardian, was nevertheless enduring.4 Article 34 of the Armed Forces Internal Service Law of 1935, and its successor, Article 35 of the Internal Service Law of January 1961, empowered the TSK to protect “the Turkish homeland and the Turkish Republic as defined in the constitution.”5 2 For an excellent theoretical background to the concept of a praetorian state, see Amos Perlmutter...