The July 15 Coup Attempt in Turkey: The Erdogan–Gulen Confrontation and the Fall of ‘Moderate’ Political Islam

Abstract

The failed coup attempt on 15 July 2016 in Turkey was not a continuation of the Turkish military’s ‘tradition’ of seizing power in the name of restoring ‘order’ and ‘national unity’. Rather, it was the climax of a series of former confrontations between the two formerly-allied factions of ‘moderate’ political Islam—the Erdogan–AKP administration and The Fethullah Gulen’s ‘Service Movement’. Neither the coup attempt nor Erdogan’s counter-attacks were made from a position of power. Rather, the existing confrontation is rooted in political Islam’s provisional structure as the state of bourgeoisie in the periods of crises and its inappropriateness for metamorphosing into an ‘ordinary’ bourgeois state. This inappropriateness is based on the political Islamic state’s ‘imperfection’. The inner contradiction of the political Islamic state is intensified owing to the pressure of the masses from below and the international economic and political-administrative crises of the international bourgeoisie, which yields a power struggle between the regional and international competing bourgeois factions. The coup attempt and the consequent events are evidence of the decline and the eventual fall of ‘moderate’ political Islam in Turkey.