Does Turkish Democracy Remain in Danger - From Erdogan?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 
Turkey was plunged into chaos on July 15 after a faction within the Turkish armed forces calling itself the “Peace at Home Council” launched a coup.

But it fizzled out, as people swarmed onto the streets in a show of support for the elected government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Even Turkey’s four main opposition parties condemned the coup attempt, and most of the important branches of the military and security services rallied to the government’s side.

“What is being perpetrated is a treason and a rebellion. They will pay a heavy price for this,” Erdogan promised. “This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army.”

The president blamed the coup attempt on a small group of military officers loyal to a Pennsylvania-based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who maintains a network of adherents across Turkey and has long challenged Erdogan’s hold on power. The officers were apparently destined to lose their jobs in August during a military reshuffle.

“He has been obsessed with the Gulenists for years,” according to Derek Chollet, a former senior White House official. “I have been in meetings where he’s spent more time talking about them than the threat from the Islamic State.” The movement denied any involvement in the coup.

Erdogan has made many other enemies in the 13 years he has run Turkey, first as prime minister and then, since August 2014, as president. Hundreds of officers have been imprisoned by his government, some of them accused of coup-plotting.

He wants to change Turkey’s constitution, which was promulgated in 1980 following the last successful military coup, to adopt an American-style presidential system which would give him greater power.

There had been international criticism of Erdogan’s human rights record, especially his growing repression of the media. It has been reported that since 2014 1,845 journalists, writers and critics have faced charges of insulting the president.

Judicial independence is also under attack. Last month, Erdogan had already submitted to the Turkish parliament a bill that would remove judges accused of links to Gulan. The government has now purged 2,745 judges from duty in the wake of the coup.

The attempted coup happened because Turkey is deeply divided over President Erdogan’s project to transform the country. “He is a political Islamist who has rejected modern Turkey’s secular heritage,” contends Jeremy Bowen, Middle East editor for the BBC.

Certainly, there has been dissatisfaction in some secular army circles with Erdogan’s policy of moving away from the secularist principles of Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of the Turkish Republic after the First World War.

The current unrest has revealed a society deeply polarized between supporters and opponents of the president, who remains hugely popular and commands the admiration and loyalty of millions of Turks.

“There was no good outcome,” maintained Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “If the coup had won, the state will be oppressive. If Erdogan wins, it will still be oppressive, because now there’ll be a witch hunt.”

The coup attempt “presents a dilemma to the United States and European governments,” Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, remarked. “Do you support a nondemocratic coup,” or an “increasingly nondemocratic leader?”