The roots of Turkey’s failed military coup last Friday lie in the uneasy accommodation that has dominated relations between the military and the ruling elite since Kemal Ataturk established the country as a secular republic nearly 100 years ago.
Ataturk was a formidable military commander in his own right, whose heroics during the Gallipoli campaign resulted in the British suffering a disaster in their attempt to defeat the Ottoman Empire, which then controlled large tracts of the Muslim world. By establishing Turkey as a secular republic, he sought to modernise the country by giving it a more Western and liberal style of government. But tensions between the pro-Western modernisers, whose ultimate objective is for Turkey to join the European Union, and the more conservative Muslim establishment has meant Turkey has never fully come to terms with the Ataturk settlement.
The Turkish officers and soldiers involved in Friday’s dramatic attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan no doubt believed they were merely acting in accord with a military tradition which has seen the country suffer numerous coups since its creation in 1923. While the precise motives of the coup plotters still remain unclear, tensions between the military and the government of Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been growing in recent years over the president’s relentless pursuit of pro-Islamist policies.
Many accuse Erdogan of seeking to restore Turkey to its former Ottoman glory. Certainly, since his emergence on Turkey’s political scene as mayor of Istanbul in 1994, Erdogan has made no secret of his support for the Islamist cause. In 1999 his uncompromising support for Islamist culture resulted in him serving a four-month prison sentence for reading out an Islamist poem. Nor has Erdogan suffered any illusions that his commitment to a more Islamist-based form of government in Turkey, where women are increasingly encouraged to wear the veil, places him at odds with the military’s determination to uphold Ataturk’s secular legacy.
The first serious clash between Erdogan and the military arose in 2007 after the Turkish parliament selected a new president to replace the departing secularist head of state. This prompted the military to proclaim itself “an absolute defender of secularism.” But as support for the AKP grew to make it the dominant force in Turkish politics, so Erdogan intensified his efforts to clamp down on military meddling in Turkish politics, jailing a number of senior generals and admirals, as well as scores of army officers. By 2013, so many admirals had been jailed that the government struggled to appoint a new head of the Turkish navy. No doubt the reason this latest coup failed is that, with so many senior Turkish military officers languishing behind bars, the armed forces simply did not have the experience or expertise to mount a successful coup.
If Erdogan thought he had crushed the will of the military to challenge his authority, his controversial involvement in the civil war in neighbouring Syria, where he has turned a blind eye to the activities of Daesh (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), has prompted opponents to raise fresh questions about Turkey’s current direction of political travel. Erdogan has denied supporting Daesh, but Western officials say the Turkish authorities have done little to prevent the organisation smuggling weapons and recruits across the border to Syria. In addition Ankara has supported Al Qaida-affiliated groups trying to overthrow the Syrian regime President Bashar Al Assad. Erdogan’s involvement in the Syrian crisis, as well as the role he played in allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants to flee to southern Europe, has led to serious strains developing in Ankara’s relations with European leaders. His half-hearted support for Daesh has also resulted in the group carrying out a series of deadly terror attacks in Turkey, the most recent being last month’s on Istanbul airport, in which 42 people died.
The combination of Turkey’s growing diplomatic isolation and the increased threat posed by extremists has, not surprisingly, had a devastating impact on tourism, one of the mainstays of the Turkish economy, which has seen bookings fall by 40 per cent in the past year. Prior to Friday’s failed coup attempt, there had been signs that Erdogan was seeking to restore Turkey’s global standing, with initiatives to restore relations with Israel and Russia. And the fact that Erdogan was able to summon thousands of his supporters to take to the streets and crush the coup through a massive demonstration of people power suggests that he still enjoys strong support throughout the country.
But no matter how hard Ergodan tries to address his past mistakes, there is clearly a strong constituency, both inside and outside the military, who believe that, unless there is radical change in the way the country is governed, Turkey will soon reach the point where Ataturk’s legacy will be reduced to ruins.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2016
Con Coughlin is the Telegraph’s defence editor and chief foreign affairs columnist.
