Turkey’s Constitutional Crisis Highlights Army Role
The political role of the Army is fundamentally changing.
The growing crisis over whether Turkey’s ruling party will be banned highlights the changing role of the Army in ensuring official secularism within the overwhelmingly Muslim country.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) stands accused before Turkey’s Constitutional Court of promoting Islamic law by, among other things, repealing a longstanding ban on the wearing of headscarves at Turkish state universities. If found guilty, the party could be banned from politics for a period of 5 years, with no protection resulting from the fact that it is the ruling party.
Those familiar with Turkish politics and the legacy of founder Kemal Ataturk will find this concept less bizarre than those habituated to more traditional notions of parliamentary democracy where the ruling party has few limitations on its power. But analysts of Turkish politics may find something more surprising by its absence — to wit, where is the Army?
In another dramatic departure from the routines of democratic practice, Turkey’s Army is empowered with an openly political role as the official guarantor of political secularism. This authority has been a point of irritation for many European countries, who have insisted that Turkey reform its civil-military institutions to eliminate the Army’s political role.
Acting on the imperative granted to them, the Army has several times intervened in politics to check the influence of Islamic parties. In 1962, this took the form of a typical coup, with the Army summarily throwing out the ruling party and ruling directly until it could install an acceptable civilian front. In 1980, the Army intervened again, but with notable reluctance, acting only after a long period of political paralysis and only after widespread demands from broad segments of the media and economic elite. In 1997 and 2002, the Army conducted what has been called a “stealth coup”, moving behind the scenes to give civilian lawmakers the choice between acting on their own to remake the government in ways that the Army could find acceptable or face the possibility of a coup.
To understand the present situation, it is important to note the historical pattern of steadily decreasing Army enthusiasm for political intervention. From a regular coup in 1962 to the “stealth coups” at the turn of the new century, Turkey’s Army has been finding ever more subtle ways to exercise its secularist imperative. To be sure, the imperative itself remains, but the lure of future EU membership and general norms of legitimacy in the international community have combined to encourage Turkey’s Army to find ways to be creative about how they act when they feel compelled to do so.
The placement of the issue in the Constitutional Court may signal a watershed moment in this lengthy historical process. For the first time, the first line of defense for secularism in Turkey is a legal process rather than the force of arms. This indicates a growth in the principle of “rule of law” that cannot help but be helpful in Turkey’s continuing drive for full acceptance as a part of Europe.
Of course, the Army remains behind the scenes, standing ready should the Constitutional Court fail to protect secularism. But clearly, the Army is seeking and always has sought to reduce its political role as much as possible, thus refuting many of the more malign interpretations of Turkish Army motives.
This is one of the best short articles on the situation in Turkey I’ve read in quite some time. Very well explained Jason.
This is indeed a very important development; one also gets the impression that the leaders of the Turkish army are more moderate nowadays then they once were. My almost in-laws are also part of the army establishment, as you know, but they too oppose a coup right now; there are legal ways to stop the AKP, they say.
And the fact that Turkish Army officers even consider alternatives to a coup shows that the unusual Turkish system of civil-military relations is not the normative monstrosity that some European critics perpetually present it as (as part of their project to keep Turkey excluded from a "Christian" Europe, of course). A coup in Turkey simply does not have the same social and institutional meaning that a coup in, say, Fiji has. European critics need take the same advice that they so freely offer to Americans in other contexts and consider the situation in local terms before jumping to conclusions about other countries’ governing systems.
Turkey’s military officers are overwhelmingly modernists who seek to emulate western models of political and economic development. In an objective sense, they even like the idea of a wholly non-political military for functionalist reasons (a military that is paying attention to politics loses some of its attention to professional development in war-fighting doctrine). But they are concerned that a hasty and clumsy application of European notions of civil-military relations might destroy precisely what they seek to create — a secular democracy. As the history of Turkish military intervention and its acquiescence to this situation shows, those officers are willing to try a gradual and evolutionary withdrawal of their political prerogatives, but Europe shouldn’t push too hard too fast.
Jason a nice article but have some comments.
Previous coups you mentioned in your article were not against actually religious based parties:
1960 coup was against Democrat Party’s ruling and foreign politicial strategies for long-term interests of Turkey, 1970 coup was against socialists and 1980 coup was against a blend of political, economical and religious factors prevailing in Turkey by then.
I definitely agree with you though that Army is trying its best not to intervene in politics now due to the obvious short-term consequences of such an interference (although may well be in the long-term interest of the country) and I agree with you on your comments about Europe’s approach to the issue.
Amen brother Jason, Amen.
Exactly. Europe’s policy will, ironically, result in that which Europeans abhor most if Turkey’s secularists don’t active prevent it from happening; a mixture of religion and state.
Sometimes I think that this is indeed what European leaders want; after all, a Turkey like that cannot join the EU, can it?
Excellent article. It was extremely educating.
I think that many people are confused about Turkish politics only because they are use to stable European/Western democracies. They cannot fathom a democracy where every 10-20 years a corrupt religious party trying to disguise itself as something else can come in and try to establish Shari’a Law.
Could you imagine a party that comes to America, runs, wins an election (even though it was recently created) with a message of ‘change’ (which many Islamist parties love to talk about), with a charismatic charming leader like Erdogan, who have been known to have radical pasts but yet they say "no I’m not like that." And yet when they achieve power, they begin to use the government to make themselves rich and to use the government to make themselves more established and bring their religious laws!
In America, this doesn’t happen. Not even in most European nations does this happen (except sometimes… When Hitler came to power with a message of Change and a message of national unity… Or Mussolini, and many others).
Becareful when voting in any country, do not assume those politicians are all innocent. They all have secrets they don’t want voters to know. Messages of unity, change, etc, are the worst kind of messages, because they are empty vague promises.
Barack Obama’s message of "change" and "unity" and "hope" and "changing America’s image" are simply vague promises as Nostradamus had made in the past including other fortune tellers. Any president is going to bring change, why is it that people think Barack Obama will bring the right change?
To paraphrase what Bernard Lewis says:
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