Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Gangale
19 July 2016
I am not at all surprised that the attempted coup d'etat in Turkey occurred last week. I have been expecting it for some years now. Historically, the Turkish military has had the mission of safeguarding Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's vision of a secular democracy, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist who has accumulated ever more power over the past decade, is everything that Ataturk would not have wanted in a leader of the Turkish republic which he founded. So who is the real traitor? Perhaps "traitor" is too strong a word, but Erdogan is certainly subverting Ataturk's vision
The Turkish military executed successful coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980; however, there is little evidence that senior Turkish officers have ever had political ambitions. They have always restored constitutional government after a brief period, during which they sorted out the undesirable elements and banned them from future political participation. Put simply, the Turkish military's job is to push the "reset" button when it assesses that Ataturk's system is about to crash.
A lot of Britons who voted to leave the European Union a few weeks ago out of fear that the United Kingdom would not be able to block Turkish membership and thereby prevent a tidal wave of Turkish immigrants crossing the English Channel have all the more reason to regret the price they will pay for Brexit. The attempted coup and Erdogan's repressive crackdown have set back Turkey's long held dream of EU membership by several decades. The EU is far more than simply a free trade zone; it is a zone of liberal democratic peace, and Turkey has just shown itself to be unqualified to join.
Ataturk's secular republic was a radical break from the Ottoman sultanate, and it was the first political experiment of its kind in the Muslim world. Despite its history of military coups, Turkey is one of the most democratic and least corrupt nations in the Muslim world. The only predominately Muslim states which are rated higher by various sources are: Tunisia, which has certainly had some problems with political stability having undergone a revolution five years ago; Senegal, a small, impoverished West African state; and Indonesia, the most populous Muslim state and one which has ridden the wave of economic globalization very well, but it has had democratic government for only two decades, during which it has been plagued with two secessionist movements. The rest of the Muslim world is a mess: autocratic, repressive and corrupt. There is a strong correlation between how Muslim a state's population is and how bad its government is. So Ataturk's experiment is one of the brightest stars next to the crescent moon in the firmament of Islam. Tragically, it contains the contradiction that the military is obliged to take the helm occasionally to steer the ship of state away from Islam's apparent autocratic tendencies, and although these interventions are far from being the worst deeds to occur in the Muslim world, other democracies shake their heads in disappointment if not outright disgust. It does not measure up to European standards of democracy and political stability. Thus is what keeps Turkey out of the European Union.
Again, I am not at all surprised that the attempted coup occurred last week. I am only surprised that it failed. Given that the last coup was 36 years ago, it is apparent in retrospect that the Turkish military is out of practice. I fear that we are about to find out what happens when Ataturk's system crashes and the military is unable to push the "reset" button.
Worse still, a weakened Turkish military will embolden Kurdish separatists as well as Islamic State terrorists. This is a new "domino theory" for the 21st century Middle East: The Islamic State got control of much of Iraq thanks to the bungled US military occupation, then seized the opportunity to expand into Syria as the Assad regime unraveled; next stop Turkey and the doorstep of Europe.
Furthermore, in the shifting sands of Middle Eastern power plays, it is not inconceivable that the Kurds, who have enjoyed notable military successes against the Islamic State, might cut a deal for these two non-state actors to lay off each other and go after Turkey together. Although the enemy of my enemy may also be my enemy, it may be useful to make him my friend for now.
In turn, this would put the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which Turkey is a member, in a real bind. NATO has already been scrambling to find its footing in the face of Russia's increasingly menacing behavior, with the US thumping on the European members of the alliance to ramp up their defense spending. One wonders how prepared NATO would be to stand off the Russians while coming to Turkey's aid in fighting two teamed-up insurgent groups, for make no mistake: repression breeds insurgencies like rotten meat breeds maggots. NATO needs to get its head around the prospect that Turkey is about to tip from being part of the strategic solution to being part of the problem.
Thomas Gangale's Lies and Politics
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