Coups Are The Wrong Solution To Turkey's Woes

It will be a long time, maybe never, before the real story of the attempted coup in Turkey emerges. What we don’t know far exceeds what we do know. The only thing that is clear at the moment is that the one person to benefit from this farce is President Tayyip Erdoğan. Even if the coup had succeeded it was the exact opposite of what Turkey needs.

            Well-armed with a full magazine of self-righteous, theatrical anger he now has the perfect excuse to eliminate anyone who might conceivably oppose him in purges that would make Joseph Stalin blush. Erdoğan loudly proclaimed that he is protecting his version of ‘democracy’ which probably doesn’t vary much from what the military would have imposed.

            The conspiracy theorists in Turkey are having a field day with such claims as ‘This is nothing more than Erdoğan’s Reichstag fire’ – a reference to the 1933 burning of the German parliament building, started by the Nazis but blamed on some hapless Dutch communist, that presented Adolf Hitler with the perfect excuse to move against all his opponents. It seems a little far-fetched to say that Erdoğan was actively behind the attempted coup, but it is not inconceivable that he had some prior intelligence about such a move and that he  knew it would fail. He was not slow to take advantage of this golden opportunity to grab the small bit of power that still eluded him.

The coup that turned into deadly farce

            It is the sheer incompetence of the plotters that generates some questions. The Turkish army is fairly skilled in coups, but apparently the plotters missed the course called Coup Making 101. The first step in any successful coup is to arrest the civilian leadership as was done in 1960 and 1980. This was not done. As soon as I heard that Erdoğan was making public statements I knew the whole thing was over. The effect Erdoğan’s broadcast was the same as Hitler announcing he was alive after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944. Anyone even thinking of joining the plotters had a sudden change of heart and did absolutely nothing. It is fair to say the same thing happened in Turkey. Who knows what would have happened if the plotters had been marginally more efficient?

            In a final tragi-comic step a group of eight plotters swiped a helicopter and flew to Greece to ask for political asylum. This is just what Greece needs. The Greek authorities must be groaning and asking why, oh why, couldn’t they have just flown a few minutes more and landed in Bulgaria. As of Sunday night the helicopter has been returned, but there has been no decision announced on the men.

This is not a problem the Greeks need

            As far as Erdoğan is concerned the real culprit is clear – his one-time ally Fetullah Gülen who now lives on a farm in Pennsylvania in the United States. Erdoğan has long accused Gülen of setting up a ‘parallel’ state structure in Turkey to challenge Erdoğan’s government. According to Erdoğan, the tentacles of the Gülen organization reach deep into the military, judiciary, police and administrative institutions of Turkey – all the organizations now being ‘cleansed’ by the thousands. In addition, I would not be surprised to see him build up a strong para-military force answerable only to him to counter any future discontent with the military ranks.

            But the real victims in this idiocy that cost too many lives are not the plotters who deserve every punishment they get, but the long-suffering people of Turkey. Yes, Tayyip Erdoğan is a typical autocrat who has absolutely no regard for individual freedoms or respect for the incredible diversity of Turkey. But the solution is never going to be replacing one autocrat with another – the army. Too many of Erdoğan’s opponents think there is only a binary choice in Turkey -- an oppressive, Islamic Erdoğan or an oppressive, secular army. They are missing the point.

            Perhaps Erdoğan’s biggest fault in his long period in power is to strengthen the already dominant tendency in Turkey to revere the ‘strong man’ the ‘man on a white horse’ who can solve all the country’s problems with the stroke of a pen. Instead of building up and strengthening governing institutions like the judiciary, the central bank, the security services or police he made them subservient to his will. Consequently, very few people, if any, have the least bit of faith in the institutions that define a modern political entity. No one in any political or administrative position wants to make a decision without consulting the ‘reis’ – the chief to see which way he is leaning.

            Many of Erdoğan’s opponents fall into this same trap. Instead of the hard, time consuming process of building an alternative political movement stressing process and institution-building they, too, look for a simple answer – a charismatic hero to challenge Erdoğan. This latest farce of a so-called coup attempt only shows that that simply isn’t going to happen. Far from removing what they perceived as a ‘threat’ to Turkey the coup plotters only succeeded in strengthening Tayyip Erdoğan’s iron control of the country.