Turkey's Difficult Journey to Democracy: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back (Oxford Studies in Democratization) 9780199663989, 019966398X

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TURKEY’S DIFFICULT JOURNEY TO DEMOCRACY

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OXFORD STUDIES IN DEMOCRATIZATION Series editor: Laurence Whitehead

............ Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes will concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization processes that accompanied the decline and termination of the Cold War. The geographical focus of the series will primarily be Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia.

OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES Democracy, Agency, and the State: Theory with Comparative Intent Guillermo O’Donnell Regime-Building: Democratization and International Administration Oisín Tansey Rethinking Arab Democratization: Elections without Democracy Larbi Sadiki Accountability Politics: Power and Voice in Rural Mexico Jonathan A. Fox Regimes and Democracy in Latin America: Theories and Methods Edited by Gerardo L. Munck Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific Benjamin Reilly Democratic Accountability in Latin America Edited by Scott Mainwaring and Christopher Weina Democratization: Theory and Experience Laurence Whitehead The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism Andreas Schedler The Politics of Accountability in Southeast Asia: The Dominance of Moral Ideologies Garry Rodan and Caroline Hughes Segmented Representation: Political Party Strategies in Unequal Democracies Juan Pablo Luna Europe in the New Middle East: Opportunity or Exclusion? Richard Youngs

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Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy Two Steps Forward, One Step Back ............ İLTER TURAN

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # İlter Turan 2015 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2015 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2014952717 ISBN 978–0–19–966398–9 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. p. 3. # 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.

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To the Two Joys of My Life Gül, my spouse, and Belkıs, our daughter

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............ Foreword ............ Serendipity has its share in the writing of this book. If I had not run into the editor of the series and my dear colleague Laurence Whitehead during a visit to Oxford University as a member of the group of academics whom the then President of Turkey, His Excellency Abdullah Gül, had invited to accompany him on the occasion of his receiving an award from Chatham House, the idea of my contributing to the Oxford University Press Series on Democratization might have never arisen. The rest, however, is the result of more deliberate human action. It is almost a tradition that, when they meet, the first question academics ask each other after the initial exchange of pleasantries is “What are you doing these days?” I had actually just completed writing a comprehensive chapter for an edited volume on Turkey’s democratic experience. Laurence Whitehead, always interested in what people have to say about the fortunes of democracy anywhere in the world, asked me to send him what I had written, a feat that requires only a few hits on one’s computer these days and therefore very easy to do. Shortly afterwards, he wrote me a letter encouraging me to develop the ideas in the chapter into a book proposal. Happily, the proposal was accepted. As I worked on the book, I developed additional ideas and modified the existing ones without, however, losing my focus on Turkey’s experience with democracy, and where and why it has succeeded and failed. Both as a citizen and a student of comparative politics with a special focus on Turkey, my interest in the study of Turkey’s democratization process, and its democratic achievements and failures has been a long-term one. As many parts of this book will also testify, I have had many occasions to study the actors, the institutions, the culture, and the context of Turkey’s democratization process over the years. This book gave me the opportunity to look at the process more comprehensively and in its entirety; and, benefiting from the writings and analyses of many distinguished scholars of democracy, it helped me integrate my earlier efforts into a story of Turkey’s democratic adventure. No scholarly undertaking is the product of one person. As already explained, Laurence Whitehead initiated the process of writing this book. His contributions, however, far exceed this. As an editor, he made very helpful comments that not only helped clarify my thinking on many issues, but also strengthened the comparative dimensions of the book. For the many ways he generously extended his support to me, I owe him warm and sincere thanks. Through his efforts, it also proved possible for me to spend Michaelmas 2013

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at Nuffield College, where nearly half of the first draft of this book was written in a peaceful and highly supportive environment. I would like to extend my appreciation to Nuffield College. Many persons at Nuffield helped make our stay there pleasant and facilitated my work. While I am not able to name all here, I will place the burden of accepting my deep appreciation and sharing it with the staff on Andrew Dilmot, the Warden of the College. My home institutions of Istanbul Bilgi University and my own Department of International Relations have always constituted a supportive environment that has allowed me to pursue my research interests. I do owe them thanks for many things, including offering a hospitable milieu that facilitated my writing. There are many persons, both in my department and in other parts of the university, to whom I owe words of appreciation, but I am particularly indebted to the staff of the University Library, and in particular Gülşah İlhan, who made sure, through the inter-library loan system and databases available to the library, that any book or article I needed reached me promptly. My research assistant, Tuba Okçu, worked on the preparation of some tables and “information retrieval.” My friend Ahmet Demirel, a banker by profession, but truly an intellectual with a deep knowledge of Turkish politics, read all chapters, scrutinized my facts, suggested clarifications and corrections, and asked questions that helped me organize my thoughts and analysis. Ümit Kumcuoğlu, my graduate student, who has exceptional talent, also read the text and made suggestions, many of which I readily adopted. Dominic Byatt of Oxford University Press facilitated the writing of this book and offered guidance on how to proceed. For the product that is in your hands, his leadership was indispensible. He bears the responsibility of relating my words of appreciation to all from the OUP who contributed one way or another to the preparation and the publication of this book. Over the years, as a practicing academic herself, though not in political science, my spouse, Gül Turan, has always been a source of support in a variety of ways. As I was struggling with the manuscript, she willingly assumed many of the responsibilities of a common life that is usually shared by partners. Sometimes she helped me find information; at other times she gave me ideas and challenged those that I expounded. Her multidimensional contribution to my scholarly output, as one might guess, has not been confined to this book; rather, it has also included it. All I can do is to admit a deep sense of indebtedness and gratitude. The Ottoman sultans invited a Meclis-i Meşveret (Consultative Assembly) when the empire faced major problems. In a discussion, my historian colleague Sina Akşin once speculated that this exercise aimed as much to incorporate a significant part of the ruling elite into sharing the responsibility

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of what was eventually done as it sought to benefit from the wisdom offered at these meetings. It is in the nature of the academic profession that we consult others, but unlike the sultans, we cannot make them share the responsibility for what we do. Accordingly, the responsibility for the contents of this book is entirely mine, although the intellectual assistance rendered by others is duly recognized. Santral Campus Istanbul Bilgi University İstanbul 2014

İlter Turan

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............ Contents ............ List of Tables List of Abbreviations Note on Turkish Spellings

xiv xv xvi

1. The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems The Conundrum of “Late” Democratization What is a Democracy? How Does a Democracy Become a Democracy? Modernization Theory Democracy and Capitalist Development Externally Stimulated “Late” Democratization Democratization in an International Setting Problems of Externally Stimulated “Late” Democratization “Late” Democratization, Economic Development, and Democratic Consolidation Socioeconomic Development and Democratization Industrial Development Civil Society Growth of Individualism Market Economy The Rule of Law Weight of History or Path Dependence Consolidation or Democracy’s Deepening and Maturing Security or Prosperity

1 2 3 5 6 9 10 10 12

2. The Political Legacy: Antecedents of Democratization The Ottoman Legacy Challenges to the Absolutist Monarchy The Birth of Constitutional Monarchy The Second Constitutional Period (1908–1918) Ottoman Democratization: A Case of Failure The Legacy Of The Early Republic The Nationalist Movement and the Opening of the Grand National Assembly Single-Party Rule The Progressive Republican Party

14 16 17 18 20 21 22 23 24 29 33 34 34 36 37 40 42 43 45 47

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Contents Achieving the Background Conditions of Democracy Atatürk’s Reforms: Regime Consolidation and Nation Building The Construction of the Turkish State The Free Republican Party Controlled Opposition: The Independent Group Concluding Observations

52 52 53 54 57 58

3. The Transition to Competitive Politics The Second World War as a Trigger for Political Change The Extractive Bureaucratic State and the War Background to the Emergence of Opposition The Opposition Takes Shape The Transition to Political Competition The Multi-Party Period Gets Under Way From Partial to More Competitive Politics Diversity in Unity The Road to Free and Fair Elections Centrally Directed Democratic Change

61 61 62 65 68 71 71 74 77 80 82

4. The Cycles of Turkish Democracy: 1950–1980 The First Democratic Experiment, 1950–1960 Democrats Ambivalent about Democracy The Rule of the Colonels Rebuilding and Failing in Democratic Politics: 1961–1980 Return to Electoral Politics The Indirect Intervention of the Military: 1971–1973 Politics of Instability: The Coalition Years of 1973–1980 Electoral Cycles, Fragmentation, and Polarization

86 88 88 95 98 98 100 102 105

5. The Rise and Fall of the Military as a Political Force An Intervention to End All Interventions The Background The September 12, 1980 Intervention Reconstructing Turkey’s Competitive Politics: Searching for Stability Projecting the Oversight of the Military into the Future The Military and Elected Politicians: The Pendulum Swings Back and Forth Declining Support for the Political Role of the Military The Coming of Civilian Control Ending the Possibility of Military Interventions: The Trials of the Generals Discussion

110 110 110 113 115 120 124 129 132 135 137

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6. Interactions among Society, Economy, and Politics: Change and Democratization Achieving the Background Conditions Political Community and National Unity Increasing Relevance of Government in Public Life Economic Change and its Political Consequences: 1950–1980 From Enlivening of the Economy to Economic and Political Crisis The Political Economy of Import Substitution Oriented Industrialization (1960–1980) The Rise of the Operating Market Economy A Case of Recidivism The Coming of the Conservative Liberals Socioeconomically Transformed Society and Democracy

154 163 166 168 171

7. The Deepening of Democracy and its Challenges The Expansion of Civil Society The International Dimension of Turkey’s Democratization The Challenges to Democratization The Problems of Cultural Bifurcation Cultural Bifurcation Derived Pathologies of Turkish Democracy Securitization Majoritarianism and Anti-Pluralism The Mirror Image Behavior Problem Other Pathologies Authoritarian Leadership and Lack of Intra-Party Democracy The High Cost of Being Out of Power The Challenge of Ethnic Pluralism

175 176 186 191 191 194 194 195 196 198 198 201 203

8. Two Steps Forward and One Step Back The Ascent of Questions of Economic Prosperity Democratic Deepening and Maturing Partly Fulfilled Aspirations Two Steps Forward, One Step Back The Road to a More Democratic Turkey

206 206 210 210 212 217

Postscript Growing Authoritarianism of the Prime Minister The Role of the President in the Current Constitution The Presidential Election Turkey’s Democracy: Quo Vadis? References Index

141 141 141 145 149 150

223 223 225 227 229 233 243

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............ List of Tables ............ 4.1 4.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Share of vote of parties and fractionalization in the parliament Increase of distribution of GNP among sectors 1923–1999 Urban and rural distribution of population (percentages) Literate population (percentages of six years or older) Turkey’s foreign trade 1945–1960 (in million dollars) Fragmentation of the Turkish party system Composition of the GDP by percentage (agriculture, industry, services) 6.6 Ratio of consolidated national budgets to gross domestic product (percentages) 6.7 Turkey’s gross domestic product 7.1.a.1 Associations and their growth in the Province of Istanbul 7.1.a.2 Number of new associations in Istanbul (annual) 7.1.b Number of associations in Turkey 8.1 What is the most important problem facing our country? 8.2 What are the two important issues you are facing at the moment? 8.3 The aims of the country 8.4 Newspaper space allocated to economical topics (cm2)

106 107 147 148 154 161 170 171 172 181 182 182 207 208 208 209

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............ List of Abbreviations ............ AKP ANAP AP BDP CHP CKMP DP DSP DYP FP HDP HP ISI İTC MBK MDP MGK MHP MP MSP OYAK PKK RP SCF or SF SEE SHP SODEP TBMM TCF YTP

Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi) Justice Party (Adalet Partisi) Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi) Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) Republican Peasants’ Nation Party (Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi) Democratic Party (Demokrat Party) Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti) True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi) Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi) Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi) People’s Party (Halkçı Parti) Import substitution oriented industrialization Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti) National Unity Committee (Milli Birlik Komitesi) Nationalist Democracy Party (Milliyetçi Demokrasi Partisi) National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu) Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi) Nation Party (Millet Partisi) National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet Partisi) Armed Forces Mutual Assistance Establishment (Ordu Yardımlaşma Kurumu) Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan) Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) Free Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) State economic enterprises Social Democratic People’s Party (Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti) Social Democratic Party (Sosyal Demokrasi Partisi) Turkish Grand National Assembly (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi) Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası) New Turkey Party (Yeni Türkiye Partisi)

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............ Note on Turkish Spellings ............ C Ç Ğ I İ Ö Ş Ü

pronounced as in Django pronounce as ch as in check silent but prolongs the vowel that precedes it undotted i or ı is a separate letter and sounds like io as in convention dotted i (dotted also as a capital letter) sounds like i as in fit o with umlaut ö as in Curtis or Kirk s with a cedilla sounds like sh as in push u with umlaut sounds like ue in Guenther

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The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems We live in a period of history characterized by the prevalence of liberal democracies. Democracy’s Third Wave1 has enlarged the list of members of the global club of world democracies while the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring has added new candidates to the list. The leaders of authoritarian states are increasingly concerned that they will have to yield to demands for democratization, losing some or most of their political power in the process. Yet, it is not clear that countries that have made recent transitions to more democratic systems will be able to sustain, let alone build upon their fledgling beginnings. It is even less clear that demands for a democratic transition in countries that are still under authoritarian rule will inevitably lead to the emergence of new democracies. The current limited success and potential failure of the conscious efforts to build democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan can hardly be called exemplary achievements; and furthermore, we are currently unsure as regards the extent to which Egypt will evolve in a more democratic direction. The adoption of liberal democracy as the most desirable form of government is promoted by the governments of the club of liberal democracies. Yet, policymakers and academics alike are unsure about how to build a democracy, how to make it work, and how to keep already established democracies from receding into authoritarian rule. Much of our knowledge about the evolution of liberal democracies, their growth, and their becoming a trademark of many advanced societies derives from studies of countries with a history of democracy. In such cases, as we shall later elaborate, liberal democracy is the end product of long enduring processes of socioeconomic and political change. Change, interacting with what was already in existence, led to the shaping of institutions, practices, attitudes, rules, and norms that comprised the building blocks of the liberal democratic package. What is currently being done by policymakers is abstracting these elements from their original habitat and 1 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late 20th Century (Norman: University Oklahoma Press, 1991).

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recommending their adoption by countries with differing historical legacies that have neither gone through such socioeconomic transformation nor possess the economic attributes of older, established democracies.

T H E CO N UN D R U M O F “L A T E” DEMOCRATIZATION We are facing a puzzle regarding democratization of non-democratic and less democratic societies in contemporary times. To restate the problem more specifically, some of the well-established democracies of today democratized as they also developed socioeconomically (e.g. Britain and the United States), others were considerably advanced in socioeconomic development when they democratized (e.g. Spain, Poland, Brazil). In many recent cases, however, democratization has been expected to precede socioeconomic development. This situation necessitates a reversal of the logic of theories grounded in socioeconomic development. Democracy no longer represents an outcome of socioeconomic change, but the formula through which socioeconomic development is to be achieved. Is this likely? The somewhat successful operation of a democracy in India and Turkey as they developed (both with some shortcomings and with intermissions in the latter case) as well as their recent economic achievements would prevent us from responding to the question with an immediate no. Herein lies, then, the conundrum of “late,”2 or maybe “premature” democratization: can democratization come before the achievement of conditions that have preceded the transitions to democracy in earlier cases of democratization, leading to the establishment of a viable, enduring democracy? In light of our discussion, because of its relative success, it becomes important to examine the Turkish experience with democracy. How and why a transition to a politically competitive system was made, why was the operation of the system interrupted on several occasions; and conversely, why did the system prove to be so resilient, has it become more sustainable now and why? Turkey’s government was changed through elections in 1950. Once instituted, however, democratic governance survived only intermittently. In addition, constant questions have been raised about the quality of Turkish democracy. Turkey did not live through a linear, uninterrupted improvement

2

I had difficulty in deciding whether I should call democratization of countries lacking the conditions of those that democratized first “late” or “premature.” I decided on the former, because it appeared to denote only a chronological difference and did not imply other judgments.

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of its democracy; rather, it experienced ups and downs, and displayed weaknesses that have been difficult to change. Even today, Turkey is not perceived as an exemplary democracy; it is poorly ranked by the Freedom House and receives regular criticism from the EU with which it is engaged in a never ending process of accession negotiations. The book will analyze Turkish politics with a view to answering these and other similar questions. What makes the Turkish case particularly important to study is that, given its level of socioeconomic development at the time (1946–1950), no student of democracy would have predicted that Turkey would become a democracy after the Second World War. Two reasons account for this shortcoming. First, at the time, the evolution of a democracy was seen mainly as a product of internal developments, neglecting the international setting in which domestic political change occurs. We have to remember that Turkey’s transition to competitive politics preceded the growth of modernization theory and other similar frameworks, and it occurred before the United States completed the development of constitutional systems for West Germany and Japan. Second, little was known about the question of genesis, that is, how a democracy comes about in the first instance, a question the answer to which is the key to understanding why different societies have experienced democratic transitions at different stages of their socioeconomic development and why some have never lived through that experience. And finally, with the advantage of hindsight, we may now add a third reason: we did not have enough examples at the time of democratic breakdowns, failed democracies, and an abundance of semi-democracies that might have helped us better understand what makes a democracy emerge and what renders it sustainable.

WHAT IS A DEMOCRACY? Since my purpose is to study democratization; that is, how societies come to be ruled by democratic systems, I would like to begin by defining “democracy,” a term which I have already begun to use. The term is popular and widely used, and given a variety of meanings depending who uses it for what purpose. Let me identify briefly the attributes of a particular form of government called democracy, the evolution of which in Turkey constitutes the central focus of this book. Przeworski has offered a short, elegant definition of a democratic system as one “in which parties lose elections.”3 This summary contains a 3

Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 10.

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number of assumptions that need to be spelled out. To begin with, the definition assumes, if only by necessity of logic, that if some parties lose elections, then others win them, and those winning may take over the reins of government until the next elections. While the validity of such an assumption seems all too evident, to the extent a contrary possibility exists, it needs to be explicitly stated. Next, in order for some parties to lose elections and others to win them, it must be relatively easy for citizens to establish political parties and persuade voters that a party aiming to achieve power is worth supporting. This, in turn, warrants further assumptions about the presence and practice of certain liberties such as freedom of association and freedom of expression broadly defined and therefore including such liberties as freedom of the press and freedom of speech. These freedoms need to be exercised without fearing reprisals from those in power. Third, we often assume that all adult citizens, however being an adult may be defined in any particular system, may vote in elections. Again while this seems to be almost universally true in contemporary times, not only has it taken a long time characterized by struggles in even the most democratically advanced societies to achieve universal suffrage, but there also continue to exist societies, even if declining in number, where segments of the adult population may be, legally or effectively, unable to vote. Fourth, there must be a judicial system that can render judgments independent of the preferences of those in power; that is, a referee that can settle disputes among contestants without electoral and other considerations. But more significantly both those in power and those who contest it must subscribe to the notion that basic principles of law and the decisions of the courts of law will be honored. The prevalence of the rule of law and the presence of such a court system is needed to ensure that liberties are preserved and their protection is not entrusted exclusively to those in power. In order for these conditions to be met, we also have to assume that there exist institutions for public decision making and implementation; and further, that there exists public authority that is capable of keeping law and order, ensuring that the rule of law prevails, that elections are held in an orderly fashion, and the like. Huntington, in analyzing changing societies, had pointed to the need that above all else, societies needed to be governed; and that their degree of government was more important than their system of government.4 Linz and Stepan, on the other hand, have reminded us that the existence of a

4

Samuel C. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 1.

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state must not only precede the transition to democracy but that there can be no democracy without a functioning state. In addition to the territoriality of the state; that is, its possession of the monopoly on the use of coercion in a geographically delineated space, they point out that rational-legal democratic norms must prevail as the primary organizing principle of the state in a democratic system.5 In terms of human experience, democratic systems and governance are of recent vintage. As will be discussed briefly, the evolution of democratic systems in their original habitat appears to be linked with socioeconomic development and demographic change. In more recent times, democratic systems have been adopted by a large number of countries.

HOW D OE S A DEM OC RA CY B ECOME A DEMOCRA CY? The promotion of democracy as the most desirable form of government in the global commons in contemporary times, the desire of many states to develop along a democratic path, and often the reluctant desire of semi or nondemocracies to evolve into more democratic systems, lead us to the question of how a political system becomes a democracy. Although the question may have been occasionally raised in earlier points in history, its salience was enhanced after the conclusion of the Second World War and the ensuing Cold War which was, if not fully accurately, conceptualized as competition between the Free World (meaning a group of states characterized by democratic regimes) and the Socialist totalitarian dictatorships. As the leading victorious power of the war, the United States had already engaged in successful constitutional engineering to construct democratic systems in West Germany and Japan, but it and other members of the postWWII democratic club encountered a greater challenge in the newly independent countries that were emerging as a result of the decolonization process that the world was undergoing. In contrast to Japan and West Germany, these countries were not highly industrialized and urbanized. Their populations were poor and uneducated. Many of them had commenced their trip into independence with arrangements containing institutional and legal frameworks that appeared to be democratic which they had inherited from their colonial powers. Within a short time, however, departing from their democratic beginnings, they had evolved into authoritarian systems. 5

Juan Linz and Albert Stepan, Problems of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), ch. 1.

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It is under these conditions that the Free World, especially the United States, set out to promote the growth of democratic regimes. What the American leadership had in mind was the construction of “effectively and democratically governed market economies.”6 These efforts were sometimes impeded by security considerations which necessitated extending generous toleration to non-democratic regimes that sided with the “Free World.” But, more importantly, not enough knowledge was available on how to go about promoting democracies because not enough was known about their development. If sound policies for democracy promotion were to be developed, more needed to be known on the conditions under which democracy was likely to flourish, the factors that were important in its evolution, and the processes through which these factors operated. Through research, some of it encouraged and funded by government agencies, a considerable amount of scholarship emerged after the Second World War that aimed to improve our understanding of how democracies evolved in the environments in which they first appeared, how the presence of democracy in some systems influenced others to go through a similar path of political development, how a process of transition from a non-democratic to a democratic system occurred, and why democracy seemed to take hold and prosper in some societies while it failed in others.

Modernization Theory From very early on, studies on democratization established that democracies were more likely to be found in countries where the income per capita had exceeded a certain threshold.7 Since the existence of a correlation between income per capita and the presence of a democratic system was no more than covariance, the statistic did not lend itself to drawing causal inferences. It was, in other words, not sufficiently persuasive to argue that helping societies become more prosperous guaranteed their evolving into democracies. In fact, such reasoning led some scholars later to argue that how societies became democratic was a separate question from that of the development, survival, 6

Though the wording may not be exact, the quote comes from a talk given by Steve Krasner on 9 May 2013 at a panel in Istanbul organized by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. 7 See, for example, Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (New York: Doubleday, 1960); Dean E. Neubauer, “Some Conditions of Democracy,” American Political Science Review, 61:4 (1967), pp. 1002–9; Philips Cutright, “National Political Development: Its Measurement and Social Correlates,” American Sociological Review 28:2 (1963) pp. 253–64; and Dean E. Neubauer and Charles F. Cnudde, Empirical Democratic Theory (Chicago: Markham, 1969).

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and consolidation of already established democratic regimes.8 Presumably, the passing of a specific threshold of income per capita did not ensure but increased the likelihood that a system would be a democracy; and as the wealth of a society that had already become a democracy kept growing, at some point, the operation of a democratic system became irreversible.9 Others disagreed that a longer term study of the emergence of democratic systems showed that economic growth and increases in per capita income were critical in the evolution of democratic regimes.10 Yet the causal process through which this all happened was not sufficiently clarified. A number of scholars focusing on developing societies, rather than focusing on socioeconomic change alone, had offered an additional perspective by referring to changes in values and attitudes. Democracy operated successfully in environments in which there existed a political culture that was consonant with it.11 Since measurement of political attitudes and beliefs came from crosssectional studies, while it was possible to see differences in the political culture of different societies, it was difficult to determine whether a democratic political culture preceded the emergence and development of a democratic system or whether it was, in fact, a product of it. Also, the question of how widely democratic attitudes and beliefs needed to be shared in society for a democratic system to evolve or operate successfully, especially whether elite commitment to democratic norms would be sufficient for the sustenance of democracy, needed to be studied more closely.12 Earlier, a number of studies focusing on political development/political modernization had offered a description of how political systems became more “developed.” Although there were some differences among the variety of works that come under this umbrella, their lines of argument usually resembled each other. At the expense of being too schematic and simplistic, let me summarize them in the following way: economic development, often e.g. Dankwart A. Rustow, “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics, 2:3 (April, 1970), pp. 337–63. 9 Adam Przeworski, Jose Antonio Cheibub, Michael E. Alvares, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Material Well Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 10 Carles Boix and Susan Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization,” World Politics, 55:4 (2003), pp. 517–49. 11 Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), and Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, eds., Civic Culture Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980) were the leading exponents of this approach. 12 Samuel A. Stouffer, Communism, Conformity and Civil Liberties (New York: Doubleday, 1955), noted that elites were not only more familiar with systemic values but they were also more able to apply general principles to specific situations. 8

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employed as a synonym for industrialization,13 was accompanied by urbanization, spread of literacy, improved systems of communication, and greater exposure to mass media. Industrialization increased the salience of functionally based groups in society and the differentiation of interests, while the importance of primordial ties declined. The spread of literacy, on the other hand, facilitated communications and intensified exposure to them. Together, these developments prompted demands for mass political participation of groups with differing interests. Competition among different interests to serve their own needs and achieve their own goals, led to the emergence of institutions through which conflict was mediated, producing political development. Some analysts, as indicated above, added that, in addition to institutional developments, attitude shifts supportive of the operation of a democratic system were also an important aspect of such change. Though not always spelled out explicitly by the proponents of these arguments, political development was expected to proceed along a democratic path. As Adrian Leftwich has aptly summarized: At the heart of these theories was the essential claim that the structures and processes of human development from simple forms of traditionalism to complex forms of modernity . . . According to the general theory of modernization, these processes have involved a shift from non-democratic to democratic forms of government, at least from various forms of authoritarian rule to arrangements involving wider popular control.14

The elaboration of political modernization studies buttressed by the increasing availability of quantitative data led to further efforts to identify the conditions under which democratic systems existed. The goal was to see on a broadly comparative basis if our knowledge about the “economic, social and cultural requisites”15 of democracy could be advanced. While these studies yielded little information about the genesis of democracy, they showed once again that there was a clear relationship between economic prosperity measured as income per capita and whether a society was a democracy or not.16 The search for finding empirical indicators of democracy has continued into 13 I employ industrialization in a broader sense than just the mass production of goods. Today, for example, we refer to tourism industry where it is services that are mass produced. What is meant is investing in the building of a complex organizational framework, with or without machines, that hire wage earners and professional managers who produce in large quantities goods and services for sale to the public. 14 Adrian Leftwhich, “On the Primacy of Political Development,” in Adrian Leftwich, ed., Democracy and Development (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), p. 7. Reprinted with the permission of Polity Press. 15 The expression comes from Richard Sklar, “Toward a Theory of Developmental Democracy,” in Adrian Leftwich, ed., Political Development, p. 29. 16 See for example, Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man, pp. 45–76.

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later periods. By now, we are more sure that economic development is important for both the emergence of sustenance of democratic systems, but we are less than clear about the processes through which economic development generally helps promote a democratic evolution.

Democracy and Capitalist Development The studying of fewer cases or a single case, often constitutes a more appropriate method for understanding processes than amassing large amounts of quantitative data. Analyses derived from such studies may later constitute the bases of hypotheses that may be tested in studies that cover many cases and rely on large amounts of empirical information. Shortly after the appearance of modernization studies, a number of historical studies addressing the puzzle of how democratic systems emerged in the first instance and later developed also appeared. These studies looked into the genesis of democracy in specific environments. Understandably, the cases they looked at were generally Western societies where democracy had developed first, but they also included some places where democratic development had not occurred. Whether their diagnoses of democratization in some societies gave us powers of prediction as to how democratic development might have occured, or would be expected to occur in other societies was a matter of conjecture. In contrast to studies using large databases, the explanations offered by historical studies differed in terms of what variables were important in bringing about change and how they were related to each other. For example, in his Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Moore17 focused more on the importance of landed classes and peasants and to a lesser extent on the bourgeoisie and the state in the process of effecting political change, while Rueschemeyer et al. in their Capitalist Development and Democracy,18 gave a prominent role to the working class and the middle class. None of these authors assumed that socioeconomic change and development would unavoidably lead to the emergence of democratic regimes, recognizing the possibility that authoritarian regimes might continue, or modern but non-democratic forms might emerge. Studies of capitalist development and democratization are, of course, closely linked with modernization studies since the latter assumed that modernization was driven by economic development. As already pointed out, however, they 17 Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (London: Penguin, 1991). 18 Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).

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differed in their methodologies. Modernization studies usually relied on cross-sectional aggregate data, while those examining capitalist development employed a time perspective that provided a better opportunity to see the processes through which democratization occurred or failed to occur, and why economic development did not always lead to democracy.19 In this connection, some authors raised the question as to whether private ownership of the means of production constituted an inseparable part of democratic revolution, but argued that this was not the case.20

EXTERNALLY STIMULATED “ LATE” DE MOCRATIZATION Let us return to the puzzle of “late” democratization. It will be recalled that “late democratization” was used to depict a situation where a country made a transition to democracy when its level of socioeconomic development would not lead us to expect it to make such a transition. Why have some countries adopted democratic systems though their level of socioeconomic development would not pressure them to move in a democratizing direction? To answer the question, it is useful to consider the democratization experience of a country not only as an internally driven process, but as one that occurs within an international setting.

DEM O C R A T I Z A T I ON I N AN I NT E R N A T IO N A L S E T T I NG In a world where states are interacting with each other in a variety of ways, once a democratic system has emerged in one country, the entire world becomes a different place. To clarify by way of example, Ottoman students who had been sent to France to study medicine, engineering, and military science, learned about democracy in England by reading French sources and concluded that similar restrictions on the powers of their absolutist sultan and 19

Axel Hadenius, in his Democracy and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) using aggregate data, submitted the relationship between capitalism and democracy to an empirical test and found that capitalism and democracy were closely related. pp. 103–11, esp. 108–9. 20 Dietrich Rueschemeyer et al., Capitalist Development, p. 301, and also Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market, ch. 3.

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the presence of an elected assembly would serve well in reversing the fortunes of their declining empire. After they returned home, they tried to bring about exactly that. The presence of a democratic country (countries) that inspire(s) some citizens (subjects!) of another country to want to emulate the political system of the former is but one of the several ways the presence of democracy in one affects the politics of others. It is also possible that some societies experiencing difficulties with their own system of governance may want to borrow institutions, legal frameworks, and practices from some democratic state and adapt them to their governing structures in the hope of addressing problems, meeting needs, and coping with crises. What we have described so far that may be termed as “democracy as inspiration” is but one of the ways the presence of a democratic system in one or a group of countries affects others. It is equally possible that a democracy or a group of democratic countries may promote democracy in other countries in order to feel more secure themselves. In fact, the promotion of democracies in Eastern Europe after the breakup of the Warsaw Pact was probably motivated as much by considerations of European security as it was by any altruistic commitment to democratic governance. Clearly then, the role of the international setting in the adoption of a democratic system may be inspirational (internally derived) or promotional (externally stimulated). In much of the literature that takes the international system into account, democratization of societies is examined from the perspective of democracy promotion; that is, from the perspective of countries which are already democracies and want others to be like them. Ethier, in summarizing the taxonomy offered by this literature suggests that democracies use three strategies to promote democracy: control, conditionality, and incentives.21 Control is used to describe a situation where outside forces dictate that a country adopt a democratic system whether it wants to or not. American imposition of democracies on West Germany and Japan after the Second World War as well as attempts to build democratic systems in Iraq and Afghanistan after military interventions are cases in point. The legacy of

Diane Ethier, “Is Democracy Promotion Effective? Comparing Conditionality and Incentives,” Democratization, 10:1 (Spring 2003), p. 100. Ethier, in her discussion, benefits from both Whitehead and Schmitter, sources which I have also consulted and rely on in the following discussion. See Laurence Whitehead, “The International Dimension of Democratization,” and Philippe C. Schmitter, “The Influence of International Context upon the Choice of National Institutions and Policies in Neo-Democracies,” both in Laurence Whitehead, ed., International Dimensions of Democratization in Europe and the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 21

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colonial powers that wanted to make sure that they would be leaving democracies behind constitutes another example. The presence of domestic collaborators in this mode of democracy construction does not detract from the reality that the system is externally imposed. Conditionality,22 in contrast to control, does not involve the active intervention of an outside power but rather the desire of a non or less democratic country to obtain a benefit or achieve a status which becomes possible only if it meets the conditions put forth by those in a position to grant it what it wants. The clearest example of conditionality may be found in the Copenhagen Criteria that those aspiring to become members of the European Union have to meet before the accession process is to advance. Finally, incentives are facilities that those states or organizations promoting democratization extend to a country to encourage and/or render easier its plans to democratize. Assistance with organizing political parties, strengthening civil society organizations, and elections are examples. But, incentives may also be more comprehensive as in the case of Spain that hoped to be accepted as a full member of NATO after its transition from Franco’s dictatorship to competitive politics.

P R O BL E MS OF E XTE RNA L LY STIMULATED “LA TE ” DE MOCRATIZATION Often through a combination of both internally derived and externally stimulated pressures, today almost all countries that are not already democracies feel constrained to adopt a democratic system of governance. In many instances, these countries possess neither the background conditions nor those attributes that contribute to the sustenance of democracy once established. For example, Rustow has proposed that the existence of national unity is a background condition for making a transition to democracy. Noting that democracy is competition for power among parts of a whole, he suggests that some consensus regarding the whole of which the contestants are a part is needed in advance.23 The question of what constitutes the whole does not lend itself well to being settled by competitive politics. Yet, for many societies, whether this background condition has been met is unclear. As noted earlier, Linz and

22

This is introduced as another category by Schmitter, in addition to those suggested by Whitehead. 23 Dankwart A. Rustow, Transitions to Democracy.

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Stepan specify further that where this “whole” lives, that is, the territorial borders of the polity, need also to have been established prior to democratization, and further that there needs to be a functioning state, that is, a system of rule for the whole, that precedes the transition to democratic politics.24 Turning to an example regarding the conditions of democratic sustenance, Przeworski et al. have established that democratic governance becomes almost irreversible only after the level of economic development and income per capita reaches a certain level.25 Many countries that are not democracies score low on these indicators, raising questions regarding whether they can initially make a successful transition to democracy or sustain a competitive system once it is somehow established. The problems the “late” democratizers encounter do not always derive from insufficient levels of socioeconomic development but also from cultural change. In societies in their early stages of socioeconomic development, it is not unusual that a modernizing elite achieves power. In those countries that have become independent from colonial status, this elite may have been acculturated to the values prevailing in the mother country. Their vision of good society is similar to that which exists in the capital of the colonizer. But, it may also be a product of “defensive modernization,” as in the case of Russia and Turkey where state-led modernization policies were implemented in order to transform “traditional society” so as to be able to avert frequent military defeat at the hands of the industrialized European imperialist powers. In either case, what emerged was a culturally bifurcated society where cultural differences proved difficult to negotiate both during and after the advent of democracy. In some instances, an elitist political ideology provided the justification for “modernizing” elites to continue their monopoly of power, but after the collapse of the Socialist Bloc, appealing to elitist ideologies to legitimize claims to the monopoly of power have become difficult and less persuasive. How have these cultural differences affected the process of democratization? Have they constituted insurmountable impediments to democratic development and consolidation? How were these overcome? This book does not propose to answer the above questions on a comparative basis. While benefiting from comparisons, it has the more modest goal of examining the case of one country, Turkey, that made an early transition to political democracy when its previous history and its level of socioeconomic development did not necessarily point in that direction. As the following pages and chapters will testify, Turkey’s democratic adventure has not been a 24

Linz and Stepan, Democratic Consolidation. Adam Przeworski, Jose Antonio Cheibub, Michael E. Alvares, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development, p. 273. 25

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smooth success story. After the failure of its first experiment with democracy, Turkey experienced periodic breakdowns in the form of direct and indirect military interventions until the prevalence of elected governments was reasonably solidly established, although imperfections in the functioning of Turkey’s democratic system continue to this day. Nevertheless, not only has the country experienced significant socioeconomic development since its initial transition to competitive politics, but it has also become progressively more democratic. Examining Turkey’s democratic evolution may help shed light on why transitions to democracy may end in breakdowns, why and how democracy may re-emerge, and what eventually makes its continuity possible.

“L A T E” D E M OC R A T I Z A T I O N , E C O N O M I C D E V E L O P ME NT, A ND DE MOC RATIC CONSOLIDATION We have already identified the enigma. The socioeconomic conditions that Turkey faced at the end of the Second World War did not make it a candidate for democratization. It was led by a modernizing elite who judged that the formidable job of modernizing society still had to continue. Yet, as will be elaborated later, Turkey entered a period of competitive politics during 1946–50. This put the country in the unique position of working under democratic governance to achieve socioeconomic conditions that are more frequently associated with successfully operating democracies. In this way, Turkey constitutes pioneering testing grounds for the case of what have later become two related critical questions of democratic transition and consolidation:26 first, can a country that does not possess the socioeconomic conditions that usually accompany democracy achieve those conditions under democracy after its introduction? Second, does socioeconomic development achieved under democracy move a country toward the consolidation of its democracy? As regards the first question, Turkey has achieved around 5 percent annual economic growth in its GDP since 1924, including the period after transition to democracy, suggesting that the move from a more authoritarian singleparty system to a more competitive system did not alter substantially its economic growth rate. This observation is in line with the findings of others that the difference of economic growth achieved under authoritarian and under democratic systems is not great, although sometimes it had been thought that

26

I will soon propose a different terminology, but I am relying on established terminology for the time being.

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initial economic growth might be better secured under authoritarian rule.27 Many countries, be they ruled by democracy or some form of authoritarianism, appear to register comparable economic growth over time. The second question needs to be treated in somewhat more detail. When we refer to societies as having made a transition to democracy, what we usually mean is that the government has been elected through competitive elections. That does not tell us how democracy is practiced in its daily operation. It is relatively easy to adopt the procedural dimension of a democratic system such as the conducting of elections and allowing political parties to compete in them. It is somewhat more difficult to get the political leaders, the bureaucracies, and even the opposition parties (who would be the clear beneficiaries) to observe other parts of the democratic package that are concerned with assuring everyone’s equality before the law, and guaranteeing their freedom of organization and expression; and more importantly, for all political actors and especially for those in power, not to consider doing away with democracy if its outcomes are not to their liking. These aspects of democracy, which I shall call the substantive dimension, require deeper social transformation, including the redistribution of power in society; high levels of institutionalization of both the political institutions themselves and procedures; and shifts in norms, values, mores, and behavioral codes. What brings about the change in the substantive dimension? Three forces may be at play. First, the practice of procedural democracy may itself help produce some of the change. Inevitably, during operation of a democratic system, some informal rules of behavior develop, for example, in the operation of the legislature so that it may preserve its prestige, conduct its business in a reasonably orderly fashion, and produce the necessary legislation. Or, segments of society may learn that politicians serve them better when they need their votes, an experience that may reinforce their commitment to the regime.28 Second, the international system may constrain elected governments to remain democratic and behave democratically. A variety of international organizations monitor the practice of democracy in the world, keeping records, and displaying cases of violations of human rights and democratic rights, including the freedom of opinion, the freedom of the press, etc. Major democracies and groupings of democratic countries also monitor the 27

Adam Przeworski, Jose Antonio Cheibub, Michael E. Alvares, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development, p. 178. 28 For some evidence of the presence of a democratic regime reinforcing commitments to democratic governance, see İlter Turan,“The Attitudinal Correlates of Democracy: The Case of Korea and Turkey,” Orient (Hamburg), 1(1980); and Joel D. Barkan, C. L. Kim, İlter Turan, and Malcolm Jewell, The Legislative Connection (Durham: Duke University Press, 1984).

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democratic performance of all countries, issue reports, and sometimes apply sanctions. Various forms of support for building and strengthening democracy are widely available from governmental and non-governmental sources. In the case of some societies, the sub-system of the world to which they belong may also render the sustenance of an operating democracy important. These externally derived pressures and facilities may contribute to the advancement and consolidation of substantive democracy in a society. The third force is economic development itself with all its social ramifications. This is a complex process and probably the most important in the shaping of democratic development in a country after a democratic system has already been initiated. Let me reiterate that the initial transition of a society to democratic governance is not one that comes along automatically once the level of socioeconomic development reaches a certain threshold. The question of a democratic transition needs to be addressed separately. But once a democratic system is established, its taking hold and further development is shaped significantly by what happens in the socioeconomic domain, as I shall try to clarify soon. The three forces that contribute to advances in the substantive dimension of democratization have all operated in Turkey. Not only have they helped Turkey advance along the democratic path but on occasions when there have been reversals and a return to authoritarianism, they have served both as a brake on the implementation of excessive authoritarian measures and on the duration of the authoritarian spell, before democracy has been restored and improvements on the quality of democracy resumed.

S OC IOE C ONOMIC D E V E LOPMENT AND DE MOCRATIZATION We may now return to the role of economic factors in democratization. Modernization theory, as we have briefly seen earlier, described some of the outcomes of socioeconomic development and how these operated to facilitate the functioning and the growth of a democratic system. There is no need to repeat them here. There are, however, other ways through which socioeconomic development contributes to or impedes democratic advancement that are less frequently examined but which I believe are equally important. Let us begin our discussion by pointing out that our measures of socioeconomic development do not usually take into account how wealth is created and augmented. Yet this is critical. If wealth is generated mainly through rents

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such as the extraction of oil or precious minerals, it does not lead to the emergence of a large working class or a large professional middle class, which are often identified historically as building blocs of a democratic society. Unlike an industrial society, where some wealth must inevitably be distributed to various segments of society as a natural result of the productive process, a rent-based economy enables those who are able to claim the rents to enjoy them without sharing them with the rest of society, taking whatever measures are needed to protect themselves and their amassed wealth. Society, on the other hand, which lacks economic power and the indispensible interdependence of socioeconomic groups in the functioning of the productive process, remains weak and therefore often submissive to its rulers. In all systems, but particularly in rent-based economies, patrimonial and clientelistic arrangements may be employed to divide those socioeconomic groups that might challenge the domination of society by the rentiers. A country that has adopted the institutions of democracy is more likely to proceed along a democratic path if its socioeconomic development is industry and service based. Conversely, the growth of a rent-based economy is likely to prove dysfunctional for democratic development.29

Industrial Development Industrial development and the accompanying growth of the service sector may support the advancement of democracy in three ways. It may, on the one hand, help achieve one of the background conditions of democracy: national unity. The integration of disparate, disconnected economic units through the expansion of a market of goods and labor, increased urbanization, growing educational opportunities, and intensifying mass communications may indeed contribute to the evolution of a sense of national community. Socioeconomic development may also render questions of a material nature more important, both in the daily lives of people and in public discourse. And finally, it increases the size of the economic pie that is to be shared by multifarious contestants in the democratic game. The advancing of economic questions to the fore and the enhancement of the material base of society are connected. Focusing on questions of the economy, or more accurately on questions of economic prosperity, brings the political debate among the

29

Hootan Shambayati offers an excellent comparison of Iran and Turkey on this point. See “The Rentier State, Interest Groups and the Paradox of Autonomy: State and Business in Turkey and Iran,” Comparative Politics (April 1994), pp. 307–31.

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contestants to an arena in which negotiation, and give and take are possible, unlike questions of belief, identity, or race, which cannot be settled by negotiations. The growth of the pie, that is, expansion of resources that can be divided among contestants through negotiations or the expansion of the negotiables, broadens the resource base over which bargains are to be conducted, and probably dampens the severity of the contestation.30 Together, these outcomes may provide opportunities for a democratic system to redress the inequalities which constitute one of the major driving forces of politics and political change.31 Finally, industrial development leads to the strengthening of the middle class and labor in social and political life. This invites a redistribution of power in society among various actors. Historically, this process has proven to be painful and frequently bloody as the French Revolution, and the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 testify. How painful the process proves to be for late democratizers depends on the nature of the pre-industrial class structure, the extent to which the new classes include or incorporate parts of the previously dominant classes, and the nature of other cleavages in society, as well as other factors. The multiplication of the sources of power in society, nevertheless, leads to a multidimensional competition for public decision making, constituting a background for democratization. Although democratization provides a peaceful framework for political contestation, there is no guarantee that the contestants in a power game will see it that way; hence the struggle by each actor to achieve domination of the public decision-making processes. A democratic solution may or may not emerge, but it is more likely to emerge if no group is capable of achieving control and assured of retaining it even at destructive costs.

Civil Society Socioeconomic development has been associated with the emergence, or more accurately with the strengthening of civil society. Although as early as the middle of the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville had pointed to the important role voluntary associations played in the rise of the United States as 30

Adam Przeworski, Jose Antonio Cheibub, Michael E. Alvares, and Fernando Limongi, in their Democracy and Development, p. 101 refer to Lipset, who has argued that wealth lowers the intensity of distributional conflicts. 31 Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson make a persuasive case that inequality is a driving force of democratization in their Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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a democracy,32 the concept has received regular attention as a critical component of democratic governance only during recent years. The concept is mainly employed to describe organizations but is also used of informal groupings that are formed and function independent of government, and initiate activities to influence it. The growth of civil society is linked with socioeconomic development in intimate ways. Economic development leads to the broadening of functional differentiation in society, reflecting the increasingly complex division of labor that leads to the formation of social groupings that perceive themselves to have interests different from those of others, and want to influence the decisions, policies, and the overall behavior of public authorities in their favor. But the presence of such interest is not in itself sufficient to produce the mechanisms through which influence is exercised. There is, in fact, a second process that leads to the appearance of autonomous organizations that undertake these activities. The wealth created by industrial development makes it possible for both individuals and fictitious personalities owning, managing, or working for units of economic activity from a small store to a large corporation, to allocate monetary resources to fund activities that serve their interests. Without this independent source of income, any association that people sharing similar interests might establish would not be able to finance the organization and activities that efforts to influence the behaviors and decisions of public authorities would necessitate. Equally important is the availability of leaders who could mobilize groups into associations, organize their activities, and initiate action on their behalf. Formulating goals, raising funds, planning action, articulating demands, and mobilizing members to pursue them all necessitate capable leadership. Industrial development, by expanding the size of the managerial class, furnishes the cadres needed for the autonomous activities of civil society. The visibility, recognition, influence, prestige, and the opportunity to have access to important political figures and decision makers may serve as an enticement to talented figures with managerial skills to offer their services to instruments of civil society of voluntary associations.33 In the development of civil society, the owners of capital and the managerial class are initially at an advantaged position both because funding is more easily available for them and because they possess skills they can mobilize with relative ease for their civil society oriented activities. Although this is in the 32

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (London: Penguin, 2003). This paragraph has relied considerably on İlter Turan “1972–1996 Döneminde İstanbul’da Derneksel Hayat,” in A. N. Yücekök, İ.Turan and M. Ö. Alkan, Tanzimattan Günümüze İstanbul’da STK’lar (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı, 1998), pp. 202–6. 33

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nature of a permanent advantage, its magnitude becomes considerably reduced over time by the rising welfare of other groups, their acquisition of skills to challenge those that dominate civil society, and the development of both informal understandings and the emergence of a legal system that ensures all segments of society have some chance of organizing and providing inputs into public decision making. The rise of civil society does not automatically ensure that this will lead to the birth or strengthening of a democratic system. A government that has achieved power through the application of the procedures of democracy may well try to suppress civil society or incorporate it into the decision-making mechanisms that eliminate the necessity of their conducting open activities that challenge the government. The incorporation of interests into the decisional process usually falls under the label of “corporatism” and may be found as frequently under authoritarian arrangements as it is in democratic systems. These observations lead us to conclude that the emergence and the strengthening of civil society is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the initiation and the sustenance of a democratic system. The existence of autonomous agents that can initiate independent action aimed at political authority and make demands from it is an indispensible characteristic of a democratic society, but the presence or evolution of such agents in society does not render the emergence or the smooth operation of democracy a foregone conclusion. The presence and the strengthening of civil society may indeed facilitate a transition to democracy as well as help develop, sustain, and consolidate it, but it will not by itself produce democracy.

Growth of Individualism A final important outcome of socioeconomic development is the enhanced importance of the individual. The basic unit on which the democratic system is built is the citizen. The citizen chooses who shall rule him, joins political parties and civil society organizations, and makes demands of the government. It is these individual liberties that the citizen must enjoy to perform the functions that are expected of him in a democratic society. We also know, however, that not all cultures accept the individual as the building bloc of society. The question is whether socioeconomic development helps elevate the individual to being the primary actor in politics. While it seems difficult to offer a definitive answer to such a question within the context of this introductory discussion, it may be recalled that industrialization and urbanization are associated with the rise of the nuclear family. As also noted by Karl Marx, the city has

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a liberating influence, meaning the pressures for conformity to the social environment are reduced in urban settings. Therefore, it appears likely that socioeconomic development enhances the opportunities for the individual to pursue goals and initiate actions, including political action, of his own volition.

Market Economy We have been discussing socioeconomic development and how it relates to democratization without referring to whether the economy is state owned and directed, or a market economy. I would like to propose that a liberal democratic system which I have defined above can neither be born nor become consolidated in a command economy.34 In order for a democratic system to operate successfully and become consolidated, there must be independent centers of power in society. Independent centers of power cannot emerge in society unless they have access to material or economic means that are not controlled by others, or most importantly, by the state. More specifically, in an operating democracy, the economic and political domains, even if not fully independent, must still be reasonably autonomous. If the political and the economic are closely integrated, then an act in the economic domain would be subject to the approval or permission of the political domain or vice versa. Such a situation might increase the costs of political (or economic) action not approved by those who can command the instruments of the state. This was often the case in socialist dictatorships where deviating from the official line, criticizing the government openly, or engaging in activities that could be construed as opposition, could lead to a loss of gainful employment and loss of opportunity to find another job. Let us remember, however, that a similar situation may arise in non-socialist and non-dictatorial environments. In countries where most of the banking is part of the public sector, the government may deprive uncooperative businesses, however big or small, of credits. Similarly, in environments where industries protected from foreign competition operate, extending or withholding protection may be a powerful weapon to tame the critics. Nevertheless, the plurality of the market economy is a better guarantee of autonomy of the individual and groups than a command economy. The absence of a market economy has critical implications for the emergence and the functioning of civil society in many ways. First, civil society that

34

Linz and Stepan, Democratic Consolidation, p. 11, refer to state owned and directed economies as command economies, and I have borrowed the term from them.

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does not have access to independent financial resources would not have the capability to influence the political process. Second, civil society leadership would be lacking if all leaders are public employees in one way or another since such leaders would not be free to act in ways that would run counter to the preferences of the government in power. Third, civil society would lack the variety and heterogeneity which enables it to inject dynamism into the political process. Fourth, the convergence of the political and the economic would lead to a more polarized power structure, preventing the building of multiple political coalitions. The ensuing lack of flexibility would render bringing about change through the efforts of civil society more difficult. I have deliberately shied away from using the word “free” in my references to the market economy because “free market” is an ideal type that does not exist in the real world. Linz and Stepan have identified three reasons why the government is a participant in the market in democratic societies.35 First, state regulation is needed for a variety of reasons. Public safety, environmental protection, protection of consumers, protection of workers, and the protection of public health are examples. Second, market failures need to be corrected. At a time when the Federal Reserve Bank has been injecting billions of dollars into the American economy and the ECB to European economies to bring an end to economic stagnation, no additional examples are needed. And third, government policies resulting from competition among political actors affect the market. In addition, the government itself is involved in the production of some public goods such as education. The presence of the market economy is a sine qua non for the growth and the consolidation of democratic governance.

The Rule of Law Democracy assumes the rule of law. The expression contains several, equally important underlying dimensions. First, it means that the laws of a country are in harmony with the general principles of law. For example, a person cannot be accused of having committed a crime if what s/he has done did not constitute a crime in the laws at the time it was committed; or a person cannot be held in custody for long periods without being brought before a court of justice. Second, rule of law means that laws are applied to all citizens equally: no one is exempt from obeying the laws and no one is accorded exceptional or privileged status vis à vis the laws. Third, rule of law means that 35

Linz and Stepan, Democratic Consolidation, p. 12.

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all actors agree to abide by the laws and the mechanism through which justice is administered in society. This means that the government itself will feel bound by the laws and not act outside them, and that it will yield to court decisions even if such decisions run counter to its own preferences. Fourth, as a natural follow-up to the third, the rule of law presumes the existence of a judiciary that is independent of political authority and is endowed with the capability of administering justice. Fifth, the rule of law means that minimum and maximum penalties for violating any particular provision of a law are known in advance to the citizens. In other words, court decisions regarding any particular allegedly unlawful act are confined to predictable limits. Although there is no assurance that socioeconomic development will automatically promote the rule of law, combined with the presence of a market economy, strong pressures may emanate from society toward government to enhance the rule of law in two domains: 1) the relations between the state and the citizens as individuals or in organized collectivities such as associations or corporations; and 2) the relations among individual citizens, among individual citizens and organized collectivities, and finally among organized collectivities. As societies become more complex as a result of socioeconomic development, the need for rendering these relations predictable becomes critical in maintaining domestic peace and allowing further development. From the perspective of democratization, the emphasis would naturally be on the limits on the exercise of political power by the state and the government.

Weight of History or Path Dependence When we examine the process of democratization a society may undergo and how that process is inextricably linked with socioeconomic development, it is tempting to overlook the input of context to the outcomes of change. Yet, the effects of change are mediated through a national context that has its historical, cultural, demographic, institutional, and other peculiarities. That is why the same universal socioeconomic forces may produce divergent outcomes in different countries. Take the example of Lebanon where politics in society is organized along confessional lines. So far, socioeconomic change in Lebanon has not led to the replacement of religious cleavages by functional ones; rather, it has affected politics within religious communities as regards who dominates, while retaining the inter-confessional nature of national political competition. Similarly, the failure of the al-Assad regime in Syria to accommodate the demands of the opposition for liberalization has been met with force in large part because a democratic accommodation would threaten the commanding

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position Assad’s minority Nusayri sect had achieved in Syrian politics. In an environment where religious sects prevail as the primary political actor, pressures for democratization may be perceived as an existential threat by the ruling coalition while pressures to liberalize may be countered by turning to an intensification of authoritarianism. We have already suggested and we shall elaborate later that the particular mode of modernization that had been employed in Turkey, motivated by security considerations and implemented mainly through education and in the cultural domain, had resulted in a culturally bifurcated society. We may also note that the modernizing cadres of the early republic implemented a strict policy of laicization and they tried to drive religion, as much as possible, outside the domain of politics. These factors and others left their imprint on how democracy evolved in Turkey and what kind of problems it encountered on the way. To conclude, a main reason why the same economic developments do not produce the same political and social outcomes in all cases is the influence of the context in the process. The influence of a given context in what happens next is sometimes referred to as path dependence. In our analysis of Turkey’s democratization, path dependence will constitute one of the critical inputs.

C O N SO L ID A T I O N O R D E M O C R A C Y’ S D EE PENING AND M ATURING We have already noted that the initial transition of a society to democratic governance is not one that comes along automatically once the level of socioeconomic development reaches a certain threshold, and that the question of a transition to democracy needs to be studied as a distinct phenomenon. But once a democratic system is established, its taking hold and further development is shaped significantly by what happens in the socioeconomic domain. The achievement of both the procedural and the substantive dimensions of democracy gradually pave the way to what in the literature is usually referred to as consolidation of democracy. Consolidation has been described as democracy’s becoming “the only game in town,”36 meaning that no major political group entertains changing the regime or achieving power other than through established democratic procedures. How does a system reach the level of consolidation? Linz and Stepan have suggested that there are three underlying 36

Linz and Stepan, Democratic Consolidation, p. 5.

The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems

25

conditions of consolidation that need to have been achieved: behavioral, attitudinal, and constitutional. Behavioral refers to the idea that no major actor expends large resources to create a non-democratic regime to achieve its goals. Attitudinal refers to the presence of a widely shared belief that democratic procedures are the most appropriate way to govern a society. Finally, constitutional is used to point to the presence of laws, institutions, and procedures through which political conflicts are peacefully resolved.37 We may add that the concept of consociational democracy first put forth by Arend Lijphart suggests that it may be sufficient for a democracy to operate, if the political leadership of sub-groups in society that otherwise perceive their interests to be inimical to each other, agree to rule society through democracy.38 Consolidation, attractive as it is, is a problematical concept. It has a teleological flavor of “getting and staying there,” and fails to convey a dynamic situation. What we should aim to convey by the concept, at minimum, are the presence of two conditions. The first is the presence of a state of equilibrium where no major societal actor feels powerful enough to subvert the democratic system, recognizing that such an attempt is likely to fail or prove unsustainable in the long run even if it initially succeeds, and is likely to impose unacceptably high costs on those who have initiated it. The second is that there exist no public policy domains that remain outside the scope of intervention of democratically elected politicians. The equilibrium may be stable but it is not necessarily permanent; major crises that a society fails to cope with, such as the rise of a separatist movement, or the appearance of new forces that reject democracy, such as a radical religious or secular ideological (e.g. communists or al-Qaida) movement may seriously undermine or possibly destroy it. What we mean by consolidation, its content and underlying dimensions necessitate further examination. While the definition of democracy as a system in which parties lose elections is elegant, the assumptions underlying the definition, as already indicated, need to be spelled out. The emphasis on elections is understandably a necessity since this is the mechanism through which the citizens change those in power. Yet, while democratic rule involves the necessary condition of the determination of who is to rule a society by elections, that a country is ruled by elected governments is not sufficient to call

37

Linz and Stepan, Democratic Consolidation, p. 6. Arend Lijphart, Politics of Accommodation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), and Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 38

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it a liberal democracy. As recounted earlier, in addition, there needs to be credible opposition parties, that is, parties that can organize freely and challenge the governing team and their policies. Individual liberties such as freedom of association and expression need to be practiced unimpeded, rule of law needs to prevail, which in turn points to the necessity of an independent judiciary. All of these need to be integrated within a system of checks and balances such that no branch of government can come to dominate the entire political system. Linz and Stepan have defined a consolidated democracy as a regime “in which democracy as a complex set of institutions, rules and patterned incentives”39 has become the only way to conduct politics, that is, the “only game in town.” Consolidation of a complex system, then, assumes high levels of institutionalization of both formal institutions, such as the legislature, political parties, courts, constitutions; and beliefs, norms, and rules of behavior, including among others, respect for law, individual liberties, and tolerance of different identities, beliefs, preferences, and viewpoints. When, over time, all of these become known, widely accepted, and valued, they may be said to have been institutionalized. Some students of democracy have pointed to the proclivity in some democracies to electionism, whereby a system may be branded a democracy40 simply because the government is elected without necessarily subscribing to other attributes of a liberal democracy. Others, in fact, have talked about electoral authoritarianism, reminding us of the possibility that under the democratic appearance of elections that are not wholly competitive, what may exist is no more than an authoritarian system.41 Still others have referred to the possibility of delegative democracy, where the elected leader who has obtained the support of the majority rules, often by decrees and without submitting to the constraints of a system of checks and balances.42 Not to be forgotten is the possible emergence of democradura, in which elections are held, some groups enjoy some civil liberties, and non-elected officials

Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, “Toward Consolidated Democracies,” in Larry Diamond, Marc F. Platttner, Yun-han Chu, Consolidating Third World Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 15. 40 Linz and Stepan, Democratic Consolidation, ch. 1. 41 Andreas Schedler, “The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism,” in Andreas Schedler, ed., Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2006), pp. 1–23; and also his The Politics of Uncertainty (Oxford: University Press, 2013), esp. pp. 21–53. 42 Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, 5:1 (January 1994), pp. 55–69. 39

The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems

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condition what elected officials may do.43 The presence of these options points to the reality that the emergence of a competitive system and the absence of forces that are capable of subverting it do not ensure a natural transition to liberal democracy and its “consolidation.” In many countries that are latecomers to democracy, while some aspects of the democratic web of institutions, rules, and behavioral norms have become institutionalized, others have not, producing essentially imperfect democratic outcomes. The failures of institutionalization in some instances reflect the insufficiencies of socioeconomic change such that background conditions for democracy are not met, while in other cases the weight of history, that is, path dependence prevails. Often both operate together to determine outcomes. The determination of governments by elections seems to be one of the easiest aspects of democracy to be adopted. It seems more difficult to develop political parties and get actors to subscribe to the rules of free and fair elections as well as to accept the results as legitimate. For example, in a number of African states, political parties are no more than tribal networks which contribute to the intensification of the polarization of political contestation rather than its vitiation. In addition, there are always allegations that the elections have not been administered freely, leading to their contestation and sometimes non-recognition. Even if the premise that elections have been free and fair and the outcome is legitimate are accepted by all major actors that have taken part in the elections, the operation of a liberal democratic system in between elections is not guaranteed. To express this differently, consensus among major actors that democracy is the only game in town, does not assure us of the quality of democracy that is practiced.44 Some of the typical ailments that are encountered in societies that have become democracies after the Second World War and particularly after the end of the Cold War include insufficient respect for individual liberties, with freedom of expression and freedom of the press leading the list, restrictions on freedom of association, a distaste of pluralism, unwillingness of popularly elected leaders to accept the constitutional limitations of their power, as well as others. While political competition goes on and

43 Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions From Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 9. 44 Leonardo Morlino, in his Changes for Democracy: Actors, Structures and Processes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), lists qualities as rule of law, electoral and institutional accountability, participation, competition, freedom and equality, and responsiveness, pp. 196–7; 214 et passim.

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governments get in and out of office through competitive elections, what exists can best be described as imperfect democracy. Given the reality that many countries practice some aspects of democracy and fail in others, whereas “consolidation” assumes that an end state has been reached in which democracy with all its aspects is the only game in town, it may be preferable to employ terminology that allows for a sense of change and evolution rather than assume a final state, that of consolidation, which sounds a bit like a Weberian ideal type. I would like to propose “deepening” and “maturing” as two concepts that we may use to describe the advancement of liberal democracy, such that opting for other forms of ruling a society becomes negligible. Deepening is employed to refer to both to the expansion of the content of any dimension of liberal democracy and the incorporation of new dimensions to the overall liberal democracy package. Maturing, on the other hand, refers to the evolution of patterned and therefore predictable behavior. Let me try to clarify these concepts by offering examples. Democratic deepening has both a vertical and a horizontal dimension. Starting with vertical deepening, after a transition to democracy, the borders of the freedom of expression may expand over time. Whereas, for example, the criticism of the rulers may initially be timid, they may grow bolder and more comprehensive over time. Or, the use of unreasonable force by law enforcement agencies to quell demonstrations may become more limited as the job gradually becomes redefined from being one of suppressing public manifestations to one of keeping them under control. Not all deepening is vertical, however. Some deepening is horizontal. It is possible, for example, that questions that earlier were not considered a part of the liberal democratic package may later become incorporated into it. Ethnic rights or rights of those that have other than heterosexual preferences are recent examples of additions to the package. Maturing, as distinct from deepening, refers to the evolution of more patterned and predictable behavior on the part of political actors, including politicians belonging to government and opposition, the members of parliament, the bureaucrats, the members of the military, and the judiciary. While deepening refers to processes of change and adaptation, maturing refers to processes of stabilization. But, as noted above, we are talking about a state of equilibrium that may change in the face of unfavorable developments, rather than a fixed state where everyone now agrees that “democracy is the only game in town.” Furthermore, there may be differences between the states of equilibrium in different societies. We know that even among those widely acclaimed as “consolidated democracies,” there are differences, and some practices in one may be found less than democratic in others. Turkey’s democracy has deepened over the years; its maturing, however, has been a slower process as authoritarian interludes testify. Yet, these

The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems

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interludes have not taken Turkey back to the level of authoritarianism that existed at the previous interlude, but have always retained some elements of democracy that were added to the liberal democratic package during the interval of democratic expansion.

SE CURITY OR PROSPERITY Many of the “late” democratizers vacillate between rounds of democracy and more authoritarian forms of government. Democratic beginnings lead to breakdowns; sometimes, they slowly degenerate into authoritarian government. What needs to change in order for democracies to be spared from authoritarian recidivism? Societies, I would like to propose, strive to maximize the two broad values of security and prosperity. Achieving both values is important and indispensible for societies, but each requires a different orientation. One may get different answers to the solution of the same political, social, or economic problem, depending on which orientation prevails. Let me offer two examples. First, an example from the domain of economics. If there is contraband trade across the borders of a country, the policymakers with a security orientation would likely reinforce border patrols, construct more physical barriers across the border, and stiffen the penalties for those who are caught smuggling goods across the border. Those among whom a prosperity orientation prevails, on the other hand, would try to take measures that would make it unprofitable to engage in contraband trade. Next, an example from politics. Let us assume that the government has extended recognition to a military junta that has just taken over power in a neighboring country, and a national organization called Citizens for Democratic Action has announced that it is planning to stage a big demonstration in a major square in the capital. Those administrators with a security orientation would likely try to prevent the demonstration primarily because it would embarrass the government vis à vis the country whose military government has just been recognized, and because they may fear that the manifestation would disturb public peace, get out of hand, etc. Those with a prosperity orientation, on the other hand, would be more oriented toward an optimal solution by allowing the demonstration to take place and simply keeping it under control, so that the cost imposed on others is minimal. Trying to prevent the demonstration might mean having to suppress it, necessitating the use of extensive force which would not be needed if the goal had been set as ensuring an orderly demonstration. The casualties that might ensue among the demonstrators and the police might also be high and

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costly. Street fighting, tear gas, water cannons, etc. might generate more costs to businesses in the area than an orderly demonstration. Also, the country might find itself in an embarrassing position in the international arena, and become the target of criticism of other governments, international organizations, and global civil society organizations. Lest it be misunderstood, I am not proposing that societies have to choose between one or the other. Societies where security orientation prevails over one of prosperity also have to provide for the economic well-being of their citizens. Similarly, in environments where prosperity orientation constitutes the basis of political action, questions of security have to be dealt with. Furthermore, in any society, there will be institutions, political groupings including parties, and civil society organizations that subscribe more closely to one or the other orientation. Yet, I would propose that in a society at a given time, one or the other orientation is prevalent, except during stages of transition where temporarily neither may possess the upper hand. Security orientation gives priority to preventing and countering the internal and external dangers a country faces. Understandably, this produces a proclivity on the part of government to conceptualize problems which politics has to deal with primarily as security questions. Accordingly, emphasis is placed on the development, maintenance, and expansion of the instruments of the state under which society can be kept under control and in “peace.” The security orientation relies on holding society together by a strong central administration and state regulation. It views civil society, which it finds unpredictable, with suspicion. Conformity is preferred over pluralism. It prefers a limited scope for politics and more comprehensive power for the bureaucracy. It retains reservations about political competition, fearing that it may generate populist policies that undermine the security of the state.45 The prosperity orientation places primary emphasis on the economic wellbeing of society: By its nature, it is society centered and the state is seen as an instrument that serves to enhance the prosperity of society and individuals. The bureaucracy is public service oriented rather than assuming a commanding posture toward the citizenry. Under this scheme, society is thought to be best held together by the economic division of labor, mutual interdependence and the complementarity of interests. The room for political

45 The ideas presented in this and the next paragraph come from İlter Turan, “Two Steps Forward and One Step Back: Turkey’s Democratic Transformation,” in Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Avalos, Hakan Yılmaz, and Ana I. Planet, eds., Turkey’s Democratic Process (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 63–4.

The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems

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action is broad and civil society is seen as an indispensible part of the political process.46

In non-democratic forms of government, security orientation is prevalent. This is hardly surprising. Since organized channels of peaceful change are lacking, the demands for change may take unpredictable courses for which the regime feels it needs to be on guard. In an authoritarian society, the growth of the market economy is likely to expand the scope of transactions where prosperity orientation is more likely to be found. That does not ensure, however, that there will be strong pressures for democratization. Those in political control may succeed in confining prosperity orientation to the economic domain, resisting its encroachments to the political, which seems to be the case in China these days. Alternatively, under some circumstances, major actors in the market economy may find it to their advantage to have an authoritarian government that may, for example, help keep workers under control and wages down, as was the case under Pinochet in Chile. But, in the long run, the costs of authoritarianism may become high enough for the private sector that it may want to also opt for the prevalence of prosperity orientation in politics. With the pluralistic nature of the market economy and a propensity to negotiate differences, approaching politics from the perspective of prosperity orientation may not prove difficult. In a well-functioning democracy, we would expect to find the prevalence of the prosperity orientation. Epitomized in President Clinton’s words, “It’s the economy, stupid!” populations judge governments mainly on the basis of economic performance. We have already noted that socioeconomic development does not lead to the establishment of a democratic system in a society in a linear fashion. But, after the transition to democracy, its sustenance, deepening, and maturing become important. Many societies experience difficulties in preserving their democratic systems and fall prey to authoritarian recidivism. When and how does a democracy deepen and mature? The answer to this question is the main concern of this book. By examining Turkey’s uneven path of democratic evolution, it hopes to show that Turkey’s democracy has advanced toward maturation only after prosperity orientation came to permeate much of society, especially its politically salient segments. This has been closely linked with the market-driven economic growth Turkey has enjoyed in recent years. Security-based arguments to do away with democracy, typical of earlier periods, are no longer formulated by major political actors. They are found neither credible nor legitimate. We shall begin by looking at the single-party period (1923–1946), then turn to the 46

İlter Turan, “Two Steps Forward”, pp. 63–4.

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transition to electoral politics. Next, we shall focus on the 1950–1980 period, during which Turkey’s democracy was interrupted by direct and indirect interventions, complementing the study of that period with a subsequent analysis of the changing political role of the Turkish military. This will be followed by an analysis of economic change and its political consequences, finally leading to an evaluation of how prosperity orientation has come to prevail as the principal framework of Turkish politics.

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2

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The Political Legacy Antecedents of Democratization

In societies not under democratic rule, criticisms of those in government, the policies they implement, and even the entire political arrangement that we summarily refer to as the regime, are never lacking. The mere presence of such criticism, however, does not necessarily allow us to call it opposition. Opposition in the domain of politics requires the presence of activity organized and explicitly directed at those who are ruling, what they are doing, and the framework within which they are acting, with a view to bringing about change in any one or all of those areas. Furthermore, the presence of differentiated political preferences in a society and their manifestation as political opposition does not, in itself, constitute a sufficient background that promotes the evolution of a democratic system. The opposition may want no more than to replace a person such as a cruel grand vizier to modify a decision that is inflicting unacceptable damage on them such as an agricultural tax, or to replace the existing non-democratic regime by another one, for example one that applies Şeriat better than the current “infidel” regime. Non-democracies try to accommodate opposition in different ways depending on how confident they themselves feel, what the opposition wants, what means it employs to get its way, how strong the incumbents judge the opposition to be including its domestic and international support, how they feel accommodation will be viewed domestically and internationally by a variety of constituencies, and where they think opposition will go in the future. To the extent that opposition is a challenge to the monopolistic exercise of power, however, it constitutes a threat to the existing political arrangement and therefore tends to be viewed as a security question. How a non-democratic system tries to cope with opposition, how it suppresses or accommodates it, and how it gives way to practices, legal and institutional arrangements, and other precedents that constitute an accumulation, that is, some sort of political capital that may impede or contribute to a process of its democratization at some future date. Keeping these general ideas in mind, in the current and the

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following chapter, we will look at the antecedents of Turkish democratization and the actual process of Turkey’s transition to political competition.

T H E O T T OM A N LE G A C Y Challenges to the Absolutist Monarchy The reader may find it unusual that we initiate our discussion with the Ottoman siege of Vienna but, as we have argued in Chapter 1, “The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems,” the forming of new political institutions in a society or their adoption, as well as how they change, what forms evolve after change, how adopted institutions in particular may begin to function differently than in the original habitat they had initially evolved from are all influenced by the existing institutions and culture of a society. From that perspective, the aftermath of the siege set off a process of change and transformation of Ottoman society that produced cultural outcomes that continue to affect, as we shall see, contemporary Turkish politics. The second siege of Vienna by Ottoman armies in 1683 constituted a turning point in terms of the empire’s westward expansion. It appears that not only had the empire reached the limit of its capabilities in achieving further geographical expansion, but also, superior military technologies were being developed in the West that rendered it increasingly difficult for the Ottoman armies to compete with those of the “Franks.” Relations with European powers were basically stalemated for the next century, but increasingly defeat and loss of territory became the usual outcome of military confrontations with the Austrians, the Russians, and the French. The decline in Ottoman military capabilities gradually gave way to a process of selective and defensive modernization where the idea was to acquire the particular military instruments and skills of the enemy in order to defeat him. The sultan’s intention was to limit what was borrowed and confine contact with foreigners to what such borrowing required. These contacts, however, set off two processes that became the driving force for political change in the empire. The first process related to the content of the contacts and the unplanned and unwanted outcomes it produced. To offer an early example, we may cite the opening in Istanbul’s Üsküdar district of a school of geometry in 1734 to help improve the effectiveness of the Ottoman artillery.1 This only 1

Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: C. Hurst, 1998), p. 48 et passim.

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marked the beginning of a process of educational development that continued until the end of the empire. Instructors were brought in from European countries, notably France. Students were taught French in order to follow the courses. The acquisition of the language skill enabled the students to talk to their instructors to quench their curiosity about life in France and the rest of Western Europe, and also to read books that had little to do with military science or medicine.2 It is through such interaction that the newly forming modern Ottoman military-bureaucratic elite began to develop visions of an alternative political and social order. The second process was the continual expansion of a network of Westernstyle new schools gaining speed at the end of the nineteenth century, which was followed by the development of new government agencies. As the limited adoption of innovations failed to arrest the tide of military defeat, more measures along the same lines followed. Let me describe briefly how this process advanced: Modern warfare brought with it growth in the size of the armies and increase in the use of firepower. The empire needed to increase the number of soldiers and trained officers, to equip and feed them, to transport arms and munitions, to offer medical treatment in view of the fact that new warfare produced a high number of casualties as well as frequent epidemics among soldiers, to raise and take care of the large number of animals needed for the cavalry, to offer veterinary care for the animals, to develop better communications systems, and a stronger central administration for drafting soldiers, collecting taxes, etc. Hence, the development of a system of modern educational institutions, including a military medical school, a military school of veterinary medicine, a school to train public service personnel, and even a royal school of music for the military marching bands. The new schools produced graduates who had acquired, in addition to skills for modern warfare and modern public administration, ideas as regards how governance could be improved and society transformed so that it could not only resist the Western onslaught but also prosper. These young people then entered the service of the imperial state only to find their ideas about the need for political change confirmed by experience. Other forces than the military challenge of the West were also undermining the unity and integrity of the empire. The French Revolution and the efforts of Napoleon to promote nationalism to undermine the multinational Austrian Empire had had repercussions in Ottoman lands as well. The Greek rebellion (1821–1829) had culminated, with substantial outside help, in

2

Berkes’s work, Development of Secularism, contains extensive discussion of the role of these modern schools as a driving force for change in the Ottoman Empire.

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Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy

Greek independence.3 Other non-Muslim minorities had begun clamoring for their own autonomy, usually backed by some European patron such as Austria or Russia. The sultan’s government had responded to such demands by introducing reforms extending basic liberties to non-Muslim subjects with limited success.4 Developing a constitutional system in which the rights of ethno-religious minorities were guaranteed was a typical demand that outsiders presented to the sultan. For a different reason, the Ottoman bureaucratic-military elites supported the demands for the introduction of a constitution: they wanted limits placed on the absolute powers of their ruler and the enhancement of their own power.

The Birth of Constitutional Monarchy External and domestic pressures combined to lead the sultan to promulgate a constitution in 1876.5 Although the document was not binding on the sultan in that he could and did suspend it when he deemed necessary, it included features that have been a part of future political developments. Critical among them are the introduction of an elected parliament and a list of rights of subjects that the government is to guarantee. The coming of the Turco-Russian War in 1877 gave Abdülhamit II the opportunity to suspend the constitution, a document that he had been forced to promulgate but in which he did not believe, and to rule the country with heavy-handed absolutism for the next thirty years. The sultan, a man with a propensity for paranoia, judged correctly that ethnic minorities would use the new constitutional opportunities and instruments to advance their aspirations for independence, while the military-bureaucratic elite would expand its powers at his expense. Suspending the constitution, he surmised, would give him the opportunity to put the lid on both developments. His absolutism backed by a network of informers, his sending any soldier or bureaucrat suspected of entertaining ideas of opposition into exile, his wooing of the students of the medreses (the traditional houses of learning) against the

3

Fahir Armoğlu, Siyasi Tarih (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler, 1973), pp. 95–106. Twice in 1839 and 1856 the sultan’s government issued imperial scripts with guarantees of life, property, and legal equality to subjects. For Rose Chamber Rescript (1839) and the Reform Edict (1856), see Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 55–171, passim and esp. pp. 59–69. 5 Niyazi Berkes, Development of Secularism, pp. 223–50 offers an excellent analysis of developments leading to the promulgation of the 1876 Constitution. 4

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products of the modern schools, many of which he himself had opened, only postponed the reintroduction of the constitutional monarchy.

The Second Constitutional Period (1908–1918) The stalemate between the modern military and civilian bureaucrats and the absolutism of the sultan surrounded by religious conservatives was broken only when the soldiers in the Balkans mutinied, and the military units sent from Anatolia (Asia Minor) to suppress them chose not to fight but join them. Abdülhamit II, seeing that he no longer had the power to hold the demands for political change back, put the Constitution of 1876 back into force in July 1908.6 Stanford Shaw points out that this major political change was not deliberately planned but the end result of a series of uprisings against the sultan. While all opponents of the absolutist monarchy agreed that the constitution should be reinstituted, not only was the opposition disparate but there was no common program or set of goals to which all subscribed. In fact, the Committee of Union and Progress, or the İTC to give it its Turkish acronym, that had been critical in bringing about the political change, was a secret committee comprising mainly military officers operating out of Selanik (Thessaloniki) that was not well known to the public. It did not possess any particular plans for shaping the government. There were differences among the officers regarding what they expected of the change, although there was general agreement that the military needed reforms.7 There were even more differences between them and other groups in society who had joined them in pressing for a restoration of the constitution. Many of these were non-Muslim, aiming to break away from the empire and establish independent states,8 and saw the end of the absolutist monarchy as a step toward achieving their ultimate aim. In the following years, the political agenda was occupied mainly by losses of territory and war, pushing questions of security to the fore, leaving little room for questions of democratization to be discussed. There was an initial democratic opening and a liberalization of political life. Immediately following its

6

Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History, volume II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 266–7. 7 Many soldiers were mainly interested in military reforms, improvement of material conditions. See Odile Moreau, Reformlar Çağında Osmanlı İmparatorluğu: Askeri Yeni Düzen’in İnsanları ve Fikirleri 1826–1914 (Istanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2010), pp. 171–240. 8 Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History, p. 278.

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reintroduction, the sultan, in response to public expectations including those of the İTC, felt pressured to enact by decree some changes in the constitution: The secret police was now abolished. The remaining police forces could act only in accordance with the Constitution . . . All Ottomans would have the same rights regardless of religion. No one could be arrested or imprisoned without cause. The courts were to be entirely free from outside interference. Subjects were guaranteed complete inviolability of their domiciles . . . They could travel to foreign countries . . . without having to secure special permission. . . . The government no longer would examine and censor publications before they were issued. . . . Teaching and studying were to be free, without any kind of control. . . . All ministers, governors, and members of the Council State were to be chosen by the Grand Vezir with the assent of the Sultan.9

Elections were held toward the end of 1908. The İTC, not yet organized as a political party, did not field its own candidates but supported candidates who agreed to follow its instructions. The main opposition belatedly organized into Ahrar (Liberal Union). While those close to the İTC won more seats in the elections, no one had a commanding majority, and the parliament was paralyzed, failing to address major problems. The vacuum opened the way for the sultan to reassert his commanding position in politics, while the Islamists began to mobilize the masses against secularism, criticizing such developments as equal status for non-Muslims, the westernized lifestyle of military officers and bureaucrats, and the appearance of Muslim women who were not conservatively dressed. This came on top of difficult economic conditions and loss of territory like the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria, the annexation of Crete by Greece, and concessions to Bulgaria. The Islamists judged that they had become strong enough to initiate action to achieve political power. On April 13, 1909 (March 31 according to the Julian calendar), their supporters began to take control of the capital. Soldiers, students of religion, and mullahs chased after officers trained in modern schools and those who they thought were associated with the İTC. They occupied the parliament building and killed a couple of deputies on account of mistaken identity. They demanded that the government resign, the constitution be suspended and the Şeriat be reinstituted. The government resigned and the sultan happily accepted the resignation. It was the Macedonian army that organized to send units to Istanbul to restore order and protect the achievements of 1908. The so called “Operation Army” quickly took over control of the capital. The instigators were captured and tried, and some were

9

Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History, p. 275.

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sentenced to death. The parliament met and deposed the sultan, replacing him with his brother, Mehmet Reşat.10 The deposing of Abdülhamit set the stage for new changes in the constitution that brought the political system closer to one of parliamentary government. A law accepted in August 1909 made the Grand Vezir and his cabinet responsible to the parliament, no longer to the sultan. The parliament was empowered to depose the sultan if he failed in his legally defined obligations. The prerogative to make laws was given to the parliament. The sultan could veto them but he could be overridden by a two-thirds majority. Finally, the liberties of citizens were further specified.11 Despite these institutional and legal developments that have helped shape the politics of Turkey in later years, including facilitating the transition to competitive politics under the republic, the İTC-led government proved unable to cope with emergencies, including the invasion of Tripoli by the Italians and loss of territory in the Balkans. Opposition to the government kept growing more intense. To defuse growing dissatisfaction, in January 1912, the İTC managed to achieve the dissolution of the parliament for new elections. Under the watchful eye and heavy hand of the government, the İTC won the April 1912 elections and appeared to achieve a solid basis for power. The developments on the international front, however, continued to undermine the support of the Unionists. The loss of the Tripoli and then the Dodecanese Islands to the Italians and Edirne to the Bulgarians intensified the dissatisfaction felt toward the government, particularly the bureaucratic and military elites. There was considerable fragmentation among the İTC deputies as well as in the parliament in general. It is under these circumstances in July 1912 that a group of military officers calling themselves Halaskar-i Zabitan (Savior Officers) made common cause with the opposition, demanding that the government resign. They did succeed in bringing the government down. Although the İTC maintained its parliamentary majority and tried to hold on to government, the new government it backed stayed in office but one day and resigned.12 The Savior Officers were able to have their preferred ministers installed in critical positions in the new cabinet. The Saviors wanted the military to stay out of politics and, in fact, made all on-duty officers sign an oath that they would not join any political organizations. In August 1912, they were also able 10

This is summarized from Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History, pp. 276–82. See also Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 215–16. 11 Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History, p. 285. 12 Lewis, Modern Turkey, p. 224.

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to affect the dissolution of the İTC-dominated parliament. But, as the government was trying to deal with emergencies, the İTC made plans to seize power. On January 23, 1913, some İTC-affiliated officers led by Enver Paşa broke into the cabinet meeting, killed the minister of war, and forced Grand Vezir Kamil Paşa to resign. The outcome is well described by Bernard Lewis: The Committee had made their preparations in the army, the police, the government offices. They were now firmly in power again, and secured the appointment of Mahmut Şevket Paşa as Grand Vezir. His murder, on 11 June, 1913, provided them with the pretext for removing the last shreds of freedom and democracy. From then until 1918 Turkey was governed by a virtual military dictatorship, dominated by three men—Enver, Talat, and Cemal Paşas.13

Ottoman Democratization: A Case of Failure The İTC did not leave the government until 1918 when it dissolved itself after defeat in a war that the party had led the empire into in the hope of recovering lost imperial territories, but losing much of what remained from previous wars, most notably the Turco-Russian War of 1877–1878. The last election for the Ottoman House of Deputies was held under occupation in December 1919. As will be elaborated, in the meantime, a nationalist movement, led mainly by Ottoman military officers not tainted by İTC connections, had grown into a powerful political movement. Other parties refrained from offering candidates, leaving the field to the nationalists. The chamber accepted the National Pact that defined the territorial aspirations of the nationalists. On April 11, the government dissolved the parliament. The British occupation forces rounded up whichever member of the parliament they could and sent them to Malta for detention. A few days later on April 23, 1920, a new nationalist parliament opened in Ankara.14 The Ottoman experience in constitutional monarchy and parliamentary life can hardly be called a continual evolution in the direction of democracy. Yet, the 1908–1920 interim, in particular, constitutes a period during which Turkish society got introduced to political parties,15 and competitive elections, and developed an understanding that governments are formed according to 13

Lewis, Modern Turkey, p. 225. Kemal H. Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi: Sosyal, Ekonomik, Kültürel Temeller (İstanbul: Afa, 1996), p. 52. 15 Hakkı Uyar, Tek Parti Dönemi ve Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (İstanbul: Boyut, 1998), pp. 56–63, lists literally dozens of political organizations of various sizes, orientations, and life spans that came into being during the 1908–1922 period. 14

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the results of elections. Of course, these outcomes are part of a package which also included such elements as the devising of electoral laws, voter registration procedures, and lists, the development of standing orders for the parliament, and even the evolution of some informal parliamentary rules and procedures. These developments may be deemed functional for deeper democratization in the future. But, they also harbored highly problematical tendencies that have plagued Turkey’s later attempts at democratization. As already indicated, the initial drive for limiting the absolutism of the monarch was led by products of the modern educational system that the sultan’s government had developed to enhance the military capabilities of the empire. The westernized militarybureaucratic elite were fairly removed from society. As a group, it did not represent the interests of broader social classes, but their own visions of good society. Their interest in transforming society in the direction of their own visions hardly corresponded to the aspirations of much of society. The socalled “people” were seen more as a problem than a source of support. They constituted an element whose resistance to change rendered them suspect as a refuge of counter-reformers. The modernizing elite’s suspicion of the masses was further exacerbated by the fact that they came into being during the period when the multinational empire was in the process of being dismembered. Ethnic and religiously based movements challenged Ottoman sovereignty and made common cause with outside powers to secede from the already shaky empire. The result was ambivalence about the legitimacy of grounds for rival teams that offered alternative cadres, policies, and visions for governing society. Understandably, such an approach had implications for the evolution of democracy. Opposition movements were frequently accused of having ulterior intentions, treated harshly, delegitimized, and banned. The root cause of the problem was what Daniel Lerner and others16 have referred to as the “cultural bifurcation” in Turkish society that the imported and isolated modern educational system has produced. For those who subscribed to it, the aspiration to build a modern society, or more accurately to transform society into being modern, represented a comprehensive ideological formulation, a vision that should not be compromised. In this approach, opposition simply represented a rival vision that should not be allowed to prevail. Not surprisingly, this often became a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that the opposition came to adopt alternative visions to challenge the incumbents. 16 This view was first offered by Daniel Lerner in his The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1958), p. 1340 et passim, and was elaborated in Frederick W. Frey, The Turkish Political Elite (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965), p. 41 et passim.

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The pragmatism associated with a working democracy, negotiation, and compromise was lacking in this pattern of interaction. The rather schematic way I have described how modernization may have produced problematical and dysfunctional outcomes for the advancement of democracy during the final stages of the Ottoman Empire should not lead to the conclusion that opposition simply comprised two camps called the modern and the traditional. There were, to be sure, different types of oppositions: people who were together at some point became opponents at another point in time. Furthermore, that the empire was involved in war almost during the entire period in question meant that governments were more concerned with questions of defense and security. Here, intra-elite conflict among military figures was often more important in determining outcomes than the broader questions of the general direction of change and whose interests should be served. Each time there was an election, however, the lining up of rival forces reflected the cultural split that I have identified. What is being described, then, is a polarized situation based on culture, in which opposition was conceived as the other pole threatening your values and your visions of good society; and therefore deserved to be treated accordingly. The following section in which we will take up the politics of the singleparty period under the republic will offer us further opportunity to expand on this observation.

THE LEGACY O F T HE EARLY R EPUBLIC The Ottoman defeat in the First World War had not only resulted in the loss of significant territory but, as became apparent quickly, had posed an existential threat to what remained of the empire. The armistice signed on October 30, 1918 at Mudros, ending the war for the Ottomans, was followed by a variety of steps on the part of the Allies which indicated that much of the territory would be colonized or be given to future satellite states.17 The landing of Greek troops in Izmir in mid-May of 1919 was a particularly harsh blow to those who entertained the possibility of salvaging the Turco-Islamic core of the empire.18 17

The Treaty of Sevres of August 10, 1920 imposed on the Ottoman Empire by the Allies but never ratified by Turkey, and replaced by the Lausanne Treaty on July 24, 1923, is an illustration of what the victorious allies had in mind. 18 Arnold Toynbee and Kenneth Kirkwood, Turkey (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1926), p. 93, point out that the Nationalist movement gained real momentum after the Greek invasion.

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The Nationalist Movement and the Opening of the Grand National Assembly Two related responses emerged to avert the virtual disappearance of the Turkish state. The Ottoman military cadres, particularly those who were not tainted with İTC linkages, began to discuss and then organize an effort of national resistance to ensure the existence of an independent state. In many towns that felt threatened by foreign occupation or those that came under it, the local notables came to recognize that their material existence as well as their social and political prominence would be taken away if current trends were to continue.19 Establishing local organizations whose ostensible purpose was to defend the legal rights of local populations, and their coming together under the name of Anatolia and Roumelia Defense of Rights Association, became the political instrument through which a resistance effort was conducted. The local associations, usually founded under military leadership, brought the local notables and the members of the military-bureaucratic elites together.20 The coming together of the two groups was clearly symbiotic. The Ottoman soldier-bureaucrats did not have access to grass-roots support for which they would have to rely on the intermediation of the local notables. The latter, on the other hand, were in need of the broader network of soldierbureaucrats who could actually plan and execute a national liberation effort. The occupation of Izmir by the Greeks on May 15, 1919 introduced a sense of urgency about organizing a liberation effort, while removing doubts in the minds of local notables that a negotiated peace treaty would produce acceptable outcomes for them. A string of regional meetings under the leadership of General Mustafa Kemal in Eastern and Central Anatolia, which were not under allied occupation, secured a consensus that the commanders of the remaining units of the Ottoman army would not take orders from the sultan’s

Following the invasion, support for the Nationalists swelled while Mustafa Kemal’s prestige grew immensely. The Ottoman military, on the other hand, modified its cooperative attitude and stopped handing over their arms to the allied forces. 19 (Mustafa) Kemal Atatürk complained about the initial lack of interest in the national struggle by the general population in his famous speech in 1927, recounting the history of the liberation. See Nutuk II (İstanbul: Milli Eğitim, 1951), p. 619. It is known that some local notables were reluctant to support the movement until it became clear that occupation would produce even less acceptable results. 20 İlter Turan, Cumhuriyet Tarihimiz (İstanbul: Çağlayan, 1969), pp. 50–2; Hakkı Uyar, Tek Parti, pp. 61–3.

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government until the national liberation effort was concluded, and that a national assembly would gather in Ankara on April 23, 1920.21 The Grand National Assembly (TBMM)22 was not a fully elected legislature. It included those members of the last Ottoman House of Deputies that been elected in December 1918 who could make it to Ankara. Otherwise, governors of provinces had each been asked to send representatives.23 Not all governors responded and some who were chosen by governors decided not to go. The politically interesting aspect of this body is that it claimed to represent the nation, and justified its existence by rejecting the argument that the sultancaliph did not approve of its birth, counter-arguing that the ruler was a captive in the hands of the occupation powers and therefore unable to exercise his will. One of the primary goals of the TBMM, it said, was to liberate the sultan to enable him to exercise his will freely. In this way, the leaders of the nationalist movement managed to postpone, if not fully avoid, the delicate question of where sovereignty rested, allowing the TBMM to focus on the liberation struggle.24 The assembly combined legislative and executive powers. The ministers were chosen individually by the deputies to represent them. They were each directly accountable to the body and could be dismissed any time by a negative vote. From the perspective of democratic development, it is useful to focus on how the TBMM held its meetings. Mustafa Kemal and other commanders had to come and defend their actions and persuade the deputies that their performance was acceptable. Since it seemed important to achieve broad consensus in order to maintain support for the national liberation effort, discussion and debate were free and open. The agreement that the war had to be won helped postpone the debate on what would be done once the struggle was successfully concluded. Even then, however, in the midst of the war effort in the spring of 1921, a minority concerned that Mustafa Kemal was accruing too much power tried to prevent the prolongation of his appointment as the commander-in-chief. This experience prompted Kemal to consolidate his basis of support in the assembly by forming the “Defense of Rights” Group that also came to be referred to as the First Group.25 The 21

22 Turan, Cumhuriyet Tarihimiz, pp. 66–8. Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi. Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History, p. 349. 24 Sabahattin Selek summarizes this strategy well: “The strategy of the Anatolian revolution was to establish an organization outside that of the state by leading the public to focus on the external enemy and then use this organization against the government that failed to defend the rights of the country,” Anadolu İhtilali I (İstanbul: 1963), p. 194. 25 Ahmet Demirel, Birinci Meclis’te Muhalefet (İstanbul: İletişim, 1994) offers an extensive study of opposition in the first TBMM and an account of how the First and the Second Group was formed, esp. pp. 211–532. 23

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formation of this group gradually paved the way for the formation of the socalled Second Group as a default group of those who had not been invited to join the First. The Second Group, because it was more in the nature of a residual group, contained a greater variety of opinion. Some among them argued that they were opposed mainly to the growing personalization of power by Mustafa Kemal and not policy. Yet, in view of the different policy, and in fact regime preferences, that soon arose, it is somewhat difficult to distinguish between the two, although there is no question that some of those who found themselves in the Second Group had been close associates of Kemal and had supported him in his efforts to organize the national liberation effort. As the actual fighting ended with nationalist victories, there began to emerge sharper differences about the future. One watershed occasion arose, for example, when the Allies also invited the Istanbul government to the peace negotiations. This forced the TBMM to decide whether it should allow a second authority to represent the same country in peace negotiations, thereby undermining its own position. After some debate, the sultanate was abolished. Some of the leading figures in the TBMM were not in favor of the abolition; serious and irreconcilable differences became manifest. More broadly, a critical cleavage regarding the future direction of developments was shaping up between moderate and radical reformists. It was under these circumstances that in April 1923, the TBMM decided to hold new elections in October. The Second Group did not enter the elections of October 11, 1923. The two-stage electoral system inherited from the Ottoman Empire where the voters chose the electors who would then choose the deputies rendered it a futile exercise to contest an election in which the Defense of Rights Group (which transformed itself to the People’s Party shortly after the elections though the intention had been announced much earlier) was expected to prevail.26 A period of singleparty rule commenced. A few days later on October 29, 1923, Turkey was declared to be a republic.

Single-Party Rule The People’s Party, having achieved full control of the TBMM, formed the government under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal. The government faced 26 The People’s Party had nominated more candidates in this election than the number of positions available, thereby allowing a degree of choice to the second electors. Tanel Demirel, “Tek Parti Dönemi Meclislerinde Değişim ve Yerellik,” in Mehmet Ö. Alkan, Tanıl Bora, and Murat Koraltürk, eds., Mete Tunçay’a Armağan (İstanbul: Iletişim, 2007), pp. 639–40.

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three challenges. To begin with, a republic had been declared. Although the Ottoman ruling house had been much discredited for its opposition to the national liberation effort, there were still significant segments of the leadership that were loyal to the dynastic imperial system. Furthermore, while the sultanate had been abolished, the caliphate continued to constitute a base around which the opponents of the republican system could congregate. The first challenge was, then, to consolidate the regime, establish its legitimacy fully in the minds of citizens, and eradicate the institutions and the sources of support for the ancien régime such that the possibility of its restoration would be totally eliminated. Second, the party was the driving force of change. If the regime were to be consolidated, the party would have to achieve control over the machinery of the state, that is, the civilian bureaucracy and the military. And, third, now that the multinational empire had been replaced by a nationstate, a new identity more in harmony with the new form of political organization had to be developed for the body politic. It is open to debate as to whether these challenges could have been met within the framework of competitive politics. For example, can the question of regime change be settled through democratic procedures? Since democracy entails competition within the framework of rules agreed upon, it seems difficult to answer this question in the affirmative. A civilian and military bureaucracy whose loyalty is to the newly established regime, may also be a condition that may not be achieved within the confines of political competition if the regime question is not settled in the minds of the functionaries. As regards the identity of the political community, the absence of a commonly shared identity may constitute grounds for separatist or secessionist movements. Especially in the minds of the nationalist leaders, the experience of Ottoman dismemberment, with minorities making common cause with outside powers and rebellions during the national war of liberation instigated by imperial powers, this was a major concern. It is tempting to suggest that the overcoming of these challenges would clear the ground for the emergence of a democratic system.27 Yet, it is important to remember that any political organization and any political arrangement within which a political organization operates leads to the development of “status quo oriented” institutional interests that stand in the way of democratic evolution. The life of the republic under the single party (1923–1946), as 27

It may be remembered that Lucian W. Pye in his Aspects of Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966) talked about a series of crises that had to be overcome in achieving political development. See also Leonard Binder, James S. Coleman, Joseph LaPalombara, Lucian W. Pye, Sydney Verba, and Myron Weiner, Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971).

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we shall see, testifies to the ambivalence of the ruling elites about democratic openings and the difficulties that may be encountered in the introduction of competition to the political system.

The Progressive Republican Party The achievement of total electoral victory in the elections of 1923 did not mean the end of opposition to the Republican28 People’s Party (CHP) rule. A number of people who had left or had been forced to leave the country after the end of the war and the declaration of the republic published books and journals, organized conferences, and engaged in a variety of other activities in opposition to the Ankara government and its policies. These, however, were not particularly effective.29 Of greater importance was the founding of an opposition party within the parliament in response to the leadership style of Mustafa Kemal and the policies of the CHP government. The opponents, some of them comrades of Kemal in the Independence War, as well as others who had been members of the Second Group in the first assembly or who had been associated with the İTC, criticized the fait accompli manner in which the republic had been declared, and opposed the abolition of the caliphate and the ratification of a new constitution.30 The abolition of the caliphate in March 1924 appeared in many ways to be a necessity, since its continuation presented a direct threat to the new regime, its authority, and legitimacy.31 Until the abolition of the sultanate in 1922, the jobs of the sultan and the caliph were different hats of the same ruler and their respective powers and responsibilities were not clearly specified. After the founding of the republic and the transfer of the capital to Ankara, the caliph continued to constitute a symbol around which opponents of the republican regime could congregate. The caliph Abdülmecit himself behaved in ways suggesting that he might not confine his activities to the domain of religion.32 28

The party added Republican to its name in November 1924. In Turkish, the name is Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi. 29 Cemil Koçak, in his Tek Parti Döneminde Muhalif Sesler (İstanbul: İletişim, 2011) has identified eight types of opposition, including religion based, anti-regime, and ethnic separatist. 30 For an excellent analysis of the process of constitutional change and the features of the 1924 Constitution, see Ergun Özbudun, 1924 Anayasası (İstanbul: Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2012). 31 Mete Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması (1923–1931), (Istanbul: Yurt Yayınları, 1999), p. 72. 32 Turan, Cumhuriyet Tarihimiz, p. 78. Halide Edip in her Türkiye’de Şark, Garp ve Amerikan Tesirleri (İstanbul: Doğan Kardeş, 1956), p. 144, argues that in terms of religion a caliph without temporal authority is tantamount to its abolition.

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In a session of parliament when the budgetary allocation to the members of the Ottoman dynasty was being discussed, a motion to abolish the caliphate and send members of the dynasty into exile was accepted in the midst of tense debate.33 The fate of the sultan-caliph, it seems, did not differ significantly from that of the German kaiser and the Russian czar, both of whom had also failed to relinquish their power gradually over time to become symbolic leaders as had been the case in Britain and Northern European countries. The failure to adjust to changing power realities, on the other hand, led, at the end of the war, to their total disappearance, along with the collapse of their empires. In April, a new constitution was briefly debated and ratified. This transformed the government by assembly system that had prevailed since the opening of the TBMM into a parliamentary system.34 Mustafa Kemal now became the president of the republic, and his close associate İsmet İnönü, the prime minister. This reduced the opportunity of the opposition to unseat Kemal whose job under the government by assembly system had been the president of the assembly, who could be changed anytime by a majority in the legislature. These changes, often prepared outside the parliament and enacted with speed had, nevertheless, stimulated debate within the party; opposing viewpoints had been expressed and unanimity of vote had not proven possible. The inability of the party to act together had given way to speculation that an opposition party might soon be forming. A triggering event in this regard was a question directed to the minister of construction and settlement on October 20, 1924 about the incompetence and irregularities in the settlement of immigrants and exchange populations that developed into a motion of censure when the minister’s response was found not to be satisfactory. This was followed by the departure from their posts of two important generals in succession to assume their full duties as deputies.35 Kemal became concerned that there might be a conspiracy of generals against him and asked those who he knew were loyal to him to leave their parliamentary posts and return to their command posts. Finally, a vote of confidence was held on November 8 that the government won. Forty-one deputies had not participated in the vote, nineteen had voted against the government, and one had abstained.36

33

See Atatürk, Nutuk II, p. 829. Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde, pp. 91–4, offers a concise account of the changes. 35 At the time, it was possible for military officers to occupy positions in the military and hold an electoral post simultaneously. These two generals, Karabekir and Ali Fuat, left their military posts—they did not leave the military profession. See Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde, p. 105. 36 Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde, p. 106. 34

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After the vote of confidence, a string of resignations from among the CHP deputies commenced. The number of those departing, which included some of the prominent military and intellectual figures of the liberation effort, rapidly rose to twenty-nine. On November 17, they founded the Progressive Republican Party (TCF).37 They were soon joined by some figures associated with the defunct İTC, creating fears in the government that this Ottoman party would somehow be resuscitated.38 The İnönü government, treating the situation as an emergency, wanted to declare martial law, but could not get the party group to agree to it, and resigned on November 21, 1924. The new government was established by Fethi (Okyar), a moderate, who brought in other moderate figures to his cabinet. The TCF joined the CHP in extending confidence to the government. The appointment of a moderate prime minister seemed also to stem the tide of resignations from the majority party.39 The TCF began to expand its organization rapidly. In a way that was reminiscent of the Second Group in the First TBMM, the party brought together a variety of opponents from the former members of the İTC who had not approved of the declaration of the republic and the abolition of the caliphate. The founding of a new party seems to have encouraged moves to organize other opposition parties. A deputy who had served in the first TBMM and who published a newspaper in the southern town of Adana also announced his intentions to establish a party, but was unable to translate his aspirations into reality.40 The flourishing of party life did not prove to be long lived. On 13 February 1925, a tribal cum religious rebellion broke out in eastern Turkey. The attempt of the gendarmerie to arrest ten men as bandits and their refusal to surrender triggered a rebellion that rapidly spread to much of Turkey’s east-southeast area. The rebels under the leadership of a local sheikh registered significant gains. After capturing the provincial center of Genç Province (today’s Bingöl) and arresting the governor and other public officials, Sheikh Said invited people to join him in a religious uprising. The declaration of martial law in the eastern provinces on February 21, 1924 did not stop the rebels from extending their control to other centers. This led to the resignation of the government and a return to power of İsmet İnönü who, upon receiving a 37

Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası. Uyar, Tek Parti, p. 116, and Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde, pp. 104–15, passim. 39 A similar account of the same event may be found in Ahmet Demirel, Tek Partinin İktidari (İstanbul: İletişim, 2013), p. 73, in Uyar, Tek Parti, p. 116, and Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde, pp. 110–12. 40 Meral Demirel, Tam Bir Muhalif: Ali Kemali Bey (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2006), pp. 161–237. 38

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vote of confidence from the TBMM, with TCF deputies opposing, proposed the “Return of Order” law that gave excessive powers to the government to close down any organization, publication, etc. that threatened the domestic order and peace in society by advocating religious reaction and rebellion. Both this bill and an additional one setting up two extra-ordinary courts known as the Independence Courts, one in the capital and the other in the east, were accepted.41 The government and the courts proceeded to end the rebellion, which they felt to have been, if inadvertently, promoted by the opposition party and external actors.42 Opposition newspapers were closed. The Eastern Court sentenced to death the instigators and the leaders of the rebellion who had been captured in military operations. The court also found that some of the local branches of the TCF had been involved in the rebellion. Some local party functionaries also received death sentences. When the Ankara Court established links between the rebellion and the TCF, the party was also closed down on June 3, 1925.43 A totally unexpected development in the June of 1926 opened the way to further examination of the activities of the opposition. A plot to murder Atatürk during his visit to İzmir was uncovered after a tip off from one of the conspirators who got scared. Those whose names came up immediately as having been involved in the conspiracy, with the exception of a former deputy, appeared to be thugs who were hired by the latter. The government asked the Independence Court in Ankara to try the accused. The members of the court came to İzmir and, after an initial investigation and hearing, began a series of arrests, including the leadership of the now defunct TCF. The court judged that the planned murder was part of a bigger conspiracy by former İTC members, and those deputies who had joined the Second Group in the first TBMM, as well as leaders and some members of the CHP to affect a coup d’etat. TCF had served as the organizational framework within which this was all planned. Fifteen persons were sentenced to death, a decision that was promptly implemented.44 41

Ahmet Demirel, Tek Partinin, pp. 74–5. The Eastern court did not have a permanent seat but moved among provincial centers as they deemed appropriate and held proceedings. 42 There is a widely held belief that the rebellion was also encouraged by the British who were engaged in a contestation about the status of Mosul, the solution of which had been postponed to a later date at the Lausanne Peace Conference. Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde, however, has not been able to find any document in the British archives to support this explanation, pp. 137–8. However, this is a widely shared explanation among the Turkish public, perhaps demonstrating the prevalence of a security orientation that tends to easily perceive external dangers. 43 Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde, pp. 76–7. 44 Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde, pp. 78–9.

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The court returned to Ankara and continued its activities there. Some of the comrades in arms of Mustafa Kemal and İnönü were spared from a similar fate only through presidential and prime-ministerial intervention. Some leading figures of the İTC, including the brilliant minister of finance of the İTC governments, Cavit, were sentenced to death.45 It appears that the court had seized on the opportunity to eliminate and disable elements that were perceived to represent a disloyal opposition. At a time when a regime was in the process of being constructed and the opposition was raising questions regarding the nature of the new system, one may wonder if it is possible to distinguish between loyal and disloyal opposition. Loyal opposition, after all, is oriented toward changing the policies of those in power and changing the government team, not the system. In the abstract, it may seem possible to construct a new regime on the basis of electoral politics. Since, however, the regime itself would also likely be a major issue of contention among competing parties, the issue would always reappear with fluctuating electoral tides, and the opposition would easily be accused and/or suspected of being anti-system and therefore disloyal. The experience of the TCF regime shows that consolidation of power (having a state) and nation building (that is, developing a sense among inhabitants of a territory that they constitute a political community that should be under the same rule) are important background conditions for democratic development.46 Party competition that commences before these conditions are reasonably achieved, tends to become security challenges for governments and may set, in the long run, precedents that undermine the evolution of a democratic system. The closing of political parties and establishment of extra-ordinary courts are cases in point. The republican government, in order to overcome problems of consolidation and nation building initiated a policy of political and cultural reforms that are usually collectively referred to as the Atatürk Revolution. It is to a brief examination of these that we now turn.

45

Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde, p. 80, and pp. 168–73. Lest it be misunderstood, the presence of these conditions does not by itself ensure that there will eventually be progress along a democratic path. Rather, if there are demands and events that result in a democratic transition, the presence of these background conditions both facilitate the transition and then the sustenance of a democratic system. 46

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Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy A C H I E V I N G TH E B A C K G R O U N D C ON D I T I ON S OF DEM O CR AC Y

In Chapter 1, “The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems,” the achievement of national unity and having an effective state were identified as two important background conditions that needed to be met before a transition to democracy. Before proceeding further with the recounting and analysis of political developments, it may be useful to look briefly at how these background conditions were basically met during the early years of the republic.

Atatürk’s Reforms: Regime Consolidation and Nation Building We have already referred to the fact that the abolition of the sultanate in 1922 was a prelude to the establishment of the republic and that the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 was a critical development since the caliph constituted a symbol around which opposition to the regime could congregate. Furthermore, the caliphate symbolized a tie to the Islamic umma which the nationalist government wanted to replace with nation. The abolition of the caliphate constituted removing the last vestige of the ancien régime, but it was complemented shortly after by the closing of the tekkes and zaviyes where religious orders gathered, recognizing that these could serve as training grounds for anti-republican cadres. At about the same time, the traditional institutions of learning, the medreses, were closed and all education was placed under the control of the ministry of national education. These acts were intended to implement a system of political socialization, directing children and young people to internalize the republican system of government, the ideology of popular sovereignty and laicism, while removing from the field of education the traditional teachers more likely to be oriented favorably to the ancien régime. Changes in the legal domain complemented those in the field of education. From the perspective of national community building, the critical development was the adoption in 1926 of a new civil code inspired extensively from that of the Swiss canton of Neuchatel. Previously, different religious communities were subject to their different law and each had its own method of providing for justice. The introduction of a law that would apply equally to all would help eradicate the differences between citizens. But taken together with legal changes in other domains such as commerce and criminal law, the policy of changing laws and basing them on principles of natural law eliminated a system that gave more emphasis to belonging to a religious rather than a national community.

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Other changes such as the shift from Arabic to the Latin alphabet, the extension of suffrage to women, the purification (de-Arabization and dePersianization) of the Turkish language,47 and the removal of Islam as the state religion from the constitution in 1928, were all aimed at achieving the same set of goals of eliminating the social and political bases of support of the ancien régime, creating and sustaining a feeling of national community, generating support for the new regime, and consolidating the political power of the nationalist RPP elites.48 Whether success has been achieved, particularly in the creation of a sense of belonging to the same political community among the citizens, is a question that continues to stimulate debate to this day. Later policies have focused on ethnic homogenization, which has generated difficulties for both Muslim and especially for non-Muslim minorities, leading to a large extent to the exclusion of the latter from the political life of the country. Religion, despite sustained effort at laicization, has continued to constitute a powerful dimension of national identity.49 Clearly, success has been obtained in the elimination of the bases of support for the Ottoman system as a result of these policies. They were also important in at least creating a sense of national community among the ruling elite and those who were trained in public schools and then recruited into government service or the school system, and most of the population seemed at the time to share the identity which the ruling elite had internalized.

The Construction of the Turkish State The Turkish experience with regard to the emergence of a functioning state may deviate from the experience of other late modernizers in the sense that not only did the republic emerge as the result of the collapse of an empire but also because the conduct of a successful war of liberation that led to the founding of the new state had been led by military and civilian bureaucrats 47

For language reform, see Hüseyin Sadoğlu, Türkiye’de Ulusculuk ve Dil Politikaları (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2003), especially Section IV that addresses the question of language as an instrument of nation building. 48 This section is a short synopsis of three works of İlter Turan, “Atatürk’s Reforms as a State and Nation Building Process,” Southeastern Europe, II: 2 (1984), pp. 169–90; İlter Turan, “Continuity and Change in Turkish Bureaucracy: The Kemalist Period and After,” in Jacob M. Landau, ed., Atatürk and the Modernization of Turkey (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 99–124, and İlter Turan, Cumhuriyet Tarihimiz, pp. 77–98. 49 For a more detailed analysis and discussion, cf. İlter Turan, “Religion and Political Culture in Turkey,” in Richard L. Tapper, ed., Islam in Modern Turkey: Religion, Politics and Literature in Modern Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993), pp. 31–55.

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of the empire. While there may have been differences among the bureaucratic elites of the empire who established the republic with regard to the nature of the regime, they were agreed that a state as an entity with its institutions, laws, bureaucrats, and soldiers, capable of implementing its will over a national territory whose borders were delineated was a sine qua non of independence, and should therefore be supported. Rustow has noted that 93 percent of the officers and the 85 percent of the bureaucrats who were in the employ of the Ottoman state remained within the borders of Turkey and worked for the newly established Turkish republic.50 To put it differently, the republic inherited in many ways a fully established state, a condition that has not been available to many newly established countries. The presence of a well-established and functioning state from very early on has facilitated economic development. It has also helped direct the political conflict that is a part of democracy into patterned competition between institutions, helping the country to withstand the stresses and strains of democratic life. Its domination of society, however, as will be seen later, has also made it possible for the military to assume political power on certain occasions and serve as a veto group over Turkish politics for extended periods of time. It is important to note, in returning to our discussion about Turkey’s experiment with the establishment of an opposition party in 1930, that two major background conditions for achieving national unity and having a functioning state were basically met early in the history of the republic. This is a fortunate advantage many new democracies have not been able to enjoy, and it has taken many “late democratizers” a longer period filled with more painful experiences to achieve these background conditions.

The Free Republican Party The suppression of the TCF and the introduction of a variety of reforms to consolidate the regime led the government to try to develop a loyal opposition this time. Let us begin by asking why the leadership, particularly Mustafa Kemal, the president, felt that an opposition party was needed at all? Several answers, none ruling out the veracity of the others, may be offered. To begin with, the presence of an opposition party might provide a measuring stick as to

Dankwart Rustow, “The Military,” in Robert T. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow, eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 387. 50

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how the government party was faring with the voters. The TCF experience had shown that not all was well. An officially sponsored opposition might help identify the potential sources of genuine opposition, who they were, and the reasons for their opposition. In this way, it might also be possible to co-opt some of the promising opposition leaders.51 Second, to permit “managed” opposition might help release some of the tensions that the reform policies had generated. Third, the political leadership was sensitive to questions of corruption and, as later experiences like the Independent Group also demonstrated, was in search of mechanisms for oversight on the operations of government. Fourth, Mustafa Kemal appears to have felt that the presence of an opposition party might stimulate the government to intensify its efforts to deal with urgent problems.52 Fifth, there was a feeling that relations with Western European countries might improve and it might be easier to get them to extend economic assistance to Turkey as well as support in Turkey’s relations with third countries.53 Sixth, the republican leadership was ideologically committed to the westernization of Turkish society. They wanted Turkey to resemble countries like France and Britain. These societies had competitive systems. Not having a competitive system was perceived as a source of embarrassment, but there were also doubts about whether the conditions in Turkey were appropriate for the establishment of rival political parties.54 This ambivalence may explain why the leadership experimented with opposition parties but did not allow the experiments to go very far.

51

An example of this is Adnan Menderes, a wealthy and well-educated farmer who became the provincial head of the Free Party. After the closing of the party, he was recruited to the CHP and served as a deputy. He was one of the leaders of the opposition that emerged after the Second World War and won the elections of 1950, with Menderes becoming the prime minister. 52 This is cited as one of the two main reasons by the late Walter F. Weiker for the desire to build an opposition party. See his Political Tutelage and Democracy in Turkey: The Free Party and Its Aftermath (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), p. 55. Weiker suggests that the other reason was that Kemal thought that “the country was ready for such a step.” 53 Ali Fethi Okyar, who later founded the Free Party, relates a conversation to this effect between Atatürk and himself in his memoirs. Cf. Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası Nasıl Doğdu, Nasıl Fesh Edildi? (İstanbul: 1987), p. 13. 54 The founder of the Free Party in his memoirs relates a conversation he had with Atatürk during which, as the president tried to convince him to assume the responsibility for establishing a new party, complaining that western visitors viewed him as a dictator, he added that he did not want to leave an absolutist system behind. Ali Fethi Okyar, Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası Nasıl Doğdu (İstanbul: 1987), p. 14. On the other hand, in a speech in Balıkesir in 1927, Atatürk had said: “ . . . Let me tell you that in other countries, political parties are always built around economic goals. There are (social) classes in these societies. A party is established to protect the interests of a class. The results of establishing political parties as if there were social classes in

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Atatürk entrusted the founding of a new party to his close friend and comrade-at-arms, Fethi Okyar, who had come for a vacation from Paris where he was serving as ambassador. After much persuasion, with assurances from Atatürk that, as president, he would maintain his distance between the CHP of which he was the founder and (party) president and the opposition party to be established, Okyar consented. The Free Republican Party (SCF),55 usually referred to as the Free Party (SF), was formally founded in August 1930. Not unlike the experience of the TCF, twelve deputies left the CHP to join the new party. Quickly, provincial branches were established. It seemed that dissatisfied voters, once they perceived that political change leading to an alternative government might be possible, joined the ranks of the opposition. On September 7, 1930, the SF organized a mass rally in İzmir in advance of the up-coming municipal elections. Prior to the meeting, some demonstrators threw stones at the CHP headquarters. The meeting was well attended, not a surprise in view of the fact that Fethi Okyar had already received a stupendous welcome on his arrival on August 4. The rally was very crowded and lively. The participants, if not the speaker, expressed strongly anti-government sentiments. The official reports interpreting the developments argued that there was violent opposition to the government; that religious reactionaries were the main source of support for the new party; and that counterrevolutionary activities were intensifying. The raising of such concerns produced a shift also in the attitude of Atatürk, who had intended to maintain impartiality between government and opposition. Once he revealed his preference for the CHP, the fate of SF was sealed. The CHP had not welcomed its establishment, and now its main protector had turned against it. In midNovember, Fethi Okyar filed a petition with the ministry of interior that he was closing his party.56 The experience of the SF demonstrates the problems associated with the idea of a single-party system that encourages the establishment of an approved party for a variety of reasons including the exercise of oversight and stimulating the government party into action. It seems that under the conditions of single-party rule, allowing the establishment of an opposition party constitutes our country are only too well known.” Türk İnkilap Tarihi Enstitüsü, Atatürk’ün Söylev ve Demeçleri, vol. 2 (Ankara: 1959), p. 82 55

Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası or Serbest Fırka. The story of the SF is comprehensively described in Water F. Weiker, Political Tutelage. For the above account, see ch. 5, pp. 84–95. For briefer accounts, see Ahmet Demirel, Tek Partinin, pp. 107–10; Tunçay, Tek Parti Yönetiminin, pp. 247–77; and Uyar, Tek Parti, pp. 118–22. The opening of the SF had led to attempts to establish other political parties. These seemed to be attempts by individuals without substantial backing and proved inconsequential. 56

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an opportunity for all kinds of opposition to rush to the party, including antisystem groups. It seems very difficult, if not impossible, to filter supporters so that only certain kinds of opposition are allowed to become associated with the new party. Predictably, the growth of the opposition produces concerns among the ranks of the single governing party that its monopoly of power is under threat. The fact that the opposition includes some “unsavory” elements makes it possible to identify the opposition as a security question. When the opposition is defined in terms of representing forces of reaction, counterrevolutionaries, and communists, the way to their eradication is opened. The accusations against the opposition may not be entirely untrue. Antiregime opposition may judge the opening to opposition parties as a sign of weakness on the part of the government and may try to infiltrate an opposition party, trying to direct it to serve their own ends. In the case of the CHP, it is probably the case that the government was sensitive that its westernization– secularization policies were generating complaints in many parts of society, creating fears of counter-revolutionary religious reaction. But, the conceptualization of developments as a security problem caused the government to fail to appreciate that the opposition received much support from citizens who were suffering from the 1929 economic crisis which had produced impoverishment and deprivations. The SF episode showed that having an opposition party while preserving the essence of the system as a single-party system was not possible. While the government party continued with its policies of nation-building and strengthening the powers of the state, it also experimented with a new way of having some opposition party functions performed now by an “Independent Group.”

Controlled Opposition: The Independent Group In the CHP Party Convention in 1939, President İnönü announced that the leadership had decided that an “Independent Group” would be established from among the deputies to oversee the “affairs of the state,”57 and that these gentlemen would not be bound by the decisions of the party group, meaning that they would not be subject to party discipline. Their responsibilities included overseeing, without being obliged to observe the decisions of the party group, seeing that the resolutions of the party convention were implemented, and reporting their observations to the party convention. They It is worth noting that the expression used is “the affairs of the state” rather than the affairs of the government. This is an indication that the party and the state were seen to be fused, and the distinction was not seen to be important. 57

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would be able to direct questions to ministers and ask that items be placed on the agenda of the assembly. They were allowed to participate in the party group meeting but not to take part in the discussions.58 The group was enlarged after the elections of 1943 and continued its activities until the elections of 1946. Since a transition to political competition was made before the elections, it became redundant.

C O N C L U D I N G O B S E R V A T I O NS Turkey made a transition to political competition in 1946. We will examine the specific development that led to that particular outcome in Chapter 3, “The Transition to Competitive Politics.” Were there antecedents in earlier Turkish history that may have contributed to the transition or may have impeded it? In this chapter, I tried to show that democracy as an ideology was imported from Western Europe by the Ottoman military-bureaucratic elite. While the socioeconomic development of the Ottoman Empire and early republican Turkey did not necessarily produce socioeconomic conditions comparable to those in the West that generated pressures for democratization, government-initiated cultural change as well as economic developments did generate pressures for change of government and policy such that each time it proved possible to organize a rival party to the RPP, the emerging party experienced little difficulty in finding leaders, establishing a national organization, and mobilizing public support. The ambivalent relationship of the government with opposition derived in some part from the fact that the basic cleavage that ran through society was one of culture. The modernizing elite, in possession of a new weltanschauung, was determined to transform society in the direction of their visions. They conceptualized politics as a process through which they could create a new society, not one of negotiating competing interests. Their approach was one of revolution from above.59 They possessed neither the attitude nor the skills to mobilize the population for social change. They relied on the local notables to serve as intermediaries between themselves and the masses. The fact that the modernization policies did not yield immediately visible material benefits to a basically rural population tended to generate resistance to their policies. They, in turn, tended to perceive religion in oppositional terms, which in some ways 58

For more information about the Independent Group cf. Uyar, Tek Parti, pp. 123–34. Ellen Kay Trimberger, Revolution from Above: Military, Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Peru (Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction books, 1978). 59

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became a self-fulfilling prophecy. When they judged the opposition to be mainly one of religious reaction, their fears that the regime was in danger led their policies to be driven mainly by considerations of security. At the same time, it was judged that the country was not yet ready for opening up to political competition. Turkish experience confirms that regime change is highly problematical in terms of democratization of a political system. Political competition provides opportunities for opponents of the regime to reinstitute the ancien régime. This possibility constitutes an impediment to democratic openings and leads to their termination if and when they take place. It may also guide the governing parties to perceive and conceptualize demands for change as security challenges, thus rendering democratization even more difficult. Single parties face the problem that lack of oversight leads them to inaction and unresponsiveness to popular demands as well as corruption. They may devise a variety of mechanisms of internal control. Judging from the Turkish experience, these do not achieve the outcomes for which they were created. In all societies, there always seem to exist forces that favor political change. Whether they do lead to the birth and growth of a democratic system is dependent on specific conditions that vary from society to society. Suffice it to say that the presence of demands for political change is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a democratic opening. Nation building or more accurately, generating a sense that all citizens do belong to the same political community, also constitutes an important background condition for an eventual transition to democracy. As seen in the Turkish experience, policies promoting the evolution of a national community may be pursued but whether these policies have been successful is difficult to judge; and changing conditions over time may present new challenges to retaining a sense of political community. A few observations, however, may be in order. First, because the dismemberment of the empire had occurred to a large extent with religious-ethnic minorities making common cause with European powers for their independence, the founders of the republic were always suspicious of non-Muslim minorities. They were considered a security liability. As a result, until recently, the republic has pursued a four point policy of 1) Turkifying60 them, 2) reducing their role in the national economy,61 3) reducing their ability to survive as communities by expropriating the properties of community institutions and 4) encouraging them to leave Ayhan Aktar, “Cumhuriyetin İlk Yıllarında Uygulanan Türkleştirme Politikaları,” Tarih ve Toplum (December 1996), pp. 324–38. 61 Ayhan Aktar, Varlık Vergisi ve Türkleştirme Politikaları (İstanbul: İletişim, 2000). 60

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Turkey.62 This policy has been successful in reducing the non-Muslim presence in Turkish society to negligible proportions, but has failed to integrate the remaining non-Muslim citizens into the national political community. The bureaucratic elite have assumed that irrespective of origin all Muslims were either Turks or could be rendered into ethnic Turks by education and political socialization. It has become increasingly apparent in recent years that this policy has been only partly successful and that there are significant segments of the population that have maintained an ethnic identity which they would like to have recognized without submitting their loyalty to the Turkish state to test. This still continues to be a challenge that the republic has to meet. Successive Turkish governments have cited ethnic separatism as a danger to justify placing limitations on political liberties, yet this seems to have been counterproductive in the sense that it has led to the development, for example, of a Kurdish terrorist movement, the PKK, that has tried to force the Turkish state to recognize Kurdish ethnic identity, sapping its energies on the way, and bringing security questions to the fore at the expense of those of prosperity. It has also constituted grounds for curtailing and sometimes temporarily suspending individual liberties. It seems that cultural transformation alone may prove insufficient to build a sufficiently strong sense of national community. Whether economic change that may help build strong bonds without necessitating full denunciation of identity will lead to a stronger sense of community remains to be tested.

62 M. Çağatay Okutan, Tek Parti Döneminde Azınlık Politikaları (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2004).

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3

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The Transition to Competitive Politics We have seen that while the legacy of the early republic may have contributed to the achievement of some background conditions for a democratic system and that some experiments were conducted regarding the establishment of rival political parties to the CHP, there was no reason to expect a major opening that would lead to a fundamental transformation of the single-party system that had come to prevail since the beginning of the republic any time soon. The system had actually passed a critical test with the death of Atatürk in November 1938 after a prolonged illness. İsmet İnönü was elected president the next day smoothly without a succession crisis, indicating a certain degree of institutionalization of the regime. The attention of the government, however, was not focused on political reform but on the appearance of war clouds for which Turkey was hardly prepared. Turkey tried to ensure its protection by signing defensive alliances with both the major revisionist and status quo powers of the forthcoming confrontation.

THE S ECOND WORLD WAR AS A TRIGGER F OR POLITICAL C HANGE The outbreak of the Second World War exposed Turkey to new dangers. Still trying to recover from the devastating series of wars that came one after another toward the end of the empire, and then the First World War and the War of National Liberation, but content with the Treaty of Lausanne that had allowed the reconstruction of what remained of the empire as a nation state, all efforts of the government were directed toward staying out of the war. Not getting involved in the conflict was not a choice that was entirely a decision of the Turkish government, however. The government was exposed to persistent pressures to become involved in the war, initially on the side of the Axis and later and more strongly on the side of the Allies. Furthermore, there were constant fears of a possible German invasion. Turkey, therefore, felt

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obliged to maintain a fully mobilized army, a rather costly undertaking for what was at the time a rural, agricultural society. The conditions of war made the government even more security oriented than earlier. Voluntary associations as well as the press were kept under close scrutiny lest they influence the public in favor of the Nazis or the Communists, or create incidents that would provide reasons for outside powers to voice opinions about Turkey’s domestic or international politics. While neither the internal nor the external conditions favored a democratic evolution during the war, forces were at work that made it possible for Turkey to make a transition to competitive politics within a couple of years of the end of the war. This chapter will focus on this process of transition. What were the forces that favored this transition, and how did they evolve? Which forces resisted the democratic opening? What were the stages of transition to a multiparty system? In trying to answer these questions, we will focus on both structure and agent. Clearly, socioeconomic and political development and change generate pressures on governments to make adjustments at both the system and policy level. While conditions might help shape the configuration of forces that are involved in the policy-making processes of society and limit the options available to a government, what the political leadership will prefer to do will not be determined by the conditions themselves but by how they as individuals perceive the situation, what values they will choose to maximize, what their judgments are as regards what they would like to do, what they think they can do, and the possible outcome of their actions.

The Extractive Bureaucratic State and the War Turkey had come out of the War of National Liberation with a totally exhausted economy.1 The fact that the war had been fought against the imperialist Western powers rendered the regime particularly sensitive to receiving external economic assistance and borrowing from without, especially from the Allies. To render conditions worse, in order to free itself from capitulations (unilateral economic and trading privileges accorded to various European powers) at Lausanne, Turkey had undertaken to assume and pay a significant portion of the Ottoman public debt and not charge customs duties to European exports until 1929. The government’s hope that private enterprise would enliven

1

For a study of the difficulties the Ottoman Empire encountered during the war and its attempts to cope with them, cf. Zafer Toprak, İttihad-Terakki ve Cihan Harbi (İstanbul: Homer, 2003).

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economic life proved illusory. There was not much capital to invest. Some of the most economically active segments of the population that were non-Muslim had left the country, been subject to population exchange, or killed during the war, while a new class of entrepreneurs had not yet evolved. This difficult economic situation was only confounded by the coming of the Great Depression that reduced the demand for Turkish exports, which mainly comprised raw materials and agricultural products. It was under these difficult conditions that the CHP developed the doctrine of étatisme, mainly aimed at achieving industrial development, with the state as the main investor.2 Although the initial intention might have been to show leadership and set an example,3 soon the doctrine turned the state into the major industrial investor, a tradition that lasted into the 1980s. A fiveyear industrial development plan was prepared and put into effect during 1933–1938. A second five-year plan was also readied, but the coming of the Second World War prevented its implementation. Despite these efforts, much of the population remained rural and lived at close to subsistence levels, with economies that had limited interactions with the market. The Ottoman Empire had an agricultural tax that obliged the peasants to make cash payments to the state, an obligation that the cash-starved peasants hated to meet. The republic had repealed this tax, a measure that proved highly popular with the rural population. The coming of the war and the necessity to keep ready a fully mobilized army intensified both the provisioning and cash needs of the state to levels that could not be met except by turning to the countryside in addition to urban sources. Prepared mainly with the idea of increasing the materials and income available to the state without considering their broader impact on the population, and implemented in haphazard ways, the new economic measures and taxes led to much economic deprivation as well as resentment against the CHP single-party rule. The first measure came in the form of the National Defense or Protection Law in January 1940 which gave the government extraordinary powers to control “production, prices, investment and trade.” These powers included confiscation of property requiring mandatory work as well as imposing price controls on commodities, the surrendering of a substantial part of the agricultural produce to government at 2

For a discussion of the economics of the interwar period, the development, and the implementation of étatisme, see Henri J. Barkey, The State and the Industrialization Crisis in Turkey (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1990), pp. 43–52. For a more comprehensive analysis, cf. Çağlar Keyder, The Definition of a Peripheral Economy: Turkey 1923–1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 3 Mustafa A. Aysan, Atatürk’ün Ekonomi Politikasi (İstanbul: Dönüşüm, 2000).

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below market prices, and the requisitioning by the state of draft animals. The economic powers given to government were buttressed by putting new limitations on the freedom of the press.4 In the domain of economics, the National Defense Law had mainly aimed at ensuring that the provisioning needs of the state and urban centers were met. Although price controls made it possible for the state to acquire the commodities the army needed at below market prices, it had not increased the cash funds available to the state. The CHP leadership felt, on the other hand, that much money had been made by hoarding and profiteering. Taxing this recently acquired excess income would not only help meet the financial needs of the government, but also force the “hoarders” to release their stocks into the market, since they would need the cash to pay taxes; and finally, it would penalize the war profiteers.5 Accordingly, a Wealth Tax was enacted in November 1942. Though it was not written in the law, unstated intentions became immediately manifest in its implementation. The law aimed to reduce the weight of the non-Muslim segments of the population in industry and commerce, areas in which they occupied an important place. Unusually high amounts of tax were assessed for the non-Muslims.6 In May 1943, the government turned to agricultural incomes by introducing a Land Products Tax. Though it was intended to penalize the profiteers, the tax was collected from the farmers and peasants, not from the merchants who were presumably the real culprits. Even small producers were not exempted. Its burden on the poor peasants, who had already been forced to sell a percentage of their produce to the government at under market prices, was heavy, causing great dissatisfaction against the government and its policies.7 The heavy-handed policies that the government pursued had, in fact, created much dissatisfaction across the board. The rural population had been subject to much abuse and deprivation. The merchants, whether they 4

For more detailed discussion of the National Defense Law which I have summarized here, see John M. VanderLippe, The Politics of Turkish Democracy: Ismet İnönü and the Formation of the Multi-Party System, 1938–1950 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), pp. 49–53. 5 VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, p. 83. 6 The ethno-religious basis of labor in Ottoman society in which the Turco-Muslim element produced the military and the bureaucratic elites and the peasants of the agricultural sector, the religious minorities were concentrated in industry and trade. The so-called Wealth Tax was applied unequally to Turkish citizens of Jewish, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian origin, as well as a sect of Jewish converts to Islam, taxing them at much higher rates than Muslims. Failure to pay resulted in being sent to labor camps to build roads in Eastern Turkey. The tax director of Istanbul at the time offers a vivid account. See Faik Ökte, Varlık Vergisi Faciasi (İstanbul: Nebioğlu, 1951). 7 VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, p. 86.

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had benefited from wartime profiteering or not, felt insecure in that they might constitute a target of the arbitrary actions of the state. The industrialists and commercial classes in towns and urban centers shared similar concerns. The Wealth Tax, for example, had undermined business confidence, even among those who had benefited from its application. Businessmen of Islamic origin had been taxed lightly, and many had been able to purchase inexpensively some of the immovables of non-Muslims, but there was nothing to keep the Turkish state from taking away their belongings if it determined that this was necessary. In addition, the political leadership had little skill in communicating with the masses, and failed therefore to get sufficient feedback on the problematical outcomes of their policies. It was slow in making adjustments when it became clear that some of the policies it introduced were not achieving their purpose but giving way to unanticipated outcomes. The “coercive state”8 had planted fear and dissatisfaction in the hearts of most constituencies in society save the bureaucratic-military elite. The general direction of the actions of the government was understandable as being driven by wartime necessities. The problem derived from the fact that security considerations had determined exclusively what was done, without attention being paid to how it all affected the welfare of the citizenry. It is such negligence that led to a search for political change. The peasants wanted their burden reduced, the merchants wanted to protect their wealth, the industrialists their plants.

Background to the Emergence of Opposition The CHP had always harbored competing tendencies and rival groups among its ranks. Our discussion in the preceding chapter, “The Political Legacy: The Antecedents of Democratization,” has pointed to two major lines of political cleavage within the party. The first pertained to the policies of cultural transformation that were closely linked with rendering Turkish society and politics fully secular or laic. The second was about the means through which economic development would be achieved. Regarding policies of laicization, on the two occasions in 1924 and 1930 when rival political parties enjoyed a brief existence, they had advocated policies and/or mobilized constituencies that were more mindful of the public role of religion than the CHP, a situation that quickly Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, in his “Civil Society in Turkey: Continuity or Change?” in Brian Beeley, ed., Turkish Transformation: New Century, New Challenges (Walkington: Eothen Press, 2002), pp. 59–78, especially p. 71, argued that the Turkish state was, in fact, not a strong state as some authors have argued but a coercive state that used “executive power in a relatively arbitrary manner to establish a punitive capacity.” 8

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developed into regime challenges and led to their closing. On economic policy, a shift from liberal policies to state-led economic development had taken place in the early 1930s as the expected economic growth under liberal policies had failed to materialize. Although the laic-statist line achieved a superior position during the 1930s, the fundamental cleavages did not disappear. Sometimes they became the core issue in the intra-party debates and, as we shall see, they continued to constitute a basis on which political parties would form. It appears that as early as 1942, a number of personalities who had been prominent under Atatürk but sidelined under İsmet İnönü’s presidency had begun to meet under the leadership of Celal Bayar, criticizing the government’s economic policy, and advocating the lowering of taxes and promotion of private enterprise. Some also argued for closer relations with the Soviets. While all thought that President İnönü’s rule was despotic, there was agreement that wartime conditions rendered open opposition inappropriate. The opposition continued after the elections of 1943, manifesting itself as a high number of no votes in a secret vote of confidence for the government of Prime Minister Saraçoğlu in March 1944, and a substantial minority voting against the national budget in May of the same year.9 In the ensuing debate, the prime minister volunteered that freedom would not be so broad as to allow a “reactionary uprising,”10 summarizing the perennial fear of republican governments that democratization would release forces that would threaten the regime and the basic values that the republic was trying to inculcate in the population. More generally, the deprivations the population suffered and the extractive policies of government to finance military mobilization were causing much dissatisfaction with the government and a desire for political change. Wartime conditions, on the other hand, were not favorable to political experiments. Aware of declining support, the government party tried to introduce changes that would render the party more responsive to citizen expectations without allowing the establishment of rival parties. As the war began to draw to a close, however, the single-party government encountered external challenges that also related to the kind of political system Turkey had.

9 To appreciate how unusual these votes were, suffice it to say that starting with the 1927–1931 term, unanimous voting in the TBMM was typical, reaching 98.9 per cent during the 1935–1939 term and 99.1 percent during the 1939–1943 term. See Meral Demirel, “Oybirlikli Demokrasi Açısından 1920–1945 Arasında TBMM’deki Oylamalar,” in Mehmet Ö. Alkan, Tanıl Bora, and Murat Koraltürk, eds., Mete Tunçay’a Armağan (İstanbul: İletişim, 2007), pp. 725–50. 10 This paragraph is mainly a summary of VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, pp. 110–11.

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Turkey had managed to stay out of the war by avoiding taking sides, sometimes working closer with the Axis and sometimes with the Allies. Although it had gradually developed closer relations with the Allies, Turkey never fully acceded to Allied demands to join the war or allow its territory to be used for operations against Germany, much to the frustration of the Allies. When it became apparent that Germany was losing the war, however, Turkey proceeded to take a number of steps both domestically and in the area of foreign policy that brought it closer to the Allied side. On the domestic front, starting in June 1944, administrative and court procedures were initiated against a string of pro-German and anti-Soviet racist publications and organizations that had been tolerated earlier. Pro-Soviet press was also silenced.11 Internationally, in April 1944, Turkey stopped the exporting of chrome ore to Germany, a step that was followed by terminating all economic and political relations with Germany in August and later with Japan; and finally declaring war on both on 23 February 1945.12 The next day, Turkey signed the United Nations Declaration.13 By the time Turkey made a clear choice, a major split in Allied ranks had become evident. With Germany eliminated as a major contender in European politics, the new division was between the West and the Soviets. After the First World War, as newcomers to an international system dominated by imperialist powers, Turkey and Russia had established good relations. In fact, the Soviets had extended support to the Turkish war of national liberation. After the war in 1925, the two countries had signed a Friendship and NonAggression Treaty. Now, as the war neared its end, having acquired the status of a big power, the Soviet Union notified Turkey in March 1945 that it did not plan to renew the treaty of 1925, and also requested changes to the Montreux Convention of 1936 that gave full sovereignty to Turkey on the administration of the Turkish Straits. Russia wanted to share their administration and have a physical presence on them in the form of a base. It also indicated that revisions on the Turco-Soviet Border in the East were desired.14 Though not entirely unexpected, the clear shift in Russian foreign policy reinforced concerns that Turkey ought to quickly integrate itself into the newly emerging Western Bloc to ensure its security against the rising Soviet danger. A main condition of gaining access to the Western community 11

Ahmet Demirel, Tek Partinin, pp. 305–6, and VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, pp. 108–9. 12 VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, p. 307. 13 Kemal Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, p. 127. 14 Füsun Türkmen, Türkiye-ABD İlişkileri (İstanbul: TİMAŞ, 2012), p. 56; and Ferenc A. Vali, Bridge Across the Bosporus: The Foreign Policy of Turkey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1971), p. 34.

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appeared to be to have a democratic form of government. In this context, the comments of President İnönü to Feridun Cemal Erkin, a senior diplomat who was a member of the delegation going to the San Francisco Conference (April 25–26, 1945) that led to the founding of the United Nations, are revealing. After noting that Mr Erkin might be directed questions by the Americans as regards when Turkey would establish a multi-party democracy, he added that the Americans should be told that his (i.e. İnönü’s) mission was to consolidate these reforms and build the full democracy which Atatürk had so ardently desired. While he had desired to lead the country to this stage, the problems and the dangers emanating from the war had not allowed it, and Erkin was to say that it was now the sincere wish of the president to proceed in this direction after the conclusion of the war.15 A message with a similar content constituted the core of the president’s remarks on Youth Day, May 19, when he said that progress would continue in the direction of democracy.16

The Opposition Takes Shape The May of 1945 seems to have been a critical month for a turn toward democracy. A few days before the May 19 Youth Day speech of President İnönü, announcing a cautious path to democracy, on May 14, the Grand National Assembly began to consider a bill for land reform. The bill proposed to distribute publicly owned lands as well as those to be expropriated from large private holdings to peasants who were either landless or possessed insufficient land. The peasants would also be given animals and tools to work the land. Predictably, the bill proved controversial since many of the local notables who owned large tracts of land that would be confiscated for redistribution were party to a grand CHP coalition between them and the military–bureaucratic elites. A split between the interests of these two fundamental constituencies of the party had already appeared in 1940 during the establishment of Village Institutes, the “learning and labor”17 boarding schools in the countryside intended to spread basic education to the rural areas,18 but

15

Quoted in Erol Tuncer in his 1946 Seçimleri (Ankara: TESAV, 2008), p. 22, from Feridun Cemal Erkin, “İnönü, Demokrasi ve Dış İlişkiler,” Milliyet, 14 January 1974, p. 2. 16 Cem Eroğul, Demokrat Parti: Tarihi ve İdeolojisi (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler, 1970), p. 5, and Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri. The text of the speech may be found also in Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, pp. 172–3. 17 I owe the expression to my Alma Mater, Oberlin College, Ohio whose motto is “Learning and Labor.” 18 Hakkı Uyar, Tek Parti, p. 86.

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political conditions at the time did not allow it to develop into a major issue. This time the challenge was serious and opposition to the law was voiced openly. Before the debate on the Land Reform Bill was concluded, the legislature began also to consider the annual budget on May 21. Some deputies, already known to be opponents of the Land Reform Bill, utilized the occasion to render a severe criticism of the prevailing economic conditions. In the final tally on May 29, five deputies voted against the budget. The government then asked for a vote of confidence, where the number casting a negative vote went up to seven including the five. Shortly afterwards, on June 11, 1945, the Land Reform Bill was enacted into law. There were six negative votes.19 In the negative votes cast against the budget, the government, and Land Reform Law, five of the names were the same: Celal Bayar, Adnan Menderes, Refik Koraltan, Fuat Köprülü, and Emin Sazak. The first four of the five, as the debate on the Land Reform Bill was continuing, submitted on June 7 a petition to the CHP party group asking for consideration of democratization of the political system. The petition pointed out that democracy was Atatürk’s vision and was depicted in the Constitution of 1924, but that certain restrictions had had to be imposed in order to protect the country “from the remnants of some medieval thoughts” and “religious reaction.” The coming of the world war had led to further restrictions on liberties, moving the country away from the democratic spirit of the constitution. Now, however, currents of freedom and democracy tied to international guarantees (a reference to the United Nations Declaration) were prevailing in the world. There was no doubt that all Turks, from the president to the average citizen, shared the democratic ideal, and even the illiterate citizens had reached a level of maturity and could therefore exercise their rights responsibly. The petition ended by making three demands in order to speedily bring to life the democratic spirit of the 1924 Constitution: measures should be taken to enable the parliament to exercise genuine oversight over the government, to ensure that the citizens can fully exercise the political freedoms and rights that they have been accorded in the constitution, and that all party activity be reorganized according to the same democratic principles.20 The CHP party group met the day after the passing of the Reform Law on June 12, to discuss the Petition of Four. After prolonged debate, the group decided unanimously (excepting the four who had signed the petition) that changes in the laws were a matter for the parliament to consider and that those pertaining to party procedures and operations were responsibilities 19

Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, pp. 23–4; Ahmet Demirel, Tek Partinin, pp. 308–10; VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, pp. 115–19. 20 The text of the petition is available as Document VI in Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, pp. 174–5.

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of the party convention. Conclusion: the petition should be rejected. It appeared that the party group was in no mood to accommodate aspirations for further democratization. One observer, noting that President İnönü (simultaneously the president of the CHP) had commented that those who signed the petition should not do this within the party but should establish their own party to engage in opposition, argued that this hard-line response was a roundabout way of encouraging the establishment of a rival political party.21 Since a majority in the party group was not interested in moving toward democracy as later events showed, İnönü might have indeed thought that not only would it be easier for him to support a new party than to protect a small group of reformists within his own party, but that in order to move toward democracy, having rival parties was indeed necessary. In retrospect, it is clear that the rejection of the petition constituted a critical event that paved the way to the formation of a new party. When Messrs Menderes and Köprülü carried their arguments and criticisms to the press, they were expelled from the party in September. Celal Bayar resigned from his deputyship in protest. At the end of November, Refik Koraltan was also expelled from the party for disciplinary violations of a similar nature as Menderes and Köprülü. A week later, Bayar also resigned from the party. The same four established the Democrat Party (DP) on 7 January, 1946. Three other deputies left the CHP soon after the founding of the DP and joined the latter.22 A second critical event, in addition to the rejection of the Petition of Four, is the founding of a new party in mid-July. Its founders, led by the businessman Nuri Demirağ, in contrast to those that proceeded to establish the DP later, were not affiliated with the CHP: they had been identified with anti-CHP conservative movements. They were not well known to the voters and did not appear to have wide appeal, as has also been shown by later developments. Its program was no more than the personal ideas of its founder.23 The importance of the National Development Party (Milli Kalkınma Partisi) lies not so much in its mass appeal, however, as it does in the fact that the government allowed its opening. The law at the time treated political parties as ordinary associations and rendered their opening subject to the approval of the ministry of the interior. The gesture of allowing a new party to be born signaled to others

21

Ahmet Demirel, Tek Partinin, p. 310. This is a summary from Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, pp. 27–9. See also VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, pp. 121–5; Ahmet Demirel, Tek Partinin, p. 310, and Uyar, Tek Parti, 197–9. 23 Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, p. 133. 22

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that the government had changed its policy about banning the establishment of competing parties.24

T H E T R ANSITION T O P OL ITIC AL COMPETITION With the opening of the National Development and then the DP, Turkey entered a new phase in its politics. During the 1946–1950 interim, innumerable parties were founded, some never noticed by the voters, others proving to be ephemeral.

The Multi-Party Period Gets Under Way The program of the DP focused on two basic principles: democracy in the political and liberalism in the economic domain. With regard to politics, it focused on the importance of individual liberties, and called for changes in laws to expand them. Understandably, special emphasis was placed on freedom of association since political parties were subject to regulations that came under that title. But, in addition, a desire was expressed that associations in all areas of life should be formed freely. More broadly, it called for democratization in all aspects of public life that translated more specifically into electoral reform including the holding of direct elections, the adoption of secret ballot– open count, and a system of proportional representation;25 the administration of elections by the judiciary rather than the ministry of interior; an end to the intervention of the bureaucracy in the operation of political parties; the separation of the presidency and the leadership of a political party; and a ban on bureaucrats joining political parties. The universities should be given academic and administrative autonomy and public administration should become less centralized.26

24 Uyar, Tek Parti, pp. 195–7; Ahmet Demirel, Tek Partinin, p. 311; Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, p. 26, and VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, p. 121. 25 The demands of the opposition, in a sense, tell us what was lacking in the electoral system. Elections were at the time a two-stage process, where a large number of electors were chosen who then proceeded to choose the deputies. People voted openly but votes were counted secretly. The elections were administered by the bureaucracy closely linked with the government rather than the independent judiciary. Political parties, on the other hand, were not represented in the electoral boards. Multi-member districts and a winner-takes-all plurality system was used. 26 Critical articles of the DP program are excerpted in Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, pp. 40–2.

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In the domain of economics, private enterprise was taken as the basic element of economic progress. Unless there were compelling reasons, the state would not interfere with the operation of the market. In fact, in the interest of efficiency, some state enterprises could be privatized. The agricultural sector would constitute the base on which economic development would be achieved. In taxation, direct taxes would be preferred over indirect taxes. And the party program repeated the six principles of the CHP, also enshrined in the constitution which included, in addition to nationalism, republicanism, populism, laicism, reformism, the principle of étatisme that gave the leading economic role not to private enterprise but to the state. One can only surmise that this was more a gesture to enhance the acceptability of the new party vis à vis the CHP circles and dispel concerns that it would also evolve into another anti-regime party as in the case of earlier experiments. The DP had followed the tradition of earlier political parties in that it was born in the parliament. More like the SF than the TCF, it appeared to have been established with the support of the government. President İnönü referred to the idea that democracy had always been preserved as a principle of government and that dictatorship was a system that was unbecoming of the Turkish nation, complaining that what the country lacked was an opposition party. He also asked the parliament to liberalize the criminal law and the law of associations, and accept a system of direct elections that would be used in the elections of 1947.27 Interestingly, such an inviting speech was interpreted by some as indication that the DP would be another officially approved party whose main function would be to support the government.28 Soon, however, developments belied any such judgment. The initial reaction of the CHP to the establishment of the DP was mild. There was general recognition that a decision in favor of political competition had already been made and that President İnönü was behind it. This produced a sense of inevitability, even among those who might have preferred to retain the single-party system. In contrast to earlier times, the personalities who had been involved in the founding of the DP were cadres that had had long political experience among the ranks of the CHP: their loyalty to the regime was not suspect. But, just as importantly, the new party was not expected to offer a basic challenge to the politically dominant position of 27

The text of the opening speech of November 1, 1945 is available in its entirety in Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, pp. 176–83. Elections were due in 1947, but as will be seen later, they were moved to July 1946 in order for the CHP to have an edge over the DP since the latter was still in the process of completing its national organization. 28 Ahmet Demirel, Tek Partinin, p. 312; Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, pp. 35–6, and Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, p. 135.

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the government party. This judgment is surprising in light of the already familiar experience of the Free Party in 1930 which had quickly developed a support base among the electorate. Such optimism on the part of the CHP shows how far removed it was from the feelings of the average voters and their concerns. And, in fact, after a slow start, the DP began to expand its organization and serve as a center of attraction for all constituencies that desired political change. The general interest the DP generated in the country led the CHP to move to a strategy of simultaneously democratizing and preempting electoral achievements by the DP. In January 1946, the unpopular Land Products Tax was repealed and a social security system was established for industrial workers. In February, university students were allowed to establish student associations and unions of such associations.29 Then, President İnönü called for an extraordinary party convention to meet in May 1946. In his speech, he asked that a number of measures for rapid democratization of the country be adopted. These included the repeal of the ban on establishing associations and political parties on the basis of social class, the adoption of a system of direct elections, the abolition of his title “National Chief ” and his permanent status as party leader, making the office elective, and the abolition of the “Independent Group” since rival political parties had now come into being. This, last point, he concluded, necessitated that new elections be held.30 Signals regarding the moving of the elections ahead had already been given earlier by the CHP party group that had decided to move the municipal elections from September to May of 1946. The decision was met with the protests of the DP leadership who argued that the change would not give them sufficient time for the elections31 and that they would therefore not take part, but to no avail. The parliament enacted the change into law. After the party convention, the parliament moved quickly to bring about changes that would pull the democratization rug from underneath the feet of the DP. The recommendations of President İnönü were all accepted and transformed into legislation. On May 31, the holding of direct elections was enacted into law. Next, on June 5, came the changes in the Law of Associations, making it possible to form organizations on the basis of social class. A few days later, on June 13, a new Universities Law giving them academic and administrative autonomy was accepted, while the power of the government to close newspapers was turned over to the courts, and an amnesty was accepted for journalists sentenced for what they wrote.32 29 31 32

30 Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 15. Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, p. 137. VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, p. 140. Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 15. Also Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, p. 54.

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The DP had boycotted the municipal elections in May. When the Grand National Assembly voted in mid-June to move the elections a year ahead to mid-July, the DP leadership protested and considered once again boycotting them. But pressures, on the one hand, from the leaders of provincial organizations33 and statements, on the other hand, from President İnönü that he would not “tolerate actions by the opposition that would threaten national security,” led them to decide in favor of offering candidates.34 The party could put up candidates in forty-seven of the sixty-three electoral districts.35 The campaign was marred by complaints that public officials were partisan, favoring the government party. The count which was in the nature of open balloting–secret counting constituted grounds for further complaints. The complaints, continuing after the conclusion of the elections in the form of asking for recounts, did not alter the results. The elections were clearly far away from being free and fair. But they allowed the opposition DP to win 66 seats (placing only 62 deputies in the TBMM)36 to 395 by the CHP.37 If not in the most impressive way, a transition to a not so perfect competitive politics had taken place.

From Partial to More Competitive Politics The next four years leading to the elections of 1950 in many ways constitutes a classic in democratic transitions, the government changing hands four times (with three prime ministers), moving gradually from radicals to moderates within the government party; vacillations on how far to proceed with democratization without risking the modernization–laicization policies of the republic and the commanding position of the military–bureaucratic elites in the politics of the country. Following the elections, the parliament elected İsmet İnönü once again as president. İnönü appointed as prime minister Recep Peker, an authoritarian man known to believe in the retention of the single-party system. This set the 33

Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, p. 66 and Uyar, Tek Parti, p. 200. VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, p. 142. 35 Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, p. 70. 36 The number of seats won by the DP vary by one or two depending on the source. I have taken Erol Tuncer’s figures in 1946 Seçimleri, since the book is a very meticulous study only of the specific election. 37 The actual number of deputies elected was less than sixty-six because two candidates had won seats in more than one district (an option that was allowed according to the electoral law at the time) and some appearing on the DP ballots were independents. See also, Tuncer, 1946 Seçimleri, pp. 71–2. 34

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stage for difficult relations between the government and the opposition from the very beginning.38 The program of the government reflected the ambivalence of the CHP regarding democracy. While it promised, for example, the advancement of the measures of democratization, it also emphasized that the job of the government was to ensure a respect for laws irrespective of unlawful demonstrations; and that if the current laws proved insufficient to preserve order, new laws would be enacted.39 On the economic front, measures of liberalization were promised. The prime minister wanted to speed his program through the parliament in the day it was presented, while the DP wanted time first to study and then debate it. The opposition walked out and then returned to vote against the program. The DP, understandably, pursued a line that was highly critical of the government. It kept referring back to the improprieties in the national elections of July 21, which it argued had been repeated in the election for provincial assemblies on September 1.40 It strongly opposed the introduction of restrictive amendments to the press code that the government tried to justify in terms of maintaining public order and preventing anarchy, but were intended to muzzle criticisms of the government that had intensified since the transition to competitive politics. Finally, it began to attack the economic measures that had been introduced by the government as being counterproductive, discouraging investments, increasing the cost of living, and harmful to the economic well-being of the citizens.41 The tensions between government and opposition reached a climax during the debate on the 1947 national budget in December 1946 when Prime Minister Peker, angry at the criticisms leveled against his government, called Adnan Menderes a psychopath, and accused Celal Bayar of instigating rebellion. This led DP to a boycott of parliamentary sessions which only ended after President İnönü persuaded its leaders to return and resume their activities. The Peker government insisted on continuing with its hard-line policies, however, by extending the duration of the martial law, taking some journals and newspapers that were critical of the government to court while closing others down, and finally closing down labor unions opened only a short time previously. Since the government justified much of this repression on account of fighting communism, the DP reaction was initially mild, intensifying only Emre Ateş, “Demokrat Parti’nin Muhalefetleşebilmesinde Recep Peker Başbakanlığı’nın Önemi,” in Ayşegül Komsuoğlu, ed., Türkiye’de Siyasal Muhalefet (İstanbul: Bengi, 2008) p. 147, suggests that İnönü deliberately chose Peker, to provoke the DP into conducting strong opposition. 39 For a more comprehensive summary, see Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi pp. 149–51. 40 41 Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 19. Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 21. 38

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after the government tried to implicate some DP figures as collaborating with communists.42 It is under such a tense atmosphere that the DP held its first national convention lasting four days, beginning on 7 January 1947. Four critical demands were directed at the government as a result of the meeting: the removal of anti-democratic and unconstitutional clauses from the existing laws, the adoption of a new electoral law ensuring free and fair elections, the separation of the position of the head of party from that of the head of state, and ensuring the impartiality of public administration.43 These demands, dubbed the Freedom Pact, would be related to the government by the leadership of the party and if refused, the DP deputies might boycott the sessions of the parliament. The demands of the DP triggered a debate within the CHP in which a small number of moderates argued for accommodating them while Prime Minister Peker continued his strong resistance to the activities of the DP, even to the point of reminding his opponents that the law that gave the government the right to establish “Independence Courts” was still in force. The uncompromising line of the government did not prove powerful enough to deter the opposition from carrying its message to the voters through highly popular mass rallies. The attempt of President İnönü to bring the party leaders together to effect a consensus between them so that political tensions should be toned down did not succeed, whereupon the head of the DP, Celal Bayar, announced that it would be impossible to develop democracy under the Peker government.44 The authoritarian policies of the Peker government were also creating difficulties for the Turkish government in the US Congress where Turkey was hoping to receive American military and economic assistance and thereby be incorporated into the process of post-War reconstruction of Europe as a security–prosperity bloc. Arguments were heard that the American assistance programs were intended to help consolidate and protect democracies, not support authoritarian governments. President İnönü had tried to counter such commentary by arguing that American assistance would contribute an important step in the defense of democracy.45 In the end, Turkey was reluctantly included in the assistance programs, but its initial request for economic assistance in July 1947 was not approved since Turkey had not taken part in the war, its gold and other reserves were sufficient, and the country possessed considerable agricultural and mineral wealth.46 42 43 45 46

Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, pp. 153–6. 44 Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 27. Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, pp. 158–63. Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, pp. 162–3. VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, pp. 164–5.

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Persuaded that Turkey’s democratization had to advance in the interest of both maintaining domestic peace and managing foreign policy, beginning in June, President İnönü initiated talks with the prime minister and the leaders of the opposition hoping to transform the adversarial relationship to one of ordinary political rivalry. The prime minister insisted that the opposition was being treated fairly while Celal Bayar complained of harsh treatment and wanted changes in the laws to achieve further democratization. On July 12, the president issued a declaration. Referred to by the date it was issued, the statement invited both the government and the opposition to protect and develop what had been achieved so far, emphasized that the government and opposition parties had to work under the same conditions receiving impartial and equal treatment, and that the president considered himself to be equally responsible to both parties.47 It just so happened that the declaration was made on the same day as the signing of the Treaty of Assistance with the United States.48 The July 12th Declaration considerably weakened Recep Peker’s position. His search for a vote of confidence in the party group in late August produced thirty-five negative votes, an unusual number in a single party. The numbers increased to forty-seven when he asked for approval to make changes in the cabinet. A few days later, he resigned on account of health reasons. Hasan Saka, a moderate became the new prime minister.49 Two consecutive Saka governments, the second one incorporating even more moderate figures than the first, however, was not very successful in producing sufficient political reforms to satisfy the expectations of the opposition. The CHP seemed to have lost confidence in its ability to cope with the challenge of an increasingly vocal opposition. It was under these conditions that in January 1949 Şemsettin Günaltay became the prime minister after four other men had refused the job. It took more than a year for this last government to get to an electoral reform law that the DP found acceptable. Its critical feature was that the judiciary would assume the responsibility for the running of elections.50

Diversity in Unity When a variety of actors perceive that political change is possible, each may find it in their interest to join a coalition that will rid the system of the ruling 47

VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, p. 150; Uyar, Tek Parti, p. 201; Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, pp. 34–5, and Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, pp. 164–6. 48 VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy. 49 Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, pp. 36–7; Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, pp. 169–74. 50 Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, pp. 42–6 and 51–2.

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coalition and push their agendas at a later date. This may lead the way to a highly heterogeneous coalition with a negative agenda; that is, a coalition the members of which are agreed on ridding the country of its current rulers but unsure about how to proceed, and even less sure on what to do if the current government leaves office. As a consequence, political competition, especially as it manifests itself during democratic transitions, displays an ambivalent characteristic. On the one hand, achieving political reforms requires a certain amount of communication and cooperation among all actors, both in government and in opposition, if the process is to move ahead peacefully. On the other hand, parties on both sides are coalitions, and politics of confrontation help each side to tighten its ranks. In the case of Turkey, we have already seen that the first opposition party to get established, the National Development Party, which was comprised of well-intentioned but inexperienced and not so well known leaders, had failed to generate a stir among voters, although its opening had shown to others that the regime would now allow the establishment of new political parties. On the other hand, voters had perceived the DP as a more promising organization and many had extended it their support. The particular coalition of voters who supported the DP was highly heterogeneous,51 however, including some who had been associated with conservatism and others who pursued a Marxist line of thought. In fact, a variety of cleavages characterized the DP. There were those who came from the CHP, including the founders and those who joined later. Those that came from the CHP did not all belong to the same factions and had different judgments on how much the CHP could be trusted and how to deal with the CHP; some were more at peace with the modernizationlaicization policies of the republic while others preferred more social and religious conservatism. Given the nature of its support base, the appearance of rifts among the ranks of the DP should not come as a surprise. As long as relations between government and opposition were tension ridden, understandably, internal differences received little attention; but when inter-party conflict got toned down, intra-party differences became more pronounced. In this light, the July 12th Declaration to which the DP leadership responded warmly, moderating their rhetoric and general approach to the CHP, constituted the occasion for the DP to face an open breach among its ranks. Through a series of developments which included criticisms directed against the party leadership accusing them of being too soft and ready to give up the fight against the CHP, disagreement on whether the party should oppose a salary

51

İlter Turan, Cumhuriyet Tarihimiz (İstanbul: Çağlayan, 1969) p. 123.

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rise for deputies and decline to accept the rises if made or simply oppose it but take the extra income, and finally challenging the authority of party chief Bayar by not voting for his candidate for the presidency of the party group, the rift among the ranks of the DP became public information. In the ensuing showdown Mr Bayar, arguing that the party group should follow the instructions of the Party Central Committee which he headed, emerged victorious. Kenan Öner, who was heading the intra-party opposition, and four of his colleagues were expelled from the party central committee for undermining party unity. A number of others then also left their positions on the committee and finally the party. Joining some other deputies who had been expelled earlier from the party, they formed the Nation Party in July 1948. In addition to defending economic liberalism, the party wanted an end to government interference in religious activities and closer relations with the countries of the Middle East. More importantly, they promised to conduct real opposition, trying to depict Mr Bayar and his associates as collaborators of the CHP.52 The new party did not attract many supporters. Its policy concerns, for the most part, did not seem to be shared by the electorate, but its birth led the major opposition to return to more confrontational politics while the debate became more focused on electoral reform. Differences on policy questions were also never lacking within the CHP. Not surprisingly many debates centered on how to deal with the opposition and the extent to which their demands should be accommodated. We have already referred to the fact that Prime Minister Recep Peker was challenged by a group of reformers who were advocates of a democratic opening. Some of the policy debates within the party related to the reforms that the DP was demanding. An important question of debate at the seventh party convention held in November 1947 pertained to whether the party president and the presidency of the republic could be simultaneously held by one person. After long debate, it was decided that while the president might retain his position as party chief, he would turn his powers over to a deputy during his incumbency. But the broader concern the CHP had to address was how to cope with the clear electoral challenge that the DP was presenting.53 For example, the Convention, in order to respond to the challenge, formulated a 52

The story of the Nation Party can be found in Uyar, Tek Parti, pp. 203–5; VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, pp. 174–6; Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, pp. 38–41, and Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, pp. 179–87. 53 See Hilal Akgül, “DP Muhalefetine Bir Tepki Olarak VII. CHP Kurultayı: CHP’nin Özeleştirisi ve Parti İçi Demokratikleşmeye Yönelim,” in Ayşegül Komsuoğlu, ed., Türkiye’de Siyasal Muhalefet (İstanbul: Bengi, 2008), pp. 151–71.

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more liberal interpretation of étatisme and called for the repeal of some parts of laws that were particularly unpopular with some CHP voters, such as the confiscation of private lands for redistribution to poor peasants.54 There was much diversity in the unity of the government party and the main opposition party. Some of the factionalism was the classical difference between radicals and moderates, but other cleavages owed their existence to the historical split on religious conservatism versus modernity debate that had been ever present since the beginning of the republic, while yet others derived from personality differences. These were overlooked more readily when the relations between the government and the opposition were tense, but easily reasserted themselves when they became more moderate.

The Road to Free and Fair Elections In January 1949 when the Günaltay government took office after the second Hasan Saka government felt compelled to resign amid major economic criticisms, relations between government and opposition were moderate. Günaltay was responsive to the demands of the opposition. He liberalized strict laicization measures, introduced voluntary religion classes in primary schools, brought to an end the law allowing the establishment of “Independence Courts,” and the government began preparations for changing the electoral law. The prime minister consulted Celal Bayar on how to fight communism, an ideological current that had always been seen as a challenge by successive Turkish governments but now seen as a real security concern in view of the new world conditions.55 The DP leadership felt that the democratization measures, especially changing the electoral law, were not moving along with sufficient speed. It was also known that President İnönü did not favor turning over the administration of the elections to the judiciary. This led to fears among the DP leaders that the CHP was not committed sufficiently to democratization of which free and fair elections were a critical element. When the Second National Convention of the DP met on June 20, 1949, in discussing the major problems facing the party, the frustrations and fear of the delegates led a committee to produce a report which argued that governments were responsible for ensuring the free manifestation of the national will, and

54 55

VanderLippe, Politics of Turkish Democracy, p. 172. Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi, p. 192.

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failure to achieve that would push the voters to the legitimate defense of their rights which would be done within the boundaries of the laws, but that those who force the voters into that position would be the target of the hostility of the nation.56 The report was accepted in a general session and became known as the National Hostility Oath. The National Hostility Oath took the government by surprise, producing harsh words of response, to which the DP responded in a similar fashion. The deterioration of cordial relations, nevertheless, did not prevent the CHP from bringing an electoral reform bill before the parliament. The DP found the document unsatisfactory and presented its own bill. As electoral reform was being debated in the parliament, the time for by-elections came and the DP boycotted them. Poor participation in the elections put the government in an embarrassing position, leading it to concede that letting the judiciary run the elections was acceptable. During the debates on the electoral law, the DP on various occasions let it be known that it would not take part in an election under a law that did not ensure free and fair elections. On February 16, 1950, the new law cleared the parliament, with both the CHP and DP voting in its favor.57 Later, the two parties agreed on holding the elections on May 14, 1950. The campaign and elections were peaceful. The rate of participation at percent was quite high. The majority system of election with multi-member districts gave the DP an impressive victory.58 With 55.2 percent of the votes, it won 416 seats. The CHP’s 39.6 percent, on the other hand, produced only 69 seats. The Nation Party (Millet Partisi) that had broken off from the DP had received little voter support.59 Power had changed hands peacefully.

56

Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 48. Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 51. Erol Tuncer, 1950 Seçimleri (Ankara: TESAV, 2010), pp. 68–80, offers a highly detailed account of changing the electoral laws during which the process almost broke down, but then resumed, producing an electoral process administered by the judicidary, secret voting and open count, with parties represented in the electoral committees. The winner-takes-all and the multi-member district features, however, were retained. 58 The electoral system was a winner-takes-all system that allowed the party that achieved the plurality in an electoral district to win all the seats in that district. Districts which corresponded to the administrative division of the country were of different size and populations, electing from a few to dozens of deputies. The winner-takes-all system distorted electoral preferences so as not to reflect them in a meaningful way. 59 Erol Tuncer, 1950 Seçimleri, p. 117. It is interesting to note that different sources cite different numbers of deputies as having been elected. This derives in part from the earlier cited fact that a person could be a candidate from more than one district and get elected in both. Another possibility is that unofficial results appearing in newspapers may have been taken as the source. I have chosen Tuncer because it is the most reliable and well-researched source. 57

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A democratic transition had been effected in line with Linz and Stepan who argue that: A democratic transition is complete when sufficient agreement has been reached about political procedures to produce an elected government, when a government comes to power that is the direct result of a free and popular vote, when this government has de facto authority to generate new policies, and when the executive, legislative and judicial power generated by the new democracy does not have to share power with other bodies de jure.60

C E NT R A L L Y D I RE C T E D D E M O C R A T I C CH A N G E In the preceding pages I have tried to compress Turkey’s initial transition to competitive politics by focusing on some of the major developments. In terms of historical experience, a smooth transition to democracy was a unique achievement. Societies in which democratic systems have evolved over time usually share a history of class struggles, revolutions, and social turmoil. By comparison, the Turkish transition which involved only exchanges of harsh words and the holding of some mass rallies was astonishingly peaceful. How was this possible? We may begin by noting that Turkish democratization was for the most part an elite-induced change and it was propelled to a large extent by an intraelite struggle. True, the masses had been disaffected by the deprivations that the government had imposed on them and the heavy-handed manner with which it had ruled them; and also true that the world war had led to the expansion of a strata of merchants and producers of raw materials and agricultural products who wanted to be more assertive in politics and protect their interests against the arbitrary vagaries of government, but these groups did not constitute a strong enough counter-elite to challenge those in power. Their power was further weakened by the fact that some of them had been incorporated into the CHP network from the time of the War of National Liberation and had been able to buttress their local influence by getting the backing of the national government.

60 Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 3. # 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.

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As we have seen earlier, policy and personality-based cleavages had always been present within the CHP. Earlier experiments with rival party formation had shown that clearly. In those experiments, a group within the ruling elite had mobilized various constituencies after they judged that establishing a rival party was possible. The oppositional movements were neither developed nor led by groups that were not already a part of the ruling elite though some local notables joined the new parties during the process of their formation. The intra-elite nature of political change had a tempering influence on political competition, keeping harshness to the level of rhetoric and not allowing it to develop into bloody physical struggles to force a democratic opening. Several factors contributed to the moderate nature of the relationship between government and opposition. First, the elites had shared a common past; some had fought in the liberation effort together, many had studied at the same school at the same time; they knew each others’ families, etc. These personal relations probably served as a brake. Second, they had worked in the same political party, sharing a sense of camaraderie and common political destiny. Third, the party had no clear ideological position against political competition and democracy. At different times, the party leadership had displayed different attitudes toward inter-party competition, sometimes depicting it as being unnecessary, at other times pronouncing it a desirable goal. But, in contrast to, for example, communist and fascist systems, there was no strong ideological ground on which to defend a single-party system. Rather, the general line of modernization interpreted as Europeanization, generated a sense of embarrassment that Turkey did not have a multi-party system. Therefore, wanting to form a rival party, even if not always welcome, was not seen as an act of treason. The constant concern of the republican leadership was that the forces of religious reaction would be released to challenge the secular republic if political competition were allowed. The end of the Second World War added a foreign-policy dimension to this anxiety. Turkey, the leadership felt, would have to incorporate itself into the Western security system and abandon the neutral foreign policy that had been followed during the interwar period. The fact that the leadership of the newly forming opposition in 1945 was clearly comprised of those whose republican credentials were not suspect, facilitated the transition. The conversation between President İnönü and Celal Bayar when the latter visited the president to acquire his consent for founding a new party is revealing. Not feeling the need to examine the bylaws of the party and the program that was presented to him, he asked whether the party would encourage religious reactionism and whether it would support the CHP in

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foreign-policy matters. When he got no and yes responses respectively to his questions, he gave the go ahead.61 A number of favorable conditions then came together to make a democratic transition possible. There has been some debate as regards which factor was the determining factor. Some observers have emphasized the socioeconomic dimension of change, particularly the effects of the world war on the social class structure of the country.62 Others have focused on the security considerations that led Turkey to search for affiliation with the United States and the West.63 Still others have referred to the fact that democratization was on the agenda of the modernizing elite as part of their westernization goals.64 It may not be a useful exercise to try to determine which factor weighed how much in the transition process but to remember that policy choices were made in a specific situation by a set of specific actors with their own concerns and judgments who tried to achieve a number of different goals at the same time. It may be difficult to attribute a determining role to a single factor. For example, if the party leadership had believed that the opposition would release uncontrollable forces of religious reaction, would they have opted for democratization even if they believed that this would bring the country into closer relationship with the United States? Or, could the CHP have tried to incorporate the newly rich into its ranks and prevented them from supporting the DP? Would a somewhat more liberal party system have been equally feasible? We can ask many similar questions to which we would be unable to give reliable answers. The various factors operated in a complementary way to produce the democratic transition. One last factor needs to be added to those we have already discussed to complete the picture. President İnönü appears to have been personally persuaded that the regime should transform into a democracy. At each stage of the evolution, he intervened to push the democratic agenda and not allow it to be overcome by the proponents of the continuation of a single party. 61 Quoted in Ö. Faruk Loğoğlu, İsmet İnönü and the Making of Modern Turkey (Ankara: İnönü Foundation, 1998), p. 145. The same information is offered by Emre Ateş, “Demokrat Parti’nin”, p. 139. The original source is Metin Toker, Tek Partiden Çok Partiye (İstanbul: Milliyet, 1970) p. 112. 62 e.g. see İlkay Sunar, “The Politics of Civil Society Formation in Turkey,” in İlkay Sunar, State, Society and Democracy in Turkey (İstanbul: Bahçeşehir University, 2004), pp. 39–63. 63 See Hakan Yılmaz, “Democratization From Above in Response to the International Context in Turkey, 1945–1950,” New Perspectives on Turkey (Fall, 1977), pp. 1–37. 64 e.g. İlter Turan, “Stages of Political Development in the Turkish Republic,” in Heath W. Lowry and Ralph S. Hattox, eds., Proceedings of the 3rd Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey (İstanbul: ISIS Press, 1990), pp. 384–7; Ergun Özbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), p. 21.

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His personal commitment was an important component of the transition process.65 Put differently, structure alone could not have produced a democratization process if an agent in the person of İsmet İnönü had not displayed a strong determination for a democratic transition.66

65

Ergun Ozbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics, p. 16 also supports this viewpoint. For a more comprehensive evaluation, see Ö. Faruk Loğoğlu, İsmet İnönü, pp. 128–53 where the author discusses the qualities of İnönü as a statesman, with particular reference to his role in bringing about democracy. 66 Loğoğlu points out that there were other options such as loosening up the authoritarian system or going fully authoritarian, İsmet İnönü, p. 129.

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The Cycles of Turkish Democracy 1950–1980

Turkey’s transition to political competition had been a relatively peaceful process. The ease with which the transition occurred generated a wave of optimism that the country would now proceed along a democratic path. No one at the time appears to have detected a major factor that would increasingly render the proper functioning of Turkish democracy highly problematical. This factor, which continues to be important today if not with the same intensity as in the past years, is the driving force behind what I have elsewhere called asymmetric competition.1 I had used the term to denote a situation in which two rival parties or party coalitions that vie with each other to get into government pursue very different agendas. Having its roots in Turkish modernization, the pursuit of different and often divergent agendas has produced highly dysfunctional outcomes for Turkey’s democracy. Turkish modernization, as has already been described, had created a culturally bifurcated society. When the transition to competitive politics came, one of the major concerns of the CHP was that the achievements of the Turkish revolution would not be sufficiently protected by elected politicians and would therefore be compromised. Recalling that the two earlier experiments with allowing the opening of rival political parties had led to a burst of support against the regime (cf. Chapter 2, “The Political Legacy: The Antecedents of Democratization”), President İnönü had in fact sought assurance from Celal Bayar, who was leading the effort to found the DP, that the new party would be respectful of Atatürk’s reforms with special emphasis on laicism. The nature of political competition, however, with its logic that each political party try to maximize its votes, had already produced, toward the end of the tenure of the CHP, a tempering influence on hard-line laicism. The DP İlter Turan, “Two Steps Forward and One Step Back: Turkey’s Democratic Transformation,” in Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Avalos, Hakan Yılmaz, and Ana I. Planet, eds., Turkey’s Democratic Process (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 63. 1

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continued along the same path in the domain of culture. It also turned to more liberal policies in the domain of economics by inviting foreign capital and engaging in extensive borrowing from foreign countries. These policies ran against the laicist-autarchic proclivities of the CHP. Less competent in linking up with the masses and mobilizing electoral support and resigned to the likelihood that it would function mainly as an opposition party, the CHP gradually came to define its duty as the protector of the original Kemalist republic against the elected politicians. Hence, the asymmetric politics where the DP tried to respond to the economic and cultural needs of the masses in a practical way, while the CHP traveled on high ideological ground, defending abstract values rather than responding pragmatically to popular demands.2 The adoption of a political posture as the defender of the state rather than a political party that defined its function as interest aggregation interjected into Turkish politics a distinction between men of politics and men of state. Men of state, comprising the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the military, university faculty, and the leadership of the quasi-official organizations such as the bar, the chambers of engineers, architects, doctors, etc., were seen by the CHP as cadres that were responsible for protecting the values and the achievements of the Kemalist republic against encroachments from elected politicians who were seen as populists who would not hesitate to compromise these values and achievements in the interest of getting votes. The CHP associated itself with the men of state and the latter usually identified with the CHP. The men of state, suspicious of elected politicians, generally felt that the best way to protect the “original” republic was to limit the scope within which the latter could operate, drawing borders that aimed to restrict what the politicians could or could not do. The distrust of politicians led to two direct and one indirect military interventions during the 1950–1983 interim. Understandably, the politicians distrusted the men of state as well. Although it was difficult to meddle with the inner workings of the highly professional organizations such as the military, the diplomatic corps, and the autonomous universities, other ministries and quasi-governmental associations provided arenas where politicians could intervene in order to develop a corps of cadres that would be more amenable to acquiescing to their supremacy. In a framework characterized by deep cleavages in politics based on values and culture where the intervention of the military, however distant, always loomed on the horizon, it seems only natural that a security mindset prevailed 2 Even today, the fundamental cleavage within the CHP is the extent to which the party will serve as the protector of the values of the Turkish revolution in their original form and the extent to which the party will operate according to voter satisfaction and oriented toward pragmatic electoral politics.

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in political decision making. Each side viewed the other with suspicion, feeling that they had ulterior intentions. Each side used its own symbol of evil, “communists” for the DP and “religious reactionaries” for the CHP, respectively, to denigrate its rivals. As expressed in another context: The overarching concern of the modernizing state elites during the 1945–1980 period can best be described as security maximization. While the concern with regime consolidation and sustenance that had characterized the single–party period had not fully disappeared from the agenda of the state elites after the advent of democracy, an external concern with Soviet expansionism created a new basis for adopting security as the guiding concept in the politics of the country.3

Questions of prosperity were treated as subtitles in this struggle. This chapter will look at the developments during the 1950–1983 period where one witnesses a cyclical pattern of a transition to democracy, expansion of the room for politics of the elected, and then the contraction of political space by the intervention of the men of state led by the military.

T H E FI R S T D E M O C R A T I C E X P E R I M E N T , 19 5 0–1 9 6 0 The DP had achieved an electoral success that had far exceeded its expectations. The electoral system based on the principle of winner-takes-all in multi-member districts gave the DP a parliamentary majority that was highly disproportional to its share of the vote, enabling it to achieve a dominant position in Turkish politics. It came to power with great expectations that it would liberalize both the economy and the politics of the country. The fact that the CHP, the major opposition party, having suffered an unexpectedly harsh defeat, was confused and in disarray, made it possible for the DP to begin its rule without serious hurdles. Celal Bayar was elected president and Adnan Menderes became the prime minister.

Democrats Ambivalent about Democracy Although these conditions might have suggested smooth sailing for the DP, difficult relations with the opposition marred its tenure from the very beginning. Now the government party in a competitive system but with cadres socialized into politics during the single-party period, the DP subscribed to a

3

İlter Turan, “Two Steps,” p. 46.

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set of understandings about politics and political competition that were hardly in harmony with a democratic political system. To begin with, the leaders of the DP felt that achieving power by obtaining a majority of the votes entitled it to its unrestricted exercise. This general orientation was interpreted to mean that the opposition could exist and function only to the extent that the government would allow it. As we shall see later, this exclusivist understanding of power guided the DP to take measures and pursue policies intended to muzzle and eradicate opposition, which in turn, encouraged the opposition to search for ways to bring about political change outside the established democratic channels. Second, just like during the single-party period, the DP felt that the agencies of the state could be used by the party in government to advance its own political agenda and interests. Third, the CHP as a single party had functioned also as a patronage network for local notables who had served as intermediaries between the rural and provincial masses and the CHP and government. The DP now felt that it would be its turn to build its own patronage network and enjoy the fruits of being in power.4 Let us now turn to the elaboration of these observations. The DP argued that it represented the national will, implying that whoever achieved the majority would be entitled to its use. Furthermore, it felt that employing the instruments of the state to advance the interests of the DP was its prerogative. In this line of thinking, since the government party represented the national will, the opposition rather than prevent, limit, or modify what the government wanted to do, and hold the government accountable for its deeds, was expected to be accommodating to the government. The insistence of the opposition on challenging the DP was therefore perceived by the latter not so much as regular and rightful undertakings but as conspiratorial activities to undermine or even sabotage it. This lack of consideration for the opposition was confounded by the fear that the military-bureaucratic complex which I referred to above simply as “state elites” was in collusion with the opposition to subvert the activities of the government directed toward serving the people. A colonel, for example, had warned Menderes on June 5, 1950 that a coup would displace him in three or four days, whereupon the prime minister had changed the top command and retired some high-ranking officers5 without bothering with any investigation of the truthfulness of the allegation. But more generally, there was great apprehension that İsmet İnönü, who continued to enjoy the support of the

4 These points come from İlter Turan, “Stages of Political Development in the Turkish Republic,” in Ergun Özbudun, ed., Perspectives on Democracy in Turkey (Ankara: Turkish Political Science Association, 1988), pp. 74–6. 5 Cem Eroğul, Demokrat Parti: Tarihi ve İdeolojisi (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler, 1970), p. 67.

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bureaucracy and the military, posed a challenge to the DP’s power.6 This feeling of insecurity only served to intensify efforts to tame, stymie, and eventually to eradicate the opposition. Some of the efforts of the DP were directed against the opposition parties while others aimed at muzzling the press. Still others aimed to tame the bureaucrats into submission and render them active supporters of the DP. An earlier example in 1951 of trying to stymie opposition was confiscating the material wealth of the CHP and returning it to the treasury.7 It was true that during the single-party period, when the distinction between party and the state was not closely observed, public funds had been used to acquire real estate for the party. The government might have been justified in asking that these properties be returned to the state, but in a way that would not challenge the existence and proper functioning of the main opposition party. The move was clearly intended to inflict a paralyzing blow on the CHP. The DP also introduced changes both in the Standing Order of the parliament and in the laws pertaining to parties and elections in order to reduce the ability of the opposition parties to perform their functions. As regards the Standing Order, the changes included easing the conditions for removing the immunity of the deputies and the introduction of heavier penalties, including fines, for violations of discipline in the proceedings of the parliament.8 The stronger disciplinary rules were used later against the opposition, including keeping İsmet İnönü, the leader of the CHP and the past president, from attending several sittings of the National Assembly. A number of laws were also changed on various occasions in ways to favor the government party or to render the opposition less effective. For example, in 1954, political parties were banned from using the radio during the electoral campaign. The government, on the other hand, had access to the radio and could therefore use it to reach audiences for campaign purposes. The significance of this restriction may be better appreciated if one is reminded of the fact that the radio, a state monopoly with only two national stations at the time, constituted a major means of news distribution and communication in a country where systems of communication and transportation were little developed. To limit the opposition in its activities, the law on public assembly was amended in June 1956, banning mass rallies except during election times.9 6

Eric J. Zürcher, in his Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993), p. 233, points out that the so-called Pasha Factor, an allusion to İnönü’s military title “general” was a fixation in the minds of the DP leaders. 7 8 Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, pp. 73–4. Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, pp. 156–7. 9 Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 138.

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Mass rallies were a very popular instrument through which political parties mobilized and motivated their voters. Similarly, in September 1957, before a decision on moving the coming elections was taken, the electoral law was changed such that parties were now required to put up candidates in all electoral districts so that small parties could be prevented from taking part in the elections. Parties were forbidden to allow individuals who were already a member of another party to be placed on their ticket10, thereby effectively barring electoral cooperation among opposition parties. This came on top of an earlier measure taken in 1954 that prevented political parties from putting on their ticket a person who had been turned down as a candidate by another party, a measure clearly designed to stop persons whose candidacy was not accepted by the DP from becoming a candidate of the opposition.11 To tame the opposition, the DP government tried also to coerce the opposition into obedience. By far the most significant challenge to the existence and proper functioning of the opposition came in the April of 1960 when the parliamentary majority of the DP voted to establish a parliamentary committee, comprised exclusively of the members of the government party, to investigate the subversive activities of the opposition. This decision was buttressed a few days later by a law that gave the committee judicial powers, including not only to collect evidence but also to ban political assemblies and sentence those who objected to the decisions of the committee to up to three years in prison.12 While these measures were adopted ostensibly to check the activities of the CHP, which the government suspected of conspiring to effect a military takeover—the truthfulness of which was open to question—giving this duty to a parliamentary committee, hardly an impartial body, was a clear violation of the democratic game. This step was critical in the judgment of the opposition that the DP would not leave power through ordinary democratic procedures. Another area on which the government focused to arrest criticism was the press. Through a series of measures, some of which were in the domain of laws, others in public administration, attempts were made to silence the press that published critical news about the government leaders and the undertakings of government. An earlier manifestation of measures to bring the press into submission was taking away the distribution of public announcements from a private agency that distributed them fairly among newspapers and making it a government prerogative.13 The funds coming from the publication of public announcements was an important item among the sources of income

10 12

Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 142. Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 175–6.

11

Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 115. Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 75.

13

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of newspapers. Depriving some of the dailies from such an income (and the DP began to practice exactly that) made their financial survival more difficult. Twice in 1954 and 1956, the Press Law was amended to tighten the control on its freedoms. The 1954 law introduced severe monetary and prison penalties for those publications and writers who defamed individuals and undermined the political and financial integrity of the state. Newspapers and correspondents were denied the right to prove the truthfulness of what they wrote.14 The debate on this law also revealed a major crack among the ranks of the DP where a number of politically liberal deputies broke with the majority on the question of the rights of the journalists to document and prove what they wrote, arguing that the latter could not be denied the right to submit evidence to defend their writing. Eventually, they left the DP to form the Freedom Party (Hürriyet Partisi) in 1955. The party decided to join the CHP after the elections of 1957 in which it did not do well. The law itself was immediately used to imprison a number of prominent columnists and levy unusually high fines on others, all guilty of undermining the political and financial integrity of the state or defaming (i.e. writing critical things about) the government. The Press Law was amended in June 1956 to render the penalties even harder, while a number of imprecise clauses were added to the law allowing rather arbitrary administration of justice against the critical segments of the press.15 The DP governments, having identified the bureaucracy as a force that constituted a source of opposition to its policies, devised a number of measures in the hope of taming the bureaucracy and rendering it more obedient to it. Soon after it came to office, the DP government removed the right of those whom it forcefully retired after thirty years of service irrespective of age to appeal the decision at the courts. Later the minimum years of service was reduced to twenty five. After the elections of 1954, in June, those positions that were exempted from forced retirement to protect the autonomy of the institutions for which they worked, such as those of judges in the Supreme Court of Appeals, Council of State (administrative appeals), the Court of Audits, and university faculty were also incorporated in the general rule. Then in July 1954, the minimum years of service before forced retirement was fully abolished rendering all government employees vulnerable to removal from public service without recourse to justice.16 Using its expanded powers which it granted itself through a set of new laws, the government did not hesitate to

14 16

Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 95. Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, pp. 115–16.

15

Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 136.

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remove or demote judges who rendered decisions not to the liking of the government in its efforts to tame the bureaucracy. The tension between the bureaucracy and the government derived from a variety of factors. While it was true that many bureaucrats and university faculty were sympathetic to the CHP, as a whole, the bureaucratic corps was a professional organization and was trained to implement the laws. Furthermore, the end of the single-party period had sensitized the bureaucrats to the difference between the party and the state and rendered them more observant of the laws. This led to a mismatch of expectations between the government and the bureaucrats. The government, familiar with the patronage system the CHP had built in which the party and the state worked together, now anticipated that it would build a new patronage network in which the bureaucrats played the same role that they had under the single-party rule. Not only at the national but also at the provincial level, party organization tried to coerce the bureaucrats into doing whatever they asked them to do. Whenever this was not done, the party officials perceived this as an affront to their political supremacy and wanted the bureaucrats that did not carry out their wishes removed. As regards the universities, the government did not welcome criticism emanating from them, particularly from law professors, who frequently criticized the legal appropriateness of what the government was doing. The DP government, from early on, tried to intimidate the opposition by using a mixture of its superior number of supporters and security people. This was somewhat reminiscent of the response of the CHP as a single party to the highly popular mass rallies that the nascent opposition parties organized during the two occasions when they were briefly allowed. In October 1952, a mass rally in which the CHP leader İnönü was to speak at the provincial Aegean center of Manisa was raided by DP sympathizer crowds with fights breaking out and the provincial headquarters of the CHP being stoned. A similar incident was prevented the next day only because Mr. İnönü, having been warned by the provincial governor of the pending incidents, decided to cancel his speaking plans.17 More sustained challenges to suppress the activities of the opposition came in 1959 as the popular support for the DP had begun to decline significantly. For example, in April 1959 in the Aegean town of Uşak, the CHP supporters were encircled and stoned by supporters of the DP. It was there that İnönü was also injured by a stone. In İzmir, where the CHP was given a crowded welcome, the head of the CHP could not speak at a provincial party convention because the provincial governor banned the meeting on orders from the

17

Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, p. 85.

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Minister of Interior. On May 4, 1959, party thugs attacked İnönü’s car in Istanbul. He was saved by coincidence by the presence of a military unit that happened to be passing by. Similar incidents continued throughout the rest of the year in which attempts to muzzle the opposition in rallies or in the parliament became routine, continuing into the spring of 1960. In a dramatic event near the central Anatolian town of Kayseri, in April 1960, İnönü marched through a road block set up by the military upon orders of the provincial governor, indicating that the ability of the government to order the military bureaucracy was declining.18 Persuaded that they were the true representatives of the people, believing therefore that the opposition could only conspire to take over government by instigating political turmoil, apprehensive that the deprivations to be suffered by leaving power would be unacceptably high, the DP leadership began to talk about closing down the main opposition party, and hence the Investigation Committee mentioned earlier. As the law giving extraordinary powers to the Parliamentary Investigation Committee went into effect, university students began to demonstrate against the government, chanting “Down with the dictators!” The sending of police and when that failed the military to quell the demonstrations, the introduction of curfews, and issuing news blackouts did not succeed in bringing an end to the demonstrations that finally came to include even the military cadets from the army college in the capital. Then on May 27, 1960, a military committee of younger officers took over the government. The first Turkish experiment with democracy had come to an end. Many of the works written on the first Turkish experiment with democracy emphasize that electoral politics had given an opportunity to the masses to choose governments that were responsive to their needs.19 The transition to competitive politics had also integrated the mainly rural masses and the urban poor into the political life of the country. These reforms happened at a critical time since the development of the highway system and the introduction of tractors in agriculture had promoted a movement of labor to urban centers, producing in addition to the traditional peasant population, a group of urban poor. Electoral politics gave these “rurbanites” the means to get the government to pay attention to their needs. The support the DP got from the population was naturally in part a reaction to the heavy-handed policies of the single-party governments. But the influence of this factor was buttressed by the economic prosperity the DP 18 Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, pp. 166–72. For the summary of these events, see also Eric J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), pp. 251–2. 19 For example, Kemal Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi (İstanbul: Afa, 1996), and Richard D. Robinson, The First Turkish Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963).

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administration brought during the first half decade of its rule. Favorable weather conditions and the infusion of tractors into farming produced bumper crops which, combined with high prices for agricultural commodities as a result of the Korean War, translated into economically good times. The liberalization of the import regime also helped remove shortages of goods and commodities in a society that remembered vividly wartime deprivations. The fact that the DP got more votes in the elections of 1954 was partly a reflection of this economic euphoria. But when, starting in 1955, economic conditions took a turn for the worse and inflation began to climb, voters did not hesitate to reduce their support for the government party. As the preceding discussion of the first democratic experiment tried to show, it was the political leadership that subverted the democratic process, in part because it feared the machinations of the opposition to drive them out in whatever way possible, but also in part because they enjoyed being in power and did not want to leave. Whatever the “true” motives of the DP might have been, it “securitized”20 politics and treated the opposition as a security problem, trying to drive it out of contention for power. The breakdown of the first democratic experiment was as much the responsibility of the DP government as it was of others. The price was heavy. All deputies were imprisoned and tried, some leaders including Prime Minister Menderes received death sentences, some of which were implemented.

The Rule of the Colonels The National Unity Committee (MBK) that took power on May 27, 1960 was a group of young military officers, including even a captain. In contrast to later occasions when the military had intervened as an institution maintaining its hierarchy and its command structure, the MBK was a secret organization. Understandably, it had not been able to develop elaborate plans on what to do once in power. It was against the dictatorial policies and practices of the DP government, and it was concerned that the basic achievements of the republic were being undermined. Some among them, as it became evident later, were interested in remaining in power to transform Turkish society along the lines of their nationalist visions, but they were a minority soon neutralized by the

20 Barrry Buzan, Ole Weaver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), p. 23, refer to rendering issues into security concerns which then takes them beyond the “rules of the game” and frames them as a special kind of politics or above politics.

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majority that wanted a return to competitive politics.21 The officers, in order to solidify their power base and legitimize their intervention, wanted to bring the members of DP governments, the deputies, and the provincial leaders of the DP to trial. Lacking a road map, however, they turned for help to what was at the time another pillar of the Kemalist revolution, the university faculty. A special court was set up to try the “evicted” politicians, while a committee of law professors was asked to prepare a new constitution. The law professors prepared a temporary constitution to legitimize the rule of the MBK, proceeding afterwards to work on the new text. The MBK had asked an Istanbul University based committee of law professors to work on the constitution. A group of faculty members from the Faculty of Political Science in Ankara, also desiring to influence the constitutionmaking process, developed their own text. Their ideas, in particular with regard to the debating and ratification process of the constitution, proved important in the creation of a constituent assembly, in effect, with two chambers. The MBK would serve as an upper chamber for giving final approval to the text before it would be submitted to a public referendum for ratification. The lower chamber that bore the name “constituent,” on the other hand, was comprised of members chosen and appointed in a number of ways. The MBK appointed some members; political parties other than the now defunct DP chose their own representatives; and labor unions as well as bar, small businessmen, and youth associations each also elected representatives. Administrative provinces also got to be represented.22 The constitution that emerged and was ratified by a public referendum on July 9, 1961 was a liberal document. A major guiding concept was introducing checks on what seemed to be the unlimited power of the elected government under the 1924 Constitution. Accordingly, a constitutional court, inspired by its American and European counterparts, was introduced into the system. A number of agencies, such as universities and TRT, the state broadcasting company, were given autonomy to protect them from the interventions of government. A new National Security Council was created to provide an effective channel of communication between the military and the elected government, offering an instrument through which the former might inform

21 A group of radical officers was expelled from the MBK in an interesting way. The committee disbanded itself but then reconstituted itself without the radical members, who were given foreign service posts as military attachés in distant places. The leading figure, Colonel Türkeş, for example, was sent to New Delhi. For a more detailed account see Walter F. Weiker, The Turkish Revolution: 1960–1961: Aspects of Military Politics (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1963), pp. 47–51. 22 For a fuller account, cf. Weiker, The Turkish Revolution: 1960–1961, pp. 65–72.

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the latter of its expectations. The legislature was now to have two chambers, with the members of the upper chamber, that is, the senators, elected for sixyear terms with one third being elected every two years. The senate would also include among its ranks, in addition to fifteen members who would be designated by the president of the republic, the members of the MBK as permanent members, thereby not only providing for their smooth exit from military rule but also giving them the opportunity to wield some influence in the forthcoming period of electoral politics. The DP deputies and party officials were barred from taking part in politics.23 Finally, the electoral system was changed from the winner-takes-all system to one of proportional representation while the multi-member districts were retained. The winner-takes-all system had given the DP majorities that bore little relation to the actual distribution of votes. For example, in 1950 the CHP, while receiving 39.4 percent of the vote, had won only 14.2 percent of the seats, while the DP had gotten 85.2 percent of the seats with 52.7 percent of the vote. The corresponding figures for the elections of 1954 were 35.4 percent of the vote with 5.7 percent of the seats for the CHP, and 57.6 percent of the votes with 92.8 percent of the seats for the DP.24 Many observers felt that the 1961 Constitution was the most liberal constitution Turkey has ever had. In part because the DP government had not been sensitive about respecting individual liberties and democratic principles in the running of government, and in part because the law professors had been asked to prepare the initial draft, individual liberties and checks and balances on the powers of government occupied a central place in the new constitution. Coming from a tradition of social and political engineering in which bringing about change through legislation was the most frequently employed means, both the soldiers and the professors subscribed to an almost altruistic belief that their challenge was to enact a good constitution complemented by a set of equally good laws. These laws would direct the elected politicians to run the government in a democratic way and serve the good of the country. The officers, sensing that their tenure of office would not be long, hastily took the DP leaders and deputies to court. In addition to the charges of violating the constitution and the laws, they determined that it would persuade the public of the rightfulness of their cause if they exposed what they considered to be the corrupt and immoral life of the DP’s leaders. The trials were thus broadened to include charges of “corruption.” The private lives of political leaders were exposed to show their immorality to a public that 23

For these provisions, cf. the Constitution of 1961, Law. No 10859 dated 20 July, 1961. Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics: Bridge Across Troubled Lands (New York: Palgrave, 2005), p. 75. 24

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perceived this treatment as unjustified victimization. In the end, President Bayar and Prime Minister Menderes, as well as the foreign, interior, and finance ministers, were sentenced to death. All except that of Bayar, for reason of old age, were carried out. Such harsh punishment probably reflected the insecurity that the soldiers felt that the “ignorant masses” might return the DP to power and that it would implement a policy of vengeance, but it left a deep scar among those who recalled the end of single-party politics with favor and who benefited from the liberal economic policies that the DP had pursued.

REBUILDING AND F AILING IN DE MOCRATIC POLITICS: 1 961 –1 9 8 0 To the credit of the MBK, it led the country into elections in the Fall of 1961. While the CHP led the polls, the parties that had been established to claim the votes that had gone to the DP had an impressive showing. Within a year and a half of military intervention, a return to elected civilian politics had taken place. We will analyze the reasons for such a smooth transition in Chapter 5, “The Rise and Fall of the Military as a Political Force”, that looks into the role of the military in Turkish politics.25 Return to Electoral Politics October 15, 1961 elections were free and fair. Two parties that claimed the legacy of the DP took part in the elections. While the CHP led the polls with 36.7 percent, the Justice Party (AP) as the strongest contender to take the place of the DP came in a close second with 34.8 percent. With another contender, the New Turkey Party (YTP) that received 13.7 percent, it was clear that the constituencies that had extended electoral support to the DP were resilient. The system of proportional representation that was used for the first time in these elections had produced the intended result of reflecting the distribution of votes in the distribution of seats in the parliament,26 bringing in the process, 25

There are two major studies of the 1960–1961 military intervention: Walter F. Weiker, The Turkish Revolution: 1960–1961, and Ergun Özbudun, The Role of the Military in Recent Turkish Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Center for International Affairs, Occasional Papers 14, 1966). 26 The results come from the excellent account of the 1961 elections by Erol Tuncer, 1961 Seçimleri (Ankara: TESAV, 2012), p. 148. The largest deviation between the distribution of the

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however, the necessity of coalition governments, a phenomenon with which Turkish politics was hereto unfamiliar. Who would establish the coalition? The CHP had the largest number of seats, but those parties representing the DP constituencies formed a larger group. The AP and YTP announced that they would not take part in a coalition with the CHP, while the small Republican Peasants’ National Party (CKMP) said that it would not be a party to any coalition. Given these constraints, it seemed impossible for a majority coalition to form, but a minority coalition or minority government was also out of the question. Furthermore, it was clear that the military would not welcome a return of parties that identified with the legacy of the DP. In fact, two later attempts by a radical faction in the military to stage coups on February 22, 1962 and May 21, 1963 showed that the election results were not necessarily even welcome. Cemal Gürsel, the titular head of the MBK who had become the president, literally pressured the CHP and AP to form a coalition under the leadership of the CHP head, İnönü, in order to “get us out of the situation in which we find ourselves,”27 insinuating that the impasse might bring back military rule. An unnatural coalition government was thus formed, received a vote of confidence in December 1961, and survived for about seven months. The 1961–1965 interim constituted a period of gradual restoration of competitive politics. During a four-year period, four different governments held office. As the likelihood of the return of the military to power receded, the parties trying to capitalize on the legacy of the DP became more assertive. The first coalition ended when the AP decided that the provisions of a proposed amnesty for DP members who were barred from politics by the military were not sufficient. The second coalition also led by İnönü ended when the AP scored major victories in the local elections of November 1963, and the small partners YTP and CKMP withdrew from it. The forming of a third coalition was initially offered to the head of the AP who failed, leading İnönü to form a minority coalition this time with some independents. This government ended when its budget failed to get approved in the parliament in February 1965, and was replaced by one headed by an independent28 but in which the newly elected head of the AP, Süleyman Demirel, became the vice premier. As this brief account shows, there occurred a gradual return to fully competitive politics and acceptance of its results. Successor parties to the DP managed to vote and parliamentary seats was only 2 percent for the right-wing Republican Peasants’ National Party. 27

Tuncer, 1961 Seçimleri, p. 113. This brief account of coalition governments has relied on Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 262. 28

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take command through a process of adjustment in which changing coalition governments provided the means of that adjustment. The elections of 1965 helped the AP to consolidate its place as the successor to the DP. It received 52.9 percent of the vote. All other parties save the CHP had 6 percent or below. The particular electoral system, employed only for this election and operating to the detriment of large parties,29 had failed to keep the AP from getting a clear majority, but had also resulted for the first time in the presence of a Marxist party in the legislature. Süleyman Demirel established the government. Though it suffered a loss of votes, the AP repeated its electoral performance once again in the elections of October 12, 1969, giving Turkey another one-party government.

The Indirect Intervention of the Military: 1971–1973 Despite the stability one-party government might offer, beginning with the second half of the 1960s, Turkey began to experience intensifying social turmoil. A number of factors came together to produce this outcome. To begin with, the growing rural populations continued to move to the cities. All major Turkish cities were encircled by squatter settlements that failed to receive many of the municipal services and in which poverty and unemployment were often typical. The implementation of state planning and a strategy of policies oriented toward import substitution had led to the growth of an industrial working class who lived in these districts and demanded to get a bigger share of the economic pie. Rival labor unions had emerged to capture this working-class potential, and in some instances were organized by political parties to control it. Relations between labor unions were prone to violence. Second, there had been a swelling of university students as the system of higher education began to expand during this period. This rapid expansion had brought in segments of the population who had not had the opportunity to attend a university before. Many of these students not only had very meager means for living in an urban setting but were unsure of what kind of a future awaited them. In earlier times, the graduates of the few universities were reasonably assured of some kind of government employment, but this was getting less and less likely to be the case. This sense of insecurity rendered it easy for them be attracted to radical movements which offered solidarity,

29

The system was called the national remainder system. The system brought together votes remaining in each district that had failed to elect a deputy and allocated them a parliamentary seat when an electoral quotient, i.e. a sufficient number of votes to elect a deputy was reached.

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purpose, and excitement. The universities became battlegrounds between right- and left-wing students under intensifying ideological polarization. Third, it was speculated that some of these clashes were also fanned by conspiratorial groups within the military who, frustrated by the successive electoral victories of the conservative AP, aimed at establishing a longer term military regime to implement radical reforms.30 Fourth, many in government and in the military, as well as many citizens, judged that the liberal constitution of 1961 had tied the hands of government in controlling the spread of leftand right-wing radicalism, giving extremists a free hand in their endeavors. The top command of the military, under the circumstances, decided to intervene once again, but this time indirectly. They pressured the government of Mr Demirel to resign in favor of a national coalition that would have the backing of all parties in the parliament and would introduce changes in the constitution and the laws as well as implement strict policies to bring violence under control. Later, it became known that the military leadership had acted within its existing command structure to give the government an ultimatum in order to arrest a military takeover in which some top commanders were also involved. A string of governments were again formed in this uneasy coalition that was trying to accommodate and resist the political will of the military at the same time. With the help of martial law and military backing, the violence was brought under control. In part because the Demirel governments had already been complaining about the liberal nature of the constitution and in part to prevent the military from further involvement in politics and facilitate its early exit, changes were effected in the constitution and the laws, reducing some liberties, and strengthening the powers of the executive. Elections scheduled for the Fall of 1973 were held on time. Prior to the election, the term of the incumbent president of the republic was due to end. The military wanted to ensure its oversight of civilian politics by having the chief of staff elected president by the parliament. The chief of staff asked for his retirement and was immediately appointed a member of the senate by the then President Sunay to fill a vacancy in the presidential quota of fifteen. Another presidential appointee had been asked to resign to make room for the retiring commander. Despite the presumed willingness of a sufficient number of deputies to vote for the general, in a series of secret ballots, he did not achieve the qualified majority needed. Finally he withdrew and retired admiral Fahri Korutürk, noted for his lack of affiliation with the intervention-prone

For this point, cf. Ergun Özbudun, “Development of Democratic Government in Turkey: Crises, Interruptions, Reequilibrations,” in Ergun Özbudun, ed., Perspectives on Democracy in Turkey (Ankara: Turkish Political Science Association, 1988), p. 20. 30

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top brass, became the president. By the time the elections were held in October 1973, the indirect intervention had already come to an end.

Politics of Instability: The Coalition Years of 1973–1980 The elections of October 1973 produced a surprising result. First, the CHP that had not managed to come out on top in an election since 1950, excepting the transitional elections of 1961, received 33.3 percent of the vote, the highest. The success appeared in part to derive from the change of party policy to “left of center”: an ideological line, however vague, appeared to have an urban focus and emphasize redistributive politics just at a time when Turkey was becoming more urban than rural and more industrial than agricultural. But it also came in part from the fact that the new head of the party, a former minister of labor and party secretary general Bülent Ecevit had challenged the leadership of İsmet İnönü and had achieved what many considered to be unthinkable, that is, defeating the perennial leader, one of the founding fathers of both the republic and the party, a representative of the state elites par excellence. Second, a religiously oriented party, the National Salvation Party (MSP), had entered the parliament. Furthermore, it was a key party in that with the exception of the two largest parties that had a highly adversarial relationship, majority coalitions could not be formed without its participation, giving the MSP a power position to make or break governments. Third, the AP had fallen to second place (29.8 percent), not only because its votes had declined but also because some its deputies had left the party in 1970 to revive the old DP, charging that the AP had departed from that tradition and had been reluctant in restoring the political rights of the former DP members. The new DP had gotten 11.9 percent of the vote. As we shall see, Turkish politics had entered a new phase, with new actors and with the need to rule by coalition governments, a situation that had arisen only once in 1961–1965, an experience which the voters did not recall with favor. As the election results became known, Prime Minister Demirel announced that the voters had given his party the job of opposition, indicating that the AP would not be interested in taking part in a coalition. Under the circumstances, the only other possibility seemed to be a coalition between the CHP and the MSP, but the chemistry of the laicist CHP and the religiously conservative MSP hardly constituted an appropriate mix. The initial resistance to such a coalition was overcome, however, with the guidance of some CHP advisors who argued that the MSP represented deprived classes that expressed themselves in traditional ways, and that these were the constituencies that the left-

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of-center CHP would also aim to serve.31 After a long period of hesitation and much negotiation, a coalition emerged at the end of January 1974, three and a half months after the elections. The uneasy coalition encountered a major challenge six months later when the government of Cyprus was toppled by an Athens directed coup. Turkey, as a guarantor of the constitutional arrangement under which Cyprus had been granted its independence from Great Britain in 1960, intervened to ensure the safety of the Cypriot Turks. The intervention that came on top of sustained efforts on the part of Greek Cypriots to render the island Greek and unify it with Greece and frustrated Turkish efforts to arrest such a contingency, proved extremely popular with the electorate. Prime Minister Ecevit became an instant hero. The Cyprus intervention also marked a turning point in the intragovernmental relations. The MSP found the mounting popularity of the prime minister unfair since they had been a part of the decision-making process. Prime Minister Ecevit, on the other hand, thought that he might do away with the difficulties of the coalition government and ride to power in a one-party government by capitalizing on his popularity, if only new elections could be held. Such conditions did not allow the government to continue. It resigned in mid-September. There was no desire, however, on the part of a parliamentary majority to decide on new elections only a year after they had been elected32 when it also looked like Bülent Ecevit was likely to win the election. Faced with a deadlock, President Korutürk asked a senator appointed through the presidential quota who did not have a party affiliation to form the government. This was an interim measure to give time for a new coalition to form. The Irmak government did not expect to win a vote of confidence, and it did not. Its job was to serve as a caretaker. It took several months of negotiation and bargaining to form a new government that took office on the last day of March in 1975 and served until after the elections of June 5, 1977. The new coalition was a combination of center right and right-wing parties that branded itself as the Nationalist Front Government, a name that was used also to identify the two later governments representing a similar combination of parties. The government was led by the veteran leader Süleyman 31 The ideas of Ahmet Yücekök who had authored a book on the socioeconomic bases of organized religion was particularly important. The book itself is Türkiye’de Örgütlenmiş Dinin Sosyo-Ekonomik Tabanı (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler, 1971). 32 My observation is that Turkish deputies have been reluctant to support moves for early elections if this reduces their tenure to less than three years. Apart from the fact that elections require much effort and many resources, a deputy has to serve two years or more in order to acquire retirement rights and other benefits that come with having held office. My own estimate is that it takes no less than three years to pay campaign debts and accumulate enough resources for re-election.

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Demirel. The coalition partners had little in common, did not trust each other, and perceived each other in a competitive light. Their parliamentary wings did not want early elections, but they were all interested in dispensing public resources for purposes of patronage. This proved possible only by allowing each party to run the ministries it was allocated in government, with little communication or coordination among them. The cabinet hardly met since its meetings only revealed disagreements among ministers representing different parties. Sessions of the parliament were non-productive for the same reason. These conditions did not provide for effective government, allowing the CHP, now in opposition, to improve its electoral standing. As the country went to the elections in early June 1977, the CHP appeared as if it might win the elections; and it did, but not with enough deputies to form the government by itself. Eleven deputies short of a majority, Mr. Ecevit tried to form a minority government without first securing the consent of other parliamentary parties. He may have also hoped that if he failed, he would stay on as caretaker as other parties spent endless time among themselves, trying to form a new coalition. In any case, his government failed to get a vote of confidence and within a month, another Nationalist Front government returned. In the meantime, the turmoil and violence that had characterized Turkey’s politics prior to the 1971 military intervention had also returned. In the highly polarized political environment, parties promoted polarization to hold their own ranks together, a questionable policy that had already invited the indirect military intervention.33 Concerned that right-wing parties were filling the ranks of the bureaucracy with their own men in an irreversible way and frustrated that his party had not been able to get to rule despite its electoral performance, Mr. Ecevit held a secret meeting with eleven deputies belonging to the AP late in 1977 and persuaded them to resign in return for promising cabinet seats to ten of them (one deputy did not want a ministerial post). The Demirel government thus came to an end. Bülent Ecevit formed the new government at the beginning of 1978 and served for twenty-two months, resigning after a by-election in which all five parliamentary seats went to the AP.34 This time, facing formidable challenges, the partners in earlier National Front governments were not 33

For a concise but comprehensive analysis of the politics of violence of the 1976–1980 period, see Sabri Sayarı and Bruce Hoffman, Urban Insurgency: The Turkish Case, 1976–1980 (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, Rand Note N-3228-USDP, 1991). 34 An excellent description and analysis of the 1971–1980 period with special emphasis on the 1977 period and Ecevit governments is Faruk Ataay, 12 Mart’tan 12 Eylül’e Kriz Kıskacındaki Türk Siyaseti ve 1978–1979 CHP Hükümeti (Ankara: DeKi, 2006).

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ready to form a new coalition. They were willing, however, to allow their former partner, Süleyman Demirel, to form a minority government. In this way, they may have wanted to enjoy the best of both worlds: If the government proved successful, they could claim the credit for having supported it, and if it failed, they could disavow any responsibility. Political violence continued to intensify, the economy encountered difficulties for lack of hard currency, while the warnings by the military that government and opposition needed to work to bring violence to an end went unheeded. On September 12, 1980, the military, within its existing chain of command, took over power once again. Before proceeding to recount politics under military rule, it may be useful to analyze the politics of the 1950–1980 period in order to understand why the civilian governments failed to work successfully and cope with major challenges facing society, and instead paved the way for military interventions.

E L E C T O R A L CY C L E S , F R A G M E N T A T IO N , A N D PO L A RI Z A T I O N An examination of Turkey’s politics between 1950 and 1980 reveals some near regularities. During this period there are three sub-periods, 1950–1960, 1961–1971, and 1973–1980, with one direct and one indirect military intervention in between them. As can be seen from Table 4.1, at the beginning of each sub-period is an election of transition: in 1950, it is a transition from a singleparty regime to political competition; in 1961 from military rule to electoral, and in 1973, from indirect military interventions to civilian politics. In the transitional election, votes are more widely dispersed than in the succeeding election (compare the index of fractionalization) where the leading party of the preceding election consolidates its position and the dispersal is narrowed down. This election may be called the election of consolidation. The exception is the elections of 1961 where the AP has received a slightly lower vote than the CHP, but won an impressive victory in 1965. This minor deviation derives probably from the fact that there was not enough time to fully organize before the election and more importantly from the fact that there was uncertainty as regards the extent that the military junta would allow the return to power of a party that appeared clearly to be a successor party to the DP from which the military had seized power. In the third election, which takes place in a tense atmosphere, the largest party tends to lose votes, the opposition gets stronger

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Table 4.1. Share of vote of parties and fractionalization in the parliament Years

vote of the largest party

vote of the major opposition

n of parties in parliament*

index of fraction**

1950

52.7

39.4

3

0.54

1954

57.6

35.4

3

0.52

1957

47.9

41.1

4

0.60

1961

36.7

34.8

4

0.71

1965

52.9

28.7

6

0.63

1969

46.5

27.4

8

0.70

1973

33.3

29.8

7

0.77

1977

41.4

36.9

6

0.68

* In addition to parties in some of the terms, independents were also elected to the parliament. ** This index has been developed by Douglas Rae in Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 56. The figures here have been calculated based on the distribution of the vote. The figures for 1961–1977 come from Ergun Özbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), p. 77. 1950–1957 have been calculated by the author.

and the votes get dispersed once again. This may be called an election of polarization, which is then succeeded by a military intervention. Here again, 1957 and 1969 fit the model, whereas before the elections that were to have been held in 1981, there was a military takeover. In other words, the military intervened before a national election of polarization could take place. But the by-elections of 1979 in which the AP won all the seats, conforms with the rule that the ruling party experiences losses in the election. Table 4.1 shows that the number of parties in the parliament has increased over time, pointing to a process of fragmentation. Part of this evolution may be explained by the fact that, as already indicated, Turkey went through rapid socioeconomic change during the period in question, particularly during the 1960–1980 interim. The movement of the population from rural areas to the cities, from agriculture to industry and services (see Table 4.2), and the increasing differentiation, produced a heterogeneous society, making it difficult for large parties to meet the needs and expectations of multifarious groups harboring contradictory interests, leading some to proceed to establish their own small parties. A greater part of the evolution, on the other hand, derived from the two actions of the military: that is, the closing of a political party by the military which led to the dispersal of the vote of that party among a number of contenders, and the introduction of a system of proportional representation that allowed smaller groups to achieve parliamentary representation. Finally, it may be pointed out that fragmentation produced the need for coalition

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Table 4.2. Increase of distribution of GNP among sectors 1923–1999 Year

% of growth

% of industry

% of agriculture

% rural pop

1923

—

10

43

76 (1927)

1930

87

9

47

77 (1935)

1940

58

14

45

76

1950

14

13

41

75

1960

82

16

38

68

1970

44

22

26

62

1980

33

23

22

56

The percentages for the economic indicators have been calculated from Oktay Yenal, Cumhuriyet’in İktisat Tarihi (İstanbul: Türkiye Sınai Kalkınma Bankası, 2000), p. 61. The original figures were in 1968 prices and Turkish liras. The population figures, on the other hand, have been calculated from the Population Census conducted by the Turkish Institute of Statistics.

governments, opening the way to smaller parties to wield more influence than the number of their deputies in the legislature would suggest, a reality that perpetuated the tendency to fragment and remain fragmented. The party system, during the period in question, was in flux. Parties were established and closed while some groups broke off from one party to form another. Each party wanted to make sure that its supporters would not defect to other parties. There were two ways to ensure cohesion of both the parliamentary party and the party as a broad organization including its voters. The first way was to get into a coalition and maximize opportunities for the dispensation of patronage. The second way, on the other hand, was to pursue a policy of polarization against your rivals to ensure that your supporters would not defect to other parties. The challenge to keep the troops together was more daunting than it may appear at first sight. Since many of the parties were newly established organizations, party identification among their supporters was not strong, making it easier to defect to a party in the same camp. Here, the expression “in the same camp” may call for an explanation. During this period as also later, a fundamental cleavage in Turkish politics continued to be the cultural divide between the westernized secular and the traditional provincial elites and masses.35 Those who identified themselves with one of the camps, when they were unhappy with the party they supported, appeared more willing to vote for other parties in their own camp rather than switch their vote to a party in the other camp; and hence, the tendency to fragment. For a brief but very clear analysis of what Ersin Kalaycıoğlu refers to as “kulturkampf,” see his Turkish Dynamics, pp. 50–3. 35

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But since each party also developed an institutional interest in survival once established, each had to assert its own distinct identity and keep both its members and voters within its own circle. Because people were not particularly willing to change camps, the efforts to strengthen party identification directed polarized politics as much against ideological relatives in coalition governments (as in the case of Nationalist Front governments) as against parties in the opposite camp. These considerations rendered politics highly volatile and governments unstable. Governments could not function as an integrated policy team. The expression Di Palma used to describe Italian politics at some point seems fit to describe how politics operated in Turkey particularly during the 1975–1980 period: “Surviving without governing.”36 While issues of economic prosperity were always present on the agenda, particularly after 1967 as political violence came to occupy the center stage, politics came to concentrate more and more on security. In the rivalry between the parties of the two camps, the right-wing parties that found favor with the traditional–provincial elites and masses, mobilized the communist threat as a scare item, securitizing the debate and moving it away from questions of distribution and particularly redistribution. Some segments of the urban–modern camp had, in fact, come to express themselves in some kind of socialist and usually Marxist terms. Filled with references to class struggle and revolution, their language was, however, hardly one of economic prosperity. It seemed that, be they Maoist or Leninist, those who claimed to subscribe to these ideologies, were more interested in being a part of the “vanguard of the proletariat” spearheading the “toiling masses,” leading one to speculate and ask if this did not constitute a substitute for the role the modernist bureaucratic elite played during the earlier period of the republic that had been undermined by democratic politics. Countering the “socialists” were the “nationalists” who were determined to defend the Turkish state against the “communists.” The Nationalist Front governments happily employed the street power of these Nationalists to keep the “Communists” under control, exaggerating that a Communist takeover in Turkey was a clear and present possibility. This left–right polarization gradually began to take hold among government employees, among them the police. There were constant rumors that the military might take over any moment to bring an end to this polarization and the bloodshed it produced. The top commanders, concerned that lower ranks would act if they failed to, issued invitations to the politicians to stop their

36

Guiseppe di Palma, Surviving without Governing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

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quarrels and offer effective government as the parliament continued to bicker on who to elect president after a hundred rounds of voting. Finally, on September 12, 1980, the military intervened once again under its existing chain of command. Yet another return to democratic politics thus came to an end.

....................

5

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The Rise and Fall of the Military as a Political Force The military intervention on September 12, 1980 was welcomed by a majority of the population. Law and order appeared to have totally broken down while politicians, bickering among themselves, had failed to remedy this unfortunate state of affairs and devise satisfactory solutions. The military set to work immediately. Curtailing civil liberties, and not hesitating to use force, it quickly brought to an end violence and acts of terrorism that had begun to claim up to a dozen lives daily. The military leaders were aware, however, that limiting their intervention to the termination of violence through the employment of extraordinary means such as the imposition of a state of siege, curfews, and sealing city quarters for searches using military forces in lieu of less reliable and competent police would not constitute a long-term solution. They had little confidence, on the other hand, that a return to political competition with the pre-intervention political actors and arrangements would be successful. The military had intervened twice before; they had produced an entirely new constitution and then trimmed its liberal aspects, arguing that this was in the interest of maintaining law and order, but had, nevertheless, failed to ensure the permanent restoration of orderly politics. This time, their intervention turned out to be both longer and more comprehensive.

A N I N TE RVE N T I O N T O E N D AL L I N T E RV E NT I O N S The Background The main aim of the 1980 junta led by General Evren was to achieve stability. To achieve that, terrorism had to be brought under control, the economy be put on a course of growth, and finally measures devised such that the conditions that had warranted the military intervention would not come back.1 1 The same points are also raised by William Hale, “Transitions to Civilian Governments in Turkey: The Military Perspective,” in Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin, eds., State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), p. 160.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/3/2015, SPi

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This was a more daunting challenge than had been the case during the earlier interventions. The authors of the 1961 Constitution had believed that a liberal constitution would bring Turkey peace and stability. They had thought that the core problem they encountered was the authoritarian policies of Prime Minister Menderes. The governing DP had blocked the channels of political change. Their job was to open them by preparing a new constitution with institutions and guarantees that would put the country back on the democratic path. The coalition of state elites perceived it to be their duty to protect the basic values of the republic. The universities, the judiciary, much of the press, and professional associations, as well as the major opposition RPP, were seen as allies whose support could be counted on for achieving this mission. The liberal constitution, which gave autonomy to some institutions, put legal checks on lawmakers, and extended protection to bureaucrats, aimed to prevent the elected government from pressuring the state elites into obedience in its endeavors that might compromise the values of the republic for their political ends. The commanders who had issued the March 12, 1971 ultimatum demanding constitutional changes so as to place limitations on liberties and enhance the powers of government, continued to feel that constitutional and legal manipulation would be important to restore order. But the conditions and the environment under which they staged their indirect intervention differed from those of 1960 in significant ways. First, there was sustained violence which expressed its goals and justified its actions in ideological terms. On the one side were leftist movements that had begun to reflect the multifarious varieties of thinking that prevailed around the world at the time, from Marxist–Leninist and Stalinist to Maoist. While fighting also among themselves, these “true believers” were united in their aspiration to challenge the government that they considered to be a pawn of capitalist-imperialism through violent means. On the other side were the Nationalists, whose ideological credentials were based on being anti-communist. They perceived a clear link between the social democratic CHP, the various Leftist movements, and the Soviets that they thought to be historical enemies of Turkey, occupiers of the historical homeland of the Turkish (i.e. Turkic) peoples and still interested in achieving control over Turkey in order to reach the warm seas. The right-wing governments, confused as regards what to do, viewed rightwing violence with ambivalent favor as an antidote to the left, generating a mirror image approach among the parties of the left with the RPP leading the way, that right-wing extremism could somehow be balanced by similar forces on the left. The soldiers themselves were strongly anti-communist, not so much for reasons of ideology as for fears of Soviet designs on Turkey. This led them to distance themselves from the RPP which they had earlier seen as an

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ally. In fact, when the indirect coup itself came, while İnönü, the veteran leader of the RPP agreed, if without enthusiasm, to support the establishment of the above-party government that the generals wanted, the party’s secretary general, Bülent Ecevit, resigned, arguing that the coup was aimed at him and his efforts to redefine the ideological orientation of the party as left of center.2 Second, it seems that some of the high-ranking generals had been preparing a coup that aimed to bring about a radical transformation of Turkish society which, predictably, would necessitate long-term military rule. Unlike the 1960 intervention, the perpetrators were all generals, including some force commanders. But like the 1960 intervention, it was outside the established institutional framework which, therefore, was likely to lead to rifts and ensuing quarrels among the military leadership. To prevent an open break, the commanders had to take some kind of immediate action. Quickly, on March 12, 1971, it was decided that they would ask Prime Minister Demirel to resign, to be followed by the forming of an above-party government but backed by the parliament which would be charged with addressing problems of violence that the outgoing government had failed to deal with effectively. Part of the solution as already conceived by the military was effecting changes in the constitution and the laws.3 Judging in retrospect, this method of indirect intervention had not proven effective. While an elected parliament displayed outward acquiescence vis à vis the military leadership, implementation of changes was slow. In a period of slightly more than two years, no less than four governments were formed. The constitution and some laws were amended; the liberties that the citizens enjoyed were clipped. Terrorist violence was reduced by placing much of the country under martial law, using indiscriminately the coercive powers of the state, and speedily administering military justice. But, the elected officials were eager to return to politics as usual without being dictated new demands by the commanders. The military, having allowed the existing parliament to stay, had not only recognized its legitimacy, but had also tacitly agreed that parliamentary elections would take place on time. In order to project its oversight role past the elections, in addition to introducing changes that enhanced its autonomy which will be taken up later, the military leadership tried to pressure the parliament to elect the chief of staff, General Gürler, as president to replace General Sunay, whose term was coming to an end. The political leaders pretended to extend their consent, but in secret balloting, the general could not achieve the required majority. A retired admiral, Fahri S. Korutürk, not associated with the existing military establishment, was finally agreed on as the next president. The elections gave the RPP whose 2 3

Hale, Turkish Military and Politics (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 195. For an account, see Hale, Turkish Politics, pp. 189–93.

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new leader Bülent Ecevit had openly resisted the indirect intervention a victory, though not enough to form a majority.

The September 12, 1980 Intervention By the time the 1980 intervention came, the military leadership had lost hope that confining their actions to the legal domain would be sufficient to achieve stability. During the 1973–1980 interim, they had seen that while the politicians might have managed to remain within the letter of the constitution and the laws, their behavior had led to what they saw as disastrous outcomes that eliminated what the soldiers hoped to be the positive results of their intervention. Ineffective, do-nothing coalitions, fragmented parties bickering among themselves, a declining economy, and most importantly terror were all back. This was in remarkable contrast to the military itself which had enhanced its prestige as a result of a successful intervention in Cyprus in 1974 in response to a coup engineered by the junta ruling mainland Greece that installed in the place of the elected president of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, an adventurer who wanted to unite the island with the “mother country.” In contrast to earlier experiences, in 1980, the top command team did not contain members who wanted to stage a comprehensive intervention so as to bring about such revolutionary changes as land reform, the nationalization of economic enterprises, and the redefinition of Turkey’s place in the world. A wing of the junta in 1960 as well as some of the commanders whose plans were eventually frustrated in March 1971 had hoped, in fact, to do exactly those things. Rather, the possibility of clandestine activity by lower ranking officers was important in 1980 in directing the military to intervene as an institution so as to preserve Turkey’s cohesion and integrity.4 In fact, trying to avert the continuation of conditions that would invite its intervention, the top command issued a series of warnings to politicians to work together to address terrorism and other critical problems, insinuating that otherwise they would be compelled to intervene. The commanders opined that a fundamental reconstruction of the political order and the body politic was needed to reset Turkish society on the “correct” cf. İlter Turan, “Less Military May Not Mean More Democracy,” German Marshall Fund of the United States, On Turkey Reports, March 9, 2010, p. 2. Kemal Karpat, in his “Military Interventions: Army–Civilian Relations in Turkey Before and After 1980,” in Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin, State, Democracy and the Military, p. 151 reminds us that General Evren had to render frequent visits to troops to ensure that rank and file officers would remain within the boundaries of the existing chain of command. 4

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path. The political parties and the governments of the pre-intervention period were discredited in the eyes of the public, reducing the potential appeal of domestic resistance they might expect to encounter, but nevertheless, a “democratic façade”5 had to be maintained for a variety of reasons. The citizens, despite the problems that it sometimes produced, continued to feel that democracy was their preferred form of government. The military itself was cognizant of the fact that the initial public support which it was accorded was based on the belief that its intervention was temporary and that it would lead the country back to democratic governance once it solved the problems that had warranted its intervention. Furthermore, the military had an ideological commitment to democracy in an interesting way. The Turkish armed forces harbored what may be described as two discordant traditions: serving as the protector of the republican state and serving as the leader of Turkish modernization. While protecting the republican state was a security concern which, so the military leadership felt, arose in part from the practice of democracy; modernization was interpreted mainly as becoming like Western European societies, a prominent characteristic of which is democratic governance.6 Therefore, doing permanently away with democracy constituted an ideological anathema that should be avoided. Rather, democracy had to be sustained, but adjusted in such a way that it would not threaten national security. Finally, its international relations did not allow Turkey to maintain nondemocratic forms of government for long periods without undermining the continuation of those relations. In fact, the difficulties Turkey encountered at the European Parliament of the Council of Europe after the 1980 takeover which eventually led to the suspension of Turkish representation in the European Parliament until competitive politics were restored, constituted an indicator of difficulties that might also be encountered at other international forums in the future. Under the circumstances, the military leadership developed a multi-stage program to deal with the immediate contingencies and to design a stable political future for the country. Understandably, the violence had to be addressed before all else. What, on the other hand, should the future look like? To begin with, the commanders judged that Turkey needed a new constitution, one that would not only provide solutions to the problems that 5

The expression is borrowed from Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics: Bridge Across Troubled Lands (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), p. 127. 6 This point is convincingly made in İhsan Dağı, “Democratic Transition in Turkey, 1980–1983: The Impact of European Diplomacy,” in Sylvia Kedourie, ed., Turkey: Identity, Democracy, Politics (London: Frank Cass, 1996), p. 124.

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had been encountered during the 1960–1980 interim, but one that would also project the visions and the oversight functions of the military into the future when competitive politics would be restored. Next, the party system had to be restructured such that it would no longer produce highly fragmented parliaments which, in turn, produced highly unstable coalitions. The party system should also be cleared of the parties that represented political ideas that were seen as security threats to the republic including “religious reaction,” varieties of communism, racism, and Kurdish separatism. The narrowing of the ideological spectrum of political parties would also apply to civil-society organizations. Third, society should be depoliticized. The commanders judged that the polarization of political life prior to their intervention owed much to the overpoliticization of society. All organizations and associations, irrespective of their purpose, had taken on political coloring. Even organizations that were established for charitable purposes were replicated on the basis of ideology, so that rather than exercising a tempering influence on political conflicts, they inadvertently reinforced them. The termination of violence was achieved with efficiency but by employing highly authoritarian means. The military moved on politically based acts of terrorism committed by both right and left-wing organizations and managed to bring much of it under control in a short time.7 Cognizant of the fact that acts of terrorism were committed in an environment in which the perpetrators received support from concentric support circles, the military complemented its antiterror campaign by carrying out a comprehensive wave of arrests: Within six weeks of the coup, 11,500; by the end of 1980, 30,000; and within one year of the coup 122,600 people had been arrested.8 The time had come to move on with achieving the long-term stability of political life and the political system.

R E C ON S T R UC T IN G T UR K E Y’ S CO MP E TI T I V E P O L I T I C S : S E A R C H I N G FO R S T A B I L I T Y The military leadership had to devise an interim system of government as well as an institutional framework within which constitutional and other legal 7

Eric J. Zürcher, in his Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993), p. 294, says terrorist acts diminished by 90 percent, without indicating the time span within which this drop occurred. It is to be added that the National Security Committee did not hesitate to put, for example, Alpaslan Türkeş, the head of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and his entourage behind bars for having organized and supported right-wing terrorist youth gangs that called themselves Ülkücü or “Idealists.” 8 Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 294.

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changes could be implemented. Although the National Security Committee, comprising the chief of staff, General Evren; the commanders of the army, air force, navy, and the gendarmerie; and several other top commanders, would be the final decision makers, a council of ministers was needed to run the daily affairs of government. After initially searching for an acceptable politician to lead the cabinet, in the end, the junta settled on a retired admiral, Bülent Ulusu, who had no political credentials, and a team of technicians.9 For the constitution and law-making process, on the other hand, a 160-member Consultative Assembly selected by the junta or nominated by the provincial governors it had appointed, gathered in the capital in October 1981 and began its deliberations. Not surprisingly, whatever the legislature decided was subject to the approval of the National Security Committee,10 together with whom it constituted the Constituent Assembly.11 In contrast to the making of the 1961 Constitution during which there was much debate among intellectual circles and to some extent among the public, the making of the 1982 Constitution was not as open a process. A 15-member committee headed by a law professor from İstanbul University was given the job of preparing a draft which would then be viewed by the National Security Committee. The new constitution and the laws that would be enacted along with it would aim to build and sustain long-term political stability. The committee announced that the new constitution would be submitted to a public referendum in the fall of 1982 and that elections would be held the following year. The program was carried out as planned with the new constitution approved by 91 percent of the voters in November 1982. Elections were held in November 1983 as promised. The general frame of thinking that gave direction to the constitution and law-making process was one of trying to devise a system that would make the repetition of the pre-1980 developments impossible. Since political parties and over-politicization of society were identified as major sources of instability, both received much “restrictive” attention in the law-making process. Article 14 of the 1982 Constitution dealing with individual liberties confined the ideological domain of politics to the central values of the republic. Accordingly, individual freedoms could not be used to challenge the national unity and the territorial integrity of the republic, to abrogate the fundamental Karpat, “Military Interventions.” To avoid confusion, it should be pointed out that the National Security Committee, as the junta itself called it (Milli Güvenlik Konseyi in Turkish) was different from the constitutional body, the National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu) that was first established in the 1961 Constitution and remained in the 1982 Constitution with enhanced powers. 11 Hale, Turkish Politics, p. 256. 9

10

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freedoms themselves, to establish the rule of a person or a specific group, to have one social class establish domination over others, to promote divisions based on race, language, religion or sect, or to advocate a regime based on such divisions. The essence of the article was repeated again in Article 68 referring to political parties. Although political parties were depicted as indispensible institutions of democratic life and could be established without prior permission from the government, their statutes and programs could not be in conflict with “the principles of national unity and the territorial integrity of the state, human rights, national sovereignty and the democratic/secular characteristic of the republic.”12 In addition, no parties advocating domination of society by a group and the establishment of a dictatorship could be founded. These provisions were repeated and elaborated in the Political Parties Law that defined the scope of ideologies that were allowable in political competition. The generals were concerned about communism, Kurdish separatism, and religious reaction. Elaborate wording of the laws was mainly aimed at addressing these contingencies. Similar reservations were already present, if not as comprehensively, in the pre-1980 Constitution and laws such that these changes did not mark a fundamental shift in the narrow, restrictive approach to competitive politics shaped by security considerations but rather its intensification. The greater departures from past practice were aimed at depoliticization of society, placing severe constraints on democratic governance in the process. Articles 33, 34, 52, and 54 of the new constitution prohibited voluntary associations and labor unions from pursuing political goals and engaging in political activities as well as from developing links with political parties, cooperating or coordinating their activities with them, or receiving or giving aid to them. Corresponding restrictions were also imposed on political parties where they were banned from developing ties with voluntary associations and labor unions, receiving aid from or giving aid to them. Furthermore, parties were banned from establishing youth, women’s, and other similar branches.13 While the concern with reducing the intense politicization that was a concomitant of polarization in society may be understood in light of experiences of the immediate past, the changes made it impossible for a democratic system to function well, since political parties could not by themselves meet the interest aggregation and articulation needs of societies. This holds true for Turkish political parties to this day as they continue to be rather narrowly based organizations with limited numbers of active members. This summary comes mainly from İlter Turan, “Political Parties and the Party System in Post1983 Turkey,” in Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin, eds., State, Democracy and the Military, p. 69. 13 Heper and Evin, State, Democracy and the Military, p. 70. 12

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The changes in the laws, in addition to reducing politicization, also tried to favor the evolution of a new party system, preferably with two parties. To that end, organizational requirements for parties to take part in elections were rendered stringent. The law on national election of deputies stipulated that a party had to have been organized and held its conventions in half (later twothirds) of the provinces six months prior to the election. Another barrier that favored the evolution of large, national parties was the introduction of a national threshold of 10 percent that a party had to achieve in order to place any deputies in the parliament. The effect of this barrier was further enhanced by a district level threshold.14 Reducing the number of parties in the legislature and therefore the need for coalition governments was expected to enhance the stability of governments. Stability, however, was such a prevailing concern that it escaped the attention of the lawmakers that representativeness was being wholly overlooked, carrying the potential of injecting a new element of instability into the system in the long run. Finally, other problematical aspects of party life received attention. For example, Article 84 of the new constitution tried to penalize those who had changed parties, an act that always threatened the stability of coalition governments.15 Some provisions were added to the constitution and the pertinent laws to render parties internally more democratic institutions. These included the introduction of term limits to party leadership and placing party membership rosters under the oversight of the sub-provincial election committees that included the members of the judiciary to ensure that all members could participate in local party conventions. The Constitutional Court would decide the fate of political parties that violated provisions of the constitution and laws, and conduct an annual review of their accounts. The generals had wanted to make sure that old politics would be buried in history for ever. After some indecision as regards what to do with the existing parties, they decided to close them. On October 16, 1981, all political parties were closed. Furthermore, a temporary provision added to the constitution banned the presidents, secretary-generals, and members of the executive committees of all political parties that were in existence at the time of the military intervention from participating in politics for the next ten years starting in October 1982 when the constitution was ratified.16 Then came a Turan, “Political Parties, p. 71. For the phenomenon of party changing and its outcomes, see İlter Turan, “Changing Horses in Midstream: Party Changers in the Turkish National Assembly,” Legislative Studies Quarterly, X:1 (February 1985), pp. 21–34; and İlter Turan, Şeref İba, and Ayşe Zarakol, “InterParty Mobility in the Turkish Grand National Assembly: Curse or Blessing?” European Journal of Turkish Studies, 3 (2005), , accessed November 17, 2014. 16 Hale, Turkish Politics, p. 260. 14 15

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final blow in the form of a provisional article in the Political Parties Law that went into effect in April 1983 which extended to the National Security Committee the right to veto the founding members of newly established political parties. This gave the generals the power to prevent political parties that were just in the process of getting organized from completing the formalities required to participate in the forthcoming elections: parties needed to submit to the ministry of the interior the names of forty founders who were already approved by the National Security Committee. Only those parties the generals favored got forty names approved.17 Did the generals favor some political parties? As often expressed by General and then President Evren (he had been elected president for a seven-year term as part of the constitutional referendum in 1982) who had not made it a secret, his vision was that of a two-party system with one on the moderate left and the other on the moderate right. Parties that appeared in some way to be connected with or appeared to be a continuation of the pre-1980 parties were not allowed to compete. Two new parties that seemed to be favored by the generals (by being allowed to compete in the elections) were not led by persons with political experience but by high-ranking bureaucrats. On the right, the Nationalist Democracy Party (Milliyetçi Demokrasi Partisi or MDP), was headed by retired general Turgut Sunalp; on the left, the People’s Party (Halkçı Parti or HP) was led by Necdet Calp, a ministry of interior man who had served as a provincial governor and then as the undersecretary of the prime ministry. Under the circumstances, it came as a surprise that a third party led by Turgut Özal, a high-ranking economics bureaucrat with private-enterprise experience who had served as a deputy prime minister responsible for the economy until July 1982, was also allowed to compete. One possibility appears to be that the generals allowed Mr Özal into the race because they did not think he had much of a chance.18 No party escaped, however, the fate of having a substantial number of their candidates vetoed by the generals before they could finalize their tickets. The campaign was open and lively. The two parties that had the blessing of the Presidential Council (the members of the National Security Committee had assumed that position through the constitutional referendum) conducted rather insipid campaigns. In contrast, Turgut Özal, who was identified as one of the architects of Turkey’s recovery from the economic crisis of 1979–1980 generated much attention, especially by suggesting, on the one hand, that his party was integrating pre-1980 political movements into one, and on the other hand, that he would put a rein on the power of the bureaucracy about which

17

Hale, Turkish Politics, p. 262.

18

Hale, Turkish Politics, p. 265.

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every Turkish citizen complained. The election showed that Mr Özal’s Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi or ANAP) had carried the day, getting 45.2 percent of the vote. The People’s Party had come in second with 30.5 percent, with General Sunalp a poor third with 23.3 percent. ANAP had won enough seats to form the government by itself. Turkey had gone through another transition from military to civilian rule. The military intervention had brought respite to the unstable political environment that had prevailed prior to the intervention, but as will be seen later, the generals’ dream of reshaping Turkey’s politics along entirely new lines such that it would no longer produce instability was premature.

P R O J E C T ING TH E O V E RSIGH T OF THE M IL ITARY INTO T H E FU T UR E Although, as we have seen, the Turkish military has staged interventions and has assumed political power on three occasions, these have been temporary. Attempts by cliques with comprehensive programs of revolutionary transformation of society and its politics that would necessitate long-term military rule have been arrested by the soldiers themselves. Beginning from the time of the transition to competitive politics, the Turkish military has generally preferred to maintain a veto power in politics, mainly delineating the ideological borders within which elected civilian governments may operate, rather than getting into the business of running the daily affairs of government. When it has assumed power directly or indirectly, its intervention has been in the nature of guardianship, limited to achieving specific goals or outcomes, after which a return to regime oversight is assumed.19 The reasons for the Turkish military not to stay in power but to confine its role to a veto group derive from a set of reasons some of which have already been identified. For example, it has already been noted that understandings of modernity inculcated into Turkish soldiers from early on have been based on a democratic form of government. It has also been said that Turkey’s international linkages make it difficult for the country to be under prolonged military rule and at the same time sustain these ties. But, other factors also need to be taken into consideration. To begin with, the Turkish military is a highly professional organization that has a clearly perceived external defense mission. The military leadership is “keenly aware that involvement in daily 19

The three roles of veto group (moderator), guardian, and ruler come from Eric Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1977), pp. 21–6.

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domestic politics draws attention away from this mission” and is dysfunctional in terms of military preparedness. Within the military such awareness generates pressures to limit the duration of interventions. Second, interventions create challenges for the internal solidarity of the military. In addition to the inevitable competition for acquiring political positions and power (more evident in 1960 and in 1971 than in 1980), interventions tend to stop the ordinary procedures for promotions and retirement in the armed forces. Once an intervention is staged, top commanders either do not retire or continue to maintain a commanding political position until the intervention is concluded. This sometimes leads to the untimely retirement of younger generals who have, inevitably, entertained expectations that they would achieve higher and possibly the highest command posts in the system. Such a situation not only undermines morale but generates dissatisfaction among the cadres of higher ranking officers. In a similar vein, the assumption of explicitly political roles by the military leadership opens them to extensive contact with civilians, bringing with it the potential of corruption. Third, the willingness of citizens to yield to military rule, often strict and unresponsive to their daily needs, in contrast to the times of electoral politics, derives from their belief that the intervention is temporary.20 And in fact, during the three interventions that we have so far looked at, in each case, from the very beginning the military junta announced that its intervention was temporary, and soon after its assumption of power, made public a tentative schedule to hold national elections and make a transition to democracy. The length of a military intervention has been determined by the nature of the conditions that have led to it and what the military leaders have thought needs to be done before their departure, but there exists a keen awareness that their tenure is limited. This poses a dilemma for military leaders. They make new rules and develop new institutions in order to solve the problems that have invited their intervention in the first instance, but how can they be sure that those who get elected in the election of transition to civilian politics, and others that eventually succeed them, will behave in ways that are in conformity with their expectations? Even before tending to such concerns, however, there is the immediate problem that those who have conducted the intervention want to be assured that they will not be penalized for having taken over power by extra-ordinary means and having done things that may have inflicted hardships on politicians and other segments of society during their tenure. This problem is usually

These points all come from İlter Turan, “The Military in Turkish Politics,” Mediterranean Politics, II:2 (Autumn 1997), pp. 133–4. 20

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taken care of by exit guarantees. In 1960, members of the junta were given judicial immunity for their actions. In addition, the leader of the junta, General Gürsel, became president while the rest were made lifetime members of the newly created senate. In 1971, since the intervention was indirect, life returned to normal after elections. In 1980, while the chief of staff was elected the president, the force commanders became members of a temporary body called the “Presidential Council.” A provisional article in the new constitution assured them that their actions could not be challenged in court. Exit guarantees, however, do not provide an answer to the projection of the political will of the military past its intervention. For the military to maintain a veto role, two conditions must be met. First, the military must be able to maintain its autonomy vis à vis the institutions and the cadres of electoral politics. And second, instruments and institutions need to be created through which the military may exercise influence in politics within the framework of ordinary political processes. After the 1960 intervention, a number of institutions and practices were gradually developed that expanded the autonomy of the armed forces. For example, in 1972 a High Military Council (Yüksek Askeri Şura) was established by law. This body, comprised exclusively of commanders save the minister of defense whose place in government protocol was below that of the chief of staff, decided on all major promotions in the military as well as expulsions from the profession, with no recourse to judicial review. Civilian governments usually rubber stamped its decisions. In the same year, a High Military Court of Administrative Appeals was created, removing the judicial review of military administration to outside of the civilian judicial process. Through a change in the constitution, crimes committed under martial law administration would now be handled by military courts, although the proper venue would clearly have been civilian courts. The jurisdiction of the military courts was broad and covered, among others, even civilians who made critical remarks about the military or those who were conscientious objectors. Furthermore, a system of State Security Courts was created to deal with crimes committed against the state such as terrorism, broadly defined. These courts had military judges as members. The armed forces, mobilizing arguments that it was a question of national security, did not permit its budget to be discussed as part of the open national budget-making process in the legislature. But, after 1972, it also escaped judicial review of its finances by the Court of Audits, the body that discharges this function on behalf of the legislature. In addition, the production and purchase of military equipment was conducted by the military without civilian

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participation in the process. The military had its own system of intelligence which it did not share with other agencies of a similar nature.21 As can be seen, in many areas, the military abstracted its activities and operations from the oversight of civilian political institutions. The root document of the autonomy of the military was the so-called Internal Service Law of 1967, a provision of which authorized the armed forces to defend the republic against external and internal threats. This provision, “generously” interpreted, constituted the grounds on which the military based its prerogative to offer political guidance in areas that are considered to be within the domain of civilian politics in other democratic systems. The military, again from 1960 onwards, created a set of institutions and instruments through which it found opportunities to project its political will past the military interventions. The most prominent instrument was the National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu or MGK). Created initially in the 1961 Constitution, this body was intended to offer a forum to discuss matters of national security between the appropriate ministers in government and the commanders of the armed forces. In 1973, its functions were expanded to include making recommendations to the government. In 1982, a new law was enacted, reorganizing the MGK. In the restructured body more members came from the military than the government and civilian bureaucracy. The new MGK was empowered to make recommendations to the government on questions of national security to which the government would accord priority consideration. Cizre points to the fact that the scope of the security concerns of the MGK far exceeded those that might be expected of such a body. The rather broad definition of security included such diverse topics as the curriculum of schools, the broadcast hours of state television, and the nature of electoral alliances between parties in elections.22 As we shall see later, the MGK played an extraordinary political role in the country’s politics during the 1990s. The continuity of the political role of the military was secured in the 1980 intervention, and also in part by the election of Kenan Evren as the president of the republic. After 1960, a pattern had already begun to evolve that the president would be a person of high military rank whose impartiality would not be questioned because he would be coming from an above-politics, state21

Two sources offer excellent analyses of the political autonomy of the Turkish military from which this discussion has indirectly benefited. Ümit Cizre, “The Anatomy of the Turkish Military’s Political Autonomy,” Comparative Politics, 29:2 (January 1997), pp. 151–66, and Ergun Özbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), pp. 107–20. 22 Ümit Cizre, “Anatomy,” p. 158.

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service background. Although tailored to the immediate needs of the military rulers, in the 1982 Constitution, the institution of the presidency was also shaped under the assumption that future presidents would continue to come from a non-political and, most likely, from military backgrounds. It is with such expectation the president was given extensive powers of appointment of judges to the Constitutional Court as well as the head and many members of the Council on Higher Education and some other key posts in the bureaucracy. In this way, the military leadership of the 1980–1983 intervention hoped that they would be able to project the power of the military into politics after the conclusion of their active intervention. The commanders were confident that they had made satisfactory arrangements which would give them the instruments through which they could play the role of the veto group without having to assume political power directly, a course of action that had become more difficult to sustain in view of Turkey’s relations with the EU and the end of the Cold War that had led to the decline in the toleration of authoritarian regimes in general. The commanders had broadened the definition of security so as to cover all major aspect of public life. They did not appreciate sufficiently that forces undermining the power position of the military had been operating for some time, rendering the very arrangement they had made increasingly difficult to sustain.

T H E M I L I T A R Y AN D E L E C T E D PO L I T I C I A N S : T H E PENDULUM SWINGS BACK AND F ORTH It needs no telling at this point in our discussion that the political role of the military in Turkish politics has changed and varied over time. Some of the variation is contextual. For example, the role of the military which reaches a climax during an intervention inevitably declines as the military disengages in favor of a return to electoral politics. But, gaining momentum during recent years, a secular trend has emerged leading to a more sustained decline in the military’s political role. These two processes operate together, but for purposes of analysis, it is important to distinguish between them. Let me begin by a discussion of contextual changes and then engage in an analysis of the secular trend. As noted above, the elections of 1983 had produced a one-party government by ANAP in an election where parties that were thought to have links with parties of the past were not allowed to compete. The voters had judged that a successful election with limited choice was the price to pay for the

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departure of the military from power and the restoration of competitive politics, and had acquiesced in voting for parties they probably would not have voted for in a more open election. In 1984, municipal elections were to be held. By this time, with civilian politics restored, the military leadership, now in civilian clothes,23 had dropped its gatekeeping role regarding which parties would be allowed to complete the formalities to come into legal existence and take part in the elections. The newcomers included the Social Democrats (SODEP) claiming the heritage of the historical CHP, the True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi or DYP) representing the heritage of Süleyman Demirel’s pre-1980 AP, the religious Welfare Party (Refah Partisi or RP) tied to the MSP, as well as others with links to pre-1980 politics. The elections, although presumably only local, showed that the two parties favored by the military had no roots in society, while the old parties in new form were well received. This anomaly of having parliamentary parties with little support among voters and outside parties with significant voter support but no parliamentary representation soon got corrected. The People’s Party (HP) merged with the SODEP to form the Social Democratic People’s Party (Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti or SHP). Many deputies from the Nationalist Democracy party (MDP), on the other hand, left their parties mainly to join the governing ANAP. In this way, an anomaly deriving from the desire of the military leadership to construct an entirely new party system disappeared. The elections of 1987 confirmed that this new realignment was well received by the electorate. Again, the ANAP led the elections though its share of the vote declined. The high electoral threshold with a greater dispersal of the vote, however, gave it an even larger parliamentary majority than in 1983. Again with a one-party government under Turgut Özal, domestic peace continued to prevail. The economy was plagued with high rates of inflation; but nevertheless, growth was taking to place, if unevenly. In 1987, the ten-year ban on the leading cadres of the pre-1980 parties was lifted by a public referendum, making it possible for the reconstituted pre1980 parties to get their old leaders back. The exception was the RPP leader Bülent Ecevit who had chosen to sever his ties with his party and establish his Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti or DSP). As politics assumed its normal course, the end of the term of President Evren in 1989 came and went under peaceful circumstances as somewhat of a non-event. Prime Minister Özal immediately offered his candidacy. Although he did not enjoy the 23 The National Security Committee had transformed itself into the Presidential Council as part of the constitution that was ratified in October 1982. After the elections, these gentlemen turned into a more genuine civilian team while the military functions were assumed by professional soldiers on active duty.

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support of the opposition, his party had enough votes in the parliament to have him elected in the third round when the qualified majority requirement came down to one of simple majority. This outcome, of course, was a significant deviation from the conceptualization of the office as formed by the military where the president would be an above-party person representing the state rather than politics; but then, civilian politics were prevailing now, and the military had no persuasive reason to challenge a choice which was within the power of the Grand National Assembly. The conditions, in fact, allowed Prime Minister Özal, prior to his being elected president, to challenge a reserved domain of the military and appoint as chief of staff another general than the one the High Military Council planned. He continued his challenge as president and forced the then chief of staff to resign regarding a conflict on making facilities available to allies and sending troops to Iraq in the Gulf War. The elections of 1991 ended eight years of ANAP rule, bringing in a DYP– SDP coalition. The new coalition worked reasonably well, and the election of Prime Minister Demirel as president in 1993 upon the unexpected death of President Özal was realized without significant political turmoil. In 1991, with an expectant and supportive international context, it proved possible to introduce liberalizing changes in the laws without significant reaction from the military. For example, some articles of the Turkish Criminal Code were modified so that it was now possible to establish organizations that defended Marxist ideas or wanted to render religion the basis of a political order. Similarly, the use of Kurdish that the soldiers had banned was allowed again, to the dissatisfaction of the latter.24 These developments demonstrate the contextual aspect of the power of the military. When the government was one party or a harmonious coalition government, politics was able to satisfy the needs of governance, putting the elected civilians in a better position to prevail in politics and exercise control of the military. By the same token, as governments became weaker and unable to perform the basic functions well as in the case of the post-1995 coalition governments, the military felt better placed to attempt to give direction to politics, as the developments after the elections of 1995 showed. The 1991 election results had already signaled the return of the problematical tendency of fragmentation in national politics. With severe threshold barriers, only three parties had made it to the parliament in the 1987 elections. The number had gone up to five in 1991, a number that remained the same 24

See Hale, Turkish Politics, pp. 289–91.

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after the elections of 1995 and 1999 before dropping down to two in 2002. The index of fractionalization of the vote, on the other hand, kept increasing from 0.75 in 1987 to 0.79, 0.83, and 0.85 respectively in the 1991, 1995 and 1999 elections.25 Such fragmentation, it may be suggested, was in part the doing of the military itself. The closing of political parties during military interventions invited the emergence of several parties that wanted to claim the legacy of the defunct parties. Although in the long run some parties may have been more successful than others in doing that, sufficient institutional interest may have evolved for the less successful, smaller parties to continue to exist. Yet it would be too simple to credit the tendency to fragment exclusively to the military. It is also to be remembered that if a party achieves parliamentary representation, then it may become a partner in a coalition, often extracting a higher return than its numbers might suggest for its participation, a reality that also encouraged fragmentation. Finally, the wide dispersal of the vote over an extended period, namely from 1973 to 2002, with a military-introduced interim during 1983–1991, reflects the heterogeneity of cleavages and interests that socioeconomic change produced during those years. We will have more to say on this point in Chapter 6, “Interactions among Society, Economy and Politics: Change and Democratization.” Two major developments that gained momentum during the post-1995 coalitions made it possible for the military to enhance its power position in politics. First, a Marxist Kurdish organization, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or the PKK for short, began a rural-based campaign of terror against the Turkish state. Both Özal (1983–1989) and Demirel (1991–1993) governments had acknowledged that a Kurdish problem existed, but had not done much beyond that. They had called upon the military to bring terror to an end. Not experienced in irregular warfare, the military turned to its traditional instruments of dealing with civil disturbances. Much of the country was placed under a state of siege. State security courts, with loosely structured, not sufficiently substantiated cases, began to prosecute people for having assisted terrorists or for having engaged in terrorist propaganda. Some villages were simply evacuated and their residents were told to go elsewhere, with many graduating into the category of the urban poor, constituting a new recruiting ground for PKK. It is also becoming clear nowadays that the military developed some informal and uncontrolled security mechanisms that employed extra-legal means to fight terror. Particularly after mid-1993, the government led by the DYP leader Çiller left the problem of terror exclusively to the

These figures come from İlter Turan, “Unstable Stability: Turkish Politics at the Crossroads?”International Affairs, 83:2 (2007), p. 336. 25

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military and tried to accommodate all their demands in the hope that the ordeal might come to an end. This did not happen, but the political position of the military was enhanced since the government, reducing terror to an exclusively military challenge, had given the initiative to the soldiers and equipped them with powers that normally civilian administrators would be expected to wield. The ascent of military power enabled the commanders to address another subject which they considered a matter of security challenging the basic tenets of the republic. They felt that successive governments had been too accommodating to political movements committed to the expansion of the role of religion in public life. The problem had its origins in the inclusion of the religiously oriented MSP in Nationalist Front coalitions during the 1974–1980 period. Interestingly, the 1980 junta itself also promoted religion as an ideology that would be useful in countering the attractiveness of Marxist thinking on the youth, but they seemed intent on not accommodating it in political life. But after competitive politics was restored and the ANAP achieved power, to its surprise, the military leadership found the increasing manifestations of the growing public role of religion to be threatening the foundations of the republic. The military leadership felt that the improving electoral fortunes of the religious RP after 1991 to be particularly disconcerting. That the RP came out as the first party in the 1995 elections and founded a coalition government led by its leader Necmettin Erbakan was seen to be unacceptably problematical. In a meeting of the National Security Council in February 1997, the military leaders, after producing a list of acts that the commanders considered to be serious violations of secularism, pressured the prime minister to accept and implement a major change in educational policy, raising primary education to eight years, closing middle (junior high) schools, including the middle section of Preacher Training Schools, judging that these were the years during which non-secular socialization occurred intensely. By June of the same year, the prime minister was forced to resign.26 President Demirel then pressured the ANAP and DYP to form a coalition government, excluding the RP. Half a year later, early in 1998, came the decision of the Constitutional Court that the party had used religion for political ends, and was therefore closed down. Its leaders could not return to active politics for a period of five years. The Virtue Party (Fazilet or FP) was soon established to continue the tradition of the RP, but its grip on power was broken. An ANAP–DYP coalition with outside support from the DSP assumed power.

26

These developments are also recounted in Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, pp. 158–9.

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To conclude, when civilians failed in political leadership, the military expanded its political space, but when the former performed reasonably well, the military was less interventionist. Thus, the military pendulum swung toward or away from politics depending on how civilian administrations were doing. This is not to say that the military did not perceive a political role for itself and espoused ideologies at variance with those prevailing among the elected politicians: it is simply noting that at times context facilitates or sometimes even invites military interventions, and at other times stands in the way of them.

DEC LINING S UPPORT FOR T H E P OL I TIC AL R OL E OF THE MILITARY Apart from the rises and declines in the political role of the military in Turkish politics deriving from context, over time forces producing a secular trend favoring a decline in the military’s political role have begun to operate, particularly after 1980. As noted earlier, ever since the initial transition to competitive politics during 1946–1950, “Turkish politics has been characterized by fluctuating tensions between the institutions of the state and those of politics. As is widely known, in Turkish political jargon, institutions of state refer primarily to the military, the courts, the bureaucracy and the universities, while those of politics comprise the legislature and the council of ministers.”27 The men of state have assumed that certain political domains constitute matters of high politics, that is, matters of state, and should therefore remain outside the competence of elected politicians. Men of state were particularly sensitive about preserving the achievements of the republic in the domain of secularism, which they feared would be sacrificed by politicians in their ever continuing search for more votes. The men of state were a coalition of bureaucrats and urban intellectuals. Although the military was an important member of this coalition, until 1960, it was not the prevalent institution. Its role became indispensible after the 1960 intervention showed that the state elite would not be able to contain elected politicians without the active participation of the military. From that point on, it was the military that assumed the leadership of the institutions of the state in trying to keep the elected politicians within boundaries. The rise of the military to political prominence could be accounted for not only by its possession of the means of coercion but also because it was a highly professional organization that could not be easily penetrated from the outside, and 27

İlter Turan, “Less Military,” p. 1.

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had the capability to act as a united force, a quality that other institutions did not possess to the same degree. The professionalism and impenetrability were assets it shared with the judiciary and the foreign ministry. Other ministries were more vulnerable to encroachments by elected governments. Elected governments, after all, had the power to create new ministries, reorganize the existing ones, redefine their functions, and expand the number of people they employed. Therefore, many ministries were open to penetration and control by elected ministers, and over time, they had managed to make peace with the idea that their job was to help formulate and implement policies their political masters wanted. Much of the expansion of government after 1960 took place in ministries that were more open to civilian control. To summarize, many parts of the bureaucracy were the first to depart from the grand coalition of state elites. The universities, a major ally of the military during the 1960 intervention also lost their cohesive stance as part of the state elites over time. To begin with, as a place where it is natural to hold and openly express varieties of opinion, it was always a little difficult to count on the universities to support uniformly the policy choices of other state elites.28 The university administrations backed by a majority of the faculty, however, ensured that their institutions continued to be counted as state elite institutions. Over time, two developments undermined this stature. First, the government began to expand the university system. Initially slow, the number of universities began to expand rapidly, especially after 1980. The new universities, located in provincial capitals, blended in with their conservative milieu. The students and the faculty alike often came from provincial backgrounds and represented a different breed than the urban, urbane, and highly westernized faculty and “modernist” oriented students of the earlier universities who saw themselves as belonging to a network of “progressive” institutions associated with state elites. The university system became more heterogeneous, representing the plurality of political preferences in the country, thus moving away from forming an integral component of a conglomeration of “state” institutions. Their position was further complicated by the fact some students came to be associated with Kurdish separatism, a phenomenon that the military found exceptionally offensive. There was yet another development that moved the universities from being among the institutions of the state. After 1960, socialist, extreme nationalist, and politically oriented religious ideologies began to permeate faculty and 28 Suffice it to remember that at the height of university cooperation with the military in 1960–1961, a professor of constitutional law with sympathies toward the ousted DP government offered his candidacy for president against General Gürsel, the head of the National Unity Committee. He was forced by the military to withdraw his name.

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students. The military as the strongest and the best organized part of the state elites saw this as an undesirable development. Particularly as students became one of the leading elements in violent street politics while some members of the faculty mentored them in the fine points of this or that ideology, in the military mind, the universities graduated more into the category of problem than of ally. In fact, when the intervention of 1980 came, the universities became one of the targets of depoliticization policies and reform to tame them into “good behavior.” As Turkish society turned more heterogeneous through socioeconomic change and began to acquire a more pluralistic composition, this came to be reflected among what might be called the fellow travelers of the state elites such as bar associations, some professional chambers, and significant segments of the press corps. These became increasingly unreliable partners in defending “state” causes, and as suggested above, sometimes presented problems for the core of the state elites. Who, then, was included in the remaining core? The military was clearly at the center. The ministry of foreign affairs could be added to the core, but its duties were not concerned with internal affairs. There were also a number of organizations like the Council on Higher Education established after 1980, and the state broadcasting company. The military wielded some influence in these organizations and could initiate action through its representatives placed in their management, but the leadership of these organizations had to balance the expectations of the military with those of other centers of power in society, with elected governments leading the list. Then, there were the high courts, including the Council of State (administrative appeals), the Supreme Court of Appeals, and finally the Constitutional Court. State elite orientations prevailed in all these courts such that, when the interests of the state could be invoked, these courts would generally be inclined to protect state interests over the rights of the individual, even in the field of human rights. The changes Turkish society was undergoing were narrowing the base of the state elites. In view of this development, as the leader of the remaining hard core, the military became less flexible in its approach. Forcing its educational policy preferences on the government in 1997, preceded by a show of tanks rolling in the streets of a municipality that was hosting the Iranian ambassador for a religious play in the municipal theatre,29 and finally forcing the government to resign in mid-1997 were examples of this hard-line approach. It became known much later that a team called “Western Study Group” was formed within the general staff to monitor the activities of politicians as well as

29

Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, p. 157.

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government policies and actions that the soldiers considered to be in violation of the principle of secularism. The election in 2000 of Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the head of the Constitutional Court, who shared the hard-line secularist attitudes of the military, as president of the republic, when civilian politicians failed to agree on a person with a background politics, rendered it easier for the commanders to pursue their hard-line secularism. In this context, the outcome of the elections of 2002 presented an enigma. The winner was the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AKP), representing the lineage of Islamic politics. Its founders had mounted a challenge against the leader of FP, who was the protégé of Mr Erbakan, the founder of the movement, who was now on the sidelines, banned from politics for five years for having led to the closing of the RP. The FP had been established in 1997 to take the place of the RP in the event the latter was closed down by the Constitutional Court. That contingency became a reality in 1998 when the court did in fact close RP down for having used religion for political ends, with its “partyless” deputies joining the FP. In the meantime, a group of younger politicians in the party had concluded that Mr Erbakan’s policies had led the party down blind alleys. They challenged his candidate for FP’s leadership in May 2000 but lost by a small margin. When the FP was also closed for exploiting religion for political ends and being the continuation of a party that had already been closed for a similar offense, they proceeded to establish their own party, the AKP, and scored a major success in the elections, achieving enough seats to establish a one-party government.

The Coming of Civilian Control The clear-cut victory of the AKP represented an unqualified achievement of political power by a party whose ancestors had been forced to leave government by the military or closed down by the Constitutional Court. In earlier times, the military might have raised strong objections and tried to find formulae whereby the winner of the election might not be allowed to take office. But, in addition to the fact that the AKP, trying to avoid the mistakes of its lineage, had chosen to adopt the line of a democratic, market-oriented, conservative party, changes in three other domains: the growing relationship with the EU, the transformation of public attitudes, and the emergence of new orientations within the military itself, became driving forces of change in military–civilian relations.

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Although its links with the EU had started right after the latter’s birth and had culminated in an Association Treaty that depicted Turkey as obtaining membership after a period of preparation, Turkey had not been offered candidate status in the Luxembourg Summit of 1997. Its strong reaction to that decision produced a positive outcome in Helsinki in 1999 and from that date on Turkey became more attentive to EU expectations. For example, the military judges in state security courts that had been a cause for complaint in the 1997 report on Turkey’s performance were removed prior to the EU Helsinki Summit to impress upon the EU that their recommendations were valued. Similarly, in 2001, Article 118 of the constitution was changed to increase the number of civilians in the MGK such that their numbers surpassed those of members of military background. Later, in 2003, the language of the MGK law was changed to clarify that governments were not under obligation to implement the recommendations of the MGK, while the secretary general, whose duties were reduced to secretarial functions rather than monitoring that the decisions of the council were being implemented, was made a civilian.30 The beginning of Turkey’s accession negotiations with the EU in 2005 gave added impetus to changes. In 2004–2005, the representatives of the MGK were removed from the Council on Higher Education and the State Radio and Television institution. But more importantly, it was made clear in the law that it was the prerogative of the government to determine what the internal and external security threats facing the country were. In a similar move, the State Security Courts were closed. Then in 2010, the jurisdiction of the military courts was reduced further, while military budgets were opened once again to the inspection of the Court of Audits.31 In addition to the stimuli that the EU connection might have provided in promoting legal changes that modified the power position of the military in Turkish politics, citizen attitudes toward the military’s political activism were also changing. Having gone through a series of military interventions and even a post-modern coup in 1997, the Turkish public had come to appreciate that while military interventions might have provided temporary relief, in the long run, they were a poor substitute for democratically elected governments. Especially, following an economic crisis that began in 1999 and serious restructuring, from 2002 the country had begun to enjoy stable economic growth, and no one wanted the recovery to be thrown off course by political conflict 30 This discussion comes from İlter Turan and Yaprak Gürsoy, “The Role of the EU in Changing the Role of the Military in Turkish Politics,” European Review of International Studies, I:1 (2014), pp. 132–40. 31 Turan and Gürsoy, “The Role of the EU,” p. 137.

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between government and the institutions of the state. The invitation by the EU to commence with accession negotiations had generated widespread public support of over 70 percent for advancing the Turkey–EU relationship which it was believed would lead Turkey into greater economic prosperity and more democracy.32 A watershed event that provided an opportunity for public attitudes toward the political role of the military to crystallize and find public expression occurred when the time for the election of a new president came. Since the AKP was a clear majority in the parliament, it seemed natural that it would offer a candidate for the position. Abdullah Gül, a former prime minister and minister of foreign affairs became the party’s candidate. With a spouse who dressed conservatively and covered her head, he seemed to be the antithesis of a person that the commanders would consider suitable for president. In addition to implying through a variety of means that included pronouncements on the Office of the Chief of Staff website, that the military would prevent the contingency of his being elected, efforts were initiated to mobilize the public against the choice and to pursue legal procedures to prevent the election. Atatürkist Thought Associations, in which retired military leaders were heavily involved, successfully organized rallies that brought together large crowds who were suspicious that the AKP planned to undermine Turkish laicism. But, there was no call of the military to duty. Quite to the contrary, the few cries along those lines were quieted down by organizers. The crowds themselves showed sensitivity that their demonstrations should not be interpreted as support for a military solution to a political problem.33 The military was joined by the CHP (reconstituted after 1992 and continuing to be a repository of state elitist attitudes) in capitalizing on the wisdom offered by a retired chief public prosecutor to try to block the parliament’s election of the president. The former chief prosecutor argued that a two-thirds quorum of the whole house was needed in the first round in order for voting to start. While the RPP took the question to the Constitutional Court, other small parties were pressured by “the men of state” not to attend parliamentary sessions to prevent their version of a quorum from obtaining. This peculiar interpretation of what constitutes a quorum had never been used before and was at variance with the constitution that observed a distinction between the less stringent requirement for a quorum and more strict requirements for decisionmaking majorities. The Constitutional Court, as one of the last strongholds of the state elites, was persuaded to adopt this interpretation and rendered a decision that made the election of Abdullah Gül as president impossible. Yaprak Gürsoy, “The Changing Role of the Turkish Military in Politics: Democratization through Coup Plots,” Democratization, 19: 4 (2012), pp. 735–60. 33 Gürsoy, “Changing Role,” p. 12. 32

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The AKP, judging correctly that public opinion was in great sympathy with it and against the way the military and their supporters in the civilian institutions were blocking the election of the president, decided to call for early elections. It also whisked through the parliament a constitutional amendment to be submitted to a referendum,34 making the presidency a five-year, renewable-once position to be filled by popular elections. The elections resulted in an impressive victory for the AKP that received 47 percent of the vote. The small parties like ANAP and DYP had disappeared from the parliament, and other opposition like the CHP and MHP had registered only minor gains. When the new parliament met, Abdullah Gül was elected president with no difficulty. Shortly afterwards, the voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional change that transferred the election of president to the general electorate. The new president could serve two consecutive five-year terms rather than the one time only seven-year terms that the replaced constitutional article stipulated. The elections and the developments leading to it showed that the sympathies of the public lay with the government. Even those parties and political movements that were sympathetic to the military found it difficult to approve of the interventionist political role the military had assumed. Prevailing political stability, leadership, the prospect of getting into the EU35 and sustained economic growth had persuaded the public that competitive politics was clearly preferable to relying on the military for pursuing political ends.

Ending the Possibility of Military Interventions: The Trials of the Generals The tense state of relations between civil society and the military appears to have led to differences among the military regarding how they should adjust to the changing political environment. The more moderate officers recognized that they had to accommodate themselves to the change and try to advance the viewpoints and the interests of the military without resorting to open assertions of military power against elected civilian governments. Another group of more radical officers believed that the policies the government was pursuing 34

The constitution could be changed directly by a two-thirds majority of the whole house, a number the AKP did not possess. It did, however, have the numbers to try the other method of changing: Get the change approved by three-fifths of the whole house and then submit it to a public referendum. And this is what the AKP did. 35 Ersel Aydınlı,”A Paradigmatic Shift for the Turkish Generals and an End to the Coup Era in Turkey,” Middle East Journal. 63:4 (2009), p. 588.

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harbored a secret Islamist agenda. They further suspected that moving closer to EU membership would endanger Turkey’s national independence and territorial integrity. Their solution for this undesirable flow of events may have been to plan for a coup which would involve their ridding the armed forces of their “accommodationist” colleagues.36 But the conditions were developing increasingly against such solutions. With the strong political mandate the AKP obtained in the 2007 and 2011 elections, and the shift in public attitudes against the military’s extensive role in politics, the likelihood of new military interventions seemed to have become a remote possibility. The government gave much less consideration than before to what the military leadership might think about the policies they were developing and implementing. It came as a surprise, therefore, that beginning in late 2008, special prosecutors launched a series of investigations that led to the uncovering of evidence pointing to the preparation for a military takeover preceded by the initiation of public disturbances. The series of investigations, accompanied by early morning raids into homes, foundations, private and government offices, and the arrest of on-duty officers and a considerable number of retired generals, including several former chiefs of staff and force commanders, displayed a propensity to expand. Documentary evidence mainly in the form of computer records, caches of arms and munitions, explosives, and testimonies of secret witnesses constituted the basis on which a number of related cases were brought to the courts. The prosecutors alleged that they had uncovered plots, subplots, conspiracies planned by criminal networks run by military officers, bureaucrats, university presidents and professors, journalists, professionals, and others who were involved in plans aiming at creating the conditions that would warrant or justify a military takeover. The trials were long. Some of the evidence appeared to be flimsy, some even tampered with, some circumstantial, and some inconclusive. Owing to previous experience with military interventions, however, there was a general feeling that if some of the allegations were fiction, others were facts. When the families of dependents complained that proper judicial rules were not being pursued in the trials, the government counseled patience and argued that it had no power over the judiciary. One case in which former top commanders were involved was concluded in September 2012, with some defendants receiving sentences of twenty years. Other cases were continuing when in May 2014, the Constitutional Court to which the families of the defendants appealed agreed that there had been serious maladministration of judicial procedure and that the

36

Gürsoy, “Changing Role,” p. 13.

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requests for retrial should be granted.37 In a matter of weeks, those in prison for a variety of related trials went to criminal courts and were discharged from jail. There will be retrials, but it is generally judged that many and possibly all will be acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence.38 While a retrial may correct the maladministration of justice in the original trials of the alleged military conspirators, it will not lead to a resurgence of the military as a political force. In fact, the trials have not only brought to the open the rifts among the top officers regarding how the military should relate to politics, it has reinforced the existing divisions and introduced new ones into the equation. Since 2008, the military seems to have been subdued, and the members of the top command, if not all with the same degree of enthusiasm, have accepted that civilians control the military. The decline of the political role of the military does not, by itself, produce further democratization, but removes an impediment to Turkey’s democratization process.

DI S C US S I O N As the above recount shows, the receding of the political influence of the military in Turkey has taken a long time. A democracy may not be fully developed, deepened, and mature until politicians, the public, and the military all agree that soldiers should submit to the authority of elected politicians. Are there conditions that promote that? In the preceding discussion, several conditions, some of them related with each other, have become evident. First, we have seen that the military was more likely to intervene if civilian governments failed to provide effective governance and manage to address the major questions a society happens to be facing at a given time. This seemed to be the case with governments during the 1969–1973, 1977–1980, and 1995–2002 intervals. Unwieldy coalitions, with members deeply divided among themselves but united in their desire to stay in power, failed to deal with terror during the 1969–1973 and 1974–1980 interims, and with the PKK insurgency during

37

Dani Rodrik, the well-known Princeton economist whose father-in-law was a leading suspect in the Sledgehammer Case that ended up with major convictions has produced an unpublished manuscript in June 2014 entitled “Plot Against the Generals” which, among others, shows some major inconsistencies in the evidence that the court chose to ignore, denying objections on the part of the defendants in the process. 38 Sedat Ergin, in the daily, Hürriyet, July 8–14, 2014, had a series of articles that analyze carefully the decision of the Constitutional Court in which a retrial for the Sledgehammer Case was granted.

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the 1995–2002 period. The deeper the failure of the civilian politics, the more interested the military became in political intervention and more willing the public to accept it. Although as the military intervention progressed, so did frustrations with it, there is no denying that, for example, in 1980, the public, suffering from terrorism, had almost come to look forward to the intervention. It is critical to appreciate here the fact that the public is more influenced by the perception that the governments are more committed to pursuing their own interests than addressing problems, rather than simply not possessing the ability or the competence to meet them. By the same line of reasoning, governments that are able to act coherently (which in the Turkish experience has usually been one-party governments), if their heads display leadership, then the conditions for military intervention do not arise. Second, we have seen that the changes in attitudes among the public regarding the political role of the military comes eventually to be reflected among the military itself. It seems reasonable to assume that this type of change is more likely to take place if a country already has a competitive system in which the military is not a ruling military that is capable of stymieing the formation of public opinion and forbidding its expression. Third, we have also seen that the military may comprise part of a bigger coalition of forces that are willing to put the democratic game on hold, if they judge that it is producing highly unwanted outcomes. Socioeconomic developments as well as government policies, some intentional and others unintentional, may, in time, loosen this coalition, weaken it, and render it less effective. This has happened in the Turkish experience as shown by the departure of much of the bureaucracy, the universities, and some professional associations from the fold. The gradual dissolution of the coalition may direct those remaining in the coalition to become more hard line in their positions to maintain their ground, but this probably undermines their standing with the public. This seemed to be the case with regard to the behavior of the military and its partners, whose behavior proved to be counterproductive in that it did not prevent the outcome they wanted, but cost them public support. Fourth, the military does not behave in an international vacuum. Its political actions are influenced by the reactions it is expected to cause in the international system. This explains, along with other factors, why the Turkish military’s intervention proved to be temporary. The presence of the possibility of military intervention means that a democracy is not sufficiently deepened and mature. The military, by its actions, may consciously and unconsciously undermine the road to this end in several ways. To begin with, it tends to conceptualize problems exclusively in terms of security and devises solutions within that framework. It may be pointed out, for example, that for a long time, the military treated the Kurdish problem as

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one of security, and it also led the governments to see the PKK insurgency as exclusively a security problem, leading to two problematical outcomes. Number one, it justified the employment of instruments of governance like state of siege, military courts, and other tools that lowered considerably the quality of Turkey’s democracy, and also left behind a legacy among law-enforcement agencies of using coercion too readily. The legacy has extended into periods when those instruments were no longer needed. Number two, it has actually delayed a political solution that would have been more in line with the practices of democratic governance. It is only recently that the Turkish government has turned to a search for a peaceful solution by trying to accommodate some of the expectations of its Kurdish-origin population. An attempt at a solution in the political domain earlier might have given society more experience in problem solving through democratic means while sparing the country from very costly anti-insurgency warfare. Second, a security mindset tends to reduce the scope of negotiated settlements, that is, the basic idea around which democratic institutions function. While security approaches focus on eradicating the source of insecurity, democratic approaches emphasize accommodating differences. Therefore, conceptualizing problems in terms of security, even if it is not always intended, undermines the accumulation of democratic experience. Third, by availing itself of an extra-political option, the military has unintentionally slowed down the adjustment of other segments of society to democratic ways of conducting politics. The hard-line secularist segments of the population continue today to lack the skills to organize politically, to persuade the voters and mobilize them to support their causes. This explains the presence of a dwindling minority nested particularly in the CHP that experience difficulty in accepting that democracy may have become the only game in town. Fourth, looking at policy choices from the perspective of security has led to exaggerated judgments on the outcomes of policy choices that have helped bring more democracy and greater prosperity to Turkey. The military’s overall negative reaction to Turkey’s expanding relationship with the EU is a case in point. The military has seen the EU connection as a bond that would lead to the dismemberment of Turkey, and the loss of its independence and its ability to defend itself. While this stance may be explained in part by the military’s recognition that the connection would clearly be a disadvantage in that it would work to enhance civilian supremacy in government, it was also a sincere concern deriving from viewing the world from a very narrow focus. In fact, the EU connection, however problematical, has constituted an anchor for Turkey’s democracy, and through the Custom’s Union contributed in a major way to the country’s economic prosperity.

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It is only recently that the Turkish government has begun to define national security needs. In contrast to the military leadership, elected politicians define security broadly, tend to better balance the needs of security with prosperity, and to achieve both these without producing a challenge to democracy.39

39

A dear friend, Ahmet Demirel (not to be confused with the historian whom I have quoted earlier) who read my manuscript, upon having read the concluding remarks asked the following question: “Can it be that almost all perceived threats were secondary and aimed mainly at preserving military supremacy?” It is possible, but I feel that the military establishment, although it might have been exaggerating, did have genuine concerns about security, in addition probably to securitizing problems in order to enhance the role of the military in national political life.

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Interactions among Society, Economy, and Politics Change and Democratization

ACHIEVING T HE BACKGROUND CONDIT IONS Democracy assumes the presence of a citizenry that accepts and participates in the processes by which it is ruled. It also assumes the presence of a multiplicity of power centers in society that compete and negotiate over who gets what, as well as the existence of resources over which this contestation–negotiation takes place. These are in the nature of background conditions that have been briefly touched upon in earlier chapters. For example, in Chapter 1, “The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems,” we referred to the importance of the achievement of national unity as a background condition. In the same chapter, we touched upon the idea that democracy is about matters that can be collectively negotiated, then elaborating in Chapter 2, “The Political Legacy: Antecedents of Democratization,” on how policies of laicization aiming to remove questions of belief to outside the domain of political negotiation helped achieve a condition that was important for preparing the background for democracy that came to be introduced later. In Chapter 5, “The Rise and Fall of the Military as a Political Force,” we focused on how change served to undermine the power of the centralist elites and the decline of the political role of the military, a sine qua non for the advancement of political democracy. In this chapter, we will elaborate further on some of these conditions, linking them to the process of socioeconomic change that Turkey has undergone during the recent decades.

Political Community and National Unity When the presence of national unity is posited as a background condition of democracy, it is done so with the logic that to the extent democracy involves

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conflict and competition among a multiplicity of political actors, in order for the process to occur in an orderly fashion and not prove destructive of the community, there should be agreement that the competing sides all belong to the same community and consent to live under the same government. Since the sense of belonging to a community and a sense of identity are feelings, they do not lend themselves easily to negotiation and compromise. Therefore, democracy may not be the most appropriate instrument through which the question of whether a people constitute a political community is settled. The question needs to have been settled before orderly political competition commences. In recent times, the possibility of breaking away from an already existing political community ruled by democracy has come under discussion as in the case of the Catalans and the Basque in Spain, the Quebecois in Canada and Scots in the United Kingdom; we do not yet have, however, enough examples of breaks and how they may be achieved within a democratic framework. It has been possible for constituent parts of a political community to part ways peacefully as in the case of Czechoslovakia or for a political community to disband itself as in the case of the Soviet Union. These are new developments that may eventually lead to a revision of our thinking on the “national unity” as a background condition of democracy, but the examples of breakup have so far come from federal systems where political sub-communities were already in existence and possessed institutions of governance. More relevant for our study would be examples of the emergence of a democratic system as the struggle for defining a political community is continuing, of which there is an absence of cases. The emergence of movements that want to break away from existing democracies suggests that the existence of national unity is temporal and contextual. Some groups that see themselves as belonging to a particular political community may decide at a later date that they no longer retain the same feeling. The change in attitude may derive from a variety of factors. To begin with, in contemporary times the ideas of asserting a different political identity and desiring to leave an existing community have become politically more acceptable. Groups that saw themselves as mainly culturally distinct in the past, may nowadays perceive such distinctness also as political identity because others are doing so. This is in the nature of diffusion effects. Next, a sub-group that had accepted the idea of belonging to the same national political community with others may judge that it is being excluded from collective decision-making processes or the distribution of economic benefits, and consequently, may develop aspirations to establish its own political system. Third, some groups, both at the time of state formation and democratic transition, may have been suppressed or may have failed to express a

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preference because they felt too weak to challenge the existing political community. At a later date, they may think that the political environment has changed or that they have become powerful enough to want to challenge their status. Demographic change in favor of a group may be an example of a way that a group becomes more powerful. Economic change such as the discovery of oil in a region a group inhabits may constitute another similar motivation. This discussion leads us to an evaluation of how and to what extent the condition of national unity was met at the time of Turkey’s transition to political competition. The continual loss of territory by the Ottoman Empire during its last century of existence, mainly in its European parts, had led to an ascendance of the Turco-Muslim element as the largest group in numbers in addition to being the politically dominant element in the body politic. The First World War culminated in losses of territory also in the Asian provinces of the empire mainly inhabited by Arabs, a development which further enhanced the weight of Turco-Muslims as the largest pillar of the political community. During the war, the attempt by Armenians to carve a homeland for themselves in eastern and southeastern Turkey where they were in the minority culminated in disaster for all populations and resulted in the elimination of the Armenian population through forced deportations, hunger, disease, and massacres, from most areas that were under Ottoman rule but claimed as theirs by the Armenians. After the War of National Liberation against the Greek invasion, the peace treaty signed in Lausanne included a protocol on the exchange of the Greek Orthodox populations of Turkey, save those of Istanbul and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos, with the Muslim populations of Greece except Western Thrace. In this way, the new government inherited a population that was mainly Muslim and with a majority speaking Turkish. During the last stages of the multinational Ottoman Empire, as nations had made common cause with this or that European power to wrest their independence from the Sublime Porte, the ruling elite had searched for an ideology that would hold the empire together. At first, the idea of Ottomanism had been put forth in the hope of converting the sultan’s subjects into Ottoman citizens, but to no avail. Next, seeing that it was mainly the Christian nationalities that were breaking away from the empire, pan-Islamism was offered to hold Muslims together, but the rise of Arab nationalism dashed the hopes for that ideological formula. Finally, Turkism rose to prominence since the ruling elite, even if not always ethnically Turkic in origin, spoke Turkish and when forced to think in terms of nationality, identified increasingly with being a Turk. Although there was a chronological order to their appearance, these ideologies did not replace one another; in fact, a person could claim to

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subscribe to more than one at the same time.1 Nevertheless, the emphasis shifted from the Ottomanist to Islamicist to Turkist over time. Under the Union and Progress rule, as other formulae lost their credibility, a policy of Turkifying the population was adopted and partly implemented, adding another reason for the Arab revolt against the Ottomans during the First World War. The republic inherited the late Ottoman tradition of Turkification. During the War of National Liberation there were references to the recognition of the Kurds as a constituent unit of the emerging new polity; but after independence, the republican leadership resumed the policy of Turkification as its method of building national unity.2 This choice may be viewed as somewhat natural in view of the proclivities of both the modernizing state elites of the Ottoman Empire and early republican Turkey toward creating a new society through cultural change. The political community would be Turkish speaking and Turco-Muslim3 but not pan-Turkist.4 The fact that much of the Kurdish-speaking population was rural and partly nomadic while the tribal leaders were integrated into the circle of local notables helped arrest challenges to the unity of the political community.5 It is only during the last three decades that a modern brand of Kurdish nationalism, prompted by urbanization, increased education, and expanding economic mobilization has presented a challenge to the republican regime, as distinct from the occasional manifestations of tribal resistance to central authority that had been witnessed in the past. When the question of opening the system to political competition came up, little if any concern was expressed by the ruling elite about possible threats it İlter Turan, Cumhuriyet Tarihimiz (İstanbul: Çağlayan, 1969), pp. 19–30. For a more comprehensive discussion, see İbrahim Saylan, “The Formation of Citizenship in Turkey,” in Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Avalos, Hakan Yılmaz, and Ana I. Planet, eds., Turkey’s Democratization Process (London: Routledge, 2014). pp. 16–42. 3 Non-Muslims, as already explained, had been reduced to numerically few and politically impotent minority communities as will be elaborated later. 4 Pan-Turkist ideologies would not only undermine the efforts of consolidation of the new regime, but also make for difficult relations with the Soviet Union whose populations in Central Asia were mainly of Turkic origin. As the republican regime consolidated its power, it suppressed pan-Turkish movements. They regained some vitality during the early stages of the Second World War under German influence, only to be suppressed again when the tide of war turned against Germany. For a more comprehensive discussion, see Jacob M. Landau, Pan-Turkism: From Irredentism to Cooperation (London: C. Hurst, 1995). 5 The Kurdish rebellions that have been referred to in Chapter 2 were not national insurgencies. Rather, they combined protests against, on the one hand, the laicization policies of the government and on the other hand, the penetration of the national public administration into the countryside, thus reducing the power bases of some tribal–religious leaders. 1 2

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would pose to national unity. As noted in Chapter 3, “The Transition to Competitive Politics,” the CHP leadership wanted only to make sure that religious reaction would not be allowed to return to politics and that the foreign policy of the single-party government would be maintained. A concern about maintaining national unity did not need to be expressed.

Increasing Relevance of Government in Public Life There is another sentiment, which in some ways resembles the sense of belonging to a national community that often goes unnoticed, but which is critical in the long run for the successful emergence and functioning of a democratic system. Citizens of a democratic society must feel that government makes a difference in their lives, and that they want to, and think they can, influence the decisions or behavior of government. The existence of such a feeling is neither self-evident nor can it be taken for granted. Socioeconomic change which not only intensifies horizontal interactions among citizens but more relevantly, vertical interactions between the government and the citizen is important in helping create citizen awareness that what the government does makes a difference in their lives. Change is also likely to stimulate the desire of citizens to influence what the government does. It goes without saying that the achievement of the background conditions of democracy does not ensure that democracy will necessarily follow. These are in the nature of necessary rather than sufficient conditions. In this context, it is simply important to recognize that democracy is only one of the possible outcomes of socioeconomic change. Change, we must not forget, empowers not only society but also the state vis à vis society, producing, under certain circumstances authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. With these caveats in mind, let us now examine the developments through which Turkish citizens gradually came to appreciate that government made a difference in their lives. At the time of the founding of the republic, what we find is a heterogeneous society that is basically rural. As Table 6.1 shows, the first census taken during the fourth year of the republic in 1927 showed that 76 percent of the population lived in rural areas. Some of the countryside, particularly in the west of the country, was integrated into an economic network producing agricultural products such as tobacco, raisins, and dried figs, and raw materials such as chrome ore or timber mainly for export markets. Transport and communication systems in those areas were relatively well developed. The rest of the rural areas, however, tended to be comprised mainly of villages that were nearly self-sufficient units with limited interactions

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with the market. Small towns served as commercial and service centers to meet the very modest market and service needs of this population. Apart from the Baghdad railway going through Turkey’s center, and its south and southeast, and a number of lines that were built during the interwar period, transportation systems were poorly developed. Often only seasonally open roads linked cities to cities, and even poorer tracks villages to each other and to towns. Telegraph lines stretched along the railroads as an instrument that were most often used by the state for its own purposes of information, administration, and control.6 During the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, the state had reached its population living in villages or towns mainly for reasons of tax collection and the recruitment of soldiers. In this context, the state was perceived mainly as an unwanted intruder in the life of the countryside, one which should be avoided if possible and evaded when its agents appeared. It extracted money of which the peasants had very little, and it took away young men who were the basic force of agricultural production. The agricultural tax was such a burden on the peasants that, in order to enhance its legitimacy, the republic, shortly after it came into being, had felt obliged to repeal it. Otherwise, however, the state continued to retain its intruder role toward a society living mainly in villages and small towns. These small units of settlement were seen as bastions of ignorance and conservatism which the modernizing state elites felt dutybound to transform. As explained in Chapter 2, in this endeavor, the citizens were conceptualized as passive objects that the republic, in line with its modernizing ideology, the state would proceed to “modernize.” The interventionist approach of the government no doubt generated an understanding that what the government did, affected the life of citizens. It did not, however, generate as strongly the associated feeling that the citizen by his own actions could influence the actions and decisions of the government. In any case, the presence and diffusion of both feelings were shed by the heterogeneous structure of the country. In the western coastal regions of the country that were more closely integrated with the market economy and that possessed better transport and communication systems, the two-way link between the citizen and the government was more clearly perceived. This is one of the main reasons why when the opportunity for political competition İlkay Sunar, in his “Populism and Patronage: The Demokrat Party and its Legacy in Turkey,” that originally appeared in Il Politico, LV:4 (October–December 1990) but was reprinted in his edited volume State, Society, Democracy in Turkey (Istanbul: Bahçeşehir University 2004), p. 122, notes that in contrast to the uniformity of the state, Turkish society was traditional, heterogeneous, and disjointed, and dominated neither by a landowning aristocracy nor by a grand bourgeoisie. 6

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Table 6.1. Urban and rural distribution of population (percentages) Year

rural

urban

1927

75.8

24.2

1935

76.5

23.5

1940

75.6

24.4

1945

75.1

24.9

1950

75.0

25.0

1955

71.2

28.8

1960

68.1

31.9

1965

65.6

34.4

1970

61.5

38.5

1975

58.2

41.8

1980

56.1

43.7

1985

47.0

53.0

1990

41.0

59.0

2000

35.1

64.9

2010

23.7

76.2

Source: Population Census, 1927–2000 (Ankara: TUİK) and Population Census, 2010.

appeared to be opening up as in the case of the Free Republican party in 1930 and the Democrat Party in 1945, these movements found much support in the western parts of the country but not in the interior or eastern sections. In other parts, the government was seen not only to be distant, but an entity that should be shied away from. Citizen contacts with the government were also considerably dampened by the presence of clientelistic networks in which the local notables performed the role of intermediaries between the agents of the central government and the citizens. The presence of such intermediaries introduced a level between the government and the citizen, rendering the government a rather remote and difficult-to-reach actor. The agent of government with whom peasants came into most regular direct contact were the gendarmes, the members of the semi-military rural police force. Noted for their coercive and extractive posture, these officials showed that the government could make a difference in the lives of peasants but did little to enhance the feeling that the citizen could affect the behavior of government.

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Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy Table 6.2. Literate population (percentages of six years or older) Year

Illiterate

Literate

Literate males

Literate females

1935

80.75

19.25

29.35

9.81

1940

75.45

24.55

36.20

12.92

1945

69.78

30.22

43.67

16.84

1950

67.49

32.51

45.52

19.45

1955

59.01

40.99

55.94

25.61

1960

60.49

39.51

53.63

24.84

1965

51.24

48.76

64.10

32.84

1970

43.79

56.21

70.31

41.80

1975

36.28

63.72

76.21

50.51

1980

32.52

67.48

79.98

54.67

1985

22.55

77.45

86.52

68.16

1990

19.51

80.49

88.81

71.98

2000

12.68

87.32

93.86

80.64

Source: Population Census, 1935–2000 (Ankara: TUİK). Note: The figures for 1940 have been extrapolated from the figures for 1935 and 1945. The 1945 figure is for persons over not six but seven years of age and the 1950 figures for five years old and over.

Finally, a major impediment to the growth of citizen feelings of empowerment vis à vis the government was the exceptionally low rate of literacy among the general public. As Table 6.2 shows, even twelve years after the founding of the republic only 19 percent of the population was literate. Considering that the rates of literacy were higher in the major commercial centers of Istanbul and İzmir as well as in Ankara, the new capital, we may estimate that the rates were below 10 percent in much of the country. Villages in which only one or two persons possessed limited skills to read and write were not exceptional. Of course, the low level of literacy not only reduced the efficiency of government but it also made it difficult for the regime to reach different segments of the population to propagate its ideology. Therefore, from very early on, in order to staff the schools that it planned to open, the government launched a program to train primary, middle, and high school teachers, equipping them with republican ideology. The strategy was first to train cadres who shared the new regime’s ideas and thereby help consolidate the regime among elements of the center, and then mobilize them to carry the message to the masses in the periphery.7 Table 6.2 shows that the efforts of the republican 7

Turan, Cumhuriyet Tarihimiz, pp. 84–8.

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regime produced a slow but steady increase in the rate of literacy. Even then, when the government changed hands through an election for the first time in the history of the republic in 1950, the rate of literacy was still a meager 32.5 percent.

E C O NO M I C C H A N G E A ND I T S P O L I T I C A L C O N S E Q U E NC E S : 1 9 5 0– 1 98 0 The preceding discussion shows that during the early years of the republic, the national unity background condition of democracy had basically been met. Much of the population was also aware that national government and politics affected their lives, and some among them desired to influence government, but no institutions or channels were readily available. Developments during the Second World War, however, created pressures for change of government. As has been discussed extensively in Chapter 3, the war increased the extractive posture of the state vis à vis society, especially in the rural areas, imposing hardships that reached almost existential proportions while the growing export trade created a layer of newly wealthy that not only wanted to preserve their wealth but also to establish themselves as part of the political elite. They wanted change: the peasantry, particularly in the more commercialized parts of the country, wanted to rid themselves of the government that had made life so miserable for them; and the commercial and the much smaller industrial bourgeoisie wanted liberalization of economic policies that had come to be dominated increasingly by the state. There is no question that during the interwar years, while the performance of the Turkish economy may have been satisfactory in international comparisons, it fell far short of meeting the needs or expectations of the population. As recounted in Chapter 3, the hopes of government that private enterprise would lead to a period of economic growth were not realized. The entrepreneurial groups in the empire who were mainly non-Muslims were for the most part no longer there, having vanished through exile, population exchange, or massacres. Furthermore, the provisions of the Lausanne Treaty, by allowing imports from Europe to enter Turkey duty-free until 1929, had placed local products at a disadvantage in competing against imports, reducing incentives to invest. Then in 1929 came the Great Depression, causing a reduction in Turkey’s exports and leading to a drop in the national income, paving the way to new economic hardships. The only major investment effort during this time came from the state

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which developed the doctrine of étatisme through which it established a number of industries to meet the basic needs of the economy and society.8 The economy had not fully recovered from the effects of the depression when the Second World War came. While the approach of the war and then its outbreak had increased the demands for the raw materials and the agricultural products Turkey exported, importing became difficult and shortages of basic commodities prevailed. The policies of the government to acquire grain from farmers below market prices and store it under unfavorable conditions that led to waste, served only to exacerbate the shortages. As the war progressed, the extractive posture of the government intensified, generating intense dissatisfaction among all segments of the population against the single-party government and its policies. Therefore, when the possibility of the introduction of political competition appeared, in significant part owing to changes in the international environment, constituencies that would support the opposition emerged without difficulty.

From Enlivening of the Economy to Economic and Political Crisis The story of Turkey’s transition to democracy has already been told in Chapter 3. As was clearly stated there, the transition was not an exclusive product of capitalist industrial development and emergent social classes clamoring for being incorporated into the political process. While there were desires for political change, there were no revolutionary pressures. Rather, the government hoped to improve national security by bringing about changes that would render it more acceptable to the Western Bloc. Also, becoming more like a western European country was thought to be desirable. Although, as explained, there were pressures from below, Turkish transition to political competition was more a case of democratization from above than from below. It did, nevertheless, lead to a peaceful change of government. The leaders of the DP that won the elections of 1950 were believers in a liberal economy. The voters who had brought them to power had done so with the hope that liberalization of economic policies would serve to improve their economic prosperity. They liberalized the import regime; goods long time absent from the market returned. While this was a welcome development, its effects would have been limited if it were not for two other developments that

8

See also Henri J. Barkey, The State and the Industrialization Crisis in Turkey (Boulder: Westview Special Studies on the Middle East, 1990), p. 5 and passim.

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reinforced each other, creating no less than a socioeconomic earthquake in the countryside. The first of these was the decision to commence with a system of highway construction, propped up by American economic assistance. The single-party regime had emphasized the building of railways, and during its tenure had doubled the length of those that had been inherited from the empire. Highways, on the other hand, were ignored. In fact, in 1950 when the government changed hands, the total length of hard-surface roads was a meager 1624 kilometers or around a thousand miles.9 Yet, in a large country where human settlements were widely dispersed, the railroad failed to reach many places. The coming of highways of varying quality, less expensive to build than railroads and more flexible in meeting the transportation needs, offered a system that linked the countryside much more effectively to towns and cities than the railroads had ever done. During the ten years of DP rule, highways grew by 23 percent, but hard-surface roads grew by 435 percent.10 A second development was in the field of agriculture. Emphasizing agricultural development which it had promised it would do, the DP government turned to the mechanization of agriculture. The number of tractors that reached only around 9,000 in 1949, increased to 24,000 by 1951 and grew to around 42,000 by the end of the decade.11 The replacement of animal power by tractors made it possible to expand the land under cultivation. For example, the land under cultivation increased from 9.5 million hectares in 1946 to 14.2 million hectares in 1955.12 Serendipitously, favorable weather conditions during the first three years of DP rule resulted in bumper crops that elevated Turkey to being the fourth largest grain producer in the world as well as a major producer of cotton. Demand promoted by the Korean War, on the other hand, boosted prices, and inflated agricultural incomes. Villages with larger tracts of land under cultivation could now produce more, send their products to the market using the new or improved roads and earn an income they had never achieved before. Although dependence on climatic conditions caused significant fluctuations both in quantities produced and income as was the case for example in 1954 when poor weather and the end of the Korean War combined to lead to a lower yield and lower prices, these unfavorable developments did not challenge the strong link that 9

These numbers come from tables in Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics: Bridge Across Troubled Lands (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), pp. 78–9. 10 Calculated by the author from Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, p. 79. 11 Barkey, Industrialization Crisis, p. 53. 12 Çağlar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (London: Verso, 1987), p. 130.

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emerged at the beginning of the DP rule between much of the rural economy and the market. The government promoted agricultural growth by extending cheap credit to farmers to buy tractors and fertilizer, subsidizing the price of fertilizer and offering high supportive buying prices for major agricultural commodities.13 The support for the DP soared in rural areas, particularly in the economically more developed regions of the country. The mechanization of agriculture, combined with the increased rural prosperity led some of the rural population to move to towns in search of work and a better life. The expansion of the use of the tractor had reduced the need for manual labor in the fields, leading to the elimination of sharecropping formulas. The released labor had no choice but to gravitate toward towns and cities in search of employment. Squatter settlements began to appear around cities. Growing prosperity in the cities generated by commercial activity spurred by the availability of imports and the modest private industrialization encouraged partly by World Bank credits created opportunities to absorb some of the incoming labor. The liberalization of trade and the policies of economic expansion initiated by the DP quickly ate away the meager foreign exchange reserves of the country that had been accumulated during the Second World War. The end of the war had already begun to put a strain on these reserves since Turkey could now import some basic commodities which it could not during the war. The ensuing deficits in the national budget and the balance of payments began to be financed respectively by borrowing domestically and abroad. The economic expansion thus achieved was not one that was carefully planned so as to increase the country’s hard currency earnings. As the economy expanded, so did the need of the economy for external funds (see Table 6.3) that became increasingly difficult to borrow. Adjustment to this contingency was rendered more difficult by the resistance of the government to devaluing the currency deriving, in addition to the fear of inflationary pressures, from an understanding that preserving the value of the Turkish lira was a sacrosanct goal in itself. Beginning in 1954, step by step, the government had to return, if reluctantly, to import controls and to state leadership in industrial investments.14 These shifts in policy once again began to augment the role of the state in the economy, but they did not alter substantially its import needs. External 13

For the main applications of the agricultural policy of the DP during 1950–1954 with contrasts with the policies of the pre-1950 CHP policies, see Suat Oktar and Arzu Varlı, “Türkiye’de 1950–1954 Döneminde Demokrat Partinin Tarım Politikası,” Marmara Üniversitesi, İ.İ.B.F. Dergisi, 28:1 (2010), pp. 1–22. 14 Barkey, Industrialization Crisis, p. 54.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/3/2015, SPi

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earnings, dependent in part on climatic conditions and in part on how global commodity markets fared, were not doing well. The economy began to contract beginning in 1956 in parallel with the declining ability of the country to borrow from abroad. Finally, in August 1958, failing to find lenders abroad and unable to sustain its ongoing policies, the DP government, with IMF encouragement, adopted an economic stabilization program. The economic difficulties the country was facing had already begun to reflect in politics as rising tensions between government and opposition, and a decline in the electoral support of the DP guided the governing party to move the national elections due to be held in the late spring of 1958 to the end of October 1957 so as to be assured of achieving a parliamentary majority before its support eroded further. From an electoral perspective, the adoption of the 1958 stabilization program appears timely since the government had approximate three years ahead to compensate for the initial unhappiness the program might have generated. But the harshness of the measures, especially the more than 300 percent devaluation which was reflected in the rapidly rising cost of living, in the absence of a corresponding improvement in incomes, produced strong disenchantment and did not reverse the growing electoral tide against the DP government. Feeling insecure and convinced that it represented the “true will of the people,” against the bureaucratic elites, the government of Prime Minister Menderes turned to the use of more authoritarian measures to suppress the opposition, a development that has already been examined in Chapter 4, “The Cycles of Turkish Democracy: 1950–1980.” Among those most negatively affected by the rising prices was the salariat comprised mainly of government employees, the dominant political middle class under the single-party regime. This class was experiencing a multidimensional decline. With the introduction of political competition and the loss of power to a party that wanted to “command” them, they had begun to witness an erosion of their political clout. This decline, accompanied by the inflationary policies of the DP that had failed to increase simultaneously their salaries, had imposed economic deprivations on them. Loss of status on the political and economic fronts, on the other hand, predictably, led to a decline in their social standing.15 The outcome, as humorously recounted by Kalaycıoğlu, is that young lieutenants could not find suitable ladies to wed, presumably, for lack of sufficient income and a status job.16 The DP’s economic stabilization program did not contain enough structural measures that would significantly improve Turkey’s export performance, the

15

Turan, Cumhuriyet Tarihimiz, p. 125.

16

Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, p. 82.

154

Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy Table 6.3. Turkey’s foreign trade 1945–1960 (in million dollars) Year

Imports

Exports

(X-I) Trade Balance

(X/I) percentages

1945

97

168

71

174

1946

119

215

96

181

1947

245

223

22

91

1948

275

197

78

72

1949

290

248

42

85

1950

286

263

23

92

1951

402

314

83

78

1952

556

363

193

65

1953

533

396

137

74

1954

478

335

143

70

1955

498

313

185

63

1956

407

305

102

75

1957

397

345

52

87

1958

315

247

68

79

1959

470

354

116

75

1960

468

321

147

69

Source: Turkish Institute of Statistics, (Ankara: 2012). Figures have been rounded by the author.

key to more sustained expansion. Therefore, it is unclear that it would have resulted in a transformation of the Turkish economy. In fact, as we shall see in a moment, the 1958 program was the first in a number of similar programs that were developed and implemented in the following years. The first stabilization program seems, however, to have improved Turkey’s ability to import as can be also seen from Table 6.3. Before the effects of the program or lack thereof could be fully seen, on May 27, a military junta assumed power.

The Political Economy of Import Substitution Oriented Industrialization (1960–1980) The military leadership was dismissive of the economic development that had been achieved under the DP administration. The soldiers were interested in heavy industrialization. An example of what they desired was ordering the railroad workshop in Eskişehir to start working on the production of a car.

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After devoting all its energies and expertise to the cause, the workshop produced two prototypes of a car brand-named Devrim (Revolution). General Gürsel, head of the National Unity Committee and president, proudly stepped into one and traveled a few hundred yards before the car stalled, allegedly because they had forgotten to put fuel in it. The soldiers’ interest in industrialization combined with their autarkical proclivities led them to favor economic planning. They thought that the economic troubles the country had undergone under DP rule emanated in large part from spendthrift approaches of the government without planning. They proceeded quickly to establish a State Planning Organization, an organization which also found its way into the constitution. This institution would plan the expenditures and the investment budget of the state and would offer guidance and incentives to the private sector in its investments. It was initially conceived as an almost above politics technical organization, but after the restoration of competitive politics, it gradually came under the command of elected governments. The general thrust of thinking behind it, however, became the thrust of Turkey’s philosophy of economic development for the next two decades. Turkey had opted for import substitution oriented industrialization or ISI for short. Although ISI had not been adopted as a formal policy doctrine earlier, the aspirations of the single-party CHP with its industrial development plan of 1933–1938 clearly constituted a precursor. More significantly, although the DP government had preferred a liberal economy led by private economic development funded by external borrowing, by 1954, it had become evident that this expectation was not being borne out, producing a policy change which was both statist and protective of domestic industries. The policies the DP government pursued after 1954 may be said to constitute the post-war beginnings of import substitution industrialization.17 ISI had a solid base of political support in Turkish society. The military and civilian bureaucratic elites supported it, not only because it conformed to their nationalist and autarkic line of thinking but also because the policy enhanced their power. ISI would serve the omnipotent state visions of the soldier and bureaucrat politicians who were suspicious of the growth of autonomous groups in society, as well their aspiration to build a modern society.18 The military shortly developed an institutional stake in ISI-oriented 17

See Keyder, State and Class, p. 134; and Barkey, Industrialization Crisis, p. 54. Regarding the mindset of soldier politicians, see Anne O. Krueger and İlter Turan, “The Politics and Economics of Turkish Policy Reforms in the 1980s,” in Robert H. Bates and Anne O. Krueger, Political and Economic Interactions in Economic Policy Reform (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 334. 18

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industrialization by establishing the Armed Forces Mutual Assistance Establishment (OYAK) which, as a retirement fund, invested in some of the major industries including the automotive industry and, later, steel and in defense industries. The business community was also highly supportive of ISI because the policy ensured them a protected market and favorable credit terms. The intelligentsia that had historically constituted part of the modernizing centralist elites, by its nature, was deeply attracted to the idea; the general public, on the other hand, did not object because the policy created new opportunities for employment and made new products, though of low quality, available on the market.19 ISI also diluted the struggles that are usually associated with capitalist development. The state was a major investor in the economy through the state economic enterprises or SEEs. Since these did not usually give priority to profit maximization, they were more generous to their workers than private investors. To find and enjoy employment in an SEE was in the nature of a privilege that was bestowed on a worker usually through a partisan clientelist network. For this reason, during the 1960–1980 period the workers and labor unions whose members worked at SEEs were generally associated with the economically liberal, socially conservative parties, notably the Justice Party, rather than the CHP that had come to identify itself more and more as a social democratic party but without shedding its modernizing outlook. Labor unions on the left emerged in the large industrial enterprises of the private sector which were more sensitive to questions of cost and profit maximization. ISI, in some ways, slowed down the evolution of socioeconomic conditions that are supportive of democratic evolution and consolidation. We have already suggested that this was the case with the labor unions. But, the complementarity of interests between the economic and the political elite was generally rather strong. The industrial–commercial bourgeoisie relied on the political authority not only for protection and support, but also for the allocation of hard currency, credits, and the SEE-produced intermediate goods. Hard currency was especially important since it was needed to import capital and non-locally produced intermediate goods without which the private industries would come to a halt. Resources over which the government exercised control were made available, particularly to those who joined their economic fortunes with the political fortunes of the government. Businessmen, to put it differently, were more likely to prosper if they made the correct political decision, not necessarily the correct market decision. Under the

19

For a somewhat similar analysis, see Barkey, Industrialization Crisis, pp. 60–1.

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circumstances, unless an absolute necessity, challenging the government did not seem to be a prudent policy choice. Despite the integration of the economic and the political, and the achievement of a superior position of the political over that of the economic under ISI, the system contained a number of contradictions that constituted a dynamic for both socioeconomic and political change. To begin with, it had been assumed that ISI was a way of rendering the economy less dependent on other economies, that it was a way of achieving self-sufficiency. The truth was that ISI did not reduce reliance on imports, it simply changed their composition in favor of raw materials, energy, and intermediate goods. In fact, under ISI, the failure to import produced, in addition to shortage of goods, unemployment. Furthermore, the economic expansion achieved under ISIoriented growth, rather than reducing the need for external earnings, intensified it. In an economy where external incomes derived mainly from the export of agricultural products and some raw materials in which not much new capital was being invested at the time, external earnings did not grow significantly over time. Therefore, the economic expansion secured under ISI served to increase the need for external borrowing, paving the way to periodic crises. The proclivity to periodic crises was exacerbated by the high domestic expenditures deriving from a policy of holding a difficult coalition together by engaging in acts of generosity toward them. Sunar’s observation regarding the 1950–1960 period continued into the 1960–1980 period: Patronage was a weapon used to great effect by the DP: to cut across primordial and class divisions and to bind “the people” to the party. It was however, a costly weapon as well. Coalitions built on patronage thrive on the disposition of resources on a particularistic basis: goods and services are exchanged for loyalty and support. . . . Clientele groups are subject neither to the planned discipline of the state nor the disciplinary competition of the market. A patronage coalition survives best under conditions of economic growth and begins to become undone in economically troubled times.20

In terms of initiating a crisis, the shortage of hard currency, exacerbated by a fixed exchange rate policy, was more crucial than the shortage of domestic funds. The mechanism leading to a crisis operated simply. As the country kept borrowing to finance its ISI-driven economy, there came a point when doubts began to rise about the ability of the country to repay its debt. This meant not being able to find the external sources to finance the economy and hence the crisis followed by a stabilization program. When the crisis came, the United States and in later years major European allies, with Germany often leading the way, took an interest in Turkey’s economic crisis, more for reasons of 20

İlkay Sunar, “Populism and Patronage,” pp. 125–6.

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Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy

alliance security than for Turkey’s indispensible place in the international economy. How the resources available to the government, especially hard currency, the acquisition of which clearly constituted a rent because of an overvalued exchange rate, should be distributed among clients, then, constituted the source of tension between the government and the heterogeneous private sector. Barkey has identified five groups as component units of the latter: 1) agricultural interests, 2) commercial interests, 3) commodity brokers, 4) industrialists, and 5) small artisans and shopkeepers.21 For example, to keep the agricultural sector in the coalition, high support prices were paid for agricultural products. This was in the interest of small artisans and shopkeepers in the provinces who benefited from injection of money into the local economy. It also increased the margin of profit of agricultural commodity brokers. It reduced, on the other hand, credit available to the industrialists. Or, for example, the industrialists and the commercial groups had contradictory interests since both competed for the limited hard currency to import, in the case of the former, intermediate and in the case of the latter, finished goods. The conflict was exacerbated by the fact that each time an industry started producing another good, often a surrogate of the imported product, it wanted it to be added to the list of goods prohibited to import, a request which undercut the market for the importer. Or as a final example, the ISI industrialists were initially against devaluing the currency since this would increase their costs of production all of which they would not be able to pass on to the consumers for fear of reduced sales, whereas agricultural interests were more supportive since this would serve to increase exports and their income. But it became clear to the industrialists during the 1970s that the only way to meet the shortage of hard currency was through devaluations for, otherwise, acquiring it in the parallel market was even more expensive. They changed their position and became supporters of devaluation. Like the DP that had found itself with insufficient foreign exchange reserves in 1957–1958 and forced into a stabilization program that included the devaluation of the Turkish lira by threefold, Mr Demirel, the AP prime minister who was a master in keeping a heterogeneous coalition of voters in power from 1965 on, found himself in a similar situation in 1970. He had to initiate an economic program which included a major devaluation. The measure began to work in that Turkey’s hard currency earnings began to rise,22 but social disturbances that had commenced in 1968 in the form of student demonstrations, and were later also joined by labor unions, had gotten more radicalized

21

Barkey, Industrialization Crisis, p. 110.

22

Barkey, Industrialization Crisis, p. 121.

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as the government tried to suppress them. The erosion of domestic peace invited the indirect military intervention and a “national unity” government.23 A similar situation began to arise after 1973, a year which will be remembered as the year of the oil crisis when OPEC effected a substantial rise in oil prices. Already encountering a persistent failure to generate enough foreign exchange to meet its needs, the sudden rise in oil prices imposed over time almost insurmountable difficulties on Turkey. The 1973 elections had produced a series of coalition governments that were reluctant to take difficult economic measures. They encountered conflicting pressures from various constituencies on how to proceed, causing them to postpone decisions. Furthermore, an intervention on Cyprus to arrest a total Greek takeover of the island had led to a costly American arms embargo. The 1977 elections, however, produced a similar outcome. The successive governments were reluctant and unable to take decisive action. Small devaluations in 1977 and 1978 of 10 and 30 percent were ineffective.24 Turkey began to default on some of its debts. In 1979, the prime minister volunteered his famous remark that the country was in need of seventy cents. Amidst continuing social disturbances and extensive economic instability, the minority government of Mr Demirel adopted on January 24, 1980, a number of decisions which liberalized the foreign currency regime, and though not allowing it to float freely, allowed the value of the Turkish lira to reflect better the supply–demand relationship, scrapping many controls on economic transactions that had been in place ever since the Second World War. The decisions taken together were tantamount to the termination of the ISI-led growth strategy and its replacement by one of export-led growth.25 While the economy began to perform better, public peace continued to deteriorate. On September 12, 1980, the military was at the political helm again, this time directly and for nearly three years. The import substitution era that had formally begun during the 1960 military intervention had ended shortly before the military came back again in 1980. The change Turkish society underwent under ISI, in retrospect, appears to harbor critical transformations for Turkey’s democratization. This was a period of significant socioeconomic change. To begin with, the pace of urbanization that had begun to move upwards after the Second World War, gained additional speed. Whereas only 32 percent of the population lived in cities and 23

See also Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, pp. 104–6. The military intervention is analyzed in Ch. 5. 24 Barkey, Industrialization Crisis, p. 120. 25 An analytical account of the conditions that led to these changes, the process of change, its contents and outcomes is rendered in Krueger and Turan, Politics and Economics, pp. 336–50.

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towns in 1960, the percentage had reached nearly 44 percent in 1980. Literacy had registered a similar increase from nearly 40 to 67 percent. Among males, it had approached 80 percent. The total length of highways had doubled, the quality of roads significantly improved. People traveled frequently. Radios were everywhere and television was rapidly spreading. To express it briefly, Turkey had moved along on the various indicators of modernization. Second, Turkey had gone through a significant change in the structure of its economy. Whereas in 1960, agricultural production accounted for 41 percent of the GNP while industrial production only 15 percent, by 1980, industrial production had increased to 22 percent and agriculture dropped down to 24 percent. The share of services, etc. on the other hand, had gone up from 43 to 54 percent.26 Urbanization and industrialization together appear to have constituted a suitable background for student and worker activism that characterized the less than peaceful atmosphere of the period. Students took to the streets as change undermined their prospects for finding easy employment in the state sector which had been the case before 1960. Labor activism was prompted by a desire to get a bigger share of the economic pie as income disparities in society were growing. The squatter settlements new urbanites often lived in, reflecting the heterogeneity of backgrounds of ethnicity, religious sect, region, and origin, marginal in every way to the cities of which they were a part, offered easy safe havens for the perpetrators of violence. The activism of both students and labor was encouraged by some political parties in a party system that was becoming increasingly fragmented as explained in the following paragraphs. Once unorthodox politics became an instrument of political rivalries, all parties, either to benefit from it or defend themselves against it, connected with some student and labor groups that they felt were ideologically closest to them. Third, economic change rendered differentiation in society more complex. Groups that were able to coexist in the same political coalition earlier found that their interests had become so divergent that they were becoming rivals. Partly also encouraged by an electoral system of proportional representation that allowed small parties to achieve parliamentary representation and take part in coalition governments, parties began to fragment. To cite examples, a group that was more closely tied with the commercial elite coming from outside the three major urban-industrial centers of Istanbul–Izmir–Ankara broke away from the governing AP in 1970 and established the Demokratik Krueger and Turan, Politics and Economics, p. 338. The figures for 1980 are at slight variance with those presented in Table 6.5. deriving from the fact that the figures have probably been revised later, but the difference is not critical in terms of pointing to the direction of change. 26

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Table 6.4. Fragmentation of the Turkish party system Election Year

Fragmentation Index (vote)

n of parties in parliament

1961

0.71

4

1965

0.63

6

1969

0.70

8

1973

0.77

7

1977

0.68

6

1983

0.65

3

1987

0.75

3

1991

0.79

5

1995

0.84

5 (6)

1999

0.85

5

2002

0.80

2

2007

0.71

3 (4)

2011

0.67

3 (4)

Source: Douglas Rae’s Fragmentation Index 1961–1977 comes from Ergun Ozbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), p. 77; 1983–1999 comes from İlter Turan, “Volatility in Politics, Stability in Parliament: An Impossible Dream? The Turkish Grand National Assembly During the Last Two Decades,” Journal of Legislative Studies (Summer, 2003). The 2002–2011 figures have also been calculated by the author. The figures in parentheses indicate that a party did not enter the election as a party but immediately organized as a parliamentary party. In 1995, a party ran its candidates on the ticket of another party; in 2007 and 2011, the BDP, the Kurdish ethnic party, ran its candidates as independents but immediately formed a parliamentary party after the elections.

Parti.27 Within the CHP, when the party leadership wanted to make an adjustment in the party’s ideology and move it to the center left so as to appeal to a broader group of voters, an ideologically conservative group left the party in two waves in 1967 and 1973, eventually coming together under the banner of the Republican Reliance Party in 1974. Part of this fragmentation also became manifest in the strengthening of small parties and the establishment of new parties. For example, Nationalist Action (MHP), a small party, improved its electoral standing in the 1977 elections to place sixteen representatives in the legislature. By taking part in coalition governments after 1974 when it had three deputies and then after 1977 in a more substantial way, it even proved capable of expanding its

27

The party tried to create the impression that it was a continuation of the Demokrat Parti, the governing party during the 1950–1960 interim, and assume the name “Demokratik” because the laws did not permit it to assume the name “Demokrat.”

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Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy

support base, and succeeded in organizing its own national labor federation among workers who were employed by SEEs that were attached to the MHP ministers. But, a more significant development was the emergence of the National Salvation Party (MSP), which represented the economic elite of the provinces who felt that the metropolitan areas were dominating economic life and that the country’s economy was being run to cater to their interests. The party made its presence immediately felt in the first election it entered in 1973 and achieved such representation that neither of the two bigger parties had to secure its participation in a coalition in order to muster a parliamentary majority. Fourth, fragmentation produced coalition governments. The fact that the party system was in flux and parties competed against the likes of their kind or ideological relatives for votes created two problematical tendencies: a) the competition among parties in the same coalition and the policies of polarization they pursued in order to establish their distinct identity vis à vis the electorate, rendered governments unstable, ineffective, and short-lived. They did not stay in office as long as governments established by single parties. After 1960 and until 2003, one-party governments including minority governments enjoyed an average tenure of 448.8 days compared to 366.5 days for coalitions and minority governments that received a vote of confidence.28 b) second, when coalition governments operated within already existing systems of patronage and clientelism, each party in the coalition tried to maximize its own gains, putting unmanageable strains on the national budget, thus hastening the coming of economic crises. Ineffective government, inability to deal with public disorders, and the economic crises came together to create a set of unfavorable conditions which not only opened the way to military interventions, but also created a greater willingness among the general public to trade off their liberties for a while to restore security and economic stability in their daily lives. In retrospect, the 1960–1980 interim, as already indicated, signified a period of painful socioeconomic change on the way to becoming a more industrialized society. Societal tensions, resort to violence, fragmentation of parties, and the polarization that characterized the party system, over-politicization of the electorate, ineffective governments, and the near exhaustion of clientelism, and military interventions aiming at keeping the system from atrophying were all parts of the same process. In comparison to other societies, such as Chile, Brazil, and South Korea, the price Turkish society had to pay may be judged to The figure for coalition governments come from Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, p. 97. The author has calculated the figure for one-party governments from data also supplied by Kalaycıoğlu. Governments not receiving a vote of confidence are excluded. 28

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have been less. Furthermore, despite such instability, during the period the country achieved an annual growth rate of 6.8 percent,29 a magnitude that cannot be ignored.

The Rise of the Operating Market Economy We have already seen that the economic system that had evolved under ISI was not a fully operating market system. The state owned many of the major industries and these units pursued an array of non-economic goals; their actions were generally not guided by profit maximization. The private producers were protected by a wall of quantitative and duty restrictions on imports. The allocation of hard currency was not done on a fully economic basis (e.g. auctions) but guided by other considerations that ranged from being equitable to being politically useful. The decisions of January 24, 1980 aimed to change this but, with the exception of changing some of the rules pertaining to hard currency transactions, time was needed. The changes were producing winners and losers. Viewed from a business perspective, some of the beneficiaries of the old system had come to recognize that the system was unsustainable; they had either adopted or prepared themselves to adopt an export orientation. For them, the changes did not constitute an unwanted development but the natural way to go to break the cycle of periodic economic crises that had a military intervention component in the past. For others, adjustments had to be made. If given time, though experiencing some temporary losses, they could enter the new era. A third group could simply not compete, and changes would have meant their end. From the perspective of labor and the salaried, on the other hand, the changes necessitated loss of jobs for purposes of rationalization and lower pay to bring inflation down and to enhance the powers of the industries to compete in the international markets. For the general public, a program that would help stabilize prices and bring an end to the shortages of goods which at some points had come to include coffee and cooking oil was a positive development. However, the program would also involve significant price hikes for the SEEs to bring an end to their losses which the Treasury ended up paying; and that was problematical. The losers in the changes had a clearer perception of what they were to lose and began to challenge them. In this, they were joined by all parties in the

Korkut Boratav, Türkiye iktisat Tarihi, 1908–2002 (7th ed.), (Ankara: İmge Yayınevi, 2003), p. 130, quoted in Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, p. 105. 29

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parliament save Prime Minister Demirel’s that led the minority government. The opposition leveled a variety of charges that ranged from having failed to protect the value of the Turkish lira, and having betrayed the working class, to having become a pawn of international capital. But before they succeeded in undoing the government, the military took over. The military, unlike militaries in Latin America, had not intervened to protect the economic interests of a particular socioeconomic group. Rather, the military leadership was reacting to political turmoil during which the parliament had failed to elect a new president of the republic after more than a hundred rounds of voting while street violence had climbed to new heights. Under normal circumstances, the military would have been protective of ISI industries and have shied away from moves that would undermine the economic role of the state in society.30 But, they had been well briefed from very early on by Turgut Özal, the architect of the reforms. Özal, a bureaucrat with extensive private-sector experience, had been made the undersecretary to the prime minister and the acting head of the State Planning Organization, after he discussed his ideas of reform in a courtesy visit to the prime minister. Cognizant of the political role of the military, shortly afterwards, he also offered briefings to the top commanders to explain the purpose of the reforms and the steps they would entail.31 By focusing on political stability, the military “facilitated the adjustment effort.”32 When the military took over, Mr Özal was made the deputy prime minister, while another member of his team, the minister of public finance. But as the consequences of the new economic policies began to unfold, the military leadership found it difficult to pursue the line Mr Özal was advocating. Two incidents in particular guided the commanders to bring about a shift in economic policy. One was concerned with the purchase by the government, in order to preserve “national wealth,” of a high-quality steel plant that was going bankrupt. The other was the case of a fund that went bankrupt, initiating a rush on other funds and threatening to bring them down too. In this case, the government thought that those who lost their savings should be compensated by the public treasury. In strong disagreement with the government, 30 Barkey, Industrialization Crisis, p. 184, suggests that the militaries in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, like the military in Turkey, had intervened after the exhaustion of the ISI paradigm. Though it is true, as I have already tried to recount, that the ISI paradigm had also been exhausted in the Turkish case, there is scant evidence that the military stepped in to cure economic ills. Evidence supporting a restoration of law and order orientation is more convincing. 31 Krueger and Turan, Politics and Economics, p. 356. 32 Ziya Öniş, State and Market: The Political Economy of Turkey in Comparative Perspective (İstanbul: Boğaziçi University, 1998), p. 246.

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Mr Özal resigned.33 The plans of Mr Özal to transform the role of the state in the Turkish economy and make it operate according to the market rules rather than those of politics came to a temporary halt. A year later, after the November 1983 elections, however, he was back in power: this time as prime minister, to continue with his policies. The military, in the meantime, had taken a series of measures to bring street violence to an end and depoliticize Turkish society. Associations were placed under strict restrictions not to engage in political activity as were the unions. Other measures were also initiated to reduce the power of the unions. Capping wage increases was a case in point. The military’s desire for law and order had translated into policies that favored business interests more against those of labor. But more importantly, the generals had brought back the bureaucrats to a commanding position both in society and the economy. The return to power of Mr Özal gave new impetus to market reforms. Rather than focusing on stabilization as a goal, transforming the economy along market lines became the priority of the Özal government. Reforming taxes, liberalizing interest rates, opening the Istanbul Stock Exchange, bringing the deficits of the SEEs under control, and building incentive structures for export promotion were among the government’s targets. The government also promoted infrastructure projects which it saw as a proper responsibility of government in a market economy, but developed a comprehensive privatization program for SEEs and other economic resources owned by the state that, it believed, could be more productively utilized under private ownership. The changes introduced under Özal gradually removed the allocation of hard currency as an instrument that the government could use for political ends. The attention paid to balancing the budgets of the ministries and other government agencies seemed to put a brake on the patronage potential available to the government. Privatization, on the other hand, initiated a process whereby SEEs could no longer be used for patronage purposes at the expense of business rationales.34 The positive effects of these policies could be seen in the indicators of macroeconomic performance where Turkey

33

Öniş, State and Market, pp. 365–6. Privatization was a major item on the agenda of the Özal governments, and has continued into later periods. Though the initial logic was one of rationalization and removing money losers to outside of governmental activity, in later years, the income coming from privatization became more important than other considerations. See also Selim İlkin, “Privatization of the State Economic Enterprises,” in Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin, eds., Politics in the Third Turkish Republic (Boulder: Westview, 1994), pp. 63–75. 34

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experienced real GNP growth throughout the decade, and its exports registered significant growth.35 There were three losers under the economic reform programs that the Özal government undertook to restructure the economy. The first was the agricultural sector that now became deprived of subsidized inputs such as fuel, fertilizers, and credits. High support prices also became a thing of the past. The salaried were the next losers. Many among them were government employees some of whom left public service for jobs in the private sector, thereby getting out of the government employment safety net. And, labor was the third loser with the introduction of a restrictive legal framework and downward pressure on wages.36

A Case of Recidivism During the initial years of the Özal government, the opposition was still trying to realign itself into coherent political organizations and to recover from the devastation it had suffered under the military administration. Positive as some of the results of the economic reforms were, disappearance of large segments of the patronage system and rising prices had created voter dissatisfaction. This had, in fact, been reflected in the 1987 elections in which Mr Özal’s Motherland Party (ANAP) had lost votes. His departure from the prime ministry in 1989 to be elected president and his leaving behind a trusted but not widely esteemed colleague as prime minister, invited a challenge for the party’s leadership and constituted additional developments that continued to weaken the standing of the party vis à vis the voters after 1987. The elections of 1991 marked a return to the political stage of the pre-1980 parties, and personalities, and because the vote was widely dispersed, coalition governments. Table 6.4 shows the nature of the fragmentation in the parliament. The governments, led first by Süleyman Demirel, now heading the True Path Party (DYP) that had taken the place of his pre-1980 Justice Party, and then by Mrs Çiller (after Mr Demirel became the president upon the unexpected death of President Özal) in coalition with the Social Democratic People’s Party (SHP) proved long lasting. During their tenure governmental largesse to finance patronage was restored and the intensification of ethnically İlkin, “Privatization,” p. 375. İlkin, “Privatization,” p. 378. Ziya Öniş, in his “Power, Interests and Coalitions: The Political Economy of Mass Privatization in Turkey,” Third World Quarterly, 32:4 (2011), p. 721, reminds us that the labor unions reached the peak of their power in late 1970s, and that after 1980, their bargaining powers were curtailed. 35 36

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based Kurdish terror by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was met by an ascending and costly military response. The growing expenditures and deficit financing brought about the third largest devaluation of 51 percent in 1994 as part of stabilization efforts.37 The elections of 1995 and 1999 again produced widely dispersed votes and coalition governments. The 1995–1999 interim was particularly turbulent, because in addition to the difficulty parties experienced in working together, the military became more assertive on two critical questions. On meeting the Kurdish ethnic challenge, it insisted that the terrorist insurgency could be overcome by military means, thereby excluding accommodation of Kurdish aspirations as a way of dealing with the problem. Second, the military leadership found the prime ministership of Mr Necmettin Erbakan of the Welfare Party (RP) a threat to the secular nature of the republic and forced his resignation. In this way, the move toward the deepening of the market economy was replaced by questions of security and a return to the enhanced prevalence of the military in politics. Having exhausted the possibilities of working together and constrained by military preferences, the 1995 parliament went into the elections under a four month old minority government led by Bülent Ecevit, the head of the pre-1980 CHP who had proceeded to establish after 1980 his own Democratic Left Party (DSP). Discredited, the DYP of Mrs Çiller, the ANAP of Mr Yılmaz and the CHP of Mr Baykal (who had resuscitated the pre-1980 party and united it with the SHP) all suffered significant losses. The fortunes of Mr Ecevit’s DSP to whom all had turned as a leader of last resort, and the MHP, not tainted by having been in the government, improved. The votes of the Virtue Party (FP) that had filled the vacuum that the closing of the RP by the Constitutional Court had created, on the other hand, declined about six percentage points. A DSP–MHP–ANAP coalition emerged and served for the entire term that shortened by a decision to move the elections seventeen months ahead. During the interim, the RP was closed down by the Constitutional Court for having used religion for political ends. Especially during 1995–1999 public expenditures had gotten out of control. The government had tried to meet the deficit mainly by internal borrowing which pushed the interest rate up to ever higher rates. Deficits were also a permanent feature of foreign trade where, growing as they were, exports failed 37 E. Fuat Keyman and Ziya Öniş suggest that the growth of the domestic and external debt created a rentier class whose fortunes were determined by their ability to make loans to the government at high interest rates. Cf. Turkish Politics in a Changing World (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi University Press, 2007), p. 138.

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to meet the import needs of the economy. In 2000–2001, some smaller banks became unable to meet their obligations and began to fail. The efforts of the government to stabilize the economy proved insufficient. Despite a strong aversion to stability programs on the part of the prime minister and his nationalist partners, starting yet another stabilization program became unavoidable. Kemal Derviş, a vice president of the World Bank of Turkish origin, who enjoyed the confidence of the IMF, was invited to return to Turkey and become the cabinet minister for economic affairs and guide the reform program. This time the institutional framework for the proper functioning of a market economy, regulatory and oversight agencies for banks and capital markets was solidly established, excessive spending by public bureaucracies including local governments was brought under control. When the government decided to move the elections a year and a half ahead, the economy had begun to hum along. The old economic order that the pre-1980 cadres had tried to resuscitate was discredited as a source of the economic problems the country had undergone. Even privatization which had generated much resistance in the past was now seen as a part of constructing a healthy economy.

T HE CO M I NG O F T HE C ON S E R V A T I V E L I B E R A L S The socioeconomic transformation that commenced in 1980 with the abandonment of ISI in favor of export-led growth, the “valiant” efforts of the representatives of old politics to come back only to bring back with them economic crises led to an erosion of faith in them. This may be the primary reason why a new party established by the reformist wing of the string of religious parties from MSP to RP and FP, all closed down by the Constitutional Court for having used religion for political purposes, raised interest and hope among the voters. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) registered a meteoric rise and was in power within a year of its founding, winning the elections of 2002. The origin of the political movement that achieved power in 2002 may be traced to 1969 when the secretary general of the Turkish Union of Chambers of Industry and Commerce, Professor Necmettin Erbakan, was elected its president in a surprise move. The chambers were rather heterogeneous organizations that brought the representatives of small, medium, and large commercial enterprises and industries together. The commercially and industrially

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more developed regions, Istanbul in particular, had prevailed in running the organization. The provincial bourgeoisie, organized and led by Erbakan, complained that credits, import quotas, and hard currency allocations, all went to a narrowly based business elite, a “comprador bourgeoisie” located in Istanbul, to the exclusion of others. The center-right Demirel government reacted strongly to this surprise rebellion in what it considered to be its own turf and used all legal means available to it, succeeding, in the end, in removing Mr Erbakan from his position.38 But a new movement was born. Erbakan, after his candidacy was refused by the governing party, had won a seat in the parliament as an independent from Konya in central Turkey in the 1969 elections. At the beginning of 1970, he and two defecting deputies from the AP joined others to establish the National Order Party, an anti-economic establishment religious party that advocated a geographically more equitable industrialization. Within a year, the Constitutional Court closed the party for exploitation of religion for political ends. Slightly more than a year later, the same team established the National Salvation Party (MSP). A religiously conservative party, challenging both the cultural and economic domination of the country by the Istanbul–Ankara–Izmir based westernist elites found immediate favor in the provincial centers of Anatolia. MSP came in as the third largest party in the 1973 elections and it or its successors have been a permanent part of the Turkish political scene ever since. The MSP and its successor organizations and their role have been discussed in Chapters 3–5 and will not be repeated here. Suffice it to remember that the party was a partner in many governments, and as the RP, it led the polls in the elections of 1995 and became the leading party in a coalition with Mr Erbakan as prime minister in 1996–1997. His provocative words and actions colored with religion produced reactions in Turkey’s secularist establishment and led first to his being forced to leave the prime ministry in 1997 and then to the closing of his party by the Constitutional Court in 1998. The successor Virtue Party did not perform as well in the 1999 elections as the RP had done in 1995. It was also closed down, as those before it, by the Constitutional Court for similar reasons, in 2000. A group of young politicians that had come up through the ranks of the string of religious parties were frustrated that the policies of Mr Erbakan led to constant closures by the Constitutional Court. Furthermore, the party had become acculturated to Turkish political life and was losing the attention of the voters. In the summer of 2000, they offered a rival candidate to that nominated by Mr Erbakan who, according to law, could not himself be a

38

Barkey, Industrialization Crisis, pp. 130–1.

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Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy Table 6.5. Composition of the GDP by percentage (agriculture, industry, services) Year

Agriculture

Industry

Services*

1970

37.1

16.8

46.1

1975

33.5

17.1

49.4

1980

25.8

18.6

55.6

1985

19.8

22.1

58.1

1990

17.0

25.0

58.0

1995

15.0

25.8

59.2

2000

13.6

22.5

63.9

2005

10.1

24.4

65.5

2010

8.4

23.2**

68.4

Source: TUİK (Turkish Institute of Statistics) except for 2010 which comes from a report of the Turkish Union of Chambers of Industry, Commerce and Commodity Exchanges, visited on 29 November, 2013: . It should be noted that once the website is accessed, one should click “1 Bölüm-Bütçe Dengesi” which is an Excel table. The figures above come from the tables located in line 17 (1924–1949), line 19 (1949– 1974), line 21 (1975–2005) and line 23 (2006–2012). All tables bear the name “Konsolide Bütçe Gelir, Gider ve Dengesi” and the figures given above appear in column M. The report also cites TUIK as the original source of the information. All percentages have been calculated using current prices. *Services here is a residual category obtained by subtracting from 100 percent the shares of agriculture and industry. **Includes construction which was given as a separate item in the original table.

candidate because a party he had led had been closed by the Court less than five years previously. Mr Erbakan’s candidate won but not overwhelmingly. Then, when the Virtue Party was closed by the court, those advocating a new type of politics established the AKP in August 2001. A year later, the party was in power. The elections of 2002, conducted under the 10 percent national threshold rule, eliminated the parliamentary representation of all parties except the AKP and the CHP and gave the former a comfortable majority to form a one-party government. The AKP, despite its impressive electoral performance, adopted a conciliatory line, saying that it was a socially conservative, politically and economically liberal party. It said that it had observed closely the principles of the stabilization program that had been developed by Kemal Derviş and had begun to be implemented by the Ecevit government. Under successive AKP governments in the following years, the economy has been set on a steady path of growth, and despite some structural problems that had produced growing current account deficits, it has weathered the crises that mature economies have been undergoing without encountering major

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Table 6.6. Ratio of consolidated national budgets to gross domestic product* (percentages) Year

Percentage

Year

Percentage

Year

Percentage 12.94

1925

7.13

1960

8.46

1990

1930

7.99

1965

10.30

1995

16.52

1935

11.74

1970

12.56

2000

28.20

1940

13.50

1975

13.24

2005

24.60

1945

6.92

1980

16.32

2010

26.8

1950

10.28

1985

13.76

2012

25.6

Source: , visited by Tuba Okçu on November 30, 2013. *Consolidated budgets includes the budgets of agencies that do not generate income as well those that raise income, such as public universities that charge tuitions, public hospitals that charge for their services, etc. minus direct transfers from the treasury to public agencies, local governments being the prime example.

problems. With an array of opposition parties that have failed to put economic considerations to the top of their agenda, in each election the AKP has improved its electoral performance.

S O C I O E C O N O MI C A L L Y T R A NS F OR M E D S O C I E T Y A ND D EMO C RA CY The adoption of the export-led growth strategy in 1980 has produced major changes in Turkish society. These have not been limited to the economic domain but are also reflected in the sociology and politics of the country. Table 6.5 shows, for example, that the share of agriculture in the GDP has been steadily falling, while those of industry and services rising. The composition of the GDP is beginning to look more and more like those of industrialized societies. While the share of the working population employed in agriculture at 25.1 percent39 is considerably higher than those in most industrialized societies, it has also been declining. More than three-fourths of the citizens are now living in towns and cities. The figure comes from the website of the Turkish Union of Chambers of Agriculture: , visited on November 5, 2014. 39

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Table 6.7. Turkey’s gross domestic product Year

GDP (bn USD current prices)

GDP (bn USD PPP)

GDP/cita (USD, PPP)

1980

68.789

116.291

2758

1985

67.235

188.856

3841

1990

150.676

291.450

5558

1995

169.486

385.475

6709

2000

266.568

512.946

7750

2005

482.980

747.326

11,117

2010

731.144

968.604

13,577

Source: , visited on October 25, 2014.

Turning to communications, in 2005, the number of radios per thousand was 470, while television sets trailed at 423. For newspapers, which appeared to be losing to electronic media, the number was 111.40 In 2012, the number of landline telephones per 100 population was nineteen, but cell phones was ninety, indicating that almost everyone had access to a telephone. Access to fixed broadband Internet was 10.5 per 10041 but it is known to be rapidly expanding. The growth of GDP gained particular momentum after 2000.42 Income per capita in 2012 was 10830 US dollars in current prices43 and probably considerably higher if calculated as Purchasing Power Parity. Table 6.6 shows a steady improvement in income during the last three decades. This growth led to the expansion of the urban middle class as well as the size of the working class. The working class that used to have strong ties to its rural roots has been acquiring an urban identity as its earlier ties become distant and less salient in 40 These figures come from Hatice Erkekoğlu, “AB’ye Tam Üyelik Sürecinde Türkiye’nin Üye Ülkeler Karşısındaki Göreli Gelişme Düzeyi: Çok Değişkenli İstatistiksel Bir Analiz,” Kocaeli Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 14:2 (2007), p. 44. 41 , accessed October 25, 2014. Writing in November 2013, Taha Akyol, without indicating the source of his information, says there are 9 billion fixed and 25 million mobile broadband subscribers in Turkey, adding that usually a subscription is used by more than one person. Cf. , accessed December 4, 2013. 42 Ümit E. Kumcuoğlu, reading the manuscript, commented that a significant part of the growth has not derived from higher rates of growth per se but from the fact that the value of the Turkish lira appreciated. I would agree that appreciation of the Turkish lira was important but overall rates of growth were also reasonable and furthermore, growth was sustained. 43 , accessed October 25, 2014. The figure is GNI per capita calculated using the Atlas method.

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daily life. Economic growth has also bolstered governmental incomes and has therefore expanded resources available to the public, that is, negotiables, for the allocation of which political actors compete among themselves. As the amount of negotiables in a society increases, it not only becomes possible to satisfy the expectations of a larger contingent of political actors thereby reducing the intensity of conflict, but also political conflict becomes more likely to be directed to the domain of negotiables, moving away from items like identity and belief over which negotiation is not possible. Table 6.6 shows that the money resources available to governments have increased significantly over time such that the national budget now represents more than one-fourth of the GDP. The growth of the economy (see Table 6.7), in addition to enhancing the resource base on which politics have to operate, has also led to a reformulation of the role of government as the manager of the market economy, forcing political parties to pay more attention to economic concerns. This is reflected in the space political parties have been giving to economic concerns in their programs. For example, in the 1983, 1996, and 2006 program of ANAP, economic questions were given 253, 304, and 356 lines respectively. There was a fundamental transformation in the CHP where the numbers went up from 824 in 1994 to 2670 in 2008 such that the space given to economic concerns constituted 47 percent of the entire program. Even in the case of the MHP, not noted for its focus on economic matters, the number of lines jumped from 707 in 2000 to 1573 two years later, only to go back, however, to 768 in 2009.44 The ascent of economic concerns is also reflected in the space newspapers allocate to economic questions. Many papers have either introduced or significantly expanded their economic coverage, while radios and television stations have allocated much time to economic news. A couple of television channels nowadays focus mainly on economic developments. In short, economic questions have come to increasingly permeate public discussion and debate after 1980, gaining momentum as capitalist development has advanced. Looking at the above cited statistics and the general direction of socioeconomic developments, it may be easy to conclude that the level the indicators of modernization have reached in Turkey, places it among the countries where democracy is thought to have become irreversible. Such a conclusion, however, is hasty. There is no question that Turkey has been a democracy in terms of having elections determine who is to rule. The last direct military intervention was concluded three decades ago. The military has been so

These figures have been compiled by my graduate assistant Tuba Okçu for which I am thankful. 44

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weakened politically that it is difficult to imagine that it would make a political comeback. Yet, in terms of individual liberties and the rule of law, there is distance to be covered. In the following chapter, we will examine the deepening of Turkish democracy deriving partly from socioeconomic change that has led to the strengthening of civil society and partly from Turkey’s association with the European Union, and then proceed to discuss its shortcomings.

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The Deepening of Democracy and its Challenges In the preceding chapter, “Interactions among Society, Economy, and Politics: Change and Democratization,” we examined changes that Turkish society has undergone in the social and economic domains since the founding of the republic, including some emphasis on the post-1980 period when the Turkish economy underwent a transformation that raised Turkey to the level of an upper-middle-income country according to World Bank classification and a member of the G-20. Our central argument was that Turkey had moved along in the magnitude of socioeconomic indicators that modernization theorists had found were associated with democracy. Since, however, improved socioeconomic indicators do not in and of themselves ensure a democratic outcome or the strengthening of already existing democratic rule, we will focus more closely on two factors that contributed in important ways to the deepening and maturing of Turkish democracy. The first of these is the strengthening of civil society, complemented by the rising importance of the individual as a political actor. This is related, of course, to socioeconomic change. Second are the developments in the international environment and in particular in Turkey’s European Union connection, without which the practice of democracy would not have been as successful as it has been. After completing our discussion of factors that have contributed to the deepening and maturing of democracy in Turkey, we will engage in a discussion of some of the impediments to its further improvements toward fullfledged democracy. The deepening of Turkish democracy has not come to mean that the Turkish political system is spared from problematical tendencies that pose challenges to its quality. Despite the fact that there seems to be little likelihood that Turkey will be ruled by a non-competitive political system in the foreseeable future, Turkey’s democratic performance will probably come under scrutiny and criticism for the country’s failure to perform satisfactorily in those finer aspects of democracy that distinguish classical democracies of the world like Great Britain, France, Canada, and the United States from those that still harbor shortcomings.

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Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy THE EXPANSI ON OF CIVIL S OC IETY

As has been defined in Chapter 1, civil society is used to refer to both formal and informal organizations that are formed and function independent of the state and engage in activities to limit its powers and influence what the government does. It is expected that this set of diverse non-governmental institutions are strong enough to counterbalance the state and prevent it from dominating society while allowing it to fulfill its role as the keeper of the peace and an arbitrator between major interests.1 Starting with the Ottoman Empire, the state has traditionally viewed autonomous centers of power in society with suspicion.2 One may speculate that the origin of such suspicion lies in the shift from dynastic forms of rule in which the ruler divided the estate among male siblings to an imperial system in which primogeniture became the rule of succession. During that transition, younger brothers of the oldest son who had inherited the throne from his father, continued to subscribe to the notion that they had not received their fair share of the estate. They conspired with any societal and sometimes external allies they could find to wrest from the estate what they considered to be rightfully theirs. To ensure his own survival, in the first century and a half of the empire, the sultan did away with the vestiges of nobility in the provinces and did not hesitate to have his own brothers killed.3 More immediately, however, is the reality that modernization strategies of the Ottoman Empire and then the early republic were oriented toward a oneway flow of modernity from state to society, the latter being perceived as “not modern” and therefore in need of being modernized. In the ensuing absence of effective channels through which societal responses and expectations could be communicated to the decision makers, unorthodox forms of political participation like conspiracies, murders, riots, and rebellions took their place. Predictably, this relationship became self-sustaining. As governments tried to suppress society, unorthodox forms continued to be the only way to try to influence the former’s behavior, fanning further efforts on the part of government to keep society under control. Administrative centralization that began to be implemented under the reign of Mahmut II in the early part of the

1

The careful reader will recognize this last sentence as the rewording of Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994), p. 5. 2 İlter Turan, Türkiye’de Demokrasi Kültürü, Koç University Working Papers, 1996:1. 3 On the topic of “political killing,” see Ahmet Mumcu, Osmanlı Devleti’nde Siyaseten Katl (Ankara: A.Ü. Hukuk Fakültesi, 1963).

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nineteenth century enhanced the powers of government vis à vis society even more, leaving little room for autonomy for society to organize and express itself. The republic inherited this tradition. Dedicated to modernization, especially through cultural transformation, the early republican leadership typically viewed negative responses to their policies as manifestations of ignorance. Since the responses were often couched in religious terms, they came to be associated with religious reaction. Furthermore, as discussed earlier, the republic encountered some rebellions in the countryside in which foreign involvement was suspected. Being confronted with movements perceived as being reactionary and thought to have been instigated by foreigners hardly constituted the background for the shaping of a cognitive frame in which autonomous organizations in society could be viewed with favor. From very early on, approaching autonomously based activity in society with suspicion presented a severe problem for democratization, since opposition parties were viewed with the same mental maps. The experiment with party competition during the Second Constitutional Period of the Empire (1908–1920) failed in part because of mutual suspicion and distrust among rival groups. This perception also constituted an input to the reluctance the republican regime displayed toward allowing new parties to function. During the beginning years of the republic, much opposition was directed against the new regime and therefore much of the suspicion against rival parties may have had a sound basis, and under the circumstances democracy would not have been the most suitable means to settle questions of regime. Nevertheless, it should be recognized that the attitude toward not allowing opposition parties was a legacy more deeply embedded in the political culture than simply being a product of a specific situation or context. Although power centers outside the government were not abundant, the single party had, nevertheless, developed a highly restrictive Law of Associations that empowered the Ministry of Interior to allow the establishing and closing of associations. It may be recalled from Chapter 3 that during the transition to political competition in 1945–1950, changes in this law (which were eventually realized) constituted a critical issue of contention between the government and the budding opposition, the latter arguing that opposition parties could not function effectively under the law’s provisions. After the military intervention of 1960, a separate Political Parties Law was enacted, somewhat liberating political parties from the general repressive approach of the state. The law on labor unions was also liberalized. Other associations, on the other hand, with slight improvements in the laws such as the removal of

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prior approval of the ministry for establishing an association, continued to operate under close state scrutiny.4 Apart from the legal environment that was less than receptive to the flourishing of civil-society organizations, the more serious problem was that groups, few as they were owing to low levels of differentiation (particularly those based on the economic division of labor) in society, did not have the material means to organize and maintain a minimum level of activities on their own. Over time, this led to the development of a network of associations that were funded by the state. The state, that is, mainly the incumbent government, then used these associations to penetrate certain constituencies or to develop support groups outside of government and party, and mobilize them for its own ends. The experience of the stormy years in which acts of violence and terror prevailed, guided the leaders of the 1971 military intervention, in addition to introducing restrictions on civil liberties, especially on the right of association, to also ban state aid to them.5 While circuitous ways continued to be practiced, direct infusion of public money to organizations usually connected with a political party was ended. Despite efforts of the military leadership of 1971 to defuse the polarization accompanied by violence that had come to characterize Turkish politics, the indirect intervention constituted but brief respite. After the restoration of electoral politics, hostile relations between government and opposition, and creeping violence returned, paving the way, as already recounted in Chapter 5, “The Rise and Fall of the Military as a Political Force,” for a much more comprehensive direct military intervention in 1980. Since many associations had been involved in street politics characterized by hyper-politicization of students, workers, and even the bureaucracy, the military rulers began by closing down some labor unions and an array of other associations, arresting and taking to court some of their leaders whom they suspected of having been involved in instigating violence.6 The military leaders, mobilizing the Consultative Assembly that they had appointed, then proceeded to reconstruct the legal framework within which associational life would occur thereafter. The thrust of the changes in the laws was directed toward depoliticizing associational life and confining political

4 For a comprehensive study of interest groups, their regulation, and their overall relations with the state, see Robert Bianchi, Interest Groups and Political Development in Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 5 İlter Turan, “1972–1996 Döneminde İstanbul’da Derneksel Hayat,” in Ahmet N, Yücekök, İlter Turan, and Mehmet Ö. Alkan, eds., Tanzimattan Günümüze İstanbul’da STKlar (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı, 1998), p. 200. 6 Turan, “1972–1996 Döneminde İstanbul’da”, p. 201.

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activity to political parties. Accordingly, not only associations but also labor unions were banned from engaging in political activity. Similarly, political parties were not allowed to develop youth, women’s, and other similar branches, and they were required to abstain from developing a network of affiliated organizations or establishing links with such organizations. In this context, public employees, academics, and students received special attention. Bureaucrats and professors were asked to clear their associational membership with their administrative superiors prior to joining, while students were initially even deprived from voting rights as long as their student status continued.7 The general directorate of security of the ministry of the interior was expected to keep a watchful eye on the associations to make sure they operated within boundaries. The measures the military junta took succeeded in bringing violence to an end and defusing the political polarization that had come to permeate society. After the resumption of electoral politics, the first few years were spent on efforts to reconstruct the pre-1980 parties and normalizing party politics, pushing matters of broader liberalization down to a lower priority on the agenda. Furthermore, political parties seemed somewhat content with the restrictions for two reasons. First, they did not want the conflict and violence-ridden politics of the pre-1980 period to return. Second, those in power could in fact extend tolerance to the activities of associations that were in line with their ideologies, policies, and expectations, but used the restrictive framework to prevent the opposition from doing the same. Substantial changes affecting associational life came successively in 1995, 1999, and 2001. The ban on political activities of labor unions was repealed in 1995 along with those on political parties that prohibited them from opening youth and women’s branches. Students and academics were once again allowed to join political parties. The 2001 changes focused, among other things, on the broadening of individual liberties. They covered inclusion of an explicit provision in the constitution that specified that joining associations was a right and that no prior permission would be needed in order to stage peaceful marches and demonstrations. The closing of political parties by the Constitutional Court was rendered more difficult. Improvements were made in protecting the privacy of the individual, particularly as regards the search of homes and offices, and freedom of expression. Freedom of the press was also strengthened. Although the Constitution of 1982 prepared by the military has undergone a significant number of changes, successive governments have volunteered that because the basic law was prepared with an authoritarian frame of mind,

7

Turan, “1972–1996 Döneminde İstanbul’da,” p. 201.

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it is difficult to transform it into a document fully supportive of democratic evolution, and that it should be changed in its entirety. After the elections of 2011, an inter-party committee was established in the legislature whose job was to prepare a new draft. Despite efforts, however, it has not proven possible for this committee to agree on a draft to be presented to the parliament for discussion and eventual enactment. While, in the event it is enacted, a new constitution may bring an environment which will restrain governments in their attempts to keep civil society under control, it is to be recognized that the presence and the livelihood of civil society is not exclusively a function of laws. Civil society must be strong enough to counterbalance the government. This is possible only if civil society organizations can come into being and sustain themselves without having to rely on the government. In fact, the strengthening of the bases on which civil society flourishes may generate the forces that succeed in bringing about legal changes that are more favorable to its smooth functioning. From this perspective, it is important to note that associational life has gained greater relevance in Turkish politics in parallel with economic development. Organized interests as such had not been lacking in Turkish political life from the early years of the republic. One of the ways the state had forged links with society was through the establishment of quasi-public organizations which helped the state regulate various domains of activity from agriculture and trade to medicine and engineering. But, these agencies prospered mainly because the state allowed them to maintain their privileges, which included the collection of membership dues and sometimes fees charged for services performed in lieu of public authority. Therefore, their existence and prosperity depended on their ability to be on good terms with governments.8 One of the earlier major organizations, formed without using public funding or being granted specific privileges by the government, that challenged government policy was TUSİAD, representing the large import substitution oriented industries based mostly in Istanbul. Established in 1971, it engaged in a major campaign against the Ecevit government in 1979 which, it alleged, was moving away from market orientation and therefore deepening the economic crisis. The campaign consisting of large newspaper advertisements has usually been cited as one of the major factors that forced the government to resign. Revealing the unique nature of the campaign at the time, its one-time president Feyyaz Berker recalls the comment a friend made to him: “No establishment 8 Let me remind the reader of how in 1968 the Demirel government was able to turn around the outcome of the election of the president of the Union of Chambers of Industry, Commerce and Commodity Exchanges, by preventing the winner, Professor Erbakan, from assuming the position, and forcing new elections that produced a more acceptable outcome. See Ch. 5.

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Table 7.1.a.1. Associations and their growth in the Province of Istanbul Year

Total

Annual increase

Year

Total

Annual Increase

1971

3831

=

1983

5210

33

1972

3961

130

1984

5395

185

1973

4065

104

1985

5777

382

1974

4154

89

1986

6168

391

1975

4199

45

1987

6528

360

1976

4288

89

1988

6927

399

1977

4399

111

1989

7403

476

1978

4554

155

1990

7923

520

1979

5052

498

1991

8559

636

1980

5101

49

1992

9305

746

1981

5137

36

1993

10,207

902

1982

5177

40

1994

11,344

1137

1983

5210

33

1995

12,424

1080

Source: İlter Turan, in Ahmet N. Yücekök, İlter Turan, and Mehmet Ö. Alkan, Tanzimat’tan Günümüze İstanbul’da STK ’lar, p.211, with minor corrections on the annual increase calculated by the author.

in the nature of a public institution would have dared register its response to the government in this way. Only civil society would have such courage even at the expense of knowing that it might inflict harm on them.”9 The proliferation of associations in Turkish society gained much momentum under economic growth achieved after the transition to export-led growth and the concomitant expansion of private economic activity. Tables 7.1.a and 7.1.b testify to this growth. Table 7.1.a shows the cumulative and annual growth of associations in Istanbul, Table 7.1.b for all of Turkey. The first table gives us an opportunity to compare the pre-1980 and post-1980 periods, while the second describes developments nationwide after 2000. Several trends may be identified by a summary glance at these tables. To begin with, the number of startup associations has been increasing over time, and the magnitude of the increase became considerably higher after 1980 and even more so after 2000, the year after which the country began to enjoy uninterrupted economic growth.10 Secondly, the influence of military rule on associational Çağrı Bilgin, “30 yıl önce Ecevit’i ilanlarla deviren TÜSİAD, ilk ilanı Ecevit’e okutmuş,” , visited on November 5, 2014. 10 Despite such growth, the total number of people who are members of associations do not exceed 10 percent of the population. See E. Fuat Keyman and Tuba Kancı, “Democratic 9

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Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy Table 7.1.a.2. Number of new associations in Istanbul (annual) Year

Number

Year

Number

1996

444

2004

1038

1997

426

2005

1165

1998

442

2006

1592

1999

193

2007

2384

2000

64

2008

1684

2001

732

2009

1682

2002

975

2010

1589

2003

994

2011

1710

Source: Provided by the Directorate of Associations, Province of Istanbul on July 25, 2013.

Table 7.1.b. Number of associations in Turkey Year

N of associations

Year

N of associations

2000

60,931

2007

77,849

2001

64,379

2008

80,200

2002

68,155

2009

83,954

2003

71,832

2010

86,324

2004

69,439

2011

89,495

2005

71,287

2012

93,592

2006

73,378

2013

94,124*

Source: Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Interior, General Directorate of Associations , visited on 5 November 2014. *not final, mid-year measurement

life has been devastating. After military interventions, significant drops in the number of newly opening associations have occurred. This holds true even for the 1997–1999 period when the influence of the military enjoyed a final rise in its efforts to keep religious reaction and ethnically based acts of terrorism under control. Many of the voluntary associations were formed in areas and with purposes that have little to do with politics. The two most numerous groups among Consolidation and Civil Society in Turkey,” in Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Avalos, Hakan Yılmaz, and Ana I. Planet, Turkey’s Democratization Process (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 146.

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Turkey’s associations are sports and religion-related associations. Some of the religious organizations are temporary organizations established to collect funds to build a mosque, others to support the teaching of the Quran. A third large group is comprised of mutual aid societies that people from the same region, often a village, who have settled in an urban area have established, to be followed by those who aim to promote the economic development of a village, a subprovince, a province, and so on.11 The number of associations that are established for purposes that can be easily linked to sustained political activity is small, but no matter what the nature of an association may happen to be, there are occasions when each may have needs, concerns, or positions that need to be transmitted to political decision makers. In doing this, they may form coalitions with others, they may link up with political parties, they may stage demonstrations, or they may try to mobilize international support. The important thing is that together their presence and activities constitute an environment in which different groups in society, possessing their own means of existence and the autonomy, can initiate action independent of the state and when necessary, work to constrain or modify the behavior of the state and/or the government. Economic development and particularly the expansion of private economic activity appear to be important components in the emergence and the strengthening of civil society. How are the two related? Let us remember the arguments that were offered in Chapter 1. Economic growth expands the resources available to groups, organizations, and individuals, allowing them to allocate some of it to the pursuit of public goals that serve their interests, broadly defined. At the same time, the expansion of economic activity leads to the broadening of a professional, managerial class whose members possess the skills to guide or lead voluntary organizations. These managers seek leadership while groups turn to them to lead them. Furthermore, achieving organizational leadership enhances the social and political prestige of individuals and facilitates their access to decision makers. Some among them are in fact eventually recruited to politics. This is an explanatory framework based on my observations. We are in need of case studies to test, confirm, or modify it. Unless citizens as individuals develop an interest in organizing to influence the affairs of government and changing government teams through elections, democracy cannot function well in a society. This, in turn, requires the presence or the emergence of autonomous individuals.12 In any society, 11 Ministry of Interior, General Directorate of Associations provides a detailed classification. See , visited on 5 November 2014. 12 Ernest Gellner refers to this as modular man, Conditions of Liberty, p 100.

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there may be groups that compete with each other to achieve certain political goals or achieve general political prominence. The members of such groups as individuals may not be in a position, however, to initiate political action by themselves or in conjunction with members of other groups. They may not be able to join around common public purposes with others whom they have not known before, and with whom they do not share common origin, kinship, or other similar attributes. Civil society assumes a “modular man” who will join others to form associations and institutions for specific purposes without committing total self to any one of them.13 The links he forms are flexible, specific, and instrumental. Groups so formed can function because its members are expected to honor their commitments to the group, not because they have to as members of a primordial group, but because they as individuals have voluntarily contracted to do so.14 These linkages are then partial, temporal, and contextual, rather than permanent and unchangeable. Economic development does not automatically produce a modular man. This is one of the reasons why, in some societies in which the level of economic advancement would lead us to expect to find a well functioning democracy, we find one with shortcomings. The abundance of diminutive democracies, qualified by adjectives such as delegative, illiberal, or partially free, is a familiar phenomenon to students of democracy. Turkey has so far failed to achieve the status of being just a plain liberal democracy. This situation, I would like to speculate, owes itself in part to the paucity of modular men. In a society that has gone within half a century from being mainly rural and autarkical to urban and integrated with the market, it may not be surprising that values emphasizing group solidarity have often prevailed over those protective of the individual and his private space. In fact, group solidarity may have helped reduce the severity of the changes people have had to live through within one or two generations. The accompanying system of patronage and clientelism has also probably arrested the emergence of the individual. Yet events that broke out in Istanbul and came to be referred to as the Gezi Park Events in the spring of 2013 and the spread of protest movements to other urban centers point to the likelihood that the modular man is beginning to take his place in Turkey’s politics. Gezi Park demonstrations started at the end of May 2013 against government plans to cut down trees to enlarge a road and also to rebuild the old military barracks that were torn down more than half a century earlier and replaced by a park facing one of the major squares in the modern part of Istanbul. Public authorities, notably the prime minister, insisted that the new

13

Gellner, Conditions of Liberty.

14

Gellner, Conditions of Liberty.

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building would go up, and law enforcement officers resorted to their routine of clearing the area by using tear gas, water cannons, and clubs. In contrast to earlier times, the police encountered sustained but passive resistance. Quickly, sympathy rallies got organized in other metropolitan areas of Turkey and clashes with the police became commonplace. As İlter Turan says, “Polls conducted among those who rallied to the Square show that a large majority had not participated in a political rally before and that only a small minority belonged to a political party.” Many were either students or well-educated professionals.15 This is not a typical mix of backgrounds in the street politics of Turkey, which is usually dominated by radical movements of the left and the right. A recent study released by the ministry of the interior divulges that in a period of 112 days starting with May 28, there were 5,532 demonstrations, sympathy demonstrations, or other associated activities in 80 provinces (total 81) of Turkey in which approximately 3,600,000 people participated. Among those taken into custody, using sampling, it is found that 36 percent were university students and 25 percent were university graduates; 43 percent were between 26 and 40 years of age.16 These figures lend credence to the earlier diagnosis that this group represents a new and different mix of political activists. In the polls conducted among those who took part in the demonstrations and in sympathy rallies, two complaints stand out. The first and more relevant to the immediate triggering event is that the government has failed to consult citizens in a project that affects their daily lives. The second complaint is, however, a broader one, saying that the government displays an interventionist attitude and had adopted lately too many measures that intruded in the private lives of citizens. The demonstrators did not want the government to resign but simply to change its policies. They included persons of different political and social persuasions and, unusually, secularists and some deeply religious groups working together.17 I have suggested elsewhere the following analysis:

This discussion comes mainly from İlter Turan, “Encounters with the Third Kind: Turkey’s New Political Forces are Met by Old Politics,” On Turkey Series, June 26, 2013 (Washington, DC: German Marshall Fund of the United States), p. 1. For more extensive commentary and analysis, see Attila Yayla, “Gezi Park Revolts: For or Against Democracy?” and Tahir Abbas, “Political Culture and National Identity in Conceptualizing the Gezi Park Movement,” in Insight Turkey 15:4 (Fall 2013), pp. 7–28. 16 Tolga Şardan, “Gezi’den kalanlar ve farklı bir analiz,” Milliyet, 25 November, 2013, p. 13. 17 İlter Turan, “Encounters,” p. 2. 15

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It seems that these developments point to the emergence of a new political animal, a third kind so to speak, in Turkish politics: the socially engaged individual citizen who expects a government to be open to regular communications with the citizens, more responsive to citizen preferences, and more respectful of the individual’s privacy. Expressed differently, they want a more refined form of governance: limited not interventionist, pluralistic not monistic, inclusionary not exclusionary.18

It may be that the modular man, not seen with frequency so far in Turkish politics, has begun to rise. This is not a development that can be separated from the economic development Turkey has experienced in recent years. The change has created pressures for the deepening of democratization. The extent that governments have had to accommodate pressures for further democratization has been influenced by developments in the international arena, to the examination of which we now turn.

T H E I NT E R N A T IO N A L D I M E NS I O N O F T U R K E Y ’S DE MOCRATIZATION We have noted in Chapter 1, “The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems,” that the international context and outside actors may, actively or passively, impede or facilitate the processes of democratization in a country. Then, in Chapter 3, “The Transition to Competitive Politics,” we referred to the desire of Turkey to join the Atlantic security system and how that policy goal constituted one of the major driving forces that made it possible for Turkey to make a transition from a single-party system to competitive politics. In Chapter 5, we made further references to the role Turkey’s international connections played in bringing about changes that reduced and finally concluded the activism of the military in politics. Finally, at the beginning of this chapter, once again, we identified the international environment as an important factor in contributing to the deepening of Turkey’s democracy. We will now continue to examine the ways international factors affected the country’s democratic evolution. The decision of the Turkish government to open the political system to competition in large part in the hope that this gesture would facilitate Turkey’s inclusion in the emerging Western Bloc marked the beginning of a new foreign policy: Turkey should not stay out of major institutional developments,

18

İlter Turan, “Encounters,” p. 20.

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especially those in Europe that would help anchor Turkey into the Atlantic Community. Accordingly, already involved in the process that led to the establishment of the United Nations before it began its transition to political competition, Turkey became one of the original countries that signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. Shortly afterwards on August 9, 1949, it joined the Council of Europe, a club mainly of Western European democracies; and more importantly from the perspective of democratization, in 1954 it ratified the European Convention of Human Rights. Also in 1952, Turkey became a member of NATO, the alliance system of the “Free World.” Signing international legal documents are statements of intent and sometimes are no more than a ritual. Governments may be reluctant or disinterested in reflecting the imperatives of their international commitments in their domestic legislation and implementation. In order for international commitments to translate into domestic rules and policies, there has to be either a system of monitoring performance that may bring sanctions to bear if commitments are ignored, or an environment in which the signatory country feels that it would face deprivations, including significant loss of prestige, esteem, and status if it ignores its commitments, or both. From this perspective, Turkey’s membership in the UN has been of little relevance in shaping the democratic nature of its politics. NATO as a defensive alliance, on the other hand, particularly during the years of the Cold War, gave priority to questions of security. This meant, for example, tolerating a dictatorial regime in Portugal. By the same line of reasoning, when democracy faltered in member states, unless there was an unusually blatant and continual violation of democratic life as in the case of Greece of the Colonels, NATO was accommodating to non-democratic rule. It may even be suggested that the prevalence of the military in policy making in the field of defense represented a convenience for NATO’s planning and activities, and that NATO, to prevent the emergence of cracks in defense arrangements, encouraged accommodation to temporary military interventions. Two international organizations that have provided positive impetus for Turkey’s democratization, linking general commitments to specific policies and implementations have been the Council of Europe and the European Union (and its antecedents). The Council of Europe, not long after its establishment, prepared the European Convention on Human Rights. As already mentioned above, an important feature of the Convention was that it set up a European Court of Human Rights to which Turkey became a signatory, if with some reservations, in 1954. In 1987, if belatedly, Turkey recognized the rights of its citizens to make individual applications to the ECHR and in 1990, it

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accepted the decisions of the court as binding.19 The ECHR has constituted an indispensible court of appeal to many Turkish citizens who feel that they have failed to find justice in their own judicial system. The fact that applications from Turkey have ranked high on the number of cases the court has had to deal with each year points to the need for Turkey to make efforts to ensure the proper administration of law. The availability of recourse to the ECHR, on the other hand, assures Turkish citizens of last-resort international instruments to redress maladministration of justice in their national system. Turkish government honors the decisions of the court, and the Turkish Ministry of Justice has initiated programs of training for judges and public prosecutors to improve the quality of domestic justice and to bring it in line with the commitments Turkey has undertaken within the framework of the Council of Europe. Turkey’s membership in the Council of Europe has also meant that it has been represented in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council. In its proceedings, non-Turkish parliamentarians have often raised questions about specific acts of the Turkish government that appear to have involved violations of human rights. The knowledge that such scrutiny is to be expected has guided governments to be sensitive in areas where they have anticipated questioning and criticism. The Parliamentary Assembly has also been one of the leading institutions to express displeasure at military interventions and has barred Turkey from participating in its activities with military appointed MPs. Understandably, the EU and its predecessors have provided the most powerful and sustained external stimulus for Turkey’s democratization. This is because the EEC was conceived as a club of European democracies with market economies. As the initial trading bloc conception was step by step replaced by an understanding of long-term political integration, the criteria to be achieved for membership became more clearly defined though, as indicated earlier, they were applied with varying rigor. In 1959, when the EEC came into being, Turkey along with Greece was the first country to search for association with the possibility of eventual membership. Talks were interrupted for almost two years when the Turkish military staged an intervention, and resumed only after elected government returned.20 The importance of the EU as a source of pressure for Turkey’s democratization increased after the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union. The altered security environment preceded by Turkey’s adoption of an export-led growth strategy and deeper integration into the world 19 Thanks are due to Ümit Kumcuoğlu for suggesting that I might mention the 1987 and 1990 decisions of the Turkish government here. 20 İlter Turan and Yaprak Gürsoy, “The Role of the EU in Changing the Role of the Military in Turkish Politics,” European Review of International Studies, I (2014) pp. 132–40.

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economic system promoted its deeper interest in pursuing membership. The effecting of a Customs Union was a clear indication on Turkey’s part that it wanted to achieve closer integration. The decision of the EU Council in its Luxembourg Meeting in 1997 not to include Turkey among those it invited to join the organization constituted a shock to which Turkey reacted strongly, threatening to suspend political relations with the EU. The council, however, quickly asked the Commission to draw up a strategy to bring Turkey closer to the Union. In a report the Commission issued in 1998, much emphasis was placed on the unusually strong presence of the military in Turkish politics and the judiciary.21 The report prompted, for example, the Turkish government to enact legislation to remove military judges from state security courts. Two years later in 1999, in Helsinki, the invitation came. The EU expected those invited to become members to achieve the so-called Copenhagen Criteria, comprising democratic governance, respect for human rights, and an operating market economy. As is known, once the membership process starts, the EU produces an annual country report that reviews, among other things, a country’s democratic performance. This is important in that it offers guidelines to those countries invited to become a member to develop and give priority to programs for improving the quality of their democracy and strengthen the hands of governments in pushing a democratizing agenda through legislatures. In the case of Turkey, too, the prospect for membership has stimulated governments to move to meet the criteria. A striking example is the repeal of the death penalty except for treason in October 2001 by a coalition government, some members of which did not believe in the measure but agreed to the change in order to meet EU standards. The death penalty was repealed altogether in 2004. Predictably, the major area in which changes were affected was where the strongest criticism from the EU came, that of civilian–military relations. A string of changes in the Constitution that required qualified majorities proved possible during the 2001–2004 interim. Through amendments and other legislation enacted in 2001, 2003, and 2004, the powers of the National Security Council, the instrument through which the military leadership exercised a powerful influence, as well as the presence of the military in other institutions like the Council on Higher Education and TRT, the state broadcasting system, were reduced. These feats would not have occurred without EU monitoring and encouragement. The influence of the EU in Turkey’s democratization has naturally not been limited to the field of civilian–military relations. Changes in other laws, most 21

Turan and Gürsoy, “The Role of the EU.”

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notably in provisions of the Turkish Criminal Code dealing with freedom of expression and association, were also realized with “reminders” from the EU. Furthermore, the EU has encouraged Turkey to settle some of its domestic problems, most notably the so called Kurdish problem, with people of Kurdish origin asking for recognition of their distinct ethnicity and language, within a democratic framework. The role of the European Union in influencing the process of Turkey’s further democratization has vacillated with the country’s prospects for membership. When the EU made gestures and/or decisions that would advance Turkey’s membership process, Turkish governments, including those that have maintained reservations about full membership, have moved to meet the EU’s expectations. Conversely, expressions of reluctance, the failure of accession negotiations to make progress, member country vetoes on the opening of this or that chapter, and references to privileged partnership in lieu of full membership, have dampened the enthusiasm of Turkish governments to proceed with an EU-stimulated democratization agenda.22 We may conclude the discussion on the role of international factors in Turkey’s democratization with a general observation that has already been implied in the preceding discussion. The international context, institutional frameworks and, maybe, even the prevailing geist appear to be more effective in mobilizing Turkish governments to pursue policies and enact legislation to enhance further democratization if there is a correspondence between them and the needs and goals of domestic actors, including governments. The efforts of the AKP governments to reduce the political role of the military, for example, reflected a convergence of its own desire with pressures from the EU in the same direction. Having constituted a target of military hostility to its rule and therefore interested in bringing an end to the veto power of the military in politics, the governing party was able to legitimize changes in terms of meeting EU expectations. In this way, while international support for domestic legal change was assured, the intensity of domestic opposition was reduced. In many instances, the EU conditionality and other impetuses from the international environment have contributed that extra element that has made democratizing change possible.

22 See also William Hale, “The International Context of Democratic Reform in Turkey,” in Carmen Rodriguez et al., Turkey’s Democratization Process, pp. 67–85; and Paul Kubicek, “Democratization and Relations with the EU in the AK Party Period: Is Turkey Really Making Progress,” Insight Turkey, 15:4 (Fall 2013), pp. 41–50, and Michael Leigh, “Does the EU Still Have Leverage on Questions of Freedom of Expression in Turkey,” in Senem Aydın Düzgit, Anne Duncker, Daniela Huber, E. Fuat Keyman, and Nathalie Tocci, eds., Global Turkey in Europe (Rome: Istituto Affari Internazionali, 2013), pp. 171–4.

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T HE CH A L L E N G E S T O DE MO C R A T I Z A T I ON Despite developments that have brought Turkey’s socioeconomic indicators to levels where we would expect democracy to deepen and mature, the picture is not one of a smoothly functioning liberal democracy. Turkey meets the two critical criteria of democratic deepening and maturing that we have posited in Chapter 1. There are no actors in society that feel powerful enough to subvert the democratic system and any attempt to that effect would bring high costs to the perpetrator, and there are no longer forces in society that maintain reserves that are immune to the intervention of elected governments. Its political evolution has been toward more rather than less democracy. What, then, are the factors that have stood in the way of Turkey becoming a fully functioning liberal democracy?

T H E PRO B L E MS O F CU L T U R A L BI F U R C A T I O N We have already identified that modernization from above which has been conducted mainly in the domain of culture, rather than transforming all of society along cultural lines has produced a culturally bifurcated society, a society that is divided into two kulturkampfs,23 with different or even “irreconcilable” images of good society.24 The good society image of the ruling elite was based on progress toward modernity through the application of science and reason. The masses, rather than presenting an alternative vision of good society, were generally on the defensive and tried to hold on to their “traditional society” which they were being asked to leave behind. Some among them yearned for a return to the earlier golden age of Islam when presumably justice and peace prevailed. So long as Turkey was ruled by the single party of the modernizing elite, the CHP, the traditionalist kampf recognized the authority of the state. Such challenges as might emanate from the traditionalist periphery were put down by authoritarian means. 23 The expression comes from Nur Yalman, “Some Observations on Secularism in Islam: the Cultural Revolution in Turkey,” Daedalus, 102 (1973), p. 152; also quoted in Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, pp. 50–3 and passim. It may be added that the recent intensification of Kurdish nationalism has added a new dimension to the kulturkampfs, but in terms of cultural bifurcation in which the modernizing state elites have tried to build a Turkish nation state, the Kurdish kampf may be said to belong to the traditional side. 24 Kalaycıoğlu,Turkish Dynamics, p. 51.

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The introduction of political competition presented an enigma to the ruling elites. They had legitimized their claim to rule society on the idea that they represented modernity, a superior set of values to those of the traditionalist masses. But now, they were to mobilize the consent of those whom they thought were in need of modernizing whether they wanted it or not. They tried to cope with this challenge in a number of ways. Let us recall from Chapter 3 that the president of the republic gave the green light to the founding of a rival party after the war, with the understanding that it would not challenge the secular nature of the system. This response was the forerunner of a broader strategy that aimed to keep the scope of intervention of elected politicians in politics narrow and to rely on a set of pillars to preserve the basic values of the republic. This strategy was elaborated and strengthened, particularly in response to the experience of DP rule (1950–1960) under Adnan Menderes. The 1961 Constitution prepared by the military National Unity Committee created several areas that were not open to the intervention of elected politicians. These included the universities with a strong autonomy; a bureaucracy with strong job guarantees for high-ranking officers; a strong court system that represented a modernist–statist orientation and a military that was basically immune from political oversight and exempted from civilian administrative legal processes.25 Furthermore, the policy role of the military was enhanced through the establishment of a National Security Council. In Chapter 5, we have examined the process through which the political power of the military came to be reduced over time, bringing the military under civilian control. In Chapter 6, “Interactions among Society, Economy, and Politics: Change and Democratization,” we have described how socioeconomic and the accompanying political change gradually undermined the pillars of the bureaucracy, the universities and the courts, through which the modernizing elite had continued to wield political power and had tried to maintain the prevalence of their own versions of modernity, particularly secularism. Undoing the institutional structures and the legal frameworks that have enabled the modernizing elite to dominate a society’s politics may be critical in changing the power balances in society and ensuring that those who win the elections will be able to rule, but such changes may not necessarily lead to an immediate resocialization into a democratic culture of those who subscribe to a modernist orientation. Dwindling as their numbers may be, the Turkish modernists have continued to subscribe to a set of ideas and attitudes that has led them to become alienated from the mainline politics of

25

See also Ergun Özbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), pp. 53–7.

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society. Such a situation has indeed been one of the shortcomings of Turkey’s democracy, producing two problematical outcomes. First, ever since the transition to competitive politics, those who have continued to subscribe to the modernist ideology have tried to preserve the narrowness of the space within which elected politicians may operate. Depending on the issue at hand and the time they encountered it, they have turned to the Constitutional Court, Council of State, the Council on Higher Education, and the National Security Council as instruments through which they have hoped, often successfully, to frustrate elected governments in implementing new policies not to their liking. They have also been hesitant in their support of civilian supremacy in politics, a stance which has facilitated the intervention of the military in politics on several occasions. This has brought a predictable circular tendency to politics of the modernizing kulturkampf, where the failure to use ordinary electoral means has intensified and resulted in the use of non-electoral means, which, by leading to electoral failure, has only served to create greater proclivity to use non-electoral means, that is, the instruments of the state. Second, the recourse of the modernists to institutions of the state rather than politics has slowed down their adjustment to competitive politics. The political organization that harbors most of the modernizing elite and represents their attitudes in politics has been the CHP. The party, often focusing on using the instruments of the state to effect political outcomes, has been weak in mobilizing the masses for political purposes. Furthermore, its agenda has often been shaped by modernist concerns that have hardly been reflective of the concerns of the average voter. The result, as already mentioned in Chapter 4, has been asymmetric competition. The discrepancy between the agenda of the opposition and those in power, where the agenda of the former has failed to attract sufficient voter interest, has constituted the Achilles’ heel of Turkish democracy: an opposition whose chances of achieving power is not bright. Ever since the transition to political competition, those parties that have emphasized economic concerns over the ideological concerns of modernism have usually fared better at the polls. But particularly since 2002, the governing AKP has not feared that it might lose to the opposition in any forthcoming election. This may be an important component of any explanation of the recently growing authoritarianism of the governing party. The implications of cultural bifurcation, a permanent aspect of Turkish politics, though losing some of its intensity,26 came to be seen very clearly after

26

Nora Fisher Onar has, in fact argued in favor of a new revisionist–pluralist paradigm to analyze Turkish politics. See her “Beyond Binaries: ‘Europe’, Pluralism, and a Revisionist Status Quo Key to Turkish Politics,” (Unpublished Essay, 2nd place, the Sakıp Sabancı Award, 2009).

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2002 when the AKP got into power by itself. Expressed more specifically, cultural bifurcation derived conditions have been one of the main factors that have contributed to the emergence of pathologies observed in the operation of Turkey’s democracy. Needless to say, not all pathologies emanate from this historical inheritance. Some are, as we shall see, products of the democratic process itself. We will examine pathologies that are associated with cultural bifurcation and then others, in that order.

CULTURAL BIFURCATION D ERIVED PATHOLOGIES OF TU RKISH D EMOCRACY Some pathologies witnessed in the operation of Turkey’s democracy appear to be tied to the particular mode of modernization–secularization imposed from the above, mainly in the cultural domain. Though, as we shall see later, not all pathologies have originated from policies of cultural modernization, the origins of some important ones can be found there. Securitization Cultural changes, to the extent that they failed to improve the material wellbeing of the masses, were received with indifference and on occasion, with resistance. This led the modernizing elite to securitize opposition, that is, to render the opposition into a security concern so that its suppression would be legitimized. The practice of securitizing issues irrespective of whether there existed sufficient grounds that a security question was encountered and/or elevating the security dimension of an issue to be its most salient aspect have continued into the period of political competition. The specter raised has been different depending on the times. The ever-present danger of religious reaction has been presented as a pervasive security concern until recently by the modernizing elites. A vague Communist threat was used by both kulturkamkpfs, principally during the Cold War to legitimize authoritarian measures. Ethnic separatism (a reference to Kurdish nationalism) has always been present. The frequency of its use as grounds for securitization has risen in parallel with the rise of the Kurdish Marxist terror organization, the PKK, constituting one of the major reasons for the military intervention of 1980. Turkish leaders of all political colors seem open to the securitization of political problems. Often led by cabinet ministers, they often make references to unnamed sources threatening the country, usually a thinly veiled reference to what, in fact, are Turkey’s allies. The AKP government, for example, has made questionable references to Israel’s being behind the events that are not to its liking.

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Securitization does not mean that Turkey or any other society does not encounter security problems that it needs to address. Rather, the term is used here to describe a situation where a multi-dimensional problem is identified mainly or exclusively in terms of its security aspect in order to allow the government to have a free hand in developing and implementing policy without having to work at building consensus, since addressing security questions are usually seen as necessitating the burying of differences and operating on the principle of national unity. The allegations that have come out during the recent trials of military commanders in the so called Ergenekon trials suggested that the military leadership planned to trigger incidents that appeared to be perpetrated by religious reactionaries. Presumably, the aim was to discredit the traditionalists and create a sense of emergency that would facilitate the perpetuation of the political role of the military.27 The use of securitization as a political strategy is not limited to the military. In a recent public debate on whether the government should regulate more tightly the privately run hostels for university students, the AKP minister of the interior, to move the debate from whether these should be all male and all female to avoid the possibility of sexual liaisons, an argument that the public did not find particularly persuasive, said that his ministry had information that terrorists used these hostels to recruit militants and that they used sex as enticement, taking advantage of the fact that these facilities were not tightly regulated and controlled.28

Majoritarianism and Anti-Pluralism Securitization of political issues is but one of the pathologies encountered in Turkish democracy whose origins lie in the cultural bifurcation of society. Another problematical tendency is majoritarianism, meaning who gets the majority gets to exercise unrestrained power. This tendency started with the DP in 1950. The DP perceived itself to be a manifestation of the national will against the authoritarian single-party rule of the CHP. Led by men whose socialization to politics had occurred during the single-party period, it behaved in a similar way to a single party in government, believing that since the masses were supportive of the DP, the opposition lacked any basis of legitimacy for opposing it. The establishment of a parliamentary committee

See Markar Esayan, “Ergenekon: An Illegitimate Form of Government,” Insight Turkey 15:4 (Fall 2013), pp. 29–40. 28 , visited November 5, 2014. 27

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with judicial powers, comprised only of the members of the DP to investigate the harmful activities of the CHP that we referred to in Chapter 4 is an unusual example, demonstrating how far unrestrained majoritarianism may go. It did appear as if majoritarianism had become a tendency of the past, particularly since Turkey had to be ruled by coalition governments for long periods, but it has made a strong comeback under the AKP administration. There is a certain similarity between the DP and the AKP experiences that may explain the reappearance of the pathology. The DP was the first party to obtain power in a transition to political competition from authoritarian rule. The AKP is the first religiously conservative party which the secular establishment has shunned, resisted, and suppressed, that has achieved power by itself by popular vote. Just as the DP believed that it was the true manifestation of the national will, so does Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the AKP head and prime minister. Having the backing of the majority has led him to assert with frequency that his possession of the majority allows him to rule in the way he deems appropriate, without according consideration to minority preferences and concerns, and by changing laws that appear to restrain him in what he does. The problematical outcomes of a majoritarian understanding of democracy are confounded by a lack of appreciation of pluralism. The early republic was interested in nation building and achieving national unity. The nation would be comprised of modern citizens. To the founders of the republic, pluralism was not a welcome state of affairs, but the indicator of heterogeneity that they wanted to eradicate. This desire to homogenize society has nested a general suspicion of pluralism which was later adopted by all political actors all the way to the AKP. The frequent expressions of Prime Minister Erdoğan that “we have failed” to train a youth with high moral values, etc. appear to be aspirations to build a new society where homogeneity is secured by valueoriented training and possibly state-imposed conformity. Despite such aspirations, there is greater recognition today than in the early years of the republic that society is unavoidably differentiated along many lines, in large part as a result of socioeconomic development and change. Yet, the next step toward agreeing that being different is natural, and accepting that many groups, each with its own social and political orientations will take part in the political process, each pursuing its own interest that may conflict with those of others, is an attitude that is in need of gaining wider acceptance.

The Mirror Image Behavior Problem The experience of the culturally bifurcated society has also produced a third pathology for which a name is difficult to find. The expression mirror image

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behavior may be used to describe the phenomenon. The achievement of electoral victory by the opposition in a transition to political competition brings with it an irresistible tendency on the part of the winner to replicate the authoritarian behavior of its predecessor and use this against the losers. Let me offer two examples. The first relates to the expected behavior of the bureaucracy. During the single-party era, as already described, the bureaucracy was conceptualized as one of the pillars of the regime. The bureaucrats were not expected to be neutral: they were expected to facilitate the work of the single party as organization. Under democratic rule, on the other hand, party and government are expected to be distinct entities. Bureaucracy performs public service rather than operate as an extension of the party. The DP, however, replicating the single-party CHP, wanted the bureaucrats as its own partisan agents. As its popular support began to decline in its later years, it even tried to force bureaucrats to pledge their allegiance to a movement called the Homeland Front, an extension of the DP.29 Similarly, the AKP has wanted the bureaucrats to serve as party extensions. This pathology is, for the most part, a product of cultural bifurcation within the context of which a neutral bureaucracy is not trusted. Bureaucrats have to hold the same political orientation as their political masters in order to be trustworthy. The mirror image behavior influences not only the bureaucracy but also the judiciary and the judicial process in subtle ways. The early republic saw the judiciary as the implementers of policy in the legal domain. The entire system of laws was being changed from Islamic to universal laws based on the principles of Roman law that applied equally to all citizens. By implementing the new laws, the judiciary would help change society. Furthermore, the judiciary, as part of the state apparatus, saw its duty as defending the interests of the state vis à vis society when the two came into conflict. The government did not try to influence the judiciary, which developed into a highly professional, independent organization. But, it could comfortably assume that the judiciary would not challenge the modernist orientation of the regime, simply because it shared the same outlook. When the DP assumed power and found that some of the judges would render decisions not to its liking, it engaged in a policy of removing judges from specific cases and demoting those who had rendered “unfriendly” decisions.30 One of the questions that the Constitution of 1961 tried to address was guaranteeing the independence of the courts and making sure that they would be immune to incursions from the political domain. In recent years, the efforts of the modernizing elite to stifle the AKP governments by using the judiciary, 29 30

Cem Eroğul, Demokrat Parti: Tarihi ve İdeolojisi (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler, 1970), p. 162. Eroğul, Demokrat Parti, pp. 135 and 149.

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as most notably manifest in trying to prevent the election of Abdullah Gül president,31 has invited constitutional change with regard to instruments through which judicial appointments and promotions are decided, this time increasing the role of the government in the process. The examples of allowing inadmissible evidence (e.g. illegally obtained or tampered with) in the Ergenekon trials, and the rendering of contradictory decisions on a similar question32 depending on how government was affected, suggest an increase in the role of government in influencing the judicial process. This presents a potential that would threaten the principle of the rule of law, a sine qua non of democracy, while simultaneously undermining checks and balances, another of its indispensible features.

O T H E R PA T H OL O G IE S Though many reflect the influence the weight of history, not all problems Turkish democracy encounters are products of cultural bifurcation. We will take up two such problems to conclude our discussion. These are the authoritarian leadership of parties and the accompanying lack of intra-party democracy and the Kurdish question.

Authoritarian Leadership and Lack of Intra-Party Democracy Turkish political parties encounter difficulties in changing their leaders.33 Even leaders who have led their party to electoral failure usually remain in 31 It will be recalled that the court decided against the practice and precedents that a twothirds of the whole house needed to be present in order for voting to start, thereby effectively barring the parliament from electing a president, since the opposition was also boycotting the election. If the voting had been allowed, the qualified majority to elect a president would have gone down after the second round which would have made it possible for AKP to elect its candidate as president. 32 The High Board of Elections, contrary to precedents that people performing public-service jobs would have to leave their positions before taking part in local elections in order to ensure that they would not use the potential of their current office for the electoral office for which they are a candidate, decided cabinet ministers would not have to resign if they became a candidate for mayor. See also , accessed October 25, 2014. 33 This section is a summary of İlter Turan, “Türk Siyasi Partilerinde Lider Oligarşisi: Evrimi, Kurumsallaşması ve Sonuçları,” İ.Ü. Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi, 45 (October 2011), pp. 1–21.

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office without serious challenges to their position. Criticizing the leader is the topic of disciplinary action, while becoming a candidate for leading the party is often seen as an act of betrayal and constitutes a prelude to leaving the party. Changing leaders, on the whole, is a painful and sometimes divisive process. In the daily functioning of political parties, regular party members, leaders of local party organizations, and members of parliament are not expected to air their own opinions in public but rather to defend the party line. While, especially in parliamentary systems, deputies are expected to vote for their party’s position, party members are at greater liberty to express personal opinions, criticize their leaders, and aspire to party office as routine manifestations of intra-party democracy. That this is not the case in Turkey points to a weakness of Turkish democracy, the reasons for which need to be analyzed. Let us begin with the familiar phenomenon that centrally directed modernization created a one-way understanding of politics in which the lower echelons were charged mainly with the implementation of change rather than initiating or challenging it. In the single-party environment, being accepted as a member of the party, being made a party official, and being nominated for elective office constituted honors that were bestowed on the individual, who was expected to devote himself to the cause of the party. After the transition to political competition, this legacy was continued by the DP whose founders were all men who had received their political training in the single party. In this way, a tradition of strong leadership began to take hold. The organizational model of Turkish political parties follows closely the administrative organizational model of the country. The centrally controlled unitary administrative system is a top-down model where even elected officials of local government can be removed by a representative of central government. The CHP as a single party took as model the administrative organization of the country. The closeness, if not the fusion, of the party and the state meant that in many cases a provincial governor, the highest agent of the center at the provincial level, could also serve as the provincial party chief, a practice dropped only after the coming of political competition. The organizational model of the parties did not change after the transition to multi-party politics. The leader of the new parties found it convenient to enjoy powers of removing from office local party officials who criticized them, appointing local party chiefs, and deciding who to nominate as deputy. This model of party organization also appealed to the security instincts of the Turkish state perennially concerned that local party organizations might engage in reactionary or separatist politics if left on their own and not controlled by the center. Clientelism that has prevailed in the past and continues, if in milder forms, to this day has provided critical support for a leader-dominated central organization. Clientelism, by its emphasis on vertical links between patron

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and client, undermines the development of horizontal links in society. It is horizontal links, however, that allow the elements in the periphery to organize and develop capabilities to influence the actions and decisions of the center. In earlier days, with a population living mainly in rural areas and with a state whose economic means were limited, clientelism constituted an effective formula through which compliance to the state and to the party were secured. Socioeconomic change that has resulted in substantial urbanization and enhancement of the material means of government has served to weaken clientelism but not end it. The leader dominated, centrally administered party model has created its own legal and institutional framework to ensure its perpetuation. When, after the 1960 military intervention, Turkey got for the first time a separate political parties law, the central organs of parties were empowered to abolish local branches, remove local officials from their posts, and appoint those who would replace them. This power of the center is facilitated by the fact that party membership is not an indication of serious commitment to the party. Most members do not pay dues.34 Such a fundamental weakness does not allow local party branches to successfully influence the center, let alone challenge it. The well-intentioned measure to give state financial aid to political parties in order to free them from reliance on narrow interests, a practice initiated in 1965 and continuing to this day,35 has helped strengthen the institutional features of political parties, but has at the same time empowered the leadership even more toward the party organization. The funds are received at the center and the center decides who should get how much. In addition, in this way the center gains autonomy from the local organizations, and local organizations become dependent on the center for their own prosperity. Candidate designation for local government and for the parliament gives party leadership yet another instrument through which it can enhance its powers and prolong its rule. Although intra-party primaries are depicted in the Political Parties Law as one of the ways parties can determine their candidates for public office, the general practice has been the designation of candidates by the central organs of political parties. Usually this has

34

A deputy from the CHP, a professor of law by training, in a newspaper article, noted that registering new members was no more than an act intended to strengthen the position of the leaders of local branches. These leaders only allowed persons who would support them or the candidates they backed to register as members. See Arsev Bektaş, Demokratikleşme Sürecinde Liderler Oligarşisi: CHP ve AP, 1961–1980 (İstanbul: Bağlam, 1993), p. 124. 35 For an excellent study of government aid to political parties, see Şafak Evran Topuzkanamış, “Siyasi Partilere Devlet Yardımı,” in Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi, Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi, 14:2 (2012), pp. 167–203.

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meant that the party leader either has the final say in the nominations or decides on the candidates himself. Not surprisingly, this system produces elected officials who owe personal gratitude to the party leader whose proclivity to challenge the leader is not high. The enhanced powers of the party leader have transformed the function of the party group meetings in the parliament. Presumably, these meetings are to provide a forum where deputies discuss and debate party policies, and question and criticize the leadership. Over the years, they have evolved into ritualistic occasions where the party leader (who is at the same time the leader of the party group) enters as deputies stand up and applaud. He then renders a speech defending what they have been doing and criticizing other parties. Usually there is no discussion or debate. The party leader leaves again with applause. An indication of the downgrading of the importance of group meetings is the fact that visitors are allowed to come into these meetings and stay throughout, something that was not allowed earlier in order to allow deputies to freely question and criticize the party leader, away from the public eye. Other factors such as the high attrition rate of deputies and military interventions that have closed down parties have also contributed to the evolution of weak parties and strong leaders who are unwilling to relinquish their positions. The strength of leadership and the failure of the democratic processes to operate within political parties have created problematical outcomes. Democratic processes within parties allow them to make adjustments to changing needs and conditions. In this way, parties compete more effectively with each other. The insufficiencies of intra-party democracy and the difficulties associated with leadership change, on the other hand, weaken parties. One typical outcome of the absence of intra-party democracy in the past has been fragmentation of parties. Groups who have failed to make their voices heard or their demands be given consideration, as well as those aspiring to party leadership, have left their party to establish others, a phenomenon which was frequent from 1970–2000, and contributed in a major way to the destabilization of political life.

The High Cost of Being Out of Power Ironic as it may seem, the success of Turkey’s democracy in catapulting individuals from modest and often provincial backgrounds to the national political stage, combined with the high attrition rate of deputies,36 has

36

The percentage of deputies that were not members of the parliament in the preceding term, for example, were 93% in 1983, 63.3% in 1987, 70.7% in 1991, 64.4% in 1995, and 56.4% in 1999.

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produced a proclivity to maximize gains while in office and a reluctance to leave office and prolong tenure by making questionable compromises.37 Deputies from modest backgrounds learn quickly, if they do not know it already, that becoming the deputy is a ticket to privilege. Half-price tickets on Turkish Airlines with automatic upgrades to business class, VIP lounges, exceptional health policies for the entire family, and favorable credit terms from state banks are some of the standard benefits. Even more important is the full legislative immunity a deputy enjoys. This means the person does not get speeding tickets or tickets for driving while “under the influence.” S/he is protected from prosecution for any violation of law s/he may have committed unless the legislature gives permission. In effect, such permission is not given, and very often the requests by the ministry of justice to repeal the immunity of a deputy for this or that violation of law is not even brought to the floor unless the person has committed murder or some similar crime. A deputy becomes liable for violations after s/he leaves office. This produces two equally problematical tendencies. First, in many instances, law enforcement officers do not bother with bringing charges against deputies because nothing will happen anyhow. If the deputy belongs to the government party, it is also sometimes the case that they ask that officers that charged or challenged them be removed from their positions to a less desirable one. Second, some of the deputies who have serious charges against them (some may precede their being elected since, in most cases, court proceedings are placed on hold) will do anything to get reelected in order to avoid trials. The magnitude of benefits which accrue to deputies, particularly those who are members of the governing party(ies), enhances their determination not to lose power, producing several problems. First, since renomination is often a decision by the party leader, many deputies do not feel powerful enough to criticize leaders even when this may be needed. The deputies of the governing AKP, for example, have yielded unquestioningly to their leader’s wishes to pass legislation that appears to seriously undermine the quality of Turkey’s democracy, in order not to become a target of the leader’s wrath. Often, this pathology is exacerbated by the deputies’ efforts to ingratiate themselves with their party’s leader and engage in unruly behavior so as to demonstrate their

See İlter Turan, “Parlamentoların Etkinliği ve Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi,” in İlter Turan, ed., TBMM’nin Etkinliği (Istanbul: TESEV, 2000), p. 26. The costs of losing power is dealt with in a more comprehensive way in İlter Turan, “Stages of Political Development in the Turkish Republic,” in Ergun Özbudun, ed., Perspectives on Democracy in Turkey (Ankara: Turkish Political Science Association, 1988), pp. 103–6. 37

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loyalty to their leader and party, undermining the proper functioning of the legislature and its public esteem in the process. In many instances the sociological distance between the prestige of the office as perceived by the deputy and his/her pre-election profession and the job s/he would return to if s/he lost the election is immense, reinforcing the reluctance to leave elected office. There are costs associated with leaving a parliamentary job in any society. Many members of parliaments may harbor an almost teleological commitment to getting reelected. Turkish deputies are not exceptions in that regard. Yet, the perceived and real material and power losses are such that deputies experience difficulty in performing functions that would be expected of them in a properly functioning democracy.

The Challenge of Ethnic Pluralism A challenge that Turkish democracy has faced and has not yet succeeded in solving has to do with manifestations of ethnicity other than Turkish, and in particular Kurdish, in politics. We have already noted that the founders of the republic aimed to achieve the condition of national unity by rendering the population Turkish. This was a religio-cultural rather than a racial policy. Except for minorities, by which non-Muslims were meant, all citizens who had “Islamic credentials” would be integrated into this whole by also teaching them Turkish.38 In other words, everybody would become Turkish by education and socialization; assertions of ethnicity, on the other hand, would not be welcome. The republic had faced some Kurdish rebellions in 1925 and 1938 among others, but these were effectively suppressed by employing military means. Some of the leading Kurdish tribal families were settled in other parts of Turkey. After 1938 no tribal rebellions occurred.39 Gradually, however, Kurdish ethnicity developed other instruments of expression, often under guises since direct political assertion of ethnicity was not allowed. These included university student associations, cultural clubs, and organizations perpetrating 38 İlter Turan, “Religion and Political Culture in Turkey,” in Richard Tapper, ed., Islam in Modern Turkey: Religion, Politics and Literature (London: I.B. Tauris, 1991), p. 39. Islamic credentials do not imply being a practicing Muslim but simply coming from a family of Muslims, having a Turkish or Islamic name, and not professing belief in another monotheistic religion. 39 It has already been noted in Chapter 6 that these rebellions were less ethnic, more religious and also responses to the penetration of government to the rural countryside where it was not so strongly present earlier.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/3/2015, SPi

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political ideologies often with a Marxist bent. The government was hostile to this activity but failed to suppress it. The military who took over in September 1980 identified organized and violent assertions of Kurdish ethnicity as one of the main problems that it had to deal with and devised a set of policies to address it. Members and leaders of organizations that had been identified as Kurdish separatist and terrorist were arrested and imprisoned. They were given extraordinarily harsh treatment which the military felt would break their will to continue their activities. The speaking of Kurdish was banned in public; the sale of books and CDs in Kurdish was no longer allowed. The policy of disallowing ethnic assertiveness and punishing its violent and non-violent manifestations did not succeed in preventing the spread of the phenomenon but rather its growing violent and gaining international visibility. Starting in 1984, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, better known by its acronym PKK, began a rural campaign of terror, not only against government targets but also Kurdish people whose loyalties rested with the Turkish state.40 The efforts of the Turkish military to bring this challenge to an end proved inconclusive. In 1998, threats to conduct military operations against Syria forced Syria to change its policy of supporting the PKK and eventually also led to the capturing of Abdullah Öcalan, who had been expelled from Damascus, but it did not bring terror to an end. In the meantime, a string of political parties with alleged links to the PKK were opened and then closed by the Constitutional Court as had been the case with religious parties. The efforts to bring an end to demands for ethnic recognition have presented several challenges to the growth of Turkey’s democracy. The first problem relates to the scope of Turkey’s democracy. Contemporary interpretations of democracy include the freedom to pursue and develop one’s own culture, language, and identity. Restricting this freedom narrows down the scope of democracy and renders it deficient in a major respect. Second, the measures that had been adopted to bring the terrorist activity under control have frequently involved violations of human rights. People have been asked to leave their homes, villages have been razed, and people detained with charges of having assisted the terrorists. Third, the anti-terror campaigns have enhanced the political role of the military since there was a reluctance to bring up the question of the civilian control of the military at a time when the military was engaged in an anti-terror campaign. Fourth, political parties have been closed down for expressing ethnicity.

40

For discussion and analysis of the Kurdish problem including its international dimension, see Kemal Kirişçi and Gareth M. Winrow, The Kurdish Question in Turkey: An Example of Trans-State Conflict (London: Frank Cass, 1997).

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It is clear that Turkey’s democracy cannot improve its quality without addressing the country’s Kurdish question. Turkish governments have been of two minds on the matter. On occasion, political leaders have volunteered that that there is a Kurdish problem, an ethnic reality that must be recognized, but they have not moved to do anything more. The only important exception may be Erdal İnönü, the head of the SHP, who in the elections of 1991 formed an alliance with People’s Labor Party (HEP) to make it possible for this Kurdish party to be represented in the parliament. This gesture was not welcomed, however, by the voters, and the party lost votes in every district in comparison to the elections of 1987 with the exception of Turkey’s southeast where HEP had put up its candidates under the banner of SHP.41 To the credit of the current government, it has initiated a process of communication (negotiation?) with the PKK through the intermediation of the BDP, a Kurdish party that has close connections with it. It has promised a democratic opening in return for a ceasefire. Some symbolic changes of import like the resumption of the old names of towns and villages whose names had been “Turkicized,” many after 1960, have been effected. More recently, the government has rushed a law through the parliament, including provisions among others, that authorize public officials to meet with PKK representatives and negotiate (though this particular word is not used), and promises not to prosecute those who have taken to the mountains if they have not committed crimes. But many issues such as education in Kurdish are still ahead and they will prove to be difficult to solve.42 The successful tackling of the Kurdish question will inevitably give Turkish political leaders confidence to tackle other similar questions such as the Alevis who would like to be recognized as a different religious sect but who the government says is a cultural group.43 More generally, solving critical problems through democratic means and procedures will be the key to further consolidation of democracy in Turkey. There is no reason to be either optimistic or pessimistic on this point. While problems are recognized, admitted, and discussed, and some symbolic actions are taken, major steps, though expected, have not yet materialized.

41 Reha Muhtar, “Erdal inönü’ye Yazık Olmadı mı?” in (accessed October 10, 2014). 42 For a more comprehensive discussion of the impediments to a solution, see Dilek Kurban, “The Kurdish Question: Law, Politics and the Limits of Recognition,” in Rodriguez et al., eds., Turkey’s Democratization, pp. 345–60. 43 For the Alevi problems, see Elise Massicard, “Democratization: Insights from the Alevi Issue,” Rodriguez et al., eds., Turkey’s Democratization, pp. 376–90.

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Two Steps Forward and One Step Back We started our study by asking two questions. First, we wondered whether a country that does not possess the socioeconomic conditions that usually accompany democracy could achieve them under democratic rule. Second, we asked whether socioeconomic development achieved under democratic rule moves a country toward deepening and maturing of its democracy.

T H E AS C E NT OF QU E S T I O NS O F E C O N O MI C P R O S P E R I T Y The answer to the first question may be given by examining the indicators of socioeconomic development and how they have fared under democratic rule. The data and the discussion in Chapter 6, “Interactions among Society, Economy, and Politics: Change and Democratization,” show clearly that Turkey has experienced considerable socioeconomic change and advancement toward the achievement of conditions that are associated with operating democracies. In fact, given Turkey’s contemporary level of socioeconomic development, it seems safe to argue that Turkey has reached and passed the levels beyond which a democratic form of rule becomes irreversible. The fact that Turkey has not experienced a direct military intervention since the 1980–1983 interim and that, during the last three years, retired as well as on-duty military officers, including the top brass of the military, have been tried in civilian courts for having planned to conduct a coup,1 lend credence to the judgment that Turkey’s democracy faces no immediate likelihood of being terminated by non-elected actors. As recounted in Chapter 1, “The Emergence and Sustenance of Democratic Systems,” economic development is generally accompanied by urbanization, rises in the level of education, exposure to mass media and, naturally, in improvements in the standard of living. The intensification of the interactions

1

My emphasis is on the fact that this was done and implies no judgment on the quality of the justice administered.

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of the population with the market contributes to the growth of feelings that those living in the same delineated space constitute a community and that the daily lives and well-being of the members of this community are affected by what happens in the national economy. We have tried to demonstrate particularly but not exclusively in Chapter 6, that economic development also produces other outcomes that are closely linked with facilitating the operation and the consolidation of a democratic system by creating or strengthening the background conditions as well as those that are needed to sustain it. The expansion of the domain of negotiables, that is, material resources available to public authority for distribution and redistribution to the population, the strengthening of civil society, the strengthening the rule of law, and the appearance of the “modal man” are examples of such outcomes. In this process of socioeconomic transformation, questions of economic prosperity ascend in importance to become the priority concern in the minds of the people. Tables 8.1–8.3 show the importance Turkish citizens attach to economic questions and how this has changed over time. Although longer term data are not available, it is clear that economic questions have not only been the leading questions on the minds of the people but that there is an increase over time in the percentage of those who cite economic problems as being the most important in their lives. The ascendance of economic questions to the fore is also reflected in Table 8.4 showing how the space economic topics occupied in the largest-selling national daily changed over time. As people’s thinking becomes transformed; increasingly, economic questions occupy their

Table 8.1. What is the most important problem facing our country? Month and Year

a) terror

b) inflation

c) unemployment

b+c total

January 1990

16

19

13

32

January 1991

13

21

15

36

July 1994

16

28

24

52

July 1995

17

23

22

45

July 1996

16

28

25

53

July 1997

15

22

23

45

August 1998

14

21

21

42

September 1999

11

18

21

39

September 2000

4

21

25

46

July 2001

2

25

24

49

July 2002

3

22

31

53

Source: Strateji-Mori Surveys. The data has been kindly provided by my colleague Dr Emre Erdoğan.

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Table 8.2. What are the two important issues you are facing at the moment? Month and year

Econ. Conditions

Inflation

Unemployment

Terror

October 2004

46

16

74

18

October 2005

29

8

67

41

September 2006

34

11

64

52

October 2007

23

5

57

77

October 2008

32

16

51

68

November 2009

33

11

63

47

November 2010

33

16

59

54

November 2011

26

16

46

63

November 2012

26

13

52

62

May 2013

30

10

46

52

Source: The figures come from a working table prepared by my colleague Dr Emre Erdoğan from Eurobarometer Surveys.

Table 8.3. The aims of the country The Aims of the Country

1990

Achieving high level of economic growth

59.4

55.5

65.5

7.0

15.2

11.3

Strong defense forces

1996

2001

People have more say in what things are done

12.4

8.9

11.5

Trying to make our cities more beautiful

21.2

20.3

11.6

Source: The figures have been compiled by my colleague Dr Emre Erdoğan from the World Values Survey, selected countries/Turkey.

thinking and they begin to judge governments mainly by their economic performance. I also proposed in Chapter 1 that an economic prosperity orientation gradually permeates the way problems are conceptualized and solved. Data that support this assertion directly would have been preferably a panel or at least a trend study requiring interviews to examine changes in people’s cognitive frameworks. In the absence of such information, indirect methods have to be devised. Let me begin by citing research conducted by Turkey’s State Planning Organization that examined the modernization trends in Turkish villages during the early 1960s. In a trend study, the villagers were asked what they looked for when they were accepting a new job. In the 1962 study, “that it be easy” proved to be the most popular response (36 percent)

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Table 8.4. Newspaper space allocated to economical topics (cm2) Year

Space

1951*

127

1955**

834

1960

293

1965

229

1970

465

1975

1229

1980

697

1985*

1388

1990

2340

1995

2962

2000

5910

2005

7865

2010

7775

2013

5878

Source: Calculated from the daily Hürriyet on the basis of sq. centimeters of space allocated to economic topics. Three measurements were taken each year on the 15th February, July, and November, and then averaged. If the date coincided with a weekend, the next weekday was used. Calculations were made by Tuba Okçu. *only two measurements were made for the year **only a single measurement was made for the year

followed by “that it be prestigious” (30 percent) while “that it pay well” was preferred only by 19 percent of the respondents. In the 1968 study, a major change appears to have taken place where “that it pay well” was volunteered by nearly 41 percent of the villagers, while its being easy or prestigious had both declined to 14 percent.2 Other indicators also testify to the ascendance of economic concerns over time. In March 1981, for example, the first economics daily, Dünya, appeared on the newsstands.3 Hürriyet initiated an economics section only on January 3,

Ahmet Tuğaç, İbrahim Yurt, Gül Ergil, and Hüseyin T. Sevil, Türk Köyünde Modernleşme Eğilimleri Araştırması, Rapor 1 (Ankara: Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, 1970), p. 258. 3 The information has been provided by the former editor-in-chief of Dünya, Osman S. Arolat. It should be pointed out that Dünya was already in existence as a daily with no particular focus on the economy. It totally transformed itself and became an economics daily. 2

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1982.4 A study of Hürriyet shows that the amount of space that it allocates to economic topics has expanded over time. A similar tendency is also witnessed in Milliyet, another daily. The ascent of questions of economics to the fore, taken by itself, might have been expected to create a suitable framework for more democratization. And it is true that in many ways Turkey has moved toward greater democratization and that today’s Turkey is a more democratic society than it had been in the past. But not only do many shortcomings remain, but also, in addition to whatever progress might have taken place, there exist other ways in which democratic governance in the country has retrogressed, suggesting a mode of change that, receiving mild inspiration from Lenin, I have called “two steps forward, one step back.” Before making some concluding observations as regards why this is the case, let me first turn to the second question that I posed.

DEMOCRA TIC DEEPE NING AND M ATURING Our second question as regards whether socioeconomic change achieved under democratic governance helps deepen a country’s democracy and move it toward maturing, like our first question, sounds also deceptively simple to answer in the affirmative. Yet, any observer of Turkey’s democracy would express doubt that Turkey constitutes a shining example of unimpeded democratization driven by socioeconomic change. A more accurate judgment would be to suggest that Turkey’s democracy has deepened over time: it needs to cover significant distance, however, with regard to democratic maturation, a judgment that needs elaboration.

Partly Fulfilled Aspirations A diminished subtype it may be,5 but Turkey is ruled by a democratic system in the sense that politics is seen to be a competitive game among parties and that elections are the only acceptable way of changing governments. Turkey 4

The information has been provided by Serdar Devrim, one of the managers of Hürriyet for which I owe him thanks. 5 David Collier and Steven Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research,” World Politics, 49 (April 1997), pp. 437–42, refer to diminished subtypes where by adding adjectives one may qualify liberal democracy and narrow its scope.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/3/2015, SPi

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has so far not had an election the outcome of which has been questioned as having been rigged. Turkey’s democracy, however, contains enough shortcomings such that those agencies who measure democratic performance of countries call its system a non-liberal electoral democracy or only partly free6 while the periodic reports of the EU Commission, in addition to containing words of appreciation for the actions of Turkish governments when some of the Commission’s recommendations have been enacted into policy, always refer to where changes and improvements in democratic infrastructures and practices are needed. After sixty-four years of intermittent democratic experience, Turkey continues to be called a partial democracy. What is the problem? In Chapter 1, we suggested that democratic deepening comprised both vertical and horizontal change. Vertical deepening was used to refer to the growth or expansion in any dimension of liberal democracy while horizontal was employed to refer to the incorporation of new dimensions, that is, areas of concern, to the dimensions of the liberal democratic package. Maturing, on the other hand, referred to the evolution of patterned and therefore predictable behavior. The socioeconomic change and development Turkey has undergone, as the preceding chapters have hopefully made clear, have contributed to the deepening of Turkey’s democracy. The increased socioeconomic differentiation, for example, has generated a need for the development of institutions of peaceful conflict management crowned by a parliament. This evolution has been supportive of party competition and parliamentary life. Socioeconomic change, to add another example, has also allowed for organizations that do not depend on the state for their existence to pursue goals and initiate autonomous action. Whatever domestic evolution has occurred toward the deepening of democracy, has also been supported by Turkey’s international connections, a point which has already been elaborated in various parts of this book. Yet, there are many ways in which Turkey’s democratic performance is less than perfect. Institutions exist, international commitments to democracy are in place, but there continue to be failings in the way democracy operates in Turkey as has become evident in several parts of this book. We shall conclude our discussion of Turkey’s democratization by a brief analysis of the factors that render the Turkish system a “diminished” form of democracy.

6

These measurements include Bertelsmann Transformation Index, Freedom in the World Index by Freedom House, and Polity IV. These indicators are also cited in Şebnem YardımcıGeyikçi, “Party Institutionalization and Democratic Consolidation: Turkey and Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective,” Party Politics;

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In a discussion of the “consolidation”7 of democracy in Southern Europe and Turkey, Yardımcı-Geyikçi notes that Turkey has suffered from the same “maladies that affected the political structures of Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy” which she identifies as frequent resort to repression, excessive centralization of state power, a heavy reliance on patronage and weak civilian control over the military. She laments that while over time the four countries of Southern Europe, with the growth of a set of highly institutionalized political parties and a party system, have moved toward becoming stable, “consolidated” democracies in which governments are formed by alternating parties of the right and the left, in Turkey, though institutionalized, political parties have proven incapable of leading the process of democratic “consolidation.” She speculates that ideological polarization that characterizes Turkish politics is likely to have operated to the detriment of the “consolidation” of Turkish democracy.8 As has been persuasively argued by Sayarı and by Sunar among others, Turkish political parties easily evolve into congregations of rent-seeking clients; thereby failing to achieve high levels of institutionalization.9 Other observers of Turkish politics at different times have concurred with the judgment that Turkish political parties have weak organizations and are dominated by strong leaders.10 The party system, in other words, may not be as institutionalized as Yardımcı-Geyikçi assumes. The statistics on which she has built her argument, as they appear in documents, may have led to optimistic conclusions.11 The Instead of “deepening and maturing,” the expressions which I have preferred, I am using “consolidation” in this paragraph in quotation marks since I am reporting the terminology used by Yardımcı-Geyikçi. 8 Şebnem Yardımcı-Geyikçi, “Party Institutionalization.” 9 Sabri Sayarı, “The Changing Party System,” in Sabri Sayarı and Yılmaz Esmer, eds., Politics, Parties and Elections (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002), pp. 11 and 24; Sabri Sayarı, “Some Notes on the Beginnings of Mass Political Participation in Turkey,” in Engin D. Akarlı and Gabriel Ben-Dor, eds., Political Participation in Turkey (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University, 1974), pp. 123–33; Sabri Sayarı,“Political Patronage in Turkey,” in Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury, eds., Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (London: Duckworth, 1977), pp. 103–14; and İlkay Sunar, “Populism and Patronage: The Demokrat Party and Its Legacy in Turkey,” in İlkay Sunar, ed., State, Society and Democracy in Turkey (Istanbul: Bahçeşehir University Press, 2004), pp. 121–33. 10 Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Turkish Party System: Leaders, Vote and Institutionalization,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 13:4 (2013), p. 488. Kalaycıoğlu cites several sources to support his argument. The most recent and comprehensive one among them is Ergun Özbudun, Party Politics and Social Cleavages in Turkey (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2013), pp. 91–9. 11 For example, party membership which is used as a measure of institutionalization is not as meaningful as one might assume. Few members of any party, if any, pay membership dues. 7

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characterization of Southern European societies prior to democratic “consolidation” as relying on repression, with too much power concentrated in the center, and reliance on clientelism, however, still applies in the Turkish case, while the weak civilian control of the military is a condition that has only been modified relatively recently as discussed in Chapter 5, “The Rise and Fall of the Military as a Political Force.” Partisan polarization that weakens the role of parties in democratic “consolidation” also continues to prevail. Why have other countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy been able to achieve higher levels of democratic consolidation while Turkey has lagged behind? Although it has also been the case that these countries achieved higher levels of economic prosperity earlier than Turkey, Turkey’s development has, nevertheless, been substantial and certainly high enough to justify expectations that its democracy might be further consolidated than it appears to be. To explain why this is not the case and why Turkey continues to encounter difficulties which it is yet to overcome, we may return to the idea that Turkey’s politics continue to be shaped under the influence of cultural bifurcation that we discussed in Chapters 2 and 7, “The Political Legacy: Antecedents of Democratization,” and “The Deepening of Democracy and its Challenges.” The cultural bifurcation, as already noted in Chapter 2, had created two irreconcilable visions of society. The coming of democracy, which necessitated that those who were to govern society get elected by popular vote, appeared to provide an opportunity for these alternative visions of society to achieve some kind of accommodation and synthesis. While democracy as elections did indeed lead to a situation in which the members of the two kulturkampfs had to work together, what obtained could best be described as an uneasy coexistence in which members of the modernist camp continued to treat those representing the traditionalist camp as a security problem, a political tendency that should be kept under control. This was done, as elaborated in Chapter 7, by trying to keep the domain within which elected politicians could operate narrow by employing constitutional means and by frequently closing parties with allegations that they had used religion for political ends. The modernist camp, because it conceptualized society as being in need of modernization, rather than concentrating on developing a political party with mass appeal, relied on the instruments of the state to maintain the People bring in their friends to parties who are neither interested in party activities nor take part in them except when their friend may need their vote and even pay for their membership fee if need be. Similarly, territorial comprehensiveness, which is a legal requirement, means that parties sometimes hand in a list of names as the local organization of a party to surmount a legal barrier when in fact the party does not exist as an active unit.

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achievements of modernization policies and their further advancement. The traditionalist camp, on the other hand, relied on the maximization of voter support as the only available grounds on which it could build its political legitimacy. The modernist camp was urban and middle class and, by its nature, it was elitist. It was not sufficiently cognizant of the fact that its approach to society was exclusionary, and that it failed to appreciate the fact that questions of economic prosperity prevailed in the minds of most voters. The rivalry between the two kulturkampfs was initially described by the political organization of the modernist camp, that is, the CHP, as a struggle between exponents of progress and mainly religious reaction. The entrance of Marxist terminology and analysis to Turkish politics in the liberal atmosphere that came following the conclusion of the 1960 military intervention, and the advent of questions of economic development along with the adoption of import substitution oriented industrialization, led to the employment of left and right terminology to describe the political cleavages in Turkey. These labels, when employed in an environment where the basic cleavage was cultural, in fact, carried different connotations. The right was culturally conservative and more favorably disposed toward the market economy. The socioeconomic base of its support, however, usually included members of the working class, poor peasants and farmers, artisans, and small businessmen in addition to well-endowed segments of society. The left, on the other hand, received much of its support from urban, educated, and professional groups.12 The left was strongly nationalist, while parts of the right were more open to linking up with the global community. Neither the right nor the left gave major priority to the advancement of individual liberties. After the initial transition to competitive politics, Turkish politics have been dominated mainly by parties of the “right.” Initially, there was a major party on the right that brought together the religious conservatives, economic liberals, industrialists, merchants, owners of small enterprises, and peasant farmers under the same flag. The Democratic Party of the 1946–1960 interim and the Justice Party of 1961–1981 are examples of such parties. Elements of both parts of the culturally bifurcated society were represented within these parties of the right, and it appeared as if the bifurcation might gradually lose its political salience. As explained in Chapter 6, however, the rapid economic development under import substitution oriented industrialization led to the 12

See for example, Ergun Özbudun, Türkiye’de Sosyal Değişme ve Siyasal Katılma (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi, 1975), esp. chs. 6–8; and also Ergun Özbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner publishers, 2000), ch. 4; and Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today: Elections, Protest, Stability in an Islamic Society (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), chs. 4, 5, 7, passim.

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emergence of conflicting ideological and economical interests, and created pressures toward fragmentation of the major party of the right. Both during the 1973–1980 and the 1991–2002 interims, Turkey lived through prolonged periods of rule by coalition governments in which various types of parties of the “right” were partners. Gradually, the string of political parties that represented religious conservatism, deriving energy from representing the “underdogs” and the potential of patronage being in office offered them, expanded their support base. They were partners in most coalitions and wielded more power than the number of their deputies might suggest, since their support often proved indispensible in forming governments. The growing importance of the parties of the religious right was particularly offensive to the modernist elite whose dedication to laicism rendered them overly sensitive to public manifestations of religion and its employment as both political resource and ideology; hence, the successful attempts to have a string of religiously oriented parties closed down by the Constitutional Court for having used religion for political ends. Each time, however, the party quickly reconstituted itself and did reasonably well at elections while maintaining a mild anti-system approach. The last party of this lineage, the governing AKP, emphasized economic betterment and the provision of satisfactory pubic services, an approach that has enabled it to win by itself three consecutive elections. The first two terms of the AKP were characterized by expansion of democracy. After Turkey began accession negotiations with the European Union, legislation enhancing individual liberties was enacted. The victory speeches of the prime minister after the second and the third electoral victory were highly conciliatory, creating the impression that the importance of the great cultural divide was declining and some of the issues of symbolic resistance like the ban on the headscarf at universities would resolve themselves in the long run. The bringing of the military under civilian control, despite impressions of departures from a fully fair trial, was met with approval in the international arena. The announcement of government plans to deal with the Kurdish question through democratization was yet another indication that the government would rely on the democratic political processes rather than on instruments of security to address major societal problem. Yet, more recently, the AKP government has initiated efforts to acquire powers that would enable it to influence significantly the promotions and appointments of judges and public prosecutors which would undermine one of the cardinal principles of democracy, that of separation of powers and the associated mechanisms of checks and balances. Similarly, efforts have been made to introduce strict controls on the use of the Internet. It is all the more discouraging that these have been undertaken in response to an investigation

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of corruption charges by the judiciary which, the government has alleged, is part of an international conspiracy to bring it down. Earlier, in May–June 2013, the willingness of the police to use excessive force to quell demonstrations against the construction of a shopping mall in a major square in Istanbul, and strong expressions of approval of the behavior of the police voiced by the prime minister, clearly appears unusual for a society that is ruled by a democratic system where staging and taking part in demonstrations ought to be seen as part of the use of freedom of expression and treated accordingly. During its third term, the AKP government has also introduced changes in the educational system, expanding the place of religion classes in primary and secondary education as well as expanding the share of preacher training schools, ostensibly a vocational school, in the second stage of primary education as well as in high schools. There is a growing impression that those with preacher training backgrounds are favored in public employment and promotions. Taken together, these developments have raised concerns in the modernist camp that the current government is moving in the direction of transforming Turkey’s already problematical democracy into a popularly based, religiously conservative, authoritarian system of rule. Whereas a desire to further consolidate Turkey’s democracy would call for removing questions of cultural bifurcation from the arena of politics and their replacement by matters of economics, as well as strengthening the institutions of democracy, including the expansion of individual liberties and the further entrenchment of checks and balances and the rule of law, the EU connection might have constituted a justification for the efforts of the Turkish government in that direction. Yet, the current impression both domestically and internationally is that Turkey is not becoming more but less democratic. As also described in greater detail in Chapter 4, “The Cycles of Turkish Democracy: 1950–1980,” an examination of Turkish political history under democracy reveals a pattern of expansion of democracy and then its contraction. The DP turned more authoritarian after the elections of 1957 when its votes began to decline. The ensuing struggle between government and opposition led to the military intervention of 1960, a temporary halt to a functioning democracy. The transition to electoral politics under a new constitution marked the beginning of a democratization process such that the post-1960 politics was more democratic than had been the case during 1950–1960. Freedom of expression was broader than earlier as were the freedom of the press and that of association. This expansion came under challenge by growing violent domestic conflict, often inaccurately attributed to the expansion of liberties, culminating in the March 1971 indirect military intervention. The string of elected governments, facing intensifying political unrest during the

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1973–1980 period, did not produce a significant expansion of democratic institutions or practices. The 1980 military intervention produced laws, institutions, and practices that aimed at constructing a political system in which limitations were placed on individual liberties and on the domain of electoral politics. With the transition to political competition, however, there was a steady trend toward more democracy. This trend gained new momentum after 2002 with the coming into power of the AKP which worked to broaden the scope of politics, to reduce the political influence of the military and expand civil liberties. Since some of the limitations placed on Turkey’s democracy were a result of the attempts of the modernist elite to limit what the traditionalists could do in the arena of politics, the unqualified victory of a political party, in no way indebted to the modernist camp, that represented the traditionalist camp, facilitated the emergence of a milieu in which democratization could advance smoothly and rapidly. The invitation to become a member of the EU and to open accession negotiations reinforced domestic policies of democratization. It seems the time has come to take a step back again. Is this a temporary step back or is the country entering a period of authoritarian politics? If the past experience is a guide, even if the country goes through a retrogression of democracy, it is likely to be temporary, and to be followed by more democratization. Yet, the pendular movements between first more and then less and then again more democracy, even if less effective on the depth, does not point to a reliable process of maturing. Will Turkey continue to remain a partially liberal democracy or will it achieve consolidation of a liberal democratic system at some stage? Asked differently, will the repetitive process of two steps forward and one step back cease to operate at some future date and be replaced by a reasonably smoothly running democratic process?

T H E RO A D T O A MO R E D E MO C RA T I C T U RK E Y Democracy, in those societies where it was born, experienced a very slow and painful birth. A study of indicators to identify points at which democracy becomes irreversible and its quality acceptable does not tell us of the painful process of domestic class struggles, revolutions, and even warfare that these societies experienced in the process of their democratic evolution. This contrasts remarkably with the experience of Turkey, where the deciding initiative to open up to political competition was a decision by a single-party ruling elite to link Turkey with NATO in order to ensure its security. Sure, there were demands for such an opening and sure, some socioeconomic developments that intensified during the Second World War favored such an evolution, but

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the lack of a comprehensive transformative process rendered the adoption and the sustenance of the procedural aspects of democracy easier than its substantive aspects. In other words, although in an earlier period, Turkey found itself in a position that is similar to developing countries that are being asked to adopt and practice democracy. As we have noted throughout the book, the socioeconomic development that Turkey has experienced has created conditions that compare favorably with other democracies. Satisfactory levels reached as regards the indicators of socioeconomic development have been buttressed by the strengthening of civil society, the rise of the autonomous individual, and the dismantling of the political power of the military. Yet, questions concerning the quality of Turkey’s democracy continue to produce unfavorable responses. This problem may derive from the lack of critical experiences that have generated ingrained attitudes among the political elites that are supportive of democracy in other societies. A radical example is Germany’s experience with Hitler that has been critical in the evolution of Germany as a respectable democracy after World War II. To make my position clear, I am not arguing that Turkey is completely lacking in such experiences, but rather suggesting that their occurrence and intensity may be wanting. In recent years, however, Turkey has been going through experiences that are likely to contribute to the maturing of its democracy. The first of these is the Kurdish terrorism that has arisen in part in response to the Turkification policies of the republican governments. It is only after the loss of many lives that both the political elites and the general public is coming to the conclusion that expansion of the content of individual liberties and accepting ethnic plurality of the country may lead to an eventual removal of the issue as one that threatens the domestic peace of Turkey. The second experience relates to how to deal with the cultural divide that has shaped the country’s politics and has constituted a major issue of contention, not only during the history of the republic but also during the latter stages of the Ottoman Empire. Again, the policies of the modernizing elite to contain the traditionalist camp and gradually transform it into its own version of modernity, relying mainly on the instruments of the state, have not succeeded. To be sure, the so-called traditionalists have absorbed much of the modernity that has been offered to them13, but they have not turned into 13

The idea that tradition and modernity are not polar opposites, and that tradition absorbs some of modernity and thereby becomes redefined over time, reformulating the content of the dichotomy, was aptly noted in a seminal article by Joseph R. Gusfield, “Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Change,” American Journal of Sociology, 72 (January 1967), pp. 351–62.

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the absolute laicists that the modernists had hoped. The prolonged deadlock, which has been one of the stumbling blocks of Turkey’s democracy,14 appears to be slowly weakening. The major opposition party, the CHP, appears to have commenced with a process of multidimensional adjustment to a role as a major actor of democratic politics.15 This process entails, on the one hand, the recognition that the public manifestation of personal religiosity, as in the example of women wearing a headscarf, is part of the liberty of the individual. On the other hand, it entails the imperative that the party move from pursuit of hard-line ideologies not appreciated by the electorate to more pragmatic policies aiming to meet the material needs of the electorate while maintaining a more secular outlook than its rivals. Using the terminology that I have employed earlier, this will move political competition from being asymmetric to becoming more symmetric. Party competition may also be enhanced by the relative decline of clientelism or its relocation16 as a result of development and urbanization. In earlier periods, public service insufficiencies had encouraged the evolution of clientelistic networks as a way of distributing scarce resources. The availability of more means and the necessity of providing services across the board in urban environments have reduced in a relative fashion the need for personalized linkages. The moderation of clientelism constitutes an environment where both civil society and political parties may be strengthened since individual action is no longer needed and acting as a group becomes the more typical way of linking up with politics. The third experience relates to the recognition that the arbitrary use of political power undermines both the peace and the prosperity of society. The 14 Nora Fisher Onar in her “Beyond Binaries: ‘Europe’, Pluralism, and a Revisionist-Status Quo Key to Turkish Politics,” (unpublished Essay, 2nd place, Sakıp Sabancı Award, 2009) also refers to three cleavages that have produced stalemates in Turkish politics. These are unitary versus pluralist (meaning ethnic pluralism), secularist–Islamist, and center–periphery. The first two continue to be more influential in affecting contemporary politics than the center–periphery cleavage. 15 In late June, 2014, the CHP joined forces with the MHP to offer a jointly sponsored independent candidate for the president of the republic that is to be elected for the first time through popular elections, The candidate, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, is a deeply religious but modern person whose wife does not cover her head. Originally a university professor of Organic Chemistry and History of Science, he had served as the Secretary General of Islamic Conference Organization until recently. He would have been an equally acceptable candidate to the governing AKP. 16 The relationship with business circles and government where the favor of material benefits secured to business is returned by supporting the government, including engaging in acts of material generosity toward the government party, a form of clientelism, corrupt in nature, seems to continue and possibly intensify.

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employment of excessive force by the police in the spring of 2013 to oust the demonstrators who wanted to stop the cutting of trees in a public park (the Gezi Park in Taksim Square) in order to construct a shopping mall in its place, was initially met with favor by those who supported the prime minister in his insistence that the construction go on. The subsequent occasions where the police have continued to use excessive force, and the casualties that have ensued where the victims were not even involved in the events, have led to an appreciation that excessive use of force is not to be approved. Furthermore, the use of excessive force has had international repercussions leading to material outcomes such as the drop in tourism trade following the Gezi Park events. The fourth experience pertains to the rule of law. In preparing the case against the soldiers that were accused of plotting a coup against the civilian governments, the public prosecutors were careful neither in observing rules of seizing evidence nor in the preparation of their cases, which often relied on circumstantial evidence and speculation. In the trials, there seemed to be persuasive evidence that the submitted documents were doctored and contained inexplicable inconsistencies. The courts, however, also less than meticulous in their administration of justice, passed out harsh sentences. More recently, however, when the same approach was used by some prosecutors and judges against the government in cases of alleged corruption, the government reacted by arguing that there was an international conspiracy against it, and resorted to moving security chiefs, public prosecutors, and judges on the case to more passive positions. Ironically, the government has now begun to argue that the soldiers were also given poor justice and maybe they should be given a second trial. The problem of poor administration of justice has also been recurrent with regard to the Kurdish movement, where mayors, municipal employees, and members of Kurdish ethnic parties, among others, have been taken into custody, often arrested on flimsy evidence and released when political conditions have warranted it. This shifting of ground, the identification of law enforcement officers, public prosecutors, and judges as being pro or against the government, has undermined the public’s confidence in the administration of justice in their societies. Concerns have grown deeper when the government has turned to enhancing its powers in appointing and promoting prosecutors and judges. This particular state of affairs is leading to a greater appreciation that the independence of the judiciary has to be protected and improved. As in the case of the use of excessive force by the police, the growing doubts about the prevalence of the rule of law have had international repercussions, both in the political and the economics arena. Organizations involved in the promotion of democracy with whom Turkey has close relations, beginning with the

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EU, have made public their interest in making sure that Turkey does not veer off the democratic path in addressing its political problems. On the economic front, the Turkish lira has lost value, interest rates that apply in international borrowing and consequently in domestic borrowing have gone up, and the flow of foreign capital into Turkey has slowed down. All members of the business community, irrespective of whether they had received favorable treatment from the current government, would like to see a predictable judicial environment restored, for otherwise further problematical economic outcomes might ensue. Finally, Turkey is part of an international environment that will continue to pressure and encourage Turkey to remain and develop along the democratic path. Given the domestic experiences Turkey has been facing, the international environment will constitute a framework that will reinforce the maturing process of Turkey’s democracy. If, as I propose, this maturing process continues, the pattern of two steps forward, one step back, may lead to a fully operating democracy like its European counterparts. When Turkey made its initial transition to democracy, it had created hopes that developing societies could become democracies. Almost seventy years later, and an adventure that has had its ups and downs as this account has hopefully demonstrated, Turkey’s democracy continues to be in need of maturing. If Turkey succeeds in building a fully operating democracy, in the same way as its initial introduction had raised hopes, it may raise new hopes that democracy introduced in a developing society may produce economic prosperity, and a stable and prosperous democracy in the long run.

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Postscript The writing of this book was completed before Turkey’s presidential election was held on August 10, 2014. As was already noted in the concluding chapter, Turkey’s democracy appeared to have entered a period of “contraction” after 2011, following continual expansion since the beginning of the millennium. Ironically, it is mainly during this period of contraction that the role of the military as a political actor has been neutralized. The potential of the military to subvert the democratic process by staging interventions, however, has currently been replaced by a new challenge: that of the possible undermining of a parliamentary democracy by actors that owe their own ascent to political power to democratic politics.

G R OWI N G AU TH O RI T A R I A N I S M O F TH E PRIME M INIS TER Let me specify the problem. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s prime minister for the past twelve years, has grown increasingly authoritarian, especially during his last term of office. He has become less and less tolerant of criticism not only by the opposition but also by those within his own party. He has taken measures to limit the freedom of expression (e.g. banning Twitter from being available in Turkey, now repealed), backed by a parliamentary party which has easily yielded to his leadership since many deputies owe their parliamentary seats to the charisma of the prime minister. He has engaged in personal attacks against members of the press who have written critical articles about him and has not hesitated to take many of them to court alleging that he or his office has been insulted. He has used the instruments of the state such as tax investigations to coerce newspapers and television channels as well as those businesses that either owned them or gave them advertisements, into submission. Under his rule, government agencies have cancelled contracts that had been awarded to businesses that have failed to acquiesce to his leadership

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and tried to maintain their independent and sometimes critical stature. He has not hesitated to order and approve the extensive use of force to quell public manifestations that were critical of him, most clearly manifest in the way he handled the Gezi Park events that protested not only about a municipal zoning decision but “his efforts to shape society according to his Sunni Muslim beliefs.”1 And finally, the prime minister has responded to corruption charges that involved several ministers in his cabinet as well as himself by alleging that an international conspiracy is being staged against him, and by charging police officers involved in uncovering the corruption case as agents of a clandestine group tied to the religious leader Fethullah Gülen who has presumably engaged in an effort to establish a “parallel state” in order to achieve control of the bureaucracy. His government has relieved many of the police officers of their responsibilities. Some among them have later been taken into custody and arrested for unlawful activities such as unauthorized wiretapping, while those judges and prosecutors who have been involved in the corruption case have been appointed to other positions, thereby removing the cases from their jurisdiction. The governing party has not allowed the vote that would have removed the immunity of those deputies accused of having taken bribes to come to the floor of the parliament. It is under these circumstances that the prime minister decided to run for president. His campaign strategy has relied on securitization and polarization of politics. As regards securitization of the campaign, he has depicted a Turkey surrounded by hostile external and internal forces that have made common cause to bring down a highly successful government that has led Turkey to becoming one of the major powers in the world. He has attacked Fethullah Gülen who lives in the United States, Jewish lobbies, and in a thinly veiled way, that is, referring to the unspecified “West,” almost all of Turkey’s allies, with the United States leading the list. Jenkins has rightly described this as an effort to perpetrate a sense of siege.2 Polarization strategy, on the other hand, has relied on Turkey’s cultural bifurcation in which the prime minister presumably represents the underdogs who now have the chance for the first time in their lives to choose their president. His speeches have also contained references to non-Sunni Muslims as well as other religious minorities, insinuating

The expression comes from Gareth Jenkins, “Turkey’s Presidential Elections: The Clouds on Erdoğan’s Horizon,” Turkey Analyst, vol. 7, no. 14. (accessed on October 27, 2014). 2 Jenkins, “Turkey’s Presidential Elections”. 1

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that somehow they are not an integral part of society and therefore in the hostile camp. Mr Erdoğan has promised to build a new Turkey the attributes of which he has not specified. He has insisted, however, that he will not be a symbolic leader but one actively engaged in policy making and implementation. He has argued that he would use his constitutional powers to the fullest and that the current constitution gives him powers which, if used effectively and backed by an electoral majority, would make it possible for him to be the chief policy maker. But to become the people’s president and deliver on his promises, he has insisted that he needs to achieve a clear and superior majority over his rivals.

T HE R OL E OF T H E PRE SI DEN T I N T H E C U RR E N T C O NS T I T UT I O N Before moving on to the election, its outcome, and an analysis of its implication for Turkey’s democracy, let us take a brief look at Turkey’s constitution and the position of the president in it. Turkey has a parliamentary system in which the parliament elected a president for a non-renewable seven-year term. When the AKP nominated Abdullah Gül (the outgoing incumbent) for president, the hard-line secularist establishment3 mobilized all the means available to it to prevent his election, in large part because he was identified by them as belonging to the hard-core religious nucleus of the party with a wife who covered her head, a totally unacceptable symbol that should not be allowed to appear in the presidential palace. They turned to a “creative misinterpretation” of the Turkish constitution, arguing that a quorum of two-thirds of the whole house was necessary in order for the parliament to choose a president.4 The Constitutional Court, a pillar of the secularist establishment at the time, concurred. 3

This establishment at the time included, among others, the military leadership, the Constitutional Court and the top institutions of the court system, the national offices of the Bar Associations, and the Council on Higher Education. 4 Article 96 of the constitution made a clear distinction between a quorum and the qualified majority needed to choose a president. In other words, it was possible for a session to start, but for the parliament to fail to elect a president. By preventing the commencement of the election rounds, the opposition prevented the AKP from electing Mr Gül as president. The votes needed for election moved down to a simple majority of the whole house after the first two rounds. Getting past the first two rounds would have made it possible for the AKP holding an absolute majority of the house to elect its candidate.

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To overcome the impasse, the government introduced an amendment to the constitution such that the president would from now on be popularly elected. It also moved the elections ahead. The constitutional amendment mustered more than 330 but less than 367 votes which necessitated its being submitted to a public referendum for ratification. Because the constitution depicts a time frame for the conduct of referenda, the elections were held before the constitutional referendum could be held. The AKP scored an impressive victory by receiving 46.5 percent of the vote such that it was able both to form the government by itself and get Mr. Gül elected president. After this outcome, it would have been possible to suspend the constitutional referendum and let the system operate in its traditional form. But, taking the election of the president from the hands of parliament seemed to be a more assured way of preventing interventions by extra political actors in the process. The amendment was ratified by a 69 percent majority, but the actual election of a president under the new rules had to wait until the expiration of the term of the incumbent, President Gül, hence the election on August 10, 2014. The change of only the method by which Turkey’s president was elected without otherwise making adjustments in the constitution produced some enigmatic outcomes. For example, since the president enjoyed for the most part symbolic powers, what would be the grounds on which the electoral campaign would be shaped? Or since the constitution depicted that, once elected, the president would sever his ties with his party, did the office lend itself to being filled in an overtly partisan competition or more specifically, could the winner of a highly partisan contest manage to be equidistant to all political sides? Would the rules of the presidential election campaign be different from the election of deputies? If, say a prime minister ran for the office, what restrictions would apply to his using the facilities of his current position during the campaign? Would the incumbent who had been elected for a one time only seven-year term be able to run again under the new system that allowed for two consecutive five-year terms? When exactly would the president-elect sever his ties with his party; when would he leave his current position, upon being elected, or upon actually acceding to the new position? The constitutional amendment actually depicted the enactment of a law in which these details might be addressed, but the law that was enacted5 dealt mainly with the procedural aspects of the election, leaving many such questions unanswered and therefore extensive room for interpretation in an environment where traditions, precedents, and customs have limited effect in regulating behavior as opposed to the letter of the law.

5

Law no. 6721 enacted on January 19, 2012 and promulgated on January 26, 2012.

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THE PRESIDE NTIAL ELECTION The Constitution allows a total of sixty days or two months within which the presidential election is to be concluded. The calendar of that period is set by the High Board of elections. Part of the first month is used for parties to choose their candidates and to prepare for the campaign, while the last three weeks have to allow for a runoff if that proves necessary as well as for vote count, appeals, and other formalities associated with taking office, leaving about a month for the campaign itself. There has been much criticism that this is too short a period for the conduct of elections but a constitutional amendment is needed to make it longer, which appears unlikely at the moment. On this first occasion, all political parties were slow in identifying their candidates. It seems that Prime Minister Erdoğan experienced some hesitation in finalizing his candidacy since he wanted to make sure that he would win an impressive victory in the first round rather than face a runoff. He continued with a guessing game until the last moment before he announced his candidacy. The Kurdish ethnic HDP, an offshoot of the BDP, nominated Selahattin Demirtaş, a young parliamentarian who had also served as the party’s co-president.6 The surprise candidate came from the CHP and MHP. The leaders of both parties were sure that their independent candidates would not be able to mount a strong challenge against the prime minister. The MHP was also concerned that in a runoff, many of its supporters would support Mr. Erdoğan rather than the CHP candidate who would likely be the other contender, thus giving the former an unacceptably high majority. The solution seemed to be to find an independent candidate who would bring together attributes that would render him acceptable to members of both the modernist and the secularist camp. Only in this way, they agreed, could they hope to stop Mr. Erdoğan who had made clear his intentions to convert the political system into a presidential one by usurping the powers of the office. Mr Kılıçdaroğlu and Mr Bahçeli, the head of the CHP and the MHP respectively, agreed on the person of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, who had recently retired as the secretary general of the Islamic Conference Organization, a distinguished professor of chemistry and history of science with an acclaimed later career as a diplomat. Since both 6

The Kurdish ethnic party, BDP, judging that it was too closely identified as an exclusively Kurdish party had proceeded to promote the founding of the HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi or Peoples’ Democratic Party) in late 2012 and had loaned some of its own deputies to the new party. The idea was to develop a party which was open to all marginalized groups in Turkey, including ethnic and religious groups and others like the LGBT Alliance.

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parties have major vocal and ideologically oriented constituencies, it seems that the leaders chose to simply announce the agreement and ask their parties to support it, rather than getting it approved by the relevant organs of their party. It is therefore less than surprising that in both parties there were strong voices of criticism. Yet, the event marked a first in Turkish political history: two parties with diametrically opposed ideologies had achieved a compromise regarding an independent candidate for president in the interest of protecting the parliamentary system, although neither would have ever considered him a candidate for their own party. This is a sign of what I have referred as “maturing” in Chapter 1. The campaign displayed some unique characteristics. On the one side was Prime Minister Erdoğan, organizing mass rallies, flying from city to city in his official plane, being met by government officials, promising development projects, economic benefits, etc. which the office of the president under the current constitution does not allow him to devise and implement. He was careless in his remarks, some of which bordered on racism,7 and often publicly employed rough language to denigrate his opponents. On the other side were the two opposition candidates, talking peace and democracy in polite, moderate language. In the case of the independent candidate, the CHP and MHP organized a few mass rallies where their leaders spoke, otherwise Mr. İhsanoğlu spoke in halls, visited civil-society organizations, and made similar public appearances. In the case of both opposition candidates, the campaigns were modest since they had limited funding.8 The elections on August 10 were peaceful. The rate of participation, 74.1 percent, was lower than any rate that had obtained since 2002 and 15 percentage points below the local elections that had been held only in March 2014. This drop is generally interpreted as reflecting the lack of enthusiasm among some CHP and MHP voters to support a candidate that they did not consider to be one of their own. Mr Erdoğan received 51.8 percent

He accused İhsanoğlu of being a foreigner because he was born in Egypt, though his parents were actually Turkish. And in a mass rally, referring to negative propaganda against him, he said, “they even accused me, if you shall pardon the expression, of being of Armenian origin . . . .” Also, in a less than discreet way, he said he was not afraid to say that he was a Sunni and wondered why the CHP President Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu would not reveal his religious preference, a roundabout way of saying that he belonged to the minority Alevi sect which the almost exclusively Sunni AKP voters do not particularly like. 8 Publicly available figures so far indicate that Mr Erdoğan received 55 261 000 Turkish liras as contributions, Mr İhsanoğlu around 8.5 million, and Mr Demirtaş only 1.213 000. Many sources give the same figures, e.g., see visited on August 21, 2014. 7

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of the vote to Mr. İhsanoğlu’s 38.6 and Mr. Demirtaş’s 9.8 percent.9 It appears that the prime minister had received the votes of the majority but not the commanding majority of 58–60 percent he desired. Furthermore, his victory in the first round appeared to owe more to the abstentions that resulted in a drop of the vote of the two opposition main parties (a combined drop of over 5 million votes compared to March 2014 local elections) than a significant rise in his support. As president-elect, however, Mr. Erdoğan has continued his efforts to shape politics and designate who the prime minister and the AKP’s new leader should be. He set the date for the extra-ordinary convention of his party to take place the day before he takes office (August 27, 2014), to ensure that outcomes that he did not want would not occur in his absence.10 He seems particularly determined that the outgoing president Gül should not take the reins of the party immediately after his departure from office and become the prime minister after the next national elections.11 Such a development would present difficulties in terms of his vision to transform the Turkish political system into a semi-presidential system by “creative” misinterpretation of the Turkish constitution.

TURKEY ’S D EM OC R ACY : Q U O VA DI S ? Turkey’s democracy will be undergoing a severe test within the next year. Will a popularly elected leader with symbolic constitutional powers be able to pacify a majority parliamentary party and the government that enjoys its confidence into full submission, redefine the system as a semi-presidential system, and achieve sufficient control over the judiciary such that a system of checks and balances which is the sine qua non of a democratic system will cease to operate? Expressed differently, will Turkey’s political system evolve toward a system that more or less characterizes Putin’s Russia? While such an 9 For detailed analysis of the election results, see a series of four articles entitled “Seçim Analizi 1-4,” August 19–22, 2014 by Sedat Ergin in the national daily Hürriyet. 10 On 21 August, the AKP Central Committee designated Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu as prime minister and on August 27, 2014, at the extra-ordinary convention, he was also elected as the new leader of his party, completing the process of succession. 11 The constitution requires that the prime minister be a member of parliament, a requirement that is not valid for other members of the cabinet. Therefore, the outgoing president would have to wait till he gets elected a member of parliament which can happen only at the next parliamentary elections.

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outcome ought not be precluded, there are grounds to hope for the opposite outcome, that is, Turkey’s moving in the direction of becoming a more liberal democracy, characterized by an operating system of checks and balances and the rule of law. What are the grounds for such optimism? Let us begin by restating12 that Turkey’s international linkages generate pressures for it to stay within the democratic camp or possibly face unacceptably high costs such as losing its candidate status within the EU, and its place in the Council of Europe and even in the Western Alliance. Such a change will not necessarily enhance Turkey’s coveted status as a modern, reasonably free democratic system in Turkey’s surrounding regions such as the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. But equally significantly, it may lead to unfavorable economic developments if Turkey comes to be identified as a country bearing high political risks as elaborated next. Turning to domestic considerations, already a number of developments that favor further deepening and maturing of democracy have been discussed in the concluding chapter. Let me expand on major ones and add some new considerations. As has already been argued, the fact that economic prosperity is a primary determinant of political behavior has guided governments to be attentive to avoiding developments that would seriously undermine the proper functioning of the economy. The Turkish economy continues to be dependent on the regular inflow of foreign capital and funds for its performance. This reality further constrains governments to abstain from policies that would produce political tensions and instability, leading to judgments that Turkey presents political risk. Irrespective of their political color, in recent months, leaders of business associations have all emphasized in their public statements the importance of maintaining and improving upon the rule of law and a democratic system characterized by respect for human rights as the critical ingredient of sustained economic success. Such pronouncements help define limits within which governments whose support relies on economic performance, operate. Parties other than the government party have also been undergoing changes that render their approach to politics more in harmony with democratic politics. The CHP’s ambivalence regarding whether it will serve as a missionary party whose aim is to preserve the original values of the republic (read hard-line secularism) or as a more pragmatic party with an inclusionary secularist and social democratic approach, appears to be on its way to resolution in favor of the latter option. This may gradually reduce Turkey’s

12

The point has already been made in Chapter 8.

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“opposition deficit” which has so far produced “asymmetric competition,”13 and enable it to offer a credible challenge to the AKP. By getting almost 10 percent of the vote and getting votes in districts in which the BDP had no significant showing in previous elections, the HDP has emerged as an important actor in the country’s politics. This development, when combined with the promising efforts of the current government to bring a negotiated settlement to the country’s so called Kurdish question may also enhance Turkey’s democratic chances. The continuing rise of the HDP would further institutionalize the idea that organizing and engaging in political competition is the proper way of conducting politics. Similarly, negotiating differences rather than one side suppressing the other, would be expected to help Turkish democracy deepen and mature. To conclude, although the election of a president by popular vote, and the victory achieved by a particular leader who has promised to transform the system into one of a strong presidency by simply relying on the idea that he has obtained the majority’s backing and has a submissive parliament that is prone to implement his wishes, may not be sufficient for him to realize his visions, because social, economic, and political forces and conditions, as well as existing institutions, constitute a countervailing power that stands in the way. Furthermore, it would not be unusual for the new prime minister to have his own ideas and policy priorities that are different than those of the president; and it is not clear that any prime minister would fully implement the instructions of a president for which the constitution holds the former accountable. In politics no outcome is a certainty. Given the current conditions, however, I would argue that Turkey’s democracy is likely to pass its new test and emerge from it stronger.

13

See Chapters 4 and 8.

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............. Index ............. Abbas, Tahir 185 Abdülhamit II, Sultan 36–7, 39 Abdülmecit, caliph 48 absolutist monarchy, challenges to 34–8 Acemoğlu, Daron 18 administrative centralization 176 affairs of state 57 agricultural development 151, 160 agricultural interests, and government 158 agricultural subsidies 166 agricultural tax 63, 146 agriculture, and GDP 170, 171 Akgül, Hilal 79 AKP (Justice and Development Party) 132–6, 168, 170–1, 190, 193–4, 195, 196, 197, 215, 216, 217, 225, 226, 229 Aktar, Ayhan 59 Akyol, Taha 172 Alevi sect 205, 228 Ali Fuat (Cebesoy) 48 Alkan, Mehmet Ö. 19, 45, 66, 178, 181 Almond, Gabriel A. 7 Alvares, Michael 7, 13, 15, 18 ANAP-DYP coalition 128 ANAP (Motherland Party) 119–20, 124, 125, 126, 128, 135, 166, 167, 173 Anatolia and Roumelia Defense of Rights Association 43 Ankara Court 50, 51 anti-communism 80 anti-pluralism 195–6 anti-terrorism 115, 204 AP (Justice Party) 98–100, 102, 105, 106, 156, 166, 214 Armed Forces Mutual Assistance Establishment see OYAK Armenian population 143 Armoğlu, Fahir 36 Arolat, Osman S. 209 association, freedom of 71, 179, 180, 190 associations, growth of 181–3 assumptions, and democracy 3–5 asymmetric competition 86, 193, 219, 231 Ataay, Faruk 104 Atatürkist Thought Associations 134 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 43–5, 48, 50, 51

death of 61 reforms of 52–3, 55–6, 86 Atatürk Revolution 51 Ateş, Emre 75, 84 Atlantic Community 186, 187 attitudes, changes in 7 attitudinal consolidation 24–5 authoritarian leadership 198–201 prime ministerial 223–5 Avalos, Antonio 30, 86, 144, 182 Aydınlı, Ersel 135 Aysan, Mustafa A. 63 Bahçeli, Devlet 227 Balkans mutiny 37 Bar Associations 225 Barkan, Joel D. 15 Barkey, Henri J. 63, 150, 151, 152, 155, 156, 158, 159, 164, 169 Bates, Robert H. 155 Bayar, Celal 66, 69, 70, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 83, 86, 98 Baykal, Deniz 167 BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) 227, 231 Beeley, Brian 65 behavioural consolidation 24–5 Bektaş, Arsev 200 Berker, Feyyaz 180–1 Berkes, Niyazi 34, 35, 36 Bianchi, Robert 178 Bilgin, Çağrı 182 Binder, Leonard 46 Boix, Carles 7 Bora, Tanıl 45, 66 Boratav, Korkut 163 Bosnia-Herzegovina annexation 38 breakaway movements, and national unity 142–4 Bulgaria concessions 38 bureaucracy/government tension 92–3 bureaucratic behaviour 197 business elite 169 Buzan, Barry 95 caliphate, abolition of 47–8, 52 Calp, Necdet 119

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Index

candidate designation 200–1 capitalist development, and democracy 9–10 Çarkoğlu, Ali 214 car production 155 Cavit 51 Cemal Paşa 40 Cheibub, Jose Antonio 7, 13, 15, 18 CHP Party Convention (1939) 57 CHP Party Convention (1947) 79 CHP (Republican People’s Party) 45–7, 53, 56–7, 63–5, 68–83, 86–99, 102, 104–5, 135, 145, 167, 173, 193, 199, 214, 219, 227–8, 230 and democratic principles 88–98, 111 Çiller, Tansu 127–8, 166–7 citizen awareness 145 civil code (1926) 52 civilian control 132–5 civil liberties 110, 214 civil society and democracy 18–20 and economic development 183–4 expansion of 176–86 strengthening of 175 Cizre, Ümit 123 CKMP (Republican Peasants’ National Party) 99 class development 17–18 clientelism 184, 199–200, 219 coalition government 99, 101, 102–5, 138, 167, 215 diversity in 77–80 and party fragmentation 162, 215 coercion by officials 147 state 5, 65 Cold War era, and democracy 5–6 Coleman, James S. 46 Collier, Dave 210 Colonels, rule of 94, 95–8 commercial brokers and government 158 commercial interests and government 158 Committee of Union and Progress see ITC communications 146, 172 Communism 108, 115, 117 competing interests 8 competitive politics 22, 58, 74–7, 144–5 asymmetric competition 86, 193, 219, 231 and coalitions 78 reconstruction of 115–20 and ruling elite 192 transition to 59, 61–85, 193, 199 comprador bourgeoisie 169 conditionality 12 conservative liberals 168–71 consolidated national budgets 171

Constituent Assembly 116 Constitution (1876) 36–7 Constitution (1924) 69, 96 Constitution (1961) 95–8, 111, 116, 123, 192, 197 Constitution (1982) 116, 124, 179 (Article 14) 116 (Article 33) 117 (Article 34) 117 (Article 52) 117 (Article 54) 117 (Article 68) 117 (Article 84) 118 (Article 96) 225 constitution creative misinterpretation of 225, 229 presidential role in 225–6 constitutional change 135, 198, 226 constitutional consolidation 24–5 Constitutional Court 118, 124, 128, 131, 132–3, 136–7, 167, 168, 169, 170, 179, 193, 204, 215, 225 constitutional engineering 5 constitutional monarchy 36–7 Consultative Assembly 116, 178 controlled opposition 57–8 Copenhagen Criteria 12, 189 corporatism 20 corruption 55, 97, 216, 220, 224 Council of Europe, membership of 187, 188, 230 Council on Higher Education 124, 131, 133, 189, 193, 225 Council of State court 131, 193 coups see military political interventions Court of Audits 122, 133 court system see judicial system Crete, annexation by Greece 38 cultural bifurcation 41, 87, 191–8, 213, 216, 218, 224 anti-pluralism 195–6 majoritarianism 195–6 mirror image behaviour problem 196–8 pathologies derived from 194–8 securitization 194–5 currency devaluation 158–9, 164, 221 Cutright, Philips 6 cycles of democracy 86–109 (1950–60) 88–98 (1961–80) 98–105 Cyprus intervention 103, 113, 159 Dağı, İhsan 114 Davutoğlu, Ahmet 229 death penalty repeal 189 death sentences 95, 98

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Index debt defaults 159 Defense of Rights group 44–5 defensive modernization 13 delegative democracy 26 Demirağ, Nuri 70 Demirel, Ahmet 44, 49, 50, 56, 67, 69, 70–2 Demirel, Meral 49, 66 Demirel, Süleyman 10, 99, 100–4, 105, 112, 125–8, 158–9, 164, 166 Demirel, Tanel 45 Demirtaş, Selahattin 228–9 democracy challenges to 175–205 competitive politics see competitive politics consolidation of 24–9, 52–3, 207, 212–13, 217 cycles of see cycles of democracy deepening and maturing 28–9 definition of 3–5, 25 development of 5–10 diminished 211 future of 229–31 as inspiration 11 international 10–12, 15–16 lack of intra-party 198–201 and national unity 141–5 partial 211–17, 218 participation in 141 performance measurements 211 and rule of law 4, 22–3, 220 scope of 204 and socioeconomic indicators 191 democradura 27 democratic change elite-induced 82 in multi-party period 71–4 democratic consolidation 14–16, 24–9, 52–3, 207, 212–13 democratic facade 114 Democratic Left Party see DSP democratic politics (1961–1980) 98–105 democratic systems, emergence and sustenance of 1–33 democratic transition 82 centrally directed 82–5 democratization antecedents of 33–58 and change 141–9 international factors in 186–90 late see late democratization and socioeconomic change 210–21 and socioeconomic development 2–3, 14, 16–24, 31, 162, 171–4 Democrat Party see DP demographic change and national unity 143

245

depoliticization of society 115 Derviş, Kemal 168, 170 developing societies 7 Devrim, Serdar 210 Diamond, Larry 26 di Palma, Guiseppe 108 Dodecanese Islands 39 DP (Democrat Party) 70–7, 78–82, 86–99, 105, 146, 150–3, 155, 160, 192, 195–6, 197, 214 and democratic principles 88–95, 111, 216 national convention (1947) 76, 79–80 national convention (1949) 80–1 DSP (Democratic Left Party) 125, 167 DSP-MHP-ANAP coalition 167 Duncker, Anne 190 Dünya 209 Düzgit, Senem Aydın 190 DYP-SDP coalition 126 DYP (True Path Party) 125, 127, 135, 166, 167 Ecevit, Bülent 102, 103, 104, 113, 125, 167 ECHR (European Court of Human Rights), Turkey as signatory to 187–8 economic change, political consequences of 149–68 economic conditions, as perceived problem 208 economic contraction 153 economic development and civil society 183–4 and democracy 7–8, 14–16, 71–2 economic growth 133, 163, 173 as national aim 208 economic prosperity, ascendancy of questions of 206–10 economic stabilization program 153–4 economic topics, newspaper coverage of by year 209–10 Edip, Halide 47 education improvements in 206 learning and labor 68 religious 80, 216 educational development, Ottoman 34–5 electionism 26 elections 4, 15, 27, 40–1 (1912) 39 (1923) 45, 47 (1943) 58 (1946) 73–5 (1947) 72 (1950) 74, 81, 97, 105, 150 (1954) 92, 95

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246

Index

elections (cont.) (1957) 92, 106, 153, 216 (1961) 98, 105 (1965) 100, 105 (1969) 100, 106, 169 (1973) 101–2, 105, 159, 169 (1977) 159, 161 (1979) 106 (1983) 116, 124–5, 165 (1984) 124 (1987) 125, 126, 166 (1991) 126–7, 166 (1995) 127–8, 167, 169 (1999) 127, 167 (2000) 132 (2002) 127, 132, 135, 170 (2007) 136 (2011) 136 (2014) 226 administration of 71 of consolidation 105 democratic transition 82 of deputies 118, 202 direct 73 free and fair 80–2 polarization 106 presidential 227–9, 231 proportional representation 98, 160 provincial assemblies 75 of transition 105 veto of candidates 119, 120 winner-takes-all system 81 electoral authoritarianism 26 electoral law 90–1 electoral politics return to 98–100 transition period 31–2 electoral reform 71, 96–8, 118 Enver Paşa 40 Erbakan, Necmettin 128, 132, 167, 168–70 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 196, 223–5, 227, 228–9 Ergenekon trials 195, 198 Ergil, Gül 209 Ergin, Sedat 137, 229 Erkekoğlu, Hatice 172 Erkin, Feridun Cemal 68 Eroğul, Cem 68, 73, 75–7, 79, 81, 89, 90, 92, 94, 197 Esayan, Markar 195 Esmer, Yılmaz 212 estates, dynastic division of 176 étatisme doctrine 63, 72, 80, 150 Ethier, Diane 11 ethnic minorities policy 59–60 ethnic pluralism 203–5

ethnic rebellions 203 ethnic separatism 60, 194 ethno-religious basis of labor 64 ethno-religious basis of taxation 63–5 EU (European Union) Association Treaty 133 Customs Union 139, 189 relations with 124, 133–6, 175, 187–9, 190, 211, 215, 217, 221, 230 European Convention of Human Rights, Turkey as signatory to 187 European Parliament 114 Evin, Ahmet 110, 113, 117, 165 Evren, Kenan 110, 113, 116, 119, 123, 125 exchange rate 158 exports 153–4, 163, 167–8, 171 expression, freedom of 190, 216 extractive bureaucratic state 62–5 Faculty of Political Science 96 Fethi Okyar, Ali 49, 55, 56 First Group see Defense of Rights Group First World War 61 five-year plans 63 forced retirement 92 foreign policy, in political competition 83 foreign trade 154 FP (Virtue Party) 128, 132, 167–9, 170 fractionalization 105–6, 127 freedom of expression 190, 216 Freedom House 3 Freedom Pact 76 Freedom Party see Hürriyet Partisi free market 22 Free Republican Party see SF Frey, Frederick 42 Friendship and Non-Aggression Treaty 67 G-20 membership 175 GDP by year 172 composition by percentage 170 and consolidated national budgets 171 growth 14 Gellner, Ernest 176, 183, 185 geometry school 34–5 Gezi Park Events 184–5, 220, 224 GNP distribution among sectors 107 GNP growth 166 government agencies, Ottoman 35 government, relevance in public life 145–9 Grand National Assembly see TBMM Grand Vizier, responsibility of 39 Great Depression 63, 149 Greek independence 35–6 Greek Orthodox population 143

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 21/3/2015, SPi

Index growth rate 163 growth strategies 159 Gül, Abdullah 134, 135, 198, 225, 226, 229 Gülen, Fethullah 224 Günaltay, Şemsettin 77, 80 Gürler, Faruk 112 Gürsel, Cemal 99, 122, 130 Gürsoy, Yaprak 133–4, 188–9 Gusfield, Joseph R. 218 Hadenius, Axel 10 Hale, William 110, 112, 116, 118, 119, 126, 190 Hattox, Ralph S. 84 HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) 227, 231 Helsinki Summit (1999) 133, 189 Heper, Metin 110, 113, 117, 165 HEP (People’s Labor Party) 205 High Board of Elections 198, 227 high courts 131 High Military Council 122, 126 High Military Court of Administrative Appeals 122 highway construction 151, 160 historical variables 9 horizontal change, and democratic deepening 211 horizontal links, in society 200 HP (People’s Party) 119, 120, 125 Huber, Daniela 190 human rights, and anti-terrorist activity 204 Huntington, Samuel P. 1, 4 Hürriyet 209–10 Hürriyet Partisi 92 İba, Şeref 118 İhsanoğlu, Ekmeleddin 219, 227–8 İlkin, Selim 165, 166 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 153, 168 import controls 152 imports 157 import substitution 159, 214 income per capita 6–7, 172 Independence Courts 50, 76, 80 Eastern Court 50 Independent Group 55, 57–8 individualism, growth of 20–1 industrial development and democracy 17–18 five-year plans 63 industrialists and government 158 industrialization 7–8, 152, 155 industry, and GDP 170, 171 inflation, as perceived problem 207–8 İnönü, Erdal 205

247

İnönü, İsmet 2, 48–9, 51, 57, 61, 66, 68, 70, 73, 74, 76, 77, 80, 83, 86, 89–90, 93–4, 99, 112 institutionalization, failure of 27, 212 interest aggregation 87 interest rates 165, 221 Internal Service Law 123 international democracy 10–12, 15–16 Internet control 215 interrupted democracy period (1950–1980) 32 intra-party democracy, lack of 198–201 ISI (import substitution oriented industrialization) 155–7, 158, 159, 163, 164, 168 Islam Muslim population 143 as state religion 53 Islamic Conference Organization 227 Islamic law 197 İstanbul, political violence in 94 İstanbul Stock Exchange 165 İTC (Committee of Union and Progress) 37–8, 39–40, 49, 51 İzmir Greek occupation 42, 43–4 political violence in 93 Jenkins, Gareth 224 Jewell, Malcolm 15 job priorities 209–10 judicial systems 4, 22–3, 122, 192, 197–8, 220 July 12th Declaration 77 Justice and Development Party see AKP Justice Party see AP Kalaycıoğlu, Ersin 65, 97, 107, 114, 128, 131, 151, 153, 159, 178, 191, 212, 214 Kamil Paşa 40 Kancı, Tuba 181 Karabekir, Kazim 48 Karpat, Kemal H. 40, 67, 70, 72, 73, 75–7, 79, 80, 94, 113, 116 Kayseri, political violence in 94 Kedourie, Sylvia 114 Kemal, Mustafa see Atatürk Keyder, Çağlar 63, 151, 155 Keyman, E. Fuat 167, 181, 190 Kılıçdaroğlu, Kemal 227, 228 Kim, C.L. 15 Kirişçi, Kemal 204 Kirkwood, Kenneth 42 Koçak, Cemil 47 Komsuoğlu, Ayşegül 75, 79 Köprülü, Fuat 69, 70 Koraltan, Refik 69, 70

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248

Index

Koraltürk, Murat 45, 66 Korean War, and agriculture 151 Korutürk, Fahri S. 101, 103, 112 Krasner, Steve 6 Krueger, Anne O. 155, 159, 160, 164 Kubicek, Paul 190 kulturkampfs rivalry 107, 191, 193, 194, 213–14 Kumcuoğlu, Ümit E. 172, 188 Kurban, Dilek 205 Kurdish BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) 227, 231 Kurdish language 126, 204 Kurdish separatism/nationalism 60, 115, 117, 130, 144, 190–1, 194, 203–5, 220 Kurdistan Workers’ Party see PKK labor activism 160 labor federation, national 162 labor unions 100, 117, 165, 166, 177, 179 laicization policies 65–6, 72, 74, 80, 86–7, 141, 219 Landau, Jacob M. 53, 144 Land Products Tax 64, 73 land reform 68–9 Land Reform Bill 69 Land Reform Law 69 LaPalombara, Joseph 46 late democratization 2–3, 10–12 and democratic consolidation 14–16 and economic development 14–16 externally stimulated 12–14 Latin alphabet 53 Lausanne Peace Conference 50, 62 Lausanne Treaty (1923) 42, 61, 143, 149 Law of Associations 73, 177 law reform 72 leadership 19, 22 see also political party system authoritarian 198–201 changes in 198–9 Leftwich, Adrian 8 legislative immunity, of deputies 202 Leigh, Michael 190 Lerner, Daniel 41 Levitsky, Steven 210 Lewis, Bernard 39, 40 LGBT Alliance 227 liberal democracy 1 deepening of 28–9 maturing of 28–9 liberal economy 150 liberalism, in economic domain 71 liberalization of trade 152 Liberal Union 38 liberties, individual 4, 26, 27, 219

Lijphart, Arend 25 Limongi, Fernando 7, 13, 15, 18 Linz, Juan 4–5, 12–13, 21, 22, 24–5, 26, 82 Lipset, Seymour Martin 6, 8, 18 literacy levels 148–9, 160 Loğoğlu, Ö. Faruk 84–5 Lowry, Heath W. 84 Luxembourg Summit (1997) 133, 189 Macedonian army 38 Mahmut II 176 Mahmut Şevket Paşa 56 majoritarianism 195–6 Makarios, Archbishop 113 managed opposition 55 Manisa, political violence in 93 market economy, and democracy 21–2 market failures 22 martial law see military intervention Marxism 20–1, 108 Massicard, Elise 205 mass rallies 90–1 MBK (National Unity Committee) 94, 95–8, 130, 192 MDP (Nationalist Democracy Party) 119, 125 medreses 36 Mehmed V Reşat, Sultan 39 Menderes, Adnan 55, 69, 70, 75, 89, 95, 98, 111, 153, 192 MGK (National Security Council) 96, 116, 123, 128, 133, 192–3 MHP (Nationalist Action Party) 115, 135, 161, 167, 173, 227–8 military and elected politicians 124–37 and elections 121 political role 110–40, 190 decline in support for 129–32, 138, 141, 173–4 as perceived by military 110–40 tenure of 121 veto power 119, 120 and return to civilian control 132–5 trials of generals 135–7, 206 military-bureaucratic elites 74 military courts 122 military expansion, Ottoman era 34–5 military intervention 32, 87, 110–40 (1960) 94–8, 111, 112, 122, 130, 154, 177, 188, 214, 216 (1962–63) 99 (1971) 178, 216 (1980) 106, 109, 110–20, 122, 131, 178, 217 (1997) 131 exit guarantees 122 indirect (1971–1973) 100–2, 112

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 21/3/2015, SPi

Index internal consequences 120–1 martial law 49–50, 75, 101, 112 motives for 164 and Parliamentary Assembly 188 military tradition 114 and democracy 114 mirror image behaviour problem 196–8 modernization policies 58, 74, 86, 146, 160, 173, 175, 176–7, 208, 213–14, 218 modernization theory 6–10, 16, 192–3 modernizing elites 13, 41–2 modular man 184–6, 207 Montreux Convention (1936) 67 Moore, Barrington Jr. 9 Moreau, Odile 37 Morlino, Leonardo 27 Motherland Party see ANAP MSP (National Salvation Party) 102, 128, 162, 168, 169 Muhtar, Reha 205 multi-party period 71–4 Mumcu, Ahmet 176 national budget (1947) 75 National Chief title 73 National Defense Law 63–4 National Development Party 70, 71, 78 National Hostility Oath 81 nationalism 12, 35–6, 42, 43–5, 52, 72 see also Kurdish separatism/nationalism Nationalist Action Party see MHP Nationalist Democracy Party see MDP Nationalist Front coalitions 128 Nationalist Front Government 103, 104–5, 108 nationalist parliament, Ankara 40 national labor federation 162 National Order Party 169 National Pact 40 national remainder system 100 National Salvation Party see MSP National Security Committee 116, 119, 125 National Security Council see MGK national unity 141–5 National Unity Committee see MBK national wealth 164 nation building 52–3, 59 Nation Party 79, 81 NATO membership 187, 217 negotiables 173 Neubauer, Dean E. 6 newspaper coverage, of economic topics 209–10 New Turkey Party see YTP Nordlinger, Eric 120

249

Öcalan, Abdullah 204 O’Donnell, Guillermo 26, 27 Okçu, Tuba 173, 209 Oktar, Suat 152 Ökte, Faik 64 Okutan, M. Çağatay 60 Onar, Nora Fisher 193, 219 Öner, Kenan 79 Öniş, Ziya 164, 166, 167 OPEC oil crisis (1973) 159 operating market economy, rise of 163–6 Operation Army 38–9 opposition 26, 34, 42, 51, 54–7, 61, 89–91, 107, 177, 219 see also competitive politics; democracy; individual political parties; political party system background to emergence of 65–8 controlled 57–8 development of 68–71 opposition deficit 231 suppression of 153 Ottoman decline 143 Ottoman defeat, First World War 42 Ottoman democratization 40–2 Ottoman House of Deputies 40, 44 Ottoman legacy 34–42 Ottoman modernization strategies 176 Ottoman officials/bureaucrats, retained by republic 54 Ottoman opposition to republicans 46 Ottoman sovereignty, challenges to 41 Ottoman taxation 63 OYAK (Armed Forces Mutual Assistance Establishment) 156 Özal, Turgut 119–20, 125–6, 127, 164–6 Özbudun, Ergun 47, 84–5, 98, 101, 123, 161, 192, 216 Pan-Turkist ideology 144 Parliamentary Assembly 188 parliamentary privileges, of deputies 201–3 parliamentary subversion, to authoritarian prime minister 223–35 parliamentary voting 106 partial to competitive politics 74–7 partisan officials 74 path dependence, and democratization 23–4 patronage 93, 157, 184 Peace and Democracy Party see BDP Peker, Recep 74–7, 79 Peoples’ Democratic Party see HDP People’s Labor Party see HEP People’s Party see CHP; HP Petition of Four 69–70 PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) 60, 127, 137, 138–9, 167, 194, 204, 205, 218

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 21/3/2015, SPi

250

Index

Planet, Ana I. 30, 86, 144, 182 Plattner, Marc F. 26 police, excessive use of force by 184–5, 220 political competition see competitive politics political culture 7 political demonstration 185 political development, and modernization 7 political diversity 111 political intervention 25 political killing 176 political opposition see opposition Political Parties Law 117, 119, 177 political party system 107 see also individual parties; leadership; opposition candidate designation 200–1 fragmentation 161–2, 166 lack of intra-party democracy 198–201 party membership and institutionalization 212 reconstruction 115–20 state financial aid 200 top-down model 199 political polarization 107–8, 226 political power, arbitrary use of 219–20 political violence 93–4 politics, scope of 217 population distribution 147 population literacy 148–9, 160 populism 72 post-colonial democratization 11–12 post-Second World War democracy 5–6, 14 post-Warsaw Pact democracy 11 power centers 21, 141, 176 power consolidation 51 power redistribution 18 Preacher Training Schools 128, 216 presidency elections to 227–9 institution of 123–4 role in constitution 225–6 tenure of office 135, 225 Presidential Council 119, 122, 125 press code 75 press control 91–2 Press Law (1954, 1956) 92 prime ministerial authoritarianism 223–5 private enterprise 72 private sector, and government 158 privatization 165, 168 procedural democracy 15 Progressive Republican Party see TCF proportional representation 98, 160 prosperity/security orientation, and democracy 29–32 Protection Law see National Defense Law Przeworski, Adam 3, 7, 10, 13, 15, 18

public assembly law 90–1 public expenditure 167 public influence, as national aim 208 public service retirement 92 Purchasing Power parity 172 Pye, Lucian W. 46 Rae, Douglas 106, 161 rebellion (1924) 49–50 Reform Edict (1856) 36 reformism 72 regime change 59 religious associations 183 religious minorities policy 59–60 religious reaction 83, 84, 115, 117, 145, 195, 215 rent-based economy 17 republicanism 72 Republican Peasants’ National Party see CKMP Republican People’s Party see CHP Republican Reliance Party 161 republic declared 45–7 Return of Order law 50 Robinson, James A. 18 Robinson, Richard D. 94 Rodriguez, Carmen 30, 86, 144, 182, 190, 205 Rodrik, Dani 137 Roman law 197 Rose Chamber Rescript (1839) 36 RP (Welfare Party) 125, 128, 132, 167, 168 Rueschemeyer, Dietrich 9, 10 rule of law, and democracy 4, 22–3, 220 rural population distribution 147 rural society 145–6 rural worker migration 100, 152 Rustow, Dankwart A. 7, 12, 54 Sadoğlu, Hüseyin 53 Said, Sheikh 49 Saka, Hasan 77, 80 San Francisco Conference (1945) 68 Saraçoğlu, Mehmet Şükrü 66 Şardan, Togla 185 Savior Officers 39–40 Sayarı, Sabri 212 Saylan, İbrahim 144 Sazak, Emin 69 SCF (Free Republican Party) see SF Schedler, Andreas 26 Schmitter, Philippe C. 11, 12, 27 Second Constitutional Period (1908–18) 37–40, 176 Second Group 45, 49, 50 Second World War economic change 149–50, 159

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 21/3/2015, SPi

Index neutrality 67 and political change 61–71 securitization 95, 139, 194–5, 224 security maximization 88 security/prosperity orientation, and democracy 29–32, 84 SEEs (state economic enterprises) 156, 163, 165 Selek, Sabahattin 44 service sector and GDP 170–1 growth 17 Sevil, Hüseyin T. 209 Sezer, Ahmet Necdet 132 SF (Free Party) 54–7, 73, 147 Shambayati, Hootan 17 Shaw, Ezel Kural 36–9, 44 Shaw, Stanford J. 36–9, 44 shopkeepers, and government 158 SHP (Social Democratic People’s Party) 125, 166, 205 single-party period (1923–46) 31, 45–7, 59 Sklar, Richard 8 Sledgehammer Case 137 small artisans, and government 158 Social Democratic People’s Party see SHP Social Democrats see SODEP socioeconomic change, and democratization 210–21 socioeconomic development, and democratization 2–3, 14, 16–24, 31, 162, 171–4, 175, 206–10, 218 socioeconomic differentiation, increase in 210 SODEP (Social Democrats) 125 sovereignty issues 83 Soviet expansionism 88 Soviet policy 67–8 squatter settlements 100, 152, 160 state construction of Turkish 53–4 instruments of 193 state economic enterprises see SEEs state elites 82, 89 state functioning, and democracy 4–5, 13 state funded associations 178 state industrial investment 63 state intervention 146 state-led modernization 13 State Planning Organization 155, 164, 208 state regulation 22 State Security Courts 122, 133 Stepan, Albert 4–5, 12–13, 21, 22, 24–6, 82 Stokes, Susan 7 Stouffer, Samuel A. 7 strong defense forces, as national aim 208 Sublime Porte 143

251

substantive dimension of democracy 15–16 sultanate, abolition of 52 Sunalp, Turgut 119, 120 Sunar, İlkay 84, 146, 157 Sunay, Cevdet 101, 112 support prices 166 Supreme Court of Appeals 131 Talat Paşa 40 Tapper, Richard L. 53, 203 taxation 63–5, 72 tax reform 165 TBMM (Grand National Assembly) 43–5, 48, 49–50, 66, 74, 126 deputies’ attrition rate 201–2 deputies’ legislative immunity 202 deputies’ privileges 201–3 TCF (Progressive Republican Party) 47–51, 54–5 terrorism 60, 115, 127–8, 167, 194, 204, 218 as perceived problem 207, 208 Third Wave democracy 1 Tocci, Nathalie 190 Tocqueville, Alexis de 18–19 Toker, Metin 84 Toprak, Zafer 62 Topuzkanamış, Şafak Evran 200 Toynbee, Arnold 42 trade deficits 167 trade liberalization 152 traditional-provincial elites 108 tradition, and modernization 218 Treaty of Assistance (United States) 77 Treaty of Lausanne see Lausanne Treaty Treaty of Sevres (1920) 42 trials of generals 135–7, 206 tribal rebellion (1925) 49 Trimberger, Ellen Kay 58 Tripoli invasion 39 TRT state broadcasting company 96, 189 True Path Party see DYP Tuğaç, Ahmet 209 Tunçay, Mete 47, 48, 49, 51, 56 Tuncer, Erol 68–9, 71–4, 81, 98–9 Turan, İlter 15, 19, 30, 43–4, 47, 53, 78, 84, 86, 89, 113, 117–18, 121, 127, 129, 133, 144, 153, 155, 159, 160–1, 164, 176, 178–9, 181, 185–6, 188–9, 198, 202–3 Turco-Russian War (1877) 36, 40 Türkeş, Alpaslan 96, 115 Turkification, and national unity 144, 203, 205 Turkish Criminal Code 126, 190 Turkish Union of Chambers of Industry and Commerce 168–9, 171

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 21/3/2015, SPi

252 Türkmen, Füsun 67 TUSİAD 180 Ulusu, Bülent 116 unemployment, as perceived problem 207, 208 United Nations Declaration, Turkey as signatory 67, 69 economic assistance/economic assistance 76–7 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Turkey as signatory 187 universal suffrage 4 Universities Law 73 universities, political activities in 93, 96, 100–1, 130–1, 160, 179, 195, 203–4 urbanization 159–60, 171, 206 urban population distribution 147 Uşak, political violence in 93 Uyar, Hakkı 40, 49, 56, 58, 68, 70–1, 77, 79 Vali, Ferenc A. 67 values changes in 7 opposing 87 VanderLippe, John M. 64, 66–7, 69, 70–1, 73–4, 76–7, 79, 80 Varlı, Arzu 152 Verba, Sidney 7, 46 vertical change, and democratic deepening 211 Vienna, Ottoman siege of 34–5 Village Institutes 68 violence, suppresion of 114–15, 165 Virtue Party see FP

Index voluntary associations, and political goals 117 voting, in parliament 106 voting rights 4 Ward, Robert T. 54 War of National Liberation 61–2, 82, 143 wealth creation 19 Wealth Tax 64–5 Weaver, Ole 95 weight of history, and democracy 23–4 Weiker, Walter F. 55–6, 96, 98 Weiner, Myron 46 Welfare Party see RP Western Alliance 230 westernization 55 Western Study Group 131 Whitehead, Laurence 11 Wilde, Jaap de 95 Winrow, Gareth M. 204 women’s suffrage 53 World bank credits 152 Yalman, Nur 191 Yardımcı-Geyikçi, Şebnem 211–12 Yayla, Attila 185 Yenal, Oktay 107 Yılmaz, Hakan 30, 84, 86, 144, 167, 182 Youth Day speech 68 YTP (New Turkey Party) 98–9 Yücekök, Ahmet N. 103, 178, 181 Yun-han Chu 26 Yurt, İbrahim 209 Zarakol, Ayşe 118 Zürcher, Eric J. 90, 94, 99, 115