(The following three articles are about the trial of Turkish generals for their part in past coups. Thanks to Robin Khundkar. Ed.)
In the wake of the military coup in 1980, the daily Hürriyet ran an extra edition, whose headline read “The army has seized control”. SOURCE/Wikipedia
Settling accounts with a brutal coup
by SAHIN ALPAY
In the history of Turkish democracy there have been four successful military interventions, each with its own character. The most radical and brutal military coup, whose deep imprint on Turkish politics has yet to be erased, is the one that seized power on Sept. 12, 1980.
Last week the judicial case against that coup started with only two surviving members of the five-member junta, one aged 95 and the other 87, to stand trial.
That military officers involved in coups or coup attempts are being brought before the law is highly significant in terms of avoiding such crimes being committed in the future and for coups to take their place in the dustbin of history. This is surely a great achievement for Turkish democracy. There are, however, things not to be forgotten while settling accounts with the 1980 coup, mainly the political and economic environment that paved the way for it.
In the late 1970s Turkey’s intellectuals at large did not believe in democracy. Most of them were committed to authoritarian or totalitarian ideologies of the fascist, Islamist or communist kind. In the “slow motion civil war” being waged between ultra left- and right-wing groups, an average of five people a day lost their lives. The government and main opposition parties were so sharply polarized that they could not cooperate to avoid the coup which gave all the signs of its coming.
The import substitution industrialization strategy implemented since the mid-1950s had gone bankrupt, causing a severe balance of payments crisis. The coalition between ?stanbul-based big business, which owed its power to state protection and favors, the heavily subsidized agricultural producers and the unionized workers representing only a tiny part of the labor force, on which the status quo rested, had collapsed. Under these conditions of simultaneous political and economic crisis, the military committed to Kemalism, regarding itself as the owner of both the state and the people, knowing no other solution than staging a coup, seized power as it had previously done in 1960 and 1971. In order to legitimize the intervention, the military refrained for over a year from taking effective measures to stop the violence and watched on as the “slow motion civil war” got worse.
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Even death should not save junta, coup perpetrators
BULENT KENES
There is a Turkish saying used to depict a deplorable situation: “May God not put anyone in such a situation!” This is the shortcut to empathizing with anyone who is stricken by disaster.
Yet, there are some cases when it is preposterous to hold God responsible for the mournful situation that befalls someone and to sympathize with him. For instance, it is certainly not God who put Kenan Evren, the leader of the military coup of 1980, into the sordid situation in which he has found himself today. He should put all of the blame on the coup he and his cronies undertook 32 years ago, as well as the inhuman treatment and crimes they perpetrated in its wake.
According to a front-page story run on Friday by the Sözcü newspaper, a neo-nationalist paper known to lend strong support to subversive generals and the defendants in the case against Ergenekon, a clandestine organization nested within the state trying to overthrow or manipulate the democratically elected government, Evren, referring to the situation in which he has found himself, said: “It is not a good thing to have a long life… God shouldn’t have let me have such a long life. I should have died and not seen these days…” In my opinion, it was a good thing that he has had such a long life. Because of this, he has been able to see that things can change in the long run, and people will eventually settle accounts with coup perpetrators who victimize so many people and make the country an unlivable place. I believe people will be questioned in the hereafter for what they do in this world. Still, I am glad to see that in some cases, divine justice is able to partially manifest itself in this world.
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Four military officers I knew in the coup
EKREM DUMANLI
It was one day after the coup.
The people who had been brought to military barracks had many questions in mind: Who staged the coup? Was it a hierarchical intervention or a coup like the one on May 27, 1960, performed in the absence of a chain of command? There were other questions as well: Were the officers who staged the coup right-wingers or left-wingers? And even worse: Who could guarantee that we would not be executed?
All these concerns that — so long after the coup — seem meaningless were the realities of life back then. Young people who were serving in the military were beating older people who were the age of their grandfathers. That was the order. They were beating these people to death. They were beating us while we were forced to praise them with the name “Mehmetçik” (an affectionate term for Turkish soldiers). Apparently, they were doing so because of orders from higher-ups. An orderly named Pvt. Sabri cursed at us, chanting, “You fascists!” every time reminding us that he was from ?zmir [a province called “Infidel ?zmir” among some Turks because of its pro-secular population]. The people subjected to torture were screaming. Because our house was close to the military compound, I was woken up by military songs every morning. Now we were subjected to excruciating torture in a military barrack that was less than a mile away from my home. I wondered whether my dear mother had heard me.
The torturers did not care about the fathers or the mothers. Obviously, as they hit more strongly, they believed that things were getting better in Turkey. They made a list of people who would be electrocuted every day. I saw one of my friends on the list, a delicate young man named Hasbi. I did not know anybody else in Yozgat back then who wore brilliantine; however, the torturers did some of the greatest harm to him and you could not compare his appearance to times before his arrest.
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