Coup d'état
Attempt: Turkey's Reichstag Fire?
We are witnessing the consolidation of a new form of
authoritarianism with a populist streak.
By Ayşe Kadıoğlu
July 17, 2016
"Information
Clearing House"
- "Open
Democracy"
- On
the evening of July 15, 2016, a friend called around
10:30pm and said that both bridges connecting the
Asian and European sides of Istanbul were closed by
military barricades. Moreover, military jets were
flying over Ankara skies. As someone living on the
European side of Istanbul and commuting to the Asian
side to my university on a daily basis and spending
many hours in traffic in order to do that, I
immediately knew that the closure of both bridges
was a sign of something very extraordinary taking
place.
To confirm
the news about the military jets over Ankara, I
called my parents in Ankara. They answered the phone
in a panic. I could hear military jets from the
other end of the phone. Not surprisingly, my
86-year-old parents had experienced military coups
in Turkey before. As I was talking breathlessly with
my Dad, my Mum murmured from the other line calmly
but firmly: “this seems like a coup
d'état.”
From that
point onwards, all hell broke loose especially in
Ankara and Istanbul. The death toll in less than 24
hours after the coup attempt in Turkey is over 200.
There are thousand of people who are wounded.
Twitter and facebook became inaccessible during the
early hours. The tv channels started broadcasting
live from Ankara and Istanbul: yet, they were not
sure what was going on at the outset. Shortly after,
the military released a statement saying that the
“military has seized all power in Turkey” through
the state tv channel TRT. That is when I could not
stop my tears, for memories flocked back of the
September 12, 1980 coup d'état when a similar
announcement was made. I had experienced that coup
as a student in one of the most politically active
universities in the country, the Middle East
Technical University. The memories, as for many
people of my generation, were painful.
Last nail
in the coffin of critical thought
Within two
hours, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was
live on FaceTime on Turkish CNN (CNN Türk). His
face could be seen on tv screens as it appeared on
the phone held in the hand of the CNN Türk anchor.
He issued a statement in this manner and urged the
people to go to the public squares and the airport
and defend the nation. Soon afterwards, there were
echoes of calls to prayer from multiple minarets
although it was not prayer time. I read later that
there were also calls for action by Imams against
the military urging people to take to the streets.
Joining the
echo of the calls to prayers were the loud noises of
military jets flying over Istanbul skies. The
combination of these sounds made me think that yes,
these were the sounds of the funeral of free speech,
critical thinking, and any other remnants of liberal
democratic process in Turkey. I realized in fear and
agony that whether the coup was successful or not,
one thing was certain: there would no longer be room
in Turkey for people who can listen, read, analyze,
and think critically. With the siren-like echoes of
calls to prayer and military jets, Turkey was
becoming a land only for true believers.
This did
not happen suddenly. With the crackdown on media,
academic freedoms, random arrests, and the
increasing violence in the southeast provinces,
citizens in Turkey have been facing major
limitations on their basic freedoms for the past few
years. The attempted coup d'état of July 15 is like
the last nail in the coffin. Lying dead in the
coffin was the courage to use one’s own
understanding (as in Sapere Aude) that
relentlessly resisted the rising tide of categorical
thinking typical of true believers.
Sight of a
parliament in ruins
The damage
that was inflicted on the parliament building in
Ankara was huge. Many of its major halls and
corridors are in ruins. The sight was reminiscent of
the Reichstag fire in Germany that took place on
February 27, 1933, about a month after Adolf Hitler
became the Chancellor. The similarities are not
limited to the visible damage of both parliament
buildings. The Reichstag fire was also a last nail
in the coffin of the possibility of basic freedoms
as well as critical thinking in Germany. On the
evening of the Reichstag fire, Chancellor Hitler was
relaxing at a dinner party in Joseph Goebbels’ home.
The fire was soon blamed on a demented Dutch
Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe who had a
record of crimes of arson. The reality behind the
Reichstag fire was not even clarified during the
Nuremberg trials. Still, there was a lot of evidence
that pointed to the responsibility of the Nazis
behind it. But what was important was not so much
who set fire to the Reichstag but rather what came
out of it.
On the day
following the Reichstag fire, juridical order was
suspended by the Decree of the Reich President for
the Protection of People and State (Verordnung
des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat).
The decree involved the suspension of seven sections
of the Constitution which guaranteed individual and
civil liberties. The decree authorized the
government to take complete control in the federal
states and impose the death penalty for a number of
crimes. In fact, Goering wanted to hang the arsonist
on the spot right after his arrest. Today, I heard
one journalist ask the Prime Minister on live
television whether they were thinking of bringing
back the death penalty in the aftermath of the
attempt at a coup d'état. The Prime
Minister responded by saying that they will consider
every need for extra preventive measures. He also
seemed to praise the violent mobs who took to the
streets to oppose the coup d'état.
The Decree
following the Reichstag Fire led to emergency
measures that created a state of exception. It
suspended the personal liberties listed in the
Weimar Constitution, including the rights of
personal freedom, freedom of opinion, freedom of the
press, freedom of organization and assembly, and
privacy of communication. The Decree was followed by
the Enabling Act (23 March 1933) which enabled the
cabinet to enact laws without the participation of
the Reichstag. In sum, it led to the consolidation
of the Nazi regime (See: Ayşe Kadıoğlu “Necessity
and State of Exception: Turkish State's Permanent
War with its Kurdish Citizens” in Riva Kastoryano (ed),
Turkey Between Nationalism and Globalization,
Routledge, 2013). There are already signs of the
suspension of the juridical order with dozens of
members of the Council of State and Court of
Cassation taken into custody in less that 24 hours
after the coup état attempt.
I could not
help but remember the days when the expression
“consolidation” denoted the consolidation of
democracy and the issues surrounding it in the
literature on democratization in Turkey. After July
15, we now talk about the consolidation of a new
type of authoritarianism in Turkey. Some call it
competitive authoritarianism (See; Berk Esen and
Sebnem Gumuscu, “Rising
Competitive Authoritarianism in Turkey,”
Third World Quarterly, 19 February 2016).
Fascism:
conservatism made popular and plebeian
There is no
doubt that we are witnessing the consolidation of a
new form of authoritarian regime with a populist
streak. I cannot help but remember a quote by
Barrington Moore (Social Origins of Dictatorship
and Democracy, Beacon Press, Boston, 1966
[1993], p.447): “…fascism is inconceivable without
democracy or what is sometimes more turgidly called
the entrance of the masses onto the historical
stage. Fascism was an attempt to make reaction and
conservatism popular and plebeian, through which
conservatism, of course, lost the substantial
connection it did have with freedom…”. |