Suchergebnisse

Demokrat Parti (Turkey); Turkey; politics and government; 1950-1960; Coup d'état, 1960

This article aims to highlight the point that the nature of an outgoing authoritarian regime does matter for a new democracy. It discusses the Turkish case. The military interludes in Turkey have hardly been perceived as highly repressive by a significant proportion of civilians, nor have those periods been regarded as failures in political, economic, or military terms. This very experience with the military regimes was one of the reasons why civilians and soldiers have found it difficult to see democracy as the only game in town. The lack of a negative evaluation of military rule has helped civilians and soldiers alike to consider the military intervention as a low-cost option, and this belief generated deleterious consequences for the democratic regime.

Der Autor geht der Frage nach, inwieweit die mächtige Position des Militärs in der Türkei die Demokratisierung des Landes gefährdet. Dabei stellt er zunächst heraus, dass es nicht die Politiker sind, die das Militär für ihre Zwecke benutzen; viel mehr widersetze sich das Militär der zivilen Kontrolle. Wie er anhand eines knappen historischen Überblicks zeigt, versteht sich das Militär als Garant der von Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ausgerufenen Türkischen Republik. Der Übergang zu einem Mehrparteiensystem in den 1940er Jahren und der Zuwachs des politischen Islam und des kurdischen Nationalismus seit den 1980er Jahren habe das Militär in dieser Rolle bekräftigt. (DÜI-Mjr)

This article analyzes the Turkish military's decision to take over the government on 12 September 1980. It argues that just because the military believed itself to be a true guardian state, it easily considered intervention a legitimate solution. The perceived threats to the integrity of the Republican state posed by rampant terrorism were the key elements driving soldiers towards intervention. In retrospect, the military's willingness to learn from experience and the role played by civilians in encouraging the military to take over the reins of government are striking features of the whole episode.

The advent of democracy in Turkey has been far from tranquil. Since the transition to multiparty politics in 1946, democracy has been interrupted by three military interventions (in 1960, 1971, and 1980)- unless we count as the fourth intervention the more recent incident, euphemistically labeled "the 28 February Process," in which the military played a crucial role in forcing the resignation of the governing coalition led by the Islamist-oriented Welfare Party (WP). Not only has Turkish democracy followed a cyclical pattern in which breakdowns and transitions succeeded each other, the degree or the quality of democracy that was in place never ceased to attract bitter criticism.