The Military Coup in Turkey, 1980

Within Turkey, the political situation was deteriorating. Locked in a mortal rivalry, Demirel and Ecevit were unable to cope with rising political violence from the extreme right - - the ultranationalist party led by Alparslan TürkeÕ - - and the extreme left. The Kurdish provinces of the southeast were restive, and all were governed under martial law by late 1979. A new, militant organization, the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkari Kurdistan, or PKK), had formed around a campus leftist, Abdullah Ocalan, and was making threatening noises. The urban Marxist group, Dev Sol, and numbers of other sectarian militants were mobilized. Political killings, bombings, and threats were commonplace; by summer, thirty fatalities a day were attributed to extremists of left and right. A sense of siege pervaded the society. The army chief of staff, General Kenan Evren, warned the political party leaders to end their squabbling and empower the military to deal more forcefully with the terrorism. The economy was suffering from 20 percent unemployment and 130 percent annual inflation; labor strikes were frequent and increasingly strident. Martial law was extended to Izmir (formerly Smyrna) and other Western provinces.

On September 5th, Parliament voted for a resolution of no confidence in Demirel's pro-Western foreign policy. The very next day, Necmettin Erbakan, the fiery leader of the Islamic party and the junior partner in the ruling coalition, led a rally in Konya, a city in central Anatolia with a long Muslim traditios - - the home of a famous school for dervishes and a stronghold of Islamic feeling. The rally was boldly pro-Islamic and anti-Western. According to one account of the scene, "The rally was addressed by Erbakan, who called on Turkey to break with Israel and for all Muslims to liberate Jerusalem.' But Erbakan went further and proclaimed the start of a struggle to end 'the false Western mentality' that ruled Turkey. Banners in Arabic proclaiming the greatness of Allah and calling for the restoration of the Shari 'a [Islamic law] were carried by the demonstrators, who ended the rally with the burning of the Israeli, American, and Soviet flags . . . the three 'Satans' which Islam had to confront."

Six days later, the military moved in. Positioning tanks at key intersections, taking control of the news media, rounding up the political leadership of the country for "protective custody," and imposing martial law for the remaining two-thirds of Turkey, General Evren declared yet another military regime. The constitution was suspended, Parliament sent packing. Some 1,700 mayors were ousted. A return to civilian government would come at the earliest possible time, Evren insisted, but first the "anarchy" had to be eliminated.

Naturally, speculation about the American role grew, particularly since the reaction in Washington was uncommonly forgiving. The coup leaders had informed the U.S. military command in Turkey at least 75 minutes before the coup; the suspicion that the generals asked permission of Washington before moving was plausible if wholly deniable. "Officials in Turkish military circles privately suggested recently that the armed forces would not intervene unless they received prior approval from Washington," the New York Times reported the day after the coup. Some analysts see a longer pattern of U.S. encouragement to the coup plotters - - a persistent attitude of impatience with the civilian leadership, sometimes slow to do its bidding. When DECA [Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement] was in the final stages of negotiation in January 1980, the State Department apparently found Demirel's attitude wanting, concluding "that Turkey under her existing government was incapable of playing the regional role that Washington had assigned her." Demirel failed to appreciate the U.S. obsession with Iran, which had just seized the embassy hostages in Teheran, and moreover was beholden to the Islamicist Erbakan for the survival of his ruling coalition. The generals had been planning the coup at least since December 13, 1979, when Evren returned from a NATO meeting in Brussels; in the ensuing months, the generals sought signals from the United States to proceed, and the signing of DECA in late March looked like such a nod to them.. The U.S. officials of the period always denied foreknowledge or prompting of the coup, of course. Paul Henze, the former CIA station chief in Ankara who was responsible for Turkey on the White House national security staff during the Carter administration, stated flatly that there was no encouragement or prior approval of the coup. But he also said that "the Carter administration would not have discouraged the takeover if it had been informed in advance, but it preferred not to be. Given the fears that Turkey might go the way of Iran and that the entire Western security position in the Middle East would disintegrate, there was a great sense of relief throughout Washington when the change occurred." Carter signaled his approval by calling for generous increases in military aid in the next two years. Given how traumatic the arms embargo of 1975-78 had been for the Turkish military elite, it is unlikely they would have taken such a drastic step without some assurances from Washington that it would not earn retribution from the "human-rights president."

Certainly, the State Department's reaction to the overthrow of a democratically elected government was mild, and editorials in the New York Times and Washington Post also welcomed the action in the name of civil order. Invariably described as "bloodless," a "tremor more than an earth- quake," the coup was widely praised, as were Evren's restraint and his commitment to a speedy return to democracy.

These tranquil images of the takeover were very much in the eye of the beholder. Thousands of people were arrested - - labor leaders, political organizers, university activists, Islamic hardliners, journalists, teachers. When the coup occurred, the conventional wisdom was that it was regrettably necessary to restore order. But Evren's post-coup actions and statements indicated more sharply focused reasons: a determination to destroy Kurdish nationalism and a concern about the increasing stridency of Erbakan=s Islamic followers. The timing of the coup just days after the Konya demonstration, the rising anti-U.S. sentiments among the political elite, the fears of Khomeini=s influence, and the immediate prosecution of the Kurdish activists all signaled this dual purpose.

"What lies at the basis of the Turkish Republic" Evren said in a speech shortly after seizing power, "is the sublime Atatürk's philosophy that says: 'Happy is he who calls himself a Turk.' This philosophy includes every citizen who considers himself a Turk. . . . The integrity of the land and the nation finds its true expression and meaning in these words. . . . Atatürk=s concept of nationalism is basically this. . . . The Turkish nation, based upon the principles of Atatürk, will survive by its unswerving adherence to the motto, 'a single state, a single nation' in the future, just as it has in the past. No power will be able to divide it."

from John Tirman=s Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America=s Arms Trade (Free Press, 1997).