Calls for stronger democracy persist on coup anniversary

On the 17th anniversary of the Feb. 28, 1997 postmodern coup, politicians and civilians renewed demands for stronger democracy and the rule of law.

Independent deputy İdris Bal, on behalf of six deputies who recently resigned from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), read out a statement in Parliament on Friday. In the statement, which he said also represents the opinion of independent deputies Ertuğrul Günay, Hakan Şükür, Hasan Hami Yıldırım, Haluk Özdalga and Erdal Kalkan, Bal said that Turkey had witnessed anti-democratic practices in the past, a reference to military coups, and added that memories of those times are still fresh in people's minds.

According to Bal, Turkey recently re-entered a “period of anti-democracy.” He was referring to a number of controversial policies pursued by the AK Party government since a large, ongoing government corruption investigation became public on Dec. 17, 2013. “Our country, though it was considered a model for developing countries in the recent past, has recently become a problem for its region. We would like to draw people's attention to some facts, including democracy, transparency, accountability, peace and universal values and virtues, on the anniversary of [the] Feb. 28 [coup],” the deputy said.

Bal also said a coup means seizing power illegally in a country through means that are not enumerated in the Constitution or law. “Coups are not solely staged with weapons or military tanks. The executive branch currently controls the judiciary thanks to its majority in the legislative branch. Indeed, this is an unnamed coup. The [political] system in Turkey has been blocked. The system should be allowed to function for the stability of democracy and rule of law. Turkey should normalize,” he said.

On Feb. 28, the military forced a coalition government led by the late Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to step down, citing claims of rising religious fundamentalism in the country. Erbakan subsequently resigned and his Welfare Party (RP) was shut down by the courts. The Feb. 28 coup brought a series of severe restrictions on social life, including the expulsion of thousands of officers from the military for no valid reason at all without due process and an unofficial but widely practiced ban prohibiting women from wearing a headscarf on university campuses and when employed in the public sector.

A number of anti-democratic moves that have been implemented since Dec. 17, 2013 such as the reassignment of thousands of civil servants, including police officers and members of the judiciary, as well as discrimination against members of the faith-based Hizmet movement, have led to comments that Turkey is experiencing events similar to the Feb. 28 period.

On Dec. 17, 2013, dozens of people, including businessmen close to the government and the sons of three former Cabinet ministers, were detained on accusations of corruption and bribery. Of these, 24 were later arrested. Some were recently released pending trial.

On Friday, the Education Personnel Labor Union (Eğitim-Bir-Sen) issued a statement in which it condemned the bans and pressure tactics of the Feb. 28 coup era. According to the union, more than 33,000 teachers across Turkey were profiled according to their religious and ideological backgrounds during the Feb. 28 coup period. As a result, Eğitim-Bir-Sen said, roughly 4,600 teachers stood accused of pursuing religiously fundamentalist activities and some 11,000 teachers were forced to resign.

In addition to teachers, some 2,000 military officers were expelled from the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) during the Feb. 28 period because of alleged involvement in anti-secular activities. Others faced disciplinary measures.

Safiye Özdemir, head of the Women's Commission of the Civil Servants' Trade Union (Memur-Sen), said that the Feb. 28 coup ignored people's will and violated the rights of women who wear a headscarf to pursue their education and to work in violation of the Constitution and international conventions. “They [coup-stagers] were trying to ‘teach a lesson' to Merve Kavakçı,” Özdemir said.

Kavakçı was elected to Parliament from the Virtue Party (FP) in 1999, but was not allowed to serve as a deputy because she wore a headscarf. Amid angry protests and boos, Kavakçı was forced out of Parliament for wearing a headscarf during her swearing-in ceremony.

Columnists: Now no different from Feb. 28

Also on Friday, several columnists from the country's leading newspapers devoted their columns to the Feb. 28, 1997 coup and drew a link between the anti-democratic practices of the coup period and today.

According to the columnists, the threats and pressures of the Feb. 28 coup period are still in place.

Adem Yavuz Arslan, a Bugün columnist and Ankara bureau chief of the daily, made a comparison between the profiling activities of 1997 and today. He said a group nested within the Turkish military profiled thousands of people, including military officers, according to their religious and ideological background in the Feb. 28 coup period. As a result, thousands of people lost their jobs due to their conservative beliefs. According to Arslan, similarly, thousands of people have again become the target of profiling activities, this time conducted by the government, on the grounds that they are members or followers of the Hizmet movement. Many have again lost their jobs, said the columnist, in reference to thousands of police officers and dozens of judges and prosecutors who were removed from their jobs and reassigned to different posts in the aftermath of the Dec. 17, 2013 corruption operation.

Ahmet Hakan from the Hürriyet daily criticized AK Party supporters for being “extremely happy” following a National Security Council (MGK) meeting on Wednesday after which a statement from the council was released saying, “Structures and activities that threaten the security and comfort of our people were discussed [at the meeting].” The MGK's use of “structures” was read by many as a reference to the Hizmet movement. “I'd like to ask them [AK Party supporters] what led to Dec.17, 2013. Weren't similar decisions made by the council? If so, why did they complain about Feb. 28?” the columnist wrote.

During the Feb. 28 process, some leading media outlets cooperated with the TSK to render the civilian government dysfunctional by discrediting it. Bosses of some of those outlets, including the Sabah daily, confessed years after the coup that they made some mistakes in the run-up to and after the Feb. 28 “postmodern” coup. In 2012, then-Sabah Media Group owner Dinç Bilgin told a parliamentary commission investigating the Feb. 28 coup that the ambitions of media bosses to earn more played a role in the mistakes they made during the coup period. In addition, former Sabah Editor-in-Chief Zafer Mutlu told the commission: "What we saw at that time was an organization that clearly stated they would use weapons if needed. And we were afraid."

Last but not least, the daily's then deputy editor-in-chief, Ergun Babahan, told a journalist in an interview in 2010 that he and his paper were pressured during 1997 coup era. Babahan said the military's messages to them at the time were relayed through Sabah's Ankara representative Fatih Çekirge. According to Babahan, the military personnel did not want any articles published that criticized them or that praised the government. Babahan also said his main job at the newspaper during the Feb. 28 process was to censor articles.

On Friday, Sabah Media Group's English-language newspaper, Daily Sabah, ran a story on the Feb. 28 coup in which it said, "The Gülenist newspaper Zaman also took a pro-coup stance [in 1997] and claimed that the coup sped up the democratic process in Turkey." However, the facts are different. In the run-up to and after the 1997 coup, Zaman harshly criticized any move that would damage the development of democracy. "We cannot turn back from democracy," "No approval for eight years [of compulsory education, a plan to close down the religious imam-hatip high schools] and “Imam-hatip students are disappointed" were some of the headlines Zaman ran at the time.

Published on Today's Zaman, 28 February 2014, Friday

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