Comment by kaanski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaanski | Hacker News Reader

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Erdogan definitely took advantage of the aftermath of the coup to purge the military but the coup was not “made up”.

This was mostly a theory thrown around by western journalists who first tried to claim that a coup against Erdogan would be a good thing, a “liberal coup”. Followed by them pushing the idea it was fake.

I dislike Erdogan but hearing from my family’s experiences during the last coup in Turkiye I’ll take a democratically elected government I dislike over another military dictatorship.

I’m really disappointed in the media here in the west and the ideas they were pushing during that time.

Edit

Two extra points:

1. Turkiye has an extensive history of coups and general military intervention in politics which sets a precedent for this kind of coup attempt.

2. These sorts of claims are really akin to claiming 9/11 was an inside job. For some reason when it’s Turkiye being discussed what should be rightly identified as conspiracy theories become socially acceptable and viable in people’s minds.

Good thing or not, coups in Turkey were a feature of their democratic system. One of the problems they had to contend with was a continuing push to religious governments - a sort of "majority dictatorship", because probably well over half the population leans religious, but voting politicians by this criteria will end democracy pretty quick. So Ataturk left the military as guardian dogs, with a more or less official mandate to bring down any overly Islamic governments and restore democracy. And it worked, for quite a long time.

I'm not saying coups were nice, or civilized. I can easily take your word that they were brutal. I'm just saying they were part of the system, and when they stopped working the system failed.

I would argue that the although the military like to paint themselves as guardians of democracy they don’t exactly have a great track record.

The 1980 coup banned all political parties, all trade unions and the Kurdish language. They then “democratised” the country by only allowing parties that were junta approved, two of which were established directly by the junta themselves, to participate in elections.

This is not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people arrested, hundreds of thousands denied passports, tens of thousands killed either directly, in custody or through capital punishment.

Turkiye today does not have a “failed system” because there are no coups they have a system which is recovering from coups.

I’m not an Islamist, I don’t support Erdogan. A large number of Turks don’t.

But the paternalist idea that Turks are unable to govern themselves without violent takeovers and reprisals for the crime of voting for politicians they agree with is not good for the country and is not democratic.

Edit

“Dictatorship by majority” as you describe it is the definition of a democracy. The majority dictate the policy of the country. Unless my definition is wrong.

Edit 2

Claiming coups “were a feature of their democratic system” is an oxymoron and something I’m almost shocked to hear in a non satirical sense.

Until you can convince me that locusts are a feature for crops you won’t convince me that coups can be a feature of democracy.

> I'm just saying they were part of the system, and when they stopped working the system failed.

No, when the last one finally succeeded in what it intended to, the system failed.

The last coup in Turkey hanged 10,000 left wing politicians, intellectuals, activists, trade union leaders, and basically anyone who opposed neoliberal wave that was sweeping the west. The ones not hanged were either jailed for decades, or banned from politics.

The result was a totally far-right slanted landscape in everything - from economics to nationalism to religion. In this environment the Islamist factions prospered because the coup government and its successors used Islam as a 'counterbalance' to those pesky left wing ideas that hampered corporate profits. It didnt take ~20 years before all of these resulted in a hellscape in which poor people had only Islamist organizations to get any support from because practically the entire country was privatized, labor protections loosened, wages bottomed and social services were gutted for tax breaks. The result is the Turkey you see now.

In all respects, the current government of Turkey can be considered much more representative of the poor majority than all the post-1980 governments of Turkey since with all its problems, this government at least does something for the poor majority - either through the scarce social programs that are left, through its municipal governments, or through the Islamist organizations that are associated with it. Financial aid, food aid, education scholarships etd - all of which are described as 'bribes' by the secular minority - things that they took away from those people in the post-coup period neoliberal craze, leaving the these segments were left to rot. Which is the reason why those segments will never let go of Erdogan and his party and vote for any competitor.

...

Think of the last coup in Turkey like the Chilean coup against Allende.

Yep, you’re right, and I’d say your two extra points are spot on. I’m not a Turk myself, but I have Turkish friends who’re perhaps more on the secular/modernist side, hence my potential bias.

Re: the 2016 coup, I’m still not certain that it was a “legitimate” one, ie not sure that Erdogan wasn’t aware of it in its infancy, and decided to allow it to go through.

As others have said, coups are embedded within Turkish democratic history in one sense (though a coup still cannot be a democratic device), so maybe Erdogan has the political acumen to plan ahead including potential coup attempts.

His utilization of the 2016 coup to strengthen his control was astounding in its speed and accuracy. Perhaps this is what enabled western media to think of it as a planned event on the part of the government?

With the precedent for coups in Turkey I don’t think there’s that much planning involved for the strengthening of control afterwards. Erdogan purged the army ruthlessly and declared a state of emergency, pretty par for the course after an attempted coup.

He definitely widened the net of his purge and take out some political enemies, but I don’t think Erdogan reacting fairly predictably to an attempted coup is proof that he knew of it before hand, or planned it.

>Erdogan wasn’t aware of it in its infancy, and decided to allow it to go through

It's not impossible, but when you go through the details (e.g. how much everything, including Erdogan's early morning nationally broadcast FaceTime(!)[0], hinged on Türksat remaining operational) it's clear how huge of a gamble that would be on his part.

[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/7/16/erdogan-resorts-to-...

Thanks for the explanation, I am also baffled by the simplistic view of western media on this topic.

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