1980 Turkish coup d'état

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The September 12, 1980 Turkish coup d'état, headed by General Kenan Evren, Chief of the General Staff, was the third military putsch in the history of the Republic after the 1960 coup and the 1971 "Coup by Memorandum".

Kenan Evren headed the National Security Council (NSC) of five generals (the commanders of the Army, the Navy the Air Force and the Gendarmerie. Martial law, which had been first proclaimed in 1978 after the Kahramanmaraş massacre, was extended throughout the country. The generals abolished the Parliament and the government, suspended the Constitution and banned all political parties and trade unions, and most other organizations. They invoked the Kemalist tradition of state secularism and of the unity of the nation, which had already justified the precedent coups, and presented themselves as opposed to both Communism, Fascism, separatism and religious sectarism[1]. For the next three years the Turkish armed forces ruled the country through the National Security Council.[2] In his book 12 September, 4 o'clock (1984) Mehmet Ali Birand described how Paul Henze, at the time advisor on Turkey to the National Security Council of the USA, informed President Jimmy Carter about the coup in Turkey with the words Our boys (in Ankara) did it! [3]. This has created the impression that the USA stood behind the coup. In June 2003 Henze denied this, but after two days Mehmet Ali Birand presented an interview with Henze recorded in 1997 in which he basically confirmed Mehmet Ali Birand's story [4].[5]

Contents

[edit] The Way to Intervention

In 1975 Süleyman Demirel, President of the conservative Justice Party (AP) succeeded Bülent Ecevit, President of the social-democrat Republican People's Party (CHP) as Prime Minister. He formed a coalition of the Nationalist Front with Necmettin Erbakan of the fundamentalist MSP and the extreme right-wing MHP of Alparslan Türkeş. The MHP used the opportunity to infiltrate state security, which seriously aggravated the low-intensity war which was waged between rival factions [1]. The elections of 1977 had no winner. First Süleyman Demirel continued the coalition of the National Front, before Ecevit was able to get to power again in 1978 with the help of some deputies who had shifted from one party to another. In 1979, Demirel once again became Prime Minister. At the end of the 1970s Turkey was in an unstable situation with unsolved economic and social problems facing strike actions and partial paralyzation of politics (the Grand National Assembly of Turkey was unable to elect a President during the six months preceding the coup). Since 1968-69, a proportional representation system made it difficult to find any parliamentary majority. The interests of the industrial bourgeoisie, which held the largest holdings of the country, were opposed by other social class such as smaller industrials, traders, rural notables, landlords, etc., whose interests did not always coincide between themselves either. Numerous agricultural and industrial reforms requested by parts of the middle upper classes where blocked by others [1]. Henceforth, the politicians seemed unable to combat the growing violence in the country.

Unprecedented political violence had erupted in Turkey in the late 1970s. The overall death-toll of the terror of the 1970s is estimated at 5,000, with nearly ten assassinations per day [1]. Most were members of left-wing and right-wing political organization, then engaged in bitter fighting. The ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves, youth organisation of the MHP party, claimed they were supporting the security forces.[2] According to the British Searchlight magazine in 1979, in 1978 they were 3,319 fascist attacks, in which 831 were killed and 3,121 wounded [6]. In the central trial against the left-wing organization Devrimci Yol (Revolutionary Path) at Ankara Military Court the defendants listed 5,388 political killings before the military coup. Among the victims were 1,296 rightwingers and 2,109 left-wingers. The others could not cearly be related.[7] The 1977 Taksim Square massacre with 35 victims and the 1978 Kahramanmaraş Massacre with over 100 victims are somehow outstanding in the series of attacks. Following the incidents in Kahramanmaraş martial law was announced in 14 of (then) 67 provinces in December 1978. At the time of the coup martial law had been extended to 20 provinces.

As a member of NATO and because of its geographical position, at the crossroads between Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, Turkey was an important ally of the so-called "free world". Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Washington had lost its main ally in the region, while the Carter doctrine formulated on 23 January 1980 stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf region. Turkey received large sums of economic aid mainly organized by the OECD and military aid from the NATO but the USA in particular [8]. Between 1979 and 1982 the OECD countries raised $ 4 billion in economic aid to Turkey.[9]

Washington started developing the Rapid Deployment Forces (RDF) in implementation of the Carter doctrine, for a quick intervention in areas outside the NATO, in particular in the Persian Gulf, and without having to rely on NATO troops. On October 1, 1979 President Jimmy Carter announced the foundation of the RDF. One day before the military coup of 12 September 1980 some 3,000 American troops of the RDF started a maneuver Anvil Express on Turkish soil. [10] Just before the coup, the general in charge of the Turkish Air Forces had travelled to the United States [1]. At the end of 1981 a Turkish-American Defense Council (Türk-Amerikan Savunma Konseyi) was founded. Defense Minister Ümit Haluk and Richard Perle, then US Assistant Secretary of Defense of the new Reagan administration, and the deputy Chief of Staff Necdet Öztorun participated in its fist meeting on 27 April 1982. On 9 October 1982 a Memorandum of Understanding (Mutabakat Belgesi) was signed with a focus of extending airports mainly in the Southeast for military purposed. Such airports were built in the provinces of Batman, Muş, Bitlis, Van and Kars in the south-east .

[edit] The Coup

The pretext alleged by the military, headed by General Kenan Evren, for the coup was to put an end to the social conflicts of the 1970s, as well as parliamentary unstability. The US-support of this coup was acknowledged by the CIA Ankara station chief Paul Henze. After the government was overthrown, Henze cabled Washington, saying, "our boys have done it."[3]. This has created the impression that the USA stood behind the coup. In June 2003 Henze denied this, but after two days Mehmet Ali Birand presented an interview with Henze recorded in 1997 in which he basically confirmed Mehmet Ali Birand's story [4].[5] The US State Department itself announced the coup during the night between 11 and 12 September: the military had phoned the US embassy in Ankara to alert them of the coup an hour before passing to action [1].

US president Jimmy Carter, elected in 1976 and president from 1977 to 1981, would comment much later that "before the September 12 movement [sic], Turkey was in a critical situation with regard to its defences. After the [1979] invasion of Afghanistan and the [1979] overthrow of the Iranian monarchy, the movement for stabilisation in Turkey came as a relief to us.".[11]

Beside Kenan Evren, the National Security Council also counted the general Haydar Saltuk, who was its secretary general. Both men were the strong men of the regime, while the government was headed by a retired admiral, Bülent Ulusul, and included several retired militaries and a few civil technicians. Some alleged in Turkey, after the coup, that general Saltuk had been preparing a more radical, rightist coup, which had been one of the reason prompting the others militaries to act, respecting the hierarchy, and then to include him in the NSC in order to neutralize him [1].

On 29 June 1981 the military junta appointed 160 people as members of an Advisory Assembly to draft a new Constitution. On 7 November 1982 the new Constitution was accepted with a referendum of almost 92% and on 9 November 1982 Kenan Evren was appointed President for the next seven years.

Amnesty International has estimated that over a quarter of a million people were arrested in Turkey after the coup and that almost all of them were tortured [2]. The Human Rights Association in Turkey (HRA, called İnsan Hakları Derneği) said 10 years after the coup that 650,000 people had been detained on political grounds. Most imprisoned persons were from the intellectual strata of Turkish society. Apart of many militants allegedly killed during shootings, at least four prisoners were legally executed immediately after the coup, the first ones since 1972, while in February 1982 there were 108 prisoners condemned to capital punishment [1].

After having taken advantage of the Grey Wolves' activism, General Kenan Evren, alleged by historian D. Ganser to be the head of Counter-Guerrilla also decided to imprison hundreds of them, including Colonel Türkeş, head of the MHP, for their role during the strategy of tension [12]. At the time they were some 1,700 Grey Wolves organizations in Turkey, with about 200,000 registered members and a million sympathisers. In its indictment of the MHP in May 1981, the Turkish military government charged 220 members of the MHP and its affiliates for 694 murders.[13] Following the coup in Colonel Türkeş's indictment, the Turkish press revealed the close links maintained by the MHP with security forces as well as organized crime involved in drug trade, which financed in returns weapons and the activities of hired fascist commandos all over the country [1].

But a short time afterwards, Grey Wolves imprisoned members were offered release if they accepted to fight the Kurdish minority and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the south-east of the country.[14] as well as the ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia). They then went on to fight, with Counter-Guerrilla, Kurds, killing and torturing thousands in the 1980s, and also carrying false flag attacks in which the Counter-Guerrilla attacked villages, dressed up as PKK fighters, and raped and executed people randomly.[15] The dirty war had a toll of 37 000 victims.[16] The fact that Counter-Guerrilla had engaged in torture was confirmed by Talat Turhan, a former Turkish general. According to a December 5, 1990 article by the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Counter-Guerrilla had their headquarters in the building of the US DIA military secret service.[17] In addition, members of this "deep state "carried out operations to assassinate the leader squad of ASALA, Hagop Hagopian, in which they succeeded on April 28, 1988.

[edit] Aftermath and 1983 elections

After the approval by referendum of the new Constitution in June 1982, Kenan Evren organized general elections, held on 6 November 1983.

However, the referendum and the elections did not take place in a free and competitive setting. Many political leaders of pre-coup era (including Süleyman Demirel, Bülent Ecevit, Alparslan Türkeş and Necmettin Erbakan) had been banned from politics, and all new parties needed to get the approval of the National Security Council in order to participate in the elections. Only 3 parties, two of which were actually created by the ruling military regime were permitted to contest.

This transition to democracy has been criticized by the acknowledged Turkish scholar Ergun Özbudun: "The 1983 Turkish transition is almost a textbook example of the degree to which a departing military regime can dictate the conditions of its departure (…)" [18].

Out of the 1983 elections came one-party governance under Turgut Özal's Motherland Party, which combined a globally-oriented economic program with conservative social values. Turgut Özal, who had been vice-prime minister of the junta, had also been the main responsible of the economic policy implemented by the Demirel liberal administration since 24 January 1980, which was inspired by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He had obtained at the end of 1981-start of 1982 the resignation of the director of the Central Bank, İsmail Aydınoğlu, one of the main opponent to the IMF policies. The latter were based on freezing of wages, an important decrease of the public sector, a deflationist policy, and several successive mini-devaluations [1].

The feckless Yildirim Akbulut became head of the Parliament, succeeded, in 1991, by Mesut Yılmaz. Meanwhile, Süleyman Demirel founded the right-wing True Path Party in 1983, and returned to active politics after the 1987 referendum.

Yılmaz redoubled Turkey's economic profile, converting towns like Gaziantep from small provincial capitals into mid-sized economic boomtowns, and renewed its orientation toward Europe. But political instability followed as the host of banned politicians reentered politics, fracturing the vote, and the Motherland Party became increasingly corrupt. Ozal died of a heart attack in 1993 and Süleyman Demirel was elected president.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Ata Gil, Le Monde diplomatique, "La Turquie à marche forcée," February 1981
  2. ^ a b c Amnesty International, Turkey: Human Rights Denied, London, November 1988, AI Index: EUR/44/65/88, ISBN: 086210 156 5, p. 1
  3. ^ a b Birand, Mehmet Ali: The Generals’ Coup in Turkey: An Inside Story of 12 September 1980, New York, Brassey’s Defence, 1987, ISBN: 008034741X
  4. ^ a b See Turkish daily Zaman, 14 June 2003, Birand’dan Paul Henze’ye ‘sesli–görüntülü’ yalanlama
  5. ^ a b Selahattin Celik, Türkische Konterguerilla. Die Todesmaschinerie (Köln: Mesopotamien Verlag, 1999; see also Olüm Makinasi Türk Kontrgerillasi, 1995), quoting Cuneyit Arcayurek, Coups and the Secret Services, p.190
  6. ^ Searchlight magazine, n°47, May 1979, p.6
  7. ^ Devrimci Yol Savunması (Defense of the Revolutionary Path. Ankara, January 1989, p. 118-119
  8. ^ See detailed list of [Arms and Aid to Turkey] between 1980 and 1992
  9. ^ Alternative Türkeihilfe (an alternative aid for Turkey), Militärs an der Macht (Military in Power) Herford (Germany), August 1983, p.11
  10. ^ alternative türkeihilfe (an alternative aid for Turkey), Militärs an der Macht (Military in Power) Herford (Germany), August 1983, p. 6
  11. ^ Turkish magazine Kurtulus n°99, September 19, 1998 ([1]), quoting Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, July 21, 1988
  12. ^ See Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Frank Cass, London, 2005. Extracts and documents available here.
  13. ^ Source: Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (New York, 1986, quoted by Daniele Ganser, 2005)
  14. ^ See interview of Grey Wolves member Ibrahim Ciftci with Milliyet on October 13, 1996, quoted by Daniele Ganser in Operation Gladio. Terrorism in Western Europe, 2005
  15. ^ Daniele Ganser, 2005
  16. ^ (French) "Les Kurdes de Turquie redoutent un retour aux années de plomb", Le Figaro, May 2, 2006.
  17. ^ Chronology from the ETH Zurich's website
  18. ^ Özbudun, Ergun: Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000; p. 117

[edit] See also

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