A day after the Egyptian military forced President Mohamad Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government from office last week, a researcher at an Ankara think-tank was visibly satisfied that in his country it was not the military that had given the government a hard time for one whole month lately, but civil society groups (whose Taksim Square protest grabbed international headlines).
Turkey has seen four military coups since 1960. In 2007, it attempted what’s called an “electronic coup”, when it rushed a memo — which was disregarded — to the Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s government to refrain from making the country’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, the country’s President, on account of the putative Islamic attitudes of the latter’s wife.
In Turkish society, there does appear to be some history-rooted edginess about the outlook of the military. This is true even of secular circles who would not like armed forces’ rule to return although the military has traditionally been hard secular.
On the other hand, Mr. Erdogan’s A.K. Parti (the Justice and Development Party), which has won three consecutive elections and has governed for ten years, is moderately Islamic but has so far not pushed the Islamic agenda that makes the country’s broadly secular society jittery. In spite of the wariness, most Turkish people now seem to believe that an Egypt-like situation cannot arise in Turkey, as this country has had its “spring” back in the 1940s when a multi-party system was introduced.
Besides, as a liberal-oriented ruling party MP, Iris Bal, who is a member of the foreign relations committee of Parliament (and also head of the recently formed India-Turkey Friendship Group), puts it, Turkey’s society and military have both changed over the years.
Nevertheless, Mustafa Edib Yilmaz, the foreign news editor of the widely circulated Zaman group of newspapers, does not hesitate to speak of the “power struggle between the old establishment (which was secular) and the new middle class the present government represents”.
All sections, ranging from the conservative to the Left, who had even a minor grievance against the Erdogan government, joined the Taksim movement and helped spread it across the country. Overtly secular young people, some of whom even attacked conservatively dressed women at Taksim Square, were prominent in the protests. Nevertheless, secular circles in Istanbul would hate to have the military back, and Egypt’s Tehrir Square serves as a reminder to Taksim Square veterans.