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The AKP Government from its Formation to the Popular Uprising in June 2013 (Part I)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2019

Ercan Gündoğan
Ercan Gündoğan*
Affiliation:
Cyprus International University, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Haspolat, Lefkoşa, Mersin 10, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Email: [email protected], [email protected]
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Abstract

The article starts with the analysis of the origin and development of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) until the 2013 Gezi Uprisings. It tries to show that the AKP first tried to survive in a defensive manner in the so-called ‘Kemalist secular republic’, and thus established strategic relations with non- or anti-Kemalist sections of society. It then chose an offensive strategy to maintain its power against attacks from traditional political and ideological forces in Turkey, such as the army, mainstream political parties and the official ideology of the Republic. However, it is argued that the more power it accumulates the more it loses or leaves its allies and the more it is alienated. As a result, it becomes more authoritarian. The article will be followed by a second part to be published in the next issue of this journal, which deals with the reactions to AKP’s authoritarian and offensive politics and ideology, and the new measures AKP has taken for its survival.

Type
Articles
Information
European Review , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 468 - 489
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2019 

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References

References and Notes

The civil Islamic movement in Ottoman Turkey was organised around religious circles such as Nakshi and Bektashi. During and after the Reorganisation Period of 1839–1876, the former circles were preferred by the central authority to the latter ones to organise and link the religious masses to the state authority. For the relations of religion-army-state and party politics from the Ottomans to modern Turkey, one of the best sources is Bulut, F. (2008) Ordu ve Din-Devlet Gözüyle İslamcı Faaliyetler (Army and Religion- Islamic Activities Through the Eyes of the State) (Istanbul: Berfin Publications).Google Scholar
The coup was only a phase within the revolution that demanded a social-liberal political and economic system. The constitution of 1961 would provide a democratic framework for all classes and ideologies, free and equal competition of the political parties, a proportional election system and the principles of the separation of powers, rule of law and some checks and balance systems such as the Constitutional Court. The military officers led the revolution, and their leading position in the state administration was consolidated with the establishment of the National Security Council (MGK). Since the 1961 Constitution, the MGK was the most powerful institution of the Republic of Turkey. The President chaired the council composed of five army generals, the Prime Minister and other ministers and bureaucrats. Its main function was to control and monitor the civilian government and authorities.Google Scholar
They were called First National Front and Second National Front governments.Google Scholar
It was already MNP’s last campaign in Konya, which was the centre of anti-secular politics, considered the last culmination point for the decision of military intervention. Necmettin Erbakan’s second anti-secular party had been shut down, too.Google Scholar
The military intervention of 12 September was a fascist coup as it closed all leftist and democratic organisations, trade unions, parties, associations and pressGoogle Scholar
Necmettin Erbakan’s political portrait seems to be a summary of the recent period of political Islam in Turkey, including the current AKP governments of Erdoğan. For his portrait and political struggle, I refer to Yalçın, S. (2012) Erbakan-Eziyet Edilerek Yalnızlığa Yükseltilen Bir Siyasal Liderin Portresi (Erbakan-A Portrait of a Political Leader Risen to Loneliness with Torment) (Istanbul: Kırmızıkedi Publications).Google Scholar
In the Susurluk district of Balıkesir province, when a Mercedes Benz hit a truck it was revealed that a Kurdish Member of Parliament, a police officer and an old nationalist terrorist carrying weapons were in the same car. The public reacted and left circles began to organise nationwide campaigns against the gladio-mafia relations. The extension of those relations reached into government and were used and protected especially by Çiller’s party and her minister of interior affairs, Mehmet Ağar. Ağar resigned a week later, but nothing changed.Google Scholar
Erbakan said that protesters performed a ‘glu glu dance’ and Kazan, worse than him, said that ‘this is a sort of candle game’ (repeating an old humiliating rumour circulated within the Sunni sect against Alawites in Turkey, meaning that Alawites engage in random sexual relations in their rituals).Google Scholar
The negotiation with the EU was strategic for the AKP’s survival strategy for the first three years. Turkey’s candidacy was accepted in 2005. However, afterwards, the AKP lost interest in the EU and the accession process nearly stopped.Google Scholar
The project had been designed by then US’s foreign minister Colin Powell and the head of the National Security Council Condoleezza Rice under George Bush’s administration. For the co-presidential role of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan within the ‘Greater Middle East Project’, see a summary in ‘DOĞU PERİNÇEK/ BOP Eşbaşkanı işsiz kaldı (TAMAMI)’, http://www.aydinlikgazete.com/yazarlar/dogu-perincek/22382-bop-esbaskani-issiz-kaldi.html (accessed 7 February 2014).Google Scholar
Reforms made by the government between 1999 and 2002 created a suitable financial and economic environment for the entry of foreign capital during the AKP period. In addition, after 2002, the world’s economy had a good amount of surplus money capital. Between 2003 and 2012, approximately US $400 billion moved into Turkey. See M. Sönmez, ‘Türkiye kapitalizminin son 10 yılı ve yönelimler,’ http://www.tr.boell.org/web/111-1696.html (accessed 7 February 2014). The years 2003–2007 are described by K. Boratav in his ‘İkinci Lâle Devri’nin Son Demleri’ as ‘the First Tulip period of the JDP’ because of the foreign capital and economic growth it created. The second ‘tulip period’ of the AKP started in 2010 due to the abundance of cash money in the core countries. http://haber.sol.org.tr/yazarlar/korkut-boratav/ikinci-lale-devri-nin-son-demleri-48995 (accessed 7 February 2014).Google Scholar
From now on, unless noted otherwise, I will follow the chronological developments as noted by Özdil, Y. (2013) Beraber Yürüdük Biz Bu Yllarda (We Walked Together In These Years) (Istanbul: Doğan Books). Özdil edited newspaper headlines during the AKP governmental period from 2002 until the fall of 2013. ‘Beraber Yürüdük Biz Bu Yollarda’ (We Walked Together on These Roads) are the words of a song Erdoğan sang in his party meetings.Google Scholar
The nationalist and Kemalist books such as Those Crazy Turks (Şu Çılgın Türkler by Turgut Özakman), which told the Liberation War of Turkey between 1919 and 1922, were becoming best sellers. Division acquired symbolic wars, as Prime Minister Erdoğan did not attend the official celebrations of the Republic, such as 23 April. The religious headscarf, however, was the highest symbolic focal point for public debates and divisions. The personality of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was frequently attacked by religious circles.Google Scholar
Here we say ‘so-called’ because towards the current period of the AKP government, even notable members of the AKP and of the pro-government media would begin to confess that the ‘organisation’ was a part of conspiracy against the army.Google Scholar
About the case of Ergenekon, the public was divided and forced by the government to choose one of the sides. Nearly all opposition to the government was condemned as being a part of the terrorist organisation of Ergenekon and a part of the plot against the AKP government. Actually, the government clearly saw that the largest section of Kemalist, secular, nationalist, leftist, socialist and social-democratic circles, which were the most educated and modern groups in Turkey, did not accept and obey, the ‘hegemony’ of the AKP government. It was an opposition to the government rather than ‘a terrorist organization’ that planned to overthrow the government through illegal, armed methods. Hence, the government needed many subsequent police operations to find ‘legal proofs’. The case of Ergenekon would proceed with new police operations, the search for ‘proofs,’ by artificially combining different and seemingly unrelated evidence over the next years. The Ergenekon was made the symbol of the ‘deep state’ or ‘the secret state within the state’. The pro-government media (labelled as ‘yandaş media’ in Turkey) circulated some news and comments to relate different cases, such as the murder of Armenian-Turkish leftist journalist and writer Hrant Dink in 2007, to the army, which was seen by the government as the centre of all anti-government forces. The strategy of the government was so confused that even the journalists who tried to reveal the background of Hrant Dink’s murder were arrested. The government tried to find, and often ‘invent’, evidence and proof to show the connection between the army and the Ergenekon terrorist organisation. First, a so-called Atabeyler Gang appeared in the newspapers and many military officers were arrested. Second, it was argued that the case of the Council of the State attack had a relation to the organisation. In addition, through the web, some military plots, coup plans, began to circulate. Continuous search for such ‘evidences’ and their media appearances further complicated the Ergenekon case, such that it became impossible for an ordinary citizen to understand what was happening in Turkey.Google Scholar
His vice-prime minister Bülent Arınç provoked the situation further by saying that they would elect a ‘religious head of state.’Google Scholar
The office of the President of the republic in Ankara.Google Scholar
Over the next few days, Istanbul police found 27 portable bombs in a house in Ümraniye and declared that the owner of the bombs was a retired military officer, Oktay Yıldırım. This event would be used to show the armed wing of the so-called ‘Ergenekon’ terrorist organisation. In that period, one of the bestsellers of 2007 was Ergün Poyraz’s books on Tayyip Erdoğan. He would also be arrested later within the context of Ergenekon case.Google Scholar
The assembly now included the CHP of Deniz Baykal, the MHP of Devlet Bahceli and Kurdish members elected independently by passing the 10% national voting threshold.Google Scholar
Turkey was compared with Malaysia in terms of ‘moderate Islam’. Accordingly, another debate on the ‘Second Republic’ restarted. The new president of the YÖK was Professor Yusuf Ziya Özcan, who taught at the Malaysia Islam University years ago. Haşim Kılıç, a conservative, was elected to the presidency of the Constitutional Court. One of the largest media groups was indirectly transferred to a pro-government business circle.Google Scholar
Zekeriya Öz, who as a prosecutor played a very significant role in Ergenekon and related cases, would be seen as one of the responsible people behind 17 December 2013’s corruption affair, which was seen as a plot organised by Fethullan Gülen’s movement against the government and would be punished by reducing his rank and changing his place of employment.Google Scholar
İlhan Selçuk, the main columnist of the leftist and Kemalist newspaper The Republic (Cumhuriyet), a Kemalist professor and the old rector of the Istanbul University Kemal Alemdaroğlu, were detained and the head of the Workers’ Party (İşçi Partisi, İP) Doğu Perinçek, who was a major Maoist as well as Kemalist socialist politician and theorist within socialist tradition, was arrested.Google Scholar
Retired generals Şener Eruygur and Hurşit Tolon, as well as the president of Ankara’s Chamber of Commerce Sinan Aygün and the columnist and Ankara representative of Cumhuriyet newspaper Mustafa Balbay, were detained. Balbay would be released and arrested again for his notes circulating through the internet. Sinan Aygün was claimed to be the ‘financer’ of the Ergenekon organisation. Every criminal and terrorist event was attributed to this ‘organisation’. An attack on the American consulate in Istanbul was said to be the work of Ergenekon by pro-government media, although the US stated it was perpetrated by al-Qaida. The Ergenekon trial would be held in Silivri, a district of Istanbul very far from the city centre. The proofs were based on the documents found in 2001 in Tuncay Güney’s house.Google Scholar
With or without connection, these arrests took place after Obama left Turkey.Google Scholar
The conflict between the movement and the AKP first appeared in the case of the Mavi Marmara affair, reappeared in MİT’s under-secretary Hakan Fidan’s summons to the prosecutor’s office for interrogation and intensified with the AKP government’s attempt to close private pre-university preparatory schools, many of which belonged to the movement, and reached a mutually destructive phase with 17 December 2013’s corruption affair, which was seen by the AKP as a plot organised by the movement against itself.Google Scholar
However, the document regarding the plan was found in an office that belonged to veteran Serdar Öztürk, and he claimed that the ‘movement of Fethullah Gülen placed it in his office’. Moreover, his computers were copied by the police without following legal procedure; that is, the evidence was obtained illegally. Subsequently, more military officers were arrested as they were found to have documents in their computers.Google Scholar
For the liquidation of the military officers from the army, it was clear that many cases had been fabricated. The Atabeyler ‘gang’ of some officers was declared to be innocent. But they had already been dismissed from the army. Similarly, in another case opened against some military officers for spying and prostitution, military officers were found innocent, however, they had been fired from the army too (Özdil, Y. (2013) Beraber Yürüdük Biz Bu Yıllarda (We Walked Together in These Years) (İstanbul: Doğan Books), p. 299). In August 2012, the High Military Council forced 40 generals to retire and then had them arrested. Even if they would be found innocent later, they were not allowed to return to their positions (Özdil, Y. (2013) Beraber Yürüdük Biz Bu Yıllarda (We Walked Together in These Years) (İstanbul: Doğan Books), p. 301). Balyoz case was completed in 2012, and 325 military officers were sentenced to 20, 18 and 16 years respectively for an ‘incomplete attempt to coup’. The case was erected upon ‘digital documents’, which, the defence argued, were ‘manufactured’ and ‘fake’. In March 2013, the Ergenekon case was concluded with 64 life sentences for military officers, including the chief of staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, General İlker Başbuğ, professors, writers, party leaders, journalists and members of Parliament.Google Scholar
To understand the Ergenekon case and other cases that have been merged into it, see Yalçın, S. (2012) April, Samizdat- Hakikatlere Dayanacak Gücünüz Var mı? (Samizdat- Do You Have Strenght to Withstand the Truths?) (İstanbul: Kırmızı Kedi Publications).Google Scholar
Meanwhile, many former rectors and the current rector of Başkent University Professor Mehmet Haberal, many well-known professors and the presidents of several civil associations concerned with education, such as Professor Türkan Saylan, were arrested.Google Scholar
After the local elections held on 29 March 2009, Erdoğan revised the cabinet. Ahmet Davutoğlu, foreign policy advisor of Abdullah Gül and a professor of international relations became foreign minister on 1 May 2009. Besides his idea of ‘zero problem’, his book Stratejik Derinlik (Strategic Depth) became highly influential and propagated a neo-Ottomanism, which also became the main foreign policy theme under the AKP government. Here we have to remind ourselves that some Middle East specialist CIA members, such as Graham Fuller, had already analysed Turkey’s new geopolitics and suggested a new Ottomanist foreign policy orientation for Turkey at the beginning of the 1990s. In this context, see Bulut, F. (2008) Ordu ve Din-Devlet Gözüyle İslamcı Faaliyetler (Army and Religion- Islamic Activities Through the Eyes of the State) (İstanbul: Berfin Publications), pp. 187–190.Google Scholar
The AKP mayor of the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, Melih Gökçek, would soon provoke the university that was known as one of the leftist strongholds in Turkey with his new transportation project from 2013 September onwards.Google Scholar