2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

Prospects for a ‘Torn’ Turkey 73
civilian secularism – owed a lot to the support given by European parties, EU
institutions and European civil society associations.
With a center-right party appealing to the religiously conservative
bourgeoisie, to the Kurds of the southeast, as well as to right-leaning seculars,
and a social democratic alternative that caters to the center-left seculars while
being equally attentive to the economically vulnerable part of the
conservative electorate, the centenary republic had been equipped with a
political equation that manifested democratic reconciliation and secured
stability.
Scenario Three: Return of Military Stewardship
In a third scenario, the tensions between Islamic conservatism and
secularism had finally become impossible to contain. The AKP government
was emboldened by its ability to defeat the challenge to its power in 2008,
and did not bother to take the seculars’ sensibilities into due consideration. A
new constitution was tailored, curtailing the power of the Constitutional
court and with a redefinition of secularism to imply a greater public role for
religion. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and president Abdullah Gül
miscalculated when they assumed that the military would not be able to
challenge them; the AKP government was overthrown by the military in
2011, in an intervention reminiscent of the March 9, 1971, memorandum and
the February 27, 1997, “postmodern coup” – but with a more pointed threat of
a full-scale coup. The Chief of the General staff, Gen. Işık Koşaner, who had
struck a staunchly secularist and die-hard nationalist chord in his
inauguration speech as new army chief in 2008, had in fact been forced to
take pre-emptive action as a coup outside the chain of command threatened.
The conditions in 2011 were markedly different to those of 2007-2008, when
the hands of the military had been tied by external and internal factors. The
global economic crisis of 2008-2010 had effectively undermined the power of
the AKP government, which was no longer seen as being able to offer
economic stability and growth. The AKP had also lost much of its
international backing. Although the EU had remained supportive of the
Turkish Islamic conservatives, it no longer seemed to offer any prospect of
membership to Turkey. Thus, for the secular, pro-European voters, the