Dwyer: Turkey makes peace with religion

In my trade you get used to it after a while, but the first time you wake up to find a military coup has happened overnight where you live is quite alarming. That was in Turkey back in 1971, when the army seized control of the country after months of political turmoil. It was not as bad as the 1960 coup, when the military authorities tried and hanged the prime minister, but it was bad enough.

There were two more coups in Turkey: In 1980, when half a million were arrested, tens of thousands were tortured and 50 were executed, and 1997, a “post-modern” coup in which the army simply ordered the prime minister to resign.

But there will be no more coups in Turkey: The army has finally been forced to bow to a democratically elected government.

Last Friday, a Turkish court sentenced

330 people, almost all military officers, to prison for their involvement in a coup plot in 2003. They included the former heads of the army, navy and air force, who received sentences of 20 years each, and six other generals.

Five years ago, nobody in Turkey could have imagined such a thing. The military was above the law, with the sacred mission of defending the secular state from being undermined by people who mixed religion with politics.

This was the duty the 330 officers thought they were performing in 2003, according to the indictments against them. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), a moderate Islamic party espousing conservative social values, had come to power after the 2002 election: The voters had got it wrong again, and their mistake had to be corrected.

With public opinion abroad and at home increasingly hostile to military coups, a better pretext was needed than in the old days. So the plot, Operation Sledgehammer, involved bomb attacks on two major mosques in Istanbul, a Turkish fighter jet shot down by the Greeks and an attack on a military museum by Islamic militants. The real attackers would actually be the military themselves. The accused 330 claimed Operation Sledgehammer was just a scenario for a military exercise, and the documents supporting the accusations have never been properly attributed. But given the army’s track record of four coups in 50 years and its deeply rooted hostility to Islamic parties, the charges were plausible, and the court believed them.

The army has no choice but to accept the court’s judgment. The AK party has been re-elected twice with increasing majorities, the party’s pious leaders have not tried to shove their values down everybody else’s throats, and the economy has flourished. Even now, many in Turkey still think the army is there to protect them from the oppression of the religious fanatics, and that any attempt to curb its power is a conspiracy against the secular, neutral state.

But the Turkish secular state has never been neutral. From the time Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his companions rescued Turkey from the wreckage of the Ottoman empire after the First World War, the state was at war with religion.

But today’s Turkey is modern, powerful and prosperous, and there is no external threat.

It’s time for the Turkish army to stop waging a cold war against the devoutly religious. They are entitled to the full rights of citizenship, too.

That was the significance of AK’s victories in the past three elections, and of the trials that have finally brought the army under control. The head of the Turkish armed forces and all three service chiefs resigned in July in protest against the trials of military personnel, but President Abdullah Gul promptly appointed a new head of the armed forces — who tamely accepted the post. It’s over.

— Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

via Dwyer: Turkey makes peace with religion | Column | Opinion | The London Free Press.