Istanbul protest at government's cessation of peace process with PKK, July, 2015. Demotix/Erhan Demirtas. All rights reserved.In spite of being one of the only
polities in the Middle East considered as a democracy-model for other Muslim
nations by American administrations, Turkey has had an uneasy relationship with
democracy throughout its history.
While its founding fathers
desired western-style governance, Turkey’s first twenty-seven years passed under
a single-party regime whose opposition parties were closed or banned when they
contradicted the ruling Kemalist ideology. In response to the Soviet threat
following the Second World War, the regime adopted multi-party elections in
order to be accepted into the western bloc. Yet when the founding Republican
People’s Party lost power to the Democrat Party in 1950, the military emerged
as the ultimate power in Turkish politics.
Starting with the military coup
in 1960, the military intervened in every decade – in 1971, 1980 and 1997 –
whenever they believed the Kemalist ideology and state security were under
threat. As a result, although there were civilian regimes and electoral
politics in the political system, the Turkish people have rarely experienced
genuine democracy almost throughout their entire history.
The picture changed in 2007 when
the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the military
challenged each other over Abdullah Gul’s nomination to the presidency.
Although Turkey’s military opposed an Islamist politician’s candidacy, the
election following the disagreement ended with the AKP’s victory, which
significantly diminished military prestige. A year later, this prestige
declined further as some retired soldiers, even a former chief of army staff,
were accused of, and put on trial for, planning a coup. With these
developments, military control of Turkish politics ended and Turkish politics
entered a truly democratic stage for the first time in its history.
The Kurdish question
This democratization process
raised hopes on many issues, but especially on the Kurdish question. Since
1923, both the founding fathers and the military chose to end the Kurdish
question through military and economic means while social and political
concessions were avoided, using the argument that they may be the first step on
the way to an independent Kurdish state.
Since its formation, AKP leaders,
especially president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have opposed militarist policies and
in 2009, when the military no longer controlled politics, the party started out
on important cultural and political reforms. With the confidence of being a
single party government, the AKP started the Democratic Opening process in 2009
and met with several Kurdish groups in order to understand Kurdish grievances.
During this period, violence between the state and the PKK terrorist
organization diminished as indirect contacts between both sides were
established. In 2013, the government announced a Democracy Package which
included some cultural reforms and a “solution process” designed to curtail the
long-lasting violence. All these policies, which could not have been undertaken
in the period of military control, were the result of democratization. The
promise was the solution to the long-lasting Kurdish question.Yet, democracy is
never a perfect political system and may intensify existing problems,
especially once personal and party interests are at stake. After ending the
military control of politics, the AKP seemingly slowed democratic consolidation
in Turkey. Accession to the European Union, which had been the central focus
between 2002 and 2007, was removed from the agenda, while growing religiosity
in politics and excessive police repression during the Gezi park protests in
2013 raised question about the AKP’s commitment to democracy.
However, despite domestic and international
criticism, Ankara did not step back from the solution process in this period until
it came to the recent elections in June 2015. Due to electoral concerns, the
AKP suspended the solution process during the pre-election period while
charismatic Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas’ moderate speeches increased his
popularity not only in the Kurdish region but in western Turkey as well.
Consequently, the AKP lost around 9 per cent of the vote compared to the 2011
elections while both the ethnic-Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and
ethnic-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) increased their votes. The AKP
lost its ability to form a single-party government by losing its parliamentary
majority.
This electoral result has changed
all the political equations in Turkey. While the MHP increased its opposition
both to the solution process and to the HDP’s presence in the assembly, the AKP
also played on Turkish nationalist sentiment by accusing the HDP of being on
the same side as the PKK terrorist organization. Speeches by AKP officials
implied that the government has no desire to continue the solution process
which, they believe, cost them their parliamentarian majority. The Suruc
massacre by an ISIS member led to further deterioration of the situation.
Following the attack, which killed 32 people, the HDP blamed the government and
intelligence agencies for not preventing the attack, while the PKK initiated a
terrorist campaign by killing Turkish security officers and kidnapping people.
This has given the AKP and MHP
more of a chance to increase their militarist-nationalist rhetoric, while the
HDP has proved unable to criticize the PKK, again mainly out of its own
electoral concerns in southeast Turkey. All parties have chosen to fight rather
than take the last steps in the solution process.
Consequently, all the political parties
are starting to follow the same paths they took in the 1990s. While the PKK
organizes terrorist attacks, the Turkish army hits the PKK camps in northern
Iraq and both the MHP and AKP have started a political campaign to remove
Kurdish parliamentarians’ immunity.
The situation today shows that
Turkey’s problem with democracy is more structural and normative than simply a
civil-military relations problem. With a politically-aggressive military
removed, Turkish politicians are still unable to play by the rules of
democracy, as both the AKP and MHP are unwilling to recognize the HDP’s
electoral gains. At the same time, the HDP cannot effectively differentiate
itself from PKK terrorism, as its leaders cannot criticize the organization.
But most importantly, all sides
expend all their effort on protecting their personal and party interests
instead of fixing the system that they broke. In its first real test after the
end of military control, Turkish democracy has failed. If democracy cannot keep
its promise and bring peace, then what can?