The Turkish AK Party and its Leader by Cizre Umit;

Author:Cizre, Umit;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4530556
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Birikim and the AK Party’s policies toward the military tutelage

Birikim troika’s personal histories and ideological upbringings obviously position them against the TAF’s tutelary role, which they hold responsible for the repression of a democratic life and thought in Turkey after 1980.49 Not surprisingly, this issue has been at the center stage of their critique of the ruling party. The editors believe that the breaking point for the post-1980 tutelary regime came on February 28, 1997 when the notion of military intervention proved to be still alive and on the books. The post-2002 clandestine coup plans within the army revealed in 2007, on the other hand, showed that the aspirations of the high command had moved from “tutelage to establishing a military dictatorship.”50 With the institutions, actors, constitution and laws of the tutelary regime still being operative, the consensus in Birikim is that the investigations and trials of Ergenekon51 helped reveal to the public beyond any doubt that the guardians of the republic were plotting to overthrow a constitutionally elected government and the trials “are delivering the last blow” to the guardians exhausting their “societal legitimacy.” The end result is that the Kemalist “tutelary regime is dying.”52 Challenging the military’s hegemony is portrayed as being inevitably intertwined with the middle-class support base of the party in Birikim’s analysis. As a party carrying out a bourgeoisie democratic revolution, it had to deal with the military question to release the huge energy and dynamism of the so far marginalized but nascent middle classes in their march up to the top.

The Birikim group lauds the AK Party’s robust posture that led to the disempowerment of the high command regarding the latter’s political role. One feels that in assessing the government’s performance on the issue, the Birikim troika has given this government a special/preferential place which they denied to past governments, which, to be fair to them, it can be argued, were hindered in their own treatment of the military issue by broader Cold War strategic conditions. Birikim’s critique also overlooks the initial years of the government in office when it followed a conflict avoidance approach and did not rattle the military’s cage. This appreciation of the government represented the sentiments of the majority of socialists in the country who suffered physically and emotionally in the past because of the ideological character and self-assigned guardian role of the army. Laçiner sums up why Birikim has supported the government on this issue regardless of alienating most left-wingers:

I have always known that the AK Party guys were conservative right-wingers … “Well then,” they say “is the AK Party any good?” No, it isn’t. It doesn’t have to be good. It fulfilled a duty in the removal of the military’s tutelage. I believed that it was terrible for Turkey for the army to have a say about the country’s future … I thought it was extremely important that the status of those who did not consider the majority of the citizens as human beings and caused hell in the life of the country was pulled back … This is done.

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