1980 Turkish coup d'état
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The Military coup in Turkey, 1980 was a coup d'etat made on September 12, 1980 by General Kenan Evren, head of the general staff and also chief of Counter-Guerrilla[citation needed], the Turkish branch of Gladio[citation needed].
Kenan Evren became the leader of the new junta, named National Security Council, and dissolved the parliament and the government. According to a widely believed story in Turkey, he and his team of force commanders were named "our boys" in the CIA headquarters after the coup.[1]
Following bloody years of turmoil and a deliberate strategy of tension followed by Counter-Guerrilla and the Grey Wolves, the military took power claiming to end the chaos. Thousands of people were imprisoned after the coup, generally from the intellectual strata of the community. After having used the Grey Wolves, Kenan Evren also decided to imprison hundreds of them for their role during the strategy of tension; however, many of them were later released in exchange for their fight against the PKK during the 1980s.
The people suffered heavily under strict leadership. Under the generals' leadership's guidance a new constitution was established diminishing civil liberties, and increasing the role of the National Security Council. In 1983 new elections were held, relinquishing the power to civilian rule.
According to the acknowledged Turkish scholar Ergun Özbudun "The 1983 Turkish transition is almost a textbook example of the degree to which a departing military regime can dictate the conditions of its departure (…)" (Özbudun, Ergun: Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000; p. 117).
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[edit] Context
The 1980 coup took place in a context of struggle and clashes between the left and the right-wing.
A first military coup had happened on May 27, 1960, ending up with the execution of Prime minister Adnan Menderes and two of his cabinet members Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan. The "junta" returned the power to civilians in October 1961, a period succeeded by parliamentary instability.
A second coup, dubbed "Coup by Memorandum", took place on March 12, 1971, leading to Bulent Ecevit's exercise of power. The NATO stay-behind army Counter-Guerrilla, related to the Millî İstihbarat Teşkilâtı (MIT), the Turkish intelligence agency, engaged itself in domestic terror and killed hundreds. As in Italy, it engaged itself in a strategy of tension[2]
[edit] Policies 1970-1980
On the international scale, Bulent Ecevit also decided the invasion of Cyprus to counter a coup supported by the Regime of the Colonels. [citation needed]
[edit] Right-wing and left-wing armed conflicts
Alparslan Türkeş, a member of the Counter-Guerrilla (Turkish branch of NATO's stay-behind army, known as Gladio[citation needed]), founded the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in 1969 , whose youth organizations became known as the Grey Wolves.
The overall death-toll of the terror of the 1970s is estimated at 5 000, with right-wing and terrorism responsible for the most part. According to statistics published by the British Searchlight magazine (n°47, May 1979, p.6), in 1978 they were 3 319 fascist attacks, in which 831 were killed and 3 121 wounded. The 1977 Taksim Square massacre, the 1978 Bahçelievler Massacre and the 1978 Kahramanmaraş Massacre testify to a serie of attacks.
According to Le Monde diplomatique, Grey Wolves member Abdullah Çatlı "is reckoned to have been one of the main perpetrators of underground operations carried out by the Turkish branch of the Gladio organisation[citation needed] and had played a key role in the bloody events of the period 1976-1980 which paved the way for the military coup d’état of September 1980. As the young head of the far-right Grey Wolves militia, he had been accused, among other things, of the murder of seven left-wing students." He was seen in the company of Avanguardia Nazionale founder Stefano Delle Chiaie, while touring Latin America and on a visit to Miami in September 1982.[3]
On February 1, 1979 in Istanbul, Grey Wolves member Mehmet Ali Ağca murdered Abdi İpekçi, editor of the moderate left-wing newspaper Milliyet.
[edit] The Coup
A paralyzed parliament and increasing death-toll prompted a coup in September 1980, led by General Kenan Evren. The US-support of this coup was acknowledged by the CIA Ankara station chief Paul Henze. After the government was overthrown, Henze cabled Washington, saying, "our boys have done it."[citation needed] At the time they were some 1,700 Grey Wolves organizations in Turkey, with about 200,000 registered members and a million sympathisers. Colonel Türkeş and other Grey Wolves were arrested after the coup. In its indictment of the MHP in May 1981, the Turkish military government charged 220 members of the MHP and its affiliates for 694 murders.[4]
However, Grey Wolves emprisonned members were offered release if they accepted to fight the Kurdish minority and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).[5] as well as the ASALA ("Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia"). They then went on to fight, with Counter-Guerrilla, Kurds, killing and torturing thousands in the 1980s, and also carrying false flag attacks in which the Counter-Guerrilla attacked villages, dressed up as PKK fighters, and raped and executed people randomly.[6] The dirty war had a toll of 37 000 victims.[7] The fact that Counter-Guerrilla had engaged in torture was confirmed by Talat Turhan, a former Turkish general. According to a December 5, 1990 article by the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Counter-Guerrilla had their headquarters in the building of the US DIA military secret service.[8] In addition, they carried out operations to assassinate the leader squad of ASALA, Hagop Hagopian, in which they succeeded on April 28, 1988.
According to a widely believed story in Turkey, Paul Henze, former chief of the CIA station in Turkey, declared the following day to his colleagues in Washington: "Our boys have done it!"[1] US president Carter would comment much later that "before the September 12 movement (sic), Turkey was in a critical situation with regard to its defences. After the invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Iranian monarchy, the movement for stabilisation in Turkey came as a relief to us.".[9]
[edit] Aftermath
In 1982, a new constitution is adapted; and one year later, with the elections, civilian politics is restored. However, the constitution referendum and the elections didn't take place in a free and competitive setting. Many political leaders of pre-coup era (including Süleyman Demirel, Bülent Ecevit, Alparslan Türkeş and Necmettin Erbakan) had been banned from politics, and all new parties needed to get the approval of the National Security Council in order to participate in the elections. Only 3 parties, two of which were actually created by the ruling military regime were permitted to contest.
Out of the 1983 elections came one-party governance under Turgut Ozal's Motherland Party, which combined a globally-oriented economic program with conservative social values. Under Ozal, the economy boomed, converting towns like Gaziantep from small provincial capitals into mid-sized economic boomtowns.
Upon the retirement of President Kenan Evren, the leader of the 1980 coup, Ozal was elected president, leaving parliament in the hands of the feckless Yildirim Akbulut, and then, in 1991, to Mesut Yilmaz. Yilmaz redoubled Turkey's economic profile and renewed its orientation toward Europe. But political instability followed as the host of banned politicians reentered politics, fracturing the vote, and the Motherland Party became increasingly corrupt. Ozal died of a heart attack in 1993 and Süleyman Demirel was elected president.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Selahattin Celik, Türkische Konterguerilla. Die Todesmaschinerie (Köln: Mesopotamien Verlag, 1999; see also Olüm Makinasi Türk Kontrgerillasi, 1995), quoting Cuneyit Arcayurek, Coups and the Secret Services, p.190
- ^ See Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Frank Cass, London, 2005. Extracts and documents available here.
- ^ (English)/(French) "Turkey's pivotal role in the international drug trade", Le Monde Diplomatique, July 1998.
- ^ Source: Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (New York, 1986, quoted by Daniele Ganser, 2005)
- ^ See interview of Grey Wolves member Ibrahim Ciftci with Milliyet on October 13, 1996, quoted by Daniele Ganser in Operation Gladio. Terrorism in Western Europe, 2005
- ^ Daniele Ganser, 2005
- ^ (French) "Les Kurdes de Turquie redoutent un retour aux années de plomb", Le Figaro, May 2, 2006. Retrieved on May 2, 2006.
- ^ Chronology from the ETH Zurich's website
- ^ Turkish magazine Kurtulus n°99, September 19, 1998 ([1]), quoting Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, July 21, 1988
