Is Turkey facing a military coup? No way, says a journalist whom I met in Istanbul, Turkey's most populous city which reminds visitors and citizens of the country's glorious Islamic past. During my conversation with journalists, academics, political activists and businessmen, I was shocked to hear them criticise Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey. A few years ago, none dared criticize him in public or in conversation with outsiders. Things are changing in Turkey. History is being rewritten. Even the last Ottoman sultans whom the Kemalists — supporters of Mustafa Kemal and Turkey’s secular system — blamed for all the ills of Turkey in the early 20th century are being hailed as "good and honest leaders". Media freedom has undergone a qualitative and quantitative change for the better. They are daring to speak now.
"The army won't be able to topple the government," the journalist said. "If it does, it knows there will be public uprising and street protests," he said.
"Can I quote you," I asked him.
"No problem, go ahead," he said.
But I told him that I would not mention his name, because I did not want any harm befall him.
A highly respected leader of the Fethullah Gulen movement, which emphasizes Islam's universal love and tries to make Islam compatible with the country’s secular order, told me that a "quiet revolution is taking place" in Turkey, hundreds years ago a superpower reverently addressed as the Great Ottoman Empire.
The revolution is: A government elected by the people is daring to look into the eyes of the "deep state", which, in Turkish political terminology, means a state within a state, while more and more people are discovering their Islamic roots, which the secular elite have been trying to erase for the past 86 years.
Turkey, where democracy had been often disturbed by regular military coups since the Republic was set up in 1923, is moving towards more democracy, with the government sending a message to the military that its role as a state within the state is ending.
 |
| Turkish President Abdullah Gul (C), Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (L) and Army Chief Ilker Basbug (R) hold a National Security Council meeting in Ankara on June 30 amid growing tension over an alleged military plan to discredit the Islamist-rooted government and moves in parliament to curb the army's powers. The portrait in the picutre is of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. AFP |
The Turkish military, which has the world's eighth largest Army, considers itself as the guardian of the republic. It is an important member of the "deep state" which believes that the responsibility to maintain the country's secular character lies with it. The deep state, which, apart from military chiefs, comprises the westernized elite including top public servants and university dons, are largely Kemalists — supporters of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey and its first President. They were the people who drafted Turkey’s secular constitution and laws that bar Muslim women from wearing the head scarf in keeping with Ataturk's vision of a modern republic.
Very little is known about Ataturk's family background or what his faith was. Was he a Muslim or a Donmeh, a word used for a member of a secretive Turkish society? Donmehs are the descendants of the Ottoman era Jews who, along with their leader Sabbatai Zevi, converted to Islam in 1666 and took Muslim names but secretly followed their Jewish rituals. The orthodox Jewry, however, has condemned the Donmehs as heretic because they worshipped Sabbatai Zevi as the messiah and an incarnation of God.
"It is very difficult to identify a Donmeh in today's Turkey because they have well assimilated into Turkish society and there is no difference between a Donmeh and a highly westernized Turkish Muslim," a journalist from Turkey's Cihan News Agency said. But he declined to answer my question whether Ataturk was a Donmeh.
A Google search, however, produced a number of web articles on Ataturk's alleged Jewish links.
Ataturk was an officer in the Ottoman Army. Hailing from Salonika, the birthplace of Donmehs, he was one of the commanders who defeated the British and the French forces during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. Later, he joined the Young Turk rebellion and played a key role in the military coup that overthrew Sultan Abdul Hameed II at a time when Western powers such as Britain and Zionists had deeply penetrated into the corridors of power in Istanbul. The Zionists were particularly angry with the Sultan, for he refused to meet the father of the Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl, when he visited Istanbul in 1901. The Zionists also tried to pay him money and buy Jerusalem, which was then under Ottoman rule.
The Sultan told one of his officials, "Advise Dr. Herzl not to take any further steps in his (Zionist) project. I cannot give away even a handful of the soil of this land (Palestine) for it is not my own, it belongs to the entire Islamic nation. The Islamic nation fought jihad for the sake of this land and had watered it with their blood. The Jews may keep their money and millions. If the Islamic Khilafah (state) is one day destroyed then they will be able to take Palestine without a price! But while I am alive, I would rather push a sword into my body than see the land of Palestine cut and given away from the Islamic State. This is something that will not be. I will not start cutting our bodies while we are alive."
This part of history has failed to find its way into Turkey's curriculum. Instead, officially recognized history books are full of blame for Sultan Abdul Hameed. They have painted him as as a vicious tyrant.
But senior journalists and academics whom I met during my week-long visit to Turkey say things are changing and people are beginning to see Sultan Abdul Hameed as an honest and pious leader and as a victim of the British and Zionist sinister schemes.
Ataturk later abolished the Caliphate (Sultanate) and with the help of the rival parliament in Ankara, he became the founder President of the Turkish Republic in 1923. He changed the country's Islamic character and confined Islam to mosques. Thousands of Islamic scholars were either banished or killed. The Arabic script was replaced with the Latin alphabet — a move that made 99 percent of the Turkish population illiterate overnight. The move, however, helped the westernized elite to dominate politics and covet top positions in public administration and the military. Eighty six years after the setting up of the republic, the elite who still continue to live with their erroneous belief that Turkey belongs to them feel threatened. The signs are ominous.
During my stay in Turkey last week together with veteran Sri Lankan journalist Latheef Farook on an invitation from the Cihan News Agency, a major political upheaval was taking place after a newspaper exposed a secret military document that gave details of a plot to overthrow the civilian government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and discredit the popular Fethullah Gulen movement, which is regarded as the power behind Turkey's current Islamic renaissance.
The exposé came against the backdrop of the arrest of several ex-military and civil servants last year for their alleged role in a plan to topple the democratically-elected government of Erdogan, who is the leader of the AK Party (Justice and Development Party). Erdoagan's Islamic credentials are an anathema to the deep state, which feels it is fast losing its place in Turkish politics.
Erdogan, who, as a teenage boy, sold lemonade and sesame bread on Turkish streets before he graduated from Istanbul's Marmara University, was a hardline Islamist. In the past, the military has toppled several Islamic-leaning governments. Former prime minister Adnan Menderes was tried in a military court and hanged. Another popular Islamic-leaning president, Turgut Ozal, died mysteriously. The official version was he died of a heart attack. But others say he was poisoned.
A controversial poem by Erdogan ruffled many feathers a few years ago and continues to hang over his administration like Damocles' sword. Here are the first lines of that poem.
"The mosques are our barracks
The domes our helmets
The minarets our bayonets and
The faithful our soldiers..."
Of late, largely due to the influence of the Gulen movement, Erdogan has distanced himself from his hardline Islamic views and is taking Turkey towards more democracy in an effort to gain full membership of the European Union. His moves towards more democracy have apparently irked the secular elite, for whom more democracy means more Islam. The secularists accuse him of having a secret agenda to turn Turkey into a religious state. But Erdogan is emerging strong. He is presiding over a government that has made Turkey one of the fastest growing economies of the world.
Last week, his government dared to arrest Colonel Dursun Cicek, who allegedly signed the military document that called for the toppling of Erdogan's government. On Wednesday, a court in Istanbul ordered his release, pending further investigations. In another move, parliament passed legislation to curb the powers of the military court in civil matters. The government said that such a measure was necessary to meet EU membership requirements.
These moves have added to the tension between Erdogan's government and the military, the self-assumed guardian of the secularist system.
(Next week: The return of Islam in Turkey).
Key events:
 |
May 15, 1919: Independence War began
Nov. 1, 1922: Regality (Sultanic Rule) was annulled
Oct. 29, 1923: Republic was declared and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk elected first President
Mar. 3, 1924: Caliphate was annulled
Nov. 1, 1928: Alphabet was changed from Ottoman to Latin
Feb. 6, 1937: Secularism was included in the Constitution
July, 1946: First multi-party elections
May. 27, 1960: First military coup. The civilian government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes was toppled. Menderes was later hanged.
Mar. 12, 1971: Second military coup. Turkish Armed Forces issued a memorandum and overthrew the government
Sep. 12, 1980: Third military coup. Political parties were banned.
Nov.6, 1983: General elections after the coup. A landslide victory brought Turgut Özal to power. The era of liberalization began.
Nov. 9, 1989: Özal became the country's eight President.
Apr. 17, 1993: Özal died of heart attack. (Many believe that he was poisoned)
Feb. 28, 1997: "Post-modern coup". The coalition government was forced to step down by the National Security Council (MGK)
Nov. 3, 2002: Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AK Party) won the elections
Oct. 3, 2005: Turkey-EU accession negotiations were launched
Jun. 16, 2007: a landmark investigation into a clandestine criminal network charged with plotting a coup began.
Jul. 22, 2007: AK Party won the general elections victory again with 46.6 percent of all the ballots cast this time.
|
E-mail