It’s been 22 years since the last coup in Turkey. We saw other coup attempts from the e-memorandum of 27 April, 2007, to the bloodiest coup attempt of 15 July, 2016. But these two failed to topple down the democratically elected government. Unlike the later two cases, the military’s intervention on 28 February, 1997, toppled down the government, banned the biggest party (Welfare Party) in parliament, and arrested many for not adhering to the republican laws (!) This last item of enforcing republican laws deserves more attention since it is a living memory in contemporary Turkish society and one major cleavage of political polarization. The coup plotters did not only push Prime Minister Erbakan to resign, but also took severe measures to affect society as a whole. The coup was not just about re-shaping the political spectrum by forcing political parties with military dictates. It was also a top-down social engineering process. A process that was destined to fail.

During and in the aftermath of the coup, the companionship of the Turkish military and judiciary carried out severe measures targeting the life styles of ordinary pious people on the street. Girls in headscarves were prevented from receiving education, as they could not enter public or private universities. One such fresh memory is the video footage of Behriye Kardeniz. She was a university student wearing a headscarf studying at the Nursery School of Sivas Cumhuriyet University. She happened to graduate in the heydays of the February 28 process. She did not simply graduate, but was also the top student of her entire program. The video footage takes place during her graduation ceremony where she was prevented from speaking while some people were shutting her mouth with their hands and pulling her headscarf.

Such encounters have tones of documented evidence, where women in headscarves went through physical and psychological intervention not only from the police or other security personnel, but also from their professors and peers. The mainstream media whitewashed such atrocities, the leading Turkish industrialists made supportive speeches for the process, and even some elected politicians took side with the military’s policies. While the policies of the coup plotters were still in charge, PM Ecevit had made a very harsh speech against the only female deputy in parliament with a headscarf. He had said that “Here [the Parliament] is not a place to challenge the state. Please bring this lady into line.” Following the speech Kavakci was forced to leave parliament and she was expelled from parliament and her Turkish citizenship was revoked.

It is this legacy that keeps the conservative and pious people of Turkey united behind the current President Erdogan to a great extent. Erdogan, himself was jailed in the process and banned from active political activities. Thousands of Turkish women had to drop out of school, thousands of students –both male and female- from Islamic education schools were denied entry to universities, and so on. These students still vote today and their memories are still fresh. Some people think that it has been 22 years since the coup and it is time to forget. I disagree. I believe the February 28 process showed and enforced the major line of division in Turkish politics and society.

The old establishment of Turkey and their supporters did not want the conservative people of Anatolia to rise in the social, economic, and political life. The latent critiques of AK Party still seems to be about its role in the vertical mobilization of Turkey’s conservative millions. They could study in higher education and become judges, parliamentary members, and so on. This has changed Turkey’s traditional social structure in which the conservative millions of Anatolia had one role to play, serve the civilized(!) and modern republican spirited people (or White Turks in short) of Turkey.

Erdogan’s AK Party has broken this power structure. But even today, women in headscarf are denied to enter such white Turkish circles. I can count multiple private universities in which you cannot see a single professor, instructor or secretary in headscarf. The same observation is valid for many other private companies, which explicitly exclude such conservative people from their staff. And this tells me that these very same circles who no longer control the state apparatus but continue to exclude pious people from their private enterprises must be missing the February 28 coup. The millions voting for Erdogan’s AK Party seem to be aware of this living polarization. Their memories of February 28 do not die because the spirit of February 28 coup plotters is still alive.

Exceptional for being a “post-modern coup” in Turkey’s history of coups and triggering one of the largest devastations of the political system in contemporary history, February 28 differs from other coups for being a process rather than a one-off intiative. Unlike conventional military coups that occurred during the multiparty system era, the coup was realized in coordination with actors from the judiciary, mass-media, academia, finance and the business worlds while the material and psychological damage it caused is still observable in various institutions and segments of society. The said damage is a result of the immense socio-psychological traumas triggered by the implementation of the headscarf ban, discriminatory quotients and national security pressure over pious segments of society with the pretense of a so-called “Sharia threat.” While there are ongoing February 28 trials today, the disappointments, tragedies and wasted years of thousands of people who were barred from employment and education are still fresh. On the other hand, it is obvious that the coup caused political and economic devastation due to banned politicians, parties that were closed down, siphoned banks and ransacked public finances. Having multidimensional societal and institutional devastations similar to all other military coups, analyzing the economic and financial damage caused by the February 28, 1997 coup is crucial.

Turkey’s first liberalization experience

Remembering the issues and systemic malfunctions of Turkey’s post-1980 liberalization experience is important in terms of better understanding the economic dimensions of the February 28 process. Turgut Özal led Turkey’s first wave of liberalization and implemented it according to the “Washington Consensus,” which limits state interference and enforces deregulation. During this era, the overlapping visions of the Motherland Party and foreign institutions led by the IMF and World Bank accelerated the process towards an open economy. However, even though a free market economy was advocated, failing to amend regulations and establish control mechanisms necessary for the institutional infrastructure rendered the country’s economy prone to crisis. Meanwhile, the era of fragile coalitions which began in 1991, triggered a ten-year long period of instability as political uncertainties and financial crises aggravated each other. High inflation, burden of uncontrolled public debt and the need for international loans condemned the economy to a vicious cycle in which debts were paid off with new loans. With the 1994 financial crisis, Turkey suffered its first systemic shock after the decision of financial liberalization in 1989.

The divided political structure and vulnerabilities in the management of the economy in the mid-1990s consolidated the spoils system. Public finance deteriorated due to paying high interest to the financial sector over aggravating internal debt. Systemically making losses under the pretense of “duty losses,” state economic enterprises (KITs) were being covered by high interest loans taken from private banks, making it a lucrative business for individuals with immense capital. By loaning the credits taken abroad to public institutions with high interest rates and exploiting the internal debt spiral, a superficial bourgeoisie that had the political power to form and destroy political coalitions was shaped. Along with banks, large-scale industrial enterprises in and around the Association of Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen (TÜSIAD) amassed a huge capital through internal debt incomes, which were shown as non-operating income. The terms such as industry, investment and production became obsolete in the country.

The Welfare Party’s ‘pool system’ in the Treasury

Winning the elections in 1994 through the discourse of clean politics and crowning this victory by coming first in the 1995 parliamentary elections, the Welfare Party led by Necmettin Erbakan formed a coalition with the True Path Party and was determined to implement a “pool system” that would overhaul the management of macroeconomics. Implemented in 1996, this system created a resource pool among state enterprises and allowed those showing relatively better financial performance to loan with low interest rates. Rather innovative for its time, the pool system limited the vulnerabilities of public finance that was caused by state enterprises and the total public debt started to decline. However, as has been the case throughout Turkey’s political history, the large-scale bourgeoisie objected to this innovation in order to protect their interests, resorting to anti-democratic tactics. The new public finance order caused a great loss to those who were loaning funds to the state institutions with high interest rates. Rejecting to lose their source of easy income, this financial bourgeoisie initiated its plan to either persuade the coalition to give up the pool system or to depose the coalition. A consensus was formed between the military-civilian bureaucracy and large business groups along with their media affiliates who were all ideologically opposed to the Welfare Party’s Islamic discourses. A psychological war was launched during which the economic concerns and calculations were kept hidden as a part of the strategy and some careless statements made by certain members of the Welfare Party were provocatively used to indicate a so-called “Sharia threat.”

Financial operations hidden behind the regression discourse

What happened next is history. Using the expression “readjusting democracy”, February 28 process created a new type of post-modern coup aiming to change the government through the discourse “secularism is being abolished” rather than just seizing the control of the state through armed forces. Assumed to “last for a thousand years,” this process was expected to shift the economic and social balance along with the political, to obstruct political movements that emphasize Islamic identity and to constrain the conservative representatives of the business world like Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (MUSIAD) and Anatolian Tigers Business Association (ASKON).

While injecting the paranoia of regression into the subconsciousness of society with marginalized figures and images, the coup perpetrators were attempting to cover up the substantial economic and financial operation. Indeed, during the 4-year time period between February 28, 1997, and the 2001 financial crisis, Turkey lost its public finance discipline and experienced the most intense subsequent crises of the country’s political economy. Coming to power in June 1997, the coalition formed between the Motherland Party, Democratic Left Party and True Path Party, also known as the AnaSol-D coalition, removed the pool system and opened the way to the internal debt exploitation cycle. This caused the interest expenditure to national dividend ratio to increase from 5% to 17% within four years. Allowing the financial bourgeoisie to exploit internal debt, this system crashed with the twin crises of 2000 and 2001 – all tax revenue of the state was being used for paying interest and it was not enough.

The financial cost of February 28 process: over $50 billion

Along with having a detrimental effect on public finance, the February 28, 1997 coup also damaged financial supervision and regulation systems. Undermining the financial supervision system, weak coalition governments issued multiple banking licenses together with their allies including the military-civilian bureaucracy and financial bourgeoisie. Transferring public banks to private enterprises without any supervision, issuing banking permits easily, siphoning banks the high volume of international loans taken to be given to public institutions with high interest rates and the fragility of supervisory institutions triggered a banking crisis. During the process, 20 private banks announced bankruptcy and were transferred to the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund of Turkey (TMSF). Considering the burden of seized banks, their interests and the burden of public banks, which were at a duty loss, the February 28 process cost over $50 billion to Turkey.

One of the most tragic features of the era in terms of the relationship between politics and economics was that retired generals were being made members of many private companies and the executive boards of various holdings. Under military tutelage, these large-scale enterprises did not shy away from protecting themselves with senior military officers and using their influences for commercial purposes. As the Chief of General Staff Hilmi Özkök objected to this practice on ethical grounds, this tradition, which only exists in third world countries, came to an end. However, the mysterious relationship between military actors and the financial bourgeoisie is among the main dimensions of February 28, which we are yet to shed light upon. Meanwhile, it should be remembered that the TUSIAD administration – which tries to boast on being pro-democracy and pro-modernization – while reaping the economic benefits of this hefty crime period, was silent to injustices committed against conservative political movements, conservative segments of society and entrepreneurs.

Despite all institutional and democratic gains, as the July 15 coup attempt reminds us that the threat of military coups in Turkey is still alive. For this reason, democratic consolidation, social solidarity and economic institutionalization which render such coup attempts unsuccessful, shall be achieved swiftly and the anti-coup spirit should be kept alive at all times.

The claim that the process started by the 1997 Turkish military memorandum will “last a thousand years” was founded on a wrong answer to the question as to why military coups occur. According to this view, coups are the result of a clash between a state with immense powers or a “progressive” bureaucratic elite and public elements with “reactionary” beliefs. Historically, the coups in Turkey happened due to political and public actors that were unable to internalize the republican regime and Ataturk’s reforms crossed the red lines of the state. Thus, military coups would only end after the entire public internalized reforms through a radical political and cultural shift. The sociological extinction of “reactionary” views and the decreasing number of people subscribing to those views led to the end of coups.

Those who sought alternative answers to this question were also similarly mistaken. For example, people evaluating the issue from the point of political culture reasoned that coups happen due to a statist mindset with authoritarian and patriarchal inclinations. Such mental constructs, present since the Ottoman era, were the real reason for coups. The prevention of new coups required a radical shift in public mentality, which would subsequently lead to a dominance of democratic beliefs in politics. In order to accomplish this, it was necessary for the perpetrators of the coups, namely the state, the military or the bureaucratic elite, to gradually lose its importance and control in politics to a civil society with liberal beliefs.

Another opinion was that coups in Turkey occur as a result of the interference of international powers. This was especially for the cause of the U.S. due to its global influence and self-interest in Turkish politics. According to this belief, any government that adopted internal or foreign policies against the interests of the U.S. would inevitably face a military coup. Therefore, in order to prevent coups, it was necessary to stop toeing the line of the west and end their influence in Turkey.

These three views all disregard the sociological structural factors of the Turkish public. The changes in the balance of power between political and public actors in the country were not being accounted for. Coups could possibly be triggered by an authoritarian and patriarchal mindset endemic in the state, resistance of the public to internalize Kemalist reforms and bureaucracy or international forces seeking to shape Turkish politics according to their own interests. However, none of these factors explain why coups are actively being used as a tool in political power relations. The reason for this is because only the perpetrators of the coup, whether the military, bureaucratic elite or the west were being focused on. The political and sociological forces subject to the coup were being objectified and not being viewed as political agents. The reason why coups were being actively used as a tool in political power relations and succeeding in their intentions was due to the fact that the public subject to such military interventions were weak.

Changing balances of power

To give a substantial answer to the question regarding why coups occur, one must examine and account for the historical developments in political and social balances of power in Turkey. The main power struggles in Turkish politics between the 1840s and the 1920s happened between the Ottoman Sultan and the westernized bureaucratic elite, combined with inner conflicts of the bureaucratic elite itself. During this period, popular democratic forces were not even perceived as actors in politics. Since the 1950s, political power struggles have occurred between the military and the bureaucratic elite, around which gathered the capital-owning class, organic intellectuals, artists, politicians and small portions of the public in line with these elements either due to ideological or financial benefits, versus popular domestic forces of the public. We can identify two main structural breaking points within this period that deeply affected public power balances.

The first is the partial dismantling of state power and its division among democratic forces according to the principles of democratic politics. This turned the long-standing hierarchical structure of political power in the country into an anarchical one (as in power did not belong to anyone). State power that was solely wielded by the Sultan for a long time prior to the 19^th century was being shared among bureaucratic oligarchic powers and the Sultan until 1919. Following the abolition of the Sultanate in 1922, political power transferred entirely to the bureaucratic oligarchy. In both cases, government power was not open to the public and had absolute owners.

The opening of political power to the public with a multi-party parliamentary system was introduced and its subsequent adoption by certain political actors in the 1950s caused a radical change in the situation; it opened the political stage for large masses in search of a democratic regime. Likewise, democracy is a system of government where segments of the population that hold a majority are the principal actors in the government of the state. From this point onwards, political power was being shared between the bureaucracy and large public masses – in other words, between the appointed and the elected. After the 1950s, the struggle for power was the main driver of Turkish politics. The 1960, 1980 and 1997 coups are critical moments in Turkish history where oligarchic powers, along with their bureaucratic and civil counterparts, acted together to keep their hold on political power and to banish the representatives of the people from the power domain via accusations of being “reactionary” and “separatist.” These sudden coups were always followed by periods where via the introduction of new regulatory agencies, power was restored to the bureaucratic oligarchy and further denied to the general public.

The second structural breaking point was the continuous strengthening of democratic public actors against the oligarchy. This is a situation that must happen in practice if a democratic regime’s ideal of transitioning political power to the public is to be realized. The conservative strata of the public, composed chiefly of people with low socio-economic status from the Turkish countryside, became urbanized and improved their economic and cultural class over the course of a half a century period. The result of this sociological shift is the gradual change of material and moral power balances between the minority oligarchic powers and majority democratic powers in the country. If a small analogy is to be made between this situation and international relations, we can say that the unipolar structure that enabled the hegemony of oligarchy powers and backed coups slowly evolved into a bipolar structure via the strengthening of democratic forces. This bipolar structure enabled the AK Party to assume power in 2002 and allowed it to become even more established and stable in the following periods between 2002 and 2010.

The period from 2010 onwards was defined by the gradual shift of power towards the pole represented by the AK Party and a transition back to a unipolar power structure. Two indicators representative of this are first, the Nationalist Movement Party’s (MHP) – a party that traditionally associated itself with a different segment of society – decision to closely follow the AK Party’s line after the November 1, 2015, elections. The second indicator is the fact that the opposition led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) had to plan its policies defensively, with the focus of preventing AK Party’s influence and power from increasing rather than offensively, with the focus of reclaiming the government and political power.

Are new coups possible?

Changing power balances explain why the coups of 1960, 1971, 1980 and February 28, 1997, were successful while the memorandum of 27 April 2007, the attempted judiciary coup of December 2013 and the failed military coup of July 15, 2016, were unsuccessful. As pro-democratic political and public actors change power balances in their favor, coup attempts become unable to achieve desired results. Furthermore, as democratic forces accumulate their share of power in the political system, coups will ultimately stop being an effective tool in power struggles. Thus, as coups fail to succeed, the heavy costs of participating in a failed coup attempt, namely the legal punishments of participating in anti-democratic acts, deter future coup attempts.

The court decision of June 2014 that sentenced the participants of the 1980 coup to life imprisonment, the current point arrived in the trial process concerning the 1997 coup and the fast-moving trial process of the 2016 coup attempt signify that Turkey has reached an important milestone with respect to domestic democratization. Coup trials can neither be reduced to, as some say, attempts of revenge, nor can they be reduced to purely apolitical processes where injustices are addressed and justice is served. Attempts to define this process through apolitical points of views disregard the historical structural breaking point that Turkey has gone through. Since the 1950s, large public masses have become political actors and the power balances in Turkey continue to shift in favor of pro-democratic forces. This historical and on-going structural process renders future coups impossible.

February 28 was a coup. There was nothing post-modern about it. In a clear and direct way, it was a military coup d’état. The government was deposed through threats, blackmails and various other methods. Illegitimate means were used. It was anti-democratic.

While the army led the way, academics supported them, the business world preferred this overthrow and the media announced the whole thing. A legitimately elected government was deposed due to its number of deputies in Parliament. Politicians were threatened at the National Security Council. They were forced to sign various decisions. Tanks paraded on the streets. People were arrested. Discrimination occurred in all spheres, on all levels. Methods of political engineering were applied. Psychological warfare became part of everyday life. If this is not a coup, then what was it?

Those who claim that February 28 was not a coup are only trying to cover up their own crimes. I’m not sure who coined the term “post-modern coup,” but it is being used frequently. What does this mean? Nothing essentially. Are coups modern? Did they not exist before modernity? What does post-modernism, a phenomenon of the social sciences, have to do with February 28? The whole thing is farcical.

Turkey’s conservatives barred from accessing education

The coup’s most prominent aspect was education. With discriminatory policies and double standards, the religious segment of society was barred from accessing education. The headscarf ban was implemented and wasted away a generation. The 28 February coup was not only framed against politicians, but against society.

Looking back, we may assume that this mentality has been defeated. However, the estimates of the damage made are yet to be calculated: How many girls were barred from education due to wearing a headscarf? How many people were barred from education through the implemented quotient to imam-hatip and vocational high schools? How many dreams were shattered?

In the upcoming years, all these estimates may become clear. For instance, it might be easier to calculate how many people were denied the right to an education due to their headscarves. Yet, we may not know how many girls had to remove their headscarves in order to access education. Moreover, we may never know the cost of the trauma the coup had on the psychology of these girls.

Think about it. How many girls had to give up on registering to university because of the headscarf ban? You may have seen such examples around you. It is possible to understand what a prominent tragedy this was by listening to personal experiences. We may assume that it has a higher cost when we think about society as a whole. Despite these events, if some are still claiming that February 28 was not a coup, this means that the arrays of events have not been explained well enough.

Another aspect of this hostility and design was the quotient issue of imam-hatip high school graduates. Through the implementation of a quotient, the coup plotters wanted to bar a generation from accessing education. Those who remember will note that in the summer of that year, regulations involving university entrance had changed. High school seniors learned that entering a university was almost impossible in the autumn. More, they were told that they could not transfer to other high schools as it was also banned. Some transferred to open high schools, where they would complete their education from outside the system. There were a few who entered foundation universities. Some had to go abroad, as if they were exile. They suffered a lot. Yet, these people were the only ones that could have saved themselves as a minority. Most of them were doomed and were forced to apply to open education. While their scores were enough to enter prestigious universities in Istanbul or Ankara, they were forced to register to associate degree programs.

We didn’t forget, we won’t forget

Who could possibly calculate the estimates of this cost? Who is to be held accountable for the people deprived of an education? There is a vile figure left from those times. He was only recently defending all these discriminatory practices on TV. In the eyes of God, everything is forgivable, with the exception of injustice towards a fellow human being. Thousands of people were barred from establishing a good career and helping their children and grandchildren establish a good career. Is this a forgivable crime?

I came across a friend of mine who could have entered the most prestigious universities in Turkey had these unjust practices not been implemented. He told me that he had worked in various villages and towns of Anatolia for many years as a high school graduate. After many years he re-entered the university exam. He said he would be graduating soon. “After 18 years, I barely got everything back on track,” he said. Who is going to answer for all these years wasted? Who can claim that February 28 was not a coup? It was a vile coup that stole the future of people.

There is never a “good” coup, as all of them in all forms are detrimental. However, February 28 was different than previous coups as it tried to achieve more. The government deposed with the May 27, 1960, coup and which was replaced with state bureaucracy had an impact on the state, but not directly on society itself. The right to education was not barred. The March 12, 1971, coup was realized among various fractions of the state and was mostly dis-regarded by the people. The September 12, 1980, coup hurt a lot of people. However, it had a limited design towards the people as it aimed to perpetuate the tutelage system. It did not care about left or right wing politics – its focus was the state. Meanwhile however, the February 28, 1997, coup did not only push the largest ideological group in Turkey away from politics, but also attempted to destroy them. In this respect, the February 28 coup is on par with the July 15, 2016, coup attempt. The July 15 coup attempted to have a larger impact than February 28. It tried to control all of society, not just a particular segment. If the July 15 coup attempt had been successful, the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) would have had control of both the state and society. As they failed with this aim, they attempted to push the country into a civil war. Considering these factors, only July 15 could be compared with February 28 in terms of vileness.

There is never a “good” coup. Military overthrows are vile. However, some are trying to whitewash February 28 today. Excuse me, but we have not forgotten, and will never forget the tragedies lived.