A modern nation-state carved out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. A society with deep eastern roots, commandeered and rebuilt by westernized elites as a secular, liberal state.
As the decades pass, the society’s buried traditional elements begin to re-emerge and with the help of favorable demographic and cultural waves, the more traditional sectors of society achieve the democratic strength to form a governing coalition.
The westernized elites, though deposed from elected office, maintained much of the institutional power they had built, and sought to use one of those institutions – the military – to correct course.
Turkey, early 1997: two years prior the Islamist Welfare party won a plurality in the Grand National Assembly, allowing its leader – Necemttin Erbakan – to form a government and break the Kemalist rule which had been continuous since the birth of the modern Turkish state.
Erbakan turned Turkey eastward both domestically and globally. He greatly expanded the religious school system and openly worked towards the creation of a regional NATO-style military alliance, breaking dramatically from Turkey’s long-standing Western-oriented domestic and global policy.
The military intervened about a year into Erbakan’s premiership. General Cevik Bir, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, established the Western Working Group, an organization for the military to organize resistance against Erbakan and his policies. On February 4, they marched with tanks down the streets in Sincan in a show of strength. And on February 28, they released their demands: the resignation of Prime Minister Erbakan, the closure of the religious schools opened during his premiership, and the forced abolition of tariqas (civilian Islamic outreach associations).
The coup d’état was immediately successful, forcing Erbakan to endorse their demands and resign from office. Shortly thereafter, Erbakan’s Welfare Party was banned by Turkish courts for promoting Islamic fundamentalism.
History repeated itself in Turkey in 2016, though with much different results. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was a member of the Welfare Party during the coup, led his new Justice and Development Party to a sweeping victory in 2002, holding the premiership from 2003-2014, whereafter he became president in Turkey’s new semi-presidential system.
The Kemalist establishment began to mobilize against the increasingly popular and powerful Islamic movement, and its champion, President Erdogan. On July 15, 2016, the Peace at Home Council, organized Kemalist elements within the military, launched a coup against Erdogan’s government, declaring a military junta on Turkish airwaves.
But unlike the success of 1997, this coup was a disaster. Erdogan was more popular than Erbakan, two decades before, with more allies and institutional power. Erdogan’s allies in the National Intelligence Organization discovered the plot and his allies within the military put down the coup. The Turkish Islamic establishment organized mass protests in support of the president. By the next day, Erdogan announced the coup had been subdued, beginning an ongoing wave of detention of hundreds of thousands of military officers, judges, bureaucrats and other co-conspirators, as well as a government seizure of up to $60 billion US dollars believed to be connected to the coup.
The similarities between Israel and Turkey, especially right now, are almost too obvious to even explain, yet often too uncomfortable for many to consider. As Israel faces its own traditional turn against its westernized establishment and, consequentially, its own threatened military coup from said establishment, it is worth wondering: will this be a successful coup along the lines of 1997 or a self-destructive disaster in the image of 2016?
Yet, even if it is a 1997-style success, the demographic tsunami will not be stopped.
The issues dividing Israeli society will not go away and the popular momentum behind the current coalition will only continue to snowball. Even if Ehud Barak’s attempted coup succeeds, the next one will fail: the Israeli eastward turn can perhaps be delayed, but it cannot be averted.
