Democracy under Tutelage in Turkey

This chapter analyses the entrenchment of military-bureaucratic tutelage in Turkey in a more gradual and ad hoc fashion than Iran in the context of the Cold War and parallel to the development of multiparty democracy, through periodic “self-correcting” coups. Turkey formally became a multiparty democracy in 1946 and held its first competitive election four years later. But the country’s record of relatively free and fair elections has been punctured since 1960 by military coups that toppled elected governments and suspended the democratic process. With every intervention the self-proclaimed guardians of Atatürk’s legacy tightened their grip over Turkey’s state and society by enacting constitutional changes. They were able to influence events even when the soldiers were back in the barracks, through veto institutions like the National Security Council and their associates in the high judiciary, senior bureaucracy and civilian politics. The chapter takes an in-depth look at the socio-political and institutional legacies of the 1980 and 1997 coups, and the political events and debates surrounding the ‘deep state’, which set the stage for the power struggles of the 21st century.