Patrick Botros
Dr. Erdag Goknar
AMES 208FS
12 December 2016
The Military and Police Force as Political Actors in Egypt and Turkey
In Turkey and Egypt, the political is personal, spiritual, and often brutal. Both Turkey and Egypt hail from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, were liberated by secular strongmen, house majority Muslim populations, and have made a tradition of the coup. In keeping with this tradition, military elements staged a coup in Egypt in 2013 and in Turkey in 2016. The former was the result of the Tahrir Square uprising while the latter was, in part, the result of the demonstrations at Taksim Square. The former resulted in the ousting of Mohamed Morsi, the latter resulted in the detainment of the putschists and an authoritarian crackdown. I will also contrast the roles of the police forces in each country through the lens of the 2013 Taksim and Tahrir revolutions. Further, I will attempt to explain how the AKP has largely stemmed the threat of military intervention in the political sphere while the military still looms large in Egyptian politics. Finally, I will dispel the notion, popular among many other scholars, that the new Turkish model of liberalization-democratization is impossible for Egypt. For convenience and clarity, I will refer to the Egypt’s 2011 revolution only as “a revolution” and Egypt’s 2013 revolution only as a “coup” or “soft coup”
Modern Egypt emerged from the declining Ottoman Empire in 1805 at the hands of Muhammed Ali Pasha. His dynasty would survive until the Free Officers Movement in 1953 overthrew King Farouk, a British puppet, established Egypt as a republic and installed Mohammed Naguib as its first President. Gamal Abdel Nasser, a younger officer of the Egyptian revolution, became embroiled in a power struggle with Naguib after spats over the role the military should play in Egyptian politics. "[A]t the age of 36, Abdel-Nasser felt that we could ignore Egyptian public opinion until we had reached our goals, but with the caution of a 53-year-old, I believed that we needed grassroots support for our policies, even if it meant postponing some of our goals,” Naguib would write. Nasser, however, believed that without military control, the Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood would take power. In the end, Nasser won over the support of the military council and would force Naguib to resign, leaving Nasser free to pursue his pan-Arabist, socialist, secular agenda. Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat took power following Nasser’s death in office, and is most notable for establishing peace with Israel, a feat which would get him assassinated six years later by Islamists. His successor, Hosni Mubarak, acted as a tyrant committing such gross atrocities against the Egyptian people as to prompt massive protests in Tahrir (literally, “liberation”) Square. The Egyptian army stood with the protesters, forcing Mubarak to step down and face trial. However, not before riot police moved on the protesters. In Egypt’s 2012 Presidential race, Shafik won the election over Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, though the military gave the election to Morsi for fear of unrest, according to Israeli scholar and statesmen Yossi Beilin. After a year of Morsi’s corrupt, extremist Islamist rule, mass protests again erupted in Tahrir Square and the military again stepped in to remove Morsi and install General Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi, who would attempt to legitimize his rule in the following election.
Likewise, Turkey came about in the wake of the balkanization of the Ottoman Empire in 1919. Liberated by military genius turned secular strongman Mustafa Kemal Attatürk whose philosophy surrounding the role of the military in Turkey, of illiberal secularism, recalls that of Nasser. Eventually, an end to one-party rule was permitted in 1946 with the first multi-party elections in the state’s history. Just fourteen years later, though, the military would oust the elected Adnan Menderes government over its move away from illiberal secularism. Specifically, in allowing Muslim Turks to say their call to prayer in Arabic, in opening new theological schools, and in allowing thousands more mosques to operate. For these offenses, Menderes was tried for treason and executed. In 1971, widespread economic insecurity prompted the military’s second coup. Stability did not come with the 1971 coup, however, which was brought about by another coup nine years later. In response to the 1995 elections, the Turkish military pioneered what has come to be known as the post-modern coup. The military, without ever resorting to the use of force, “suggested” that Erbakan step down and the government reinstitute various Kemalist policies. In 2013, Turks gathered in Taksim Square to air their grievances by and large in opposition to police brutality and the increasingly authoritarian Islamist government as well as the economic neglect of the Turkish populace despite copious growth in the country. Unlike in Tahrir in 2013, where police officers could be spotted chanting “The police and the people are one!”, the protesters in Gezi Park were barraged with plastic bullets, tear gas and water cannons. The military officers involved in the 2016 attempted coup took their cue from these protesters in 2013.
The Taksim Uprising in Istanbul, Turkey was sparked by the violent ejection by police of a peaceful sit-in by students and ecologists protesting the development of a shopping center on the park grounds, but was fueled by rising discontent over a myriad of issues, many rooted in the government’s attempt to impose religiously-inspired restrictions on civil liberties and perceived corruption. The disproportionate response of the police was a call to arms, drawing tens of thousands to face rubber bullets and tear gas to draw a line in the sand against the progressively oppressive policies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Restrictions on the sale and consumption of alcohol and on access to abortion, along with similarly unpopular educational reforms requiring religious instruction forced a conservative agenda unwelcomed by a new and more highly educated population of central Istanbul. The government’s large-scale development by construction firms curiously connected to Erdogan’s administration forced this change in the inner-city population as Kurds, transsexual sex−workers, African immigrants are marginalized to the country to make way for upscale housing. Erdogan’s zeal for construction bred contempt in rural areas as ecosystems were threatened by large-scale projects including an airport, a bridge, and a canal. In addition, citizens questioned the prudence and philosophy behind Erdogan’s foreign policies, particularly with regard to Syria, permitting safe passage to transnational jihadists thereby endangering the border province of Hatay. The bombing of Reyhanli which killed fifty−one people, confirmed for many Turks that the government's Syrian policy, promoted by the autocratic and self-promoting prime minister, demands swift intervention by conservatives. By midnight the police relented at Taksim square and three days of large-scale but peaceful demonstrations ensued until the emergent solidarity of the people was acknowledged and their grievances addressed by President Gül. There were only two casualties.
The uprising in Taksim Square has some striking similarities to the "Republic of Tahrir” in Egypt, specifically, the solidarity among the citizenry. Both protests were inclusive, enjoying participation from all levels of society, setting aside religious differences. Both Taksim and Tahrir inspired an outpouring of support for the protesters including medical and ultimately legal assistance, provisions of food, water, and simple treatments to combat the symptoms incited by the tear gas and other police weaponry. In Tahrir, a mosque was converted into a makeshift hospital. In both, private entrepreneurs eventually overtook the responsibility of support for the protesters, evidence of the extent to which these kindred populaces are similar in their culture of personal responsibility to the success of the revolution. During both Taksim and Tahrir citizens organized slogans and a means of information dissemination. In Tahrir, the improvised sound system counteracted the state run bulletins.
The word “taksim” means “distribution” and Taksim Square was so named because it is the original site of where the main water lines from the north of Istanbul branched off to other parts of the city. It is fitting that this city was the site where the division and distribution of power be confronted. The citizen clash with police that ensued in this democratic country counterpoints the supportive relationship between the police and protesters displayed in Tahrir.
In both Turkey and Egypt, military intervention in political affairs has or had a level of legitimacy, owing to their origins in military-led independence movements. The military liberated Turkey and Egypt before the establishment of a civilian government and ispo facto any power granted to these governments was contingent upon the military establishment’s approval. Additionally, both Egypt and Turkey see danger around them. The Kurds in Turkey necessitated a bloated sense of the military’s role just as the Six Day War in Egypt did and constant battling with regional powers do.
One possible explanation for the different outcomes of each coup lies in their populaces differing degrees of political learnedness. The citizenry of Turkey is more educated, cosmopolitan and politically-cultivated than that of Egypt. To quantify this change it is useful to note in just fifteen years the number of Turks living in urban centers has increased from twenty-five percent to seventy-five percent meaning greater access to education and more interaction with Western ideas than they had as villagers. Military intrusion into politics has lost legitimacy among the populace in Turkey in a way that it simply has not in Egypt. My Egyptian grandmother provided me with some insight into the cultural logics that justify the coup. In the wake of the 2013 coup, she, a staunch Sisi supporter, assured me that Sisi could not have taken power in a coup. If, she explained, General Sisi could install himself as President in a coup, then ipso facto to resign his post as general and install himself as leader would be an abdication of power, not a power grab. It doesn’t occur to her that a general’s power to overthrow the government and take control of a country’s political activities, though real, is illegitimate power. Most likely this logic has roots in Naguib’s military establishment of Egypt. There is also a historical explanation. Whereas Egyptians had recently called on the military to step in to oust a tyrant, Turkish coups do not begin as grassroots movements or depend on popular support for legitimacy. Another explanation has to do with Turkey’s struggle to join the European Union. Brussels was wary of allowing a country with a strong military and a history of coups join the E.U. The Kemalists, eager to join the EU, and the Political Islamists, hostile to the idea of a strong, secular military, each saw reason to become more aligned on the issue.
The most compelling explanation, though, has to do with the different ways military power was institutionalized. The upper echelons of Egyptian society and various non-military bureaucratic positions were stacked with retired military officers. Every one of Egypt’s six presidents, save Mohamed Morsi, hail from the military. The Egyptian military, unlike its Turkish counterpart, is subject to little government oversight and enjoys a greater deal of independence from government institutions. The Egyptian military established hegemonic control of the government while the Turkish military opted to interject itself into politics only when it was dissatisfied. The military in Egypt infiltrate the civil bureaucracy and state institutions whereas the military in Turkey did not. (Affan, 2016)
The military’s successful infiltration into politics in Egypt can be traced back to Sadat’s strategy of preventing the coup. Sadat was able to capitalize on his victory in the Yom Kippur War to win over the military, rather than tame it. This was more or less the strategy of all pre-2011 Egyptian Presidents. Nasser, for example, granted Egypt’s Field-Marshal increased autonomy in exchange for political support. This culminated in Morsi’s strategy of institutionalizing the military’s role in politics vis-à-vis the National Defense Council, and granted the military immunity from civilian prosecution.
By contrast, the Turkish military’s clout has been steadily reigned in since 2000. Under the AKP, the National Security Council’s role was diminished, State Security Courts were abolished, and army officers were tried in civilian courts. These courts were incredibly influential in deterring coup plots as they tried officers involved in old coup plots, such as the one in 1980, who had previously been able to roam free. (Bacik and Salur, 2010) While Turkish politicians faced-off army officers, Egypt’s politicians tried to win the favor of their military. The final stage of Erdogan’s co-opting of the military took place in response to the 2016 coup attempt there, purging old army officers and allowing younger Islamist officers to rise in rank.
Independent of the current literature, I will explore how these changes manifested themselves on July 3, 2013 and July 15, 2016 in real time. Endemic to an independent study of coups is a lack of transparency even after the attempt has succeeded or failed, conspiracy theories abound (especially when analyzing the Middle East), and confusion about events even amongst experts. The literature to my knowledge does not contain an objective, scholarly log of the events of the recent Turkish coup and so I will attempt to formulate my analysis from primary sources, mainly in the form of US newspaper publications.
I contend that, as a consequence of Turkey’s modus operandi for staging a coup, the Turkish government subverted the traditional chain of command which privileged secular ideologies and in so doing undermined the military’s ability to function as a political actor indefinitely. I argue that this development was the culmination of over a decade of confrontation between the military and the civilian authority and that the role of the military cannot be curtailed in this way in Egypt due to its military’s colonization efforts within state institutions.
At 11:00 PM on the day of the Turkish coup, a faction of the Turkish military calling themselves the Peace at Home Council. Within a half hour, they had taken several key figures within the Turkish government including Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar and tortured him in an attempt to get him signature on the declaration of the coup. (86) The coupists stormed news broadcasting agencies and informed the populace of their motivations and of the new order that would exist in Turkey. The coupists blocked most traffic on social media sites and occupied the infamous Taksim Square. This coup was unique, though, in that they never detained the President, leaving Erdogan free to provoke a counter revolution. He encouraged his supporters to “take the streets and defy the curfew. Show them that no power supersedes than that of the people. Let them do what they will at public squares and airports.” Anti-coup citizens turned out in droves in support of newly-cherished democratic institutions. It is important to note that the rallies held to oppose the coup were not necessarily endorsements of the AKP. In fact, at one large anti-coup rally, Erdogan and the leaders of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) were in attendance. In an enlightening quote on the government’s response to the coup, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the coup would be dealt with militarily from “outside the chain of command”. Thanks in large part to the changes instituted in the previous decade anti-coup forces were able off the putsch and Erdogan remained in power.
Their response to the coup capitalized on the divisions they had sowed within the military by appointing pro-AKP forces and by undercutting coup leader’s immunity from civilian authorities, as evidenced by the counter-coup within the military. The AKP leveraged Turkish popular disdain for military intrusions into democracy with a call to take to the streets.
In Egypt, the coup came about in an opposite manner. On June 30, millions took to the streets in the largest protest in the country’s history to demand Morsi resign. On July 1, According to Abby Ohlheiser, these protests were among the largest in world history. Contrasting the Turkish populace, the people of Egypt took to the streets to demanded the military step in to remove the Islamist head of state and institute secular reforms. According to Andrey Korotayev, some of the economic discontent that brought people to the streets was sowed by Egypt’s elites in cooperation with the military who orchestrated scarcity to undermine Morsi. This underscores the importance of the Egyptian military’s co-opting of Egypt’s elite. On July 1, the Egyptian Armed Forces issued an ultimatum: the politicians had just forty-eight hours to placate the discontented masses. On July 2, Morsi, like Erdogan, gave a speech pleading that the Egyptian people respect democratic institutions and stand against the “illegitimate” intervention of the armed forces. “Nothing can substitute for legitimacy,” he said. While this sort of sentiment appealed to the Turkish masses, the Egyptian masses were not politically mature enough to cherish the importance of a hard, fast line separating military institutions from government institutions. What legitimacy the coup lacked was mainly recovered after Sisi won by a landslide with a ninety-three percent margin over Hamdeen Sabahi. The election was boycotted by most political parties in Egypt, principally the Muslim Brotherhood. Sisi’s election represents a return to the military’s presence in Egypt’s highest state office, a perpetuation of the practice started by Naguib and ending with Mubarak.