Letter from Lhasa, number
322. Intra-State Destabilization. Turkey’s Case Study
by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi
The declining Ottoman
Empire aligned with the Central Powers during WW1. It was consequently defeated
with them. So, Turkey was partially occupied from Allied forces.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
and his war of independence restored the formal independence of Turkey, while
the Western powers accepted it. They did not need their military occupation for
getting the already got Turkish subordination.
Kemalism represented the
formal westernization of Turkey and some limited modernization spiced with a
strong para-Jacobin-style or nazi-fascist-style rhetoric and propaganda. On 29 October
1923, the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed and WW2 will finally see it formally
aligned with the Allied side, after a long phase of neutrality. Guarantor of
this republican new order de facto
was the Turkish Army. It reaffirmed its leading position by the 1960, 1971 and
1980 coups d'état.
This Kemalist order began
to be reversed with the 2002 general elections’ victory of the Justice and Development Party of Mr. Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan. It won the two next general elections and slowly moved from the
control of the formal government to the control of the real State/government.
Two key public episodes
of the clash between the Turkish formal government and the Turkish Armed Forces
have been the 2008 prosecution against the clandestine group called Ergenekon
and the 22 February 2010 prosecution against the so-called Sledgehammer plot. These
prosecutions were strikes against military milieus. By them, the formal
government affirmed his supremacy relatively to the Kemalist Armed Forces.
Clearly this intra-State
fight is variously going on despite the determination and successes of the Justice and Development Party in affirming
its civilian rule, its democratic rule, relatively to the State/government
structures, Armed Forces included.
Intra-State
destabilizations may be used both from government and from powerful forces
opposing it. They may go from the so-called stabilizing destabilization
(eventually used from real government for affirming the power’s monopoly of a
certain party or group) to real destabilization (used from powerful forces
wishing to sink or reverse an unwished course). For them, a variety of tools
are used, from terrorism and massacres to a variety of incidents for
discrediting and weakening the target of such operations.
The current Taksim Gezi
Park’s crisis is not an initiative of the Turkish government (although it be
using it for reaffirming its democratic power against those wishing weakening
it), but of Turkish Armed Forces milieus opposing it. It follows a classic
pattern.
The pretext: the Beyoğlu
Municipality decided to rebuild the Taksim Military Barracks, to be actually
used as a shopping centre, so de facto
liquidating the Taksim Gezi Park’s small green island inside Istanbul.
The spark: on 27 May
2013, about fifty environmentalists occupied the park; on 27 May, they were
brutally evicted from police
Everything could stop
here. On the contrary, the apparently most different components joined the
initially environmentalist protest for using it as a direct attack against the Justice and Development Party’s power
and government, with national and worldwide media cover.
Leftists and rightists,
as well as whatever other political and non-political group or association, are
easily manipulable from whatever power source. Now, here, they are used against
the ruling party and power.
The initial
environmentalist action may have been a genuine concern, or it may have been
induced from some power’s centre. A small park inside a crowded and busy city
as Instanbul is not a decisive environmentalist question. Of course, it is not
a great principle question to create an addition Shopping Centre in Istanbul
although, wherever in the world, public works are connected with bribes for
ruling parties, as well as, not infrequently, for opposition ones too. So, when
decided to launch public works, it becomes difficult or nearly impossible to
reverse a previous decision.
Also the brutal
repression of a peaceful environmentalist action may have been intentional for
sparking a wide reaction. About fifty environmentalists could be peacefully
removed from the area they were occupying. Someone ordered a violent assault.
What is surely not
casual is the growing movement around this idiotic and criminal police
brutality. The media cover has given resonance and identity to the protesters,
and radicalized their actions which can be now used for further violence even
when the Taksim Gezi Park’s crisis will be in some way solved.
Without some power
source promotion and support, there are not mass movements either
‘revolutions’, contrarily to what common people think.
