The UK Independent talks about last week's failed military coup in Turkey with the most misleading headline of all time.
"Turkey's coup may have failed – but history shows it won’t be long before another one succeeds".
If you can believe it, the article talks about Syria, about Pakistan, about President Monkey, about Armenian genocide...but it doesn't talk about Turkey's insanely common military coups.
They went pretty smoothly during Ataturk's reign, but it all went south in 1960 when socialist Prime Minister Adnan Menderes went to Moscow to try to get Communist backing for his regime (which was imprisoning journalists, creating kangaroo courts stacked with far-left judges, and personally controlling the curriculum at universities and sounding an awful lot like Rachel Arab in Alberta come to think of it). A military coup took place and Menderes and his top government officials were imprisoned. Menderes lost his head in the subsequent trial and a mausoleum of his was constructed in Constantinople.
Turkey managed an entire decade without a coup, but in 1971 the military again seized power: this time through a memo (no, seriously!) Civil unrest, Marxist protests, and terrorism were occuring throughout the land (and this sounds a lot like President Monkey's final year in office down in America), and the army moved in to force the government's hands. Not much happened though, and it ultimately meant no actual change took place. A technocratic cabinet was created (again, this is eerie...), and ultimately martial law was declared. It took until 1973 before the aftermath was finally settled.
And this time they didn't even last the decade. In 1980 Kenan Evren took over after months of official deliberation in senior army ranks which really makes very little sense if you think about it). Martial law was again established, Parliament was abolished, and state secularism took over from the burgeoning Islamic sub-revolution. The end result was economic chaos: triple digit inflation, free foreign exchange, and wage freezes. 650,000 people were arrested over the 2 year instability, ending with Evren being appointed President in 1982. This period of economic strife meant that American movies weren't available to the general populace, and gave us the glorious debacle which is Turkish Star Wars.
Another decade later, another (attempted) coup: in 1993, the military (probably) tried to take over the government on the sly, executing President Özal and numerous journalists and orchestrating the infamous PKK Ambush.
Half a decade later, another sorta-coup: in 1997 the Turkish military against used the awesome destructive power of a well-written memo, ending the reign of religious PM Necmettin Erbakan and his centre-left government. Again, the secularism of the modern Turkish state was a key factor in the coup. For those keeping their boxscores up-to-date, good ol' Erdogan played a role in this one: he read a pro-Islam poem in his role as mayor of Istanbul and was given a 5 year exile.
So that brings us to 2016, and another military coup in Turkey. It seems to have failed, but indications are that we'll see another one eventually. A decade seems to be the typical separation, something tells me you should bet on the "under" this next time around...
