Turkey is very familiar with the term coup d’état. It had many different coups in history, some succeeded and some didn’t, but the main goal was the same. Taking control of the current government because they are corrupt or their ideology and ideals conflict with the group’s, who tries to do the coup, ideology and ideals. Because that group, in Turkey’s case, it’s usually the Turkish military force, is trying to defend the country’s values from a change that they think is bad for the country, coups are usually patriotic. However, the attempted “coup” of 15 July 2016 differs from the old coups and it was a nationalistic attempt.
What is the difference between nationalism and patriotism? And if the attempted coup was really nationalistic, what kind of nationalism was it? Patriotism is a defensive act against the change of your values, culture and so on. As I said, coups are usually patriotic. The Former coups happened in Turkey, because the government was acting on a way that is against secularism and they were corrupt and non-democratic. They were acting in a way that is against Kemalism, and the army didn’t want that and stopped it. But in our case, Turkey’s secularism is long gone and isn’t really democratic for years. It have changed from a Kemalist secular state to a more conservative, islamic, corrupt one. The military was too late to do a patriotic coup, their act wasn’t to protect their own values but to change the current values that contemporary Turkey has. And nationalism is exactly that. It is aggressive against the other ideologies that is opposing it. Nationalists believe that their way is the only way. They want everyone to follow their views. Just like the Turkish military force who thought that their kemalistic ideology was what Turkey needs and attempted a coup against the government. They did the attack to change something but not to protect something that think it should stay. Therefore, the attempted coup was a nationalistic act.
There are three kinds of nationalism. Positive, negative and transferred nationalism. Positive and negative nationalism aren’t necessarily good or bad. Positive nationalists want their group to gain “things” (This “things” can be borders, an autonomous government, power, money, anything really.) A good example is kurdish nationalists. Negative nationalism occurs against other nationalists. They want the other group to lose “things”. An example is Anti-Turkists from Greece and Armenia. While the attempters of the coup wanted to gain power and the government to lose power, their act was transferred nationalistic. Transferred nationalism has parts from both positive and negative nationalism. It conflicts with current ruling government’s ideologies. Orwell gave the example of Russophiles in UK who want to make UK a communist state and therefore against the current system. Just like the Turkish military force who wanted to change the current government’s ideology by what they think is right. Therefore, by the definitions of George Orwell, the attempted coup was a Transferred Nationalistic act against the ruling party.
Current ruling party, AKP, is ruling for more than ten years. Under their rule Turkey had many different changes. These changes happened very slowly, distributed to the time that they have ruled and just like the boil a frog while it’s alive, you need to increase the heat slowly and it doesn't understand it’s boiling, that’s what they did. I am not arguing that the change was positive or negative, but an obvious change occurred under their rule. This changes were attempted by other parties and group, but they were stopped years ago, but AKP finally succeeded. With these changes, Turkishness have changed. Schools stopped forcing students to sing national anthem and join the nationalistic ceremonies. Wearing hijab and burka became legal in schools and government buildings. But with these changes, their supporters felt like they can do whatever they can and started to attack alchol drinkers, women who doesn’t wear long skirts, couples who are kissing each other in public. But the former praetorian military force didn’t do or say anything. In time, these changes became the norm for Turkey and people accepted that, now, Turkey is a more conservative country who is in a different position that it was ten-fifteen years ago.
In 15 July 2016, for some reason, army decided to overthrow the current regime and everything they have changed. After they entered to TRT and made the TRT news anchor Tijen Karas, read their statement, their values became clear to us. In the statement they talk about how the Turkey has changed it’s path from becoming a westernized secular country to backlashing islamist and politically corrupt conservative country, and how their goal is to reverse this change. They talked about values of Kemalism and everything Turkey used to have. We can see it clearly that they have a disdain for the current regime and the changes that have been made and they want to change this current regime and ideology to something they think is better. They believed that Kemalism is what people wanted and their ideology was more preferable than the current one. It is a clear example of transferred nationalism.
Another proof to show that it was a transferred nationalist act was that every transferred nationalist act clashes with an authoritarian, patriotic movement who supports the government and we can see, by looking at the news, videos and such, that many AKP supporters who didn’t want the change that the army wants to cause and tried to stop them by sacrificing themselves . These people had a “devotion for a particular way of life” and tried to defend it from the “oppressing power”
In conclusion, most coups are patriotic, supported by the civilians in a way, because it is done to prevent a change that will be made. But the 15th July coup wan’t a patriotic coup. It was too late to be seen as one. It was transferred nationalistic because it had a disdain for current government and they wanted to change it with their agenda.
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