Turkish Democratization
A history of Turkish democratization.
Ottoman Empire
Turkey emerged from within the crumbling Ottoman Empire during the reign of Mehmed VI.
Following defeat in the First Balkan War, and as Kamil Pasha prepared for peace negotiations, a 1913 coup known as the Raid on the Sublime Porte saw the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) seize power. This government was led by the Three Pashas (اوچ پاشالر, or alt. Young Turk Triumvirate): Mehmed Talaat Pasha, Ismail Enver Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha. They entered World War 1 on the side of Germany and enacted a genocide against Coptic Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians, and Kurds.
The Armistice of Mudros ended hostilities on the eastern front of the war, and an occupation by British, French, and Italian armies. The Treaty of Sèvres included severe concessions. Mustafa Kemal Pasha established a provisional government in Ankara and refused to ratify the treaty; hostilities resumed as the Turkish War of Independence. This provisional government was comprised of a national assembly with a parliamentary style of government. The presidency was to be elected by the assembly immediately following national elections. For the purposes of legitimizing the war, Kemal drafted a short constitution and had it ratified in 1921.
On November 1, 1922, The assembly voted to abolish the sultanate, and Mehmed VI fled the country. The Treaty of Lausanne was negotiated with the provisional government directly. The assembly formally declared a Republic of Turkey on October 29, 1923.
Republic of Turkey
The Constitution of 1924 established a Turkey as a democracy, but it was in fact a one-party state. The direct successor to the CUP was the Association for the Defence of National Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia (Anadolu ve Rumeli Müdâfaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti) (A-RMHC), naturally led by Mustafa Kemal. The group was rebranded as the People's Party (Halk Fırkası) for the 1923 elections. Soon after, Cumhuriyet was prefixed to this name. By the 1927 elections, they had arrived at the name Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) (CHP). Kemal also adopted a new name for himself: Kemal Atatürk.
Atatürk died in 1938 and was succeeded by İsmet İnönü. İnönü led the country through World War 2 as a technically neutral state. In response to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, he signed a defense pact with the UK and France. But the sudden defeat of France and the leak of documents relating to Turkey's involvement in the proposed Operation Pike caused him to shift foreign policy towards neutrality. He signed the German-Turkish Treaty of Friendship in June 1941 and further agreed to export rare earth minerals to Germany. By late 1943 however, İnönü was convinced that the Allies would win, and began to publicly meet with Churchill and Roosevelt. Shortly after the Yalta Conference, Turkey declared war against Germany.
Following the war, İnönü began to relax restrictions on political parties. A faction of the CHP, led by Celâl Bayar, broke away to form the Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti) (DP). The 1946 elections were the first to be freely contested, and the 1950 elections saw a peaceful transfer of power. Bayar however led the country into deep corruption, and began to suppress opposition parties and journalists.
Turkey joined NATO in 1952.
A coup was launched on May 27, 1960 and handed power to a National Unity Committee (Milli Birlik Komitesi). Although not an organizer of the coup, general Cemal Gürsel was named to lead the committee. His first actions were to free political prisoners, re-license newspapers, and summon professors of law from Istanbul and Ankara Universities to draft the Constitution of 1961. This constitution was ratified through a referendum held in July 1961.
On the basis of protecting ethnic Turks, Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and established an occupation on the northern portion of the island. They established a client state as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and displaced hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks. The United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) administers a buffer zone between the two, although the UN has also formally condemned the invasion and declared the Turkish client state to be illegitimate.
The March 1980 elections led to an assembly that could not form a majority to elect a president. General Kenan Evren had been planning a coup as early as September of the prior year, and finally chose to execute it on 12 September, 1980. He formed the National Security Council (Millî Güvenlik Konseyi) with five other senior officers. The Constitution of 1982, ratified through a referendum held in November 1982, substantially diminished human rights and placed severe restrictions on the democratic process. It introduced a requirement that parties win 10% of the national vote to qualify for representation. It stipulated that the junta would automatically transition into a presidential council and serve for 6 years after the elections. Thereafter the office of the presidency would be restored, but they would serve 7 year terms rather than be elected upon convening a new president. A president must be elected by a two-thirds majority in the first two rounds of voting, or by a simple majority from the third round on.
Evren brutally repressed political opposition, and the elections held in November 1983 were not freely contested. The Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi) (ANAP), founded by Turgut Özal, was effectively hand-picked to succeed the junta. Despite winning only 36% of the national vote in the November 1987 elections, ANAP swept a majority of seats and elected Özal to the restored presidency.
Erdoğan Era
The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) (AK Party) was founded in 2001 by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The party won the November 2002 elections in a landslide, and has controlled every government since.
In an attempt to bar the AK Party from electing Abdullah Gül to the presidency in April 2007, opposition parties boycotted the vote. The constitutional court reaffirmed that two-thirds quorum was required for a legitimate vote. Therefore the AK Party called snap elections for July. Between an increased share of seats and a partnership with the Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi) (MHP), the AK Party was able to satisfy quorum in August. Gül was finally elected president in the third round of voting.
At the same time, the AK Party drafted constitutional amendments to prevent this situation from repeating. Most importantly, these provided for direct election of presidents. The terms of presidents were reduced to 5 years, with a two term limit. The terms of deputies were also reduced to 4 years. Lastly, quorum in the assembly was reduced to one-third. These amendments were ratified by a referendum in October.
Substantial amendments to the constitution were submitted to a referendum in April 2017. Among other items, they proposed to abolish the parliamentary style of government, with all powers centralized into the presidency. The published results of the referendum show a narrow win for ratification, but it should be noted that the Supreme Electoral Council ruled that unstamped votes should be counted. Election administrators needed to stamp ballots before handing them to a voter, as a fraud countermeasure, but more than a million unstamped ballots had somehow been collected.
A coup was launched on July 15, 2016. It quickly failed however, and Erdoğan used the attempt as justification for brutal repression of political opposition as well as ethnic minorities, especially the Kurds but also notably the Gülen movement. Despite the two term limit for presidents, Erdoğan was elected to a third term in October 1923.