Erdogan readies for show of strength on anniversary of botched coup

Turkey is gearing up for a big spectacle on July 15, the anniversary of last year’s failed coup. As part of ceremonies planned by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), parliament will hold a special session and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will address the nation. Then at midnight, sala prayers will ring out from mosques across the country and people will take to the streets, re-enacting an episode from the night of the botched coup. What to make of this commemoration program? Is it simply a tribute to democratic resistance against military coups in Turkey or the harbinger of an AKP-sponsored ideological celebration? The question is closely related to the key trends swaying Turkey today, hence the clues to the answer lie in the big picture of national politics.

The putsch, blamed on followers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, the AKP’s former ally, has dominated almost all political developments and debates in Turkey over the past year. It has deeply affected the balances of the system and reshaped the government’s ideological narrative. The most crucial element of the coup aftermath is, no doubt, the purges at public institutions and universities and in the media and the business community; the purges have become a continuous process and are still ongoing.

The consequences are already plain as day. Over the past year, Turkey has been under a double pressure of authoritarianism, a combined product of the dangers of Gulenist entrenchment in the state and the arbitrary measures employed against them. Officials' assumptions concerning the continuing existence and influence of Gulenist groups have made the government’s policy of “constant risk, constant alarm and constant measures” an absolute one. The alarmism has resulted in a politicized judiciary acting on assumptions based on intelligence information and political reasoning rather than evidence, grave rights violations and a glaring slide into authoritarianism.

This, however, is only one side of the post-coup developments. In a second aspect, the government used the putsch as an opportunity — or even made it the start of a new era — to alter its rhetoric and all the settings of the political system. As such, the July 15 coup attempt became a milestone in deepening and institutionalizing an authoritarian, populist rule, marked by a new government narrative of “an integrated and combined threat” in which Gulenists, leftists, liberals, Kurds and various oppositional quarters are lumped together and portrayed as partners in subversive activities.