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The Past. The Present. The Future?
The Past. The Present. The Future?
For his part, in an analysis published by RIA Novosti, Dmitri Dobrov warned that what Turkey may be witnessing today "is the end of Kemalist Turkey, where the army had been the guarantor of secularist principles and democracy, even if only in the conditional sense. What will happen to the country following this event is hard to say, but democracy is definitely set to suffer for it."
President Erdogan, for his part, called the attempted coup a "gift from God." For his critics, Dobrov suggested, it is "an opportunity to 'take care' of opposition from both the right and the left - from supporters of liberal civil society, to the pro-Kurdish parties. It's no wonder that the world's press has begun to speculate that Erdogan may have deliberately staged the coup to consolidate his power."
For now, the journalist recalled, it remains unclear what exactly motivated the officers to stage the abortive coup. "Although Erdogan himself had alleged that they were motivated by Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, it's also possible that they acted on the principle of protecting the Kemalist tradition - which sees the army as the guarantor of Turkey's secular order. It's quite possible that they had patriotic intentions."
Comment: Turkey has had a tumultuous past, and it continues. Whether tradition and progressive reform can coexist is a challenge. Whether tradition and authoritarian repression can coexist may be the break point. "Erdogan is saved, but Turkey is going under." Obviously these two won't coexist in the present state for very long.