Why revolution in turkey

View PDF Flyer. Contents About. Biographical Note Aykut Kansu , Ph. Historians, Turcologists, scholars of modern Turkish history and the late Ottoman Empire. Save Cite Email this content Share link with colleague or librarian You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:. Your current browser may not support copying via this button.

Middle East and Islamic Studies. Related Content Paradise Lost. The Lifestyles of Islam. Sign in to annotate. Delete Cancel Save. Cancel Save. View Expanded. View Table. View Full Size. Corporate Social Responsibility. Mission Statement. Corporate Governance. Eventually the ban on headscarves in public institutions was abandoned. The AKP, originally a coalition of "modernist Islamists," liberal reformers, and refugees from other center-right political parties, began to play more and more to Erdogan's Islamist base.

Although the takedown of the military played well with EU audiences, the other deviations from European standards of rule of law and free expression consistently depressed support in Europe for Turkey's candidacy.

Erdogan, with the assistance of his aide Ahmet Davutoglu, later foreign and ultimately prime minister, in fact began to turn Turkey away from its traditional Western orientation. Davutoglu touted Turkey as a potential Muslim superpower that would have "zero problems with neighbors. Because the Obama administration was bound and determined to do nothing directly about the Syrian civil war that erupted in , it was all too happy to subcontract its policy to the Turks for the first two years of the conflict.

Unfortunately, and predictably, Turkey's reach exceeded its grasp. Unhappy with the lack of commitment from the United States and suffering from the flow of refugees into Turkey, Ankara began to support the most radical elements of the Sunni opposition to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, most notably Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria.

It also turned a blind eye to the even more violent jihadism of the Islamic State, providing sanctuary for IS fighters and allowing funds and weapons to flow to the front via Turkey.

When IS proclaimed a caliphate in after the collapse of the Iraqi security forces, Turkey's policies became an enormous source of frustration to the Pentagon, which chafed at Ankara's seeming inability to control its borders, its restrictions on U. It was around this time— to —that Erdogan's seemingly insatiable thirst for power began to make his domestic political ambitions inseparable from his foreign policy.

They revealed that cabinet officials, and perhaps Erdogan and his family members, had benefited from Iran's efforts to evade U. One casualty of the ominous turn in Turkey's domestic politics was the one undeniably constructive effort undertaken by Erdogan: the opening to the Kurds and peace negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers' party PKK. The latter, as much a personality cult centered on Abdullah Ocalan as a guerrilla movement, had waged a loathsome and violent insurgency against Turkey for 20 years, costing as many as 30, lives.

Erdogan's attempt to bring the conflict to a conclusion via negotiations could have ended in a major achievement and a valuable contribution to stabilizing the country's southeast, which sits cheek by jowl with Syria and Iraq. But Erdogan abandoned it in after watching with alarm the emergence of a self-administering Kurdish enclave in northern Syria and the growth of a Kurdish political party, the HDP, in Turkey that threatened the AKP's ability to govern alone, without any pesky coalition partners.

He needed to get parliament to change the constitution again. In , he decided to roll the dice and campaign for the changes in the context of a parliamentary election. The results were an enormous setback to his project. In June, voters returned a hung parliament. For the first time since , the AKP did not have a majority and could not form a government on its own.

One important reason was the rise of the HDP under the leadership of the youthful, charismatic Selahattin Demirtas. Traditionally, the system had been rigged to prevent significant Kurdish representation in parliament by setting a minimum bar of 10 percent under the country's complicated system of proportional representation. In the June election, the Demirtas-led HDP, appealing not just to Kurds but liberals, gays, and other groups marginalized in Turkey, received 13 percent and a record 80 seats in parliament.

But Erdogan had different plans. The president methodically undermined his prime minister, ultimately replacing him with a colorless factotum, the current prime minister Binali Yildirim who cheerfully advocated abolishing his own position in the referendum campaign.

Rather than convene a grand coalition to overcome the country's divisions, Erdogan sought to make Turks vote again, making another run at a parliament that would make the changes he wanted. Then he made a series of fateful decisions.

After more than a year of dithering, he provided the United States with access to Incirlik Air Base to run operations against IS, largely a tactical move to silence potential U.

More ominously, he ended the cease-fire with the PKK and responded to the predictable terror attacks that ensued with massive military force in the cities of Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast.

This had two purposes. The formula worked. Erdogan was now poised either to win approval from parliament or take the issue of enhanced presidential powers to the nation in a popular referendum.

What is the Turkish Revolution? Today, our country is governed in the best way that has abolished all the others that were practiced in many centuries. These changes that our great nation has performed in the course of its life are in summary one of the most magnificent revolutions that is much deeper than any revolution. The real revolutionaries are those who know how to penetrate the true tendency in the souls and conscience of the people they want to direct to the revolution of progress.

I would like to take this opportunity to stress that the true owner of the political and social revolutions, and the wonders Turkish nation performed in the last years, is the nation itself. It is you. Undoubtedly, the impossibility of taking a society which is at a certain level of civilization to a much higher level in no time is obvious.

It is definitely essential to get rid of the mentality that cannot accept it. The fabricated nonsense in the minds will surely be expelled. Unless it is completely expelled, it is impossible restore the mind to its true light. A destructed country on the edge of the cliff Bloody battles against many enemies The earlier attempt to secure constitutional government, connected with the name of Midhat Pasha and resulting in the constitution of December 23, , was a failure, due to the lack at that time of any feeling for its necessity among the ruling caste.

The leaders in Paris studied in detail successful revolutions of the past, arranged their differences as between radical and conservative, invited in the other nationalistic revolutionary parties, especially the Armenians, but retained control in their own hands. The revolution seems to have been hastened by the announcement of Austria in February, , that a railroad would be built through Novibazar, linking up the Bosnian and Salonika lines, which would bring all the western part of the Balkan peninsula under Austrian influence, and by the Reval interview.

The disturbance in Macedonia had brought together large numbers of Turkish troops. The common soldiers were unpaid and wasting their time, the officers were unable to preserve order and dissatisfied with the presence of the foreign officers, who were a constant reminder that the days of the Empire were numbered. Emissaries, sent out front Paris found a good reception, and the revolution was proclaimed July 6, At first foreigners thought little of it, but adhesion was rapid.

Troops sent against the rebels refused to fight.