Culture, social contestation and Turkey's failed coup: the rivalry of social imaginaries.

• Author: Chak, Farhan Mujahid
• Position: Report

Introduction

On July 15, 2016, Turkey was abruptly thrown into gory disarray, initiated by a treacherous faction within the Turkish military, whose members unwisely, but certainly not thoughtlessly, attempted a bloodthirsty coup d'etat. Essentially, the apparent poor planning, or theatrics, of the coup-plotters is an entirely disingenuous allegation. In fact, the usurping conspirators, with meticulous planning, orchestrated "a number of coordinated attacks in both Ankara and Istanbul in an illegitimate attempt to seize key government institutions, including the Presidential Compound and the National Intelligence Agency (MIT)." (1) Tanks, combat aircraft, attack helicopters and thousands of troops were simultaneously dispatched all over the country. In addition, menacing, low-flying F-16's began circling Turkey's largest urban centers. Meanwhile, military units were instructed to block the Bosporus and Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridges, close Istanbul Ataturk International Airport, bomb the Golbasi Special Forces Headquarters and Ankara Police Department, suppress independent news, and apprehend President Erdogan, dead or alive. To that end, elite military commandoes flew to the western coastal city of Marmaris, where President Erdogan was known to be on holiday, and opened fire, causing panic and pandemonium in their failed bid to capture him. (2) Thereabouts, the national Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) station was assaulted and an anchorwoman, at gunpoint, broadcast the bravado of the coup-plotters, declaring the Turkish military in total control. (3) The propaganda war had begun, and it continued with the unfolding brutality of the coup. Nevertheless, what was quite extraordinary, and ultimately proved fatal to the coup attempt, was the decisive tenacity of the Turkish people. Even as treasonous military personnel bombed the Turkish Grand National Assembly again and again, the recoiling people's representatives, from both the ruling party and the opposition, valiantly denounced the coup. (4) Our critical query, to which we will return, is: where did this indomitable resolve come from?

This is not all, the coup-plotters carefully calculated and executed the swift kidnapping of key senior military personnel, including General Hulusi Akar, Commander Salih Colak, and General ihsan Ayar, forcibly taking them to Akinci air base. (5) While there, these senior military officers were battered and threatened with fatal consequences if they refused to comply with the directives issued by the murky recluse Fetullah Gulen. (6) Trickery, ruse and perfidy characterize the deep-rootedness of the Gulen Movement, emblematized by the appearance of Ramazan Gozel, General Hulusi's Executive Assistant, on CCTV assisting the coup-plotters. (7) However, irrespective of the plotters' planning, embeddedness, or depth of intrigue, the hostages flatly refused to relent to their demands. The coup plotters had played all their cards, banking on quick surrender, which was not forthcoming. And, against every act of sabotage, terror and death that they inflicted, everyday men and women resisted courageously. After all, rights once acquiesced are not so easily withdrawn.

Chaotic scenes of professional military infantry raiding CNN Turk, only to be countered by unruly mobs and, soon thereafter, arrested by their own police force are surreal. Imagine heavily armed and well-trained military soldiers being scolded and manhandled by the citizenry, with the intervening police officers struggling to prevent a lynching. (8) In actuality, at that point, popular mobilization was already rapidly under way. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly condemned the coup as an illegal act and ordered the police to restore order. Specifically, he used the FaceTime app on his iPhone to connect to CNN Turk and broadcast a galvanizing message: "people, everywhere, should come out on the streets and defend their democracy." (9) Responding by the millions, the Turkish people flooded the streets throughout the entire country, attesting to the legion of enthusiasts ready to sacrifice for their shared social imaginary. Using the Mosques, the Tariqats, Tekkes, independent local dailies, and employing ingenious signage throughout the public transportation networks--the metro, tramways, and buses--the entire civic spectrum of Turkish society stood strong and condemned the coup. (10) Truly, such united resistance from all sections of society has not only revealed democracy as a non-negotiable value, but illumined the pervasiveness, and the inclusivity, of Turkey's principal social imaginary led by the AK Party.

In the midst of this atmosphere, with resistance to the coup gaining momentum, unforeseen censure from the U.S. and Turkey's European allies raised eyebrows across Turkey. Ridiculously, both John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, and Federica Mogherini, the EU's foreign policy chief, issued outlandish outbursts that President Erdogan should respect democracy. (11) While millions were mourning their fatalities, this brazen issue of nonsensical statements was devastating for U.S./NATO and Turkish relations. "The clear implication, for listeners inside Turkey, was that Europe and America were more concerned for the thugs who had tried to seize the state than they were for its democratically elected leaders." (12) Responding dismissively to these statements, President Erdogan berated the West for its hypocrisy and for "siding with the putchists" (13) Then, making matters worse, NBC's Kyle Griffin falsely, and irresponsibly, tweeted that President Erdogan was seeking asylum in Germany, citing an unnamed military source. (14) For Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower who heads the alternative media organization Newsbud, this was a clear instance of a 'psy-op' designed to be spread in order to defuse the Turkish public's violent reaction to the coup. (15) Still, what is important to highlight is this did not work. The putchists, along with their co-conspirators --local and foreign--grossly misinterpreted and underestimated Turkish society by undervaluing the new social imaginary of millions of Turks. Naturally, they were surely in for a rude awakening when popular capitulation was not forthcoming; now, the Turkish peoples' heroic resistance is celebrated as "Democracy Day." (16)

Looking back, the instance that best encapsulates the failed military coup is the spectacular arrest of Brigadier General Gokhan Sonmezatec. He was the commanding officer ordered to capture or kill President Erdogan and, in his fate, we find everything that went wrong for the putchists. Grippingly enough, consider how a decorated military officer of prestigious rank, commanding tremendous respect, broke the law--in the most scandalous of fashions, murdering civilians and trying to assassinate his democratically-elected President. Upon his arrest, this disgraced brigadier offered to fully cooperate on a single condition: that he be permitted to divorce his wife, and have his children change their names, in order to conceal their identity. (17) How shockingly precipitous, and painfully conclusive, must that moment have been? Tragic, and devastating, such is the cost of his high stakes treachery. Fittingly, just as his actions claimed the lives of many, so too will he be abruptly taken away from his loved ones. All of this, though, is the consequence of his sedition--rationalized on a rejectionist social imaginary, which directly led to the untimely deaths of more than 250 people and the wounding of thousands. (18) Still, in his ignominy, we find what was emblematic of the failed coup: no matter the level of financial support and planning, a coup d'etat cannot succeed without widespread commitment to the usurpers' social imaginary, at least enough to pacify competitors.

Distinctly then, it was not poor planning that explains the coup's failure, although that reasoning seems surprisingly ubiquitous in mainstream European and U.S. media. (19) Instead, the usurpers' debacle resulted from a multiplicity of factors, including their disbelief, and ignorance, of the people's propensity for resistance, the street power of the AK Party cadre with its exemplary mobilization, the deep resentment in the collective conscious of the Turkish people to military coups, and, most importantly, the impetus for this roused resolve, to which we initially alluded, the AK Party's widespread social imaginary in present-day Turkey. Specifically, social imaginaries, and their competing ideological trajectories are critical to explore. For in the failed social imaginary of the Gulenist terror network, and the competence of its ideological competitors led by the AK Party, Turkey's coup was lost.

Taylor describes a social imaginary as, "the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations." (20) A social imaginary is, for all intents and purposes, a binding creed that makes existence intelligible. And, among Turkey's variant social imaginaries there are some, such as those of the Gulenists, the PKK, the DHKP-C and Ergenekon, that exist on the periphery of the cultural ecosystem, and others like that of the AK Party, the CHP, and the MHP, located in its core. It is in their interaction, then, that we locate the social imaginary contestation and the machinations behind the coup fiasco. Of course, a social imaginary is only as persuasive as its committed faithful, needing 'asabiyya', (21) a 'creative minority,' (22) or--simply put--a team for ascendancy. That being said, the usurpers' social imaginary did not find significant resonance among the Turkish populace. Perceptibly, they either did not understand or ignored this necessity. Nor did they seem to comprehend the concurrent dynamics of culture and social...