The 12 September coup d’état and its aftermath: The displacement of centre left politics?

The 12 September 1980 coup d’état carried out by Turkey’s armed forces had a disastrous effect on the development and continuity of leftist politics. Three years of military government represented more than just a takeover of the state’s legislative and executive functions. As the most comprehensive military takeover Turkey has ever experienced, the 12 September regime established by the generals, strived to redefine and re-engineer the Turkish polity in their own vision.1 This redefinition was largely achieved by structural measures in the form of a new Constitution (1982) and corresponding legislation, all of which spelled out and identified zones of activities for public and private life. For leftist parties and practitioners, such measures had the result of severely limiting the promotion of leftist ideas. This was primarily achieved through the closure of the CHP, and the banning of its leadership cadres from politics. However, this chapter questions the extent to which the 12 September regime was solely responsible for the weakening of leftist politics. In the wake of Evren’s regime, which ended in 1983, Turgut Özal established a neo-liberal premiership between 1983 and 1989. Within less than a decade, Turkey’s ideological polarisation between left and right forces was displaced by neo-liberal populism. Under Özal, Turkey came to terms with a ‘new order’. Whether Özal’s term in office had a weakening impact on leftist ideology however, needs to be asked. Finally, the weakening of leftist politics should not be exaggerated. Following the return to civilian politics in 1983, it was apparent that leftist parties were unable to reproduce the electoral successes achieved by the CHP during the 1970s. It can be argued that the multiplicity of leftist parties, the continuity of personal feuds and intra-party factionalism resulted in internal weaknesses in the leftist camp. In a climate where the new rules of the game were set by the military, Özal succeeded in conforming to the new order, and promoted a new and publicly appealing economic agenda. The left meanwhile, continued old debates about what social democracy should mean, which party ‘represented’ social democratic ideas, and the validity of Kemalist modernity.