COUP: An Oral History
The comments in response to this post convinced me that we do, actually, have consumer demand for a deeper discussion of the history of the Turkish Republic.
Let me make a suggestion about where to start. There's no such thing as completely objective history, journalism, or film-making. But I admire this documentary, filmed in 2000, called COUP, or Darbe. It's subtitled and you can watch it on line.
COUP (DARBE) explores the origins of the militarily-patrolled democratic system created by Ataturk in the 1920's; the place of the armed forces in the political and cultural life of the nation; the causes and consequences of each coup d'etat and how they differ from those in South America and the rest of the world, and the future of the "military democracy."
Some of the film's interview subjects are Former National Ministers of Health, the Interior, and Foreign Affairs; authors of the Turkish Constitution; current and former Members of Parliament; aides to the President and Prime Minister; military officers; junta leaders; intelligence agents; publishers; party leaders; extremist activists; former death-row prisoners, and scholars.
COUP is above all an oral history of world-shaping events, and viewers are able to hear direct testimony from the participants themselves. Several who participated in the 1960 coup are well into their 80's, making this film a great chance to preserve their thoughts and a wonderful window into their times. Already, four of our speakers are no longer with us: General Muhsin Batur (who died in Florence Nightingale Hospital in Istanbul of natural causes after filming), Columnist Raif Ertem, Constitutional Law Professor Bulent Tanor, and Journalist Ahmet Taner Kislali (who was murdered by a car bomb outside of his home shortly after filming completed.)
The lack of narrative or interpretive structure has advantages and disadvantages; the disadvantage is that there's no way to place these people in a larger context. The advantage is a riveting artistic effectiveness.
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Apr '11
Re: COUP: An Oral History
Hello,
Claire, being on the ground in Istanbul and all, do you think there's any way the army does its thing and gets rid of the Erdogan government? Or have AKP flacks/bribes corrupted the secular ethos of the army?
Mar '11
Re: COUP: An Oral History
An interesting post by Barry Rubin on the appalling number of journalists currently imprisoned in Turkey:
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-country-in-world-has-most.html
I've started watching that COUP video, but given its length I'll probably do it in a few installments. My impression after the first half hour is that they're all mostly self-interested bad guys with attractive rhetoric while they're out of power...
Edited on Apr 11, 2011 at 1:39pmRe: COUP: An Oral History
Yes, I've been seeing that figure everywhere, Heshmon, but it's really misleading. No doubt Turkey has a serious problem with press freedom. But the way they're spinning it suggests it has the worst problem, which is absurd--I mean, I've lived in countries with no press freedom (like Laos in 1996), and that was a completely different situation. No newspapers. You speak out against the government, you're off to a re-education camp. You don't hear about jailed journalists in North Korea because there are no journalists, period. Likewise Burma. Something like 60 journalists were killed in Mexico last year--that's quite a step up in intimidation from "in jail." Kazakhstan? There are way too many journalists in jail here, but one thing that tells you is that there are a lot of journalists. If it were that bad, I wouldn't be working here and saying the kinds of critical things I do.
Mar '11
Re: COUP: An Oral History
I'm sure you're right, Claire. The first thing I thought when I read the Rubin piece was that this is just a reflection of the current state of flux in which the Turkish Republic is right now. In truly totalitarian states, either people don't challenge the party line to begin with, or they end up dead.
As regrettable as I personally find Turkey's recent direction, it's clearly nowhere near the really horrible regimes of the world. Nor would I compare it to places like Kazakhstan or, for that matter, Mexico.
I just find it sad and alarming that a country that had seemed to me so westernized (granted, I've only been to Istanbul), with SO much potential, now seems to have taken a sharp turn in the wrong direction.
Oct '10
Re: COUP: An Oral History
Did the CIA really do things like train foreign thugs in torture techniques in the 1970s, or was that just the paranoia of people who lived through those events?
Re: COUP: An Oral History
Such a good question. The US cooperated with and supported the military, and provided training in counter-insurgency. Did they teach them to torture? No way to prove a negative, but common sense says that the techniques they're describing don't require "training." Building hydroelectric dams: complex. Torturing: simple. The bigger question is whether we should have provided support to people who I'm sure we had a pretty good idea were using those techniques. When I talk to Turkish friends about this, I ask them what they think would have happened if the United States had withdrawn military and economic aid to Turkey, and I point them to the Soviet Archives. Sadly, most Turks have very little idea what the Soviet Union did to its satellites or how serious it was about making Turkey into one of them. We won the Cold War in the most important way--the Soviet Union collapsed--but in a significant way we lost the propaganda war.
Re: COUP: An Oral History
It's still got all that potential, and it hasn't so much taken a sharp turn in the wrong direction as it has failed to turn in the right direction--progress toward real reform has stalled. The AKP's first years in power were actually quite good, with some significant reforms in the right direction. The opposition, too, bears a lot of the responsibility for the descent into paranoia and score-settling. It is only just now figuring out that if it wants to challenge the AKP, it will have to learn to do what the AKP has learned to do--win an election.