Military coup in Turkey in 1971

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The military coup in Turkey in 1971 (also: memorandum of March 12th) took the form of a memorandum that the General Staff handed over to President Cevdet Sunay , forcing the government to resign. In the history of the Turkish Republic it was the fourth attempt at a military coup, the second successful attempt and the first to be carried out according to the command structure .

background

The 1961 constitution , which many people still consider Turkey's most democratic constitution, introduced the separation of powers . But it had also banned many members of the Democratic Party (DP) who were indicted and convicted after the coup of May 27, 1960 (especially President Celal Bayar ). The Republican People's Party ( Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi , CHP) under the leadership of İsmet İnönü was after the first elections after the coup of 1960 a coalition with the successor party to the DP, the Justice Party ( Adalet Partisi , AP), led by retired general ragıp gümüşpala received.

After Süleyman Demirel became chairman of the AP and the coalition was overthrown, the AP gained enough votes in the 1965 elections to be the only government. After the illness of the former junta chief Cemal Gürsel , the chief of staff Cevdet Sunay was elected president on March 28, 1966. Cemal Tural became Chief of Staff on March 15, 1966. On March 11, 1969, he was replaced by Memduh Tağmaç .

In the election for the National Assembly in 1969 (October 12), the AP again came to power as the sole party. It received 46.55% of the vote and sent 256 MPs. With 143 MPs, the CHP became the largest opposition party.

Developments before the coup

After the coup of May 27, 1960 , various governments came to power. In the mid-1960s, the Turkish Labor Party ( Türkiye İşçi Partisi , TİP) split . One direction under Mihri Belli understood the "National Democratic Revolution" ( Milli Demokratie Devrim ) to be a revolution based on the model of the Soviet Union in two stages. First young officers should bring about a military overthrow and the proletarian revolution should then be bloodless. Indeed, the Anatolian experience turned many colonels into socialists.

The “bloody Sunday” in the history of Turkey relates to the events on February 16, 1969. 76 youth organizations had registered a demonstration against the arrival of the US 6th Fleet . The association for the fight against communism had called for a counter-demonstration. The second group was waiting with stones and sticks in Beyazıt Square in Istanbul . The young people Ali Turgut Aytaç and Duran Erdoğan died in the clashes with knife wounds.

A coup planned for May 20, 1969, was thwarted at the diplomatic level. According to correspondence from the US State Department between 1969 and 1972, the Chief of Staff Memduh Tağmaç threatened a coup in the event of an amnesty for members of the DP who were deposed in 1960. Above all, Celal Bayar's return to politics should be prevented. Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel and other politicians have been warned. The bill, which was submitted with 218 signatures, was withdrawn and the coup did not take place.

In 1970 amendments were made to Labor Law 274 and Trade Union Law 275, i. H. passed in parliament and confirmed by the Senate and President. This was to prevent workers from migrating from the Türk-İş Confederation to DİSK . The Labor Party ( Türkiye İşçi Partisi ) turned to the Constitutional Court to prevent the laws. From the morning of June 15, 1970, spontaneous demonstrations developed, first on the Asian side of Istanbul. The following day the demonstrations widened with the participation of 75,000 workers.

On June 15, 1970, the cabinet declared martial law limited to 60 days . Many officials from DİSK and its affiliated trade unions were arrested and charged. On June 16, 1970, incidents occurred in Ankara , Adana , Bursa and İzmir . The CHP also turned to the Constitutional Court, which declared the new laws to be invalid. In the incidents on 15./16. On June 6th 1970 the workers Yaşar Yıldırım, Mustafa Bayram, Mehmet Gıdak, the shopkeeper Doğukan Dere and an unnamed police officer died.

Ferruh Bozbeyli, who resigned as President of Parliament on October 19, 1970 and left the AP in November 1970, re-founded the Democratic Party (DP) with 69 people. Doğan Avcıoğlu and friends who gathered around the newspaper “Revolution” ( Devrim ) trusted the retired General Cemal Madanoğlu, who was seen as the true leader of the May 27 (1960) coup, and advocated the idea of ​​extra-parliamentary opposition. Chief of Staff Memduh Tağmaç and the commander of the 1st Army in Istanbul, General Faik Türün, were clearly against a coup from the left.

The coup

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On March 12, 1971 at 1 p.m., the generals' statement was read out on the radio station of the state radio and television company TRT . Parliament and the government were blamed for anarchy and fratricidal war, social and economic unrest. The future of the Turkish Republic is under serious threat. The memorandum of the Chief of Staff, General Memduh Tağmaç , the Commander of the Army , General Faruk Gürler , the Commander of the Air Force , General Muhsin Batur and the Commander of the Navy , Admiral Celal Eyiceoğlu called for the formation of a non-partisan government that could overcome the difficulties. Otherwise the armed forces are ready to take over the administration themselves. At 3 p.m. the memorandum was read out by the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Fikret Turhangil, in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The memorandum was also read out in the Senate under protest from the chairman of the Senate, Tekin Arıburun .

A few hours later, the government under Suleyman Demirel resigned. Afterwards, the most prominent politicians were with President Cevdet Sunay for 45 minutes to collect the conditions for their continued stay in office: formation of a non-partisan government, implementation of numerous reforms such as land distribution to the farmers, improved educational opportunities, passive right to vote only for alphabets, restoration of the political, economic and social order in the country, fighting corruption in the state apparatus. The 33rd government of the republic under Nihat Erim lasted from March 26, 1971 to December 11, 1971. Nihat Erim, CHP MP for Kocaeli Province , had previously resigned from the party. In the government were five members of the AP, three of the CHP and one MP from the National Security Party ( Milli Güvenlik Partisi ). The other 14 members of the cabinet came from outside parliament. The government was unable to push through many reforms. Inflation rose from 11 to 23.3%. In December 1971 a government was formed again under Nihat Erim, which was in office until April 17, 1972. This was followed by the government of 35 under Ferit Melen (Senator for Van) from May 22, 1972 to April 10, 1973 and the Naim Talu (contingent Senator) government from April 15, 1973 to December 16, 1973.

In 1973, two years after the coup, martial law was repealed and elections to the National Assembly were held in October . The Republican People's Party (CHP) achieved a surprisingly good result. The CHP and MSP ( National Welfare Party ) agreed on a governing coalition in early 1974. The general amnesty for political prisoners promised by the CHP during the election campaign was put into practice by the ruling coalition.

Post-coup events

On March 26, 1971, the government declared martial law in 11 provinces, including İstanbul , Ankara and Izmir . Some clubs were banned and newspapers were temporarily closed. On May 17, 1971, the Israeli consul in Istanbul, Efraim Elrom, was kidnapped by militants from the Turkish People's Liberation Party Front , led by Mahir Çayan . They threatened murder if their imprisoned friends were not released. A broad wave of arrests followed. On May 23, 1971, a 15-hour ban on going out was imposed in Istanbul. On the same day, Elrom's body was found with three bullets. Two people were arrested in Tekirdağ for alleged involvement in the kidnapping. On May 31, 1971, six militants fought with the security forces on Nurhak Mountain in Adiyaman Province, and three of them were killed. On June 1, 1971, the police stormed a house in Maltepe (Istanbul). They shot Hüseyin Cevahir and arrested Mahir Çayan injured.

The death penalty was imposed several times in the following trials , e. B. against three main defendants in the trial of the student revolutionary Deniz Gezmiş , who kidnapped five American GIs in Ankara but released them unharmed. On November 30, 1971, Mahir Çayan and four other prisoners escaped through a tunnel they had dug in Maltepe Military Prison. On March 26, 1972, Mahir Çayan and 9 friends kidnapped two British and one Canadian technicians from a radar station in Ünye ( Ordu Province ) in order to free Deniz Gezmiş and Hüseyin İnan and Yusuf Aslan, who were also sentenced to death. Four days later, Çayan and his friends were arrested by a special unit from the Special Warfare Office on the General Staff in Kızıldere Village, Niksar County, Tokat Province . A little later, the hostages, five kidnappers and five residents who sympathized with them were shot.

Torture and Military Courts

In the eleven provinces that were under martial law, military courts carried out mass trials to try the many defendants. The military court of the Istanbul district of Üsküdar led u. a. a trial against 26 intellectuals who allegedly wanted to found a communist party, and a trial against 83 young officers who were guilty of deviating from the prescribed course (“conspiracy against the constitution”). In Ankara, 226 Turks were accused of taking part in actions by the student organization Dev-Genç . In 1972, according to Turkish lawyers, there were 2,000 political prisoners in the prisons. According to estimates by the World Trade Union Federation, 10,000 Turks have been arrested since April 1971.

The defense in the trial against the alleged kidnappers of the Israeli consul Elrom, case file 971/26 at the 3rd Istanbul Military Court, documented the statements of tortured students. But the military judge refused, "as it is not possible to determine whether the torture was intended to discover the truth or to compel anyone to testify." Eleven attorneys in the Gezmis trial who protested the torture were themselves indicted. Reason: You would have “wanted to get the negotiation out of direction with adventurous tactics”.

The Brussels- based Info-Türk initiative gave the following figures for the period of two years after the coup of March 1971:

  • More than 10,000 people, including 3,600 teachers, were arrested.
  • They were isolated and tortured for weeks.
  • 37 newspapers and magazines and over 200 books were banned.
  • 28 people were shot dead by the police on the street
  • Three political parties were banned. The head of the TİP was sentenced to prison terms of up to 15 years.
  • Operations against the Kurdish people were extended to the major cities in the west. 111 people were sentenced to prison terms of up to 16 years for separatism .

Torture was carried out in police centers and centers of the intelligence service units known as the counter-guerrilla and the Special Warfare Department (Turkish: Özel Harp Dairesi , ÖHD). Methods included field phone electric shocks, various forms of hanging, bastinado , rape, deprivation of food and sleep, and torture of relatives. Torture of political prisoners was a military policy. The then commander of the 1st Army , Faik Türün, claimed that he had investigated the allegations and found that it was no more than a few slaps on the soles of the feet and slaps. During the investigation against the secret society Ergenekon , evidence of the torture in the "Villa Ziverbey" (Istanbul) has emerged.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k 40. yılında tüm ayrıntıları ile 12 Mart muhtırası (1) , series on the 40th anniversary of the memorandum, published on March 10, 2011; Accessed April 19, 2011
  2. ↑ a b TURKEY / MILITARY: In die Provinz Der Spiegel, edition 13/1971; Accessed April 20, 2011
  3. ↑ 68'liler Kanlı Pazarı unutmadı  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Daily newspaper Evrensel from February 17, 2008; Accessed April 19, 2011@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.evrensel.net  
  4. ↑ 1969'da darbenin yanından dönülmüş , daily newspaper Radikal from February 17, 2008; Accessed April 19, 2011
  5. ↑ a b c d e f 40. yılında tüm ayrıntıları ile 12 Mart muhtırası (2) ; published on March 12, 2011; Accessed April 19, 2011
  6. ↑ a b c d 40. yılında tüm ayrıntıları ile 12 Mart muhtırası (3) ; published on March 12, 2011; Accessed April 19, 2011
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g 40. yılında tüm ayrıntıları ile 12 Mart muhtırası (4) ; published on March 13, 2011; Accessed April 20, 2011
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h 12 Mart Muhtırası hakkında ansiklopedik bilgi ; encyclopedic knowledge of the March 12th memorandum; Accessed April 20, 2011
  9. ↑ a b Encyclopedia Turkey, Phase of the Republic, Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türkiye Ansiklopedisi , Verlag İletişim, Volume 4, pp. 1018-1022.
  10. ↑ Historical development of the political left movement in Turkey  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Protection of the Constitution of North Rhine-Westphalia, August 2006; Accessed April 20, 2011@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.im.nrw.de  
  11. ↑ a b c d e f g TURKEY Falsches Licht , Der Spiegel, edition 15/1972; Accessed April 20, 2011
  12. ↑ A detailed description can be found on the website of the Solidarity with the 68ers Association
  13. ↑ Türkiye'de 1971 Askeri Darbesi'nin 35. Yildönümü dolayisiyla On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the military coup of 1971; Accessed April 20, 2011
  14. ↑ a b Tarihçesi ve Yaşayanların Anlatımlarıyla - İşkence - 1 ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Torture 1 with history and descriptions of the victims); compiled by: Ali Osman Köse, (Turkish); Accessed October 24, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ozgurluk.org
  15. ↑ undated article by Ayhan Alemdar ( Memento of December 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (Turkish); Accessed October 24, 2009
  16. ^ File on Turkey , published by the Democratic Resistance of Turkey in August 1972, reproduced as a PDF file by Info-Turk ; Accessed November 8, 2009
  17. ↑ 12 Mart'ın kahramanı ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Article in Aktüel from March 14, 2011; Accessed April 21, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.savaskarsitlari.org
  18. ↑ 28 yıl sonra Ziverbey yüzleşmesi , daily newspaper Radikal from March 29, 2009; Accessed April 21, 2011