Türkiye on Thursday will mark the 16th anniversary of a stern memorandum by the Turkish military to the government. Viewed as a coup attempt, the memorandum, published on the website of the Office of the Chief of General Staff, stands out among many others in the brief history of the Republic of Türkiye.
It was the first attempt by the powerful military in the 2000s to intervene in political affairs. Though similar to a 1997 coup where an army memorandum paved the way for government collapse, it was the first time it took place online. Also, it was the first time a government actively resisted such an attempt and succeeded.
The memorandum, released at 23:20 on April 27, 2007, the first round of presidential elections, was a thinly veiled attempt to stop Parliament’s vote for presidential candidate Abdullah Gül.
According to the memorandum, exclusively published online, the army was concerned about the "erosion of basic values, primarily secularism," and tied the activities of the conservative population permitted by the government, such as the recitation of the Quran at public events, to mark national holidays, to a reactionary movement "against the state."
The statement targeted Gül, viewed as "reactionary," a derogatory term secular extremists use for anyone with a conservative background. Indeed, it was not different than the motive of the 1997 coup for the army, which has long promoted itself as a self-styled defender of "secularism," a concept exploited to stamp out the participation of practicing Muslims in social life, for instance, joining the public sector or pursuing political office.
Cemil Çiçek, a former parliamentary speaker who was the government spokesperson at the time of the notorious memorandum, spoke about that night in an interview with the Sabah newspaper on Wednesday. Çiçek was with then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as the government deliberated penning a response to the memorandum. "The memorandum is a turning point (for Türkiye)," Çiçek said. The government’s response, announced by Çiçek on April 28, 2007, was concise and unprecedented. "It is unthinkable in a democratic state and the rule of law for the Office of the Chief of General Staff, an institution reporting to the prime minister, to use expressions against the government."
"April 27 is a symbol of a state crisis. It was a time when a president could not be elected though there was no obstacle to his election and Türkiye was forced to declare early elections. It was a constitutional and judiciary crisis," Çiçek said.
Türkiye was heading to presidential elections with Abdullah Gül as a potential ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) candidate long before the memorandum. Gül was a controversial figure for secularists due to his background and even his status as the husband of a headscarf-wearing woman was a point of contention for secular extremists. For them, having such a man in the republic's highest office was unprecedented and against their rigid interpretation of secularism. Then Chief of General Staff Yaşar Büyükanıt openly voiced the army’s opposition to the next president when he said that the president should be "truly adhering to (values) of the republic," on April 12, 2007, to the chagrin of the government.
"Republic" rallies where crowds of hardline secularists convened in big cities followed Büyükanıt’s controversial remarks in the following days. The pressure was on the Erdoğan-led government, which did not step back from the nomination of Gül. In the first round of the election, Gül won 357 out of 361 votes in Parliament, while the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) objected to the result. The CHP took the election to the Constitutional Court, claiming that the president should win 367 votes or a majority under an interpretation of a Constitutional article.
The Constitutional Court annulled the first round of elections upon appeal by the CHP on May 1. The AK Party then proposed a parliamentary election on July 22. Constitutional amendments followed the proposal. After the AK Party’s victory in the elections, Abdullah Gül once again ran for election on an Aug. 20 vote, and at the end of a three-round election, he was elected as the 11th president of Türkiye on Aug. 28.
"Türkiye has not been unable to carry out a proper presidential election since 1961 and it happened again in 2007," Çiçek said, referring to the aftermath of the first coup in the history of the Republic of Türkiye.
Çiçek was unaware of the memorandum. "I was outside Ankara and my phone rang when I arrived home late that night. A journalist was calling and asking about my opinion on the memorandum. I turned on the TV and saw the news then. Few people were aware of it. I called the interior minister and he was not aware of it too," he recalled. The government held an emergency meeting that night. "We tried to find out if there was a greater power behind this memorandum," he recounted.
Çiçek says they also called Büyükanıt "14 times" that night and were unable to reach him. "His office told us that Büyükanıt would respond later, but he did not. For 14 hours, Büyükanıt was unavailable for our calls. I cannot imagine what would happen if enemies invaded our country and we couldn’t reach the chief of general staff." Cabinet members and Prime Ministry staff convened again the next day after a long night of discussing the response to the memorandum, putting the final touches on the brief statement. They also finally managed to reach Büyükanıt. The general’s excuse for not returning their calls was that he was traveling in a car with a signal jammer device. "He told us he was traveling to visit his grandchild," Çiçek recounted.
Çiçek laments the lack of unity among politicians and the support of the media against the memorandum in its aftermath. "If everyone exhibited a clear stance against the memorandum, there wouldn’t be July 15," he said, referring to the 2016 coup attempt. It took four years for the memorandum to be removed from the website and five years to launch an investigation against Büyükanıt. Büyükanıt died in 2019 before the inquiry reached the trial stage and the case was closed.