The Paternal Democracy

All week long the Western media covered everything about the Iranian elections from voting to how the election was stolen, how it wasn’t really stolen, protests, photoshopped pro-government rallies, how Iran hates the Western media and even how Arabs are feeling left out.

The Turkish media got in on some of the action too: protests in neighboring countries have been a popular topic in the past, but this week we were busy wondering if our military would overthrow our elected government to save our democracy, pretty much the same way one might burn down their house to prevent possible fires in the future.

On the very same June 12^th as the Iranian elections, liberal daily Taraf, which frequently publishes articles like “minorities bleed too” and “how the army plans to kill you tomorrow,” published a leaked document (link Turkish) about the military’s plans to:

“Reveal the truth about… the Justice and Development Party [the ruling party with 62 percent of the seats in parliament] which aims to replace the secular democratic order with an Islamic state, break their public support and put an end to their activities…”

This more than a year after another similar leaked document by Taraf and less then two months after the army chief publicly praised democracy and assured no toppling of government. This type of thing happens frequently enough that nobody has bothered to change the military’s bi-annual “we love democracy” apology since 1995.

Military interventions have always been a popular pastime in Turkey, with two coups in 1960 and 1980, twice making governments step down in 1971 and 1997, and even an e-coup before the 2007 elections (the next threat of intervention is expected to be only 140 characters and include lots of frowny faces).

There is much fear amongst the secular white Turks (and the army) of a looming Islamic revolution, and Iran is often evoked as an example of a secular state toppled by the religious. The army sees itself as the custodians of the 1923 revolution, obligated to preserve the revolution’s principles, particularly secularism, over all else. In doing so, the army behaves in much the same way as the Iranian Guardian Council, another unelected body with final political say, preserving the principles of its own 1979 revolution, Islam, over all else.

Just as elections don’t necessarily mean democracy in Iran, an elected body under the thumb of an unelected one is no democracy anywhere. Ideally, a state would be confident enough in its founding principles that democracy strengthens, not threatens, it. Whether or not secularism without democracy is worth the trouble, we can hope nobody has to burn down any more houses for it.