The mother of Turkey's "tutelage" tradition

It was the mother of republican Turkey?s many bad habits. It was 55 years ago this week when some officers staged a coup against the elected, ever-strong Democrat Party (DP) government of the country, overthrowing an obsessively majoritarian mentality, but at the same time setting precedence for a ?tradition of military interventions? and laying down the foundations of a military tutelage. For more than 20 years, up until another coup in 1980, May 27 was marked in this country as official ?Constitution and Liberty Day.? Members of the 1960 junta - excluding those 14 ultra-nationalist names eliminated a while later by their comrades in arms - were ?lifetime senators? with full judicial immunity, again until the 1980 coup.

Particularly after the elimination of the Group of 14 - led by ultranationalist then Colonel Alparslan Türke?, who later became the legendary leader of nationalist politics in this country, the coup took a leftist flavor and produced the most liberal and indeed democratic constitution this country ever had. Apart from setting a precedence for post-republican coup tradition - which hopefully has come to an end - the worst product of the 1960 coup was the unfortunate sentencing at an extraordinary court and subsequent September 1961 hangings of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, Finance Minister Hasan Polatkan and Foreign Minister Fatin Rü?tü Zorlu.

Yet, it was not just because of the unfortunate hangings of Menderes, Polatkan and Zorlu that on the 55th anniversary of the 1960 coup almost everyone in this country remembered once again how the country moved inch by inch to that calamity, and why it could not be prevented. The DP government, in the firm belief that having an overwhelming parliamentary majority empowered itself to undertake...