The lawsuit of the 12 September 1980 Turkish coup d'état was officially terminated on May 4, 2017.
The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) seized the control of the Turkish government in the year of 1980 through a military junta headed by the then Chief of the General Staff Kenan Evren.
TURKEY’S 1980 COUP AND 2010 REFERENDUM: FIRST TRAGEDY, THEN FARCE
Following the Turkish constitutional referendum of September 12, 2010, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) rhetorically promised to carry out such amendments that would allow the leaders of the 1980 coup to be sent to court.
Back then, the liberal politicians and intellectuals of Turkey supported the referendum package of AKP in 2010 and the following years, resorting to a motto “Not enough, but yes!”, and claimed that Turkey would settle accounts with coups and militarism under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party. The referendum of 2010 resulted in 57,8 percent of the votes in favour of the ‘yes’ campaign consisting of the alliance of the ruling party and liberals, paving the way for today’s Turkey because of significant shifts in the political arena.
While the liberals supported the AKP and its referendum implementations for “the road to democracy”, some leftist and socialist parties stood against the 2010 referendum particularly thanks to the initiative of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), which set forth that the Justice and Development Party would not settle accounts with the militarist coups and juntas because of the fact that the ruling party was the product of the 1980 coup in continuing the main politics of the pro-NATO junta’s neoliberal and reactionary philosophy that gave birth to the AKP.
COURT TERMINATED THE LAWSUIT ON 1980 COUP LEADERS
Following the 2010 referendum as a critical milestone in the political history of Turkey, a high criminal court in the Turkish capital city of Ankara launched the first trial of the coup leaders in 2012. However, the court decided on May 4, 2017, to terminate the lawsuit on Kenan Evren, the then Chief of the General Staff and the seventh President of Turkey, and General Ali Tahsin Şahinkaya, the then Chief of the Air Forces on the grounds that the relevant persons died.
Despite the plaintiff’s attorneys demanded the demotion of military ranks of the two late suspects, the court rejected the demand, too, and thus terminated the lawsuit.
Therefore, the Justice and Development Party’s rhetoric to “judge” the militarist putschists in order to pave the way for a “democratic politics” in Turkey ended up with a farce showing that entire attempts of the ruling party were a part of a populist showcase.
