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The inner contradictions of the bourgeoisie
Behind this seemingly institutional conflict between the AKP government and the army lies a contradiction in the very bosom of the bourgeoisie in Turkey. Ever since the foundation of the republic in 1923 under Kemal Atatürk, the mainstream bourgeoisie has turned its face to the West and tried to integrate economically, politically, militarily and culturally with imperialism, European and, later, American. The country has been a member of NATO since 1952, of the OECD and the Council of Europe from their inception, and is now a candidate for accession to the EU. However, since the 1970s, the fledgling bourgeoisie of the vast provincial hinterland of Anatolia (or Asia Minor) has been competing economically and fighting politically the dominant pro-Western wing of Istanbul and a few other big cities. This bourgeoisie has adopted a markedly Islamist orientation. The two wings of the bourgeoisie even have their own economic umbrella organisations, TÜSİAD representing Western- oriented finance capital and MÜSİAD the Islamic-oriented fraction of the bourgeoisie, which, over the decades, has itself risen to the status of finance capital. In the political arena, as well, a succession of Islamist parties has vied for power. The Islamists of Erbakan finally came to power in 1996. This resulted in a first battle between the two wings. In 1997, a thinly disguised military intervention, based on an alliance of the military and the Western- oriented bourgeoisie, at the instigation of the US, disturbed by the openings of the government to the Iranian and Libyan regimes, and with the servile support of the trade-union bureaucracy, brought down the government and, through the services of the Constitutional Court, banned the Islamist party. The AKP was born in 2001 as a cross-breed of Islamism and liberalism and has followed exactly the same policies that any right-wing party would have since it came to power in a landslide victory at the end of 2002. With two exceptions.
One is the fatal mistake the party committed on the eve of the war on Iraq. On March 1, partly under the pressure of the unitary anti-war movement, many AKP members of parliament voted against the government motion stipulating the use of Turkish territory by US troops to attack Iraq from the north. This drew the wrath of the United States, which had supported the AKP government generously up to that point. The AKP has been trying to make up for this since then. The fact that parliament voted for troops to be sent to Lebanon at the beginning of September despite an overwhelming anti-Israeli sentiment in Turkey is the latest manifestation of this effort by the party to cater to the needs of US imperialist policy to curry favour from the Bush administration. However, the inevitable ambiguities and vacillations of a pro-Islamic party in this age of imperialist permanent war seem to have turned the US administration against the AKP. (An advisor to Erdoğan was lately quoted as imploring US officials unabashedly "not to flush him [i.e. Erdoğan] down the drain".) The fact that Hamas leader Meshal was received in Ankara by the foreign minister after the elections in Palestine raised the ire of Israel. The vacillations concerning Iran make the AKP an unreliable partner at the helm of one of the most important military allies of the US in the Middle East, the only power on a par with Iran, if one leaves aside Israel.
This is why Erdoğan visited Bush in the White House in early October. This is in fact why the military top brass stormed the government with their tirades exactly at a time when the prime minister was in Washington. Both sides are competing for the favours of the White House in the coming showdown in April. Given that the Turkish military have been reliable partners all throughout the period of Turkey's membership in NATO and that they have taken a much more militant stand against Iran than the AKP, it is highly likely that the US will throw its weight behind the army in this political civil war of the bourgeoisie in Turkey.
All the more so, since the pro-Western wing of the bourgeoisie has changed its position regarding the AKP government. And this is related to the second difference AKP policy has displayed from other right-wing parties. After a decade of weak coalition governments, the solid majority obtained by the AKP in 2002, added to the fact that the party had toned down Islamic references and committed itself to neo-liberalism and integration with the West, had lured the bourgeoisie into supporting the new government in the name of political and economic stability. However, despite its pruned Islamism the AKP has to at least pay lip service to its Islamist constituency. This it did in very parsimonious manner. However, even this limited opening to Islamism was enough to alienate the pro- Western bourgeoisie from the AKP. The problem was compounded by the appointment of Islamist cadres to all the significant posts of the bureaucracy at the expense of cadres loyal to Turkey's pro-Western trajectory. The dogged insistence of the government to replace the man of confidence of the pro-Western bourgeoisie at the head of the Central Bank last year was the last straw. In a certain sense, the bourgeoisie sees the attempt by Erdoğan to rise to the presidency as a culmination of this same trend.
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