January 24 and September 12, 1980: Before, After, and Today

Yesterday, the calendar showed January 24. It was the anniversary of the treacherous assassination of Uğur Mumcu, the staunch defender of Atatürk's principles and revolutions and a "Kuva-yi Milliyeci without a kalpak," in 1993. I remember him with respect. May he rest in peace.

January 24, 1980... It is an important turning point not only in our economic history but also in our political history... The January 24, 1980 Decisions and the September 12 Military Coup represent the riveting of the imperialist shackles onto the Turkish economy and politics, which had been linked to American imperialism since 1947. Let's rewind the film a bit.

1945

The Second World War has ended. Following Stalin's demand for Kars and Ardahan and his request to have a say in the control of the Straits, Turkey integrates into America and the Western world. With the influence of landowners, merchants, and political Islamists in the army and parliament, the counter-revolution makes effective moves against Atatürk's Enlightenment Revolutions. The President of the period, İnönü, cannot restrain the CHP group in parliament (some of whom would later found the DP) and the army.

In 1945, the Land Reform Law is rendered obsolete. In 1947, the Higher Village Institute, which trained teachers for Village Institutes, is closed, and in 1954, all village institutes are shut down. In 1947 and 1948, upon the desire to receive a share of the military aid (Truman Doctrine) and economic aid (Marshall Plan) that the US would provide to Europe emerging from the war, the country returns to the economic program conditioned by the US. Turkey throws away the planned development and industrialization plan it prepared in 1946, which was based on its own resources and had an independent character from the Atatürk era. It switches to a model based on agriculture and highways imposed by the US.

1974- 1980

In 1974, Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit threw away the military agreements made with the US. He carried out a military operation against the genocide suffered by Turks in Cyprus. An arms embargo was imposed on Turkey. With the oil shock that followed immediately, Turkey entered a balance of payments crisis. Ecevit lifted the US ban on poppy cultivation. Ecevit fell from power, and Demirel became Prime Minister again. The US did not lift the arms embargo, upon which Demirel closed all American bases in Turkey.

By 1978, Bülent Ecevit is Prime Minister again. The slogan "The land belongs to those who till it, the water to those who use it" for land reform is written on mountains and stones all over Turkey. In 1978, the Fourth Five-Year Development Plan was to be prepared. Bilsay Kuruç was at the head of the State Planning Organization. Inspired again by Atatürk's economic policies, a model suitable for the conjuncture of the 1980s is developed. The private sector's size is not sufficient for heavy industry investments. Therefore, the state should make heavy industry investments with an entrepreneurial state model. And while doing this, the state should also support exports. The fact that resources for investments would be used by the state angers the private sector terribly. Hoarding and the black market are revived. The World Bank, OECD, and IMF come to Turkey multiple times in 1978 and 1979 and call on the government to abandon the plan. These calls are recorded as the famous Derviş-Robinson Report dated 1979, signed by Kemal Derviş and Sherman Robinson, who were World Bank officials at the time. The views in this report are exactly the decisions announced on January 24, 1980. In October 1979, a by-election is held for 5 vacant parliamentary seats. The Justice Party, which is in the main opposition, wins all 5 seats. Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel, and the Undersecretary of the State Planning Organization is Turgut Özal.

A strong devaluation is carried out. Liberalization in foreign trade is initiated. Labor rights are restricted. A strict austerity program is put into effect. CHP Chairman Bülent Ecevit, who has fallen into opposition, warns:

"These decisions, in order to be implemented, lead to military coups as in South American countries."

Ecevit is proven right, and January 24, 1980, ultimately results in the September 12 Military Coup.

In Turkey, a painful period of terror has already been experienced since 1974 under the name of artificial right-left conflicts as a counter-guerrilla-gladio project. Every day, young people, scientists, and intellectuals are killed in the middle of the street. The separatist terrorist organization PKK, which disguises itself as a leftist organization, is founded. Terror creates a great ground for a military coup. The terror, which was not ended despite the implementation of martial law before the military coup, ends overnight with the military coup. This explains what the source of the terror was. In fact, the words spoken in the US the day after the coup are: "Our boys have won."

Süleyman Demirel, who had been making heavy industry investments in cooperation with the Soviet Union since 1965, started the GAP project despite the opposition of the IMF and the World Bank, closed American bases, and was the subject of the 1971 memorandum, takes the January 24 decisions. But he is not "Our Boy" for the US.

1980 AND AFTER

Turkey began to fully fulfill the role assigned to it by America with the military coup carried out on September 12, 1980. The assigned role is as follows:

Without completing its industrialization, Turkey was integrated into the newly emerging neoliberal economy with outward-oriented economic policies; its foreign debt, economic, political, and military dependence increased. On the other hand, in accordance with the US's Green Belt project, the way was paved for political Islamists. It set out with the claim of an Atatürkist education system, but in practice, a newly interpreted Turkish-Islamic Synthesis shaped first the education system and, from the 2000s onwards, Turkish politics. It paved the way for the strengthening of political Islam and its coming to power.

In the climate created by the coups and their aftermath, Atatürk's words "Freedom and independence are my character" and the source of democratic revolutions, "The truest guide in life is science," were forgotten. Over time, the scientific approach gave way to superstitions and religious interpretations.

A short time later, we saw that the newly interpreted Turkish-Islamic synthesis began to damage and distort Atatürk's principles of secularism, revolutionism, and statism. Ultimately, from the 2000s onwards, we witnessed that the concept of Atatürk Nationalism was completely hollowed out, that even those practicing ethnic nationalism were melting Turkishness into the concept of the ummah and Turkic culture was being Arabized, that the former chairman of the CHP took a man who called Atatürk an infidel into the Party Assembly through the women's quota, and that CHP members who claim to be strict Atatürkists could not object to this. Let us also recall that the new chairman embraced the separatist Kurds' slogan of "Equal Citizenship" and gave the green light to the questioning of the nation-state and the Treaty of Lausanne.

Atatürk's principles of economic independence and growth based on one's own resources in the economy were already the primary targets that the imperialism managing the Counter-Revolution wanted to destroy. The outward-opening process that started with the January 24 decisions led to positive developments in exports, but because no planning was done, it did not reduce the economy's dependence on imports. On the contrary, dependence on the import of intermediate goods and investment goods increased. The economy became increasingly dependent on foreign resources. After 1980, instead of a competitive and export-oriented outward-opening policy, Turkey continued to pursue economic policies that surrendered the domestic market and increased the economy's dependence on the outside. The situation of being dependent on foreign resources, which the Western world assigned to the Turkish economy after the Second World War, was further reinforced with January 24.

With the January 24 decisions and the practices after September 12, significant changes occurred in income distribution to the detriment of the working class and the agricultural sector.

Prof. Dr. Korkut Boratav defines this period as "the years of capital's attack." According to Boratav, real wages in industry, which were 100 as an average of 1978/79, fell to 67.5 according to consumer prices in 1988, and the share of wages in industry fell from 37.2 percent to 15.4 percent. In the same period, the Agricultural Terms of Trade Index fell from 100 to 61.1. (Korkut Boratav, Turkish Economic History 1908-2015, İmge Kitabevi, p. 181)

Ecevit was right. Such a brutal decline in real wages and income transfer can only be experienced under military regimes. During the AKP period, the deterioration in income distribution became much more severe. Nearly 80 percent of the population fell below the poverty line, and the middle class disappeared.

Since 2003, under the AKP government, dependence on the outside in the Turkish economy has increased much more. While the ratio of our foreign deficits to national income (current account deficit/GDP) was at the level of 0.4 percent until 2003, this deficit increased tenfold during the AKP period. It rose to the level of 5 percent. Dependence on the outside in agriculture and industry became chronic. If foreign deficits become chronic, not only economic dependence but also political and military dependence follow. This becomes a survival issue for the country.

Where we have arrived today is an economic and political structure that is completely dependent on the outside. Under the baton of a US Ambassador who acts and speaks like a colonial governor, a wide choir from the government to the opposition is debating Lausanne. The secular and nation-state structure of our Republic is being tried to be changed. Do not be fooled by the US turning its back on the PKK-affiliated PYD in Syria in the last week... The Greater Middle East Project (BOP) is working. It only seems that the US's priorities and calendar have changed.