Dancing on Two Fronts
While vanishing in several parts of the world (Perkins 2013), military coups continue to loom large in the political life of several countries. The failed July 15 (2016) coup attempt in Turkey has provided the most recent manifestation. Though several observers and experts correctly highlighted several motivations behind the putschists, its external dimension, including alleged US support, was immediately sensationalized. By a nice coincidence, however, the following observations by General Michael Flynn, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (2012–2014) under the Obama Administration and subsequently President Trump’s National Security Advisor for a short period of time, on the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey during a campaign speech shows how significant military-to-military relations and professional military education programs may be to understanding the external dimension of a coup attempt:
Probably most of you do not know but there is an ongoing coup, going on in Turkey right now, right now. There is a coup. And I was just literally going back and forth with a very great friend of mine, who trained with us, in the Turkish military. And the Turkish military is, I do not know whether they are going to succeed or not but the Turkish military… they have been excised for many years by… what really became a secular nation state, then began to turn towards Islamism, that is Turkey, under Erdoğan … I am going to be very fascinated to see what happens because if the military succeeds, one of the things that came out of the military tonight… they said, we recognize our responsibilities with NATO, we recognize our responsibilities with the United Nations, and we want to make sure that world knows, we want to be seen as a secular nation. (italics added) (Mueller 2016)
General Flynn’s remarks on a coup attempt in a NATO member in 2016 also underscore the continuing importance of bilateral relations and professional military education programs well after the end of the Cold War. Yet the civil-military relationship (CMR) literature has sorely understudied the role of external actors to explain why military coups d’état occurred and left unstudied military-to-military channels in making any sense of the external dimension of a coup attempt. The primary objective of this study is to close this large gap by discussing the US role in four military coups d’état during the Cold War: in Turkey (1960 and 1980) and in Pakistan (1958 and 1977). It asks if putschists considered and estimated likely US reaction to their coup attempts in these cases. It also explores whether US reaction (support or opposition) influenced coup success or failure. If the US reaction influenced the coup outcomes, what was the influence? How did the USA influence coups in these cases? Were there any differences between these cases in terms of US influence? How can we explain these differences?
Students of CMR often provide several ‘domestic’ explanations for coups and their success or failure. These explanations include factors that are both internal and external to the military, such as political decay, economic backwardness, corruption, factionalism, and the loss of legitimacy and military professionalism, and threats to military’s corporate interests respectively (Danopoulos 1992, p. 3). At the cusp of the post-Cold War period, Rice claimed, “any number of factors can go into determining these civil-military boundaries and reinforcing them over time. History and tradition, the nature of the political system, and the relative strength or weakness of civilian and military institutions are all important determinants” (1992, p. 33).
However, in order for a coup d’état to succeed it must be well calculated and planned in advance, as attested by people who joined or watched coups from close quarters (Soyuyüce 2012, p. 35; Faik 2012, p. 10; Seyhan 1966, p. 43; Küçük 2008, p. 84; Aydemir 2010, p. 23; Esin 2005, p. 98). Some scholars have considered coup plotters to be ‘rational actors’. “Coup conspirators will carefully evaluate their chances of success and should only attempt a coup when the expected rewards of the maneuver and its probability of victory are high enough to offset the dire consequences of a failed putsch” (Powell 2012, p. 1019). Coup making is a serious business; severe costs from demotions to death sentence may be inflicted from failed coup attempts1 (Geddes 1999; Utku 2006, p. 73; Kebschull, pp. 575–577; Subaşı 2004, pp. 92, 108). This book assumes that military officers are not reckless agents; they are, similar to other political actors, rational, calculating, and “thinking and observing” (Subaşı 2004, p. 17) agents, who follow very closely not only intra-military politics and balance but also domestic, regional and global developments to use as inputs in their decision-making processes. As Kaplan, who joined in the May 27 coup as a Staff Major, said, “we used to sit and ask ourselves ‘what is going to happen, why the country is in this poor situation, why things have gone wrong’… you cannot cork officers’ hearts, feelings; officers do not just take orders and obey. They too ponder, they too have brains” (Kaplan 2012, p. 24; see also Subaşı 2004, p. 91; Elevli 1960, p. 165; Chishti 1989, p. 63; Bölügiray 1999, p. 120). They estimate possible resistance essentially on two fronts: whether or not people and other political actors will welcome them on the domestic front, because if large-scale resistance erupts this may lead to a civil war, which is one of the most threatening outcomes militaries may fear.
Some students of coups d’état claimed that coup plotters are not concerned with popular opposition since people rarely stand up to a coup attempt (Singh 2014a, p. 17). However, others insist that domestic resistance may hamper coup success because “non-state organizations constitute a powerful safeguard against military intervention when they ‘talk back’ or resist a coup by mobilizing protests or refusing to comply with plotters’ orders” (Belkin and Schofer 2005, p. 157; also see Varney and Martin 2000, pp. 53, 61, 65; Bölügiray 1999, pp. 134, 233; Roberts 1975). “Indeed, civilians have the potential to make a polity completely ungovernable in a postcoup environment.” (Thyne et al. 2017, p. 4) Popular opposition increases the risk that coup plot will be resisted from within the military as well. If that happens, the military may fall into fratricidal conflict, a war between brothers-in-arms, and may aggravate the risk of a civil war (Singh 2014a, pp. 22–23; Khan 1967, pp. 71–72). This helps explain why some coup plotters before the May 27 coup d’état in Turkey watched coups in Iraq and Syria with concern in the 1950s (Ilıcak 1975, vol. 2, p. 571; Esin 2005, p. 55; Rapoport 1968, pp. 551–572; Barracca, 2007, pp. 140–141).
The other critical, but neglected front for the officers to care for is the external; putschists often feel they must try to predict possible external reactions to their actions to make sure that they will not be totally isolated from the international community or their attempt will not trigger a foreign intervention.For Luttwak, considerable political independence from the great powers and wide immunity of internal political life to influence of foreign powers is one of the pre-conditions of the coup (1979, p. 44). As Goodspeed (1962) pointed out, “the international situation must be favorable before the rebels strike, unless they are willing to risk their coup turning into war.” (p. 214) Military coups are therefore “simply too important to be left to the vagaries of domestic politics” (David quoted in Gunn 2015, p. 124). External actors constitute at least one of the reasons behind some failed coup attempts (Kebschull 1994, pp. 571–572; Singh 2014b). As Taylor pointed out, “opportunities definitely matter. Intervention is difficult when structural barriers to coups are severe” (2003, p. 30). Nogaylaroğlu opined that “officers who plan a coup consider external support. They are thinking people like you and me. When they set themselves on such a course, they consider its likely effects, for instance, what the US might say and how Europe might react. Most likely, they also try to get an idea from these people about how external actors will react, perhaps some also directly to talk to foreign actors” (personal communication, June 9, 2015). A powerful external actor such as the United States may play an extremely critical role in coups d’état in other places because external assistance may help coupists decrease the potential external costs of their action (Shah 2014, p. 91). Hilmi Özkök, a former Chief of the Turkish General Staff, did not mince his words when it came to the importance of external actors for the successful implementation of a coup d’état. After saying that he could not confirm US involvement in the September 12 coup d’état because he was not a witness to events as they unfolded, General Özkök continued:
We may think of the connection between coup d’état and the US in the following way… the US is a powerful nation with a large clout… It has sway over the NATO, the UN, Security Council, wherein it retains the veto power. This is to say that when a revolution [ihtilal] is staged, this comes to the agenda in certain international institutions. When it does, somebody has to give you [the putschists] protection, for instance the World Bank, IMF etc. If you fail to find someone in these international institutions to protect you, they will immediately bring down your economy and you will therefore fai...