Özet:

This article aims to reveal the economic developments occurring in Turkey between 1970 and 1980, as seen through the eyes of British diplomats. It is also aimed at the non-specialists who want to understand more about the Turkish economy in the 1970s. The immediate beneficiary of the 1960 coup was the Justice Party, a successor to the dissolved Democratic Party, which, despite military efforts to hold it back, won more votes than its rival People's Republican Party (PRP) in every general election between 1961 and 1971. Initially, it was forced to join a series of short-lived coalitions with the PRP. However, after its convincing victory in the 1965 election, it was able to form a government of its own under its new leader, Suleyman Demirel. Demirel was the one who consolidated the party’s organizational strength by using his control over what remained essentially a highly politified program of planned economic development. However, it was also Demirel who saw this same strength weaken as elements on the right defected from his leadership to form new organizations like the National Action Party and the Islamic National Order Party. One reason generally put forward to explain this phenomenon was the further multiplication of often contradictory economic interests that could no longer be contained within a single organization. Another reason was the growing militancy of a number of workers' and student organizations. It is clear that many army officers shared this apprehension, and were only too ready to launch a second intervention in 1971 to put an end to a situation of growing administrative chaos and political violence. However, once again, the senior generals who took charge of events had no agreed program of reforms, and contented themselves with minor constitutional amendments aimed at curbing some of the freedoms granted in 1961. Given the highly politified atmosphere in Turkey in the 1970s, and the fact that it resulted in yet another military intervention in 1980, it is probably inevitable that analysts tend to highlight quite different explanations for the lack of a firm government, the politification of most parts of the state administration and the growing violence. Others concentrate more on the underlying stresses and strains posed first by a period of rapid social transformation and then, by a long period of economic crisis from 1973 onwards, when high oil prices combined with a loss of American aid after the intervention of Cyprus and a decline in the remittances sent back by Turkish workers in Europe to produce a crippling shortage of foreign exchange. In the events, of course, all these factors played their part. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that by 1980, the year of the third military intervention, the economic situation had much improved as a result of the introduction of the economic stabilization plan agreed with the IMF in January 1980. There is no doubt that, when it came, the army’s intervention in 1980 had widespread popular support. However, this does not mean that the majority of the Turkish people were prepared to see a long period of military rule. The generals intended to return to full civil rule as soon as possible. The fact was that ANAP was able to dominate Turkish politics for the rest of the 1980s. One of the reasons for that was the partial success of its domestic policies aimed at transforming Turkey from a protected, inward-looking economy to one based on the export of manufactured goods in the highly competitive world markets.

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