Türkiye on Monday will mark 19 years since a memorandum by the office of the chief of general staff shook the country accustomed to military coups. Today, it is a distant memory, though still a dark episode in Turkish democracy.
The "E-memorandum” of April 27, 2007, was a stark reminder that the army still had a perceived influence on Turkish politics as it did for decades after the 1960 coup. Yet, the memorandum published on the office’s website quickly backfired for those hoping to return to the old days of military tutelage. The government’s strong reaction effectively killed the message of the memorandum penned personally by then-Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt. It would take another four years before the army removed the memorandum from its website, but the deal was already blown due to the military’s lack of influence over politicians.
The memorandum’s primary target was the presidential elections, where Abdullah Gül was nominated by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). For the military, then harboring a mindset against what they called "reactionary” forces, the nomination countered "values of the republic,” something Büyükanıt openly said at an April 12 press briefing. Gül’s nomination also faced protests by self-styled defenders of the republic who took to the streets for "republic rallies.” Elsewhere, the opposition claimed that the ruling party was ineligible to field a candidate for the elections, insisting that 367 lawmakers should vote on holding the election, and the AK Party cannot call for it since it only had 354 seats in Parliament. The debate grew over time, but then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was determined to nominate Gül. Gül received 357 votes in the first round of elections on April 27, 2007, out of 361 votes cast that day at Parliament. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) challenged the result and took the matter to the Constitutional Court.
Within hours of the vote, the office of the chief of general staff released the infamous e-memorandum on its website. The memorandum had all the traces of a declaration by generals in the 1997 coup, claiming the secular nature of the republic was being eroded. It threatened to execute the Turkish Armed Forces’ "mission to carry out duties to preserve the Republic of Türkiye.”
Everyone was anticipating that the AK Party would bow down to the threat, as this was the case in 1997. One day later, then-government spokesperson Cemil Çiçek announced their response to the e-memorandum. "Such statements against the government by the office, an institution under the Prime Ministry, cannot be accepted in a democratic state operating under law,” he said. Nevertheless, the fight was still on. The Constitutional Court, on May 1, cancelled the first round of the election, siding with the CHP. The AK Party proposed another election, along with constitutional amendments to prevent a repeat of the cancellation.
On July 22, 2007, early elections were held, and the AK Party secured victory. The party then proposed a presidential election through popular vote, and the public overwhelmingly approved the proposal on July 22, immediately after the legislative elections.
On Aug. 20, 2007, another presidential election was held, with Gül nominated again. Gül secured 341 votes in the first round, but this dropped to 337 votes in the second round on Aug. 24. In the third round, Gül garnered 339 votes and was elected into office as the 11th president of the Republic of Türkiye. The CHP finally relented and accepted Gül’s election.
In 2012, Yaşar Büyükanıt told a parliamentary committee investigating coups that the memorandum was simply "a text reflecting sensitivity on secularism.” In the same year, authorities launched an investigation against Büyükanıt over the memorandum. As the investigation continued, Büyükanıt passed away in 2019.
The incident and related developments were thought to be the beginning and end of a renewed threat of military tutelage in the country, where the army took the reins in multiple instances on Türkiye’s bumpy road to democracy. In 2016, however, the coup threat emerged again, this time in the form of military infiltrators of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ). Türkiye pushed back this attempt too, at the cost of more than 250 people killed by putschists while resisting the coup. Since then, the army shed its image of de facto power above democratic institutions, while the public resistance and overwhelming support to the government cemented the role of Erdoğan, now president, as the real commander-in-chief of the country.