Chapter 99: Ballroom Blitz - More Events in the Middle East
Above: Ankara, the capital city of the Republic of Turkey, in 1975.
Throughout the history of civilization, Turkey’s geographical position as the gateway between Europe and Asia has made it a crucial center of culture, conflict, and trade. This would change little as the 20th Century progressed. In the context of the Great Twilight Struggle of the Cold War, Turkey became a valuable geopolitical player, becoming a member of NATO in 1952, and playing host to U.S. intermediate range nuclear missiles until they were disarmed and removed as part of President Kennedy’s deal to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. As the result of frequent military coups and ubiquitous political instability in the early 1960’s, Turkey suffered a series of weak, fractured, and ineffectual governments, the first of which resulted from General Cemal Gursel’s coup in May of 1960. These coalitions were essentially a political ping pong match between their leading members for control: the Justice Party of Suleyman Demirel on the right; and the Republican People’s Party of Ismet Inonu and Bulent Ecevit on the left. During President Kennedy’s second term, as his attention turned increasingly abroad and to the enforcement of the Kennedy Doctrine, JFK’s eyes were, for a time, fixed on Turkey, and resulted in several state visits to the country by Secretary of State McNamara and even one by the President himself. Despite renewed American interest in the country, and growing annual tourism revenues from the booming worldwide economy, the people of Turkey remained restless and eventually, turned violent. As the 60’s wore on, an economic recession rocked the country, resulting in demonstrations from college students, labor unions, and other left wing groups, which were then countered by right-wing nationalist and islamic fundamentalist movements as well. Terror groups at both ends of the ideological spectrum carried out bombing attacks, robberies, kidnappings, and even political assassinations. An ultranationalist, neo-fascist paramilitary organization, known as the “Grey Wolves” (which was officially the youth wing of ex-Colonel Alparslan Turkes’ Nationalist Movement Party) began to patrol the streets of major cities and lash out at any and all they saw as “enemies of the Turkish people”. The result? Horrific violence, especially against ethnic and religious minorities or those who held left-wing beliefs. In the political realm, Prime Minister Demirel and his centre-right coalition were narrowly reelected in 1969, but immediately faced issues of their own when the various members of the coalition broke off to form their own, independent parties once more, leaving his Justice Party with only the slimmest of majorities. This ground the legislative process to a halt and meant that Demirel’s government was powerless to take any meaningful action to stem the tide of violence.
By January of 1971, the country appeared to be in a state of utter chaos. Universities across the country closed, as their students, hoping to emulate Latin American urban guerrillas, robbed banks, kidnapped US servicemen, and attacked American targets. Additionally, the homes of professors and academics who spoke out against the government were bombed by the Grey Wolves and other neo-fascist militias. Industry too was at a standstill, as more work days were lost to strikes during the month of January, 1971 alone than during any prior year. Islamist movements became more aggressive as well, growing so bold as to openly renounce Kemalism, the founding ideology of the Republic (as laid out by Ataturk) through its political party, the National Order Party. This finally proved a step too far for the military, who revered Ataturk and his philosophy. With Demirel’s government seemingly paralyzed, and unable to address the social, economic, and political crises facing the nation, the military once again decided that it was time to act. On March 12th, 1971, the Chief of the General Staff, Memduh Tagmac, handed the Prime Minister an ultimatum: “step down from power and dissolve your government, or be destroyed”. After a three hour meeting with his cabinet, Demirel made the decision to comply. While the exact intentions behind the “soft coup” remain debated by scholars, even today, there were three broad motivations behind the issuing of the ultimatum. First, senior officials in the military believed that the Prime Minister had lost his grip on power and was proving ineffective at dealing with mounting public disorder and political terrorism; they wished to return order to Turkey. Second, many officers were unwilling to bear responsibility for the Demirel government's already brutal methods, such as the crack down on Istanbul workers' demonstrations the year before. more radical members of the armed forces believed that force alone could not stop popular unrest and especially Marxist and Islamic revolutionary movements. They contended that the social and economic reform mentality behind the prior 1960 coup still needed to be put into practice. Too much state control of the economy, they argued, had resulted in the ‘68 - ‘71 recession. Finally, a sizeable faction of the senior officers concluded that progress within a liberal democratic system was untenable, and that right-wing totalitarianism would result in a more egalitarian, independent and "modern" Turkey. Colonel Turkes sensed an opportunity, and began marching his Grey Wolves through the streets, showing off their uniforms and “discipline” as a show of order to a public terrified by the recent turn of events throughout the country. There were other officers meanwhile, who feared the right-wingers, and thus supported the soft coup if only to try and build a government more resistant to their influence.
The country’s liberals hoped that as had occurred in 1960, a group of radical, reformist officers would take power, and finally implement the changes promised in the 1961 constitution. The ultimatum thus initially encouraged them. Tragically, it was not to be. The military high command, remembering what had happened in the last intervention, decided to preempt such a possibility by firing all junior officers who held left-wing or center-left beliefs in days leading up to the coup. As soon as the senior command established control over the government, they immediately gave the order for their forces to suppress any group viewed as leftist, fearing the specter of potential communists. Leaders of left-wing parties, teachers’ unions, and academia had their homes raided and were placed under surveillance. Such action by the military spurred on the Grey Wolves and their allies, resulting in an orgy of attacks, theft, rape, and killings which rocked Istanbul, Ankara, and other major cities in the weeks after the coup. Hoping to establish order quickly without executing direct rule via the junta, the high command needed to get the Grey Wolves under control, and thus turned to Colonel Turkes, their leader, for aid. Turkes, eager to attain power and implement a program to pursue his pan-Turkic, far-right ideology, agreed to help the junta form a “legitimate, civilian government”, if they placed him at its head as Prime Minister, and agreed to forestall open elections until at least 1973. The junta, desperate for a return to normalcy as a wave of left-wing terrorism erupted in the wake of the police raids, acquiesced. As soon as the move was announced and Turkes took the reigns of power, utter bedlam broke out across the country. Though the NHP’s rise to power was overwhelmingly favored by the Islamist militias, who had long campaigned for a turn from Kemalist secularism, moderates within the military, liberal reformers, and of course, the left-wing extremists, decried the decision and refused to accept Turkes’ government as legitimate. The country seemed poised on the brink of civil war until Turkes agreed to make concessions and accept liberal former finance minister Ferit Melen as his Deputy, a decision applauded throughout the military apparatus. Though many hoped this marked a change of course for Turkes, the PM had little intention of forestalling his desired program of terror. Within the month, left-wing publications (but not Islamic, or nationalist ones) were banned, unions and labour strikes were declared illegal and martial law was declared throughout the country. Soon not just leftists, but people with liberal or progressive political leanings were being abducted, tortured, and even killed. It was one of the most horrific rises to power the world had seen since that of Adolf Hitler. Despite his brutalistic, ruthless methods, over time, Turkes did manage to bring a measure of peace to Turkey. Fear, repression, and force were the law of the land, and the Turkish people cowered as a new constitution, written at the end of the year, all but formally codified Turkes’ claims to absolute power. He even took a new title for himself to supplant Prime Minister - “Basbug” - meaning “Leader”, and though parliament would continue to convene and vote on legislation, any political parties who disagreed with his NMP were banned and made illegal. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish refugees fled their homeland, seeking asylum in Europe, North Africa, and even North America. Many would eventually settle in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, though many more would be turned away to face whatever cruel fate awaited them upon returning to Turkey. The world was shocked, appalled, and horrified by what it saw.
Above: A new flag for the “State of Turkey”, as established in the 1971 Constitution (left).
Though the American President at the time, George Romney, had wanted strongly to follow the Kennedy Doctrine and both denounce Turkey’s new government and distance the United States from the country, he ran into several difficulties in doing so. For starters, Romney, who had once declared that he would denounce “political extremism of both the left and the right”, failed to account for the treaty which established NATO to not have a provision for ousting member states who failed to live up to the organization’s interests and values. No one had ever tried to expel a country from the alliance before; there was no protocol in place for such an action. Furthermore, Secretary of State Richard Nixon and NSA Henry Kissinger did not believe it would be “wise” to distance the United States from Turkey at the present moment, especially as Yuri Andropov and the Soviet Union were looking to escalate the Cold War once again with renewed arms races and sabotage efforts. “Only as friends can we hope to convince them to change.” Nixon told the President in a tense phone call. “Not as enemies. We need them for containment.” Romney was forced to concede. His assassination in 1972 brought a new commander in chief to power, and President Bush had his own ideas about Turkey, and what America had the right to demand as a leader on the world stage. George Bush had nearly been killed innumerable times fighting as a pilot in the Pacific against fascism. He was damned if he was going to let these far right “brutes” make a mockery of the freedom and liberty that NATO stood for. Bush began his administration by strongly denouncing Turkes’ government. Further, when Turkey threatened invasion of the island-Republic of Cyprus once again in 1974, supposedly to protect the ethnically Turkish population there from “Greek abuses of the Republic”, Bush turned to the precedent set by President Kennedy in 1964, and told Turkes that if he attacked Cyprus and this led to war with the Soviet Union (who themselves were eager to curb Turkish expansion), the United States would not join in a war to protect Turkey. Prime Minister Robert Stanfield of Canada soon echoed Bush’s pledge, as did Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom, and Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany. With the world on the brink of a Mediterranean War, Turkes backed down, and called off the invasion of Cyprus. Turkes did not however, make any promises about free elections or liberalization, and shocked the world when he withdrew Turkey from NATO’s formal command structure the following year. Though Turkey relied heavily on the west for tourism and trade, Turkes seemed hell bent on constructing his ideal, nationalistic vision for the country. His enemies grew in number until in December of 1975, he was assassinated in Ankara by Telli Gokmen, a Turkish soldier whose liberal relatives had been killed in one of his many purges. In the aftermath of Turkes’ death, the military assumed control of the country once more, and this time, a group of junior officers, dedicated to reform and liberalization, took power and promised to lead the country down the path of “freedom and progress”. The following year, yet another constitution would be written, reestablishing the post of Prime Minister, restoring the Republic, Parliament and all of her political parties, and enshrining civil liberties in a bill of rights. A new government was formed, with the Justice Party once again at the head of a centre-right coalition and young reformer and devout Kemalist Husamettin Cindoruk as its first Prime Minister. After four years of bloodshed, turmoil, and terror under a fascist dictatorship, Turkey was finally returned to the path of semi-liberal democracy. Tragically, it had gained little from its experiment in authoritarian rule, save thousands of corpses and broken families. President Bush would call Turkes’ rule, “perhaps the greatest tragedy of the 1970’s.”
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Above: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran since his coronation on September 16th, 1941. The Shah’s dream of what he referred to as “a Great Civilisation” in Iran led to a rapid industrial and military modernization, as well as social and economic reforms.
Because of the prestige and power of Iran due to its immense oil wealth, the country’s King, or “Shah”, was arguably the most prominent and influential leader in the Middle East, and self-styled “protector of the Persian Gulf”. As the world advanced, hurtling toward the end of the twentieth century, the Shah saw an opportunity for Iran to escape the fate of so many other “conquered” nations, and become a leading power in its own right. It only made sense that he should want his country to stand above all others. A man obsessed with stature to the point that he wore elevator shoes to appear taller than he truly was, the Shah’s idol and favorite world leader was President Charles de Gaulle of France, whom at 6’5” cut a very stark figure in Pahlavi’s mind. The Shah was known in his own court and throughout the world as a very odd monarch, indeed; and not just for his obsession with height as being the primary measure of a man. Having first risen to power during World War II after an Anglo-Soviet invasion forced his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi to abdicate the throne, the new Shah was all too aware of how reliant his country was becoming on Western powers to dictate its future. The vast trove of resources, both natural and human in his country were used primarily to benefit the people of other nations, a condition he vowed to one day change through his leadership. The Shah wed his third and final wife, Farah Diba, a tall, beautiful woman (the Shah’s favorite kind) on December 20th, 1959 and shortly thereafter set about, in earnest, completing his life’s work - to build a stronger Iran to be inherited by his son and heir, the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.
Beginning in 1963, the Shah launched the “White Revolution” - a suite of far-reaching reforms which earned him the praise and encouragement of liberals and westerners, but the condemnation and fury of conservatives and religious scholars. Modeled after a number of foreign efforts at national renewal, but especially the American New Deal and New Frontier, the White Revolution began with a spirited attempt at land reform, which included a sale of several state-owned factories to finance it; vastly increased infrastructure construction and modernization, including expansions to road, ail, and rail networks throughout the country; damming and irrigation projects; nationalization of forests and pastures for their protection; the formation of literacy and medical bureaus to ensure rural access to public services; and most fundamentally of all, the extension of voting rights to women. The Shah claimed that each of these changes were “modernization for its own sake” and “simply the right thing for my country”; historians agree however, that he also had his own personal, more political motives. The White Revolution, so-called because it was supposed to be “bloodless” in nature, served to legitimize the Pahlavi dynasty in the eyes of a public with lingering doubts about its right to rule them. As the Iranian Middle Class was growing in power and wealth, they demanded more political and economic freedom and agency. “To preempt a Red Revolution”, historian Ervand Abrahamian would write, “the Shah gave his people a White one.” The alterations made to Iranian society, particularly land reform, was done to strengthen the peasant class at the expense of the wealthy landowners, in the hopes that the newly empowered peasants would support the Shah against the Middle Class. This was met with mixed results, though it did manage to infuriate many wealthy nobles, who were now seeing their land stripped from them by the government.
The reforms cost the Shah plenty in the way of political and financial capital, but they soon paid back massive dividends. Per capita income for Iranians skyrocketed, and increased oil revenues fueled an enormous increase in state funding for industry and scientific research. Tehran, Iran’s capital, became one of the most culturally attractive and popular cities for tourists in the world, and his newfound power gave the Shah more “pull” in his foreign dealings, especially with the United States and Soviet Union. Already inclined toward the United States due to their support for his regime in the past under President Eisenhower, the Shah had openly favored Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate in the 1960 election, even going so far as to personally donate to Nixon’s campaign. Of course, history went the other way, and as soon as the now President John F. Kennedy took the oath of office on January 20th, 1961, the Shah immediately went on the defensive. The Kennedy Administration did indeed prove a thorn in Pahlavi’s side, pressuring the Shah to appoint liberal, democratic/reformist cabinet members and Prime Ministers, and acquiesce to the demands of striking workers and teachers in his country when they demanded increased wages for their work. In 1962, when the Shah conducted a state visit to Washington, he was met by protesting Iranian-American students at several prestigious universities. Pahlavi, ever sensitive about his image and reception abroad, accused then Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the leading anti-Pahlavi voice in the Administration, with “personally organizing these rallies and protests”. President Kennedy reportedly laughed at the remark, and countered that “Bobby wishes he had that kind of sway over our nation’s youth.” But privately, JFK fumed. He felt that the Shah had counted on unconditional American support for him for too long. From now on, the Kennedy Doctrine insisted that the Shah’s promises of freedom for his people mean something. Pahlavi also strained Anglo-Iranian relations when he took offence at being invited to a dinner at Buckingham Palace by Queen Elizabeth II which was being thrown in someone else’s honour. He replied coldly that he would attend dinner with her Majesty if and when she decided to throw a dinner in his honour. Though this insistence infuriated the British Government and people, the Queen eventually gave in and Pahlavi’s pressure was successful. Perhaps because of his distaste for President Kennedy and his brother, the Shah toyed with the idea of strengthening relations with the USSR and pursuing a more neutral foreign policy, but upon meeting the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who stood at a diminutive 5’3” tall and left Pahlavi thoroughly unimpressed, the Shah quickly discontinued such plans, rushing back to America, with its 6’0” President.
Politics weren’t the only sore spot in the relationship between the Shah and President Kennedy, especially after JFK survived the attempt on his life in 1963, but they did play a significant part. Shortly after being reelected over Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York (whose campaign Pahlavi once again donated to), Kennedy announced that his brother, Bobby, would leave the Justice Department to become Secretary of Defense with Bob McNamara shifting to State. This meant that Bobby would play an instrumental role in devising and carrying out American military strategy across the globe. With an ardently anti-Shah man in charge of the Pentagon, Pahlavi feared that American shipments of arms and military equipment would now come with more strings attached than ever before. He wasn’t wrong to harbor such anxieties. Bobby Kennedy put increasing pressure on the Shah to sprinkle more “democratic reforms” into his White Revolution. RFK wanted increased power for the then anemic Iranian parliament; he wanted the Shah to allow more than one political party, something he had always been reluctant to do in the past; and Bobby especially wanted Pahlavi to rein in the excesses of his ruling class and financial elites, who saw the most benefit from Iran’s oil wealth and claimed that it would “trickle down” to the working classes - the world’s first use of that term. The Shah tried to cultivate a close personal relationship with the President to bypass his “meddling kid brother”, but this too proved unsuccessful. The Shah would often call the President personally or invite him to screenings of his favorite films in his palace in Tehran, mostly light French comedies and Hollywood action flicks; the President would counter that he was happy to stay at home and screen
Star Trek and James Bond films in the White House theater. Pahlavi tried to appeal to JFK’s Harvard playboy past, offering scores of “all too willing” women who would be waiting for Kennedy should he come to Tehran for visits. The President would certainly have once been tempted by such overtures, but after the death of Patrick and his own close call in Dallas, Kennedy’s devotion to Jackie was absolute. For his part, the Shah partook in his own debauchery regardless of the President’s answers. Pahlavi was a serial philanderer, rarely faithful to his Queen, Farah. The Shah’s right hand man, Asadollah Alam would regularly import tall, European women for “adventures” with Pahlavi, though Alam admitted in his diary that when this was not possible, he would bring “local product” to his Monarch as well. Pahlavi had a ferocious, insatiable sexual appetite, admitting to President Kennedy once while drunk that if he did not have sex several times per day, he would inevitably fall into a depression. Queen Farah would eventually find out about the Shah’s affairs in 1973, permanently damaging their relationship and the prestige of the Iranian Monarchy. Even then, Pahlavi was unrepentant. Rather than take responsibility for his actions, the Shah blamed the revelation on his Prime Minister, who “failed to sweep them under the rug”. Indeed, it was only a matter of time before the opulence of the Shah and his policies, even after 2,500 of uninterrupted Persian monarchy, ran afoul of the country’s Muslim clerics.
The monarch’s most outspoken critic was easily Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, better known throughout the west as “the Ayatollah”. A senior religious scholar and advocate of Shi’a Islamic fundamentalism, Khomeini spoke out bitterly against the Shah and his White Revolution. He believed that the reforms were westernizing trends which stood at odds with his deeply conservative principles of traditionalism, and were regarded by Khomeini and his fellow scholars as “downright dangerous”. On June 3rd, 1963, Khomeini drew a line in the sand by giving a public speech in which he officially denounced the Shah and his policies of change, and called him a “tyrant, a wretched, miserable man”. He also vowed that if the Shah did not cease his policies of “radical liberalization”, then he would rue the day, and the Iranian people would soon rise up to overthrow him. Two days later, Khomeini would be detained by state police in his home at Qom, then transferred to Tehran and put under house arrest. After this occurred, three days of major riots broke out across the nation in protest, due to Khomeini’s popularity and the reverence with which the general public treated him. Khomeini would be held until August, when he was released, though it was only the first of several confrontations between the cleric and the government. The following year, on October 26th, 1964, he denounced both the United States and Iran over the so-called “capitulations” of the new “status-of-forces” law passed by the Iranian parliament. The new law allowed for American servicemen and women stationed in Iran to be tried for any crime they committed by their own military courts, rather than local civil authorities. Khomeini was arrested once more and this time jailed for half a year before being released on the orders of then Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansur, who thereafter advised him to apologize for his prior statements and cease his opposition to the Shah’s government. When Khomeini refused, Mansur slapped Khomeini in the face in a fit of rage. It was a deadly error. Two months later, Prime Minister Mansur was assassinated on his way to Parliament by four members of the Fadayan e-Islam, a fundamentalist activist group with strong ties to Khomeini. This however, was the final straw. Khomeini was ordered by the Iranian government out of Iran, sent into exile in neighboring Iraq, where he would remain in the city of Najaf for eleven years, until 1975, when on October 17th, he was suddenly found dead in his home. Both the Iraqi government and SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, claimed his cause of death to be a heart attack, but thousands of his conservative supporters in Iran were unconvinced, and began to openly accuse the Shah of ordering Khomeini’s assassination. Over the next handful of years, the Shah would paint himself into a very untenable political position, and prove his old nemesis John F. Kennedy correct:
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: Trials and Tribulations Before the End of the Year
