The pretext alleged by the military, headed by General Kenan Evren, for the coup was to put an end to the social conflicts of the 1970s, as well as parliamentary instability. The US-support of this coup was acknowledged by the CIA Ankara station chief Paul Henze. After the government was overthrown, Henze cabled Washington, saying, "our boys have done it."[3] This has created the impression that the USA stood behind the coup. In June 2003 Henze denied this, but after two days Mehmet Ali Birand presented an interview with Henze recorded in 1997 in which he basically confirmed Mehmet Ali Birand's story.[4][5] The US State Department itself announced the coup during the night between 11 and 12 September: the military had phoned the US embassy in Ankara to alert them of the coup an hour before passing to action.[1]

US president Jimmy Carter, elected in 1976 and president from 1977 to 1981, would comment much later that "before the September 12 movement,[sic] Turkey was in a critical situation with regard to its defences. After the [1979] invasion of Afghanistan and the [1979] overthrow of the Iranian monarchy, the movement for stabilisation in Turkey came as a relief to us."[11]

Besides Kenan Evren, the National Security Council also included the general Haydar Saltuk, who was its secretary general. Both men were the strong men of the regime, while the government was headed by a retired admiral, Bülent Ulusu, and included several retired military officers and a few civil technicians. Some alleged in Turkey, after the coup, that general Saltuk had been preparing a more radical, rightist coup, which had been one of the reason prompting the other generals to act, respecting the hierarchy, and then to include him in the NSC in order to neutralize him.[1]

On 29 June 1981 the military junta appointed 160 people as members of an Advisory Assembly to draft a new Constitution. On 7 November 1982 the new Constitution was accepted with a referendum of almost 92% and on 9 November 1982 Kenan Evren was appointed President for the next seven years.

Amnesty International has estimated that over a quarter of a million people were arrested in Turkey after the coup and that almost all of them were tortured.[2] The Human Rights Association in Turkey (HRA, called İnsan Hakları Derneği) said 10 years after the coup that 650,000 people had been detained on political grounds. Most imprisoned persons were from the intellectual strata of Turkish society. Apart of many militants allegedly killed during shootings, at least four prisoners were legally executed immediately after the coup, the first ones since 1972, while in February 1982 there were 108 prisoners condemned to capital punishment.[1]

After having taken advantage of the Grey Wolves' activism, General Kenan Evren, alleged by historian D. Ganser to be the head of Counter-Guerrilla also decided to imprison hundreds of them, including Colonel Türkeş, head of the MHP, for their role during the strategy of tension.[12] At the time they were some 1,700 Grey Wolves organizations in Turkey, with about 200,000 registered members and a million sympathisers. In its indictment of the MHP in May 1981, the Turkish military government charged 220 members of the MHP and its affiliates for 694 murders.[13] Following the coup in Colonel Türkeş's indictment, the Turkish press revealed the close links maintained by the MHP with security forces as well as organized crime involved in drug trade, which financed in returns weapons and the activities of hired fascist commandos all over the country.[1]

But a short time afterwards, Grey Wolves imprisoned members were offered release if they agreed to fight the Kurdish minority and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the south-east of the country[14] as well as the ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia). They then went on to fight, with Counter-Guerrilla, Kurds, killing and torturing thousands in the 1980s, and also carrying false flag attacks in which the Counter-Guerrilla attacked villages, dressed up as PKK fighters, and raped and executed people randomly.[15] The dirty war had a toll of 37 000 victims.[16] The fact that Counter-Guerrilla had engaged in torture was confirmed by Talat Turhan, a former Turkish general. According to a December 5, 1990 article by the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Counter-Guerrilla had their headquarters in the building of the US DIA military secret service.[17] In addition, members of this "deep state" carried out operations to assassinate the leader squad of ASALA, Hagop Hagopian, in which they succeeded on April 28, 1988.

[edit] Aftermath and 1983 elections

After the approval by referendum of the new Constitution in June 1982, Kenan Evren organized general elections, held on 6 November 1983.

However, the referendum and the elections did not take place in a free and competitive setting. Many political leaders of pre-coup era (including Süleyman Demirel, Bülent Ecevit, Alparslan Türkeş and Necmettin Erbakan) had been banned from politics, and all new parties needed to get the approval of the National Security Council in order to participate in the elections. Only 3 parties, two of which were actually created by the ruling military regime were permitted to contest.

This transition to democracy has been criticized by the Turkish scholar Ergun Özbudun: "The 1983 Turkish transition is almost a textbook example of the degree to which a departing military regime can dictate the conditions of its departure (…)".[18]

Out of the 1983 elections came one-party governance under Turgut Özal's Motherland Party, which combined a neo-liberal economic program with conservative social values. Turgut Özal, who had been vice-prime minister of the junta, had also been the main person responsible for the economic policy implemented by the Demirel liberal administration since 24 January 1980, which was inspired by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He had obtained at the end of 1981-start of 1982 the resignation of the director of the Central Bank, İsmail Aydınoğlu, one of the main opponents of the IMF policies. The latter were based on freezing of wages, an important decrease of the public sector, a deflationist policy, and several successive mini-devaluations.[1]

Yildirim Akbulut became head of the Parliament, succeeded, in 1991, by Mesut Yılmaz. Meanwhile, Süleyman Demirel founded the right-wing True Path Party in 1983, and returned to active politics after the 1987 referendum.

Yılmaz redoubled Turkey's economic profile, converting towns like Gaziantep from small provincial capitals into mid-sized economic boomtowns, and renewed its orientation toward Europe. But political instability followed as the host of banned politicians reentered politics, fracturing the vote, and the Motherland Party became increasingly corrupt. Ozal, who succeeded Evren as President of Turkey, died of a heart attack in 1993 and Süleyman Demirel was elected president.