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A Coup in Turkey: A Tale of Democracy, Despotism and Vengeance in a Divided Land
The most dramatic, revealing and little-known story in Turkey's history - which illuminates the nation 'Through the spellbinding career of a single, ill-fated leader, Jeremy Seal illuminates a bitterly divided country' Colin Thubron 'Read this book if you're interested in Turkey. Read it if you're interested in power, hubris and redemption. Read it' Christopher de Bellaigue, author of The Islamic Enlightenment In the spring of 2016 travel writer Jeremy Seal went to Turkey to investigate perhaps the most dramatic, revealing and little-known episode in the country's history - the 'original' coup of 1960, which deposed the traditionalist Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. The story of Menderes - to his adoring supporters the country's founding democrat; to his sworn enemies its most infamous traitor - goes to the heart of the feud that continues to rage between the Western and secular ambitions of a minority elite and the religious and conservative instincts of the small-town majority. A Coup in Turkey is a thrilling account of the events leading up to the coup and the trials and executions that followed, a story of political subterfuge and score-settling, courtroom drama, state execution, authoritarian intolerance and ideological division. Seal travels through President Erdogan's Turkey, tracking down eye-witness accounts from survivors of the Menderes era in Istanbul, the historic metropolis, and the new capital at Ankara. As he expertly guides us through this extraordinary story, so the compelling parallels between past and present become strikingly clear, and he illuminates this troubled nation with a deep sympathy and love for the people and places he writes about. By focussing on one key event - one which many Turks regard with shame - this evocative, gripping portrait of Turkey recentres our understanding of the past and makes sense of one of Europe's most bewildering yet intriguing neighbours. 'A wonderful writer' Robert Macfarlane
352 pages, Hardcover
Published February 4, 2021
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About the author
Jeremy Seal
11 books7 followersJeremy Seal is a writer and broadcaster. His first book, A Fez of the Heart, was shortlisted for the 1995 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. He is also the author of The Snakebite Survivors' Club and The Wreck at Sharpnose Point, and presenter of Channel 4's ‘Wreck Detectives’. He lives in Bath with his wife and daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 17, 2023
Jeremy Seal takes the reader through the sites, moments, and emotions for the first coup of the Turkish Republic. Seal meets with those who knew, and some who loved, Prime Minster Adnan Menderes (aka Adnan Bey) and point to the dramatic times and events that led to his removal, trial, and ultimately his execution.
This books as written as more of an emotional journey than a formal history. Seal does not miss the context of the times but his work focuses more on feelings rather than facts. Some of the photos (in black and white, some surreptitiously taken) are utterly haunting.
Comparisons also abound about to the situation with Erdogan and the failed coup of 2016.
While it’s hard to call this book a history; one could can more easily characterize Seal’s work as a stroll down memory lane with a very dark ending.
This books as written as more of an emotional journey than a formal history. Seal does not miss the context of the times but his work focuses more on feelings rather than facts. Some of the photos (in black and white, some surreptitiously taken) are utterly haunting.
Comparisons also abound about to the situation with Erdogan and the failed coup of 2016.
While it’s hard to call this book a history; one could can more easily characterize Seal’s work as a stroll down memory lane with a very dark ending.
May 23, 2021
Since the decaying Ottoman Empire’s collapse after the First World War, Turkey has been dominated by autocratic, ambitious leaders with differing visions apart from a common penchant for grand infrastructure projects, from Kemal Atatürk’s creation of a new capital in Ankara, to Erdoğan’s airports, high-speed railways, and Çamlıca Mosque, the largest in Turkey, complete with art gallery, library, and a conference hall.
Travel writer Jeremy Seal has drawn on a deep knowledge and love of the country to focus on the long-forgotten decade of the 1950s in which the rise and fall of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes – Adnan Bey – reveals a good deal about the tensions which have led Turkey from Atatürk’s dream of a modern, progressive secular republic to the current reality of Erdoğan’s nominal democracy with revived support for Islam, probably reflecting the wishes of the majority, but which has also suppressed free speech and slipped into corruption.
A charismatic, successful cotton farmer, Menderes risked helping to found a new Democrat Party in the aftermath of the Second World War. Attacking an authoritarian Republican Party which had been Atatürk’s legacy, he asserted, “governments that do their work well have no reason to fear freedom of the press”. Gaining power as Prime Minister, Menderes prioritised improving the lives of villagers subjected to secular education when what they really needed was clean water, electricity and more productive farms. Although he was loved for “restoring to right-thinking religious folk the things they wanted, like mosques”, to paraphrase Erdoğan, who has followed his example, perhaps from the same desire to increase political support, the practical reforms unfortunately misfired. Imported steel ploughs led to soil erosion, and unrealistic price guarantees for wheat crops bankrupted the Treasury.
Menderes compounded his errors: relying on popular support to the detriment of Turkey’s "influencers", academics, journalists and military leaders; arguably wasting money on vanity projects such as mosques; laying himself open to charges of immorality through his many affairs in Istanbul, neglecting his loyal wife. Under pressure, he sadly went the way of too many other politicians in becoming authoritarian. The last straw was the granting of special powers to seize the property and order the imprisonment of those who resisted the work of a commission set up to investigate the “destructive and illegal” activities of the rival Republican Party.
Although Atatürk had theoretically banned the army from involvement in politics, it conducted the 1960 coup in which Menderes and many other Democrats were imprisoned on an island prior to a prolonged trial of questionable legality, leading to his rushed execution in a bungled “compromise” in which most of the other death sentences were commuted in the face of international condemnation. Before imprisonment broke his health, Menderes insisted that he had been democratically elected, and was supported by the “National Will”. Certainly, he retained widespread support, although some must have been turned against him by the distortion of facts, such as the creation of “false martyrs” – claimed to have been massacred” during protests against his regime , but in fact killed by “failures of the army’s own safety practices”.
The author contrasts this with the failed coup of 2016 in which the “National Will” of public pressure in the streets helped to foil the attempted military takeover of the news media.
This novel has been widely praised and contains interesting information which should be better known. So why was I disappointed? Frequent digressions and anecdotes are no doubt intended to flesh out an appreciation of Turkish society, but combined with the continual dodging back and forth in time, they create a disjointed, even confusing effect. Imagined conversations at dramatic points prove stilted and jarring. In his evident sympathy for Menderes, Jeremy Seal may have let him off too lightly. For instance, did he really “secretly stoke a demonstration in Istanbul in favour of Turkish claims on Cyprus, to the point of instructing local police and military units “not to intervene” and was he “behind the Salonica bomb” explosion? I would have liked less on the Gatwick air crash he survived, and the grim details of his last days, and more analytical overview of the fascinating period which brought Turkey from Atatürk to the present situation.
Travel writer Jeremy Seal has drawn on a deep knowledge and love of the country to focus on the long-forgotten decade of the 1950s in which the rise and fall of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes – Adnan Bey – reveals a good deal about the tensions which have led Turkey from Atatürk’s dream of a modern, progressive secular republic to the current reality of Erdoğan’s nominal democracy with revived support for Islam, probably reflecting the wishes of the majority, but which has also suppressed free speech and slipped into corruption.
A charismatic, successful cotton farmer, Menderes risked helping to found a new Democrat Party in the aftermath of the Second World War. Attacking an authoritarian Republican Party which had been Atatürk’s legacy, he asserted, “governments that do their work well have no reason to fear freedom of the press”. Gaining power as Prime Minister, Menderes prioritised improving the lives of villagers subjected to secular education when what they really needed was clean water, electricity and more productive farms. Although he was loved for “restoring to right-thinking religious folk the things they wanted, like mosques”, to paraphrase Erdoğan, who has followed his example, perhaps from the same desire to increase political support, the practical reforms unfortunately misfired. Imported steel ploughs led to soil erosion, and unrealistic price guarantees for wheat crops bankrupted the Treasury.
Menderes compounded his errors: relying on popular support to the detriment of Turkey’s "influencers", academics, journalists and military leaders; arguably wasting money on vanity projects such as mosques; laying himself open to charges of immorality through his many affairs in Istanbul, neglecting his loyal wife. Under pressure, he sadly went the way of too many other politicians in becoming authoritarian. The last straw was the granting of special powers to seize the property and order the imprisonment of those who resisted the work of a commission set up to investigate the “destructive and illegal” activities of the rival Republican Party.
Although Atatürk had theoretically banned the army from involvement in politics, it conducted the 1960 coup in which Menderes and many other Democrats were imprisoned on an island prior to a prolonged trial of questionable legality, leading to his rushed execution in a bungled “compromise” in which most of the other death sentences were commuted in the face of international condemnation. Before imprisonment broke his health, Menderes insisted that he had been democratically elected, and was supported by the “National Will”. Certainly, he retained widespread support, although some must have been turned against him by the distortion of facts, such as the creation of “false martyrs” – claimed to have been massacred” during protests against his regime , but in fact killed by “failures of the army’s own safety practices”.
The author contrasts this with the failed coup of 2016 in which the “National Will” of public pressure in the streets helped to foil the attempted military takeover of the news media.
This novel has been widely praised and contains interesting information which should be better known. So why was I disappointed? Frequent digressions and anecdotes are no doubt intended to flesh out an appreciation of Turkish society, but combined with the continual dodging back and forth in time, they create a disjointed, even confusing effect. Imagined conversations at dramatic points prove stilted and jarring. In his evident sympathy for Menderes, Jeremy Seal may have let him off too lightly. For instance, did he really “secretly stoke a demonstration in Istanbul in favour of Turkish claims on Cyprus, to the point of instructing local police and military units “not to intervene” and was he “behind the Salonica bomb” explosion? I would have liked less on the Gatwick air crash he survived, and the grim details of his last days, and more analytical overview of the fascinating period which brought Turkey from Atatürk to the present situation.
April 5, 2021
I was looking forward to reading this book when I heard about it in mid-2020. How I was disappointed with this book.
I expected the author to flesh out the one of the major events in the Prime Ministership of Adnan Menderes, being the pogrom of the Rum community in September 1955. It would have been interesting to have seen what position the people he interviews had in relation to these events and whether they attributed blame to Menderes.
He treats the execution of Menderes as a fatal wound to democracy yet somehow seems to ignore the autocratic tendencies of the country which had been a one party state from 1922 to the election of Menderes.
I expects something a little bit more hard hitting, it ended up being a bad Mills and Boon love story. Sorry Jeremy
Postscript: why no mention of Alparslan Turkes?
I expected the author to flesh out the one of the major events in the Prime Ministership of Adnan Menderes, being the pogrom of the Rum community in September 1955. It would have been interesting to have seen what position the people he interviews had in relation to these events and whether they attributed blame to Menderes.
He treats the execution of Menderes as a fatal wound to democracy yet somehow seems to ignore the autocratic tendencies of the country which had been a one party state from 1922 to the election of Menderes.
I expects something a little bit more hard hitting, it ended up being a bad Mills and Boon love story. Sorry Jeremy
Postscript: why no mention of Alparslan Turkes?
May 13, 2021
I really enjoyed this book. It shares much about Turkish culture and history in a fairly accessible telling by someone who really appreciates the country and its people. My only “complaint “ is I found the back and forth time jumps challengingly, especially given the number of characters and their many naming conventions. It was a tad like reading War and Peace. About a third of the way through I made a list of the major political leaders, with their nicknames and years they were in office. Armed with this cheat sheet, reading the rest of the book was a breeze. Modern news from Turkey will now be grounded in thoughtful context—very much lacking for me before.
May 4, 2021
Fascinating story of history repeating itself without any lessons being learnt along the way.
Jeremy Seal tells a great story, interwoven with his own personal perspective and love for Turkey, a country who's s recent history I was not familiar with, until reading this excellent book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in .modern history or just wants to read a thoroughly well written story
Jeremy Seal tells a great story, interwoven with his own personal perspective and love for Turkey, a country who's s recent history I was not familiar with, until reading this excellent book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in .modern history or just wants to read a thoroughly well written story
November 19, 2023
Such a great book! Had to consume a good Sunday to finish it one day and definitely worths it! Jeremy Seal explains the historic context with the recent events and leaves you to form your own ideas. Really enjoyed this book!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews