From across the continent

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

The lesson delivered in Turkey on how not to stage a coup has naturally had major repercussions within that country. But it also spread beyond the borders of a country that is currently attempting to tackle both its present and its past.

In Pakistan, a country which shares many aspects of history with Turkey, including a predisposition for autocratic rule, the events in that took place over a few stormy hours leaving behind a state of crisis, have created a sequence of thoughts and ideas.

The current tilt of national events in the country of course encourages this. There had already been calls for military intervention before the turmoil in Turkey, with mysterious banners appearing overnight on streets in over a dozen major cities.

We have also had political leaders call openly for military intervention, clearly oblivious to the fact that this demand can be interpreted as treason or, more significantly – given the ease with which we use the term ‘treason’ – that past encounters with military men in command with the state have led us not to a better place but a far more troubled one.

But it is worth thinking a little beyond these broad outlines. A reality we need to accept is that one of the reasons we seek solutions so easily in a takeover by the country’s most powerful institution is the fact that civilian governments are able to offer such limited governance.

Some of the reasons for this lie in an inherited system with inherited pressures, rather than their own flaws. There is, for example, the relentless and irresistible intervention in many aspects of government which hobbles democratic setups.

Gradually, the sticky strands surrounding them grow tighter and act as a stifling force limiting the degree of freedom available to the civilian setup to act as per its aspirations. The issue of corruption can of course almost invariably be brought up at any time. The massive Panama leaks scandal has this time round come at an opportune time.

The key lies in the ability of democratic governments to rise above these problems. Sadly, they have over the decades demonstrated very little ability to be able to do so. One of the reasons responsible for this is of course the fact that political parties themselves can easily be coerced to follow specific directions and the divide between them is a sharp antagonistic one.

Over the period since 2013, when the last general election was held, we have essentially seen a return to the ugly, divisive politics of the 1990s which eventually permitted yet another military takeover in 1999. We would have thought political leaders would by now have learned from this sequence of events. This does not appear to be the case.

It is also true that people, as a key element in the entire equation, have largely been ignored. In an unexpected turn of events from an essentially autocratic ruler, President Erdogan had used his Twitter account and other social media to urge people to rise up against any attempt by the military to take command. The fact that they complied suggests a turn against dictatorship in Turkey.

Whether the same distaste for such rule will later be used against Erdogan is an open question. But the fact is that in our own country, people have increasingly been sidelined and made irrelevant to the democratic process in which they should stand at the centre.

The truth is that if any democratically elected government is to survive pressure from other quarters, it needs to have the people standing by it. This will happen only if the essential needs of people are addressed. There has already been much debate over the successive failures in this respect.

Roads and bridges, even metro lines, have only a minor meaning in the lives of people who essentially need food placed on their tables, decent housing in which to live, schools to send their children to and hospitals to treat the sick.

The lack of these bare minimums of life leaves behind increasingly dissatisfied citizens. Even those who are able to get around these hurdles by paying for these facilities that should be provided by the state confront enormous hurdles in doing so. In such a situation, it is of course inevitable they will blame governments, and of course these governments are to a very large extent responsible for the plight of these people.

In the conditions we confront today, the essentials need to be addressed first. Using funds spent on trains or trams to raise standards at government hospitals would bring tens of thousands into the government camp and into the broader ambit of democracy. This does not happen because people receive very little from democratic governments. Perceptions then about who is acting on the behalf of the people are easy to mould.

The political leaderships of all parties need to assemble to examine this problem. Eventually, autocratic rule does nothing for the nation. In many ways, it pushes it back further even if grandiose gestures are used to give the opposite impression. The first challenge is for key leaders to recognise this reality.

One of the lessons from Turkey may be the realisation of many ordinary people that authoritarian rule is undesirable – even in a situation where Turkey, as a nation proud of its secularist history, seems to be drifting down dangerous paths.

It is this aspect of the events we have seen in Turkey that need to be taken most urgent heed of rather than the question of why the hastily planned military intervention failed or who triggered it in the first place. Analysis of this could go a long way in protecting democracy in our own country. Currently, our democracy continues to face threats of various kinds.

Building better governments at all levels is crucial to pushing away these threats. They come in each year from one season to the next and the constant circulation of rumours and speculation can only add to the instability which contributes to the difficulties in running a country. It is hard to handle routine affairs when constant crisis lurks.

At the first stage, political leaderships need to understand this, regardless of their ideological beliefs or of personal ambition. They then need to convey the same message to their supporters so that we can build an underlying foundation which supports the basic idea of rule led by the people.

The local government system also needs to come into play and help strengthen democracy at the grassroots level. It has so far had only a limited role to play in doing so. There is much potential in the system as it moves from one tier to the next.

We need to find a way to harness this potential and use the energy created to set up a protective shield which can make our nation a safer place, a more stable one and leave it more able to withstand the storms which arise within it from time to time. The emphasis must be on moving towards this goal.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com