As a generation familiar with the thousand faces of coups…

The debate over whether what happened in Tunisia is a coup looks very meaningless from Türkiye's perspective. After all, we are a generation familiar with coups that can be carried out by changing guise and in different forms, with the thousand and one faces of coups. At times the soldier intervenes in everything with his tanks upon an invitation the people have issued to the army (1960, 1971, 1980); at times appears the visible face of a postmodern coup in which democracy is given a balance adjustment through media, STK and some "deep state" operations. At times an e-memorandum posted on the internet shows its face; at times, as in the Republic rallies, it manifests itself as a section of the people "exercising their democratic right to demonstrate" in order to demand discrimination against another section of the people.

At times it tags along behind a rage that tries to set the whole country on fire in the name of saving a tree; at times it appears as a judicial case ignited with allegations of corruption against the government. Then at times it dons a democratic cloak through an election manipulation by the alliances of some actors who possess civil democratic legitimacy; and finally, one more time, it comes full circle and appears in its most archaic, most conventional guise, as on 15 July.

During the period when the Gezi incident took place in Türkiye, a movement of defiance using the same discursive tools was taking place in Egypt. This movement carried a warning that many political parties, civil society organizations and institutions would give to Morsi on the grounds that the first elected President in the country's history, only 11 months after being elected, had displayed the audacity of ruling the country alone and had therefore turned dictator. To us, as a generation familiar with the language of coups, it was very clear that this movement was in the end in fact an invitation to the military to take over the situation.

In Tunisia too, what President Kais Saied, known to be an expert in constitutional law, did is said to be a constitutional coup. A coup carried out by interpreting Article 80 of the constitution and producing a legitimacy for himself from there. The article in question of the Tunisian constitution does not actually give the President such authority. More precisely, to derive such an authority from this article one would have to subject it to a very extreme interpretation, and no matter how extremely it is interpreted, this authority does not come out. It does not grant even as much justification as an article of the TSK's own internal regulations that the TSK relied on for our coup attempts. It does not even grant as much right as the 367 interpretation introduced in the 2007 presidential election here.

Article 80 grants the President, in the event of urgent and dangerous developments threatening the country's future and independence, the right to take the necessary extraordinary measures after consulting the Speaker of the Assembly and the Prime Minister. In doing so he is required to be in constant communication and cooperation with the offices in question. Moreover, he is to notify the Constitutional Court of the extraordinary measures he will resort to as a result of the consultations, and in the meantime the Assembly is required to be in continuous session in order to leave the way open for the executive organs. The extraordinary measures to be taken are expected not to exceed 30 days, whereas Saied, not knowing these details, announced as he set about the work that he had first dissolved the Assembly, lifted the immunity of the deputies, and taken the authority to bring Public Prosecutions into his own hands. Upon the first reactions, he was forced to concede that he had suspended this Assembly only for a month and that the authority to bring Public Prosecutions belonged to the Judiciary. But in this way it was also seen how groundless his legal bases for what he did are.

One of the several important details that stand out here is the preparation he has been making for months to secure public support for the coup. This preparation was in fact an intensive effort to create in the people a distrust of the very democratic processes that elected him. They especially wanted to create the impression that the democratic parliamentary process had brought the Tunisian people nothing but chaos, ungovernability and economic bankruptcy.

Kais Saied himself worked in person to create this impression. By constantly criticizing all the political parties, the parliament and the government run by the prime minister he himself had appointed with populist attitudes, like a harsh opponent, he also obstructed them from doing their work. With the campaign of the French and BAE media that support him, and in fact steer him, he tried to get the idea that democracy is not a way out to take root among the people. After obstructing the health minister's measures regarding Covid19 by giving credit to simple legends among the people, he did not refrain from criticizing the health minister and the government over the case numbers that then rose sharply. In this way, in the midst of the discontent that had become thoroughly widespread among the people, he ensured that this coup, when it came, found a certain number of supporters among the people too. But as a result of all these strange behaviors, when this coup move came, those strange behaviors also gained a meaning in the eyes of the people, and he is now being questioned over what he did.

A discourse he himself pioneered again says that some political parties receive financial support from abroad. When claims about the source of support generally point to Türkiye and Qatar, they very readily take up this accusation. Yet the Free Destourian Party of Tunisia, the only political party that supported him up to this coup and together with this coup, is known to receive financial support openly from the BAE. Moreover, he himself is now awaiting a support of 5 billion dollars coming from the BAE.

Why this support will come from the BAE is very clear. It was no secret to anyone that the BAE would give every kind of support in return for a coup against democracy taking place in Tunisia. The real question is: while the Tunisian constitution forbids the foreign funding of any political party, and many political parties such as Ennahda and Heart of Tunisia are accused on that basis on the strength of rumors, according to which article of which constitution and for what purpose will the BAE be funding Kais Saied? Will Saied feel the need to explain this funding to his own people?