Failed Turkish coup carries a message for Bangladesh

It’s a sizzling summer everywhere — politically and environmentally. A botched coup attempt in Turkey to unseat an elected government; a humongous lorry ramming over innocent spectators celebrating the Bastille Day in the French coastal city of Nice; more white policemen shot dead by angry black activists in various US cities following shooting of innocent black youths by police; and a bubbling uprising in the Indian controlled Kashmir that had necessitated clamping of curfew in major cities of the picturesque Valley. Why the world is so unstable and precarious?

A common denomination in all such disruptions of peace and security is that the perpetrators of the extremist attacks are members of marginalized communities of races and faiths who feel excluded from the mainstream political process shaping their lives. The IS zealots aside—who propagate to reverting Muslim predominant nations into a revived Islamic empire from the Mediterranean coastline to the shores of the Indian ocean—the blacks of the US are another marginalized group like the majority of Muslim populations in France who live in squalors and struggle to subsist on earnings and public doles that are nowhere near to meeting the minimum needs of decent lives in an affluent French society. What then explains why some of the affluent youths have embarked on a virtual jihad against the government and the security forces of Bangladesh under the IS banner? Do they wish to fulfill their global vision of a broader Islamic khilafat, or, their aim is just to destabilize the nation so that someone of their choice could replace the incumbent AL regime which has been barring political dissenters from representing people in and outside the national parliament.

Whatever reason or rationale might have motivated a good chunk of English-educated youths from affluent Bangladeshi families to sacrifice lives in the name of establishing or joining a sprawling Islamic nation, the aim of the group is incompatible with the democratic aspirations of the Bangladeshi people who’d always sought to build a nation based on pluralistic democracy, rule of law, and economic egalitarianism.

If the religious zealots succeed in their ongoing mission, such hopes can vaporize overnight and the existing political parties within and outside the government may face dangers of horrific magnitude before being rendered extinct. Make no mistake that the ongoing squabbles between the major political parties had already stirred an appetite for a change of the status quo.

That being the reality and the scenario in the making, the negation once again of the PM and her team to sit for a national dialogue with all the parties active in the political landscape is a regrettable stand that will embolden the religious extremists further.

Before the last weekend’s botched uprising in the Turkish military, Turkey too had experienced too many terror attacks that had impacted the mindset of many ordinary people and soldiers and provoked them to rise against a regime that is deemed to have floundered on the cardinal principles of democracy, secularism, rule of law and tolerance of political dissents. As Turkey had experienced military takeover almost in every decade since the 1960s due to its military’s innate perception of being the custodian of secularism and democracy in the post-Ottoman dispensation laid out by Kemal Ataturk, the recent coup is a reflection of the same desire.

In France, over 4,000 raids were conducted in minority Muslim houses since the declaration of emergency rules following the November 2015 attacks in Paris by Islamic extremists. The stings of persecution and harassment unleashed ever since by the security forces boomeranged with horror when only a handful of those arrested faced charges of being involved in acts of terrorism.

If the French security forces overreacted to the incident of the Paris attack by rounding up thousands of Muslim activists for a crime conducted with trans-national cooperation, and, if the US police equally overreacted to any black political activism by shooting down black youths, the backlashes being experienced now must be viewed from the socio-political perspective thus created. After all, France is a major player in Syria and Lebanon where the IS had germinated from an embryo and spread its tentacles to other parts of the world.

In Bangladesh, the call for a correction of the flawed January 2014 election has been vociferously loud and cranky for more than two years now. Not only within the country, all the major international friends and development partners, excepting India, had also urged the government repeatedly to close its vulnerabilities by holding an inclusive general election sooner.

Instead of heeding to such cries, the government decided to show its muscle to exclude all other major political parties of the nation, including the BNP and the Jamaat, from the political process. The IS-led extremists are aware that majority of the people of the country are supporters of the combined opposition parties that have no representation in the national parliament. The Islamic zealots are seizing upon that vulnerability to eke out a political spot by sacrificing lives for what they call ‘establishing an Islamic society.’

This reality has been indigestible to the government which has had a custom-tailored answer to deflect such criticism. The government’s insistence that the election was held and the main opposition parties chose not to participate is an oxymoron. In the prevailing political culture of Bangladesh, will the AL participate in a general election while the BNP is in power? An honest answer to that question will aptly reduce the complicacy involved in the dreadful crisis facing Bangladesh at this moment. People are craving for democracy, not for more hypocrisy to allow someone to cling onto power illegitimately, and indefinitely.

As well, the prelude to the current crisis stemmed from the trickery and the fabrication used by the AL regime to avoid the court ruling that had suggested abolition of the caretaker government system during the political interregnum and power transition not immediately, but in phases. Yet, in the manner the caretaker system was abolished was very troubling; resultantly sowing the seeds of what’s being witnessed now.

Any government must learn to uphold national interest above coterie and personal interests. If the stability of the nation was the main preoccupation of the ruling AL, it would have avoided such a scheme at any cost to facilitate the prolongation of the caretaker system for two more terms as per the maiden verdict rendered by the court relating to the 5th amendment to the constitution, which eventually led to undoing the 13th amendment (caretaker system).

Somewhat like Bangladesh, the incumbent Turkish regime too fiddled with the constitution in a manner that had alienated many segments of the society, including the armed forces. In Bangladesh, the 15th amendment to the constitution had flung open a dangerous floodgate and excluded and marginalized all opposition to the incumbent AL regime. The main opposition parties like the BNP and the Jamaat first tried to fight the injustice from the streets, and then dashed to the oblivion under unbearable persecutions, arbitrary detentions, and deaths under so called cross fire by police and other security forces.

Now, if the BNP is blamed for, and excluded from, a national dialogue due to its alliance with a legitimate political party like the Jamaat-I-Islami, that fault too lies with the government which had not proscribed Jamaat and consigned it as an illegitimate political outfit. Jamaat is a legal and recognized political party of the country, which partook in all the general elections since 1979 and with which any other party may cohabit and interact to further their coterie interest and bargaining power. It also did not indulge in acts of terror prior to its banning from participating in elections.

Hence, creating more confusion in TV talk shows and newspaper columns by hammering on an irreconcilable precondition of ‘BNP-Jamaat divorce’ before sitting for a national dialogue is a proposition that’s as irrational and unlawful as is the option being offered to the BNP to join a general election under the incumbent AL.

Then again, will the holding of an inclusive election shield the nation from further terrorist attacks? It may not in the short run, but, in the long run, lawmakers of all hues can stand behind the democratically elected government in moments of dire national crisis, as did the Turkish lawmakers of all hues against the recent coup plotters.

Source: Weekly Holiday