Intellectual perspectives to the 1960 coup in Turkey's social change process

This study examines the attitude of Turkish intellectuals in the period after the Turkish army seized power with a coup on May 27, 1960. The study aims to create a basis for determining the roles that intellectuals play in the country's democracy by putting forward various aspects of the intellectual attitude in the 1960 coup, when Turkish democracy was interrupted for the first time. The coup of May 27, 1960, which went down in history as the first illegitimate movement against the government in Republican Turkey, which is an intervention by the armed forces at a time when the political culture was not robustly established, paved the way for the habits of the next period. Another problem brought by the process was the belief that after May 27, the military, bureaucrats and intellectuals can change the whole society with a top-down understanding through pressure and violence. In the first chapter of the study, which consists of three parts, the concepts of intellectual and coup d'etat are emphasized, and the Turkish intellectual and the coups in Turkey are discussed in various aspects. In the second chapter of the study, information is given about the Democratic Party and the process that led the country to the coup. In the same chapter, the relations between the Army and politics during the Democratic Party's power and the attitude of the press in the 1960 Revolution are highlighted. In the third and final chapter, the views of Turkish intellectuals to the coup are discussed name by name under the titles of of intellectuals, left-wing intellectuals and right-wing intellectuals after the approaches of the intellectuals of the period to the political events of the period are outlined. The views of the intellectuals in the 1960 coup are discussed in terms of the relationship and loyalty of the Turkish intellectual to the state, and the sociological framework of how the intellectuals of that period viewed the coup was drawn. KEYWORDS: Intellectuals, May 27, coup, left-wing intellectuals, right-wing intellectuals