President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in a message issued to mark the 46th anniversary of the 12 September 1980 military coup that the suffering experienced by citizens who were victimized during the coup period would not be forgotten. Erdoğan stated that they would not allow the development process to be disrupted again by coups.
Why it matters
The message addresses the 12 September period not merely as an event left in the past, but through the grievances experienced by citizens and interruptions to the country’s development trajectory. This framework shows how coup periods are positioned in official discourse in terms of social memory and political orientation. The message is addressed to citizens who suffered harm in the past and groups that consider it important for this suffering to be remembered, as well as a broad public that does not want coups to happen again. However, the message contains no details about how the grievances will be addressed or what concrete steps will be taken to prevent coups from recurring. Therefore, the statement essentially remains an act of commemoration and a declaration of political will.
Background
Erdoğan is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 10 reports mentioning this name in the last 90 days; the latest is dated 11 September 2026.