COUP IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY: MAY 27, 1960 AND THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF POLITICAL LEGITIMACY

Abstract

This study examines, through a semiotic lens, how the May 27, 1960 military coup was represented in mainstream newspaper opinion columns and how political legitimacy was produced in the name of democracy. Nine columns published on May 27–28 (and on May 31 in Hürriyet) in Hürriyet, Milliyet, Cumhuriyet, and Akşam are analyzed using Roland Barthes’s concepts of denotation, connotation, and myth. The analysis demonstrates that these texts construct the coup as an “extraordinary yet necessary” intervention and build a “myth of rescue” through signifiers such as “democracy,” “nation,” “freedom,” “law,” “youth,” and “Atatürk.” Within this discourse, the military is transformed into a neutral and constituent subject, while the Democrat Party government is coded as the agent of “deviation” or “degeneration.” Consequently, the coup is naturalized and legitimized through narratives of “punishment,” “purification,” and “new beginning”. Themes such as the “constituent assembly,” “normalization,” and “re-foundation” present the coup as a temporary “bridge,” thereby reinforcing consent, while binary oppositions (order/chaos, law/oppression, nation/government, youth/authority) are repeatedly circulated. The findings suggest that this discursive template provided