反思土耳其軍事政變爲什麼會失敗
Turkey Was an Unlikely Victim of an Equally Unlikely Coup
土耳其軍事政變爲何失敗？
If the attempted coup in Turkey came as a surprise, there was good reason: The event went against decades of research on how, when and why coups happen.
如果說土耳其的未遂政變出乎人們的意料，這是有很好的理由的：數十年來，有着各種關於政變如何發生、何時發生、以及爲什麼發生的研究，這一事件不符合其中任何一項。
Friday night’s uprising appeared to diverge wildly from the usual patterns. And political scientists who study coups say Turkey should have been at little risk.
週五晚上的政變似乎與通常的模式極爲不同。研究政變的政治學者們說，土耳其本該幾乎沒有政變的風險。
Secretary of State John Kerry, reiterating support for Turkey’s government, expressed the bafflement felt by many observers.
國務卿約翰·克里重申了美國對土耳其政府的支持，同時也表達了許多觀察家所感到的困惑。
“It surprised everybody, including the people in Turkey,” Mr. Kerry said, adding, “I must say it does not appear to be a very brilliantly planned or executed event.”
“這出乎所有人的意料，包括土耳其人民，”克里說，並補充道，“我要說的是，這是一次看來沒有出色計劃或實施的事件。”
The gap between Turkey’s insurrection and other coups helps explain why the attempt failed. But it also underscores how many basic questions remain unanswered.
土耳其的政變與其他政變的不同有助於解釋爲什麼它失敗了。但同時也凸顯了有多少基本問題仍未得到解答。
Not the kind of country at risk
並非高風險國家
Coups are usually driven not solely by individual plotters, but also by structural factors. Political scientists, by tracking factors like economic trends, political freedoms and public health, have identified several predictive patterns.
推動政變的不單是個體策劃者，也有結構性的因素。政治學者通過跟蹤比如經濟發展趨勢、政治自由度和公衆健康等因素，已經建立了幾種可預測的政變模式。
Jay Ulfelder, who works in the area of political forecasting, has developed a mathematical model that synthesizes this data to predict a country’s level of risk.
在政治預測領域工作的傑伊·烏菲耳德(Jay Ulfelder)開發了一個數學模型，這個模型將數據綜合起來，預測國家發生政變的風險水平。
Turkey, said Mr. Ulfelder’s research, done in conjunction with the Early Warning Project, was a “very unlikely” candidate for a coup, he said in an email. It had only a 2.5 percent probability of an attempted coup, based on 2016 data. That placed it 56th out of 160 countries, between Laos and Iran, and was within a range considered stable. At-risk countries tend to have high rates of infant mortality, a common measurement of poverty, and poorly performing economies. Turkey’s economy has been growing, and infant mortality has been rapidly declining.
烏菲耳德在一封電子郵件中說，他的研究是與“預先警報項目”(Early Warning Project)一起進行的，其結果表明，土耳其“非常不可能”出現政變。基於2016年的數據，土耳其發生未遂政變的概率只有2.5％。這讓土耳其的風險程度在160個國家中排名第56，位於老撾和伊朗之間，處於被認爲是穩定的範圍內。高風險的國家往往有高嬰兒死亡率和表現不佳的經濟，嬰兒死亡率是測量貧窮的常用參數。土耳其的經濟一直在增長，嬰兒死亡率則一直在迅速下降。
Mr. Ulfelder has also found that a country is less likely to face a coup when there is armed conflict in nearby states, perhaps because of a rally-around-the-flag effect.
烏菲耳德還發現，一個國家周邊的國家發生武裝衝突時，也許對這個國家有一種需要團結在一起的影響，所以該國不太可能面臨政變。
While Turkey has a history of coups, the country has changed considerably since its last, in 1997, and Mr. Ulfelder stressed that what mattered more was its nearly 20 years without one.
雖然土耳其有政變的歷史，但自從1997年發生最近一次政變以來，該國已經發生了很大的變化，烏菲耳德強調說，因此更重要的因素是土耳其幾乎20年來沒有發生政變。
Another crucial factor is what experts call elite fragmentation. If divisions open up among powerful elites — elected officials, business leaders, generals, judges and so on — their competition for resources and control can culminate in a coup.
另一個關鍵因素是專家們所謂的精英層破裂。如果掌握大權的精英們之間出現了分歧，包括民選官員、商界領袖、將軍、法官等等 ，他們對資源和控制權的競爭可能最終以政變而告終。
There is, as yet, no sign of such a split in Turkey. The growing economy gives elites reason to maintain the status quo. And while state institutions are imperfect and rates of corruption could be better — both factors that can lead elites to compete for resources — neither is bad enough to cause a crisis.
到目前爲止，還沒有在土耳其精英層中出現這種分裂的跡象。經濟的增長讓精英們有理由維持現狀。國家機構不夠完善和腐敗發生率較高這兩個因素都可能導致精英層爭奪資源，雖然土耳其的這兩個因素都不夠好，但都還沒有壞到可能引發危機的程度。
Turkey also does not have the kind of social polarization that disaffected elites often exploit to push forward a coup. While the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, can be a polarizing figure in electoral politics, we do not see the kind of deeper divisions, with civil society groups rallying against the state, we might expect in advance of a coup.
土耳其也沒有通常能讓心懷不滿的精英們利用來推動政變的那種社會兩極分化。該國的總統雷傑普·塔伊普·埃爾多安(Recep Tayyip Erdogan)在選舉政治中可以是一個讓事情兩極化的人物，但我們沒有看到政變之前預計會出現的那種更深層次的分歧，以及民間社會團體團結起來對抗政府的情況。
Not what a coup looks like
與一般政變過程不同
Research suggests that carrying out a successful coup is a bit like baking a cake: There is a recipe, and if you skip steps or leave out ingredients, you’ll almost certainly fail.
研究揭示，製造一次成功的政變有點像烤蛋糕：都有成分表和步驟，如果你跳過一個步驟或漏掉某些成分，你幾乎肯定將會失敗。
Turkey’s plotters didn’t follow the recipe.
土耳其政變的策劃者們沒有按照標準做法行事。
Successful coups tend to be waged as “coordination games,” Naunihal Singh, a professor at the Air War College, wrote in the book “Seizing Power,” which examines why coups succeed or fail.
空軍戰爭學院教授納烏尼哈爾·辛格(Naunihal Singh)是《奪權》(Seizing Power)一書的作者，該書討論了政變爲什麼成功或失敗，他在書中寫道：成功的政變通常以“協調博弈”的形式進行。
Coups work, according to this theory, when leaders convince other officers and soldiers that their success is already assured. That makes joining an act of perceived self-interest.
根據這一理論，政變成果是因爲當領導者說服了其他軍官和士兵，成功是有保證的。這使得加盟政變的人感覺是在爲自身利益而行動。
Plotters usually accomplish this with a predictable set of steps. A huge show of force demonstrates that the weight of the military is behind the coup. A public statement by one or more high-level public officials shows that there is elite support. And the plotters usually establish tight control over the media and the flow of public information, quashing any broadcasts that would undermine the sense of inevitable and unchallenged success.
策劃者通常用採取一系列可預見的步驟來做到這一點。巨大的武力展示表明，軍隊鼎力支持政變。一名或多名高級別政府官員的公開聲明表明，政變有精英的支持。而且，策劃者通常採取對媒體和公共信息流動的嚴密控制措施，不讓任何可能有損政變必然發生，以及不可被挑戰的感覺的節目播出。
Successful coups in countries like Turkey, which have strong military and political institutions, typically follow an “institutional coup” model, according to Brian Klaas, a fellow at the London School of Economics.
倫敦經濟學院的研究員布萊恩·克拉斯(Brian Klaas)說，在土耳其這樣的具有強大軍事和政治機構的國家，成功的政變通常遵循“機構政變”的模式。
In an institutional coup, the military is unified behind the takeover and uses its full power to force top-down control over the government — as senior Turkish military leaders did in 1980. In that scenario, the coordination game is fairly simple. All of the coordination by the military elite happens before the coup even begins — and then other elites have little choice but to fall in line.
在機構政變中，軍隊團結一致地支持政變，並使用其全部力量對政府採取自上而下的控制，正如土耳其高級軍事領導人在1980年做的那樣。在這種情況下，協調博弈相當簡單。軍隊精英的協調甚至在政變開始前就早已發生， 政變發生後，其他精英們別無選擇，只能加入進來。
When the uprising represents only a faction of officers, Mr. Klaas said, the confidence game can also require quickly seizing top leaders and persuading or forcing a senior officer to publicly declare the coup’s victory, creating an appearance of success before anyone figures out what happened.
克拉斯說，當政變只代表軍官中的一個派別時，信心博弈也要求能很快地抓住最高領導人，說服說強迫一名高級軍官公開宣佈政變成功，在人們搞清楚發生了什麼之前，製造出了成功的外貌。
This time, Turkey’s dissident officers tried to take only some of these steps, and succeeded in none of them.
這次，土耳其持不同政的軍官們只採取了這些步驟中的一些，而且都沒成功。
Rebels deployed tanks and air power in a show of force in Istanbul and Ankara, but this was not enough to intimidate the rest of the military, which eventually overcame them. Most notably, there was no public face of the coup to demonstrate elite support or issue a clear plan.
叛軍在伊斯坦布爾和安卡拉出動了坦克和空中力量來炫耀武力，但這不足以威脅到軍隊的其他部分，這些部分最終將叛軍制服。最顯著的是，政變沒有一個公共形象來展示精英的支持，也沒有發出明確的計劃。
The insurrectionists also tried but failed to control communication with the public. President Erdogan was able to use the FaceTime smartphone app to call a TV station, a bizarre scenario that risked the appearance of weakness but also sapped plotters’ momentum and allowed him to call for the public to flood the streets in opposition.
叛亂者雖然也嘗試了控制與公衆的溝通，但未能成功。埃爾多安總統竟然能用智能手機應用軟件FaceTime與一個電視臺通話，那個場景頗爲奇怪，雖然有看上去軟弱的風險，但削弱了策劃者的勢頭，讓埃爾多安能夠呼籲市民涌上街頭抵制叛亂。
Turkish internet and cellphone service remained in operation. This allowed the government to communicate on social media and helped news of pro-government protests spread, undermining the coup’s sense of inevitability.
土耳其的互聯網和手機服務沒有中斷。這讓政府能在社交媒體上進行交流，有助於親政府抗議活動的消息蔓延，破壞了政變無可避免的感覺。
Unanswered questions
未解的問題
Those protests — and the absence of visible pro-coup crowds — may have also been key to thwarting the plot. Successful coups will often exploit or even coordinate with pre-existing movements, using this show of popular support to rally elites.
這些抗議活動，加上沒有出現看得見的親政變人羣，可能也對挫敗陰謀起了關鍵作用。成功的政變往往會利用甚至協調已經存在的運動，用展示民衆的支持來召集精英。
Turkey’s 1997 coup leaders, for example, worked with civil society groups and others who opposed the government. Egypt’s 2013 military takeover came amid mass protests against the government.
例如，土耳其1997年的政變領導人曾與民間社會團體及其他人反政府人士一起工作。埃及2013年的軍事政變發生在出現大規模的反政府抗議活動的時候。
This weekend’s coup leaders appeared to lack any allies. No civil society groups or political parties issued statements in support of the insurrection, and no elites appeared to take action on its behalf.
週末的政變領導人似乎沒有任何盟友。沒有民間社會團體或政黨發表聲明支持暴動，也沒有精英出來爲政變做事。
That hindsight makes the coup seem so doomed only underscores some questions. It is still unclear what prompted the attempt, who led it, and why they believed they had enough chance at success to risk their lives.
這些事後的分析讓政變顯得如此地註定失敗，更讓人們想知道一些問題的答案。目前還不清楚是什麼原因促使了政變的發生，是什麼人領導的，爲什麼他們認爲他們有足夠的成功機會，因此冒下了生命的危險。
If history is any guide, the most straightforward explanation is simply poor planning and ineptitude.
如果以史爲鑑的話，最直接的解釋就是計劃不佳、能力不足。
