From The Sunday Times, August 3, 2008
As a result, Turks know the commander of the armed forces has the
fate of their nation in his hands every bit as much as any elected
prime minister.
So the appointment of a new chief of the general staff is always a
closely monitored event. Seldom have Turks watched more closely than
at this moment.
The next chief of the armed forces is being chosen this weekend at
the end of a tumultuous week. Two terrorist bombs exploded last
Sunday night in Istanbul, killing 17 people, including five children
whose bodies were riddled with shrapnel.
Erdogan makes unity plea after bombings
Turkey managed to step back from the brink of political chaos last
Wednesday after the country’s highest court rejected an application
to close the governing party on the grounds that it was seeking to
introduce Islamic laws in violation of the secular constitution. Even
so, a majority of the judges found the party guilty of eroding
secularism.
Adding to the crisis, two senior retired generals are in jail pending
charges of involvement with a group dedicated to overthrowing the
government.
To choose a new armed forces supremo and make other senior military
appointments, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is chairing a
meeting of the supreme military board at army headquarters in Ankara,
the capital.
The meeting started on Friday and will last four days. The name of
the general who is to be promoted to the top job will be announced
when it ends tomorrow.
He is widely expected to be General Ilker Basbug, commander of the
army, who is called in military circles the “ice warrior” because he
has a reputation for being calm and pragmatic.
Sandhurst-trained Basbug, 65, will have the top job for the next two
years. He is a formidable military figure and an ideological
hardliner who will ensure that Erdogan’s government – which was
elected last year with 47% of the vote but is mistrusted by the
military, which sees itself as guardian of a secular society – walks
a narrow political line.
For these reasons Basbug is almost certainly not the general Erdogan
would choose to promote. The outgoing chief of the general staff,
General Mehmet Yasar Buyukanit, was also a hardliner but he was
impulsive and could be outmanoeuvred by the prime minister.
“Erdogan will find Basbug is a much more formidable opponent than his
predecessor. He is a lot more subtle,” said a military source.
The prime minister has the constitutional authority to oppose
Basbug’s appointment – this authority has been invoked in the past
but has almost always backfired – and Erdogan knows last week’s
dramatic events have left him politically vulnerable.
“Erdogan is wary of Basbug and would have preferred to have appointed
someone else, but I’d be very surprised if he would be stupid enough
to try to stop Basbug. This is no time to upset the armed forces’
hierarchy,” said the military source.
Last Wednesday Erdogan narrowly survived legal moves to ban him and
the president Abdullah Gul from politics and to close his governing
party on the grounds that they were steering the country towards
Islamic rule.
After three days of deliberations, the 11 judges of Turkey’s
constitutional court decided against an indictment accusing the
Justice and Development party (AKP) of pursuing an Islamic agenda and
undermining Turkey’s secular constitution.
The court punished Erdogan’s party for its Islamic tilt by cutting in
half its public funding for next year, but a verdict against the AKP
had been widely expected.
The court had already overturned AKP efforts to lift a 1989 law that
banned women from wearing Islamic headscarves in universities.
Erdogan’s secularist opponents, who dominate the military and
judiciary, claim his policies mask plans to make Turkey more like
Iran or Saudi Arabia.
In Turkey, the military has traditionally had multiple pressure
points on the civilian government, through the chief of the general
staff’s weekly meetings with the prime minister and president, and
through the twice-monthly meetings of the national security council.
Manipulating the civilian government, sometimes through thinly veiled
threats, is a subtle art that Buyukanit was not good at.
However, Basbug is expected to be more effective in influencing
Erdogan’s government without giving the prime minister the excuse to
complain he has come under undemocratic pressure. Basbug is known for
well-crafted public statements that do not alienate the government.
The decision of the constitutional court not to ban Erdogan and his
party clears the way for the prime minister to pursue democratic
reforms and his goal of European Union membership. As a prerequisite
for membership, the EU has demanded a reduction in the military’s
influence in Turkish politics.
Erdogan is expected to start work on a new constitution, but the
court’s verdict has served notice that it and the military will be
watching his party closely for any signs of Islamic activity and he
will have to be careful how he goes about constitutional reform.
If he tries to go too far there is no doubt, regardless of the EU’s
disapproval, that Basbug and the military will come down hard, just
as the armed forces have in the past.
