Turkish Forum

Category: News

  • BASBUG APPOINTED CHIEF OF THE TGS

    BASBUG APPOINTED CHIEF OF THE TGS

    By Gareth Jenkins

    Tuesday, August 5, 2008

     

    On August 4 Turkish President Abdullah Gul formally approved the appointment of Land Forces Commander General Ilker Basbug as the chief of the Turkish General Staff (TGS) to replace the outgoing General Yasar Buyukanit, who will step down on August 30 after reaching the compulsory retirement age of 67.

    Basbug’s appointment followed a three-day meeting of the Supreme Military Council (YAS), which meets at the beginning of August each year to decide on the annual round of promotions and postings in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). Basbug has been replaced as Land Forces Commander by General Isik Kosaner, the head of the Gendarmerie. The commanders of the Turkish Navy, Admiral Muzaffer Metin Atac, and the Turkish Air Force, General Aydogan Babaoglu, remain unchanged.

    Although there is nothing in military regulations to prevent a chief of the TGS from being drawn from the Navy or Air Force, the post has always been filled by a member of the Land Forces, usually the Land Forces commander. The Gendarmerie is distinct from the Land Forces in terms of personnel, with only rare transfers of officers between the two. However, it has traditionally been commanded by a four star general on secondment from the Land Forces. Kosaner is a career Land Forces officer and has been replaced as commander of the Gendarmerie by General Atilla Isik, the current chief of staff of the Land Forces.

    In terms of postings, the military year runs for 12 months from the end of August. Chiefs of the TGS can serve for a maximum of four years, provided that they do not reach the compulsory retirement age of 67; in which case they are obliged to step down at the end of the following August.

    Basbug was born in 1943 and is expected to serve as chief of the TGS until 2010. It currently appears that he will be succeeded by Kosaner, who was born in 1945 and could thus serve as chief of staff until the end of August 2012. The commands of the individual services have a lower retirement age of 65.

    Basbug has a reputation for combining a formidable intellect with an unswerving commitment to the ideological legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), the fierce secularist who founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923. In the months leading up to the YAS meeting, hard-line elements in the Islamist media launched a defamation campaign against Basbug in the hope of preventing him from being appointed chief of the TGS. In theory at least, it would have been possible for Gul to delay ratifying Basbug’s appointment, thus forcing him to retire at the end of August while still head of the Land Forces; but Gul appears to have had no hesitation in ratifying Basbug’s appointment when it was presented to him for his approval on August 4.

    More surprising than what happened at the YAS meeting was what did not happen. Traditionally, the TGS has used the August YAS meetings and, to a lesser extent, a second YAS meeting in December each year, to purge the officer corps of anyone deemed to be ideologically suspect.

    Like most of its counterparts around the world, the Turkish military has its own court system to try those alleged to have breached laws and regulations. The military courts follow standard judicial procedures, including hearings, the presentation of evidence, prosecution and defense. In contrast, the meetings of the YAS are closed. The members of the council simply vote on cases brought before them. The accused do not have the right of defense. In many instances, they are only aware of the allegations against them when they are notified after the YAS meeting that they have been expelled from the military. There is no right of appeal.

    Although it has also been applied for other offences, the system has been the main instrument used against suspected Islamist activists. The TGS has long suspected, and not without justification, that Islamist groups are trying to infiltrate the ranks of what is regarded as one of the bastions of the Turkish secular establishment. YAS meetings have proved a convenient way of purging the officer corps of those believed to have been recruited by Islamist groups, without the need to present evidence in a court or risk the possibility of an acquittal. It is also likely, however, that some of the officers expelled over the years for alleged Islamist activism have been guilty of nothing more insidious than increased piety.

    The number of officers expelled has tended to vary. At the YAS meeting in August 2007, a total of 23 officers were expelled, 10 of them for alleged Islamist activism. This year, however, for the first time in 16 years, there were no expulsions (Milliyet, Vatan, Hurriyet, Milliyet, Radikal, August 5).

    In a country already awash with conspiracy theories, the absence of any expulsions has sent the rumor mills into overdrive. The pro-AKP press has triumphantly speculated that Basbug must have agreed not to expel any officers for Islamist activism in return for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan promising to ensure that the continuing Ergenekon investigation (see EDM, July 29) would not implicate any members of the military high command (Zaman, Yeni Safak, Sabah, August 4). This is unlikely in the extreme.

    In the prevailing political climate in Turkey, no incoming chief of the TGS, much less one as ruthlessly ideologically committed as Basbug, could afford to be seen to be bowing to pressure from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) over what most secularists regard as a politically motivated investigation.

    It is difficult to imagine that, since the last YAS meeting, there have been no perceived serious breaches of military discipline similar to those previously dealt with at these meetings. Rather than allowing suspected Islamist activists to remain within its ranks indefinitely, it is more likely that the TGS is either biding its time or will opt to deal with them through more conventional disciplinary procedures.

  • The Sultan’s Nose – Caricatures from Turkey

    The Sultan’s Nose – Caricatures from Turkey

    Exhibition at the Museum der Weltkulturen Frankfurt
August 9, 2008 to November 16, 2008

Organizer:
DiYALOG in cooperation with the Museum der Weltkulturen and
Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation

Museum of World Cultures, Schaumainkai 37, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

On August 8, on the occasion of the Book Fair, the Museum of World
Cultures in Frankfurt will open the exhibition "The Sultan's Nose -
Caricatures from Turkey."

This exhibition has been initiated and organized by the Turkish Cultural
Initiative DIYALOG in cooperation with the Museum of World Cultures, the
Turkish branch of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, and with support from
the Organizing Committee of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2008.

Since the debate on the Muhammad caricatures that were published in
Denmark, Europeans have been engaged with the question of caricature and
humour in the Muslim world. Presenting a selection of old and new examples
of Turkish caricatures, the exhibition aims to show the central role
satire has played as a form of socio-political argument since the time of
the Ottoman sultans in Turkey.

The exhibition includes work by caricaturists who are regarded as
classics in Turkey, first during the late Ottoman period and moving
forward to the 1950s with work by graphic artists like Turhan Selçuk
and Tan Oral. Simultaneously, the exhibition shows for the first time
in Germany a selection of works by today's generation of Turkish
caricaturists. Works come from saucy and/or satirical political daily
newspapers and magazines such as "LeMan," "Penguen" and "Uykusuz."

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication on the history of
Turkish caricatures. The book is published by Istanbul University Press
and the Berlin publisher Dagyeli in a bilingual German-Turkish edition.

Full publication information:

"Die Nase des Sultans - Karikaturen aus der Türkei"
Istanbul Bilgi University Press and Dagyeli Publishers, Berlin
ISBN 978-3-935597-68-5
Price: 28 Euros
  • Democracy’s Close Call in Turkey

    Democracy’s Close Call in Turkey

    Turkey narrowly averted an incalculable disaster last week. The Constitutional Court turned back a state prosecutor’s request to dissolve the ruling Justice and Development Party and ban 71 of its leading figures from politics for five years, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul. The court ruling is a victory for Turkey, for democracy and for the politics of moderation in the volatile Near and Middle East. That makes it a victory for the United States as well. Had it gone the other way, Turkey’s chances of joining the European Union would have been demolished and the clearly expressed will of Turkish voters outrageously thwarted. Worst of all, an alarming message would have been sent to religious-minded voters throughout the Muslim world that scrupulous adherence to the ground rules of democratic politics was no guarantee of equal political rights and representation.

    New York Times Article

  • `Ice warrior’ poised to repel rise of Islamic rule in Turkey …. Jon Swain

    `Ice warrior’ poised to repel rise of Islamic rule in Turkey …. Jon Swain

     
    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.

    Turkey calls itself a democracy but the military has always hovered
    in the wings. Military coups have removed elected governments from
    power three times in the past 50 years.
  • ISLAMISTS AND SECULARISTS VYING FOR TURKEY’S PAST AS WELL AS ITS FUTURE

    ISLAMISTS AND SECULARISTS VYING FOR TURKEY’S PAST AS WELL AS ITS FUTURE

    By Gareth Jenkins

    Monday, August 4, 2008

     

    On July 31 Turkish President Abdullah Gul formally ratified the appointment of Professor Ali Birinci (born in 1947) as head of the state-run Turkish Historical Association (TTK) to replace the incumbent Professor Yusuf Halacoglu (born 1949), who had held the position from 1993 until his dismissal on July 23.

    In recent years, the long-running struggle between the government of the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Turkey’s secular establishment has tended only to attract international attention when there has been a major public confrontation, such as the AKP’s ultimately successful attempt to appoint Gul to the presidency in 2007 and, more recently, the closure case against the AKP itself (see EDM, July 31).

    Such major confrontations are important indicators of a continuing shift in power in Turkey. In the long-run, however, the more decisive struggle is probably occurring on the margins of the political process, as the AKP gradually entrenches both its supporters and its ideology in the state apparatus, by means such as the appointment of its supporters to key positions in the bureaucracy.

    The TTK was established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), who founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923 from the rump of the Ottoman Empire following the latter’s defeat in World War I. Ataturk sought to create a Turkish nation state. At the time, outside the empire’s tiny educated elite, there was little sense, or even awareness, of a “national identity.” Under the Ottomans, the primary determinant of identity had been religion, which for the majority of the population meant Islam. Ataturk associated the Ottoman Empire with obscurantism and regarded Islam as one of the most important reasons for its failure to match the pace of technological and intellectual development in the West. The TTK’s main purpose was to create an historical pedigree for a new secular nation-state, which would be based on language and race. The TTK wrote a new history, in which the Turks’ origins were projected back beyond the Ottoman Empire to the nomads of Central Asia. Over the years that have followed, the TTK has remained the custodian of official Turkish history and one of the main ideological bastions of the secular state.

    The attitude of the secular establishment to the Ottoman Empire can be seen clearly on the website of the Turkish military, which has always regarded itself as the guardian of Ataturk’s legacy, known as Kemalism. Although the Ottoman Empire lasted for 600 years, only one of the 13 “Important Days in Turkish History” listed on the website of the Turkish General Staff is from before World War One (for reasons that remain obscure, the day is the anniversary of the conquest of the island of Rhodes). The majority are associated with Ataturk’s life (Turkish General Staff website, www.tsk.mil.tr).

    In contrast, Turkey’s Islamists have always been unabashed Ottoman nostalgists. Although it has not yet dared to confront the personality cult that grew up around Ataturk after his death, including the compulsory inculcation of his teachings at every level of the educational system, the AKP has certainly been less vigorous than previous administrations in terms of promoting it.

    In recent years, there has also been a noticeable shift in the historical reference points in official statements, ceremonies and speeches. Before the AKP came to power, the reference point was invariably a quotation from Ataturk or an event from his life. Now it is increasingly the Ottoman Empire. The change has been most marked at the local level. For example, ever since pro-Islamic political parties first took control of the Istanbul Municipality in 1994, the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453 has been celebrated with increasing enthusiasm each year. Conferences and symposia on Ottoman themes have proliferated, and large budgets been assigned to the preservation and restoration of the city’s Ottoman, particularly religious, architectural heritage. Tulip festivals, including the planting of three million bulbs across the city, are now held each spring to commemorate the “Tulip Era” of the early 18th century. The municipality has even begun to use Ottoman vocabulary and grammatical constructions on billboards.

    This Ottoman nostalgia has always been extremely strong among followers of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen (born in 1941), who is currently in exile in the United States. Gulen has long portrayed the Ottoman Empire as a paradigm of religious tolerance and social harmony, although the historical record would appear to indicate otherwise. Over the last decade, the Gulen movement has grown rapidly to become the most powerful non-governmental network in Turkey, which includes media outlets, schools, universities, businesses and charitable foundations. It has also established increasingly close ties with the AKP. Several ministers and many AKP parliamentary deputies are known to be Gulen sympathizers.

    Although he had often courted controversy through his aggressive denial that the treatment of the Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire constituted genocide, Halacoglu was undoubtedly committed to Ataturk’s ideological legacy. In contrast, Ali Birinci is known to be very close to the Gulen movement and has played an active role in several of its NGOs. He first came to prominence in 2006 when he publicly supported another pro-AKP academic, Professor Atilla Yayla, who described Kemalism as taking Turkey “much further backward than forward” and, in a reference to the Ataturk personality cult, asked “why are there pictures of this man everywhere?” (Vatan, July 25).

    As a result, the replacement of Halacoglu with Birinci will undoubtedly be regarded by many secularists in Turkey not merely as a bureaucratic appointment but as another indication of creeping regime change.

  • U.S. Congressman becomes godfather of Azerbaijani baby

    U.S. Congressman becomes godfather of Azerbaijani baby

     
     

    [ 04 Aug 2008 17:14 ]
    Washington. Husniyya Hasanova – APA. Ed Towns U.S. Congressman from 10th district, New York has become kirve (kind of godfather) of Kamal Amiraliyev.

    APA’s US bureau reports that member of Working Groups on Azerbaijan Turkey Ed Towns made this statement after meeting with half-month Kamal’s father Naimi Amiraliyev, officer of US Navy. Naimi Amiraliyev also met with Jean Schmidt, Congressman from 2nd district of Ohio and called him to enter the Working Group on Azerbaijan. Ms. Schmidt promised to join the Working Group on Azerbaijan and said she would send necessary document to the Working Group.
    The same day Naimi Amiraliyev also met with two other members of the Working Group on Azerbaijan – Steve Cohen and Eddie Bernice Johnson, he briefed them about the on-going processes in Azerbaijan, the country’s foreign policy, activity with NATO and European Union.
    43 congressmen have joined the Working Group on Azerbaijan. Five of them have joined the group on the initiative of Naimi Amiraliyev.