By Alexander Christie-Miller, Correspondent / August 5, 2011
Istanbul
When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accepted the resignations of his four most senior military officers on July 29, he savored a victory unprecedented in Turkey’s modern history: Whenever the government and army had squared off before, politicians had been the ones to go.
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But amid celebration of the military’s defeat as a waymark of democracy, little scrutiny has been given to allegations that fabricated evidence and the framing of suspects played a role in its downfall.
The military’s chief of general staff, Isik Kosaner, said in his parting statement that it was “impossible” to continue serving due to his inability to protect the legal rights of some 250 officers detained for a range of alleged antigovernment plots.
Many of them have been held for more than a year without trial, and publicly available papers relating to the plots reveal significant inconsistencies.
RELATED: How Turkey’s military upheaval will affect NATO
The main document detailing an alleged 2003 coup plot code-named “Sledgehammer,” included in an indictment leaked by both prosecution and defense, refers to an organization that was not founded until two years later.
And the timing of many of the arrest warrants and charges has fueled claims that the probes are politically motivated. They are often filed in the lead-up to Supreme Military Council meetings such as this week’s, meetings at which the government and army have clashed over military promotions.
Separately, scores of journalists, academics, and others are involved in mass trials for involvement in an alleged deep state network. Hundreds of Kurdish politicians and activists have also been detained as part of a sprawling antiterror investigation.
“This is not about whether you’re pro-military or antimilitary, it’s about the rule of law,” says Asli Aydintasbas, a columnist at the daily Milliyet newspaper. “Do we want to live in a country where political opponents are eliminated by trials that are unconvincing? I find it very disturbing.”
But many Turks have scant sympathy for a military that for decades brutalized its own people and overthrew four governments as self-appointed guardian of the secular state forged by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
“I’m not going to say that the deficiencies in due process is the main aspect in [the Sledgehammer] case,” says Sahin Alpay, a columnist for Today’s Zaman newspaper. “It’s helping to put an end to the political role of the armed forces.”
Confrontation between AKP, military
Turkey’s long history of military intervention in civilian rule began in 1960, when the army overthrew Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who was then tried before a kangaroo court and executed.
After seizing power again in 1971, it staged a third coup in 1980, detaining 650,000 people. Of them, 230,000 were tried, 14,000 stripped of citizenship, 50 executed, and 171 killed in custody.
via Turkey’s military defanged: Is it good for democracy? – CSMonitor.com.
ISTANBUL — Turkey’s civilian leadership appointed four new commanders on Thursday, decisively strengthening its control over its armed forces less than a week after the military leadership abruptly resigned in frustration over the continuing prosecution of officers accused of plotting to overthrow the government.
The new appointments of a chief of general staff and commanders of the army, navy and air force reflected the Islamic-leaning civilian government’s increased assertiveness in its struggle with the country’s military establishment, which has orchestrated three coups since 1960 and forced another government from power in 1997.
The appointments were announced at the conclusion of a four-day meeting of the Senior Military Council, a powerful group led by top military and civilian officials.
In prior years, the council funneled military influence into the public sphere. But on Thursday, the meeting was led exclusively by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and a widely circulated photograph of the event seemed to illustrate his success in ensuring civilian supremacy in Turkish politics. The appointees resemble their predecessors in background and experience, but their rise is the start of what many see as a new era of civilian dominance here.
The resignations last Friday came as a shock inside and outside of Turkey, a NATO member and an increasingly influential economic power that maintains close ties to Europe and the Middle East. But Mr. Erdogan, a popular leader whose conservative, Islamic-oriented party came to power in 2002, took the moment as an opportunity to install a military leadership more likely to accept being subordinate to a civilian government.
The new chief of staff is Necdet Ozel; the land forces commander is Hayri Kivrikoglu; Mehmet Erten is now the air force commander; and Emin Murat Bilgel became naval commander.
Civilian control of the military is also an important requirement for membership in the European Union, which Mr. Erdogan’s government has been seeking to join since he took office.
“The military had some misconceptions and an incorrect, antidemocratic culture about the role of an army,” said Atilla Sandikli, a former military officer and now a researcher at Bilgesam, a research group based in Ankara, Turkey’s capital. “However, from now on, I believe that the army would not be able to dismiss any civilian authority or its decrees or manipulate governments like it did in the past.”
The four commanders who resigned last week were angry over the arrests and prosecution of hundreds of officers dating to 2003, accused of conspiring to destabilize the government and cause it to fall. The catalyst for the resignations was Mr. Erdogan’s refusal to take action against the slow-moving judicial process enmeshing about 200 military personnel, including 14 generals and admirals.
Critics of Mr. Erdogan say the case reveals his authoritarian tendencies and that much of the evidence has been fabricated. But Mr. Erdogan and his party, Justice and Development, enjoy widespread support among Turkey’s 73 million people, whose livelihoods have improved significantly under his tenure.
Some former members of the military have viewed the latest developments with a sense of resignation and defeat, fearing that the military will no longer be able serve as a balance of power against what they see as Mr. Erdogan’s efforts to erode the secular principles enshrined by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at the founding of modern Turkey nearly a century ago.
via With 4 Promotions, Turkey Begins a New Era – NYTimes.com.
ISTANBUL—Turkey’s government on Wednesday began laying out details of the civil-military order they want to see, making it clear even before a new command is announced that the country’s next top soldier, Gen. Necdet Ozel, will face a tough job.
The government, backed by the European Union, has been battling since it came to power in 2002 to get the country’s overbearing military, which conducted three coups since 1960, to submit to civilian control. With that battle now won, according to military analysts, Gen. Ozel’s job will be to begin reform of a military deeply suspicious of the government driving the changes.
As a start, the prime minister should sit alone at the head of the table at twice-yearly meetings of the Supreme Military Council, as he did for the first time this week, rather than next to the chief of general staff, according to Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc.
“They say, a village can’t have two headmen,” Mr. Arinc said bluntly, in televised remarks.
The four-day council meeting decides promotions throughout the military and has been the setting for an extraordinary drama this year, after Chief of the General Staff Isik Kosaner and three service chiefs resigned Friday, in protest against prosecutions against hundreds of military officers. That has left empty five seats empty at the table.
Asked by reporters whether the website of the general staff would be purged of politicized material, Mr. Arinc attacked the “e-memorandum” still on the site, which warned the military would act to protect secularism in Turkey. The memorandum was posted in April 2007, as then-candidate Abdullah Gul of the ruling Islamic-leaning Justice and Development Party, or AKP, was trying to get elected president. Some saw it as a veiled threat to intervene in the political process.
“This was a breaking point in Turkey,” said Mr. Arinc, also from the AKP. “Now, of course, for this wrong to be on a website is just as big a mistake as the wrong itself.”
The appointment of Gen. Ozel and his service chiefs won’t be announced until Thursday, but the tightrope he’ll have to walk between pleasing the government and his fellow officers was already evident Wednesday.
“What are you hiding from the other commanders?” asked Muharren Ince, vice chairman of the parliamentary group of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, in a televised statement. On Monday, the first day of the council meeting was cut short as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pulled Gen. Ozel into an unusual private meeting of almost two hours.
Gen. Ozel differs from many of his fellow generals in that he has a cautious, studiously apolitical nature, according to Namik Cinar, a columnist who writes on military affairs for the liberal daily Taraf, and who attended military academy and infantry school with Gen. Ozel.
“He’s not very talkative. He has never knowingly given a political speech, and he doesn’t give interviews,” said Mr. Cinar.
Even as a student, Mr. Cinar remembers Gen. Ozel being careful and unusually self-disciplined —possibly overcompensating for the fact that his father taught at the military academy and he didn’t want to appear to be favored in any way. “When we would go on a march and there would be a rest break, everyone was relaxing, but he’d sit up like a candle,” said Mr. Cinar, in an interview.
That cautious nature makes Gen. Ozel a natural choice for the government, he added.
The general also has set himself apart from much of the other top brass by the things he didn’t do—or hasn’t been accused of doing.
Gen. Aslan Guner, who has been sitting at the far end of the table from Prime Minister Erdogan this week, twice appeared to snub President Gul’s wife because she wears a headscarf. Third Army commander Gen. Saldiray Berk, who sits next to Gen. Ozel, has been charged with taking part in an alleged anti-government plot called “Action Plan to Fight Reactionaryism.”
Aegean Army chief Gen. Nusdet Tasdeler was indicted last week for allegedly ordering dozens of websites to be set up to defame the government and Turkey’s ethnic and religious minorities.
And in February, Gen. Ozel was the only service chief not to take part in a highly publicized visit that Gen. Kosaner made to the jail that holds generals and admirals among more than 200 military officers currently awaiting trial on charges of plotting against the government.
Yet “he is regarded in the officer corps as a good Kemalist,” says Istanbul-based military analyst Gareth Jenkins. Kemalist refers to followers of the principles of modern Turkey’s secularist founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Mr. Jenkins said it was the other generals who put Gen. Ozel in position, within the military’s strict succession-hierarchy to take over from Gen. Kosaner. They chose him at last year’s August meeting of the Supreme Military Council because his views were Kemalist and he didn’t share the religious conservative outlook of the AKP, Mr. Jenkins added.
—Ayla Albayrak contributed to this article.
Write to Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com
via Turkey Outlines New Role for Military – WSJ.com.
Editor’s Note: Steven A. Cook is the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square, to be published this fall.
By Steven A. Cook, Foreign Affairs
Cars drive on a bridge crossing the Nile River on February 9, 2006 in Central Cairo, Egypt. (Getty Images)
Cars drive on a bridge crossing the Nile River on February 9, 2006 in Central Cairo, Egypt. (Getty Images)
In the weeks and months since Egypt’s military officers forced then President Hosni Mubarak from power and assumed executive authority, the country’s military rulers have shown an interest in applying what many have taken to calling the “Turkish model.” Spokesmen for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), along with some civilian politicians, have floated the idea of replicating in Egypt today aspects of a bygone era in Turkish politics.
Despite some similarities between the Egyptian and Turkish armed forces, Egypt’s officers would be ill advised to try to emulate their counterparts in Turkey. Not only would they be bound to fail but, in the process, would make the struggle to build the new Egypt far more complex and uncertain.
Egypt’s military commanders are not so much interested in the latest manifestation of the Turkish model, in which a party of Islamist patrimony oversees political and economic reforms as part of an officially secular state, but rather an older iteration of it. This version of the Turkish model was a hallmark of Turkey’s politics from the time of the republic’s founding in 1923 until the early 2000s. It offers a template for civil-military relations in which the military plays a moderating role, preventing – at times, through military-led coups – the excesses of civilian politicians and dangerous ideologies (in Turkey’s case, Islamism, Kurdish nationalism, and, at one time, socialism) from threatening the political order.
Turkey’s political system had a network of institutions that purposefully served to channel the military’s influence. For example, the service codes of the armed forces implored officers to intervene in politics if they perceived a threat to the republican order, and military officers held positions on boards that monitored higher education and public broadcasting. Meanwhile, various constitutional provisions made it difficult for undesirable groups – notably, Islamists and Kurds – to participate in the political process.
The most prominent among the military’s channels of influence was the Milli Guvenlik Kurulu, or National Security Council, (known by its Turkish initials, MGK). Turkey’s 1982 constitution directed civilian leaders to “give priority consideration” to the council’s recommendations so as to preserve “the existence and independence of the State, the integrity and indivisibility of the country, and the peace and security of the country.” The MGK’s directives were rarely defied. The officers who served on the council had a definition of national security that ranged well beyond traditional notions of defense policy, including everything from education and broadcasting to the attire of politicians and their wives.
In some ways, the SCAF would not have to do much to approximate the Turkish model on the Nile. The two militaries do share some important similarities. For example, like the Turkish General Staff, which worked tirelessly to ensure the political order that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his commanders established after the end of World War I, the Egyptian officer corps has long maintained a commitment to the regime that its predecessors, the Free Officers, founded in the early 1950s. In both the Turkish and Egyptian cases, this sense of responsibility stems from a sense that the military, equipped with the best organization and technology, is set off from the rest of society and is the ultimate protector of national interests. This outlook tends to breed a suspicion – even hostility – toward civilian politicians.
In addition, both militaries developed robust economic interests directly tied to their countries’ political systems. In Turkey, the armed forces became part of an economic landscape that favored large holding companies controlled by a few established families whose economic interests were connected to the status quo. In Egypt, the military itself is directly involved in a wide array of economic activities, including agriculture, real estate, tourism, security and aviation services, consumer goods, light manufacturing, and, of course, weapons fabrication.
Both the Turkish General Staff and Egypt’s present-day officers have an aversion to politics and the day-to-day running of their countries. They prefer to leave the responsibilities and risks of governing to civilians, or, in Egypt’s case, to a delegate from the armed forces. This sort of arrangement is precisely what it means to rule but not govern.
Now, with the SCAF effectively in control of Egypt, there is evidence that some Egyptians, both civilians and officers, are studying the Turkish model and its political implications. Since assuming power in February, the Egyptian military has taken measures to shield commanders from prosecution in civilian courts, a protection Turkey’s parliament just stripped from its own officer corps. They have also floated proposals through non-military representatives to shield the defense budget from parliamentary oversight, maintain ultimate authority over defense policy, and even establish a National Defense Council that resembles features of Turkey’s MGK before that body was brought to heel in 2003 through constitutional reforms. And the participation of military officers in Egypt’s electoral commission looks a lot like the Turkish military’s surveillance of society through membership on various government boards.
If the officers’ moves seem like a backhanded way of creating the conditions favorable for an enduring political role for the Egyptian army, they are. Still, members of the SCAF have been careful to say that they will abide by Egypt’s new constitution when Egyptians ratify the yet-to-be written document. They say that whatever role the Egyptian people assign to them is the role that they will respectfully fulfill. Of course, if the Egyptian people want some approximation of the Turkish model, then the military is bound to discharge that mission.
Yet if the members of the SCAF truly want to be like their Turkish counterparts, they are going to have to be more directly involved in the constitution writing process. Although some of the intellectuals, judges, and other figures on the National Council who are charged with drafting constitutional principles favor the military’s continued presence in politics, their support is unlikely to be enough given the mistrust with which revolutionary groups and others view the military.In Turkey, although the military was not directly involved in writing the 1961 constitution, the country’s officers stepped in a decade later to tighten up aspects of the document that they deemed to be too liberal. A little less than ten years later, Turkey’s generals stepped in again and directly oversaw the writing of a new constitution (which the country is now considering abolishing and replacing with a new document) that not only reinforced existing levers of military influence but also created additional means for the armed forces to intervene in the political system.
The development of a Turkish-style role for the Egyptian officer corps also presumes that there is broad elite support for such a system. In Turkey, the officers enjoyed the support of judges, lawyers, academics, the press, big business, and average Turks who were committed to the defense of Kemalism against far smaller groups of Islamists and Kurds who were long considered to be outside the mainstream.
Despite some high-profile advocates, such as the politician Amr Moussa and the judge Hisham Bastawisi, there are few influential supporters for the military becoming the arbiter of Egyptian politics. This does not bode well for the military should they seek to replicate the Turks. On the eve of recent protests intended to pressure the SCAF to meet various revolutionary demands, more than two dozen political parties demanded that the military outline when and how it will hand over power to civilians.
The only place where the military has support is among the Muslim Brotherhood. This is significant. Indeed, the Brotherhood was a central player in an effort to bring a million people into the streets last Friday to demonstrate their support for the SCAF. Yet as important as the Brotherhood’s support for the military may be, the officers should take little comfort from its embrace. The Islamists in the Brotherhood do not support the military as much as they want to undermine the revolutionary groups, liberals, and secularist parties that they oppose.
In addition, the Brotherhood and the officers are – just as they were in the early 1950s – competitors rather than collaborators. For its part, the Brotherhood can make claims to being better nationalists and potentially better stewards of Egypt than the armed forces, which are tainted by their association with the United States and Mubarakism. Whatever backing the Brotherhood is currently offering the military and the SCAF is surely tactical and does not extend to carving out a political role for the officers after a transition to civilian leaders.
Finally, the most important feature of Turkey’s system under the tutelage of the military was the Turkish officers’ singular ideological commitment to Kemalism. This was a motivating factor for generations of officers and their civilian supporters.
In contrast, it remains unclear exactly what the SCAF believes in. The Egyptians are not die-hard secularists, democrats, Islamists, or authoritarians. Other than generic platitudes about democracy and respect for the Egyptian people, the officers seem only interested in stability, maintaining their economic interests, and preserving the legitimacy of the armed forces despite having been the backbone of a thoroughly discredited regime for 60 years. As a result, the SCAF seems to be willing to hand over power to anyone who can guarantee those three interests. It is this kind of political opportunism that is fatal to a Turkish model on the Nile. Without a compelling narrative about what Egyptian society should look like and the role of the military in realizing this vision, it is unlikely that the officers will garner the kind of support necessary in order for elites to voluntarily give up their own potential power in favor of military tutelage.
For all of the political dynamism, energy, and creativity that Egyptians have demonstrated since Mubarak’s fall, the country is also wracked with a host of debilitating problems: persistent protests, economic problems, political intrigue, intermittent violence, and a general state of uncertainty. To some Egyptians, it seems that the military’s firm hand is necessary to keep all of the country’s political factions in line while building the new Egypt. After all, the Turkish officers tamed Turkey’s fractious and sometimes violent political arena, and the country is now freer than ever before.
But such analysis is backward. Turkey’s democratic changes, which remain far from complete, happened despite the military, not because of it. Regardless, attempts to replicate in Egypt aspects of Turkey’s experience would be met with significant opposition, increased political tension, more uncertainty, and potential violence, all of which create the conditions for the emergence of new authoritarianism. With the many potential drawbacks of trying to copy the Turkish armed forces, the Egyptian officers should not even bother trying.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Steven A. Cook. For more excellent long-form analysis, visit Foreign Affairs.
The Greek and Greek Cypriot politicians still try to make an anti-Turkey propaganda and a diversion within the EU (ABhaber confirmed that yesterday). Let’s underline this: Turkey doesn’t occupy Cyprus. Turkey intervened in Cyprus in order to save the Turkish Cypriots. Last year Carl Bildt answered to some Greek politicians at the EU parliament that Turkey intervened in Cyprus because the Turkish Cypriots were being killed. And those Greeks didn’t answer, because they didn’t know what to answer. Why? Because they are so used to not facing with objective statements about the Cypriot issue.
Turkey’s military intervention in Cyprus was legal. Anyway, if Turkey wished it, it could have seized the whole island. But it didn’t do so. Because its aim was only to save the Turkish Cypriots.
Therefore Turkey doesn’t occupy Cyprus (by the way, Turkey’s legal intervention happened in 1974, whereas the Greek Cypriots became illegally EU members in 2004).
Furthermore, if the Annan peace plan was accepted by the Greek side, today the 35 000 Turkish soldiers would already have gone. Because that was written in that plan for the reunification of Cyprus, which was the solution for the peace.
Let’s remind that that peace plan was the plan both of the United Nations and the European Union.
But as that solution was not accepted by the Greek Cypriot side, the Turkish soldiers had to stay in Northern Cyprus.
In other words, the Turkish troops are still in Northern Cyprus to safeguard the security of the Turkish Cypriots, because the Greek Cypriots voted “No” to the Annan peace plan in 2004.
1974: a legitimate and legal intervention. 2004: a golden opportunity missed.
Your sincerely,
Cem
PS. Besides, the behaviour of the Greek Cypriot leaders is suspicious and justifies the presence of the Turkish troops in Northern Cyprus.
Let’s remember that some Turkish Cypriots (and a Turkish basketball team from Turkey) were recently attacked by many nationalist Greek Cypriots who acted with impunity.
Why with impunity?
On the one hand because the Greek Cypriot government didn’t do anything to prevent these events from occuring.
On the other hand, because after the attack against the Turkish basketball players Mr Christofias solely said that the rushers were fools.
What a strange statement about a racist and violent act. I mean, he didn’t condemn it. Is not that assessment suspicious? That unbelievable stance of the leader of the Greek Cypriots – who was openly against the Annan peace plan in 2004 – is revealing but also a proof that there’s a real risk for the Turkish Cypriots. The president Mr Christofias didn’t condemn the barbarian attack against the Turkish sportsmen.
Therefore, given that Mr Christofias (following the Greek Cypriot religious leaders) once more turned out not to be reassuring, owing to the silence of the Greek Cypriot government, and owing to the recent scandalous and dangerous statements of the powerful Greek Cypriot religious leaders about Cyprus (why do they make political statements? Why do they enumerate their “demands”? Are they politicians? Well why don’t the EU parliament and the EU commission (as well as the EU media) deal with that serious problem instead of tirelessly keeping on criticising Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots? Is not the EU worried of the weight and influence of the Greek Cypriot Church in politics?), the Turkish soldiers have the legitimacy and the duty to stay in Northern Cyprus until an enduring solution is found.
They represent the security of the Turkish Cypriots.
PPS. The Greek Cypriot leaders and the Greek Cypriot Church see the Turkish Cypriots as second class Cypriot citizens. Due to the dangerous negative nationalism of the Greek Cypriot state, if the Turkish troops left the island that would mean deserting the Turkish Cypriots.
via Turkey » Blog Archive » A legitimate and legal intervention (1974) – A golden opportunity missed (2004).
