TURKISH MILITARY CHIEF FLEXES SOME POLITICAL MUSCLE
By Vincent Boland in Ankara
FT
February 27 2007 02:00
The head of Turkey’s armed forces used a visit to the US this month to
fire a warning shot across the bows of his political masters at home.
Turkey was facing more threats to its national security than at any
time in its modern history, General Yashar Buyukanit said, but its
"dynamic forces" – its soldiers – would prevent any attempt to "break
up the country".
Within days, the government in Ankara dropped a tentative plan to open
official lines of communication with the civilian Kurdish leadership in
northern Iraq – a controversial initiative but one that many countries
are urging.
The government’s acquiescence on an important foreign policy issue
represents a decisive victory for military over political thinking. It
also highlighted the continued influence of the military a decade
after the generals ousted an Islamist government without firing a
shot – an event that has become known as the "post-modern coup".
Despite legal and constitutional changes in the past four years to
reduce their visibility in public life, to give civilian leaders
a bigger say in matters of national security and to make the armed
forces more accountable to parliament, the Turkish general staff can
still influence and change government policy in a way that would be
impossible in other European countries.
Cengiz Aktar, a professor at Bahcesehir University, says Gen
Buyukanit’s Washington speech was meant to send a signal to the
end-of-term government and the nation at large that the military
retained a pre-eminent role on national issues such as the threat
of separatism. "If there was the slightest will on the part of the
political leadership of Turkey to talk to the Kurdish leaders in Iraq,
that will has now gone," he says.
Turkey has a history of military interference in its political affairs
It is one of the legacies that most compromises its attempt to join
the European Union.
In addition to the February 1997 coup there have been three coups
d’état since 1960, complete with tanks on the streets, mass arrests,
new constitutions and generals in uniform assuming top political
positions.
These interventions were sometimes welcomed by Turks, who regard the
military as the country’s most trustworthy institution.
Reforms to the status of a status-obsessed military since 2002 were
accepted by the general staff because they were necessary to secure
the opening of EU entry talks. Now, some observers say, Gen Buyukanit
is testing the revised constitutional arrangements to see where the
new border between the politicians and the military in Turkey lies.
"It’s his attempt to understand the new parameters," says Omer Faruk
Genckaya, an associate professor of political science at Bilkent
University.
In particular, some observers say, the generals are worried that the
constitutional changes have weakened the national security council –
which was once dominated by the military and is now run by a civilian –
without strengthening the political or civilian alternatives. This,
they believe, has occurred at a time when Turkey’s neighbourhood –
it shares a border with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Georgia and Armenia –
is going through profound upheaval.
Omer Taspinar, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington,
says Gen Buyukanit’s prominence in recent weeks reflect the weakness of
politicians as much as the new-found confidence of the military. "In
the political vacuum created by inept politicians, both in power
and in opposition, the general staff is once again filling a void
and increasingly becoming a barometer of Turkey’s stance," he wrote
last week.
Gen Buyukanit has clashed with the government before, on issues from
internal security to Cyprus. He seems certain to do so again in the
run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections this year – as
long as he feels the military is a better judge of the public mood
than politicians. "Until politicians become more honest about the
problems Turkey is facing, the military will always see a role for
itself in society," Prof Genckaya says.
–Boundary_(ID_3JkUazs+GSVM6EA7QE0x/w)–