{"id":216,"date":"2008-03-14T14:22:11","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T18:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/mesh\/2008\/03\/tough_times_for_turkeys_generals\/"},"modified":"2008-04-07T12:07:28","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T16:07:28","slug":"tough_times_for_turkeys_generals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/2008\/03\/tough_times_for_turkeys_generals\/","title":{"rendered":"Tough times for Turkey’s generals"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Malik Mufti<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Turkey’s democracy has long rested on a delicate equilibrium between the guardians of the unitary secular-nationalist paradigm who dominate the civilian and military state bureaucracies on the one hand, and the populist politicians who appeal to the particularistic sub-identities of Turkey’s diverse civil society on the other. The proper functioning of this dynamic depends on the quality of leadership on both sides, for imbalances can lead to “corrective measures” such as the military interventions of past decades. While Turkey’s elected leaders have exhibited highly variable levels of statecraft, moreover, the remarkable corporate identity and professionalism of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) in particular have yielded\u2014especially since the 1970s\u2014commanders of generally impressive judgment and prudence. This has been a major factor in keeping Turkey, occasional hiccups notwithstanding, democratic at home as well as a stabilizing regional influence and American ally abroad.<\/p>\n

Recently, however, two episodes have highlighted the challenge TAF commanders face balancing the conflicting pressures from Turkish public opinion and from their own ideological constituency, including in the junior officer ranks.<\/p>\n

The first episode arose when President Ahmet Necdet Sezer’s term reached its end last year. Aware that the governing Islamic-based AK Party (whose members dominated the parliament that elects Turkey’s presidents) would likely field one of its own as a candidate, Chief of Staff Ya\u015far B\u00fcy\u00fckan\u0131t said that Sezer’s successor must uphold secularism “in both word and deed.” When the AK Party went ahead and nominated Abdullah G\u00fcl anyway, the TAF General Staff posted a statement on its website on the eve of the first round of parliamentary voting warning that “no one should doubt” the military’s resolve to carry out its mission as the “unequivocal defender of secularism.” Simultaneously, the TAF lent its support to a series of massive anti-AK Party demonstrations in major cities, even as the equally secularist state judiciary threw legal obstacles in the path of G\u00fcl’s election. Seeking to break the impasse, the AK Party called for early national elections.<\/p>\n

The results of the July 22 elections indicated a significant popular backlash against the TAF’s campaign, with the AK Party raising its vote from 34.3 percent in 2002 to 46.6 percent\u2014a crushing landslide by Turkish electoral standards. Even so, on the eve of the last round of the new parliament’s vote for president on August 28, General B\u00fcy\u00fckan\u0131t posted another note on the TAF website warning against “centers of evil” seeking to erode secularism. G\u00fcl won and became president anyway. A series of subsequent public snubs by TAF commanders of G\u00fcl and his headscarf-wearing wife further highlighted the growing gulf between hardline secularists and a public opinion in which, according to one poll, over 70 percent have no problem with G\u00fcl’s wife covering her hair.<\/p>\n

The second episode centered on Turkey’s other main internal cleavage, between the unitary and multicultural views of Turkish society. The TAF command, alarmed by the consolidation of Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq after 2003, and confronted by the resumption of the PKK insurrection in 2004, began pressuring Prime Minister Erdo\u011fan for military action. In a series of press conferences during the summer of 2007, General B\u00fcy\u00fckan\u0131t insisted that an incursion into northern Iraq was necessary, and mused whether it should target just PKK elements or the Iraqi Kurdish leadership there as well. The TAF, despite evident reluctance on the part of both Erdo\u011fan’s government and the United States, finally launched air and artillery attacks in December, followed by a land incursion on February 21, 2008.<\/p>\n

On February 29, however, just one day after U.S. Defense Secretary Gates arrived in Ankara to urge a rapid end to the incursion, it ended. The Turkish public, led by a sensationalist media into expecting a decisive victory over the PKK, was taken wholly unprepared. Opposition leaders Deniz Baykal and Devlet Bah\u00e7eli–whose parties have been closely aligned with the TAF, and who had accused the AK Party of treason for advocating a political solution to the Kurdish question\u2014also expressed disappointment, and drew a link between American pressure and the incursion’s abrupt end. This prompted General B\u00fcy\u00fckan\u0131t to deny any such linkage, to claim that the incursion had limited objectives all along, and to post yet another note on the General Staff website denouncing the criticisms as “ignoble attacks… that have caused more damage than the [PKK] traitors” themselves. This extraordinary polemic between the TAF and its traditional allies continued as the latter asserted their democratic right to question any aspect of Turkish policy.<\/p>\n

As gingerly as possible (given laws against insulting the military), several Turkish commentators have lamented what Lale Sar\u0131ibrahimo\u011flu, writing in Today’s Zaman<\/em> on March 13, called “the dangerous, self-damaging course the [TAF] is taking.” The dilemma is that both recent episodes reflect a deeper evolution in Turkey’s political development that is placing unprecedented stresses on the unitary secular-nationalist paradigm championed by the TAF command and its allies\u2014stresses that cannot simply be suppressed. To the extent that the TAF allows its discourse to appear at odds with popular sentiment, whether on the expression of religious or ethnic identities, it will undermine its own still-necessary function as a counterweight in Turkey’s fragile democratic equilibrium. That in turn could have very destabilizing consequences for Turkey’s role abroad, which explains why in recent days American officials have been emphasizing the need for compromise solutions to Turkey’s problems.<\/p>\n

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Malik Mufti Turkey’s democracy has long rested on a delicate equilibrium between the guardians of the unitary secular-nationalist paradigm who dominate the civilian and military state bureaucracies on the one hand, and the populist politicians who appeal to the particularistic sub-identities of Turkey’s diverse civil society on the other. The proper functioning of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1620,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408,1813,2517,1911],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-michael-reynolds","category-military","category-steven-a-cook","category-turkey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}