Generals rattle their sabres
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last week scrambled
to defuse growing tensions with the country's new hardline high command
as the Turkish military once again began to flex its political muscles,
reports Gareth Jenkins from Ankara
Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced
plans to establish a network of formal and informal contacts with the
country's powerful military in order to try to defuse tensions in the
run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections in 2007.
Erdogan's announcement follows a series of public statements
by top commanders in recent weeks warning that the secular Turkish
republic was under threat. On 3 October, in a speech carried live on 11
national television channels, the new Chief of Staff General Yasar
Buyukanit accused leading members of the government of trying to
undermine secularism and reiterated the military's determination to
combat what he described as religious fundamentalism. In a country where
the military has staged four coups in the last 46 years, most recently
in 1997, few are prepared to treat the warning lightly.
Since it took power in November 2002, the moderate Islamist
Justice and Development Party (JDP) has been viewed with deep suspicion
by most of the Turkish military. But Buyukanit's predecessor General
Hilmi Ozkok, who was chief of staff from August 2002 to August 2006,
enjoyed a relatively cordial working relationship with the JDP, adopting
a low-key public profile while Erdogan resisted pressure to push through
measures demanded by the JDP's grassroots supporters.These include
easing restrictions on religious education and lifting the ban on women
in headscarves attending university, or working in state
institutions.
One of the reasons for Ozkok adopting such a low profile was
that, unusually for a leading Turkish commander, he was a deeply devout
Muslim himself and thus less worried by a moderate Islamist government.
The other was that he was aware that any direct military interference in
politics could jeopardise Turkey's chances of EU
membership.
But Ozkok was an exception. Very few in the Turkish military
share his sanguine view of the JDP. In recent years, most have been
biding their time, waiting for Ozkok to retire and relying on Turkish
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, himself a staunch secularist, to use his
presidential veto to keep the JDP in line. But Sezer is due to step down
in May next year and is expected to be replaced either by Erdogan
himself or by someone else with strong Islamist sympathies. While
problems in Turkey's relations with the EU mean that not only is
accession becoming an increasingly distant prospect, but as well, that
public support for the EU is also plummeting. The most recent opinion
polls suggest that only around 45 per cent of the Turkish population now
support EU membership, down from 78 per cent two years ago. With little
to lose and in the absence of an effective political opposition in
parliament it is not just hardliners in the military who are looking to
their commanders to curb the perceived Islamist ambitions of the JDP,
many civilian secularists are too.
There is a widespread fear that if a suitable candidate can
be appointed to the presidency, the JDP government will attempt to push
through a series of measures to placate its pious grassroots in the
run-up to parliamentary elections, which are expected to be held in
early autumn 2007.
When he took over as chief of staff at the end of August,
Buyukanit was under immense pressure to deliver a stern warning to the
government. So far, he has not disappointed expectations in this
direction. After Buyukanit spoke on 3 October, retired General Hussein
Kivrikoglu, who served as chief of staff from 1998 to 2002, was quoted
in the Turkish media as declaring that: "At last our four-year silence
has been broken."
Last week, Erdogan announced that he would try to ease the
military's concerns by sending ministers to give formal briefings to
leading generals. Informal contacts have been encouraged meanwhile,
between members of the government and the military at social occasions
and academic conferences. But the soldiers are likely to be more
interested in action than soothing words. This would include a clampdown
on Islamist activism and propaganda activities, and putting an end to
both the appointment of Islamists to key positions in the bureaucracy
and to statements by government ministers calling for a reinterpretation
of the principle of secularism enshrined in the Turkish constitution.
Yet the JDP government is itself already under intense pressure from its
grassroots to do more, not less, to redefine the current interpretation
of secularism in Turkey.
Even if they succeed, Erdogan's plans to defuse tensions
between the JDP and the military are unlikely to provide more than a
temporary respite. Few in Turkey doubt that a major confrontation is
coming. While a full-blown coup remains only a distant possibility, few
doubt that over the months ahead, the country's military will cast an
increasingly long shadow over Turkish politics.
