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Army Casts Shadow on Turkey's Future
Military Is Popular Guardian of Stability, but Threat to Western-Style Democracy
ANKARA, Turkey -- The head of Istanbul's Chamber of Commerce had a novel idea. Turkey's National Security Council, a military-civilian board dominated by soldiers, should manage the nation's economy, he suggested.
The proposal sparked a furor last month in a country trying to shore up its democratic credentials and prove to the European Union that, contrary to some appearances, civilians really do run Turkey. Their case was not helped when, a day later, the head of Istanbul's Chamber of Industry seconded his compatriot's proposal.
The call from two such powerful businessmen for military intervention in Turkey's economy illustrates an emerging trend: Fed up with weak coalition governments and corrupt politicians, Turkish citizens are turning to the military -- for decades, the country's constitutional guarantor of stability and secularism -- to solve their problems, creating a long-term threat to democracy and the country's hopes of joining the EU.
We pushed them to become a guardian -- a state within a state -- but they went too far, said Mehmet Ali Birand, a newspaper columnist and author of several books on the Turkish military. They liked it, and now they're fighting not to lose it.
Rather than civilian oversight of the military -- the standard adopted by Western democracies -- analysts and politicians here describe Turkey's political system as exactly the opposite. Generals, who have staged three coups since 1960 and helped to peacefully overthrow an Islamic government four years ago, use the Security Council to effectively dictate public policy on everything from defense to education to public dress codes, critics charge.
In an interview Tuesday, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit strongly defended the military, saying that despite numerous internal and external threats, the military does not interfere in the democratic process of life at all. . . . They are as attached to democracy as any other section of society.
The EU has advised Turkey that, before it can join, it must get the military out of domestic affairs and strengthen democracy by amending the constitution to guarantee greater civilian control.
It's not a matter of amending our constitution, it's a matter of amending our mind-set, said Yalim Eralp, a longtime foreign policy adviser and Turkish diplomat, noting that Turkey's generals, while constitutionally answerable to the president and parliament, are rarely held accountable to civilian authority and seldom challenged. If the political parties don't govern well, no constitution can do it for them.
The debate over Turkey's military also illustrates the dilemma posed by the country's strategic location -- it is bordered by Iran, Iraq and Syria -- and its unique relationship with the West, particularly the United States. A key Cold War ally that in earlier times blocked the Soviet Union's southern expansion, Turkey -- which is 99 percent Muslim but has close ties with Israel and embraces a moderate form of Islam -- is considered crucial to regional security and a bulwark against the spread of radical Islam and terrorism.
Eralp said he witnessed the quandary while serving as a Turkish ambassador in Vienna in June 1997, when the military forced the downfall of Turkey's first and only Islamic government. He said that, privately, every ambassador in the EU praised the role of the army. Everybody was happy Turkey got rid of its fundamentalist government.
In recent weeks, the military was found to be spreading lies about journalists and other prominent people in a smear campaign, and newspapers reported that officers were apparently behind an investigation of high-level civilian corruption in Turkey's Energy Ministry, prompting a deputy prime minister to warn that coup lovers were trying to undermine civilian authority.
Nevertheless, surveys show that the military remains one of the most popular institutions in the country. The military is often pushed into a more active role by businessmen, newspapers, politicians and academics who are wary of Turkey's weak civilian leadership and believe that the military is the country's only trustworthy institution, observers say.
Under the military's constitutional mandate to protect Turkey's secularism and territorial integrity -- two key principles of the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk -- the military has weighed in on numerous matters that normally would not be considered relevant to national defense.
It has demanded that head scarves, which many Muslim women believe Islam requires them to wear, not be worn in government buildings or on college campuses. It has advocated flying the Turkish flags over mosques. It has approved language courses in public schools, disapproved of Kurdish radio and TV broadcasts, urged book bannings in university libraries and promoted programs to lower Kurdish population growth, among other measures -- all in the name of state security.
Europeans don't understand this. They see the military interfering with civilian authorities, and they don't ask why -- as if this were Germany or Sweden or France, said former foreign minister Ilter Turkmen. But the military intervention is fine, because there's no other way to stop the political class from granting concessions to the fundamentalists, which is the greatest threat to Turkey today, he said.
It was that concern that prompted the military to mobilize public opinion in 1997 against the Islamic government of then-Prime Minster Necmettin Erbakan, causing its downfall. Analysts say it was a decisive event that signaled the use of new, sophisticated tactics by a Western-educated, trained and armed military that could not afford the presumed international backlash against a blatant military coup. The military's campaign is today referred to as a soft, post-modern or virtual coup.
According to Sedat Ergin, a reporter with Hurriyet, a daily newspaper published in Istanbul, it was not the military alone that brought down the government.
A majority of Turks were frustrated that a coalition headed by an Islamic prime minister was running the country, he said. The military, universities, bar associations, the mainstream press, business chambers, two major labor confederations -- you name it -- all engaged in this endeavor to overthrow the government. It was a strange coalition, from a democratic perspective.
The security council -- an advisory board made up of the country's top five military commanders and top five civilian politicians -- is the key vehicle that the military uses to impose its will on the government, political and military observers said. The EU has said that the military power it wields over civilians must be curtailed.
I've never been able to understand what these people in Western Europe mean when they say the [security council] should be substantially changed, Prime Minister Ecevit said, noting that the council's role, as spelled out in the constitution, is strictly advisory.
The military does not and cannot impose any conditions on the government, on the parliament, on the citizens, but they sometimes express their views, he said. It's no longer possible for the military to intervene, because the world has changed, Turkey has changed. We are prospective members of the European Union, and the military also supports the prospect of joining the European Union.
However, according to many observers here, while the council is numerically balanced between military and civilian members, the military in fact controls the agenda by dominating staff preparations at its monthly meetings. Civilians -- the president, prime minister, and the defense, interior and foreign ministers, who are often members of different political parties -- typically arrive unprepared and disorganized, observers said, while the military -- the chief of staff and four heads of services -- present their unified recommendations backed by extensive staff papers, they said.
Furthermore, because Turkey has had 11 coalition governments in the last 10 years, civilians on the security council typically are focused on short-term political issues, leaving long-range policy matters to the military, observers said.
Politicians are weak and dishonest, charged Nuzli Ilicak, a
member of parliament from the Virtue Party, an Islamic group. We
need strong, honest politicians so the military can't intervene, or
create the atmosphere to intervene.
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