Turkey Analyst,
vol. 3 no. 4
1 March 2010

WHAT THE COLUMNISTS SAY

The detention of over fifty active and retired military personnel – among them several generals and former force commanders – accused of having planned to stage a coup in 2003, has led several commentators to conclude that Turkey has passed a critical threshold of great historic importance. Although the accusations against the military are dismissed by secularists, the general sense is that the military is being relegated to a subordinate role. There is nevertheless apprehension also among those who welcome the subjugation of the military that this development may not in itself be enough to secure full democratization.

BERKAN:  WHAT HAPPENED IN 2003?
İsmet Berkan in Radikal writes that he has recently been informed that General İlker Başbuğ, the Chief of the General staff, who at the time was Chief of Staff of the Army, had been actively involved in the efforts in 2003 to circumvent the 1st army in Istanbul from carrying out the coup codenamed Sledgehammer. According to his information, Başbuğ was instrumental in assisting his commanding officer, the army Chief General Aytaç Yalman and General Hilmi Özkök, the Chief of the General staff, in their efforts. As part of these, several units of the 1st army were transferred from the Istanbul region, which effectively disabled it. Are these reports accurate? If they are, it raises the question whether subsequent coup conspiracies could have been discouraged; shouldn’t the General staff have taken legal action against the conspirators? Similarly, President Abdullah Gül, the Prime Minister at the time, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should give an account of what they knew: according to the diaries of journalist Mustafa Balbay (who is imprisoned, charged in the Ergenekon coup trial), the then chief of the MIT (the National intelligence agency) had told him that “the 1st army has prepared its coup plan”. Was that information given to you as well? If so, what actions did you take upon receiving it?

ÇANDAR: TURKEY IS BEING PURGED OF COUPMAKERS
Cengiz Çandar in Hürriyet finds it remarkable that the two top ranking, four star generals and one four star admiral – former Air force chief General İbrahim Fırtına, former Navy chief Özden Örnek and former deputy Chief of the General staff General Ergin Saygun – were all released after the tripartite summit between President Gül, Prime Minister Erdoğan and Chief of the General staff İlker Başbuğ at the presidential mansion. That has happened once before, and it inevitably creates the impression that matters are co-managed at the highest level of the state. The chief prosecutor in Istanbul stated that the two four star generals and the admiral were set free since “there is no risk that they will escape or tamper with evidence”. That statement incredulously suggests that those generals and admirals of lesser rank that have not been released would indeed try to escape and tamper with evidence. It would seem that the rule of law does not apply at the four star level. Never mind; we should be content that the law has reached this far, that the military can no longer avoid justice. Those who were involved in coup schemes in the past can no longer assume that they enjoy perpetual impunity. But what is happening today is as much about the future, of about discouraging any future attempts to stage coups. Turkey is going through the same cleansing process as Argentina, Spain, Greece and other countries did in the past.

BILA:  BAŞBUĞ TOLD THE GOVERNMENT TO RELEASE THE GENERALS
Fikret Bila in Milliyet refers to his conversation with Deniz Baykal, the leader of the opposition Republican People’s party (CHP). Baykal sees Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as the big loser in the latest round of the battle between the government and the military. The leader of the CHP points out that Erdoğan remained mute for 72 hours after the generals were taken into custody. Then all four star generals and admirals assembled at the General staff, after which a short but stern statement was issued. The critical words in that statement were that the situation was deemed to be “very serious”.  These words were enough, says Baykal. Subsequently, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek paid a visit to the General staff at late hours. Then, the tripartite summit was held. The former commanders were brought before a judge during the same hours, and were released immediately after the summit had been concluded. According to Deniz Baykal, the obvious conclusion is that Prime Minister Erdoğan has had to cede to General Başbuğ. It was politics, not law that was decisive. The release of the generals was politically motivated, just as they had been taken into custody on political grounds, says Baykal.

MAHÇUPYAN:  BAYKAL AND DEMOCRACY
Etyen Mahçupyan in Taraf writes that CHP leader Deniz Baykal has exonerated the accused generals. Following the round-up of over fifty active and retired military personnel, Baykal issued a statement in which he declared that it was deplorable that respectable, high ranking officers were subjected to such treatment. The day after, Baykal went a step further when he stated that the Sledgehammer plan was just a normal war game, and that those involved in it would never have been arrested if Turkey had been a normal democracy. Well, the truth of the matter is that it is such coup makers that have stopped Turkey from ever becoming a normal democracy, which it is now trying to become. But the leader of the CHP has built his politics on distorting reality, offering psychological solace for the seculars. Indeed, Baykal’s tactics are in perfect harmony with the strategy of ideological manipulation upon which the entire republican historiography has rested, and which has kept the seculars in a state of pitiful ignorance. That was underlined when Baykal compared the arrested generals to those “prominent figures of the Independence war” that were exiled to Malta in 1920 by the British, stating that they would return to freedom just as the Malta exiles had done. In fact, these latter were not any prominent figures of the Independence war, but accused of involvement in the Armenian genocide, and they were never acquitted. We know very well what they did, just as we know what the generals and Baykal have done. As long as the seculars remain ignorant of history and unable to evolve ideologically, there will always be a couple of generals and a Baykal around to represent them.

ÖZEL: IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO TEAR DOWN THE OLD STRUCTURE
Soli Özel in Habertürk observes that the political struggle that rages in Turkey has several dimensions. Power is shifting hands, and it is doing so at multiple levels. In economic and social terms, we are witnessing how the power of the conservative Anatolian heartland is asserting itself. The social conservatism of Anatolia is ideologically on the ascendancy. At another level, power is being displaced from the state, or from those who have deemed themselves to be “the proprietor of the state, and the master of society”, to politics. The military is in the process of having to cede its power to the civilians. If Turkey is to become a true democracy instead of pretending to be a democracy, these changes are obviously necessary and indeed long overdue. The democratic construction is now more or less in place; now we have to turn our attention to the details. It is not enough to tear down the old edifice in order to secure democracy; that does not in itself promise the advent of democracy, in particular since the political leadership has hardly done anything during the last seven and half years to change the authoritarian structures and mores of the state institutions that it conquered.

CALIŞLAR: THE AKP AND BIG BUSINESS
Oral Calışlar in Radikal writes that economic power still largely remains in the hands of the Istanbulite bourgeoisie that is hostile to the AKP. Of the 100 richest persons in Turkey, only 10 could be said to be close to the AKP. That list is still dominated by the bourgeoisie of Istanbul, and the wealth of that group has multiplied during the eight years of AKP rule. Much has been said and written about the supposed power of the supposedly ascendant Anatolian, conservative bourgeoisie, the so called “Anatolian tigers”; it is often assumed that this bourgeoisie is on the verge of reversing the economic power relations of the country. In fact, economic power, most of trade and industry, remains in the hands of the Istanbulite elite. And they are still the main beneficiaries of the favors that are handed out by the state. The “Anatolians tigers” are very far from being able to rival the power of the Istanbulite elite.

© Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center, 2010. This article may be reprinted provided that the following sentence be included: "This article was first published in the Turkey Analyst (www.turkeyanalyst.org), a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center".

The Turkey Analyst
The Turkey Analyst is a publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Joint Center, designed to bring authoritative analysis and news on the rapidly developing domestic and foreign policy issues in Turkey. It is published weekly, and includes a topical analysis, as well as translations and summaries of selected Turkish news reports. It is edited and compiled under the supervision of Svante E. Cornell, Halil M. Karaveli, and M. K. Kaya.

The analyses appearing in the Turkey Analyst are often written by the three Editors. The Turkey Analyst occasionally publishes signed guest analyses.

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The Joint Center was created in 2005 through the merger of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, and the Silk Road Studies Program, at the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy.

The Turkey Initiative
The Joint Center launched a Turkey Initiative in 2006 in order to improve understand of Turkish domestic and foreign affairs in Europe and the United States.

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