Turkey's Long Road to a New Military Culture

From: Real Clear World

Turkeys ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is developing a major plan to restructure the Turkish Armed forces (TSK), Todays Zaman reported Aug. 2. According to the report, the envisioned restructuring would help normalize civilian-military relations and lead to the transformation of the armed forces into a more effective fighting force. The report comes as the annual meeting of the Supreme Military Council (YSK) chaired by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in session. The meeting is scheduled to conclude Thursday.

Promotions and appointments are usually unveiled in these YSK meetings. Three days before this years session, the TSK chief as well as the commanders of the land, air and naval forces collectively resigned. The move by the top brass was designed to try and counter the growing influence of the AKP government over the Turkish armed forces, which has weakened as a political power over the past four years. However, the resignations have only further swung the pendulum in favor of the civilians - to the point where the decades-old military dominance over the civilians seems to have been reversed.

The AKP is definitely pleased to have paved the way to a moment where the TSK would begrudgingly accept a civilian government, even one led by its historic ideological rivals. Erdogan's government has the power to appoint the military's leaders (as opposed to rubber-stamping the top generals' decisions).

However, this privilege is just the first step in the AKPs vision for the military. The AKP would like to capitalize on this nascent civilian supremacy over the military as quickly as possible. It would like to reconfigure the military to serve the Erdogan administrations assertive foreign policy agenda.

Yet reshaping the armed forces to serve as an instrument of foreign-policy projection seems a far loftier goal. Subordinating the military under civilian authority seems much simpler when compared to the ambitious goal of reshaping the armed forces into an instrument of foreign policy power projection. Put differently, it will be a long time before the Turkish military will be able to serve in such a manner. Even where civilian-military imbalance of power is not an issue, a state needs years (if not decades) to transform the military into an entity that can project power far beyond its borders.

In Ankara's case the challenge is even greater - many prerequisites still need to be achieved. The first step entails installing a cadre of commanders who are beholden to the AKP for their positions. Next, a culture must be ingrained within the officers and soldiery that moves the military away from seeing itself as a praetorian force that is the sole guardian of the Republic's Kemalist ideals to one that is the defender of the constitution (which another mainstay that will also need to be altered in its own time).

Pay Attention To Turkey Elections

From: The Economist

MOST Turks are understandably grateful to the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party, and especially to their prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured). Since AK first came into single-party government in November 2002, the economy has done exceptionally well. Turkey has reformed itself enough to secure the opening of membership negotiations with the European Union. It has pursued a more vigorous foreign policy in its neighbourhood. And a politically intrusive army has been firmly returned to its barracks.

Thanks to these achievements, Turkey has become an economic and political power, both in its region and in the world. Although its relations with Israel and America have soured, in the Islamic world it stands out as a thriving Muslim democracy—an inspiration to the Arab awakening. This is in striking contrast to the mess that the AK party inherited: an economic meltdown, a bust banking system, weak coalition governments that came and went with dizzying rapidity, and the ever-present threat of military intervention.

That Turkish voters are poised to return Mr Erdogan to power in the general election on June 12th is thus not surprising. It is, however, worrying. Mr Erdogan is riding sufficiently high in the polls to get quite close to the two-thirds parliamentary majority that he craves because it would allow him unilaterally to rewrite the constitution (see article). That would be bad for Turkey.

This judgment is not based on the canard that a theocracy is being built. Nine years ago Istanbul’s secular establishment fretted about AK’s Islamist roots—and some early squabbles over religious schools and allowing women to wear the Muslim headscarf at university were indeed troubling. But since then the pious Mr Erdogan and his party have been pragmatic. No matter what the army and too many Israelis (and Americans) whisper, there is scant evidence that AK is trying to turn a broadly tolerant Turkey into the next intolerant Iran.

The real worry about the AK party’s untrammelled rule concerns democracy, not religion. Ever since Mr Erdogan won his battles with the army and the judiciary, he has faced few checks or balances. That has freed him to indulge his natural intolerance of criticism and fed his autocratic instincts. Corruption seems to be on the rise. Press freedom is under attack: more journalists are in jail in Turkey than in China. And a worrying number of Mr Erdogan’s critics and enemies, including a hatful of former army officers, are under investigation, in some cases on overblown conspiracy charges.

On top of this, on the campaign trail Mr Erdogan has begun to take a more stridently nationalist tone: he and his party are no longer making serious overtures to the Kurds, Turkey’s biggest and most disgruntled minority.

Mr Erdogan has hinted that if he wins a two-thirds majority next week, he will change the constitution to create a powerful French-style presidency, presumably to be occupied by himself. In a country that is already excessively centralised, that would be a mistake.