Asli Aydintasbas: Bashing Turkey's Army
[Asli Aydintasbas is a columnist for the Turkish daily Milliyet.]
I should be rejoicing. Dozens of Turkish Army officers and retired generals have been rounded up this past week on suspicion of plotting against the elected government led by the Islamic-inspired A.K. Party.
The 5,000 pages of documents that landed on the doorstep of a small anti-military paper in late January have suggested the officers planned to bomb Istanbul’s historic mosques, shoot down Turkish air forces jets and round up thousands of suspected Islamists in stadiums to provide a pretext for a coup.
Never mind that the military says the plan was a “simulation exercise,” a scenario based on the possibility of internal conflict following the onset of the Iraq war. Turkey’s immensely powerful military has carried out four coups against elected governments in the country’s short history....
Don’t get me wrong. Turks are sensible people. We do not want the military meddling in politics, even to fend off Islamic radicalism, thank you. We can do that ourselves at the ballot if necessary.
But we also do not like politicians messing with the nation’s most revered institution. The arrests and wiretaps have certainly tarnished the military’s image as an invincible constant in politics. But the army continues to be by far the most “trusted” institution for Turks, most of whom grow up with the motto “Every Turk is a soldier.”
For all its faults on the domestic scene, the Turkish military — NATO’s second largest after America’s — has been the leading force behind Turkey’s prestige and Western orientation in a lousy neighborhood. The military gave us our freedom in the battle of independence in 1923; it has kept us on the right side of history during the Cold War and fought off Kurdish separatism — albeit often with the wrong methods. A decade ago, the generals made a strategic decision not to stand in the way of Turkey’s advance toward membership in the European Union — a process that involves curbing the army’s own power....
That said, humiliating men in uniform with allegations that at times seem choreographed for a political vendetta do not give me confidence about the path ahead. Unlawful detention and politically motivated trials used to be the methods of the military in its campaign against Islamists and Kurdish nationalists. They are not how a democracy deals with its past....
Read entire article at International Herald Tribune
I should be rejoicing. Dozens of Turkish Army officers and retired generals have been rounded up this past week on suspicion of plotting against the elected government led by the Islamic-inspired A.K. Party.
The 5,000 pages of documents that landed on the doorstep of a small anti-military paper in late January have suggested the officers planned to bomb Istanbul’s historic mosques, shoot down Turkish air forces jets and round up thousands of suspected Islamists in stadiums to provide a pretext for a coup.
Never mind that the military says the plan was a “simulation exercise,” a scenario based on the possibility of internal conflict following the onset of the Iraq war. Turkey’s immensely powerful military has carried out four coups against elected governments in the country’s short history....
Don’t get me wrong. Turks are sensible people. We do not want the military meddling in politics, even to fend off Islamic radicalism, thank you. We can do that ourselves at the ballot if necessary.
But we also do not like politicians messing with the nation’s most revered institution. The arrests and wiretaps have certainly tarnished the military’s image as an invincible constant in politics. But the army continues to be by far the most “trusted” institution for Turks, most of whom grow up with the motto “Every Turk is a soldier.”
For all its faults on the domestic scene, the Turkish military — NATO’s second largest after America’s — has been the leading force behind Turkey’s prestige and Western orientation in a lousy neighborhood. The military gave us our freedom in the battle of independence in 1923; it has kept us on the right side of history during the Cold War and fought off Kurdish separatism — albeit often with the wrong methods. A decade ago, the generals made a strategic decision not to stand in the way of Turkey’s advance toward membership in the European Union — a process that involves curbing the army’s own power....
That said, humiliating men in uniform with allegations that at times seem choreographed for a political vendetta do not give me confidence about the path ahead. Unlawful detention and politically motivated trials used to be the methods of the military in its campaign against Islamists and Kurdish nationalists. They are not how a democracy deals with its past....