Anytime it is criticized, instead of trying to convince the public with sufficient information, the military, with an ersatz victim mentality, accuses its critics of harboring mala fide intentions or, even worse, being enemies of the military. But our generals do not take into account the fact that Turkish public opinion has matured and no longer buys this argument. Turks can easily compare what happens in similar situations in modern democracies and in Third World countries and skillfully situate the reaction of our generals in this spectrum. The generals must know that transparency is not a luxury but a necessity for the military. Several billion dollars are paid out in military contracts over which there is not even a trace of democratic supervision. There are maybe 20 million students in the country, and the military's expenditures are almost equal to the Ministry of Education's budget. If we do not have transparency, anybody accusing the military of corruption will always be one step ahead of the military. If the generals' argument is that if they open their accounts to civilian control secret information will be jeopardized, they will be challenged with the question of why then all Western generals have been "traitorous" enough to show their account books to civilians. Thus, we are all left thinking that because some of the generals do not want to share this expenditure power with the democratically elected civilians, they are not happy with the EU process, which would ultimately bring more transparency, civilian control of the military and democracy to the country.
The generals should also see that in the course of the Ergenekon case they have not put forward a good performance. The military has been very hesitant to allow the civilian prosecutors to do their job as far as military personnel are concerned. It is a well-known fact that in Turkey there have been several coups and that, without any exception, all of them were carried out by the military. It is impossible to stage a civilian coup in the country. And the Ergenekon case is about a terrorist organization that planned and tried to create havoc in the country that would legitimize a military coup. This is what happened before, the last case being Sept. 12, 1980.
The prosecutors, state security forces, two major state intelligence organizations, many respected intellectuals, politicians and millions of people talk about this issue every day, and we all naturally wonder if there are any accomplices in the military. But all we have is the chief of general staff "asking" us to be calm and silent. They are not even trying to convince the public that they are doing everything they can to find out who these accomplices are, who took military weapons out of the barracks and used them illegally. If we carefully filter out the rhetoric, the total picture one gets is that the military is not happy about the Ergenekon trial. But at least 80 percent of the population believes that this terror organization should be tried and punished. So far civilian prosecutors, security forces and intelligence agencies have discovered many soldiers -- retired and otherwise -- connected with the terrorist organization, in addition to stolen military weapons, but so far the military has not discovered even one such person or weapon. Why is it only civilian intelligence officers and prosecutors are making all these discoveries, rather than the military? Should we think the generals have been daydreaming? Or are they trying to protect their rotten-apple colleagues? With a massive amount of hard evidence at hand, a third option seems impossible.
Who, then, is undermining the credibility of the military? Who is its biggest enemy?
