A secret protocol on security, public order and assistance units, known shortly as EMASYA, allows military operations to be carried out for internal security matters under certain circumstances without authorization from civilian authorities. EMASYA has been in force since 1997, when the protocol was signed by the Interior Ministry and the military.
The European Union progress report published on Oct. 14 of last year also emphasized that the 1997 EMASYA secret protocol on security, public order and assistance units remains in force.
OHAL was imposed in 11 provinces, mainly in the southeastern part of Turkey, in July 1987, almost two years after the start of terror attacks by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and was lifted in 2002. Since then, however, the Turkish military has declared parts of the former OHAL region security zones, and it is argued that this is another form of a state of emergency.
At the end of 2001, Dr. Zafer Üskül, then a professor of law and now a deputy from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), stated that the Republic of Turkey had been under extraordinary rule for 40 of its 78 years.
As can be seen from the abovementioned facts, Turkey has continued to be a state constructed around the concept of national security instead of democracy. But as Turkey has moved toward democratization over the past 10 years, we have witnessed an overt power struggle between those seeking to maintain the emphasis on national security and those trying to promote the installation of a democratic state.
However, bearing in mind the ongoing bitter power struggle between those two fronts -- i.e., the military-led secular establishment and the political authority -- democratic reforms will not be put in place easily in the coming years.
The military’s ongoing resistance and the obstacles being created against a civilian judge’s search of files in a military archive for the first time in Turkish history as part of an investigation into an alleged assassination plot against Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç are the latest example of this bitter power struggle.
The assassination of Ankara public prosecutor Doğan Öz 32 years ago when he came close to launching an investigation into the Special Forces Command, known at the time as the Special Warfare Unit or the counter-guerilla center, hints at the high risks facing Turkish judges.
However, Turkey has changed since Öz was assassinated 32 years ago, as those regarding themselves as powerful and thus above the law, such as former generals and senior security officials, are facing charges over suspected criminal activities. Still, the alleged assassination plot against Arınç late last year requires vigilance to prevent a repetition of the Öz case.
Öz was investigating fierce street clashes between leftist and the rightist students in 1978 and found out that a secret formation, namely the Special Warfare Unit, was behind those ideological fights, laying the ground work for a military coup. He submitted his report to Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit and was due to begin his search at the Special Warfare Unit. But on March 24, 1978, he was killed in his car as his assassin escaped from the scene. Two years after he predicted a possible coup, a Turkish junta overthrew the government in 1980.
Öz’s wife, Sezen Öz, in an interview with the Star daily on Sunday, said that it was unacceptable that secret organizations such as the Special Warfare Unit are set up and their activities regarded as state secrets.
She urged the disbandment of the Special Warfare Unit, under whatever name it is now operating.
There is a bill awaiting the approval of Parliament that intends to clarify the nature of state secrets in a country where some state institutions hide behind this phrase when they’ve committed crimes and when they want to sweep dirty policies under the carpet.
Nevertheless, existing regulations and secret protocols allow the politically powerful military to assert its influence in areas that normally should not fall within its responsibility. It lies with the political authority to abolish all such regulations for the sake of normalization.
