Those detained are not some midnight clutch of conspirators, but the most senior commanders, who were charged with the defense of the realm at one of the most critical moments of recent history -- when the United States was invading Iraq and when Turkey was trying to emerge from economic recession and when a newly elected Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was trying to talk its way into acquiring a seat at the EU negotiating table. It would be news anywhere in the world for so many retired senior officers (the former heads of the navy and the air force and two former commanders of the 1st Army) to be taken to court alongside junior officers still in their posts. In Turkey, it is not so much a headline as a reversal of the natural order of things. Up until this week the debate was whether the military still enjoyed the power to call the civilian administration to account, not whether they could be called to account themselves.It is not surprising that both foreign and domestic commentators, all too accustomed to seeing the Turkish military call the shots, are somewhat nervous about what happens next. Like a timeout before the start of a very important play, both the government and General Staff have been meeting in closed huddles, planning the next move. The dust has yet to settle, but already certain things are starting to emerge. The most important is that should the current judicial investigation turn into a prolonged power struggle between politicians and the military, everyone will lose.
The real division that is emerging is between those with respect for the supremacy of law and those who believe it is their own ideological supremacy which endows them with a permanent mandate to rule.
Any connecting of the dots between the current “Sledgehammer” investigation and the ongoing Ergenekon conspiracy trial is still speculation. However, the modus operandi between the two bears an obvious resemblance. The idea was to create an appetite for a military intervention by staging highly divisive provocations. Some of the plans, such as setting off bombs in mosques, are not dissimilar to the methods used by insurgents in Iraq to ensure communities remain polarized. Those who believe that Turkey can only be governed through authoritarianism were to determined to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy. Was it a religious zealot who killed a high court judge in 2006, or was it secularist zealot trying demonstrate the depths to which their rival fanatics might stoop?
Whatever the excesses of the past, what we do know is that at some meta level common sense prevailed. Turkey did not suffer a coup nor witness a wholesale campaign to destabilize the government and wreck the economy. Shortly after this newspaper began publishing in 2007, Hrant Dink, the editor of the Agos newspaper, was shot and killed. This event did divide Turkey but united it in a sense of common outrage and shame. Again, we do not know how far advanced the coded conspiracies like “Sledgehammer” and “Cage,” “Moonlight” or “Blonde Girl” were. Yet at a certain level someone saw sense.
The picture that is slowly emerging from this round of arrests is of a military at war with itself. This is a very different picture from the proud institution that we know enjoys the respect of the majority of the Turkish population. They have integrity but are at war with themselves. Clearly there were divisions as intense as the far more visible feuds between the government and opposition. Gen. Hilmi Özkök, the chief of General Staff during the “Sledgehammer” era, is often reported to have lived under the threat of assassination. And if we know about the coup attempts, it is because a group inside the military is determined to get that information out.
Clearly if Turkey is to play the regional role to which it now aspires, it must first make peace with its own defense forces. To drive their advantage home, the government, too, must make clear that their commitment is to raising the standards of public life and ruling through transparency, not the murkiness of patronage and inside deals. Its concern must be seen to be about justice not just for themselves but for the country.
