Turkey’s military-dictated 1982 Constitution, introduced after the Sept. 12, 1980 coup, has seen only about one-third of its articles amended in the 30 years since it was adopted. Similarly, the package to be voted on in the referendum makes only some of the changes necessary for establishing democratic standards.
Instead of focusing on the details of the package, politicians have recently engaged in a war of words on the issue of the cease-fire declared by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The government has been facing accusations that it has been negotiating with a terror organization.
Such accusations by the opposition unfortunately show how cheap their approach to the biggest problem facing Turkey -- the Kurdish issue – really is and highlights their failure to help the government to solve this problem.
This is what has been happening on the political front.
How the country’s highly politicized armed forces view the cease-fire is a crucial question that needs to be addressed.
It is true that Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) felt the heat recently when the government and the president recently put their weight against the appointments of certain officers to top command posts, exercising their legal rights. Political intervention has, for the first time, broken a rather bizarre military tradition of senior generals themselves deciding on the appointments of top commanders.
For the sake of democracy, political influence on the appointments marks an important step. But Turkey still has long way to go to ensure that the TSK returns to its barracks and focuses purely on defending the nation.
Therefore, the military will continue to interfere with politics, though to a lesser degree, and nowadays I am afraid it may undermine the cease-fire of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). As a matter of fact, soon after the cease-fire declaration on Aug. 13, there was a clash between the PKK and Turkish soldiers.
It seems that the military’s perception of having its say on the PKK issue may lead to a high risk of intensive clashes despite the cease-fire. We should not be surprised if the TSK knocks on the door of the government with a request for authorization to strike the Kandil Mountains in northern Iraq, the main base of the PKK.
The military is highly uneasy with the fact that the PKK has taken the initiative in declaring the cease-fire. The TSK fears losing more control.
However, it is a well-known fact among well-informed Turkish sources that the military has very frequently conducted talks with PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is serving life imprisonment on İmralı Island, on cease-fires.
Cevat Öneş, former deputy undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), told me recently that when the İmralı prison was under full military control the TSK conducted talks with the PKK concerning cease-fire terms.
Now that the government has taken some of the initiative on the PKK and the Kurdish issue away from the military it has been pushing for more focus on non-military solutions to the terror problem.
As I mentioned in one of my earlier columns, the military has been fighting back while returning back to its barracks. The current fight has been taking place over the issue of the PKK.
Those who seek more democracy face a difficult task, since, on the one hand, there is an opposition with no vision at all and, on the other, the military still wants to retain its autonomous status at the expense of improving democratic standards.
