Lately, I keep hearing this from some of my colleagues, most of whom are of a leftist or liberal leaning. I have disagreed every time I heard complaints.I asked them: "Do you not think -- as most of us in Turkey and elsewhere think -- that civilian-military relations in this country are problematic, that most of the damage to the normalization of democracy has come from the problems in these relations and that the military tutelage over civilian politics is still a reality?"
The answer is, of course, yes. I told them that it is much better for top commanders to address the public than to keep silent and raise suspicions that the "habits of intervention" are being kept alive behind closed doors. Let them speak out, and as Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ did on Wednesday, respond to the ad hoc questions of the press.
The more they speak the better.
What Başbuğ did, in that sense, was rather unique. He gathered the press corps -- though still maintaining an unacceptable ban on dailies such as Zaman and Taraf -- and for the first time, made a traditionally non-transparent institution open to free inquiry, at least on matters of the press's choice. This was, as I know, the general's intention when he took over: Başbuğ represents a position based on the notion that in democracies, transparency as much as accountability is crucial.
He was the commander who implemented regular weekly press briefings soon after he took his post. And with this appearance before the press, he has signaled a new approach.
Whether this will be successful, skeptics such as myself will reflect, remains to be seen. To make the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) completely open to critical questions about its structure, finances, strategies, internal reform plans and alleged links with the "dirty warriors" and "political interventionists" within itself is a daring step, but one only hopes we will get there.
We are not there at all. Başbuğ's lengthy speech at the War Academy Command a couple of weeks ago was a boring, quasi-academic session that offered almost nothing of significance: it was in essence a repetition of his earlier speeches, and he maintained the same style -- a style at times patronizing, pretentious and even arrogant -- when responding to questions. He was keen on being perceived -- as it were -- as the "besserwisser" of all. But in one point he was perhaps justified: the press he met was unprepared, ignorant (a columnist asking, "How many military personnel do we have in Afghanistan?" was the high point) and completely unaware of what should and should not be asked of a top commander.
Most of the questions were about what must normally be a "no go" area for a military in a democracy: Armenia, the question on the "genocide," Azerbaijan, Kurds, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), amnesty, conditions Turkey must meet to become a member of the European Union, etc. And the general responded generously to each and every one of them, not seeming in the slightest hesitant about responding because the matters were in the arena of civilian politics.
The picture was very clear to any observer of Turkey: the military tutelage is firm and solid, and with an uncritical, submissive press corps, it will be very difficult to normalize military-civilian relations.
But, again, stop there for a moment. By organizing such wide-scale press conferences, where questions have not been screened beforehand, the top general is doing two important things: He is inviting "courage" to ask critical questions in the public domain and -- more importantly -- legitimizing an open debate between his own institution and increasingly bolder and more critical civilian politicians. Given, of course, that politicians -- as former-Parliament Speaker Bülent Arınç has done before -- will join in and refute his "political" role and his views as unacceptable in any democratic context, this is healthy and it will help bring more maturity into public opinion.
Therefore, the test for Turkey's political class is to immediately question Başbuğ's way of interfering with the issue of amnesty for outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants and his views on membership in the EU. He could have left the amnesty issue to the Ministry of Justice and have been properly questioned about whether his institution is entitled to set any conditions (such as "keeping Turkey's unitary state" and "nation-state untouched") on the policies to be pursued by the elected government. In other words, mistakes of such magnitude open up new opportunities for the ruling government and Parliament to be permanently corrected.
Turkey needs such major debates now. No more vague behavior. Let them all come out of the shadows. They all know they have to.
