Gül’s approval moves Turkey crucial steps out of tutelage

One may wonder why, first of all, he was predicted to act this way. Ever since the passage of the bill, Gül was targeted as the “referee” to “bring back harmony between the institutions.” Columnists and Ankara's prominent bureau chiefs accelerated the campaign, due to their close contacts with the chief of general staff, and injected arguments such as “chaos of jurisdiction” between the civilian and military courts and that “politics would enter the military domain.”

Most of those voices crying for a veto, or at least a partial one, were those who were questioning whether Gül was the “president of the people” ever since he was elected after a tumultuous period in politics. To hope that Gül would forget the hate campaign against him in so-called mainstream media and yield to pressure under the false disguise of the complement “referee of the people” was, no doubt, a sign of an underestimation of his intelligence.

Secondly, his reputation is, although built on a subtle but rather consistent pattern of behavior, of a leader who is keen on freedom, democratization and reform. For some, here in Turkey, his soft manners create illusions that he will compromise on issues that have kept Turkey hostage to delays and neglect.

Furthermore, Gül knows the value of keeping in touch with the grassroots. It was this factor which fed his resolve in the presidential nomination; and it is again long-term political thinking that made him approve the bill: Gül is most aware of the virtues of continued reform and knows that the political movement he stems from would lose, should he have vetoed the bill. Steps such as this latest one are the bricks he will further build his career with, after stepping down.

And, finally, there was a lack of understanding among those who pushed for a veto about domestic and EU-related support and arguments for this reform.

Without a doubt, the approval of the amendments is a landmark development in relations between what Milliyet's prominent columnist, Hasan Cemal, calls “the mother of all problems in Turkey,” the military, and the elected governments and Parliament. Yet, the process should continue, as pointed out by Gül, with necessary fine-tuning to legislation. For example, a distinction must be made on what is a “military crime” and what is not, in related laws. Also, arrangements must be made about the “legal rights and securities” of the military staff, in particular of the highest ranks. To disperse possible overlap of the jurisdictions, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan must convene Parliament in early August and pass the due changes.

The passage of the bill has become a new litmus test for parts of the media -- now further alienated from the political and social reality of Turkey -- and the opposition. The rhetoric in those domains, a powerful mish-mash of terms, such as “take your hands off the military,” “civilian coup,” etc., has a tendency to become even more bizarre, as many Turks in key positions of the media and Kemalist flanks find it harder to adjust to a new situation in which a military, once so adored and sublimated, is almost totally demythified. It points to severely blurred optics in use by observers.

The paradox is, this new reality is recognized clearly by the current command, which is more irritated by the “pro-militarist” provocative discourse in the so-called mainstream media than the harsh criticism that resorts to downright humiliation.

What to expect next? The Republican People's Party (CHP), now acting as the staunch defender of the military tutelage in a much more open manner, will take the reform to the Constitutional Court (whether that will give Socialist International enough reason to reconsider CHP's membership remains to be seen).

I have reason to believe, given the need for a totally new constitution and the “conservative” composition of the court, that the amendments will bounce back. A way out, therefore, must be a swift amendment of Article 145 of the Constitution, either in Parliament or by referendum, as soon as possible.