Accused of preparing thousands of pages of plans and preparations to blow up mosques, to trigger conflict between Turkey and Greece by arranging the crash-landing of Turkish warplanes in the Aegean Sea and give the army a central role in the country’s administration, to close Parliament, to ideologically profile hundreds of thousands of people just to arrest and collect them in stadiums during a future military coup, to introduce Soviet-style centralization to the country’s economic management, to shut the door to foreign investment, to arrest leading media professionals and to close down or take control of newspapers and TV channels, some former force commanders, retired generals and admirals were taken to custody one by one on Monday morning.These detentions -- including 17 retired generals, four active duty admirals and 28 military officers -- carried out as part of the probe into Ergenekon, a shadowy network nested within the state aiming to lay the groundwork for an eventual military takeover, is not only regarded as the first of its kind in terms of its scope, but has also shown to the world that there will not be an “untouchable” judiciary class in this country. With that said, can we be justified in asserting that the abnormalities in civilian-military relations -- a main source of almost all major problems in Turkey -- have come to an abrupt end? Of course not.
Certainly, the fact that those who regard themselves as “untouchable,” superior to the rule of law and free from legal accountability, can now be touched will have important effects in the normalization of civilian-military relations and in the dispersal of the military tutelage that has been haunting us since the establishment of the republic. Still, I personally do not think that the exposure to daylight of military junta members who made plans to betray the nation, seeking to overthrow the democratically elected government, the sweeping detentions or the ongoing judicial processes will be sufficient to solve Turkey’s gravest problem, the “army issue,” and eliminate the army’s overwhelming pressure on politics, the judiciary, the legislature and civil life. This is because I am of the opinion that developments seen during the Ergenekon investigation process are not concerned with the essence of the matter but are related to the grave consequences of this problematic structure.
To clarify, as long as the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) continue to develop and implement their current education and training system and processes -- the curriculum, ideology and teachers of which are determined completely independently of the knowledge, oversight or approval of civilian authorities and Parliament -- Turkey will not be able to get rid of problems stemming from warped civilian-military relations. Of course, I will not comment here about the scope or quality of the education and training given to cadets on current weapon technology and warcraft. These issues are outside of our interest, though we still hope that Turkey’s military academies are sufficiently endowed with capabilities to train military officers who can proficiently make use of the information and technologies of our time. We, as civilians, cannot say anything about the professional results or quality of this education without testing them during a war or conflict, which we never want to see erupt. Still, as there is this strange tradition of military officers speaking about every matter in this country, we can readily conclude from the styles and remarks of these commanders that their education produces military officers with flawed mentalities, and we can comment on this. Those curious about this may easily go and test our point by lending an ear to a voice recording of Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ, the top-ranking military officer, posted on the Internet on Friday (see http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-202075-basbug-assigned-officers-to-arincs-house-recording-says.html). Thus, my point is that without reshaping the education system, curriculum and academic qualities in the military academies according to liberal democratic principles and democratic and liberal expectations of civilian authorities, the destructive “army issue” of this country cannot be radically settled.
Is this all? Of course not. Remember how in their news stories about the meetings of the Supreme Military Council (YAŞ), to be held several weeks later, papers and TV channels extravagantly describe that the said council will identify which commanders will assume the top positions in the military for the next 10-15 years? I really wonder if there is any country, or more correctly any advanced democratic country, other than Turkey which has the perfect assignment system that can successfully predict all possible defense and security needs or threats or technological or strategic trends for the next 10-15 years and which, accordingly, identifies how the commanding structures of the army should be shaped. Here, I would like to give you the good news that some of my fellow colleagues are conducting a comparative study to find a satisfactory answer to this question. Thus, you will possibly read a news story on this matter in tomorrow’s edition of Today’s Zaman.
I will not discuss exhaustively the professional, administrative or command-related problems created by the existing TSK assignment system because I am no expert on this matter. Still, one does not need to be an expert to see that the current system creates a distorted infrastructure that breeds problems both for the military and for outside. For instance, if you determine who will be assigned to the top army positions in the next 15 years today, when candidates are only captains or majors, then you move the competition between the aspiring young officers so early that this sometimes paves the way for nasty conspiracies among rivals. In such a case, low-ranking officers who intend to pass the career funnel that gets narrower as their ranks become higher will either tend to engage in nasty conspiracies to win over their potential rivals, i.e., their brothers-in-arms, or group over juntas that tend to get rid of military officers from different ranks or years of graduation. It is my conviction that the TSK suffers intensely from both cases. The voice or video recordings of officers of certain ranks posted on the Internet, sometimes covering their private lives, should be interpreted from this perspective.
These are the problems relating to the internal affairs of the TSK created by the existing assignment and promotion system. There are also problems which relate to the outside, i.e., us civilians and the democratic will of those we elect, and everyone who is even slightly informed about Turkey is aware of these problems, which we may collectively describe as military tutelage. If you, as the civilian government, wield only an apparent, so-called authority or power to select even the top-ranking military officer, then you cannot issue any order or instruction or inspect its expenditure or activities. As long as you cannot do these, you cannot expect the military to be accountable to the civilian administration or to the people. Thus, I advise you to read from this perspective the eye-opening news story by Ercan Yavuz published in yesterday’s issue of Today’s Zaman about why the chief of general staff and certain commanders cannot be dismissed by the government despite involvement in a number of scandals (http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-202340-removal-of-gen-basbug-could-open-pandoras-box-for-turkey.html).
In other words, if you really want to settle the deep-seated problem in civilian-military relations, one that became entrenched during the history of the Turkish Republic, and if you really want to dispense with the military tutelage, then you can no longer leave the assignment of top commanders to the mercy of existing commanders. If you really wish to make the TSK more transparent, more submissive to the principles of democracy and the rule of law and more accountable to the civilian authority, then you cannot do this by allowing the existing commanders to identify the commanding generals for the 10-15 years to come. This is particularly the case given the fact that this appointment process is completely esoteric, as in the top judicial organizations, and that the people who are affected by it do not have a chance to seek a review of decisions concerning themselves.
