Demise of military’s privileges shakes status quo

 Everybody should abide by the democratic standards envisaged by the law,” President Abdullah Gül said recently upon questions over the ongoing search being conducted by a civilian judge at a military headquarters, for the first time in Turkish history.

The search is in connection with an investigation into an alleged assassination plot against Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç in mid-December. Gül has also warned against attempts to “undermine the Turkish Armed Forces [TSK]” as an institution. This terminology of undermining the military or other institutions has lately became a cliché in Turkey and is perceived as an effort by some state institutions to hide behind this cliché to conceal wrongdoings within themselves.

 However, Gül’s remarks that everybody should abide by the law was significant itself in a country where the supremacy of the rule of law has long been ignored and laws are applied arbitrarily, allowing the “powerful” to avoid judicial process. This practice, which served to damage the collective conscience, changed in the past few years when retired generals who formerly avoided facing the judiciary, as well as senior civilian figures such as the Ankara deputy director of security, were all jailed over charges of attempts to change the constitutional order by use of force or on charges of becoming involved in acts of organized crime.

These events have demonstrated that changes in certain laws have begun to be felt on the ground, introducing a new era where nobody is immune from the judicial process in the event that he or she commits a crime.

As a result of this new era under which taboos have begun to be broken, it was inevitable that a bitter power struggle would emerge between the military-led secular establishment, fearful of losing its autonomous status, and the elected political authorities.

The TSK’s increasingly defensive and sometimes offensive stance in response to the arrest of its former or active duty personnel over the alleged violation of laws and the Constitution can be seen as a strong resistance to the demise of its autonomous and privileged status as a result of changes made in laws for the civilian democratic oversight of the armed forces.

The military’s initial resistance to agreeing to allow a judge to go through military files, as part of the alleged assassination attempt on Arınç, at the headquarters in Ankara in late December in a venue where top secret military documents were said to have been kept, was the latest example of the TSK’s uneasiness over adapting to the changing situation in Turkey where the law is being applied. Civilian judges can investigate military files under Article 125 of the Criminal Law, but this was the first time this law had been applied.

The TSK’s status, which has given it a position above all law, has prompted it to stage five different types of military coups in Turkey, the most recent being an e-memorandum released by the Turkish General Staff warning the government in April 2007.

A report released by the İstanbul-based Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) late last year on the democratic oversight of the TSK, the second Security Almanac of its kind published in Turkey in the past four years, explains in depth the role of the Turkish military in Turkish politics. It is critical of the political authorities for failing to take further steps to end the TSK’s role in politics in a country that is a candidate for full membership of the European Union.

The report says that traditionally, the army has held a dominant position in the state and that it does not limit the definition of its duty to the security of the country, adding that it has always been one of the most important actors shaping the political, social and economic life of the country. As the same report emphasized, in the context of the EU, the military-civilian relationship has to be examined over and over again from the viewpoint of democratization, the development of civil society and the civilian domination of politics, and repositioned within a new framework.

There exist several legal mechanisms through which the TSK continues to influence politics in addition to the military-dominated traditions that allow it to avoid judicial process.

For example, the distinction between the civilian and military court systems and the latter’s wide room for maneuver in non-military cases have allowed and continue to allow the TSK to protect its members from the civilian judicial process. The military, thus, has extensive powers. The effectiveness and the institutionalization of the intervention of the army for the purpose of maintaining its privileged position within the system is predicated upon the exemption of this intervention from the review of military courts, the TESEV report stressed.

But positive developments are also taking place in the judicial system despite the TSK’s uneasiness. For example, a critical change in Article 250 of the Code on Criminal Procedure (CMK) adopted by Parliament during a late-night debate last June paved the way for military personnel to be tried in civilian courts in peacetime for anti-government activities. This has also made it possible for a civilian judge to have access to the military files related to the Arınç investigation.

Difficult years ahead

As the secrecy surrounding the TSK’s activities has begun to be unveiled, ordinary people in particular have been wondering and trying to understand what has actually been happening in Turkey, where the military’s involvement in politics has long been internalized and therefore been perceived as normal. Whereas, in contrast, Turkey has been moving towards a period of normalization that people have never been able to get used to. Similarly, TSK personnel whose educational doctrine has led them to think uniformed men are the guardians of Kemal Atatürk’s secular principles and that civilians do not have the ability to both rule and govern the nation, have been going through a similar psychological change, just like ordinary Turkish citizens, over the ongoing democratization process. Members of the TSK are currently having difficulty understanding the democratic changes in Turkey.

Perhaps one can trace the reasons behind the suicides of some of the eight officers in this past year, some of whom have been facing charges over alleged unconstitutional acts, to this doctrine. One of the teachings of the military has been “If it is for the good of the nation, every method [when necessary, illegal practices] is valid.” Perhaps some of those officers believed that their illegal acts were purely for the good of the nation and that they could not justify in their minds criminal investigations launched against them.

Serious tension among the military establishment and the political authority has, however, become a cause for concern for some Turkish analysts who feared that this tension could get out of control, leading to military defiance. Retired military prosecutor Ümit Kardaş, in an interview with Sunday’s Zaman, did not rule out military defiance or a possible military coup as a last resort by those members of the military unhappy about the old ways beginning to die and their privileged status coming to an end.

It is, then, no coincidence that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Dec. 27 denied claims of tension between the government and the army, seen as a sign of attempts to calm both the public and the military. President Gül warned against undermining the TSK as an institution, most probably for the same purpose.

Due to the ongoing overt as well as bitter power struggle among the military-led secular establishment and the political authority, it would not cause any surprise to predict that this year the issue of civil-military relations will continue to occupy Turkey.

Cracks existing within the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) over the continuation of both military and civilian reforms as well as the two opposition parties’ indifference to the dangerous developments taking place in Turkey, carrying risks of turning the already fragile economy upside down, hint that Turkey will continue going through unstable years. But instability will culminate in normalization because the existing tension is due to the resistance shown to democratic reforms.