While the abolishment of EMASYA, which allowed operations and intelligence gathering in cities without the approval of the civilian administration, and the prospective amendment of the MGSB are good signs in terms of raising the standards of democracy in Turkey, the “protocol crisis” at the informal NATO defense ministers’ meeting reared its head with Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ -- who is fourth on Turkey’s protocol list, ahead of the defense minister -- choosing not to participate in the program. Perhaps one of those who best described the mentality fueling this action, which illustrates the turbulent nature of the military-civilian relationship in this country, is the late journalist Uğur Mumcu, who in his book “Sakıncalı Piyade” (The Blacklisted Soldier) described the various ways in which citizens were labeled and categorized due to the things they wrote and how they experienced difficulties during their compulsory military service because of this.Mumcu’s words, written during the March 12, 1971 period, are still relevant for his colleagues today. During the March 12 period, Mumcu was himself preparing to perform his military service when he used the words “the army should be on guard” in something he wrote, leading to his detention for “insulting the military” and “establishing the domination of one social class over another.” His sentence of seven years in prison was overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeals, but he stayed in a military jail for nearly a year. Following this, he was assigned to Ağrı’s Patnos district for his military service from 1972-1974, officially classed as a “suspect soldier.” Due to this classification, he underwent a variety of forms of ill and unfair treatment during his time in the military, which he would later put to paper.
What Mumcu went through happened to many others before him and even happens today, 38 years later, to many other journalists, writers, poets, scientists and men of religion. Names such as Mehmet Akif Ersoy, Said Nursi, Nazım Hikmet, Aziz Nesin and Ahmet Kaya were all “suspect soldiers” of this nation.
Mehmet Baransu, a reporter for the Taraf daily who has published a number of stories related to cover-ups and crime within the military, says while he was doing his military service in Çanakkale, someone he knew from Ankara told him during a telephone conversation that he would be taken in for questioning soon and to be careful. Baransu called his family and apprised them of the situation just in case anything happened to him. “A day later, they woke me up in the middle of the night and took me to Block A, right next to the admiral and commanders’ rooms. I didn’t recognize any of the people who brought me, or the people in the room. A lot of swearing and insults were exchanged, and I told them: ‘I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re going to interrogate me. I spoke with a soldier from Ankara yesterday. If no news is heard from me in 24 hours, there are going to be a number of live-broadcast press vehicles outside this command -- you can’t get away with this one.’ When I said that, everything changed; I didn’t look into the incident too much after I was released,” Baransu explains.
Serhat Şeftali, the family and health editor at the Zaman daily, had a similarly strange experience. Given a job as a typist during his military service because of his knowledge of computers, he says he was questioned by his commander about where he went to university, if he was involved in any groups and where he lived during university. “Following that, I was given the night shift for about 15 days. … A few months later, we had many reports to prepare for an upcoming audit, and one of these reports included soldiers’ statuses. There were sections including ‘suspect’ and ‘possible suspect.’ It was alleged that a possible suspect could be in contact with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] -- and the suspect soldier was me. I was typing it up and asked the commander what I should write in the explanation section. He told me to write that I was involved in reactionary activities, and so I did,” he said.
Tuncay Opçin, the publishing manager for the magazine Chronicle, explains that he was doing a short-term 29-day period of military service in Çanakkale when he was alerted to an instance of alleged military corruption regarding the incongruence in the prices recorded for a project to construct a light rail line. “I wrote a piece on this in the Aktüel magazine. After it was published, Col. Cafer Çağlayan [who was his commander during his military service] wrote a letter, and the Turkish General Staff filed a criminal complaint against me for ‘disinclining people regarding the military.’ But the court issued a verdict of non-prosecution on the case,” he said.
