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Experts ask why Başbuğ professional army promise not kept
The General Staff estimates that a professional army would cost around $45 billion and thus believes it is not possible to establish an army comprising all professional soldiers. Instead, it plans to turn six commando brigades into professional units that will primarily be deployed along the country’s southeastern border to fight the PKK. Başbuğ said in 2007 that those six brigades would be turned into professional units by 2009 but the deadline was not met, and no significant progress has occurred since then.
“How could a soldier who was enrolled in the military for only 15 days fight on the border?” said Sıdık Saylan, grieving after his son Mutlu Saylan was killed in Hakkari early on Sunday morning when a group of PKK terrorists attacked their outpost with heavy artillery.
Professor Aytekin Geleri from the Ankara-based Institute of Strategic Thinking (SDE) told Today’s Zaman that it is not easy to understand why the promised transition has not happened. “That said, I also wonder how an army that has been fighting with terrorists for more than 25 years now could not gain experience and professionalize in its fight over time,” he said, adding that the problem could only be explained by attributing it to “serious negligence.” Security experts who have given their views on the subject have all agreed on the urgent need for a transition to an all-professional army but also underscored the importance of professionalizing those six commando brigades as a first step to that end. Geleri also said the fight against terrorism should be supported by special operation units of the police forces.
Terrorists attacked an army border unit in Şemdinli, Hakkari, at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning. Nine soldiers were killed and 14 were wounded in the attack. Two other soldiers from the backup force were later killed by a land mine in the area. A separate terrorist assault on a military outpost in the eastern province of Elazığ late Sunday killed one soldier and injured another, increasing the number of slain soldiers to 12.
Kemal Gökdağ, father of Cpl. Selçuk Gökdağ, who was killed in Elazığ, said his son had served in the military for only 45 days before the deadly terrorist attack. “[A] commander told me he was going to send my son home safe. He returned in a coffin,” he told reporters, weeping.
SDE director Professor Yasin Aktay said: “We are acting too slowly over the professional army matter and are keeping an unnecessary [poorly trained] human resource in the military. In warfare, it is of utmost importance to have a relatively small but highly operational, offensive army.”
Geleri also downplayed the argument that it is financially impossible to professionalize the entire army, citing the tens of billions of dollars Turkey has spent so far for defense. “It is up to the government to decide if it is less expensive to maintain a large and clumsy army,” he said.
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