Officers eye civilian authority for injustices to be addressed

Many judicial and military experts agree that the military indictment was prepared to prevent possible accomplices, including top generals, from being tried and thus blame Col. Çiçek alone for the alleged coup plot, suggesting his pending discharge from the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).

According to a retired Turkish staff colonel who spoke to Sunday’s Zaman anonymously, the military indictment seeking to center the blame on one colonel alone for the subversive action plan has set another example of growing discontent felt among many officers.

“This military indictment has proven once again that officers are in a way betrayed by their seniors, as Col. Çiçek has been accused of being solely responsible for writing this plan. Many officers will increasingly begin to listen to their conscience and will reflect that to the outside,” said the same source.

It is highly important that a new military model under which justice will be done be created within the TSK, which has already inflicted serious damage to its image with the ongoing probes and trials accusing many active duty and retired officers of being involved in coup plots, the retired colonel stressed.

The annual four-day meeting of the Supreme Military Council (YAŞ), due to start on Aug. 1 under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, during which the promotions and retirements of generals will be discussed and decided, has become more crucial than ever. This is because it has raised expectations that at least Erdoğan, as the head of the civilian leadership, should use his power to prevent the promotion of those active duty officers implicated in coup plots or facing trial.

In addition, expectations have arisen within the public that the civilian authority will use its legal powers to punish those officers and their seniors blamed for making serious mistakes in the fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has dramatically increased its violence this season.

According to analysts, the military indictment seeks to focus the blame for the plan on a now-jailed colonel and exonerate the high-profile military and civilian instigators behind the plot of all charges so that the generals can be promoted at this year’s YAŞ meeting.

Under Article 65 of the Personnel Law of the TSK, those officers either arrested, released pending trial or those whose verdict has not been given yet cannot be promoted. They should also be relieved of their posts until the courts make their verdict.

Retired Brig. Gen. Adnan Tanrıverdi thinks Çiçek is being sacrificed in order to protect his commanders.

Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ recently provided the figures of active duty officers, including generals, who are facing charges of plotting to trigger an armed overthrow of the government. According to him, 71 active duty officers have been arrested. Of them, 53 have been released, while 18 officers of various ranks are still in prison.

After the indictment into the violent Sledgehammer (Balyoz) coup plan was disclosed in the media last Friday, more details have become known about the number of generals indicted and to be tried if the document is accepted by the civilian court. According to the Star daily, 28 generals out of a total of 303 generals within the TSK will become defendants in the Balyoz coup plot if the court accepts the prosecutor’s indictment. The indictment also accuses 26 retired generals of being involved in designing the Balyoz plan to unseat the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) by planting bombs in mosques and instigating a war with neighboring Greece. The blame for these violent acts would then have been put on the government as a means to put pressure on it, according to the indictment.

Uneasy officers

Gen. Işak Koşaner, the current land forces commander, will replace Gen. İlker Başbuğ during this August’s YAŞ meeting as the new chief of General Staff, and will serve for three years in this post, instead of a full four-year term, due to the retirement age. Başbuğ has served two years as the chief of General Staff, also due to his reaching the mandatory retirement age of 67.

According to the retired staff colonel, the uneasy officers who feel betrayed by the military indictment solely blaming Col. Çiçek for preparing the subversive coup plot will now wait and see whether Gen. Koşaner will be able to remove the ongoing injustices.

But more importantly, according to the same retired colonel, the policies to be pursued by the civilian authority during the YAŞ meeting will be crucial for the uneasy officers. The civilian authority should use its legal power to prevent the promotions of generals and officers with lesser ranks implicated in coup plots to send a message that justice is being done.

Paradoxically, a civilian court is also trying Col. Çiçek and others implicated in the action plan and its implementation in the eastern province of Erzincan.

The civilian court has been seeking life imprisonment for Çiçek as well as others including Gen. Saldıray Berk, the commander of the 3rd Army in Erzurum, who the military indictment portrayed as innocent. Another general who is believed to be linked to the Action Plan to Fight Reactionaryism is 1st Army Corps Commander Gen. Hasan Iğsız, who was the deputy chief of General Staff at the time when Çiçek drafted the plan. Civilian prosecutors believe that Çiçek received the order to prepare the action plan from Iğsız and worked in cooperation with Berk to put it into operation in Erzincan.

The military indictment seeks six years’ imprisonment for Col. Çiçek and his discharge from the TSK.

The retired colonel believed that behind the military indictment that seeks a lesser prison sentence for Col. Çiçek may be a plan to help him in his civilian life in return for him keeping quiet on his co-conspirators.

Tevfik Diker, a retired lieutenant colonel, suggested in an interview with Today’s Zaman last Thursday that the military indictment points to Col. Çiçek as the sole culprit and in this way might clear other military officers under suspicion. “In this way, all obstacles before those officers’ promotion will be cleared. They have abandoned Çiçek to his own fate in order to save a few generals,” he added.

According to the military document, the action plan is authentic and is the product of Çiçek. Last year, Gen. Başbuğ described the action plan as “a piece of paper.”

With the action plan, the colonel sought to discredit the TSK after he was denied a promotion to admiral in 2007, the indictment argues. The indictment also accused Col. Çiçek of misusing the trust felt by military personnel in the TSK’s higher-ranking officers and of discrediting the TSK by designing the action plan.

The more the ruling authority uses its power to address injustices within the TSK, the more it will help improve Turkish democratic standards.