Analyst Akay: Koşaner would serve society greatly if he made public confessions

“Koşaner would have greatly served society if he had made some of the comments he made in the recording in public. That would have been a big relief for society, especially with regards to the TSK’s shortcomings and mistakes, which were never admitted by the TSK,” said Hale Akay, who authored “Security Sector in Turkey: Questions, Problems, and Solutions,” published in 2009 by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV).

A few days after the release of the voice recording, Koşaner, who stepped down in late July in protest of ongoing prosecutions against top military personnel over the last two years, said that two voice recordings published online belonged to him and stated that he stands behind what he said in those recordings. He also stated that what was said constituted “self-criticism, not confessions,” emphasizing that his remarks were meant to warn members of the military about certain issues that he deemed important for the future of the Turkish military in order to avoid mistakes on these issues.

Akay said there has been great controversy in the country regarding the TSK’s failures and interference in politics, including whether or not the Sledgehammer plan, which was described in an indictment as a military coup plan drawn up in 2003, was a fabrication.

Turkey suffered immensely after each military intervention in the country’s history. The damage caused by the Sept. 12, 1980 coup was much greater in comparison to past interventions. During this coup 650,000 people were detained, prosecutors demanded the death penalty for 7,000 people, 517 were sentenced to death and 50 were executed. A further 500 people died in prisons, some under suspicious circumstances, some during torture and others on hunger strikes. According to official records, 30,000 people lost their jobs because the military administration considered them a danger to the state.

Another 30,000 had to flee the country as political refugees. About 4,000 teachers, 120 university instructors and 47 judges were dismissed, while 400 journalists were sentenced to a total of 4,000 years in prison and another 14,000 people lost their citizenship.

Answering our questions, Akay elaborated on the issue of civilian-military relations on the anniversary of the Sept. 12 military coup.

What goes through your mind 31 years after the Sept. 12 military coup d’état?

It was the third intervention of the Turkish Armed Forces [TSK] into politics after 1960 and 1971. The detrimental results of the 1980 military have been seen gradually. The damage that it has done regarding human rights could be clearly seen in the 1990s. It was a dark period.

You’ve indicated in your report that Turkey became a “security state” during the 1980-2000 period.

Indeed, the military guardianship that started with the 1960 coup was strengthened in 1971 with another coup and it became even more entrenched in 1980. Most of the laws and regulations, including the internal regulations of the TSK that we consider problematic today culminated during the 1980 coup regime. In this process, the concept of security state has been normalized in the society as it got used to living under military guardianship.

What are the indicators of this? In other words, how do we understand whether or not the society has been pleased with the situation of military guardianship?

There are some recent poll results [released on Sept. 8 by BİLGESAM, Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies, conducted in July on about 7,000 respondents from 16 provinces in Turkey’s 12 main regions]. For example, 47.7 percent of participants say that all appointments of generals should be under the supervision of the TSK, while 31 percent say that all generals’ appointments should be under the authority of the civilian regime. Another 21 percent stated that only full generals’ appointments should be under the authority of the civilian regime. In other words, while almost half of the respondents say the civilian authority should be involved in the appointment process of the high-ranking military people, the other half regards that involvement with a sense of suspicion.

Additionally, the TSK has been the most trusted institution until recently. There has been great support for military solutions in society. Unfortunately, human rights defenders were seen as traitors in the 1980s and 1990s. Ceremonies, ranging from welcoming back soldiers to martyrs’ funerals, reflect a militarized society. When we look at our days of commemoration, even the establishment of Parliament on April 23, which is celebrated as Children’s Day, is observed with military ceremonies.

‘Security-centered mentality prevalent’

What do you think has made the public more suspicious of the Turkish Armed Forces as levels of trust for the TSK are not as high as they were in the past?

There have been some revelations in the media, showing that the TSK has been making mistakes in its handling of some security operations, resulting in the loss of lives of Turkish soldiers. However, losing trust in the TSK doesn’t mean for the Turkish public that there is less support for military and police-centered solutions. The society is still quite militarized and security-obsessed. For example, during and after the Hopa events [in which a leftist revolutionary teacher reportedly died of a heart attack caused by police using teargas to disperse protesting crowds during one of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s election rallies this year] the public at large did not protest police violence. In an anti-militarist society that is not obsessed with security, mechanisms to control both police and the military should work much better than this. What happens in Turkey today is that TSK might have been somewhat weakened, but the same security-centered mentality continues to prevail. Even when we are talking about civilian-military relations regarding “normalization,” the topics of discussion are about which institution will have more power over the other. A recent article in Birikim by Menderes Çınar provides a complete analysis of those issues.

Would you elaborate on that idea?

For example, the public debate is about “who will control” the appointments of generals, placing the General Staff under the Ministry of Defense, etc. We don’t focus on parliamentary oversight of the military. When concerns are raised about this aspect, those concerns are not seen as important, and a debate about abolishing Article 35 receives more attention.

Could you remind us what Article 35 of the TSK Internal Service Code really says?

It provides a legal basis for coups d’état. Generals of the 1980 coup d’état justified their intervention pointing to Article 35, which includes the expression that the duty of the military is to “preserve and protect the Republic of Turkey.” Article 35 of the TSK Internal Service Law became part of Turkish legislation after the May 27, 1960 coup d’état. It was later cited as the legal basis for the March 12, 1971 and Sept. 12, 1980 interventions. Bills were introduced by both the Republican People’s Party [CHP] and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party [BDP] for abolishing the article. However, they were dismissed; it is not easy in Turkish politics to reach a compromise.

‘Koşaner accepts shortcomings’

We know that the TSK has quite a homogenous structure, but some leaks from the military to the media regarding the TSK’s negligence and mistakes show that there are some people within the ranks of the military who want to take the bad apples from the basket. Do you have an idea about their numbers?

Not really. And it is not really possible to know how many are critical.

Is it possible to conduct research related to military officers?

No, I know of just one research project, a survey, involving military officers and this survey was really something irrelevant to the subjects we are discussing. There should be a clear and transparent application procedure for people who want to do research related to the military.

Were you surprised by the statements of the former military chief, Gen. Işık Koşaner, made in a voice recording posted online in August?

I am not surprised by what he said. However, Koşaner would have greatly served the society if he had made some of the comments he made in the recording in public. That would have been a big relief for society, especially with regards to the TSK’s shortcomings and mistakes, which were never admitted to by the TSK. Koşaner talks about those shortcomings in the voice recording and accepts them. Some observers even behaved as if those comments were publicly made “confessions.” In addition, Koşaner says in the recording that all the documents regarding “some plans” were thought to have been destroyed by the military, but they saw them in the indictment prepared by civilian prosecutors probing the plan [probably the Sledgehammer plan, a suspected coup plot believed to have been devised in 2003 with the aim of overthrowing the Justice and Development Party ( AK Party) government, through violence]. The most interesting part of the recording for me was the part referring to OYAK [Turkish Armed Forces Assistance Center] and the institution of the ombudsman.

‘Military: Huge profit- seeking group  with financial interests’

Why?

Koşaner said in the recording that they [the army] would not accept lower compensation as a result of possible inspections by the Court of Accounts, which has now the authority to inspect all public institutions. A privileged institution, OYAK was established in 1961 with a special law in order to generate additional income for underpaid officers. At present, OYAK is one of the largest holdings in the country, a huge business empire with stakes in a number of companies in the automotive, cement, finance, food, chemicals and service sectors, and, until recently, the banking sector. OYAK is an autonomous entity that is exempt from taxation, and it was never inspected. If it becomes a tax-paying institution, then the compensation military officers receive will be reduced. With Koşaner’s remarks in the voice recording, it has become obvious that the military is not just an institution made up of people whose only goal is to serve to their country. It is naturally a huge profit-seeking group with financial interests as well.

Koşaner also said that they cannot accept the institution of ombudsman.

The institution of the ombudsman will carry out inspections of human rights violations/misconduct in public institutions. Koşaner apparently is trying to shield the TSK privileged from inquiries by an ombudsman.

How much progress has Turkish society made in regard to civilian oversight of the TSK and civilian-military relations?

Not much in that regard. There are critical court cases like Sledgehammer and Ergenekon, but we don’t know yet how long they will take to be finalized. In addition, there are concerns that those court cases are really only dealing with the sins of the TSK in recent times, in relation to the coup plans to overthrow the AK Party government. However, there are court cases in the Southeast in relation to the TSK not performing its duties, and these are not being finalized or combined with the Ergenekon case. If it goes on like that, those cases involving big human rights violations will not be resolved due to the statute of limitations. Therefore, we can talk about not only some military people but other public officials -- like police, gendarmerie and governors -- who are shielded from scrutiny in relation to human rights abuses. When it comes to new Court of Accounts Law, we have yet to see how it will be implemented. In addition, there is a debate going on about mandatory military service and whether it should be eliminated. However, it is still hard to have a debate about conscientious objection or other types of human rights violations related to the draft. And as we mentioned before, no concrete steps have been taken in strengthening parliamentary oversight.

‘Military’s influence on civilian authority not ending’

Recently, there have been some developments observers think signal the end of the military’s influence over the civilian authority. One of those developments occurred in mid-August in regards to the seating order at the National Security Council (MGK) as members of the MGK took their seats in accordance with state protocol as opposed to the previous seating arrangements, civilians on one side of the table and soldiers on the other. Then there was a decision by President Abdullah Gül to receive greetings and congratulatory messages during official ceremonies on Victory Day on Aug. 30, contrary to previous occasions during which the chief of the military received the greetings. Your views?

First of all, one must understand that the fact that these developments became headline news shows that we are far from normalization. It is obvious in Turkey that there is a distorted distribution of authority in military-civilian relations, but it is bothersome that solving this problem takes such a long time and that it is such a cumbersome process. We see that the AK Party government does not really take direct responsibility to change the nature of this relationship and that most of the settling of accounts is done by the judiciary. The AK Party supported neither parliamentary investigation proposals regarding the Sledgehammer and Ergenekon cases nor suggestions for the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate the extra-judicial killings of the 1980s and 1990s. All of these contribute to the image of a power struggle rather than a process of normalization. This is not a healthy process because then the society starts to look for symbolic rupture points.

Like in the case of Gen. Işık Koşaner’s and of other forced resignations of generals?

Yes, it was one of those breaking points. In the post-resignation days, some journalists who expressed anti-military opinions beforehand were quite happy, while others were devastated. After the new appointments, this climate significantly changed. Therefore, from the media, we are witnessing a process of a match between the two sides. As a matter of fact, we shouldn’t be talking about who the next general will be by examining their political tendencies. Therefore, such developments, though important, do not really signal a normalization of civilian-military relations.  

PROFILE

She is the author of “Security Sector in Turkey: Questions, Problems, and Solutions” published in 2009 by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV). After graduating from İstanbul University’s international relations department she received her master’s degree from the same university in the economic structure of the European Union. She also studied at the Université Toulouse 1 Capitole in France. She has been working at Bilgi University since 2001 and continues her work at the Helsinki Citizens Assembly in İstanbul.