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As Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ was countering allegations regarding a military plot to destroy the government, recently uncovered by the Taraf daily, at a news conference on Friday, he underlined several times that the alleged plot had been created by certain circles to undermine and besmirch the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).
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“We see this as part of an organized smear campaign to weaken the military. This is an attempt to provoke and divide the military. As the commander of the armed forces, I am telling you very clearly: Take your hands off the armed forces and stop defining your political position via the armed forces. Stop carrying out asymmetric psychological warfare on the armed forces in the media,” he remarked. Başbuğ's use of the term “asymmetric psychological warfare,” which is described as a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and, in the struggle, the two sides interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses, has brought to mind the question: Who could be on the other side of this war if one of the sides is the TSK and is the victim of such a war really the TSK? Yeni Şafak's Yasin Aktay finds it strange for a number of reasons that the head of an institution that is the only one with a “psychological warfare unit” complains about the results of a psychological war. “First of all, for the head of an institution to complain about a feature of an asymmetric war, it is necessary to accept the existence of a war, that the institution is a party in that war and that it is the victim of an unjust distribution of powers in that war. No matter from which perspective you see it, a psychological war is characterized by cheating and conspiracy. Looking at Başbuğ's statements, one can conclude that he sees the TSK as the victim of psychological warfare,” remarks Aktay, who finds this really bizarre because the TSK itself has adopted psychological warfare as an administration style, as proven in its various interventions in politics, starting from the May 27, 1960 military coup to the April 27, 2007 military memorandum. Questioning under which symmetric circumstances this psychological war should be carried out in order for the TSK's alleged victimization to be eliminated, Aktay asks the TSK faces in this war. “When the language of the alleged military plot and other controversial documents prepared by the military are taken into consideration, there is a definition of the enemy in which the entire public is included. Then, what kind of power balance could there be in a psychological war that the TSK engages in with the public that it can deem symmetric? Is there any other way for the TSK to see itself as the other side of a war it engages in with the public?” asks Aktay. In reference to the National Security Council (MGK) meeting to be held today, Bugün's Adem Yavuz Arslan says the TSK will clearly mention in this meeting that there is ongoing asymmetric psychological warfare being carried out against it, which he thinks renders this meeting very important.
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| 30 June 2009, Tuesday |
| FATMA DİŞLİ ZIBAK |
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