As we head toward the European Union, this approval showed that we have overcome yet another very important obstacle. It is still very fresh in my memory when Gül was just recently elected as president. I was with journalist Hasan Cemal and a group of friends. Cemal was asked why he supported the election of someone whose wife wore the headscarf. His response was: “I have been observing Gül from the day he was elected to the Turkish Parliament and since his days in the European Parliament. He has a democratic side. I support his presidency because of his stable democratic character.” The bill -- which the president approved despite all the pressure from different circles, including the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD) -- calls for military personnel who commit crimes falling under the jurisdiction of high criminal courts to be tried in those courts.
The Vatan daily's top story yesterday assessed the president's approval very well. With the new bill, military officers who stage or attempt to stage a coup will be tried in special high criminal courts. Coups code named Ayışığı (Moonlight), Sarıkız (Blonde Girl), Yakamoz (Sea Sparkle) and Eldiven (Glove) in 2004, attempted by some force commanders and generals that were never called to account, will finally be handled by the civilian judiciary. The Şemdinli case, which I wrote about yesterday and which is still on-going in the military court, will be referred to these courts. That's not all. Generals who prepared the memorandum during the Feb. 28, 1997 process will be called to account for the assassination attempt on Akın Birdal and for the number of people that were fired from their jobs. The bill also prohibits civilians from being tried in military courts. It is for this reason that cases such as the Sauna, Atabeyler, Special Forces Command Construction and Karargah houses, in which military personnel are being tried together with civilians, will be transferred to the civilian judiciary.
Now the Republican People's Party (CHP) is saying that it will apply to the Constitutional Court for the annulment of the bill. Is this an understandable move? What part of this bill do you oppose? Don't you consider yourself a civilian politician? I thought you were against coups, and you wanted the Sept. 12, 1980 coup leaders to be tried. Here is a bill that gives you the opportunity to try all, past, present and future, coup leaders. Besides, don't you support Turkey's EU membership? Here are the requirements set forth in the EU Accession Partnership document for Turkey's membership. “Like all EU member countries, the civilian control over the military must be reinforced, the military's intervention in political affairs must be prevented, more transparency and accountability must be ensured, parliamentary supervision must be ensured over the military and its defense policy and the authorities of the military courts must be restricted to solely military personnel.”
The CHP is literally baffled. What a disastrous ending it is for the CHP as the military is its only hope. Truly, it deserves to be the “combat boot party.” The big main opposition party is committing suicide in a live broadcast.
Note: Murat Yetkin from the Radikal daily called. In yesterday's article, I wrote: “Another issue is that we've gone back to the days when an ‘anonymous senior military officer' released bits of information. In an effort to issue discreet threats, as was the case during the Feb. 28 process, reports based on anonymous generals are being released.” He was offended. He prepared the news with Fikret Bila from Milliyet. But I was not referring to either one of my two co-workers. I was criticizing the General Staff officials for taking that kind of a route.
Comments by senior military officers are obviously newsworthy regardless of whom they share the information with. Journalists cannot keep such information to themselves but rather share it with everyone else. Cumhuriyet Ankara representative Mustafa Balbay did, and now he is in jail. There is another issue. When journalists write news in reference to an anonymous state minister, the main opposition criticizes them. Let's not mistreat our journalists for doing their job when we should be criticizing generals and state ministers who speak on the condition of anonymity.
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