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The treasonable document prepared by Col. Dursun Çiçek confirmed once more that our military likes democracy as long as everything is under its control and politicians sheepishly obey whatever our generals have to say.
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Some call this democratic tutelage, but I think it is better to name it military tutelage. As our history shows, whenever politicians stepped out of their militarily defined boundaries, we had a coup. Thus, it is not surprising to see once more that our military was ready to engage in a psychological warfare against the democratically elected government, to form an alliance with the opposition, to mobilize the army’s secret agents in the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the media and the judiciary and so on. All of these are in the army’s official document duly signed by Col. Çiçek. What is more, the document details that as the civilian courts could not find anything wrong with the Gülen movement, guns, rifles, artillery and so on must be planted in dormitories and schools associated with the movement and so-called “culprits” must be taken before military courts, not civilian ones. All in all, according to the document, our military is ready to act like bandits just because some political parties and civilian groups do not fit the military’s extremely narrow-minded ultra-positivist naive ideology that still envisages a homogenous society, a recalcitrant desire of our Kemalist Jacobin social-engineers. This is not the first time our military has acted like this and even though there was no threat of terror or any indication of civil war, they arbitrarily staged a coup in 1960 and hanged a prime minister, Adnan Menderes. Even today, the military’s insiders in the media constantly want Erdoğan alongside a picture of Menderes. There are countless examples of the military stepping into the political sphere -- illegal according to our laws – but the last major incident took place on April 14, 2007 when the chief of General Staff at that time, Gen. Yaşar Büyükanit, said that Parliament must elect a president not only democratic in appearance but in essence as well. He was obviously trying to stop Abdullah Gül becoming president. On April 27, 2007 the military issued an e-memorandum to stop Gül once more, hinting at a military coup. After that, the AK Party decided on early elections and received 47 percent of the vote, a tremendous increase from 34 percent. With that harsh response from the people, the military could not raise its voice. But the Çiçek document shows that they never stopped working against the AK Party government and that part of civil society which does not support the military’s interference in politics. We know all this; nobody seems to be shocked, and among us there are columnists and even professors of law arguing that these are the military’s legal duties in order to protect the state. It is high time that Parliament passed the appropriate laws to underline very strongly that it is not our military’s duty to interfere in politics. To achieve this, the law should state unambiguously that the military’s only duty is to protect the country against foreign forces and that unless Parliament orders otherwise, the military has no duty whatsoever with regards to protecting the country, state, establishment and so on against internal and domestic threats, including foreign intelligence operations in the country, which is normally the duty of our National Intelligence Organization (MİT). It should be stated very clearly that it is the duty of the police and intelligence services to deal with any kind of potential or real incident and that the military has no duty whatsoever within our borders unless on Parliament’s orders. Some may think that if the army does not respect the law, they will not respect the law, either. But it is not simple, there are many in the military and among the civilian population who defend the army’s political interference by referring to some ambiguous laws. If the ambiguity is removed, then at least we will be able to marginalize the coup-supporters. Then, the next thing that Parliament should do is to enact new laws making our army more transparent and accountable. Society’s psychology is now ready for these democratic acts, and if the government fails to initiate them, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahçeli, will have been proven right when he said the AK Party uses the undemocratic acts and behavior of the military to increase its votes. Erdoğan would not believe it, but next time people could say “enough is enough” to the AK Party as well, emphasizing that “we gave you 47 per cent, what else did you need?”
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| 01 November 2009, Sunday |
| İHSAN YILMAZ |
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