Many members of the press rushed from one place to the next to be able to do their job but to no avail. A large portion of them were not given permission to enter. There was either incompetence or major negligence. It’s also unclear who was responsible for the accreditation disgrace that affected journalists.
Some journalists, including those from STV and TV NET, were removed from the room, even though they had already received their accreditation cards in advance. It is unclear who committed this wrongdoing. A young man with a crew cut walked around and in front of the cameras said, “This card was given to you by mistake.” Since the people around him referred to him as a “commander,” we should probably ask the General Staff who that meddler was. After all, the meeting was related to NATO defense ministers, and the host was Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül.
Everything aside, there’s another situation that Turkey needs to consider. Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ did not attend the meeting with defense ministers from NATO countries. Why? According to some news reports, a protocol crisis erupted because of the meeting. Do you know why?
According to protocol practices in Turkey, chiefs of general staff come before defense ministers. The order is the president, the parliamentary speaker, the prime minister and then the chief of general staff. The General Staff comes before the judiciary and political hierarchy. There is no other protocol like this in the world. Usually, chiefs of general staff are bound to defense ministers and appear much later in the protocol order. The difference between the protocol in Turkey and the protocol implemented in the rest of the world became crystal clear when defense ministers from NATO member countries came together. If international standards were used, Başbuğ would be somewhere toward the back of the line, and Turkey’s bureaucratic hierarchy would be jeopardized. If, as a NATO member country, we didn’t follow the standard and adhered to Turkey’s own order, then the world would shame us and NATO’s makeup would be ruined.
This is a real situation that shows that the military-civilian relationship in Turkey is far from meeting world standards. The protocol used in a normal democracy instantly becomes invalid in this country. In fact, our laws are even vague about the extent to which the chief of general staff is dependent on the prime minister (or more precisely, civil authority). Even saying he is “accountable to the prime minister” can be misunderstood when desired. For example, sometimes comments such as “being accountable does not mean being dependent” are made. Why? Because if the General Staff was bound to the prime minister, they would not be able to issue a memorandum just to please the chief of general staff. All coups, memorandums, appendices and secret lists that categorize people in Turkey stem from the desire to place the civil authority in a firm legal framework.
It is not possible to cover up the twisted military-civilian relationship by saying, “There’s nothing we can do; there are special conditions in Turkey.” If we absolutely must talk about Turkey’s “special conditions,” then we need to talk about coups and juntas. Just the other day, a military court handed down a heavy penalty to a military officer in relation to weapons uncovered in the Zir Valley, and that penalty was only for the weapons. The civilian judiciary is investigating the organizational aspect of it. The allegations in that arena are worse: the Ergenekon investigation, the Poyrazköy investigation, the Diyarbakır case. All of these show that there is a junta within the armed forces that still hasn’t sufficiently accepted democracy and that this junta is still active. Yes, this is Turkey’s actual special condition.
The protocol crisis that erupted at the NATO meeting is not a new matter. This embarrassment is experienced at every NATO meeting. This absurd situation cannot go on forever, that is, of course, if we don’t want to be humiliated.
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