EU tells Turkish military to stay out of politics

    Rehn said he was studying carefully the unusually sharp statement by military commanders and recalled that respect for democracy was a condition of Turkey's EU candidacy.

     "The timing is rather surprising and strange," he said on the sidelines of a Brussels Forum on transatlantic relations.  "It's important that the military respects also the rules of the democratic game and its own role in that democratic game."

    The powerful General Staff, which has intervened four times in the last 50 years to topple governments, issued its statement hours after an inconclusive first round of voting split Turkish secularists and the government.

    Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, a moderate from the ruling AK Party, failed to win sufficient support in the first ballot and the secular neo-nationalist opposition applied to the constitutional court to annul the poll.

     "The Turkish armed forces are watching this (election) situation with concern,"  the General Staff said, reminding politicians that the military was the ultimate defender of secularism.

   Rehn said secular democracy held a very high value for the European Union and "was the core of Turkey's  Europeanisation project", dear also to the military and to followers of the founder of the modern Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

    Turkey, a secular state with an overwhelmingly Muslim population, began negotiations to join the 27-nation EU in 2005 but has made only slow progress, partly due to an unresolved dispute over the divided island of Cyprus.

    One of the key criteria for EU membership is civilian control over the armed forces.

    Rows over trade with EU member Cyprus and statements by senior figures in some West European countries opposing Turkish membership of the bloc has diminished Brussels' influence over Turkey, analysts say.

    Turkish media reported the late-night military statement mostly without comment on Saturday.

    The General Staff statement contained what some European analysts said read like a veiled threat of possible intervention, but not as outright as the verbal broadside that toppled former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan in 1997.

     "Recently the main issue emerging in connection with the presidential election has focused on a debate over secularism. This is viewed with concern by the Turkish armed forces,"  it said.

     "It should not be forgotten that the Turkish armed forces are partial in this debate and are a staunch defender of secularism."

     "The Turkish armed forces are against those debates (questioning secularism)... and will display its position and attitudes when it becomes necessary. No one should doubt that."