Is it a waning influence?

Date: 14/06/03

Turkey's generals are still a brake on reform. But that may not last

IF THE government that took office in November were to have had its way easily, Turkey's parliament, where it enjoys an absolute majority, would months ago have approved an array of new laws to bring the country closer towards achieving its long-held ambition of joining the European Union. The “mini democratisation package”, the sixth in a series of reform bills, would let international monitors scrutinise general elections; let private radio and television channels broadcast in Kurdish; remove the armed forces from the board of Turkey's broadcasting watchdog; and scrap Article 8 of the anti-terror law, which bans “separatist propaganda” and has justified the jailing of thousands of politicians, journalists and campaigners over the years.

But Turkey's meddlesome generals, who recently blocked a UN plan to reunite Cyprus, have been saying no. They have argued, as usual, that “Turkey's special circumstances” mean that governments should always be empowered to take extraordinary measures to guard against “those who wish to undermine the country's territorial unity” (code for Kurds) or against others who might want to reverse “80 years of secular rule” (ie, Islamists).

Things may at last, however, be changing. The country's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, and his justice minister, Cemil Cicek, have recently steeled themselves to stand up to the men in uniform. The elected politicians now promise that the reforms, originally due to pass in April, will be enacted in time for a grand EU summit in Greece on June 20th - without even being brought before the National Security Council, where the top generals bang their fists.

Whoever comes out on top - the generals or the politicians - will greatly affect the government's credibility at home and abroad. It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of Turkish democracy is at stake. If the reforms go through and are actually implemented, the Turks hope they will soon be given a date for starting formal negotiations to join the EU.

For many of the generals, the changes would hurt. They would plainly have to take orders from civilians. They would have to allow the military budget to be publicly scrutinised; no one, outside the generals' circle, knows where the money goes. And they would have to keep out of politics for good.

They are unlikely to submit to political authority graciously. “The armed forces' strategy is to undermine and embarrass the [ruling] Justice and Development Party,” says Umit Cizre Sakallioglu, an authority on the army. The top soldiers, who zealously guard Turkey's secular tradition, have never concealed their contempt for Mr Erdogan, who, partly thanks to their pressure, was previously ousted as mayor of Istanbul and put briefly behind bars for publicly reciting a poem that allegedly tried to incite religious rebellion.

True, the prime minister originally went into politics under the banner of an overtly Islamist and anti-western party. But he says he long ago changed his views; among other matters, he switched to support for joining the EU. Religion and politics, he now says, should be kept separate. And in a gesture to the generals, he agreed this week to remove a clause from his reforms that would have allowed small mosques to be built within residential compounds.

Since forming Turkey's first single-party government in 15 years, Mr Erdogan and his party have done little to bolster the generals' thesis that they have a secret Islamist agenda. Mr Erdogan's resounding success at the polls was the clearest signal yet that his compatriots, most of whom share the generals' secular leanings, do not think he is bent on an Islamic takeover. With a 15-year-old separatist rebellion in the Kurdish-dominated south-east having virtually ended since the capture in 1999 of the Kurds' rebel chief, Abdullah Ocalan, most Turks are also less receptive to the generals' warnings against separatism.

They haven't surrendered, though

Still, the generals seem determined to play the nationalist (ie, anti-Kurdish) card by attacking the government over its proposed reforms. But this time the generals, who have thrice seized power directly in the past four decades and who squeezed the country's first Islamist-led government out of power in 1997, may have picked the wrong fight. One reason is that an overwhelming majority of Turks want their country to join the EU - and realise that the proposed reforms would help them achieve that goal.

A growing number of commentators are starting to ask whether the generals also want Turkey to join the EU. One columnist, Cuneyt Ulsever of the mass-circulation Hurriyet, has even said that General Tuncer Kilinc, the secretary-general of the National Security Council, should resign because of his hostile remarks about the EU. Not too long ago, Mr Ulsever might have lost his job or been censored.

On the other side of the debate, however, some ardently secular-minded writers have accused General Hilmi Ozkok, the unusually mild-mannered chief of the general staff, of being too soft on the government. A left-wing daily, Cumhuriyet, quoting sources in the army, reports that a group of hot-headed junior officers agree with that view. This has sparked murmurs of the possibility of yet another coup.

The generals, it seems, are rattled, especially since their old friends in the United States have joined the ranks of their critics - largely because of American irritation at the Turkish generals' failure to lobby publicly for a bill quashed by parliament on March 1st that would have let American troops attack Iraq from Turkish soil. Many Turkish officers who fought against Kurdish rebels in the south-east were further dismayed when the Americans dissuaded them from going into Iraq themselves in order to have a say in its future.

Now on the defensive, various generals are trying to calm things down. “Don't even mention the word coup,” huffs General Ozkok. “There are no hawks or doves, no young officers or old ones,” he says. “We support EU membership but feel we should join the Union as equals, so long as our national unity is not at risk.”

The army still tops the polls as Turkey's most trusted institution - partly because it has long reflected public opinion. But this time it may not be doing so. The generals' influence may be starting to wane - to the satisfaction, it seems, of a growing number of Turks.

Turkey's generals are still a brake on reform. But that may not last