Policy Differences Strain Relations Between Turkey's Government, Military Establishment

The policy priorities of Turkey's government and those of the country's military establishment are diverging. The nexus of the building dispute is connected with the country's need for modernization and the military's insistence on maintaining Turkey's secularist tradition. Recent developments are prompting fresh discussion in Turkey of a possible military intervention in the country's political life.

At present, Turkey finds itself in the middle of its "annual military coup discussion," suggests Sedat Bozkurt, the news coordinator at the ATV television station. Speculation about possible military intervention has intensified in the days since a June 26 meeting of Turkey's all-powerful National Security Council (MGK). At that meeting, which focused on efforts to promote Turkish membership in the European Union, the government, which is dominated by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), was unable to find common ground with military leaders on key policy matters.

Turkish military leaders are irked by the AKP's political course, which has established Turkey's full membership in the EU as a key goal. To achieve this aim, the AKP has aggressively pushed reforms aimed at aligning Turkey's legislative framework with EU standards. The problem is that the proposed changes are seen by many in the officer corps as detrimental the military's interests, especially in limiting the influence that generals can exert over the political process. Military leaders have claimed that implementation of the proposed legislation could "endanger Turkey's national security."

Some commentators say the military is also concerned that the AKP government is steering the country away from the secularist tradition established by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state. The AKP's origins are rooted in Islam and the party continues to enjoy the firm support of devout Muslims, especially those in the Anatolian heartland. The military has long believed itself to be the guardian of Turkey's "Kemalist" political philosophy.

"Those who see the European Union and its lofty ideals as a means of realizing their archaic and separatist goals are doomed to be disappointed," Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, Deputy Chief of the Turkish General Staff, stated in a May 29 speech.

Buyukanit is not the only military leader to have recently alluded to a possible intervention. At the end of May Turkey's top general cautioned the government about the need to adhere to the country's secularist constitution, while pointedly declining to rule out the possibility of the military's re-entry into politics. In what appeared to be a thinly veiled threat, General Hilmi Ozkok, the chief of the Turkish General Staff, referred to the so-called "post-modernist coup" when an openly Islamist government was eased out of power with the military's help in 1997.

"That was cause and effect," General Ozkok said, "and if the cause is still there the effect will be there also." Significantly, in 1997, one of the main complaints brought by the military against the ousted Islamist government was that it has tried to divert Turkey from its European path by advocating the formation of a "Muslim NATO and common market."

Ironically, now it is the AKP – a successor to the banned Islamist Welfare Party – that is the chief backer of EU-inspired, liberal reforms. Meanwhile, it is the army – which is viewed by some as a modernizing force in Turkey – that appears intent on stalling legislative reform.

In attempting to explain the military's seemingly paradoxical position, some analysts point out that the Kemalists' views on modernization are, to a great extent, superficial. While Kemalists, especially those in the officer corps, have been quick to embrace the trappings of modernization, particularly those found in Western society, they have traditionally been wary of embracing the core principles of Western dynamism: democracy, pluralism and genuine secularism envisaging freedom of expression.

Some political analysts are quick to emphasize that the secularist tradition played a vital role in transforming traditional Ottoman society. But this heavy-handed style of modernization "enshrined a deeply authoritarian military-bureaucratic establishment, creating the main impediment to Turkey's successful evolution into a fully developed democracy," argue political scientists Mujeeb Khan and Hakan Yavuz in the March issue of Current History.

"While the goal of becoming a