In an interview with Professor Cizre, of İstanbul Şehir University, discusses the latest situation in these critical relations. In contrast with the overall positive atmosphere, Professor Cizre says the possibility of military intervention is not over, though lessened. She argues that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government chose to build its power base instead of continuing reforms to establish complete subordination of the army to the elected authorities.Relations between the military and the civilians have always been problematic in Turkey — even before the establishment of modern Turkey during the late Ottoman era. However, when soldiers self-described themselves as the “rightful guardians of the Republic of Turkey,” they became almost a staple of Turkish politics since they intervened in elected governments whenever they deemed it necessary. As a result, since 1923, Turkey has witnessed military coups, in 1960, 1971 and 1980 in addition to a “post-modern coup” in 1997 known as the Feb. 28 period and an “e-memorandum” in April 2007. Aside from these publicly known successful and attempted coups, there were failed attempts such as the Sledgehammer plot, which is the first junta that has been put on trial in the history of the country.
The country is undergoing a critical and unprecedented process, and some believe that civilian supremacy has been established as a result of now stalled EU reforms, the cosmetic changes in the structure of the Supreme Military Council (YAŞ) and the increasing influence of the government on the appointments of the top echelons of the military.
The AK Party government accelerated EU and, particularly, democratization reforms at an unprecedented pace, but with its second term in power, reforms slowed down. What is your evaluation of the process of democratization during the decade-long rule of the AK Party?
The AK Party government’s structural reforms of the military have lowered the Turkish Armed Forces’ (TSK) vanguardist and power-oriented role and lessened the likelihood of interventions in politics to some degree. But although the moves in this direction provided an opportunity for the party leadership to bring about further legal and constitutional changes, other considerations and dynamics have emerged and stopped this process. The key point here is that once policies to establish democratic controls by the elected civilians over the military are not pursued consistently, the military’s disengagement from politics can become more improbable. That is why the verdicts in the Sledgehammer case, which convicted 324 past and present members of the military, including four-star generals and force commanders, can be interpreted both positively and negatively. By demonstrating the readiness of the judiciary to arrest, try and convict, for the first time, TSK members who attempt to overthrow an elected government, it has acted as a preventive measure.
Yet, in a country where “regime issues” — issues like secularism, citizenship, Islamism, Kurdish nationalism — can legitimize the political engagement of the military and where the government is still not fully accepted as regime-friendly by the old guard, and more importantly, where the legal-constitutional-psychological status of civilian supremacy is not fully established, I would still feel uneasy if I were in the seat of civilian power. Moreover, in a regime where not all elected political parties support verdicts in cases of “coup” attempts — I am referring to the Republican People’s Party (CHP) — I would not seek comfort from the silence of the officer corps.
Despite some reforms, why do Turkey’s civil-military relations still cause concern?
There are a number of reasons for this. The momentous changes made in the National Security Council (MGK) in 2003 and the 2004 constitutional amendments were driven by the conjectural need to align the Turkish system with the EU, not by an intended or well-thought-out desire to establish democratic controls over the TSK. That, I believe, is the main culprit for the AK Party’s lethargy in making durable institutional, legal and constitutional changes in civil-military relations. This lethargy began towards the end of its first term in office. So much so that although the party leadership knew about the Ergenekon coup plots when they were made, it found it more worthwhile to guard itself against a potential threat from the army by building a power base for itself rather than by following up the 2003 reforms with more legislation and institutionalization to establish clear and consistent democratic control of the military.
It seems safe to say that the early reforms were the result of the military “shooting itself in the foot,” rather than of a democratic move by the government. Just remember the shock we all went through in April 2007 when the military high command attempted to block the presidency of the ruling party’s candidate, Abdullah Gül, through morally and constitutionally questionable means. The historic referendum of Sept. 12, 2010, was in part a reaction to this act. It was an attempt to reset the balance in civilian favor and to end the tutelary role of a judiciary that acted as the system’s “guardian.” The huge support for the referendum also opened the way for the investigations, arrests and trials of former coup-makers. So far so good.
What is wrong in this picture, then?
The fact still remains that especially after the fading out of the flagship security project of the EU, the government chose to rely on the existing security structures (the police, national intelligence and the army) rather than change them. The appointment of a chief of General Staff, Gen. Necdet Özel in 2011, who is compliant with the government, consolidated this trend of “not rattling the cage” in the army and provided a false sense of security to the government.
Is the AK Party not aware of this false sense of security?
The AK Party’s antipathy regarding military reform also stems from its conservative-authoritarian political identity that sees nothing wrong with prioritizing security over democracy and leaving the war against the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] entirely to the high command. To be fair, polarization and militarist-authoritarian tendencies in society provide significant barriers to the government’s attempts to totally diminish the tutelary role of military institutions and change its education, indoctrination, promotion and appointment processes as well as establish budgetary controls.
In terms of civil-military relations, it seems that civilian supremacy is established at least on the surface. What is the status of civilian supremacy in Turkey? Is it consolidated? If not, what did the AK Party fail to do?
For pragmatists, this lack of action on the part of the government is understandable. But for those of us who think that civilian supremacy can only be established by better, deeper and more durable institutional and constitutional reforms and some risk-taking by the elected governments, the AK Party has definitely failed to achieve negation of the “military factor” in Turkish life.
That doesn’t mean to say that the officers as a monolithic bloc are bent on defying and destroying the civilian order and taking over the management of the country. But similarly, it is not correct to think that Turkey’s officers have stopped having a distinct worldview that makes them assume they are superior to the “incompetent” civilian politicians. This view is reproduced by their autonomous education system. That is why as long as democratic controls are established in a half-baked manner, unfortunately, it is still very important to factor the TSK’s antipathy towards pluralism and sympathy towards a rigid one-nation, one-language, one-idea motto into our future plans for a more inclusive democracy.
Sledgehammer verdict and the reaction of the military
After the verdict, the General Staff issued a statement online saying that “as the TSK, we believe — as we have always done as a requirement of our respect for the rule of law — that the trial in question will be concluded with a final verdict [in the Supreme Court of Appeals] within the principles of a fair trial and in a just way.” What strikes me about this statement is that rather than reacting to the verdicts by saying that they would initiate reforms in the institution so that such cases would not occur in the future, the online statement voices the high command’s opinion on the fairness or unfairness of the trials in a civilian court that is uncalled for in any normal functioning democracy.
The list of necessary reforms is long, and they involve legal and constitutional changes of almost all aspects of military life and institutions. However, the most significant and best way to start would be revamping the Ministry of Defense to create a civilian body competent enough to formulate and manage military and security policies and give “political” directives to the high command regarding its fighting strategies.
What about the situation in terms of accountability of the military?
The accountability problem relates to the issue of transparency. In established democracies, militaries are by definition transparent and accountable to the public via parliamentary and executive oversight. In Turkey, lack of accountability has reached utmost importance with the rising violence and death tolls in the Southeast, which, according to Crisis International, has cost 700 lives since the elections in June 2011. Although there has been a strong sense of dissatisfaction and anger in the last two decades in society and among politicians with the way the TSK is managing this war with passé ideas, methods and strategies, no public authority seems to be able to understand, contribute input or prevent and change anything much regarding the latest debacles in Uludere, Afyon and Bingöl, for instance.
“The war within” Turkey, so to speak, highlights the deadly and undemocratic “secrecy” surrounding the way the TSK decides to use its firepower and air strikes against the PKK while trying to limit risks to its troops. The responsibility here is shared by the elected government — for its lack of management and direction — as well as the TSK.
PROFILE
Ümit Cizre, born in 1946, is a prominent expert on civil-military relations in Turkey. She graduated with a degree in political sciences from London University in 1968. In 1982 she gained her master’s degree from Ankara’s Middle Eastern Technical University, and after five years received her doctorate. She worked for many years at Bilkent University in Ankara and in 2010 became the director of the Center for Modern Turkish Studies at İstanbul Şehir University. She was a Fulbright Scholar and a visiting professor at Princeton University, a Jean Monnet Research Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.
She is the author of the “Almanac Turkey 2005: Security Sector and its Democratic Oversight,” the first ever publication to critically examine the issue, published in 2006. The book was harshly criticized by the then-chief of General Staff as an attempt to undermine the military. In 2006, Cizre co-wrote an academic paper titled “Drawing lessons from Turkey’s and Spain’s security sector reforms for the Mediterranean.” The paper examined the guardianship role of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) over civil society and political parties in Turkey, comparing the situation of Turkey with Spain regarding the issue.
Her work includes the book “Secular and Islamic politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party [AK Party]“ (2007) and various articles, including “Turkey at the Crossroads: from ‘Change with Politics as Usual’ to ‘Politics with Change as Usual’,” in which she analyses the AK Party’s “new roadmap” following the elections in June 2011. In the article “Conceiving the New Turkey After Ergenekon” (2010), Cizre and Joshua Walker, a transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, examine the impact of the Ergenekon case on civil-military relations. She has also written on other topics, such as Turkey’s AK Party, which has been in power since 2002.
