A Thing, its Opposite, and a Camel
It's nearly impossible to make sense of the Ergenekon case even if you live in Turkey and keep up with it daily. I tried to explain it to foreign readers a few years ago:
The Turkish Trial of the Century opened last month among scenes of pandemonium. With 86 defendants present, proceedings were temporarily adjourned for lack of space
The indictment against the alleged members of Ergenekon numbers 2,455 pages - the indictment of the Nazi high command at Nuremburg was less than 70 - and the defendants demanded every last page of it be read out loud. Some poor schlub of a prosecutor dutifully droned on, page after page, day after day. Arguments broke out over the appropriateness of uttering the swear words in a courtroom. After a week of this the defendants were so bored that the courtroom emptied out and the journalists secretly prayed for a bomb to go off, if only to relieve the tedium.
If you're trying to make sense of this, remember that Turkish politics are like the adage about the Arabic lexicon: any given word may mean a thing, its opposite, or a camel. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry. Neither does Ergenekon.
That said, Gareth Jenkins has done an admirable job of summarizing the case and explaining why it matters. Rumor here has it that he has in fact read every single word of the indictment--in Turkish. A better man than me! Gareth, you are today's winner of the official Claire Berlinski "Pundit Who for a Change is not Talking out of His Keister" award. Congratulations!
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May '10
Re: A Thing, its Opposite, and a Camel
Is it relatively new that the military is being undermined in this way? It sounds like the watchful eye of a politically concerned military has been a constant amid a long series of thinly veiled tyrannies. How uniform or various are the political views of the generals and top officers?
Re: A Thing, its Opposite, and a Camel
Well, don't forget that there have been four military coups here since the founding of the Republic, which is not precisely the mark of a healthy democracy either. And those coups were far from bloodless. There is serious cause to wish to see the role of the military diminished in Turkey--which is why the EU has insisted upon this as a condition of accession. But absent a powerful military that is prepared to intervene when things go off the rails, there's no real check on the power of the executive branch. That's the dilemma, and that's why the issue of the upcoming referendum on the Constitution is so important. The AKP has been able to present Ergenekon and other measures aimed at curbing the power of the military as part of the process of democratization, and in some significant ways, they are: The military shouldn't be functioning, for example, as the judiciary; how can one object to the replacement of military courts with civilian ones? But without creating other strong bodies that can check executive power, you're wandering into uncharted territory with obvious and easily exploited structural weaknesses.
Re: A Thing, its Opposite, and a Camel
Sorry, not sure if that answers the question. The concern about the undermining of the military dates from the AKP's rise to power, and it's not clear how uniform the political views of the generals and top officers are--this is a subject of great debate here.
May '10
Re: A Thing, its Opposite, and a Camel
That makes sense. Turks are struggling with the balance of powers. One can set up a system of checks and balances, but legitimizing those limits by force is another matter. Generally, citizens are willing to obey laws and politicians are willing to accept limits if those laws and limits are inherited. But it must be difficult to impose a new system without the force of the military.
In that regard, I wonder how much early Americans benefited from having a foreign enemy at the time to unify them.