What the Turkish Military is Thinking
Flownover asked me for my opinion about what the Turkish military is thinking today. I expect he meant, "What they're thinking about Egypt," but I have to imagine their minds are on more immediate matters: The courts have just issued orders to lock up 162 of their officers:
A Turkish court ruled Friday that 133 current and former military officers must be jailed pending the outcome of their trial on charges of plotting to overthrow the government and issued warrants for the arrests of 29 other officers, Anatolia news agency reported.
Security forces immediately closed all courthouse doors and detained the defendants, including the former air force and navy chiefs, broadcaster NTV reported. The officers began chanting military songs to protest the court's decision, the TV station reported.
The officers, including several high-ranking generals, are on trial accused of conspiring to topple Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government in 2003. All but one officer had been free until Friday's hearing.
Dani Rodrik, whose father-in-law Çetin Doğan is the main defendant, has written a detailed account of his efforts to persuade the Turkish public that these accusations are a sham:
THE REACTION we got from the country’s liberal intelligentsia was symptomatic. The Turkish intelligentsia has made common cause in recent years with the AKP government, thanks in large part to the AKP’s success in presenting itself as a force for democratization and civilianization of Turkish politics. These intellectuals see Sledgehammer and other similar trials as a chance to make ultra-secularists and militarists accountable for the crimes of the past. Given Turkey’s history of military coups, this is understandable; we saw things pretty much the same way until recently.
What was much more difficult to fathom was these intellectuals’ unwillingness to question their beliefs in light of mounting evidence that the defendants had been framed. Many of Turkey’s leading “liberals” simply turned their backs on the evidence that we had amassed. They refused to meet with us, failed to show up at panels where we presented our findings, and left our e-mails unanswered. The reporter who first broke the Sledgehammer story in the newspaper Taraf, a ubiquitous presence in the Turkish media, declined invitations to debate us on TV. Ironically, while we were in Turkey prosecutors were forced to reveal—after presistent demands from lawyers—reams of material pointing to the inconsistencies we had identified (and more), which they had chosen to disregard (and hide from the defense).
I suspect the minds of the Turkish military are concentrated on prison walls, Flownover. Of course, the world's attention is focused elsewhere. I challenge you to find any more information about this event, in English, than has been offered in the link I provided.
See also:
Victor Davis Hanson: "The Obama Doctrine at Play in Egypt"
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Comments :
Aug '10
Re: What the Turkish Military is Thinking
Wow. I had been wondering why so quiet , now I find out this bad, sad news . Why doesn't this get reported in US ? Is it (1) not in the admin best interests (2) doesn't fit the narrative of the flower revolutions ,meaning Soros doesn't have his bets down ,or (3) too obscure for a platoon of 24/7 news content providers to include after the Lohan/Sheen wrap-up ? I'll check around and see what I can find out and see if that challenge is too tall.
May '10
Re: What the Turkish Military is Thinking
Claire, has Erdogan managed to emasculate the military enough to have it under his thumb with fear, now? Or, do you think the other officers are watching and thinking holy crap we need to do something to stop this or we're next?
Jul '10
Re: What the Turkish Military is Thinking
I love a good challenge. This piece is clearly based on that AP report, but it does fill in some details, especially in the concluding paragraphs.
Is worldbulletin a Turkish enterprise? It certainly seems focused on Turkey.
Nov '10
Re: What the Turkish Military is Thinking
I spent a couple of months traveling around Turkey in 2002. The sense I got from people was that the Turkish Army was the most respected institution in the country and that to be an officer in the Army gave one the highest honor. The Erdogan era had not yet begun but was expected to happen. I was told by some that they weren’t too worried that Ataturk’s reforms would be reversed because the Army would step in before that could happen.
But lately I’ve read that Erdogan has been systematically weakening the Army so that when he decided to take Turkey to a full Islamic state on the order of Iran the Army would be too weak to stop him. Do I have any of that right, and if so, is this the beginning of a revolution in Turkey to turn back the 20th century reforms of Ataturk and put it back to the 7th century?
May '10
Re: What the Turkish Military is Thinking
Claire, I am so grateful that you have educated me through the months on what is happening in Turkey. I spent last summer sitting at the pool with my children in swimming lessons reading a back list of everything you posted about that part of the world. It inspired me to read other articles, which included these horrific accounts of unjust imprisonments of the military officers and the solitary confinements they had to endure. One story sticks out of one of them developing cancer and they refused him treatment until it was far too late. It's horrifying.
Jan '11
Re: What the Turkish Military is Thinking
Claire, you're right again. I could find nothing on this beyond the uninformative AP report in the New York Times, which reads as if it was copied straight from a press release from the state's news agency. What's even more alarming is that I couldn't even find more than a couple of instances of that by searching Google. Is Google trying to bury this story, or just incompetent?
Aug '10
Re: What the Turkish Military is Thinking
So, is it time to admit the loss of Turkey as an ally, a NATO ally, and that we have to go get our nukes out ? The strength of their alliances with Iran/Russia/China exceeds ours ? Israel runs to Greece, Cyprus comes back on the radar. Whither the weapons systems that Turkey and Egypt share, like the F16 ? We have done nothing to restrict their use ( the North Cyprus deployment clearly wrong) and London is mute. Where will Jordan and Saudi turn ? They must look to NATO. There are two Iranian warships docked in Jeddah , waiting to sail into the Mediterranean on orders from Tehran pending transit thru Suez on approval of the new Egyptian regime ?
Edited on Feb 12, 2011 at 11:28amWhat of the Christians and Jews in that part of the Mediterranean ? Ikhwan looms. Can you smell the rot from Foggy Bottom ?
Oct '10
Re: What the Turkish Military is Thinking
So far, all evidence is ‘he said, she said’, very difficult to penetrate. As Turkey’s secular state has always depended upon the military for its survival, it has been a great failure of the west not to have opened its doors to allow for tighter integration.
It would appear that Islam is in the ascendency throughout the middle-east, encouraged no doubt, by shifting (drifting?) changes in US policies. Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt and now Turkey losing secular (albeit dictatorial) government and soon to be joined by Jordan, Pakistan and ???; and they say the sun rises in the East...
Edited on Feb 12, 2011 at 10:04am