Iraq incursion could be scenario for coup

Inside Turkey Mumtaz Soysal, leader of the Party of the Independent Republic, provides an insight into a tense power struggle between the military and government.

The Turkish parliament is virtually certain to endorse a resolution today authorising armed intervention against Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq. Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday stressed that an incursion was "not imminent". The authorisation will be valid for one year.

Twice in 2003 Erdogan obtained parliamentary approval to send troops into northern Iraq, but never did so because of pressure from Washington and Iraqi Kurdish leaders. But because of recent attacks by the separatist PKK, and the vote last week by the US Congress's foreign affairs committee labelling the mass killings of Armenians during the first World War as genocide, this time is different.

Through more than half a century in the Nato alliance, the US and Turkish militaries have forged strong links. After the vote on the Armenian resolution, Gen Yasar Buyukanit, the chief of staff of the Turkish armed forces, send a message to Washington: "Our military relations with the US will never be the same again." Erdogan's advisers sense the Turkish military has laid a trap for him in northern Iraq. "We think he handled [ the PKK crisis] very badly," says Mumtaz Soysal, a former foreign minister and former parliamentarian. He now teaches constitutional law and heads the small Party of the Independent Republic (BCP), whose goal is to be as close to the military as possible.

Though his rhetoric is hardline, Soysal is not without humour. The sunflower is the symbol of his BCP party. "We're going to change it to something more aggressive," he says.

Like a lion or tiger? I ask.

The 78 year-old breaks into a grin: "Well, perhaps a cat."

Soysal occasionally lectures at the Turkish military academy, and is so close to the generals who maintain a tense relationship with the prime minister and president that supporters of the ruling AKP snidely call him "the civilian soldier".

Turkish generals have ousted four civilian governments in the past 47 years, and war in northern Iraq is one of several scenarios for yet another coup. The prime minister "has relied too much on talks with President Bush," Soysal says.

"Even after the 15 were killed [ on October 7th-8th], he said, 'I'll talk about this when I see President Bush in November'."

Soysal says the Turkish armed forces "will probably use air attacks, landing in spots with helicopters, rather than a large-scale operation" in northern Iraq. But they are also considering a permanent cordon sanitaire beyond the mountains on Turkey's border with Iraq.

In a speech at the military academy on October 1st, Buyukanit implicitly recognised that a military operation could also target the US's Iraqi Kurdish allies. "Should an independent state emerge in [ Kurdish] northern Iraq, it would constitute a major risk to Turkey in both political and security terms," he said.

Twice this year the generals have threatened Turkey's neo-Islamist government. Government advisers say a coup is inconceivable following the AKP's 47 per cent election victory in July.

But Soysal relishes the prospect of "something like Algeria". (The Algerian military cancelled elections that would have brought Islamists to power in 1992, starting a civil war that killed some 200,000 people.)

"Our military don't want to make the wrong coup," Soysal says. "They're too sophisticated; they don't want to lose prestige. They are economical with their ammunition. They would like to wait for the opportune time to intervene. It hasn't come yet.

"There is a silent war between the military and the [ ruling] politicians," he warns. "It would be foolish for the present government to think the period of coups is over."

Under the AKP, Soysal predicts that Turkey will come to resemble Malaysia or Iran, that his daughters will be forced to wear the headscarf.

A new draft constitution would allow women to wear headscarves at university. "We will not let them," Soysal vows. "We will oppose it."

Civilian control over the military is a key requirement for Turkish accession to the EU. Marc Pierini, the EU's ambassador to Ankara, is scrupulously neutral in the power struggle between the military and the government. "Religious questions are not part of the negotiations," Pierini said.

"It is clear that neither a theocratic state nor a military state has its place in the EU. Greece, Spain and Portugal all joined Europe after the fall of military regimes."

Soysal, like the Turkish top brass, accuses Erdogan of conceding too much to Brussels in negotiations. "We think our country now is in the hands of the EU and US. We would like to follow a more independent line." Soysal says the government uses negotiations with the EU as a "smokescreen" to hide intentions of Islamicising Turkey, and that George Bush intends for Turkey to be a model "moderate Muslim state" for his failed "Greater Middle East Initiative".

"To make us a 'model', they are reducing us to a lower form of society," he explains.

Soysal broke away from the CHP, the party founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, because he believed it had betrayed the ideals of the founder of modern Turkey. He sees his own party as the true heir of Kemalism. Though the military imprisoned him for 18 months in the 1971 coup, all is forgiven.

"Kemalist ideology is taught very thoroughly in military schools," Soysal says. "Of all sectors of Turkish society, the military is the most Kemalist. Their emphasis is on independence and nationalism."

A photograph of Mustafa Kemal (the patronym 'Ataturk' was added later) with Bolshevik officers hangs above Soysal's desk. Though military coups are more readily associated with the right, Soysal insists that Kemalism is a left-wing ideology. "The Bolsheviks were the only ones who supported Kemal's revolution," he says.

Buyukanit warned on October 1st against "weakening the state" by privatising state-owned businessses. Soysal rails against the government's liberal economic policies.

Last month Lt Gen Hilmi Akin Zorlu, the head of general staff planning, warned the Erdogan government not to move too quickly to enact reforms demanded by the EU, including the abrogation of article 301 of the penal code (which punishes "insults against Turkishness") and a resolution to the Cyprus question.

Like the military, Soysal takes a dim view of efforts by the Turkish Cypriot president, Mehmet Ali Talat, to resolve the 33-year-old division of the island by absorbing the north into the EU, along with the Greek south.

"It is not in Turkey's interest to lose northern Cyprus," Soysal says. "The Turkish armed forces are there to stop them. It is shocking to see these people whom Turkey fought for, whom 500 Turkish mothers lost their sons for . . . We find this a sort of betrayal."