TURKEY: The army doesn't much care for the country's new government, Nicholas Birch reports from Istanbul
Trying to understand the idiosyncracies of Turkish politics? Start by looking at the images, on Turkish television yesterday and today, of the monthly National Security Council meeting.
On the left, some smiling, some slouched in their chairs, the country's senior cabinet ministers. On the right, straight-backed and stern, generals.
With the largest parliamentary majority in almost 20 years, the six-month old Justice and Development Party (AKP) government should by all accounts have the power to push through its stated programme of preparing Turkey for European integration, stabilising the economy and cleaning up the country's corruption-ridden political system.
Instead, yesterday it was once again given a dressing-down by the top brass, fierce guardians of Turkey's secular heritage who are suspicious of the party's roots in political Islam and worried that democratisation could loosen their hold on power.
As well as criticising AKP plans to improve links with Islamist groups popular among Europe's massive Turkish diaspora, the generals also targeted the government's continuing replacement of senior bureaucrats with their own supporters.
"You may not like it, but all governments do it," says a political scientist, Mr Soli Ozel. "What worries the army now is that the bureaucracy is traditionally an ally. It doesn't want that alliance weakened."
Tensions between the two have been high since April 23rd, when the opposition party and generals boycotted a reception hosted by the parliamentary speaker, Mr Bulent Arinc, to celebrate the foundation of parliament.
Why? They saw the planned presence of his head-scarfed wife as a political challenge to the secular basis of the Republic.
In an effort to defuse tensions, Mr Arinc's wife eventually decided not to attend. But the boycott stood.
Like many prominent Turkish liberals, Mr Cengiz Candar, a political commentator, supported AKP's bid for power last November, seeing them as a better bet than the traditional parties that had pitched Turkey from crisis to crisis throughout the 1990s. He's having second thoughts now, disappointed by their unwillingness to stand by their programme.
"This headscarf affair isn't the first time they've backed down," he says. "Their failure to push through laws liberalising the education system and their choice under pressure to dump a constructive approach to Cyprus just show their total impotence."
Other commentators point out that AKP's political power is not as great as its two-thirds parliamentary majority suggests. "In real terms, AKP came to power with only a quarter of Turks supporting it," explains a political scientist, Mr Dogu Ergil. "Added to which, most Turks still see the army as the only trustworthy barrier against political mismanagement."
Like other analysts, Mr Ozel thinks it unlikely that the army will step in again. But that is not to say that tensions between government and military will subside. With the European Union preparing to look into Turkey's membership application next year, by far the most controversial issue is the need to cut back on the military's excessive influence on politics.