TURKEY’S PRIME minister has defended the country’s military chief and warned against provocation, as allegations of a military plot against the Muslim ruling party threatened to undermine civilian and military efforts to purge anti-democratic factions inside the state apparatus.
“Efforts to stir up mistrust between institutions will harm . . . Turkey as a whole,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday after meeting the country’s top general to discuss the allegations. “The military high command has shown responsibility and sensitivity from the moment this story broke.”
The meeting came five days after Taraf, a Turkish newspaper, printed a document allegedly compiled by a military colonel earlier this year calling for the government to be toppled.
The document also suggested discrediting the pro-government Gulen Movement, a Turkish Muslim group with an estimated five million followers, by planting weapons and ammunition in its supporters’ houses.
Military prosecutors opened an investigation into the allegations last Friday. In a written statement issued on Monday, the military high command said it would not tolerate personnel “whose behaviour and thoughts were incompatible with the principles of democracy and a state of law”.
Talking yesterday to Turkey’s most influential daily, Hurriyet, chief of staff Gen Ilker Basbug described claims that the document was official military policy as “slander”. “No such orders were given,” he said.
The military is the self-styled guardian of Turkey’s secularism and has ousted four elected governments since 1960. It has been suspicious of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) since it came to power in 2002.
Relations between the two hit a low in April 2007 when the military posted a memorandum on its website hinting it might intervene. The memorandum sparked early elections, which the AKP won with a landslide.
At the same time, however, military chiefs have been working for several years to sideline hardliners among the rank and file.
In 2003 and 2004, the then chief of staff blocked two coup plots by his inferiors. Since June 2007, Gen Basbug has shown an unprecedented willingness to stand by as police arrested dozens of army officers, including two retired four-star generals, who prosecutors say were members of a gang that was attempting to destabilise the country in preparation for military intervention.
On Monday, Taraf cited an unnamed retired four-star general who said he had informed Gen Basbug years ago about the activities of the officers named in the document published last Friday.
“I told him they could put you and the [army] in a difficult position,” the retired general said. “[Gen Basbug] replied: ‘There is no way I will allow them to.’”
The difficulty modernisers inside the army face is that, since the start, many secular-minded Turks have seen the investigations as a mirage dreamed up by the AKP to discredit its rivals. Inside the army too, analysts say, pressure is increasing for Gen Basbug to call a halt to investigations.
Taraf’s allegations have polarised public opinion further, leaving Gen Basbug treading an even finer line than before between secularist hardliners and the government lobby.
Talking yesterday, the head of Turkey’s secular chief opposition party told his parliamentary group that the document was a fake aimed at destroying the reputation of the armed forces.
AKP deputies, meanwhile, said the army’s response to the controversy had been ambiguous. “It is meaningful that the army did not make any statement [on the documents] for days,” AKP deputy parliamentary group leader Bekir Bozdag said. “And when it came it was not satisfactory.”
Caught in the crossfire, Gen Basbug struck an angry tone in the interview with Hurriyet. If the document turns out to be true, “we will do whatever we have to”, he said. If it turns out to be false, “we will all see together how we will act. All Turkey will see.”