by Yayböke, Erol

civil-Military relations
The start of formal negotiations for EU accession
in October 2005 was a bittersweet notion for the
military. Although joining the EU is undoubtedly
the culmination of a modernization and Western-
ization process that started with Atatürk, the acces-
sion process requires dramatic changes in Turkey’s
political structure, including lessening the infuence
of the military. Although the military is willing to
make these changes in the name of membership, it
is unwilling to do so without some confdence in
future eu support.
One of the main problems with proposed EU
reforms is that they are vague and open to interpre-
tation. The political conditions of the Copenhagen
Criteria
are as follows: “Membership requires
that the candidate country has achieved stability of institu-
tions guaranteeing democracy,
the rule of law, human rights
and respect for and protection
of minorities.”
all accession
countries, including the most
recent entrants, have unique
characteristics; however, in
Turkey’s case its differences
may be disqualifying. Turkey could be treated as an exception with more strin-
gent accession guidelines that more geographically
“European” countries would not necessarily have
to deal with.
Nevertheless, the military remains vigilant in its
pursuit of the EU. Against what many Europeans,
and indeed many Turks, believe, the military is one
of the biggest advocates of accession. In addition,
former Minister Cem argues that in the over 60 NSC
meetings he attended, the military has never voiced
opposition to the idea.

Within reason, it is willing
to discuss lessening certain controls—including
civilian control of military budgets and military
judiciary reform among other things—for the sake
of furthering negotiations.

According to the European Commission, “Turkey
has made good progress in reforming civil-military
relations” since 2002.

However, the NSC remains
one of the prime targets for European criticism. Cur-
rently composed of seven civilian and fve military
members, it is chaired by a non-voting civilian.
While secret meetings still raise transparency issues,
regular press conferences keep the public vaguely
informed of some of the issues discussed. Although it has become the symbol of military interference in
civilian affairs, in reality, its “function is exagger-
ated in Turkish public opinion”
and by European
observers. The role of the NSC is to discuss and
make decisions over issues of national security
that are then presented to the government.

dr.
Aydınlı points out that the true infuential power
lies with the HMC, where four-star generals meet
directly with the Prime Minister and his staff at
least twice a year.

Policies are determined during
these meetings and it is here, not in the NSC, that
tension over policy arises. Due to the importance
Europeans place on the NSC despite its limited role,
the military is open to its reform.
another point of concern for the eu has been
the lack of civilian oversight over military budgets.
According to the European Commission, new laws
that came into effect in early 2005 “have the poten-
tial to improve budgetary transparency concerning
military and defense expenditures,”
but have not
yet done so. Additionally, civilian auditors have
been authorized to audit those expenditures and
report back to the Parliament. However, the military remains frmly opposed to
certain issues, such as ethnic diversity in the ranks,
due to fears that reforms will inhibit its ability to
help Turkey traverse these times of change.

The
military is proud of being the protector of Atatürk’s
legacy, and believes it must avoid the participation
of ethnic minorities, namely the Kurds, in order to
maintain this integrity and identity. According to
Aydınlı, it has tried to reach out to conservative
Muslims, hoping to erase the radically secular
image some of its leaders mistakenly perpetuated
after the ousting of Erbakan in 1998;

no such ef-
fort has been made to reach out to minorities. The
military fears recognition of minority groups would
threaten cohesion and expose the isolated troops to
deep divisions in Turkish society. Perhaps aware
that this is a very sensitive subject, the EU has not
called for great reform. the underlying ProbleM
military reform is one of many concerns the eu has
regarding Turkey. Of the 146-page 2005 Progress
Report published by the European Commission, less
than three pages focus on civil-military issues. This
has not been a signifcant area of concern because of
a high level of military cooperation up to this point.
There could come a time, however, when the mili-
tary ceases to cooperate. Although it is committed
to accession to the EU, the military understands its
role in Turkey’s stabilization and if any part of the
reform process—whether military, governmental, or economic—threatens the secular establishment
of modern Turkey based on Kemalist principles, it
will intervene.
The biggest internal dilemma for the military
today with regards to EU accession is the rise of
Islamic fundamentalism. With secular façades and
rhetoric geared towards garnering support from
the EU, parties based in fundamentalist Islam are
attempting, in some cases successfully, to gain
power in Turkish politics. With EU accession a pos-
sibility and the military’s reluctance to be seen as
the barrier to this goal, generals have been forced to
watch from a distance as Islamism, albeit of a more
moderate type, takes root. In the past it was the
military’s job to step in and ensure that the secular
status quo was maintained. Future pressure from
the EU could further curb its infuence, at which
point the military will have to make some diffcult
decisions regarding its role as stabilizer versus its
commitment to the European dream. ThE islamic funDamEnTalisT movEmEnT:
ThE rolE of rEligious ParTiEs
The recent success of islamic parties in Turkish
politics raises a troubling dilemma for those inter-
ested in protecting the secular nature of the state.
Religious freedom is widely viewed as a pillar of
democracy and Turkey’s efforts to control Islam,
such as managing mosques to limit the spread of
Islamic fundamentalism, are seen as undemocratic
by many observers. The principle of separation of
religion and state is arguably the least negotiable
of Atatürk’s teachings and vehemently protected
by the Kemalist military. As Turkey looks towards
Europe for its long-term economic and political
future, it must also guard against secular threats
presented by political Islam in the short-term. Despite attempted controls, fundamentalist
Islamic parties have had remarkable success at the
ballet box in the last two decades, to the dismay of
the military and other Kemalists. Public statements
made by current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan and other AKP (Justice and Development
Party) offcials declare allegiance to the accession
process, although it is uncertain what the goals of
the party and its leader truly are with regards to
Islam. If Prime Minister Erdoğan indeed wishes
to create an Islamic state based on Islamic laws,
as many people fear he does,

his pro-accession
speeches amount to empty rhetoric. If he adheres
to the path of moderate Islam while protecting
the secular principles on which the country was founded, Turkey may have a chance to be a success-
ful EU member and an example to its neighbors. In
the meantime, the military must watch the process
unfold and be prepared to defend the secular status
quo if necessary. Paradoxically, such an interven-
tion would be detrimental to the future of Turkish-
eu relations, but necessary if Turkey is to maintain
its progress towards Westernization.
the rise and fall of refah
The story of Islam in modern Turkish politics
starts well before Refah’s surprising frst-place fn-
ish in the 1995 elections. The military, and indeed
many government offcials, felt threatened by the
increasing support gained by leftist parties in the
1970s, resulting in the coup of 1971 during which
many leftist party leaders were imprisoned. Re-
ligious conservatives, viewed at the time as less
dangerous than the leftists, had already begun
organizing politically and were not affected by the
coup.

Among them was Necmettin Erbakan, a
political fgure rapidly gaining popularity among
the religious right. Fearing a Marxist revolution
and disturbed by the student revolts in the US and
Europe around that time, Kemalist military leaders
chose to support Erbakan and his new Milli Savcilar
Partisi (National Salvation Party, MSP) against a
secular but liberal suleyman demirel in the elec-
tions of 1973.

Although he would lose to Demirel,
Erbakan’s dynamic public speaking ability and his
appeal to conservative Muslims quickly made him
a household name. A fundamentalist Sunni Muslim, Erbakan was
again used by Kemalists as a “counterweight to
. . radical ideologies that were gaining strength in
Turkey” in 1980.

In an effort to stop leftist radical-
ism, the military supported a radical Islamist whose
MSP was blatantly anti-West and promised to cre-
ate “a country which would be fully industrialized
through economic cooperation with the Muslim
world, the prerequisite of which was the return
to Islam as the basis of social organization.”
The
military’s attempt to choose the “lesser of two evils”
not only went against its Kemalist principles but
would also soon come back to haunt it.
The fall of the Soviet Union and decline in world-
wide leftist radicalism meant that the time was right
for Erbakan to take center stage. Candidates from
his new Refah Party
began winning rural munici-
pal elections as early as 1984 and burst into national
prominence with impressive city mayoral victories
in 1991. This local success carried over into 1994
when Refah candidates Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and
Melih Gökçek became mayors of Turkey’s two larg- est cities and previous secular strongholds, Istanbul
and Ankara, respectively.

islamic Party success
was no longer just a rural phenomenon. The 1994
victories set the stage for the 1995 parliamentary
elections when Erbakan would take on a fractured
collection of secular politicians from the dyP (True
Path) and Anavatan (Motherland, ANAP) parties.
Garnering 21.8 percent of the total votes,

refah
fnished in frst place and formed an uneasy coali-
tion with corruption-plagued DYP leader Tansu
Çiller even after she had arguably run the most
vehemently anti-Islamist campaign.

How was this radical Islamic party able to gain so
much support so quickly? By the mid-1990s, Turks
were frustrated with the instability and corruption
associated with the secular politicians of the time.
The Refah platform resonated with the general
Turkish public, emphasizing morals and a return
to traditional family values. The party appealed
to recent rural-urban migrants who suffered from
high unemployment and were starving for the
“just order” promised by Refah.

It was also able
to organize at the grassroots level and truly show compassion for the “ordinary Turk,” something
Mesut Yılmaz of ANAP and Çiller of DYP were
strangely incapable of doing. Refah won the 1995
election by a slim margin, but its victory indicated
that Islamic parties (or at least their social agendas)
had the potential for widespread appeal.
The military began to worry about Refah in the
late 1980s, but not until Refah came to power did
its discontent become obvious. As protectors of
Atatürk’s reforms, it had reason to worry. Erbakan
was precisely the radical it had feared through-
out the 1970s and 1980s, just in a fundamentalist
Islamic, rather than leftist, form. In addition to
wanting to make Turkey more open to Islam, his
comments refected a desire to create an Islamic
state. In speeches leading up to the 1995 election, he
openly proclaimed that he would “work for a just
order, to liberate Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya and
Jerusalem,” later stating his intention to create “an
Islamic United Nations, an Islamic NATO and an
Islamic version of the EU.”
At the time Turkey was
not an offcial candidate for membership in the EU,
but it is safe to say that he was generally opposed
to any cooperation with the West.
Erbakan threatened to reverse secular reforms Erbakan threatened to reverse secular reforms
and align Turkey with its Muslim neighbors to the
south, distancing it from the Europe-centric future
envisioned by Atatürk. Even though a majority of
Turks were shocked by the success of the Refah
Party, the inability of secular politicians to cooper-
ate against a common enemy, preferring instead
to vie for power amongst themselves, left the door
open for Erbakan. Many who voted for him on the
basis of his social agenda were later turned off by his
overly Islamic rhetoric. Secularism was ultimately
more important to Turks than social policy and Er-
bakan’s quest for “worldwide Muslim solidarity”

was disconcerting at best. The Turkish population
faced a problem it could not solve on its own and
once again, it was time for the military to intervene
on behalf of an immature voting population.
Inspired by frequent public outbursts against
Erbakan’s Islamism and annoyed by his reluctance
to change course despite pressure from the NSC, the
military began publicly releasing the problems it,
and subsequently many Turkish citizens, had with
him.

Although the mili-
tary never directly asked
for his resignation, the
pressure eventually be-
came overwhelming and
after less than a year in
offce, Erbakan resigned
in what has been dubbed
Turkey’s frst post-mod-
ern “soft coup.”
refah was officially banned in early 1998 for “[using]
religion for political purposes, [promoting] civil
unrest and [seeking] to launch a theocratic state.”

Interestingly, this decision was upheld by the Eu-
ropean Court of Human Rights that unanimously
ruled in 2003 that “‘there had been no violation’
of the European Convention on Human Rights,”

validating the military’s efforts.

__________________
The color of blood in my veins is green,I am a proud Pakistani.