Turkey stages a coup
Okan Altiparmak, a consultant and filmmaker based in Turkey, has a column today on his on street-level views concerning the latest upheaval following Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's showdown with his military brass:
'Like something out of a Soviet bloc country rather than Turkeyâ??s traditional democracy, the government and its supporters spoke of â??an Ergenekon of soccer,â? a comparison to the trumped-up case in which many hundreds have been arrested and imprisoned without trial for three years. They were charged with allegedly planning a coup. Their actual â??crimeâ? seems opposition to the current government.One reporter for the pro-government and Islamist Todayâ??s Zaman newspaper, Huseyin Gulerce, spoke about networks of â??coupmakersâ? and subversive elements in soccer that would now be brought to heel. â??Today, the civilian authority is calling the shotsâ? and its enemies â??are doomed to lose.â? The timing of the soccer struggle coincides with the resignation of the four top military officers, another case of the government asserting itself over a key institution.
When Turkish voters approved the September 12, 2010 referendum on 26 items of constitutional change, the United States and EU hailed the results as proving â??the vibrancy of Turkeyâ??s democracyâ? and â??a step in the right direction.â?Â
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Writing in the Financial Times, David Gardner outlines what could come next:
'Mr Erdogan has clipped the armyâ??s wings and imposed new commanders. But this decisive battle does not conclude the war. Skirmishes will continue so long as the military retains its financial and judicial autonomy, and unresolved conflicts â?? with Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey and with Greece over Cyprus and the Aegean Sea â?? offer the generals a path back to influence. Yet that is not how it looks now...â??Ten years ago this would have led to a coup dâ??etat,â? says Umit Cizre, a scholar of army influence on politics at Istanbulâ??s Sehir University. The army has traditionally been the compass of the Turkish republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk after the first world war. Now, about one in 10 serving generals, 43 of them, is behind bars. The army can no longer protect its own. Kemalist officers are â??dumbfounded, angry and frustratedâ?Â, says one person close to the officer corps, â??they canâ??t grasp what has hit themâ?Â.
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The true ramifications of Erdogan's "reverse coup" within Turkey are unlikely to be known for some time, but as The Economist points out today in quoting Eric Edelman, the ramifications for NATO are unlikely to be positive.
'Keeping the generals out of politics is a must. But what of the armyâ??s day job? With 12% of serving generals and admirals in prison, notes Eric Edelman, a former American ambassador to Turkey and number two at the Pentagon under George Bush junior, â??the Turkish military gives every sign of being a broken and rudderless institution.â? He expresses concerns about the effects of a weakened Turkish army, the second-biggest in NATO, on the alliance, and on Turkeyâ??s region.'
"Peace at home, peace in the world," Ataturk said. The reverse tends to be true as well.
(AP Photo)