Cyprus-Forum.com

[fanourıo]

CIVILIANS AND MILITARY




The relations between civilians and military in Turkey has been debated hotly since the visits of Foreign Minister Gül and Chief of General Staff Gen. Büyükanit to America. This despite the efforts of Mr. Gül to convince the public that there is no discrepancy between Prime Minister Erdogan and Mr. Büyükanit’s approaches towards entering into dialogue with Kurdish leaders of northern Iraq over the PKK and that their statements were complementary. It seems that nobody is convinced, and we have once again ended up with many questions regarding civilian-military relations, who should follow whom, etc.

Unfortunately civilian-military relations in Turkey have been abnormal for decades, but this situation has been regarded as acceptable by many, including Westerners who do not really care about democracy but only for their interests. They all claim that as Turkey’s conditions, Turkish military’s role and history are unique and the masses are not democratically mature, the military is justified in interfering in daily politics. This myth has to be shattered.


In the Ottoman centuries, many Turks were either soldiers or farmers and there was not a Turkish bourgeoisie, let alone educated masses. Under these conditions one could not have a proper democracy as it had developed in the West. Turks invested their scarce resources in modern military schools and sent their most intelligent children to these schools. Afterwards, these well-educated bright military officials together with Foreign Ministry bureaucrats socially engineered top-down Turkish modernization. Yet today, our society is no longer pre-modern, where a strong Turkish bourgeoisie has investments and contracts all over the world, our intellectuals and scholars are well-versed in global discourses, and the country is full of civil society institutions, well-educated bureaucrats, hundreds of daily newspapers, radio and TV stations. Millions of our citizens have been abroad. Literacy rate is over 90 percent. In short, this society is mature by democratic standards and wisdom is no-one’s monopoly.

With all due respect to our army’s historic role, almost every nation respects their armies. Yet in places where democracy is the only game in town, soldiers do not interfere in public discussions -- including on security issues -- they defend the society but do not define it. Moreover, to steadily maintain a much-needed powerful army we need a powerful country with a full democracy, where citizens feel that they are not seen as “immature grassroots” whose elected representatives are not obeyed by soldiers.


In proper democracies, politicians reach decisions by consulting many people such as Foreign Ministry bureaucrats, intelligence agencies, etc. -- not only army chiefs. They are free to say or do anything within the legal limits, even based on their stupidity, if not consultation. When they fail, they pay the price at the elections or even are tried of treason. Yet we do not know who the leader of the coup d’etat, Gen. Evren, consulted when he allowed Greeks back into NATO without any bargaining. Now Greeks consume most of our willpower in the EU process, and Cyprus is one of Turkey’s major foreign policy issues. We all also remember our hawkish top brass haranguing in Brussels to Turkish diaspora on how to overcome Turkey’s economic crisis by getting some paint and paper and printing money.


We are all, including our military brethren, humans; we all err and that is why we should be able to discuss without the fear of guns being pointed at our heads.

I Tottaly Agree

[cypezokyli]

re fano, how can you put your name under sth that was posted by another member of the forum ? !!!

[fanourıo]

sorry i judt wanted to sign my agreement with it i did not mean to show it as mine....

[fanourıo]

You are right! it seems that as if I wrote it... ishall correct

[fanourıo]

I think I have fixed it!

[Pyrpolizer]

With all due respect to our army’s historic role….

We are all, including our military brethren, humans…….

I Tottaly Agree

[Pyrpolizer]

I think I have fixed it!

What have you fixed?

[cypezokyli]

I think I have fixed it!

What have you fixed?

it doesnt seem that he was the one who wrote it anymore

dont you agree with the essense of this article ?

[Pyrpolizer]

Those who ought to comment Cypez are those underlined above i.e those who consider the Turkish Army "OUR". As you can realize the number of responses from Turkish or TC participants of the forum so far reached the astronomical number of -0.

[fanourıo]

TC people seem not to want to answer to your ironical comments idiot!