April 30, 2007	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 12, 1428

ANKARA: The Turkish army, which on Friday threatened action to protect the country’s secularist system, regularly tops opinion polls as the country’s most respected institution.

After toppling four governments in as many decades, most recently 10 years ago, the military also remains a potent political force that many outside Turkey – particularly in the European Union – fail to grasp.

It is also Nato’s second biggest army after the United States, with half a million soldiers battle-hardened from two decades of fighting a Kurdish insurgency in southeast Turkey.

It staged two old-fashioned coups d'etat in 1960 and 1980, but such is its influence that in 1971 and 1997 it managed to topple the government by “coups by communique”. In 1997, a list of “recommendations” came in the form of an ultimatum that was so strong that it toppled Turkey’s first Islamist government, led by Necmettin Erbakan.

Its latest intervention, Friday’s “midnight memorandum”, reminded the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the army had not only moral, but also legal responsibilities to defend the “secular, democratic and social character” of the Turkish Republic.

But the government hit back and sharply called the military to order.

“It is inconceivable in a democratic state based on the rule of law for the general staff ... to speak out against the government,” said Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, the government spokesman.

The army top brass has seen its influence wane over recent years under reforms readying the country for possible membership of the European Union.

But until 2003, the Turkish army was unique in the West in maintaining a major political role.

Its top generals not only sat on but also ran the National Security Council that shaped the country’s foreign and domestic policy.

That role was set out in Turkey’s current 1982 constitution, dictated by the military junta that seized power in 1980 and overwhelmingly approved by plebiscite in 1983.

The constitution was amended in July 2003 as part of reforms to bring Turkey in line with EU norms and the all-powerful NSC of old became a civilian-dominated think tank.

Necmettin Erbakan, the prime minister who was toppled in 1997 and whose party was banned for anti-secular activities in 1998, was the political mentor of Erdogan who says he has renounced his Islamist past.

Political Islam is anathema to Turkish officers, whose education in military schools, colleges and academies is dominated by Kemalist ideology, based on the principles set forth by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern, secular republic.

They are taught to protect the republic and trained not only in the art of war, but also in dancing and etiquette, as befalls the elite of the young republic Turkey was after its founding in 1923 on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and a costly war of independence.

Although its tradition of meddling in politics is beginning to rankle in contemporary Turkey, for a large majority of ordinary Turks, the army is synonymous with respectability and serving in it – as every Turkish male must after the age of 18 – is a “sacred duty”. Opinion surveys unerringly have the military as champions of probity, compared to a political class perceived as stained with nepotism, corruption and cronyism.

The reality may be less squeaky clean but the army does its best to maintain its image and last year a court martial jailed a former commander-in-chief of the Navy for corruption.—AFP