Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last week scrambled to defuse growing tensions with the country's new hardline high command as the Turkish military once again began to flex its political muscles, reports Gareth Jenkins from Ankara Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced plans to establish a network of formal and informal contacts with the country's powerful military in order to try to defuse tensions in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections in 2007. Erdogan's announcement follows a series of public statements by top commanders in recent weeks warning that the secular Turkish republic was under threat. On 3 October, in a speech carried live on 11 national television channels, the new Chief of Staff General Yasar Buyukanit accused leading members of the government of trying to undermine secularism and reiterated the military's determination to combat what he described as religious fundamentalism. In a country where the military has staged four coups in the last 46 years, most recently in 1997, few are prepared to treat the warning lightly. Since it took power in November 2002, the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP) has been viewed with deep suspicion by most of the Turkish military. But Buyukanit's predecessor General Hilmi Ozkok, who was chief of staff from August 2002 to August 2006, enjoyed a relatively cordial working relationship with the JDP, adopting a low-key public profile while Erdogan resisted pressure to push through measures demanded by the JDP's grassroots supporters.These include easing restrictions on religious education and lifting the ban on women in headscarves attending university, or working in state institutions. One of the reasons for Ozkok adopting such a low profile was that, unusually for a leading Turkish commander, he was a deeply devout Muslim himself and thus less worried by a moderate Islamist government. The other was that he was aware that any direct military interference in politics could jeopardise Turkey's chances of EU membership. But Ozkok was an exception. Very few in the Turkish military share his sanguine view of the JDP. In recent years, most have been biding their time, waiting for Ozkok to retire and relying on Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, himself a staunch secularist, to use his presidential veto to keep the JDP in line. But Sezer is due to step down in May next year and is expected to be replaced either by Erdogan himself or by someone else with strong Islamist sympathies. While problems in Turkey's relations with the EU mean that not only is accession becoming an increasingly distant prospect, but as well, that public support for the EU is also plummeting. The most recent opinion polls suggest that only around 45 per cent of the Turkish population now support EU membership, down from 78 per cent two years ago. With little to lose and in the absence of an effective political opposition in parliament it is not just hardliners in the military who are looking to their commanders to curb the perceived Islamist ambitions of the JDP, many civilian secularists are too. There is a widespread fear that if a suitable candidate can be appointed to the presidency, the JDP government will attempt to push through a series of measures to placate its pious grassroots in the run-up to parliamentary elections, which are expected to be held in early autumn 2007. When he took over as chief of staff at the end of August, Buyukanit was under immense pressure to deliver a stern warning to the government. So far, he has not disappointed expectations in this direction. After Buyukanit spoke on 3 October, retired General Hussein Kivrikoglu, who served as chief of staff from 1998 to 2002, was quoted in the Turkish media as declaring that: "At last our four-year silence has been broken." Last week, Erdogan announced that he would try to ease the military's concerns by sending ministers to give formal briefings to leading generals. Informal contacts have been encouraged meanwhile, between members of the government and the military at social occasions and academic conferences. But the soldiers are likely to be more interested in action than soothing words. This would include a clampdown on Islamist activism and propaganda activities, and putting an end to both the appointment of Islamists to key positions in the bureaucracy and to statements by government ministers calling for a reinterpretation of the principle of secularism enshrined in the Turkish constitution. Yet the JDP government is itself already under intense pressure from its grassroots to do more, not less, to redefine the current interpretation of secularism in Turkey. Even if they succeed, Erdogan's plans to defuse tensions between the JDP and the military are unlikely to provide more than a temporary respite. Few in Turkey doubt that a major confrontation is coming. While a full-blown coup remains only a distant possibility, few doubt that over the months ahead, the country's military will cast an increasingly long shadow over Turkish politics.
