The Turkish press is reporting that, with the latest round of arrests of former military officers for allegedly forcing the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan’s Islamist government in 1997, one-in-five Turkish generals is now in prison.
Even those who see the end of military influence in Turkey as the litmus test for democracy should worry. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan now targets political opponents, real or imagined, without restraint. Under the Turkish system, an accusation is enough to jail an opponent, sometimes for years without trial. There is no mechanism for bail. On its surface, the targeting of the generals is ridiculous: The Turkish Supreme Court affirmed the illegality of the Erbakan and disbanded his party for violating Turkey’s constitution. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the Turkish court’s actions. Turkish generals might have pursued unsavory actions—especially toward Turkey’s Kurdish minority—but the sheer number of those now in prison suggests a separate motivation.
By turning a blind eye or even cheerleading Erdoğan’s repression, self-described human rights activists and diplomats enable him to target broader arrays of Turks. After all, while the arrests of Turkish generals make headlines, Erdoğan’s forces also target journalists, academics, politicians, and civil society activists.
Inconsistency also highlights the political agenda behind the arrests. In July 1993, a mob of Sunni Islamists—an important Erdoğan constituency—burned down a hotel in which Turkish Alevi intellectuals were holding a conference (Alevis are a Shi’ite offshoot). The arson killed 37 people. As Erdoğan changed the law to prosecute those he accused of oppressing Sunni Islamists, he chose not to pursue justice against those alleged to have murdered Alevis who, for sectarian reasons, he holds in contempt.
Turkey does not belong in Europe. Increasingly, Erdoğan shows that when it comes to issues relating to democracy, justice, and abuse-of-power, Turkey is more akin to Russia, Venezuela, and Pakistan.
The upside to this is that like, the Stalinist purges, it will leave Turkey almost defenseless and if or when Turkey gets or wants to get in a shooting war with a modern military state e.g. Israel, it will get an alley whipping it won't soon forget. Turkey has descended to the level of the Arab states where not only are the top military ranks populated only by cronies, crooks, family members and like minded ideologues, some of the jobs in the armed forces are not considered high status enough for even those people and so are left to rot. For example, the only branch of the Saudi Armed forces that receives manpower, money, materiel and training are the fighter pilots because that's the only job the princes and shieks will even do. All the tanks, infantry and missiles let alone all of the navy are second and third and fourth tier in Saudi Arabia. Most of the equipment is left to fall into disrepair, no one's trained to use it and the staffing nominally employed to use it is uneducated, poorly fed, poorly paid and mistreated. Arab armies, and now it seems Turkey is following suit, don't have an NCO corps to keep anything running. The mid level officers have no show jobs, they aspire to kiss up to the generals who are in place because of fealty to the leaders. n nBTW as a NATO member, it won't be possible for Turkey to keep their military dysfunction a secret very long. Any other NATO member that has any training with them will see it right away, even if they themselves are not much better off.