TSK's image as an institution is becoming "normal," the army is transforming into an ordinary public institution whose actions may be questioned.

- 23 / 07 / 2008 07:59

Etyen Mahcupyan

We are going through a process in which the military is being forced to deal with four consecutive shock waves in a very short period of time. Each of these shock waves is experienced on different platforms.

However, when taken together, they also point to a fairly traumatic outcome. The first issue is the radical transformation in the global political situation at a historical moment in which modernist ideologies are of no use. It was obvious that the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), which was the inheritor of the single-party era and matured its cultural structure during the Cold War years, would be uneasy with the concept of democracy based on human rights and citizenship.

For the military, democracy was all about the ability of some favorable political parties that came to power through elections to impose harmless preferences on a limited public sphere.

However, in the current democratic setting, which became more concrete during the EU accession process, it is impossible to accept the existence of a public sphere surrendered to the state.

Besides, the limitations and restrictions that the state introduced in this regard would have no legitimate ground. Therefore, it is easy to understand the "internal unease" of an armed institution that maintains that it needs to stage a coup for ideological reasons but is left with no opportunity to proceed with such a coup. This means that there might be coup-lovers within the TSK at any given moment and that they may resort to actions that will put the army in a difficult position. For this reason, there is an ongoing problem of internalizing a new era in which the TSK will inevitably mind its own business and be unable to influence civilian politics.

The second issue is that the influence of the military over the civilian public is becoming questionable and even illegitimate because of the ongoing change of perception in Turkey amidst the new mental environment offered by the world.

This situation undermines the young military officers' world of meanings, confuses their minds and disrupts their mental balance to the extent that it implies a lack of social approval for the ideological identity gained through military training.

But this change also includes direct political extensions. The chance for military actors to become influential over the political sphere increasingly requires more complicated paths; not to mention that such attempts to become influential are not found "elegant" by society.

Therefore, the TSK's image as an institution is becoming "normal," the army is transforming into an ordinary public institution whose actions may be questioned. Parallel to this, we are going through a process in which the economic and social privileges of the military attract greater attention and are criticized and opposed.

The third issue is the ability of the new mental environment generated by social transformation to emphasize criticism as a value and the increased eagerness in all social segments to be informed about the activities of the state. This is so influential that the demand for being informed, which was set back in the past when it was said to be under the control of the military, is not affecting the entire community like an uncontrollable wave. It is now difficult to respect the confidentiality of any information.

Moreover, there is a commonly held view that abuse and misconduct, rather than security concerns, stand behind attempts to keep information confidential. This refers to an area of trouble that is not familiar to the TSK, which has no idea of how to respond to it because we are currently living in a period in which the number of media organs meeting this increased social demand is on the rise.

 And, inevitably, the most interesting information is held by the military. Therefore, we are going through an era in which the groups and discussions within the army are deciphered and the army's image is reconstructed in light of new information.

The fourth issue is the lack of any response to the invitation of the TSK, which seems to be stuck vis-à-vis the picture depicted above to the spiritual world of Kemalism.

The statement by the General Staff last week that dismissed allegations of a connection between Ergenekon and a military investigation three years ago invited the "Supreme Turkish Nation" to stage a democratic and legal reaction.

However, only 2,000 attended the rally held by the Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD) on the same day. One reason for this may be that the people associate this organization with coups.

But I think a more fundamental process is at work. The army has become ordinary in the minds of the people in Turkey. Promoting the army is closely related to how this organization is structured and operates. Maybe this "simple" nation wants to say that it is not "supreme" and that it wants to survive just like everybody else, because it is ordinary.

It is not easy for any organization to confront such intense shocks. The TSK, too, needs time. But during this period, its institutional transformation should not lag behind the pace of social transformation. Otherwise the feared chaos will inevitably arrive.