Turkish army takes its place in race

The warnings were veiled but unmistakable. With rhetoric that grew more intense each day, Turkey’s senior generals accused the government of pursuing a fundamentalist Muslim agenda. Tanks rolled through the streets in a show of force. Markets tumbled. Political rallies took a violent turn.

That was 10 years ago, when the first elected government in Turkey to embrace Islamist principles was driven from power by the army. That event still colors the world’s image of this vibrant but struggling secular democracy, whose political model is unique in the Muslim world.

With the 1997 military intervention still fresh in memories here, many in Turkey are asking whether the military has once again stage-managed something akin to a coup.

There is little question that the army was a driving force behind last week’s dramatic decision by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling party has its roots in political Islam, to set his government on a course for early dissolution, moving up the general elections to select a new parliament by nearly four months.

On Sunday, the party’s presidential candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, abandoned his bid until after those elections have taken place in July. The president is elected by parliament in Turkey.

But there are key differences between the tumultuous events of a decade ago and the present political drama. Reforms put in place over the last several years as Turkey has campaigned to join the European Union have diminished the army’s authority in affairs of state, though by no means ended it.

“We are in a kind of no man’s land, where the military is not as powerful as it was in mounting open coups, but has not yet been transformed into a position where it accepts political decisions that grow out of the democratic system,” said Bulent Aliriza, a former diplomat who directs the Turkey Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

‘Defenders of secularism’

Erdogan’s decision to call early elections came after massive anti-government demonstrations and a court decision that blocked the election of his party’s candidate for president. Many analysts believe, however, that the opposition parties and their followers were emboldened, even guided, by statements from the military’s powerful general staff suggesting that the army would step in if an Islamist became president.

“It must be remembered that the Turkish armed forces are ... the absolute defenders of secularism,” the army chieftains said in a sharply worded statement issued late April 27, hours after the first of what were to have been four rounds of voting for president. “When necessary, they will display their attitudes and actions very clearly -- no one should doubt that.”

When that statement was posted on the main military website, some commentators dubbed it an “Internet coup.”

Erdogan’s government angrily protested it as an effort to pressure the constitutional court to halt the presidential election. At anti-government protests, however, demonstrators praised the military’s warnings as a needed defense of the secular way of life.

“The army will be the ones to make sure we don’t have to wear Islamic head scarves,” said protester Aysegul Kansak, who marched with nearly three-quarters of a million people in Istanbul on April 29.

Ultimately, though, military pressure could backfire. Though bowing for the moment to the wishes of the army and judicial establishment, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party could well emerge even stronger, many analysts say. Polls suggest that the party could once again capture a parliamentary majority in the July 22 vote.

The party, also known by its Turkish initials AKP, will spend the coming weeks trying to push through constitutional changes that could strengthen its hand, including lowering the minimum age of candidates from 30 to 25 to reflect the party’s burgeoning support among the young.

The ruling party is also expected to reap benefits at the ballot box from an economic boom over the last five years, which has enriched and empowered a large swath of religiously conservative voters. The AKP’s constituency, once largely rural and poor, is now increasingly urban and middle-class.

Army’s central role

One of the striking aspects of the current political turmoil is the disconnect between how military muscle-flexing is regarded by the outside world and by a domestic Turkish audience.

Most Western governments view military coups, or threats of one, as the hallmark of a country whose democratic institutions are shaky at best. But here in Turkey, the notion of the army stepping in to oust a government, as it has done four times in the last 50 years, is broadly viewed as an integral part of the democratic system of checks and balances rather than a contradiction to it.

That is in part because the 1-million-member Turkish military, the second-largest standing army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after that of the United States, occupies a central role in the national psyche. The republic’s founding father, Kemal Ataturk, was a war hero who used the army as an instrument of nation-building, forging a modern state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

From childhood on, Turks are taught to regard the armed forces as the principal defenders of the secular system devised by Ataturk, who changed the Turkish alphabet to a Roman one, gave women the right to vote and restricted Muslim dress in public settings. Public opinion polls consistently rank the military as among the most trusted national institutions.

“There’s this nearly universal belief, a belief that runs very deep, that if the military isn’t involved, isn’t always vigilant, that Turkey will fall under Islamic rule,” said Lale Sariibrahimoglu, an analyst and journalist based in Ankara, the capital. “It’s a big part of the education and upbringing here.”

In addition, many Turks regard the current level of army involvement in politics as mild compared with armed coups of 1960, when three senior ministers were executed, and 1980, when some politicians were jailed.

Though a big win for the ruling party might rein in the military, some analysts warn that it could also set the stage for an even more serious confrontation down the road. That risk increases, they say, if the ruling party succeeds in pushing through constitutional reforms mandating that the president be elected by a popular vote rather than by the parliament. Lawmakers on Monday approved the first step in that process.

The presidency is a symbolically charged post in the eyes of the military, which is why the looming expiration of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer’s seven-year term on May 16 proved to be a tripwire for confrontation.

Turkey’s past presidents, always avowed secularists, are considered direct heirs to Ataturk. And the president is at least nominally the commander in chief of the military, has veto power and makes crucial judicial and other appointments.

“As far as the military’s role goes, this looks more like a crisis deferred than a crisis resolved,” analyst Aliriza said.

How the military conducts itself during the electoral campaign and afterward could prove a make-or-break factor in Turkey’s push for membership in the European Union.

Disillusioned

The Bush administration has strongly supported Turkey’s bid in the belief that it would bolster the country’s role as a bridge between the West and the Muslim world. But Turks have become increasingly disillusioned by what they see as arrogant and unrealistic European demands.

Some observers see elements of a self-fulfilling prophecy: that Turkey’s already-stumbling campaign for EU membership would be weakened by greater military intervention in politics, but the military may seek to reassert itself in coming months because of the belief that Turkey is already out of the running for EU admission.

Turks paid close attention when Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected Sunday as France’s next president, said flatly last year that Turkey should not be given a place in the bloc.

Some analysts said they thought the military would reconcile itself to a new government led by the current ruling party only if it involved significant power-sharing.

“So much will depend on how events unfold, on whether the election brings about some form of coalition government,” said Umit Cizre, a political science professor at Bilkent University in Ankara. “But if I had to make a prediction, this government will stick to its guns -- and the army will do the same.”

king@latimes.com