Modern Turkey is an exceptional case as it was allowed to maintain a massive armed force despite having lost a World War. The explanation to this special treatment lays in a consensus between the country's early elites and their Western counterparts. While Turkish elites guaranteed a secure southern flank to the Western club, the latter agreed to provide vital defense infrastructure as well as financial aid and to limit its democratic expectations to the minimum level. Hence, Turkish Armed Forces was able to interrupt democratic procedures at home as long as it remained loyal to certain international security engagements with the West.
At the international level, the deal worked well for both sides. The young republic's early alignment with the West and the ensuing NATO membership bestowed Turkey a whole 20th century without a major war. This was a true gift given decades of Soviet threat in Turkey's north as well as highly vengeful and unpredictable Baathist regimes in its south. As for the Western alliance, it beared the invaluable capacity to contain Soviet and Middle Eastern threats.
At the domestic level however, one can claim a mixed success at best. The international primacy given to the Turkish army played a key role in its disproportionate influence and involvement in politics, particularly through military interventions. In addition to its political clout, the army also enjoyed economic and judicial autonomy to an extent that violated universal democratic standards. Furthermore, acting as the guardian of an aggressive form of secularism positioned the army into a highly despicable image in the eyes of Turkey's peripheral but politically ambitious conservative masses.
It is quite telling that from 1960s on, intellectuals of Turkey's conservative stream usually likened the army to the Ottoman Janissary corps and the military coups to the frequent and violent Janissary revolts. The core idea in such analogy is that just as the Janissaries were an elite army of converts with no real connection to the people, Turkish Armed Forces was viewed by many as mentally foreign and even hostile to its own people, particularly towards their religious values. It was an army with many privileges and unchallenged power, but with no people.
Just as the legendary elite corps were exterminated by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826 during what he named the "Auspicious Incident"; a dramatic historical de ja vu took place on July 15th 2016, this time termed as "A Gift from God" by Erdogan, resulting in extermination of modern Turkish army. The two incidents have a long list of striking similarities. To note one, in 1826 Bosphorus was the execution scene of many Janissary troops and their corpses floated on the water for days, while the Bosphorus Bridge was where unarmed sodiers were slaughtered in an almost ritualistic form of savagery by AKP militia in 2016.
The most important similarity though, is the very fact that in both cases the ruler of the country used accumulated hatred to get rid of a political veto actor and a societal balancing actor at the same time. Mahmud II eliminated the Janissaries who stood against his substantial centralization agenda and he also criminalized the Bektashi sufi order which enjoyed considerable social influence and possessed large estates. In the "A Gift from God" version, Erdogan curbed the moderate wings of the army that opposed military adventures in the Middle East and iron fist policies against Kurds. He also skilfully used the coup attempt as a pretext to advance his Islamist agenda of erasing the Hizmet Movement's peaceful version of Islam from Turkey's social fabric while confiscating the Movement's multi-billion dollar assets.
With the recent assignments to take effect in late August, most of Turkish Armed Forces' key command posts have been handed to hardliner Eurasianist generals. These are officers who stood trial in the Sledgehammer case, were found guilty of attempting a coup, but were later on acquitted and released by Erdogan controlled judiciary as he needed new allies to dodge the corruption cases of December 2013 that implicated his son and ministers. The recent assignments came after a massive crackdown resulting in the purging of more than 10.000 military officers since the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016. Just a brief look at the professional credentials especially of high level purge victims leaves no doubt that Turkish army has systematically been deprived of qualified human capital after the deal struck between Erdogan and Eurasianists. As a result, sadly, the pendulum in Turkey's bitter story has moved from one extreme to the other: Now it is a country with no army to rely on.
The Auspicious Incident was followed by huge demise for the Empire. Mahmud II's legacy can be summarized as a centralized state on one hand and humiliating military defeats on the other. Just trying to connect the dots listed above, Erdogan's Turkey seems to be on a similar trajectory: a refortified statism with neither any restraint to prevent a military tragedy in the Middle East nor any interest whatsoever to embrace Kurds at home, an explosive combination of shortages indeed.
The most important similarity though, is the very fact that in both cases the ruler of the country used accumulated hatred to get rid of a political veto actor and a societal balancing actor at the same time. Mahmud II eliminated the Janissaries who stood against his substantial centralization agenda and he also criminalized the Bektashi sufi order which enjoyed considerable social influence and possessed large estates. In the "A Gift from God" version, Erdogan curbed the moderate wings of the army that opposed military adventures in the Middle East and iron fist policies against Kurds. He also skilfully used the coup attempt as a pretext to advance his Islamist agenda of erasing the Hizmet Movement's peaceful version of Islam from Turkey's social fabric while confiscating the Movement's multi-billion dollar assets.
With the recent assignments to take effect in late August, most of Turkish Armed Forces' key command posts have been handed to hardliner Eurasianist generals. These are officers who stood trial in the Sledgehammer case, were found guilty of attempting a coup, but were later on acquitted and released by Erdogan controlled judiciary as he needed new allies to dodge the corruption cases of December 2013 that implicated his son and ministers. The recent assignments came after a massive crackdown resulting in the purging of more than 10.000 military officers since the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016. Just a brief look at the professional credentials especially of high level purge victims leaves no doubt that Turkish army has systematically been deprived of qualified human capital after the deal struck between Erdogan and Eurasianists. As a result, sadly, the pendulum in Turkey's bitter story has moved from one extreme to the other: Now it is a country with no army to rely on.
The Auspicious Incident was followed by huge demise for the Empire. Mahmud II's legacy can be summarized as a centralized state on one hand and humiliating military defeats on the other. Just trying to connect the dots listed above, Erdogan's Turkey seems to be on a similar trajectory: a refortified statism with neither any restraint to prevent a military tragedy in the Middle East nor any interest whatsoever to embrace Kurds at home, an explosive combination of shortages indeed.
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