Was
future Turkish army boss
involved in war crimes?
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
March 16, 2006
LONDON - Given what we now know
about the way the Turkish army fought the terrorist
group, the PKK, in south east Turkey during the 1990s, we
perhaps should not be surprised that its local commander
between 1997 and 2000, General Yas¸ar
Büyükanit, is now being accused of being behind
the well documented army atrocities visited upon Kurdish
villages at that time.
Even if he isn't guilty, as the
recent statement of a public prosecutor puts it, of
"establishing a criminal group, falsifying documents and
misconduct in office"- and the evidence seems to be based
on the testimony of a single local businessman- one would
be surprised if he was entirely ignorant of what went
on.
Establishing the degree of his
involvement- hands on or simply turning a blind eye- in
the crimes of the era is going to take many months if not
years. It is clouded further by the fact that the public
prosecutor has at the same time indicted three undercover
agents of a paramilitary force for being responsible for
the bombing of a bookstore as recently as last November,
masquerading as a pro PKK group, and has accused
Büyükanit of making a remark, taken out of
context, in defence of one of the accused.
Meanwhile, the clock ticks fast
towards August when Büyükanit is expected to
take over as Chief of the General Staff. If this earnest
prosecutor, or some newspaper or NGO succeed in digging
out information that could convict Büyükanit of
an act of complicity in war crimes this would rock the
Turkish boat at a crucial time in the negotiations for
European Union entry.
The army is a critical player in
Turkey's quest to enter the EU. No other country that has
so far entered the EU could be described as "a
military-democracy", but Turkey certainly is, if less so
that a decade ago. The army is up to its neck in the
government's European policy and if it toned down its
present enthusiasm for Europe this would have a
devastating impact in a country where the army is
considered to be its most venerated
institution.
The pro European policy reaches
back to the time of the armed forces' chief
Attatürk, the post Ottoman founder of modern Turkey,
who wanted his country to model itself on Europe.
According to the present Chief of the General Staff,
Hilmi Ozkok, "This change was as important for Turkey as
was the Renaissance for those in the West".
The army today, as one former
general told me, has made up its mind long ago to use its
prestige and influence to secure Turkey's entry into the
EU. Yet it is more complex and multi layered than he
suggests. It is complicated first and foremost by the
military's long battle with the PKK. Until recently the
army considered the PKK beaten. But it was acknowledged
in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, authored by two
Turkish military men and thus subject to having such a
manuscript vetted, that the effort had "exhausted" the
army and "also begun to endanger its institutional
integrity."
The latter is a loaded observation.
Perhaps it has something to do with the consequences of
the government's slow response in implementing its
promised reforms in its Kurdish policy- allowing Kurdish
language broadcasting, Kurdish- speaking education and an
increased pace of economic development. Six months ago
Kurds had no time for the PKK but today there is a
growing degree of passive support for a recent resurgence
of PKK militancy.
Moreover, senior figures in the
military feel that the EU has been so pro Kurdish it has
helped improve, albeit indirectly, the image and
self-confidence of a once beaten PKK.
Ilnur Cevik, publisher of the
daily, The Anatolian, who is regarded as so well informed
on Kurdish affairs that he is regularly invited to brief
western ambassadors, argues that rogue elements in the
Turkish army, led by fairly senior officers, are so angry
at the present state of affairs that beside tolerating
agent provocateurs as with the bookshop incident they are
turning a blind eye to incursions of the PKK from across
the Iraq border. They feel that the EU entry effort is
tying the army's hands and so are implementing a perverse
policy of enabling the PKK to raise the intensity of
combat in order to "legitimise" its own response, all in
an attempt to derail Turkish entry talks.
Although it is very unlikely that
General Büyükanit is involved in any such
current events the question of his probity from his time
as a local commander is not going to disappear. And if he
is compelled to resign after he is anointed chief it will
profoundly affect for the worse Turkey's EU entry
prospects.
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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