Turkeys ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is developing a major plan to restructure the Turkish Armed forces (TSK), Todays Zaman reported Aug. 2. According to the report, the envisioned restructuring would help normalize civilian-military relations and lead to the transformation of the armed forces into a more effective fighting force. The report comes as the annual meeting of the Supreme Military Council (YSK) chaired by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in session. The meeting is scheduled to conclude Thursday.
Promotions and appointments are usually unveiled in these YSK meetings. Three days before this years session, the TSK chief as well as the commanders of the land, air and naval forces collectively resigned. The move by the top brass was designed to try and counter the growing influence of the AKP government over the Turkish armed forces, which has weakened as a political power over the past four years. However, the resignations have only further swung the pendulum in favor of the civilians - to the point where the decades-old military dominance over the civilians seems to have been reversed.
The AKP is definitely pleased to have paved the way to a moment where the TSK would begrudgingly accept a civilian government, even one led by its historic ideological rivals. Erdogan's government has the power to appoint the military's leaders (as opposed to rubber-stamping the top generals' decisions). However, this privilege is just the first step in the AKPs vision for the military. The AKP would like to capitalize on this nascent civilian supremacy over the military as quickly as possible. It would like to reconfigure the military to serve the Erdogan administrations assertive foreign policy agenda.
Yet reshaping the armed forces to serve as an instrument of foreign-policy projection seems a far loftier goal. Subordinating the military under civilian authority seems much simpler when compared to the ambitious goal of reshaping the armed forces into an instrument of foreign policy power projection. Put differently, it will be a long time before the Turkish military will be able to serve in such a manner. Even where civilian-military imbalance of power is not an issue, a state needs years (if not decades) to transform the military into an entity that can project power far beyond its borders.
In Ankara's case the challenge is even greater - many prerequisites still need to be achieved. The first step entails installing a cadre of commanders who are beholden to the AKP for their positions. Next, a culture must be ingrained within the officers and soldiery that moves the military away from seeing itself as a praetorian force that is the sole guardian of the Republic's Kemalist ideals to one that is the defender of the constitution (which another mainstay that will also need to be altered in its own time).
This culture change will truly coalesce when those who learn in it in the academy (where the curriculum will need to be revised) come to maturity. What Turkey is experiencing is a generational shift. Until this is complete, there will always be officers and commanders who have been trained in the old culture and those will be slow to accept the new order.
Even if these prerequisites are achieved, a new military doctrine is needed, along with the physical training and preparation necessary to develop for a military force that can project power overseas. There is also the matter of Turkey's role as a NATO member and how that might begin to conflict with an assertive foreign policy. Therefore, the road ahead for Ankara is a long one.
