Change did not -- and will not -- come to Ankara just because US President Barack Obama dropped by Turkey. Exactly a week after Obama’s well-crafted address in the Turkish Parliament on April 6, stressing “model partnership” based on common values such as democracy and freedom in the presence of top Turkish generals, the head of the Turkish military took the stage.
In a two-hour-long nationally televised speech, Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ practically annulled all hopes that Turkey would soon be a country where military-civilian relations are defined as in a normally functioning Western-style democracy.
True, the general’s tone was milder than most of his predecessors. In an apparent effort to restore the deteriorating public image of his institution, he presented himself at relative ease, especially with regard to religious and ethnic identity questions, on which the Turkish military brass have often taken a hawkish stand. However, at the core, there was a cry for the continuance of the semi-autonomous and politically interventionist status that Turkish generals have enjoyed since the late Ottoman era, further emboldened by the inception of the republican Kemalist regime in 1923.
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