Political Violence, the ‘War on Terror’ and the Turkish State

Political Violence, the ‘War on Terror’
and the Turkish State
Abstract:
This paper looks at the impact of the “war on terror” on political violence in Turkey. It
begins by tracing the role of NATO in the management and support of Turkey’s
militarised government since Ankara joined the Alliance in 1952. Here, it suggests that a
triangular concert of agents from the Turkish state’s intelligence and special-forces
organisations, operatives from Washington and right-wing activists and paramilitaries has
been an important feature of regime formation and maintenance. By the mid-1990s,
though, these covert structures came under increasing social pressure, leading to a period
of considerable reform. However, the ‘war on terror’ and the West’s subsequent turn
towards a greater emphasis on security – particularly with regard to Muslim-majority
countries – has, this paper argues, begun to undo, enervate or obstruct the
implementation of many of these reforms. The result, it is concluded, is that elements of
the Turkish state unhappy with recent policies towards Turkey’s traditional triumvirate of
enemies – leftists, ‘Islamists’ and separatists – have been emboldened and, since the
collapse of the PKK’s unilateral ceasefire in 2004, are beginning to return Turkey to the
“dark days” of the early 1990s.
Dr Tim Jacoby
The Institute for Development Policy
and Management
The University of Manchester
Arthur Lewis Building
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9QH
[email protected]
1
Political Violence, the ‘War on Terror’
and the Turkish State
The more the attention of the masses is focused on terrorist acts, the
more those acts reduce the interests of the masses in selforganisation and self-education. But the smoke from the explosion
clears away, the panic disappears, life again settles into the old rut,
the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only police
repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place
of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes
disillusion and apathy.
Leon Trotsky
For Anatol Leiven, the events of 11 September, 2001 ‘ushered in a struggle of
civilisation against barbarism’ (2001, p. 1). As NATO prepared for the epochal wars
to come, many countries, particularly those with Muslim majorities, were quick to
review both their own security arrangements and to position themselves solidly on the
side of the righteous. Turkey, as the only Muslim-majority member of NATO and
long plagued by its own “barbarians”, was thus an especially worthy ally. For its
“civilised” elite, the attacks on Washington and New York came at a time of
considerable change and uncertainty. The catastrophic earthquake of 1999, the
ongoing EU accession reform process and rising levels of religiosity had acted in
concert to activate and politicise civil society. It was, however, the sharp decline in
political violence from 1999 to 2004 which represented the most profound challenge
2
to the militarised bureaucratic elite which had dominated Turkish politics since the
inception of the republic during the 1920s. Hitherto, the insurgency in the 13
predominantly Kurdish speaking provinces of southeast Anatolia administered under
emergency legislation from 1984 to 2002 had killed more than 5,000 soldiers and
injured another 11,000. Civilian causalities had been similar – 5,000 dead and 10,000
hurt. Amongst Leiven’s “barbarians”, 23,000 were dead, 3,000 captured and 6,000
detained at an (official) overall cost of almost $15 billion (Mango 2005, p. 46).
Such a litany of misery has prompted a considerable body of analytical work, but little
effort has been directed at placing political violence in Turkey within a broader geopolitical context. More general studies have, instead, mostly focussed on non-state
actors; communist insurgency (frequently extrapolated to include “leftism” more
generally), atavistic “jihadism” (commonly linked to phantasmal networks of socalled “Islamists”) and ethno-nationalist separatism (including many forms of proKurdish activism).1 While international actors (such as the Soviet Union, Saudi
Arabia and Turkey’s recalcitrant neighbours) are often presented as destabilising
provocateurs to be contrasted with the restraining, well-intended role of the West, few
studies include a critical consideration of the state’s anti-insurgency policies and
fewer still seek to link these with the foreign policy imperatives of Ankara’s NATO
allies.2 By contrast, this paper seeks to understand the impact of NATO’s “war on
terror” on Turkey, and its current rise in political violence levels, by looking at the
full history of Ankara’s relationship with the Alliance. In tracing the West’s
sponsorship of the Turkish state’s counter-insurgency measures back to the Second
World War, it argues that, rather than confirming President Bush’s mantra that “9-11
3
changed everything”, Turkey’s recent return to armed hostilities reveals important
continuities with earlier periods of conflict.
NATO, fascism and the origins of Turkey’s stratocracy
Turkey’s highly strategic location rendered it an important area of concern for the
Great Powers long before the war on “terror”, Afghanistan and Iraq. Having
disastrously failed to keep control of its western seaboard during the early 1920s, they
concentrated attention upon ensuring that the new republic remained resident within
their own geo-political bloc. Initial fears of pro-Soviet leanings were allayed by the
murder of the Turkish communist party’s entire leadership in 1921 and the consistent
repression of such organisations ever since (Gökay 1993). Following the Second
World War (during which the Turkish government maintained a broadly pro-fascist
neutrality), the Marshall Plan transferred $137 million to Ankara with, as President
Truman pointed out in 1947, the aim of ‘effecting that modernization necessary for
the maintenance of its national integrity… [and] the preservation of order in the
Middle East’. The quid pro quo here was a commitment to police the West’s southern
flank and, with the end of Marhsall funding in 1952, Turkey was absorbed into NATO
(just three years after its formation and three years before the admittance of West
Germany). As such, Turkey, like NATO’s founding signatories (Belgium, the
Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway,
Denmark, Iceland and the United Kingdom) agreed that, should one its allies be
attacked, it will take, ‘individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as
it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the
security of the North Atlantic area’ (Article 5)
4
In keeping with many other NATO members (Belgium, France, the Netherlands,
Greece, Italy and Germany have all acknowledged participation), Turkey became
home to a CIA-backed counter-insurgency unit which, according to General Doğan
Güreş, was housed in the American Aid Delegation building in Ankara (Ganser 2005,
p. 93). Colonel Alparslan Türkeş, former liaison office between the Turkish armed
forces and the Nazi Wehrmacht, helped to establish the unit (initially named
Seferberlik Taktik Kurulu – the Tactical Mobilisation Committee) before joining the
NATO mission in Washington in 1955 (Çelik 1994, p. 1). His extensive contacts with
right-wing paramilitary groups were an important element in both policing domestic
socialism and generating a broader sense of uncertainty (and thus popular support for
the security services). An early example of the latter was the bombing of Mustafa
Kemal’s former home in Thessalonica in 1955 which, Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu (a junior
officer attached to the counter-insurgency unit in Ankara and later full general) later
admitted, was the work of the Tactical Mobilisation Committee. With both the
director of the CIA, Allen Welsh Dulles (who happened to be in Istanbul at the time)
and Prime Minister Menderes suggesting that it was the work of communists, it
succeeded in provoking a mass round-up of “sympathisers” and a series of revenge
attacks on Greek businesses and homes in Izmir and Istanbul that cost 3 lives and
destroyed more than 3,500 properties (Güllapoğlu 1991, p. 104). This dual purpose
was institutionalised (and encouraged) by the signing of a military accord between
Turkey and the United States in 1959 which extended the geo-political focus of
NATO’s collective security to include direct assistance ‘in the case of an internal
rebellion against the regime’ (Fernandes and Özden 2001, p. 12).
5
Much would, of course, depend upon the source of such a rebellion. The 1950s
witnessed a considerable rise in left-wing activity within the Turkey’s public sector.
As high levels of inflation proletarianised much of the bureaucracy, concerns were
raised over the prominence of liberal literary and political networks and an associated
growth in unionisation (rising more than 500 per cent between 1948 and 1958) –
particularly amongst the large numbers of migrants arriving in western Anatolian
cities from the rapidly mechanising agricultural lands of the south-east (Jacoby 2004).
The resultant change in urban demographics (parts of many conurbation became
‘permanent strongholds of Kurdish identity’), coupled with a sharp decline in the pay
and conditions of the armed forces, led to a rise in political activity within the armed
forces and, ultimately, prompted General Gürsel (then Chief-of-Staff) to the
overthrow the civilian administration in 1960 and begin a process of enshrining an
institutionalised political and economic role for senior commanders (McDowall 2004,
p. 402).3 As part of new constitution ratified in 1961, a military dominated National
Security Council (MGK, Milli Güvenlik Kurulu) was created with considerable
executive powers. Having hanged three members of cabinet and imposed staff
command’s authority by exiling or executing mid-ranking officers thought to have
become overly politicised, the generals stayed on as permanent members of the
senate. By controlling the presidency and by threatening further interventions if their
interests were not respected, they nurtured ‘an attitude of benevolence bordering on
complicity’ from the civilian leadership (Vaner 1987, p. 249). Through the
establishment of a vast Army Mutual Assistance Association (OYAK, Ordu
Yardımlaşma Kurumu) in 1961, the coup also secured the presence of the officer
corps within Turkey’s economic elite.4
6
Another key pillar of this emerging stratocracy was the tacit promotion of right-wing
activism. Türkeş, who had been an important – if dangerously over-zealous –
organiser of the coup, was recalled from his posting/exile in New Delhi in 1963 and
permitted to enter politics. In 1965, he took over the Republican Villagers Nation
Party (Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi), subsequently changing its name to the
National Action Party (MHP, Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi). Promulgating an extreme
form of Pan-Turkism, it disseminated racist pamphlets, forged links with the World
Anti-Communist League and, through its direct-action wing – the Grey Wolves
(Bozkurt) – became entrusted with ‘the dirty work of execution and terrorising the
Turkish left wing movements and Kurdish activists’ (CILDEKT 1995, p. 9). In doing
so, it received support from the newly formed National Intelligence Agency (MİT,
Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı). According to Danielle Ganser, the members of this
organisation ‘could hardly be distinguished from their Grey Wolves colleagues’. They
were, he continues, ‘institutionally united because both were commanded by the
notorious and secretive CIA-sponsored Special Warfare Department’ (the new name
(from 1965 onwards) of a reorganised and considerably enlarged Tactical
Mobilisation Committee) (2004, p. 230). The new department’s burgeoning links with
Türkeş’ operatives enjoyed considerable patronage from Turkey’s NATO allies. In
addition to an overall military aid allocation of $5.8 billion between 1950 and 1979
(in which ‘arms supply and training programmes helped to integrate the Turkish
military, police and intelligence services into those of the United States’), the CIA, for
instance, covertly transferred guns and explosives to Grey Wolf units through its
agent, Frank Terpil (Brodhead, Friel and Herman 1985, p. 28).5 These became an
important element in undermining the civilian governments of the late 1960s which,
following a series of protests against (and occasional attacks upon) American
7
interests, had, in the view of the American diplomat, Robert Fresco, ‘simply become
incapable of containing the growing anti-US radicalism’ (cited in Brodhead and
Herman 1986, p. 62).
Figure I: Military Transfers from the United States to Turkey, 19502004
7000
6000
5000
4000
$USm
3000
2000
1000
0
1950-54
1955-59
1960-64
1965-69
1970-74
1975-79
1980-84
1985-89
1990-94
1995-99
2000-04
Year
US Military Assistance to Turkey*
US Arms Sales to Turkey**
* Source: USAID (2008). All values are in historical dollars
** Source: SIPRI (2008a). All values are at 1990 prices.6
Particularly disquieting for the authorities was a perceived rise in Kurdish national
consciousness. Political organisations, such as the New Turkey Party (Yeni Türkiye
Partisi), founded by elites from eastern Anatolia and local independent candidates
achieved important electoral successes within Kurdish-speaking areas during the
1960s, commonly polling more votes than the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet
Halk Partisi) founded by Mustafa Kemal in 1923 (Kirişci and Winrow 1997, pp. 107109). This was accompanied by the emergence of “Eastism” within urban left-wing
groups. Associations like the Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Society (Devrimci Doğu
Kültür Ocakları) grew up alongside the larger and already-established Federation of
Revolutionary Youth (Dev-Genç) and Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP, Türkiye İşçi
8
Partisi). Although small, their influence was apparent at TİP’s 1970 congress where
delegates declared that ‘the fascist authorities representing the ruling classes have
subjected the Kurdish people to a policy of assimilation and intimidation which has
often become a bloody repression’ (cited in Romano 2006, p. 43).
By March 1971, the CIA’s patience was exhausted and, according to Ralph McGehee
(who worked for the agency from 1952 to 1977), the CIA assisted staff command to
overthrow another civilian government and draw up ‘plans for mass arrests of
opposition figures similar to the pattern followed in Thailand, Indonesia and Greece’
(1999, p. 47).7 During these raids, CIA-trained commandos were despatched to the
southeast where, operating from ‘counter-insurgency centres which had been set up
by Turkish officers trained by the US in Panama’, they ‘rapidly became associated
with arbitrary brutality and torture’ (Nezan 1993, p. 78, McDowall 2004, p. 409). To
sustain the focus on left wing and separatist activities, MİT was placed under the
authority of Alparslan Türkeş who, despite his party obtaining only three deputies and
3.4 percent of the vote in the elections of 1973, was appointed deputy prime minister.
Ideally placed to demonstrate the ‘danger from the Left’ by instigating attacks against
Deve-Genç and TİP members, MHP’s armed paramilitary phalange stepped up its acts
of violence as ‘the government tolerated, and at times encouraged, them’, thereby
exerting ‘a political influence totally out of proportion to its following in the country’
(Ahmad 1977, p. 347, Schick and Tonak 1987, p. 369).
9
18000
16000
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
8000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
Year
Military Expenditure*
Annual Fatalities**
* Source: SIPRI (2008b). All values are at 2005 prices.
** Source: UCDP/PRIO (2008) and İHD (2008).
By the end of the 1970s, violence levels had risen sharply enough for Chief-of-Staff,
General Kenan Evren to conclude, after 5,241 people had killed and another 14,152
injured during 1979 and 1980, that, despite the presence of martial law in 19
provinces, ‘a disguised war was actually being waged in Turkey’ (cited in Jacoby
2005, p. 645). Amid ‘a general loss of confidence among sections of the bourgeoisie’
(as well as the International Monetary Fund – with whom the government were
negotiating an unprecedented rescue package of $1.5 billion) and having dispatched
General Şahinkaya to Washington to gain American support, hosted four visits from
the NATO Commander, General Rogers, and received loan guarantees of $182
million from the World Bank, Evren authorised yet another coup (Paul 1981, p. 4,
Birand, 1987, p. 187, Barkey 1984, p. 54).8 A new constitution was ratified which,
coupled with 628 additional pieces of legislation between 1980 and 1983, enshrined a
10
Annual Fatalities
7000
19
8
19 8
8
19 9
9
19 0
9
19 1
9
19 2
9
19 3
9
19 4
9
19 5
9
19 6
9
19 7
9
19 8
9
20 9
0
20 0
0
20 1
0
20 2
0
20 3
0
20 4
0
20 5
0
20 6
07
Military Expenditure
($USm)
Figure II Annual Fatalities and Military Expenditure 1998-2007
much stronger role for the military elite by associating their supervisory role with
catch-all allusions to national security and the ‘indivisible integrity’ of the Turkish
state (Article 14) (Muller, 1996: 179). During the next four years, resistance was dealt
with through the arrest of 177,565 people – of whom 64,505 were detained, 41,727
imprisoned and 326 sentenced to death (Bonner 2005, p. 50). The majority of these
were processed by newly created “state security courts” made up of a combination of
centrally appointed military and civilian judges (Cizre 2003, p. 219).
As Figure I illustrates, Evren, who stayed on as President until 1989, received
considerable assistance from the United States. Indeed, the combined value (please
see the methodological caveats in the footnote to Figure I) of annual American
military assistance and legal arms sales to Turkey rose from $413.2 million in 1980 to
$1.3205 billion in 1987. Following the intensification of the Kurdish Workers’ Party’s
(PKK, Partiya Karkareni Kurdistan) campaign during the late 1980s, this support
reached a 1993 peak of $2.460 billion (SIPRIa). Accompanied by a rapid rise in
violence intensities in the south-east (as Figure II illustrates) such a huge budget
permitted the state to increase its military expenditure considerably. It also allowed
the use of Bozkurt paramilitaries to be significantly stepped up. Many of those MHP
activists purged from state structures in the immediate aftermath of the coup (of
which there were estimated to be around 200,000) reappeared as members of the
“Uniformed Gangs” (Üniformalı Çeterler) and Special Forces (Özel Timleri) that
were deployed to the 13 provinces of eastern Anatolia administered under emergency
rule (Jacoby 2003, p. 676). Facilitated by Congress’ authorisation of the “Joint
Combined Exchange Training Program” in 1991 (which, Chalmers Johnson
concludes, constituted ‘little more than instruction in state terrorism’), these units
11
were able to incorporate more up-to-date weapons (the American-made M-16 rather
than the older and heavier German G-3 assault rife issued to regular forces) and to
take advantage of training opportunities at the CIA’s CSG-9 camp near Bonn
(Johnson 2000, p. 74, Çelik 1995, p. 87). Frequently seen wearing the wolf insignia of
the MHP, the duties of such groups (as specified by General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu – the
junior officer connected to the bombing of Kemal’s former house in Greece in 1955)
included ‘murder, bombing, armed robbery, torture, kidnapping, encourag[ing]
incidents which invite retaliation, tak[ing] hostages, us[ing] sabotage and propaganda,
disseminat[ing] disinformation and us[ing] force as well as blackmail’ (cited in
Fernandes and Özden 2001, p. 12).
‘As the counter-insurgency campaign escalated the government terror gangs indulged
in the luxury of utter recklessness… and began fighting amongst themselves’ (Clark
1999, p. 3). In 1996, for instance, the arrest of a heavily armed, 24-strong group
planning to assassinate government parliamentarian and head of an important network
of anti-PKK “village guards”, Sedat Bucak, was found to include 11 policemen
(including four police chiefs) and four soldiers (Aslaneli 1996). This was followed by
the murder of Ömer Lütfi Topal, a wealthy Kurdish casino owner alleged to be a
covert supporter of the PKK, a month later. Three policemen were implicated in this
shooting, but were transferred to Bucak’s security team on the instructions of Interior
Minister, Mehmet Ağar (Yörük 1996). In November of that year, Bucak was involved
in a car crash while returning from a meeting to discuss the future of Topal’s casinos
in the resort town of Küşadası. Three people died in the accident – his driver, Istanbul
Deputy Police Chief Hüseyin Kocadağ (previously responsible for organising the Özel
Tim deployment to the south-east), a model, Gonca Us, and a former national leader
12
of the Bozkurts wanted for drugs offences in Switzerland and implicated in the murder
of Topal, Abdullah Çatlı. Assault rifles, explosives, pistols, silencers, listening
devices and fake identification papers signed by Mehmet Ağar were recovered form
the car. Ağar resigned from the Ministry, but, like Bucak, was protected by the
immunity from prosecution awarded to all MPs in Turkey (Meyer 1998). Prime
Minister Erbakan promised ‘to get to the bottom of Susurluk’ and commissioned MİT
to investigate. Having received an interim report which pointed to the involvement of
58 public officials, he concluded that that the investigations of links between
criminals and the “deep state” (or derin devlet) ‘should definitely be deepened and
widened’ (cited in Couturier 1997, p. 1). His coalition partner (and leader of Ağar and
Bucak’s party), Tansu Çiller, disagreed, however. She ‘became the ardent defender of
those involved in the death squads saying some of these people were heroes who had
fought against the enemies of the state’ (Cevik 1997, p. 1). The military elite
concurred and, pointing to the growing religiosity of his party (Refah Partisi, or
Welfare Party) as the key reason for concern, they removed Erbakan from office,
closed down his organisation and ended his political career.9
The AKP and the challenge to derin devlet
During the second half of the 1990s, though, Congress had become increasingly
concerned at the activities of the derin devlet and thus more reluctant to continue to
arm the Turkish state indiscriminately. Accusations (from influential think-tanks such
as the Cato Institute) that ‘human rights do not appear to be a priority when it comes
to Turkey’ forced the Clinton administration to acknowledge that there was a
‘widespread and credible belief that a counterguerrilla group associated with the
13
security forces had carried out at least some “mystery killings”’ and that it was
‘highly likely’ that these activities had involved the use of American weaponry
(Carpenter 1999, p. 3, Komisar 1997, p. 26). Amid a fall in military assistance from
$432.5 million in 1996 to $5.7 million in 1998, the White House came to the
conclusion that, as former State Department liaison officer, Alan Makovsky, notes,
‘greater democratization might increase stability in Turkey and… would remove a
primary impediment to security ties, including arms sales’ – a key concern as Ankara
succeeded in securing over $3 billion worth of weapons from France and Germany
between 1995 and 2002 (SIPRI 2008a, SIPRI 2008b, Makovsky 2000, p. 254).
There too, though, legislators were reluctant to endorse unconditional support.
Growing security concerns over their minorities following the attacks on Washington
and New York in 2001 had consolidated the view that, if Turkey was to become an
‘example of a strong, stable, modern, moderate, and tolerant Muslim nation’, it ‘could
serve as a counterbalance to the forces that breed and nurture extremism, hate and
violence… in its region’ (Pagan 2005, p. 11). Somewhat contradictorily, though,
Turkey has also become regarded as ‘a barrier – a strategic glacis on the European
periphery holding Middle Eastern risks at bay’ (Larrabee and Lesser 2002, p. 150).
This dual function – exemplar and sentry – explains the incoherent European
tendency to press for a civilianisation of Turkey’s regime while continuing to arm its
security sector. Moreover, the fact that ‘full membership would mean the loss of its
status as a buffer state between Europe and the instability in its southern region’, has
resulted in a ‘containment policy objective of anchoring Turkey to the EU, as a stable
and secular country with a large market, while keeping a clear preference for delaying
14
the prospects of Turkish membership in the foreseeable future’ (Drorian 2005, p. 433,
Arıkan 2006, p. 141).
Nonetheless, the Justice and Development Party (AKP – Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi),
which, in 2002, had become the first party in Turkey since 1987 to secure a clear
parliamentary majority, was able to use a pro-EU discourse to present a challenging
manifesto of social reform ‘encompassing all aspects of Turkish socio-political life’
(Michaud-Emin 2007, p. 25). In particular, the AKP ‘increasingly asserted its control
over the military, …further shifted the balance of civil-military relations towards the
civilians and encouraged public debate in this area’ (European Commission 2004, pp.
53, 23). Despite the fact that the AKP had its roots in Erbakan’s banned Refah party
(and thus represented an important departure from the politics of the establishment’s
nomenklatura – not least because its victory was estimated to have returned around
180 MPs of Kurdish heritage) the military elite found itself out-manoeuvred (Baran
2008, p. 56).10 As the self-proclaimed ‘vanguard of reform and the harbingers of
enlightenment’, they became ‘rhetorically entrapped’ by the AKP’s logic of EU
harmonisation (Sarıgil 2007, p. 50, Hale 1994, p. 54). Future Chief-of-Staff
Büyükanıt was, for instance, forced to acknowledge in 2003 that ‘during the
deliberations on the… [last] reform package, we conveyed our views to the
government. Some were accepted, others were not. Now that Parliament [has] enacted
them into law, it is our duty to comply with them. We only hope that our concerns and
worries prove to groundless’ (cited in Heper 2005a, p. 38).
These worries received a sympathetic ear at NATO, which, having taken the
unprecedented step of invoking Article 5 of the Washington Treaty (cited above)
15
immediately after the attacks of September 2001, certainly regarded the AKP’s failure
to gain parliamentary authorisation for the American fourth infantry division to use
Turkey as a base from which to attack Iraq in March 2003 as grounds for concern.
The decision of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s predecessor, Bülent Ecevit, to deploy
troops to support the American war in Afghanistan in return for an additional $65.5
million of military aid (2001-3) had been widely welcomed and thus heightened the
sense that what Paul Wolfowitz called a ‘big, big mistake’ ‘represented a significant
break in the shared strategic vision for the United States and Turkey’ (Walker 2007, p.
98). US officials expressed surprise that the Turkish military had not exercised its
usual ‘strong leadership role’, while President Bush warned that the Turks would
‘have to pay the costs’ of their rebuttal; the most immediate of which was the $26
billion of grants and loans offered to facilitate acquiescence (cited in Belmain 2004,
pp. 53, 60). In the medium term, ‘it effectively forced the U.S. to become more reliant
on Iraqi Kurdish militias’ and raised doubts regarding Turkey’s changing loyalties –
as former Nixon speechwriter, William Safire, put it (with a degree of hyperbole
typical of contemporary war-fever), ‘the new, Islamic-influenced government of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan transformed that formerly staunch U.S. ally into Saddam's best
friend’ (2003, Çağaptay 2004, p. 47).
Given that many senior soldiers ‘feared that the failure of the motion would make
Washington less willing to listen to Turkey’s concerns about the possible emergence
of a Kurdish political entity in northern Iraq and could have a negative impact on US
sales of weapons and military equipment’, it also opened up questions over the impact
of the accelerating EU accession reforms on the military elite’s capacity to influence
the government (Jenkins 2007, p. 349). Attention was particularly focussed on the
16
Chief of Staff, Hilmi Özkök, who, having assured American state officials that the
election of the AKP was ‘not a cause for worry’, had declined to petition parliament
on the grounds that ‘according to the Constitution, the military can make such
recommendations only to the government’ (Heper 2005b, p. 218). Since it was the
generals who had designed the constitution following the 1980 coup, such reasoning
failed to convince many – including Secretary-General of the MGK, General Tuncer
Kılınç, who, having made his feelings clear, was “retired”. Özkök ‘was also believed
to be a devout Muslim’ and ‘although no-one was sure of the extent of his piety or
whether it would affect his commitment to safeguarding secularism’, his
unprecedented practice of holding his (increasingly cordial) weekly meetings with the
Prime Minister alone and persistent rumours that he had personally obstructed two
coup attempts during 2004 led some to assert that ‘he failed to understand the threat
posed by the JDP [AKP]’ (Jenkins 2007, pp. 348, 351, Baran 2008, fn. 3).
This threat was, in the minds of Turkey’s secular elite, accentuated by the activities of
a small, violent group dubbed the Kurdish Hizbullah by Turkish officials. Its tendency
to follow the killing of more than 500 journalists, human rights activists and PKK
“sympathesiers” with statements blending discourses on religion with more orthodox
fascist themes was used to discredit Refah and to substantiate an idea of creeping and
coercive Islamisation. In the absence of any evidence of such a link, writers, such as
the former adviser to the Israeli Minister of Defence, Ely Karmon, hypothesised ‘that
even if there was no structural or formal connection between the Islamic movement’s
[supposed] political and violent streams, there was an objective ideological alliance
and a de facto cooperation between them toward achieving the goal of establishing a
Turkish Islamic state’ (1998, p. 115). In fact, evidence from the Turkish Parliament’s
17
Commission on Unsolved Murders suggests that Hizbullah’s operatives were trained
by the military in the predominantly Kurdish province of Batman (which was found to
have illegally imported $2.8 million of weaponry that was then ‘transferred to the
Hizballah’) during the early 1990s (considerably before Refah came to power) as part
of the Üniformalı Çeterler and Özel Timleri deployments (Human Rights Watch
2000, Aras and Bacık 2002, p. 153).11 Nonetheless, claims that the organisation
represented ‘the armed protector of the pro-Islamic Welfare Party’ contributed to the
downfall of the Erbakan government and led the MGK to declare that fundamentalism
(irtica) was ‘the country’s number one “domestic threat” – relegating the all-time
front-runner, “Kurdish separatism”, to a mere second place’ (Criss 1995, p. 21,
Aydıntaşbaş 2000, p. 20).
Despite an extensive crackdown on non-violent organisations with religious identities,
during the late 1990s it was not until the PKK’s capitulation that Hizbullah became
superfluous to its “deep state” handlers. Within a few months of Öcalan’s capture, a
series of operations (totalling 1,763 by November 2002) had been undertaken,
resulting in the detention of nearly 5,000 individuals, the deaths of Velioğlu and his
deputy and the arrest of his successor (Nugent 2004, p. 73). Although MİT’s
exhaustive analysis of the 600,000 pages of documentation recovered in these raids
revealed links with neither Refah nor its progenies, the AKP was, as Emrullah Uslu
notes, reported to have an unspecified but apparently ‘close association with certain
prominent Kurdish Islamists’. This came under close scrutiny following the bombings
of British and Jewish targets in Istanbul in 2003 (in which 62 people were killed) that,
as Uslu continues, were said to have been carried out by a cell with ‘common roots in
the radical Kurdish Hizbollah organization’ from the south-eastern town of Bingöl
18
(2007, p. 132, 124). The facts that this attack took place only a few months after 950
“militants” were released from prison under a government-backed amnesty and that
the organisation has succeeded in establishing a non-violent wing with bookshops in
Elazığ and Batman seemingly unopposed by the state has contributed to a sense that,
as Zeyno Baran notes, the AKP is ‘concerned first with uniting people – Turks and
Kurds alike – under the umbrella of Islam, and then only second with safeguarding
the integrity of national borders’ (2008, pp. 60-61, Çağaptay and Uslu 2005).
The return of the leviathan
Suspicions regarding the AKP’s pro-European, market-orientated appeal were
deepened by the breakdown of the PKK’s unilateral ceasefire in 2004. The bombing
of hotels, a bus station and the AKP’s own offices in Istanbul, ambushes in the
southeast and the (commonly excessive) response of the security services killed over a
thousand people during the next two years, rendering Erodoğan’s ‘somewhat softer
attitude toward the Kurdish question’ an increasingly efficacious rallying point for
resurgent forces of reaction (Balta-Parker 2005, p. 1). This took the form of an
expedient ‘coalition of anti-liberal forces, made up of retired generals and their civil
society organizations, parts of the security services and far-right groups’ (Öktem
2007. p. 4). Since the attacks on Washington and New York in 2001, these have
become ‘emboldened by changes in transnational conditions’ that have tended to
emphasise security and cultural assimilation over reconciliation and pluralism (Mello
2007, p. 26). Rising levels of Islamophobia in many European states following the
bombings in Madrid and London have, for instance, tended to reinforce older
‘essentialist, primordial, cultural arguments highlighting the differences between
19
Turkey and Europe based on questions of identity’ (Erensü and Adanlı 2004, p. 59).
The AKP’s religiosity, for instance, has increasingly be ‘seen as proof of Turkey’s
non-European culture’ which may, for some, ‘reasonably be considered to be
alarming’ (Lenski 2003, p. 91). So, while ‘the Union has been markedly reluctant to
interfere with the important symbolic and institutional roles held by certain culturally
entrenched Christian denominations in many Member States’, it has required the
Turkish administration ‘to forswear any desire to introduce religious elements into its
law’ and continued to assert that ‘Turkey must undergo a major cultural revolution if
it is ever to join’ (McCrea 2007, p.2, Jacques Chirac quoted in Patton 2007, p. 345).
The United States has developed similar misgivings. While the AKP was initially
welcomed as part of ‘Turkey’s history of balancing political democracy with a strong
Islamic identity’ (which had long been seen as unsympathetic to socialism and thus
‘instructive for other states in the region’) and as a useful means of pluralising the
“coalition of the willing”, its inability to ameliorate its citizenry’s resistance to
Washington’s foreign policy (only 6 per cent of respondents to a recent survey chose
the USA as a “desirable ally”) has forced a rethink (von Tersch 2006, p. 7, Eligür
2006, pp. 3-4). Here, the views of writers such as Daniel Pipes (founder of the Middle
East Forum and board member at the United States Institute of Peace), who suggests
that the AKP’s administration may represent ‘the start of a process that could
transform Turkey, for 80 years the stalwart of secularism in the Muslim Middle East,
into an Islamic republic’, have been important (2003, p.1). As a result Washington has
tended to take the advice of commentator like Soner Çağaptay (of The Washington
Institute for Near East Policy – an organisation founded (by a future US Ambassador
to Israel) with the objective of ‘advancing U.S. interests in the Middle East’) who has
20
called for the United States to ‘regain the favor of Turkey’s majority nationalists’.
‘The surest way for Washington to reach’ this apparent “majority” (the fact that the
AKP’s easily won the 2004 local elections with 42 per cent of the vote is apparently
overlooked) is, Çağaptay continues, to address ‘the issue that they feel most strongly
about: the PKK’ (2005, p. 15).
To this end, both countries signed a “shared vision and structured dialogue” in 2006
in which they ‘pledge[d] themselves to work together on all issues of common
concern, …including the fight against the PKK and its affiliates’ (US Department of
State 2006). A similar agreement with the UK followed in 2007 which envisaged
‘further co-operation between the UK and Turkish armed forces’ (FCO 2007).
Accompanying these was the establishment of the Centre of Excellence: Defence
against Terrorism in Ankara as one NATO’s three flagship training and research
establishments (Norway and Germany respectively house winter strategy and air
power centres). In support, came the subsequent appointment of retired Air Force
General (and registered lobbyist for Lockheed Martin) Joseph Ralston as “Special
Envoy for Countering the PKK”. Charged with ‘coordinating U.S. engagement with
the Government of Turkey and the Government of Iraq to eliminate the terrorist threat
of the PKK’, his arrival in Ankara coincided with the announcement that the Turkish
government was to purchase an additional 30 F-16 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin
at a cost of $3 billion.12 Long forgotten, clearly, is the fact that, during the mid-1990s,
these planes had been singled out by Congress as American weapons used in
operations in which human rights abuses occurred (Stanton 2006). Indeed, overall US
military assistance to Turkey appears to be growing significantly – from $26.8 million
for the years 1998-2001 to $169.4 million for the years 2002-2005 – which, when
21
considered alongside Ankara’s new arms deal with Israel (expenditure on which has
been $256 million since 2001), is certainly reminiscent of the 1990s (SIPRI 2008a).
As Desmond Fernandes concludes, the ‘US government, in the name of the ongoing
post-911 linked “War on Terror”, is increasingly supporting the Turkish state once
again in its offensive against Kurdish civilians, human rights activists, peace
campaigners and PKK militants in the region’ (2006, p. 34).
Particularly noticeable is the increase in International Military Education Training
(IMET). This has grown from under $1.5 million in 1997 (with less than 100
graduates) to over $3.5 million, and more than 350 graduates, in 2007, making
Turkey, by some distance, the largest recipient in the world (Federation of American
Scientists 2008). Notorious for training Columbia’s and Indonesia’s most brutal
military units during the 1990s, the IMET programme has provided advanced
training-the-trainer instruction for at least 3000 Turkish officers (Robey and
Vordermark 2003, p. 10). From 2005 onwards, it was augmented by joint a FBI/CIA
venture maintained under the Justice Department’s budget (and thus outside overseas
appropriations regulations) and a reciprocal arrangement with Israeli commandos led
by Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz (Gülcan 2005). Exercises were undertaken at the
home of the infamous Bolu Brigade, described by Human Rights Watch as
‘responsible for numerous violations of the laws of war’ during the 1990s (2003, p.
3). From 2007 onwards, these units are being greatly enlarged to provide the largely
conscript deployment in the south-east with a specialised, six-brigade spearhead of
fully professional soldiers. As Desmond Fernandes concludes, ‘the US state will,
intentionally, choose to keep collaborating with Turkey’s notorious mountain
commando brigades and other “special military/paramilitary/police forces” that are at
22
the forefront of the counter-insurgency struggle against the “PKK terrorists”, thereby
providing a US-linked “legitimacy” to their often murderous activities’ (2006, p. 34).
By mid-2007, these troops had begun to join the garrison of more than 40,000
gendarmes stationed in the provinces of Şırnak, Siirt and Hakkari which are now
designated "interim security zones" (a situation not unlike the emergency
administration of the 1980s and 90s) (McGregor 2007).
‘The return of the Turkish state of exception’ (defined by Giogio Agamben as a
‘situation in which the emergency becomes the rule, and the very distinction between
peace and war (and between foreign and civil war) becomes impossible) has, as
before, become increasingly mired in a ‘swamp of extra-legal ultra-nationalists… and
their mentors in the [derin] state apparatus’ (cited in Öktem 2006, p. 10). Following a
series of explosions in Hakkari during 2005, for instance, three men were
apprehended by passers-by having been seen getting out of a parked car and throwing
a grenade (in which one man was killed and 6 were injured) into a bookshop
belonging to a former PKK member, Seferi Yılmaz, in the town of Şemdinli. During
the arrest, the men seem to have been joined by a fourth man who allegedly issued
warnings that all four were armed police officers before firing on the crowd, killing
another man. Assault rifles, additional grenades manufactured by OYAK and a list of
names (including numerous Kurdish politicians) marked “potentially dangerous” were
recovered from the car (which was later found to be registered to the gendarmerie).
Three of the men were identified as gendarmerie Sergeants Ali Kaya, Tanju Çavuş
and Özcan İldeniz, while the other was a former PKK informant Veysel Ateş (Beşe
2005, pp. 186-188).
23
Following MİT’s publication of a 25-page report into the matter which concluded that
the bombing was carried out by the PKK and that the presence of the officers at the
scene was a ‘coincidence’ (as well as an intervention from future Chief-of-Staff,
Yaşar Büyükanıt, who described Kaya as ‘a good boy’), the government ordered a full
investigation (Tuğal 2007, p. 29). In the subsequent 2006 indictment, the public
prosecutor, Ferhat Sarıkaya, suggested that the intention of the bombing was to ‘bring
the local [Kurdish] population to a state where it can be lured with ease into action
…then exaggerating this threat beyond its true level, in order to prepare the way for
violent measures by the state and to permit emergency rule to take precedence over
the administrative system in the region. [This would then] …be used to apply pressure
on the political authority, and thereby…to frustrate Turkey’s fundamental political
directions – the modernising project, the EU process – and to protect the power and
place of the core political/bureaucratic governing elite’ (KHRP 2006, pp. 22-23). In
response, the Office of the Chief of General Staff issued a statement asserting that
‘the indictment was political [and] …aim[ed] to undermine the Turkish Armed Forces
and the fight against terror’ (Human Rights Watch 2006, p. 3). Within a month,
Sarıkaya was taken ‘off the case, removed him from his job, and stripped… of his
status as a lawyer for “abuse of his duty and exceeding his authority”’ (Human Rights
Watch 2007, p. 18).13
These events prompted mass demonstrations in Diyarbakır in which at least 14
protesters (including 3 children) were killed by the security services. ‘In the following
wave of detentions and prosecutions, two-hundred children were taken into custody
and around ninety were charged with participation in illegal protests’ (Öktem 2008, p.
4). Further violence ensued when, in September 2006, a bomb was placed amongst a
24
queue of Kurdish families at a bus stop in Diyarbakır which killed seven children and
three women. Although immediately attributed to the PKK, another group, the
Turkish Revenge Brigade, (Türk İntikam Tugayı, TİT), submitted a claim of
responsibility accompanied by photographs of the device being prepared. TİT’s
association with the Special Forces Command (which oversees the Bolu Brigade and
receives its ‘equipment and training support… [directly] from the United States’) was
revealed by one of its operatives, Adil Timurtaş, who was arrested attempting to
extort money from an eminent Kurdish politician in May 2005 (Uslu 2008a, p. 1).
Before being released without charge, he is reported to have admitted that TİT had
been long an integral part of the gendarmerie’s covert operations unit (JİTEM) and
had, using the ordnance of the special forces, carried out a number of attacks on
suspected members of the PKK either with or in the guise of Hizbullah (Kurdish Info
2006). It thus came as little surprise when forensic investigations into the Diyarbakır
attack revealed the use of military-grade C-4 plastic explosives and a detonator
fabricated from a MT-725 walkie-talkie manufactured by OYAK (Kurdish Times
2006). Indeed, while the roots of TİT stretch right back to the formation of Bozkurt
gangs during the late 1960s, it was, according to gendarmerie sergeant, Cengiz
Ersever (who was convicted of belonging to the organisation and attempting to kill
the Human Rights Association president, Akın Birdal, in 1998), formed in 1996 by
members of the MHP’s youth wing (Mater 1998, p. 1).
Today, TİT is part of a general ‘mushrooming of extreme right-wing groups’ that are
‘eager to use the PKK’s furor to halt Turkey’s progress towards full democracy and
civilian rule’ (Taşkın 2008, p. 131, Alpay cited in Sözen 2006, p. 139). Opponents of
the such regression ‘have been subjected to forms of criminalisation that are eerily
25
reminiscent of the “dark times” of the 1990’s [sic]’ (Fernandes 2006, postscript). The
Grand Union of Jurists (BHB, Büyük Hubukcular Birliği) has, for example, used
legislation inspired by the West’s “war on terror” to take out failed lawsuits against
the novelists Orhan Pamuk and Elif Şafak. In 2006, however, the BHB succeeding in
using the 2005 Article 301 of the penal code (which ‘effectively revers[ed] previous
improvements in freedom of expression’) to gain a conviction against the journalist
Hrant Dink. His offence was to have written an article in which he protested against
the new legislation’s introduction of jail terms for those found to have ‘insult[ed]
being a Turk, the government, …the judicial bodies of the state [or] …the military’
(KHRP 2007, p. 15). Although Dink only received a suspended sentence, the highprofile trial ‘had made him a likely target of extremist violence’ and in 2007,
following a series of threats from TİT, he was murdered (Uslu 2008b, p. 88). A 17
year-old child, Ogün Samast, was caught on CCTV and admitted the killing. Another
man, Yasin Hayal, confessed to assisting and inciting Samast, but claimed to have
been working under the auspices of MİT. A third man, Erhan Tunçel (a police
informer who states that he submitted 17 reports on the plot to kill Dink to the
Gendarmerie Commander Ali Oz before Samast was dispatched) was also detained.
All three men had links with far-right organisations and Hayal managed a café at the
MHP’s Peletli branch (Timur, 2007).
In this increasingly confrontational atmosphere, the MHP has combined an
‘unabashedly nationalist campaign based on fierce xenophobic rhetoric’ with an astute
policy of throwing ‘itself behind [the] prioritisation of the military as a bidder in [the]
privatisation auctions’ that have become such a feature of Turkey’s engagement with
Europe over the last decade (New Internationalist 2008, p. 1, Cam 2006, p. 29). Since
26
returning to parliamentary office in 2007, it has organised large anti-Kurdish rallies
(which have frequently become opportunities to attack Kurdish homes and business)
while its direct action groups have stepped up their more targeted policy of
harassment.14 The result of these tensions has been levels of militarization – both of
the Ankara executive and the Kurdish speaking provinces – not seen since the 1990s.
Modelled on Western responses to the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001
(particularly a French bill presented in 2005), a new anti-terrorist law passed in 2006,
described by Human Rights Watch as ‘an ominous sign of the retrograde trend
currently prevailing in Turkey’, ‘remove[d] safeguards for detainees that ha[d]
significantly forced down rates of torture’ (2006, p. 2). It also included stiff penalties
for publicising the statements or carrying their emblems of proscribed organisations.
The security services were given greater powers of surveillance and more authority to
‘establish special covert investigation teams’ (Sözen 2006, p. 10). These are now
administered through a new Directorate General of Security Affairs that incorporates
a Higher Council for Anti-Terrorism which, with six senior members of the security
forces (the Chief of the General Staff and his deputy, the commanders of the land
forces and the gendarmerie and the directors of new directorate and of MİT) and only
five ministers under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, is distinctly reminiscent
of the MGK during the 1990s.
Conclusion
The militarised state in Turkey has, since the very beginnings of the republic (and
certainly since the end of the Second World War), been intertwined with the United
States’ geo-political objectives. The strongly anti-left flavour of these has necessitated
27
a sustained level of co-operation with fascist activists operating on the ground. For
much of the history of the republic, these three elements – Washington’s agencies,
Turkey’s intelligence and special operations organisations and direct action
paramilitaries – have worked in concert, to a point where, at times, they became
indistinguishable from one another. Their influence over the Turkish state as a whole
has been profound. Not only have they played an active role in each of Turkey’s four
military takeovers, but they have also helped both to structure the institutions and
reforms which emerged from each coup and to organise a more diffused and
prolonged repression of dissent required to ensure the implementation of these
changes.
Necessary for such sustained authoritarianism – as well as being imperative to the
bonds between the elements of the triumvirate itself – was, and remains, the
identification of a credible internal enemy. From the anti-communist massacres of the
1920s, through the “green belt” of the Cold War and on to the apparent Marxism of
the PKK, the political left has been the primary source of such a spectre. During the
mid-1990s, though, the cogency and efficacy of this discourse came under
considerable pressure. In international terms, the United States and the European
Union became (briefly and largely incoherently) concerned with Turkey’s parlous
human rights record. Domestically, a sense of war-weariness, frustration and cynicism
was sharpened by the Susurluk incident, raising doubts over the state’s capacity and
willingness to act accountably and in the interests of the citizenry. With the middle
classes’ worst fears confirmed amidst the rubble of 1999 earthquake, the PKK’s
unilateral ceasefire later that year became a springboard for a series of major setbacks
for the militarised state. Unable to resist, the “westernising” character of the AKP’s
28
clever blend of religiosity and EU accession discourse (and accompanying reforms),
their domination was clearly weakened.
From 2002 onwards, though, the war on terror offered an opportunity, firstly, to
extend and consolidate public uncertainty regarding the AKPs apparent religiosity
and, secondly, to resist the de-securitising effects of the EU harmonisation reforms.
Although the West’s retreat from multi-culturalism and particular focus on the
supposedly peculiar recalcitrance political Islam offered a potential means of
discrediting the AKP and its apparently overly sympathetic approach to Kurdish
minority rights, little could be done without a credible and active internal enemy (so
vital to rightists the world over). Fortuitously, the return of the old leftist enemy in
2004 empowered the military state and returned a role to paramilitary direct action
units. As before this took the form of targeting individuals of symbolic value,
organising collective events to terrorise opponents and indiscriminating murdering
civilians to prompt a reaction to and thus, as Trotsky points out in the quotation
above, greater levels of securitisation. Also as before, the civilian executive –
although less complicit than previous administration – has not been able to resist this
fully. Pressured by Washington to crush the insurgency in the southeast, decreasingly
able to impose its authority on its military elite, pushed rightwards by the MHP in
opposition and faced with widespread scepticism regarding the prospects of EU
accession, it has brought into force a series of retrogressive laws and institutions.
Amid the growing ‘disillusion and apathy’, which, as Trotsky notes, inevitably results
from political violence, such measures are set to increase, as ‘the gathering emphasis
on enabling a collective military response to the new security challenges (i.e.
terrorism, secessionist movements, an civil, ethnic and religious wars, and so on)
29
strengthens the Turkish establishment’s claim to prioritize military preparedness over
reform of the civil-military balance’ (Cizre 2004, p. 115).
References
Ahmad, F., 1977. The Turkish experiment in democracy 1950–1975. London: Hurst.
Aktan, G. and Köknar, A., 2002. Turkey. In: Y. Alexander, ed. Combating terrorism:
strategies of ten countries. Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 261-298.
Altınışık, H., 2001. Susurluk verdict: guilty. Turkish Daily News, 13 February [online
edition].
Available
from:
https://turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=21899
[accessed 14 November 2008].
Aras, B. and Bacık, G., 2002. The mystery of Turkish Hizballah. Middle East Policy,
9 (2), 147-160.
Aras, B. and Toktaş, Ş., 2007. Al-Qaida, ‘war on terror’ and Turkey. Third World
Quarterly, 28 (5), 1033-1050.
Arıkan, H., 2006. Turkey and the EU: an awkward candidate for EU membership?
Aldershot: Ashgate.
30
Atalar, M. K., 2006. Hizballah of Turkey: a pseudo-threat to the secular order?
Turkish Studies, 7 (2), 307-331.
Aslaneli, H., 1996. Gang in uniform paraded before press. Turkish Daily News, 23
June [online edition]. Available from:
https://turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=349 [accessed 13 November 2008].
Aydıntaşbaş, A., 2000. Murder on the Bosporus. Middle East Quarterly, 7 (2), 15-22.
Balta-Paker, E., 2005. The ceasefire this time. Middle East Report, 31 August [online
edition]. Available from: http://www.merip.org/mero/mero083105.html [accessed 1
December 2008].
Baran, Z., 2008. Turkey divided. Journal of Democracy, 19 (1), 55-69.
Barkey, H., 1984. Crises of the Turkish political economy: 1960–1980. In: A. Evin,
ed. Modern Turkey: continuity and change. Opladen: Leske Verlag and Budrich
Gmbh, 47-63.
Belmain, E., 2004. The Asian European bridge: a strategic estimate of Turkey
following Operation Iraqi Freedom. Thesis (MA). US Army Command and General
Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS.
Beşe, E., 2005. Gendarmerie intelligence (JİTEM-JİT). In: Ü. Cizre, ed. Almanac
Turkey 2005: Security sector and democratic oversight. Istanbul: TESEV.
31
Birand, M. A., 1987. The generals’ coup in Turkey. London: Pergamon.
Bonner, A., 2005. Turkey, the European Union and paradigm shifts. Middle East
Policy, 12 (1), 44-71.
Bovenkerk, F. and Yeşilgöz, Y., 2004. The Turkish mafia and the state. In: C. Fijnaut
and L. Paoli, eds. Organised crime in Europe: concepts, pattern and control policies
in the European Union and beyond. Dordrecht: Springer.
Brodhead, F., Friel, H. and Herman, E., 1985. The "Bulgarian connection" revisited.
Covert Action Information Bulletin, 23 (spring), 3-38.
Brodhead, F. and Herman, E., 1986. The rise and fall of the Bulgarian connection.
New York: Sheridan Square.
Çağaptay, S., 2004. Where goes the U.S.-Turkish relationship? Middle East
Quarterly, 11 (Fall), 43-52.
Çağaptay, S., 2005. Turkey at a crossroads: preserving Ankara’s western orientation.
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Focus No. 48.
Çağaptay, S. and Uslu, E., 2005. Hizballah in Turkey revives: Al-Qaeda’s bridge
between Europe and Iraq? Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Watch
No. 946.
32
Cam, S. 2006. Institutional oppression and neo-liberalism in Turkey. Cardiff
University School of Social Sciences, Working Paper No 81.
Carpenter, T. G., 1999. U.S. policy toward Turkey: a study in double standards
[online].
Hellenic
Resources
Network.
Available
from:
http://www.hri.org/forum/intpol/carpenter.html#10 [accessed on 10 November 2008].
Çelik, S., 1994. Turkey's killing machine: the contra-guerrilla force. Kurdistan
Report, 17 (February/March).
Çelik, S., 1995. Ölüm makinası: Türk kontra-gerillası. Cologne: Ülkem Press.
Çevik, İ., 1997. Susurluk did not do the magic trick. Turkish Daily News, 7 November
[online edition]. Available from: www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=4883
[accessed 13 November 2008].
Cizre, Ü., 2003. Demythologyzing the national security concept: the case of Turkey.
The Middle East Journal, 57 (2), 213–230.
Cizre, Ü., 2004. Problems of democratic governance of civil-military relations in
Turkey and the European Union enlargement zone. European Journal of Political
Research, 43 (1), 107-125.
CILDEKT, 1995. Which Turkey for which Europe. Paris.
33
Clark, W., 1999. Byzantine politics: the abduction and trial of Abdullah Öcalan.
Variant, 8 (supplement), 1-12.
Cline, L., 2004. From Öcalan to Al Qaida: the continuing terrorist threat in Turkey.
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 27 (4), 321-335.
Couturier, K., 1997. Turkish scandal exposes links between crime, state
officials. The Washington Post, 1 January, p. A21.
Criss, N. B., 1005. The nature of PKK terrorism in Turkey. Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism, 18 (1), 17-37.
Drorian, S., 2005. Rethinking European security: the inter-regional dimension and.
the Turkish nexus. European Security, 14 (4), 421-441.
Eligür, B. 2006. Turkish-American relations since the 2003 Iraqi war: a troubled
partnership. Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Middle East Brief No. 6.
Erensü, S. and Adanlı, Y., 2004. Turkey in the eye of the beholder: tracking
perceptions on Turkey through political cartoons. Kontur, 10 (1), 58-72.
European Commission, 2004. Regular report on Turkey’s progress towards
accession. Brussels.
34
Federation of American Scientists, 2008. FY07 International Military Education
Training
[online].
Available
from:
www.fas.org/programs/ssp/asmp/factsandfigures/government_data/section655_data_F
Y2007/fas_IMET%202007.pdf [accessed 4 December 2008].
Fernandes, D., 2006. Turkey’s US-backed war on terror: a cause for concern?
Variant, 27 (winter), 33-36.
Fernandes, D. and Özden, İ., 2001. United States and NATO inspired 'psychological
warfare operations' against the 'Kurdish communist threat' in Turkey. Variant, 12
(spring), 10-16.
FCO, 2007. Turkey/United Kingdom Strategic Partnership 2007/8. London [online].
Available from: http://ukinturkey.fco.gov.uk/resources/en/word/3629574/stratergicpartnership [accessed 2 December 2008].
Ganser, D., 2004. NATO’s secret armies: Operation Gladio and terrorism in Western
Europe. London: Routledge.
Ganser, D., 2005. Terrorism in Western Europe: an approach to NATO’s secret staybehind armies. Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations. 6 (1),
69-95.
Gökay, B., 1993. The Turkish Communist Party: The fate of the founders. Middle
Eastern Studies, 29 (2), 220-235.
35
Gülcan, N. 2005. Targets are Iran and Syria. Journal of Turkish Weekly, 27 December
[online edition]. Available from: http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=24155
[accessed 4 December 2008].
Güllapoğlu, F., 1991. Tanksız, topsuz harekat. Istanbul: Tekin Yayınevi.
Gürkan, C., 1986. 12 Mart’a bes kala. Istanbul: Tekin Yayınevi.
Hale, W., 1994. Turkish politics and the military. London: Routledge.
Heper, M., 2005a. The European Union, the Turkish military and democracy. South
European Society and Politics, 10 (1), 33-44.
Heper, M., 2005b. The Justice and Development Party government and the military in
Turkey. Turkish Studies, 6 (2), 215-231.
Human Rights Watch, 2000. What is Turkey’s Hizbullah? [online]. Available from:
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2000/02/16/turkey3057_txt.htm
[accessed
28
October 2008].
Human Rights Watch, 2003. Turkey and war in Iraq: avoiding past patterns of
violation
[online].
Available
from:
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/eca/turkey/turkey_violations.htm [accessed
4 December 2008].
36
Human Rights Watch, 2006. Letter calling for release of Kurdish activists in Turkey
[online]. Available from: www.hrw.org/en/taxonomy/term/218/all?page=2 [accessed
5 December 2008].
Human Rights Watch, 2007. Turkey: human rights concerns in the lead up to July
Parliamentary
elections
[online].
Available
from:
www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/46a764362.pdf [accessed 7 December 2008].
İHD, 2008. Summary tables [online]. Available from:
http://www.ihd.org.tr/english/index.php [accessed 13 November 2008].
Jacoby, T., 2003. For the people, of the people and by the military: the regime
structure of modern Turkey. Political Studies, 51 (3), 669–685.
Jacoby, T., 2004. Social power and the Turkish state. London: Frank Cass.
Jacoby, T., 2005. Semi-authoritarian incorporation and autocratic militarism in
Turkey. Development and Change, 36 (4), 641–665.
Jenkins, G., 2007. Continuity and change: prospects for civil-military relations in
Turkey. International Affairs, 83 (2), 339-355.
Johnson, C., 2000. Blowback: the costs and consequences of American empire. New
York: Owl Books.
37
Karman, E., 1998. Islamic terrorist activities in Turkey in the 1990s. Terrorism and
Political Violence, 10 (4), 101-121.
KHRP, 2006. Promoting conflict – the Şemdinli bombing: trial observation report.
London.
KHRP, 2007. Freedom of the media in Turkey and the killing of Hrant Dink: trail
observation report. London.
Kirişci, K. and Winrow, G., 1997. The Kurdish question and Turkey: An example of
trans-state ethnic conflict. London: Frank Cass.
Komisar, L., 1997. Turkey's terrorists: a CIA legacy lives on. The Progressive, 61
(April), 24-27.
Korkut, T., 2007. Undue influence of military in Şemdinli trial, Bianet, 18 May
[online
edition].
Available
from:
http://www.bianet.org/english/kategori/english/96206/undue-influence-of-military-insemdinli-trial [accessed 4 December 2008].
Korkut, T., 2008. IHD investigates mob attacks against Kurds in the small town of
Altınova.
Bianet,
3
October
[online
edition].
Available
www.bianet.org/english/kategori/english/110035/ihd-investigates-mob-attacksagainst-kurds-in-the-small-town-of-altinova [accessed 4 December 2008].
38
from:
Kurdish Info, 2006. TIT is under the control of the military, 18 September [online
edition]. Available from: http://www.kurdish-info.net/News-sid-TIT-is-Under-theControl-of-the-Military-4007.html [accessed 5 December 2006].
Kurdish Times, 2006. Turkish terrorist group "Turkish Revenge Brigades" claims
responsibility for the bomb attack in Amed (Diyarbakır), 14 September [online
edition]. Available from: www.kurdistantimes.hkmg.net/news/2006/bomb.amed.html
[accessed 4 December 2008].
Kürkçü, E., 1997. Trapped in a web of covert killers. Covert Action Quarterly, 61
(Summer), 3-13.
Larrabee, S. and Lesser, I., 2002. Turkish foreign policy in an age of uncertainty.
Santa Monica: Rand.
Lenski, E., 2003. Turkey and the EU: On the road to nowhere. Walter HallsteinInstitut Paper, 10 (3).
Lieven, A., 2001. The end of NATO. Prospect Magazine, 69 (December) [online
edition].
Available
from:
http://www.prospect-
magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=3736 [accessed 7 December 2008].
39
Makovsky, A., 2000. U.S. policy toward Turkey: progress and problems. In: M.
Abramowitz, ed. Turkey’s transformation and American policy. New York: Twentieth
Century Foundation.
Mango, A., 2005. Turkey and the war on terror: for forty years we fought alone.
London: Routledge.
Mater, N., 1998. Turkey: Military implicated in attack on rights activist. Inter Press
Service
English
News
Wire,
26
May
[online].
Available
from:
http://mprofaca.cro.net/greenlight.html [accessed 5 December 2008].
Meyer, J., 1998. Politics as usual: Ciller, Refah and Susurluk: Turkey's troubled
democracy. East European Quarterly, 32 (4), pp. 489-502.
McCrea, R., 2007. Limitations on religion in a liberal democratic polity: Christianity
and Islam in the public order of the European Union. LSE Legal Studies Working
Papers, 18.
McDowall, D., 2004. A modern history of the Kurds. London: I. B. Tauris.
McGehee, R., 1999. CIA support of death squads [online]. Available from:
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/pdf/DeathSquads.pdf [accessed 6 November 2008].
McGregor, A., Tactical and strategic factors in Turkey's offensive against the PKK.
Terrorism
Focus,
4
(31)
[online
40
edition].
Available
from:
www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=4450
[accessed 15 December 2008].
Mello, B., 2007. Conflicting rationalities and the return of Kurdish violence in
Turkey. Annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, 8 March 2007
La Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas.
Michaud-Emin, L., 2007. The restructuring of the Military High Command in the
seventh harmonization package and its ramifications for civil-military relations in
Turkey. Turkish Studies, 8 (1), 25-42.
Muller, M., 1996. Nationalism and the rule of law in Turkey: the elimination of
Kurdish representation during the 1990s. In R. Olson, ed. The Kurdish Nationalist
Movement in the1990s. Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press, 173–200.
New Internationalist, 2008. Devlet Bahçeli. January [online edition]. Available from:
http://www.newint.org/columns/worldbeaters/2008/01/01/turkishnationalist/
[accessed 6 December 2008].
Nezan, K. (Kendal), 1993. Kurdistan in Turkey. In: G. Chaliand, ed. A people without
a country: the Kurds and Kurdistan. New York: Olive Branch Press, 38-94.
Nugent, J., 2004. The defeat of Turkish Hizballah as a model for counter-terrorism
strategy. Middle East Review of International Affairs, 8 (1), 69-76.
41
Öktem, K., 2006. Return of the Turkish “state of exception”. Middle East Report. 3
June [online edition]. Available from:
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero060306.html [accessed 1 December 2008].
Öktem, K., 2007. Harbingers of Turkey’s second republic. Middle East Report. 1
August [online edition]. Available from:
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero080107.html [accessed 4 December 2008].
Öktem, K., 2008. The patronising embrace: Turkey’s new Kurdish strategy. Research
Foundation
Switzerland-Turkey
[online].
Available
from:
www.sfst.ch/typo3/fileadmin/user_upload/dateien/OP_Oktem_08-02.pdf [accessed 5
December 2008].
OYAK,
2007.
46th
annual
report
[online].
Available
from:
http://www.oyak.com.tr/OyakWEBEN/faaliyet_raporlari/20080829013435.oyakannu
al2007_full.pdf [accessed 7 November 2008].
Pagan, R., 2005. Strategic implications of Turkey’s potential admission to the
European Union on the war against Islamic terrorism. Thesis (MA). US Army War
College, Carlisle PA.
Patton, M., 2007. AKP reform fatigue in Turkey: what has happened to the EU
process. Mediterranean Politics, 12 (3), 339-358.
42
Paul, J., 1981. The coup, The Middle East Research and Information Project Reports.
92, Washington DC.
Pipes, D., 2003. Turkey's radical turn? New York Post, 5 August 5 [online edition].
Available from: http://www.meforum.org/article/pipes/1185 [accessed 2 December
2008].
Prime Ministry State Planning Organisation, 2004. The likely effects of Turkey’s
membership upon the EU. Ankara.
Robey, R. and Vordermark, J. 2003. Security assistance mission in the Republic of
Turkey. The DISAM Journal of International Security Assistance Management, 26
(2), 1-18.
Rodoplu, Ü., Arnold, J. and Ersoy, G., 2003. Terrorism in Turkey. Prehospital and
Disaster Medicine, 18 (2), 152-160.
Romano, D., 2006. The Kurdish nationalist movement: opportunity, mobilization, and
identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Safire, W., 2003. Turkey’s wrong turn. New York Times. 24 March [online edition].
Available from:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E0DD1430F937A15750C0A96
59C8B63 [accessed 26 November 2008].
43
Sarıgil, Z., 2007. Europeanization as institutional change: the case of the Turkish
military. Mediterranean Politics, 12 (1), 39-57.
Schick, I. and Tonak, E., 1987. Conclusion. In: I. Schick and E. Tonak, eds. Turkey in
transition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 365–378.
Silverstein, K. and Sosman, S., 2006. Lost in the valley of the wolves. Harpers
Magazine.
29
November
[online
edition].
Available
from:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/11/sb-valley-of-the-wolves-1164806194
[accessed 4 December 2008].
SIPRI,
2008a.
Arms
transfers
database
[online].
Available
from:
http://www.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/at_db.html [accessed 8 November 2008].
SIPRI,
2008b.
Military
expenditure
database
[online].
Available
from:
http://milexdata.sipri.org/ [accessed 13 November 2008].
Sözen, A., 2006. Terrorism and the politics of anti-terrorism in Turkey. In: Robert
Orttung and Andrey Makarychev, eds. National counter-terrorism strategies: legal,
institutional, and public policy dimensions in the US, UK, France, Turkey and Russia.
Washington DC: IOS Press, 155-164.
Stanton, J. 2006. Sibel Edmonds vindicated? FBI reveals investigation continues.
Turkish
Digest.
25
October
[online
44
edition].
Available
from:
http://www.turkishdigest.com/2006/10/sibel-edmonds-vindicated-fbi-reveals.html
[accessed 4 December 2008].
Taşkın, Y., 2008. ‘Upsurge of the extreme right in Turkey: the intra-right struggle to
redefine “true nationalism and Islam”. Middle Eastern Studies, 44 (1), 131-149.
von Tersch, E. 2006. Developing a strategic partnership with Turkey. Thesis (MA).
US Army War College, Carlisle PA,
Teymur, S., 2007. A conceptual map for understanding the terrorist recruitment
process: observation and analysis of DHKP/C, PKK and Turkish Hezbollah terrorist
organizations. Thesis (PhD). University of North Texas.
Timur, Ş., 2007. Profile of Hrant Dink's juvenile murder suspect, Turkish Daily News.
22
January
[online
edition].
Available
from:
www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=64501&mailtofriend=1 [accessed
7 December 2008].
Tuğal, C. 2007. Nato’s Islamists: hegemony and Americanization in Turkey. New Left
Review, 44, 5-34.
UCDP/PRIO., 2008. Armed conflict dataset version 4 [online]. Available from:
http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Armed-Conflict [accessed 13 November 2008].
45
USAID.
2008.
The
Greenbook
[online].
Available
from:
http://qesdb.usaid.gov/gbk/index.html [accessed 8 November 2008].
US Department of State, 2006. Shared Vision and Structured Dialogue to Advance the
Turkish-American Strategic Partnership. Washington DC [online]. Available from:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/68574.htm [accessed 2 December 2008].
Uslu, E., 2007. From local Hizbollah to global terror: militant Islam in Turkey.
Middle East Policy, 14 (1), 124-141.
Uslu, E., 2008a. Tackling the PKK: mew directions for Turkey's special forces.
Turkish
Daly
News,
22
July
[online
edition].
Available
from:
www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/m/a.php?id=110393 [accessed 5 December 2008].
Uslu, E. 2008b. Ulusalcılık: The neo-nationalist resurgence in Turkey. Turkish
Studies, 9 (1), 73-97.
Vaner, S., 1987. The army (trans. R. Benatar and I. Schick). In: I. Schick and E.
Tonak, eds. Turkey in transition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 236–265.
Walker, J., 2007. Reexaming the U.S.-Turkish alliance. The Washington Quarterly,
31 (1), 93-109.
Yalçın, S. and Yurdakul, D., 1999. Bay Pipo: bir MİT görevlisinin sıradısı yaşamı.
Istanbul: Doğan Kitap.
46
Yörük, Z., 1996. Silence and silencers in the devil's triangle. Turkish Daily News, 23
November [online edition]. Available from:
https://turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=1525 [accessed 13 November 2008].
47
Notes
1
See, for instance, work by Gündüz Aktan and Ali Köknar (2002), Ülkümen Rodoplu
et el (2003), Lawrence Cline (2004) and Semih Teymur (2007).
2
The literature on the West’s “good offices” is broadly divided between studies
emphasising what might be called “the shared struggle” (Mango 2005, Aras and
Toktaş 2007) and “the civilising influence” (Heper 2005, Sarıgil 2007).
3
It seems likely that General Gürsel would have sought the permission of NATO
before conducting such an operation. Indeed, plans of the coup may have been leaked
to the US embassy as early as 1957 by an informant named Major Samet Kuşçu
(Yalçın and Yurdakul 1999, pp. 91-97).
4
Today, OYAK Group is led by a 14-man board, of whom seven are serving
members of the armed forces (at the rank of general or equivalent) and two, including
the current Chairman, Lieutenant General Yıldırım Türker, are retired. It has a
controlling interest in 32 companies in which more than 30,000 workers are employed
and has total assets valued at over $16 billion (OYAK 2007).
5
The MHP has also been able to organise and fund itself in Belgium, the Netherlands,
the UK and, especially, Germany where, as Jurgen Roth notes, ‘protection is
particularly strong’ and where ‘right-wing politicians… gave support to the party in
the 1970s’ (cited in Fernandes and Özden 2001, p. 12).
6
Due to the difficulties in obtaining accurate values for arms sales, however, these are
not to be regarded as accurate financial values. Rather, they are trend indicators based
on a mixture of market price and estimated value. See SIPRI (2008b) for a detailed
account of the methods used here.
48
7
Plans for a coup appear to have been discussed during a meeting between Chief of
the Turkish Air Force, Muhsin Batur, and his American counterpart, General Ryan,
during a trip to Washington shortly before the takeover in March 1971 (Gürkan 1986).
8
Later investigations have pointed to the central role of the former head of the CIA in
Turkey, Paul Henze, in the organisation of the coup (Kürkçü 1997).
9
Although Ağar (who went on to become party leader in 2002) eventually lost his
parliamentary immunity in the 2007 elections and is currently facing charges, only
two successful prosecutions resulted from Susurluk. An MİT colonel, Korkut Evren
and Özel Tim deputy head, İbrahim Şahin, were convicted of "founding and directing
a gang with the aim of committing crimes" and sentenced to six years in prison in
2001. Former Chief-of-Staff, General Doğan Güreş, commented that ‘everything
Eken did was done with our knowledge’ (Altınışık 2001). Bucak was cleared in 2003.
The court held that ‘his clan has a long history and in the revolts of the Kurds… his
clan chose the side of the state’ (cited in Bovenkerk and Yeşilgöz 2004, pp. 588-589).
10
A fact sharpened by the party’s enduring popularity (it won an unprecedented 47
per cent – up from 34 per cent in 2002 – in the 2007 general election) and the
accession of its Foreign Secretary, Abdullah Gül, to the Presidency in 2008.
11
Indeed, Hizbullah activities also seemed to have most intensive before Refah took
office. Clashes with the PKK, for instance, ‘reached a peak in 1993 and between 1991
and 1995 [a period noted for the dominance of the MGK-backed Doğru Yol Partisi]
about 700 were killed on both sides’ (Atalar 2006, p. 308).
12
‘Weeks later, the Turkish government ruled out purchasing any Eurofighter
Typhoon warplanes. This le[ft] only one option – Lockheed Martin's new F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter’ (Silverstein and Sosman 2006, p. 1).
49
13
Despite this, Kaya, İldeniz and Ateş received long prison sentences, while Çavuş
was released (although he has since been charged with the murder of another man in
Isparta). In 2007, however, the appeals court overturned their convictions and,
rejecting the argument that ‘throwing bombs at a citizen's shop is not a military
activity’, ruled that the case should be heard by a military tribunal (Korkut 2007).
14
Witnesses at such a rally at Altınova in September 2008 reported that groups of
Grey Wolves, allegedly assembled by MHP deputy, Ahmet Duran Bulut, damaged 35
properties and 9 vehicles without police intervention (Korkut 2008).
50