Turkish Military "Advice" Reins in Islamist Erbakan Government

by James M. Dorsey

Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan is caught between a rock and a hard place. His reluctance to implement measures drafted by Turkey's military-dominated National Security Council (NSC), effectively Turkey's highest decision-making body, that are designed to curb the religious activism of his own followers has created extreme tension with the staunchly secular armed forces. It could come to a boil again at any moment. At the same time, despite expressions of unease from within his own party, Erbakan may also have enhanced his credibility among those who voted for him through the way he handled the National Security Council.

A crisis between the government and the powerful military was widely predicted in late April during an NSC review of the Erbakan government's implementation of NSC decisions taken Feb. 28. Those decisions were hammered out during a grueling nine-hour meeting in which the Erbakan government was severely criticized for allegedly attempting to undermine Turkish secularism.

Moderates among both the politicians and the military were working to avoid open clashes. The military command said it does not want to seize control of the country from politicians, even though it views them as ranging from incompetent to posing a threat to the secular character of the modern republic that Kemal Mustafa Ataturk carved out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.

During the last period of military rule, from 1980 to 1983, the armed forces supervised the writing of the current constitution, which formalizes a special role for the military. As a result, the five top commanders meet with the five most senior civilian politicians, the president, the prime minister and the ministers of defense, foreign affairs and interior, each month in the National Security Council. The council's "advice" must be given priority treatment by the government. On Feb. 28 the generals spelled out 18 measures of such advice to curb the growth of Islamists in schools, religious brotherhoods and the government.

The Council's advice crowned weeks of mounting tension between the military and the government because of Erbakan's attempts to grant Islam a greater role in public life. Modern Turkey's first Islamist prime minister, Erbakan had proposed to lift a ban on the wearing of headscarves by female civil servants in government offices. He also wanted to build mosques in central Istanbul and Ankara in locations widely viewed as symbols of secular republicanism. The military in February signaled its concern by parading tanks through an Ankara suburb.

The armed forces would like to engineer far-reaching reforms of the political system.

The military's agenda, however, goes beyond the measures decided in February, which were as much designed to curb Islamism as they were aimed at humiliating Erbakan. The armed forces would like to engineer far-reaching reforms of the country's political system. These, if successful, could return a measure of long-term stability to Turkish politics. The reforms would also prevent Erbakan's Islamist Refah Party from ever seizing absolute power. These include:

strengthening the largely ceremonial post of the president
granting the judiciary greater independence
introduction of a French-style two-tier election system
devolution of authority to grant municipalities greater freedom
reform of the law on political parties to loosen the grip of the leader on the party apparatus.

The military is increasingly irritated by recent statements by a prominent Refah member of parliament denouncing the NSC decisions and indirectly attacking the armed forces. The statements by Hasan Huseyn Celal appear both to reflect mounting dissatisfaction among Refah's rank and file and to constitute Erbakan's attempt to quell criticism from within the party.

Since coming to office in June at the head of a coalition between Refah and the center-right True Path Party headed by Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller, Erbakan has discarded virtually all his campaign promises in favor of maintaining the status quo. Rather than demanding Turkey's disassociation from the European Union, he now is calling for its full integration. Similarly, he has ceased forecasting Turkey's withdrawal from NATO as well as the introduction of an economy based on Islamic precepts.

Anti-Western Sentiment

Ironically, the recent rejection of Turkish membership in the EU by European Christian Democratic leaders, including German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, because of Turkey's Muslim culture strengthened anti-Western and anti-European sentiment in Turkey. The European Union at an informal gathering of its foreign ministers in The Netherlands tried to redress the situation by insisting that Turkey maintained the right to apply for EU membership, but stopping short of assuring Turkey that one day it would become a member of the club.

The stakes in this poker game are high. Turkey is now the European Union's fourth biggest customer, behind only the United States, Switzerland and Japan. Europe's trade surplus with Turkey rocketed up to more than $10 billion after a Customs Union went into force on Jan. 1, 1996. Preliminary data from European diplomats shows the trade gap growing even faster in 1997.

The Christian Democratic Party's statement played into Erbakan's hand as he was winning favor among his supporters as the result of his refusal to cave in immediately to the NSC demands. In a country in which the military is the most trusted institution and the ultimate arbiter, Erbakan's acceptance of the NSC demands only five days after the council meeting amounted to taking a stand.

All of this is unlikely to deter the military, which has a timetable of its own. For the first time in modern Turkish history, four of Turkey's five senior-most military commanders are up for retirement in August. These include the hard-line commander of the Navy, who has been particularly bent on curbing the rise of Islamism in Turkey. It is likely that the military would like to see its will implemented by the time rotations take place at the military top.

President Suleyman Demirel, in a letter to Erbakan prior to the Feb. 28 NSC meeting, spelled out what may happen if parliament fails to reform Turkey's decaying political system and the military decides that it may have to travel a different road. Demirel noted that under the constitution the president could under "extraordinary" circumstances take executive control of the government without pushing the prime minister aside for an indefinite period of time.

The implicit assumption in Demirel's strategy is that efforts to drive a wedge between Refah and the DYP will prove unsuccessful. Military attempts in March failed to persuade key members of Ciller's party and thus deprive the government of its parliamentary majority on the eve of two no-confidence votes. On April 26, however, two DYP ministers resigned, citing Erbakan's failure to carry out NSC demands. The list of measures the NSC has ordered the Erbakan government to implement strikes at the very heart of Refah's support. Most important among the 18 measures is the closing down of many of the country's 688 publicly run religious seminaries and Qur'anic courses. Refah officials concede that it recruits many of its cadres and grassroots activists from these seminaries. Among the 14,000 seminary graduates active in Refah are prominent officials, including Istanbul Mayor Tayyip Erdogan.

The NSC also wants the government to clamp down on all privately run religious courses and ensure that they are under the direct control of the Education Ministry. There are some 6,000 private courses currently approved by Turkey's Religious Affairs Department. The Council asserts that thousands of other unlicensed courses are being run. Some 500,000 Turkish high-school age students, or one in every eight between the ages of 12 and 17, receive Islamic training. Another 1.5 million students were certified by private Qur'anic courses in 1994 alone.

Turkish secularists charge that the religious seminaries initially created to educate state employees to operate mosques have been turned into a political tool in the hands of successive right-wing governments desperately seeking the backing of more conservative and traditional rural voters.

In its bid to undermine religious educational institutions, the military also has demanded that compulsory primary education be raised from five to eight years. Presently, Turkey has a three-tier education system: five years of compulsory primary education for children of 7 to 12 years, followed by a non-compulsory three years of secondary schooling and another three years of high school.

It is at the secondary school level that parents choose between placing their children in vocational schools, general schools or religious seminaries. An eight-year system would effectively deny them that choice, with the decisions then being made within the school gates.

The confrontation between the government and the military has put the business and financial community in a bind. The country's leading business federation issued a report earlier this year calling for quicker democratization. On the one hand, the report was in line with the military's agenda. It urged that the power of political party leaders be curbed. The leaders now are able to dictate party policies and nominate candidates without consulting anyone outside their own tight circles, making it all but impossible for outsiders to break into politics.

But moving into more dangerous territory, the report proposes that Kurds living in the southeastern part of the country be given the right to education in their own language. And in direct confrontation with the armed forces, the report demanded that the military be subjected to civilian control by abolishing the National Security Council and suggesting that laws that still limit public debate on sensitive issues be repealed.