I would suggest talking to writers like Ece Temelkuran, Latife Tekin, Haluk Sahin, Nuray Mert, Nilufer Narli, Pinar Kur… I think they would give you a more impartial and balanced view, if you are interested in that. Of course all you want to hear is how monsturous the turkish army is and kemalists are the source of everything bad, then Perihan Magden would do just fine.
Obviously, someone writing in today’s zaman (which is by the day totally different than zaman) would not say anything bad about Fethullah Gulen, even when he praises Kenan Evren as to go to heaven or call Turkan Saylan an armenian just to insult her. I never saw anyone writing in Fethullah Gulen’s journals criticizing even mildly this organization.
Regards.
melek.

I love turkey,
susanna

How incredibly naive this woman is! It is mind-boggling to what extent people can be self-delusional. And in this case it has no justification, because Ms.Magden is not an illiterate village girl, but a journalist, who pretends to know how things work. This is a common trait among the so-called “Turkish liberals”: attack the army, Kemalists, the secularists, lump them all together with ultranationalists, curse the “old, powerful elite” and hope that AKP will get things right. Just hope. Hope and believe that the AKP are good folks, unlike this hated “elite”.

However, I would suggest these so-called “liberals” and their admirers in the West to be a bit more critical, and self-critical as well. The AKP is not planning to introduce the sharia law, but social and cultural conservatism is being steadily enforced. There are countless examples of this. Uncovered women start feeling uncomfortable, especially in Anatoilian towns. People get beaten for drinking during the Ramadan. Kissing couples get harassed by the police (infiltrated by the Fetullah Gulen boys, by the way, this icon of “Islamic moderation”). To get government contract is getting all but impossible for secular-minded businessmen. Unless, of course, they start pretending being religious, to be on the “right side”. In the meantime the Islamists are becoming a real elite in Turkey. All that stands in their way to full monopolisation of power is secular businesses, media (which they try to destroy – remember Erdogan’s hysterical attacks against Aydin Dogan?) and above all, the army, this last bastion not contaminated yet by the Gulenists. So who is the real elite? Oh, sorry, I forgot. For our “liberals” drinking wine alone automatically makes one a member of the “fascist-Kemalist-ultranationalist-secularist elite”.

And yet, despite all the alarming signals about the AKP corruption, authoritarianism and intolerance, it turns out that….this is still the best hope for “the liberals”! At this point self-delusion becomes not only intellectually bankrupt, but also deeply irresponsible and even inmoral. These people seem to hate the army to such an extent that they do not even care about what would come next. Every time I draw parallels with their fellow “liberals” in Iran in 1979, they start screaming: no, no, Turkey will NEVER become an Iran. But how do you know, ladies and gentlemen? Is it just because you say this? Or you got special assurances from your AKP friends? You want to make everhybody believe that the military is the real problem, and not the absence of checks and balances on the AKP. What a shallow approach.

Mr.Knaus, there is so much on this site about “fascist secular Kemalists” that I would suggest you to interview one of them too. I am not even dreaming of some kind of impartiality here, but just for the sake of the cherished pluralism, would it not be a good idea to give floor for one of them? I am sure many of your readers will really appreciate it.

Many thanks for your comments. Indeed, there is now a heated debate in the Turkish press on these photos, where the word of Taraf stands against that of the military.

However this debate ends, to an outside observer it does seem as if the military’s main response – to have the Chief of the General Staff threaten the paper and other journalists who raise questions about the armed forces – is not fully in line with the standards of civil-military relations in a European democracy.

For those who defend Turkish democracy against often unfair criticism abroad this is a setback. The proper response, it seems, would have been a serious and measured response by the institutions of the state – government or parliament – to the allegations published by Taraf. Perhaps this is still to come. The cause – 17 deaths – and the fact that this is not the first time such allegations have been made (with some credibility) makes this a serious matter.

The reason I quoted from Today’s Zaman is not for any political bias: it was then the only English-language paper that gave a lot of space to reporting the facts of this issue. I am not sure, however, whether its recent coverage supports the (often made) claim that it is in turn an unconditional supporter of the government.

In fact, when AKP leader and prime minister R. T. Erdogan supported the military in its argument with Taraf, Zaman (and other journalists) published many columns criticizing both the military and the prime minister.

See for instance this article by Bulen Kenes: http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/yazarAd.do?kn=67. Kenes writes:

“On Oct. 3, 2008, hundreds of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists crossed Turkey’s border with Iraq, carrying with them heavy weapons and many mules loaded with ammunition and attacked the Aktütün military outpost near Şemdinli.

In the attack 17 young soldiers were martyred. Yet, with this attack, Turkey experienced a first along with its tragic losses. The media organizations and the general public asked for the first time if things were being done the wrong way in the country’s counterterrorism efforts. Actually, they did not need such a tragic death toll to ask such questions.

If a country has been seeing such tragic deaths for 25 years and has lost some 40,000 citizens in this bloodshed and if it is still impossible to find a solution to this problem, then one must nurture suspicions that something is wrong with all this. Actually, one can be certain of it.

You also know how the story proceeded. On the day the demands of the military — voiced at a time when everyone in the country was paralyzed by the attack– for an extension of its powers and authorities at the expense of restricting human rights and freedoms and reintroducing a system similar to the rule of emergency implemented in the past were to be discussed at a meeting of the Higher Counterterrorism Board (TMYK), the Taraf daily published intelligence reports and several images taken from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

These shocking documents told of a single shocking truth: Despite concrete evidence and intelligence reports of terrorist mobilization coming from different sources before the attack on Oct. 3, the security forces had taken no notice of the PKK terrorists infiltrating Turkish territory and taking up positions near the Aktütün military outpost. It was as if they sat and waited for the terrorists to attack. Not a single aerial attack was conducted on the terrorists, who were clearly preparing for an attack, and suffiecient measure was not taken to reinforce the units within and around the military outpost during this time.
The images and documents clearly showed a lack of responsibility and failure that go beyond negligence on the part of the military’s commanders.

In such a case, what are the duties of the authorities in a civilized country? Of course, they are expected to provide the public with persuasive documents that would rebut these shocking claims, resign from office with a sense of responsibility for the incident or remove those who had been negligent in the incident, whether intentionally or accidentally, from office at once.

Do you think this is what happened in our country? No, unfortunately. First, a wait and see strategy was followed with the assumption that the documents published by the Taraf daily, which has a small readership, would be ignored by the main actors of the Turkish media. For this reason, there was no reaction on the first day. However, seeing that all media organizations subsequently published the documents and information in question, the General Staff acted immediately.

However, instead of making a statement that would assuage the general public — albeit belatedly — the chief of general staff opted to challenge the journalists — who he made travel to Balıkesir by plane — with a tone that befits neither a country that claims to be democratic nor an army that is assumed to be modern while he was accompanied by the top commanders of the military, reminding us of the post-Sept. 12, 1980 coup National Unity Committees — or you may call this a Revolutionary Commanding Council.”

So far this is all critical of the army. But Kenes was equally critical of the government:

“Naturally, you might ask what the government and the ministers empowered by us to administer the country were doing in this bizarre process. We already know what the prime minister did. Under such circumstances, an elected government in a democratic country is naturally expected not to allow generals to lash out at the general public. It is supposed to remove the generals who do this from office at once. What do you think our government has done? As it cannot even think of removing them from office, it lent support to the rebuke hurled at the nation by the Revolutionary Commanding Council.”

Whatever the outcome of this specific debate, the fact that is takes place seems a sign that Turkey has indeed progressed. Why would it be “psychological warfare” to ask any institution of the state, including the military, whether it could not have prevented this tragic loss of life? Should the press not ask tough questions to all state institutions?

It does so in European countries, in the US, and it is now doing so in Turkey. Is this not a sign of progress? And will this not also help in the fight against the enemies of democracy in Turkey, including the PKK? Is an open and vigorous debate not always in the interests of a society?

Gerald Knaus

PS: Another article critical of the government and the military in the same issue of Today’s Zaman: Sahion Alpay’s “Aktutun debate good for both army and democracy” (http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/yazarAd.do?kn=37)