Tensions between Turkey’s government and its powerful generals will continue clouding the future of the European Union-applicant country, after the new military commander warned against the rising profile of Islam.
General Ilker Basbug laid bare in his first speech as commander of Nato’s second-biggest army on Thursday the battle lines of a power struggle between the Islamist-rooted AK Party and the military, which sees itself as the ultimate guarantor of Turkey’s founding secular principles.
While his words repeated the military’s long-standing policies, analysts said they also served as a reminder that despite setbacks the military was still a bulwark against what it views as attempts to bring religion into public life.
Basbug, a hawkish and calculating general, takes command as Turkey hopes to put behind it a long standoff pitting secularists, including generals and judges, against the AKP. “There is nothing new in his words. The old battle lines are all there,” said Cengiz Aktar, a professor at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University.
“He will play the role of the wise man after the storm but at the end of the day he is just repeating the well-established policy of Turkey’s armed forces,” Aktar said. Analysts say Basbug, promoted to the top job after rising through the ranks, is less confrontational than his predecessor. Turkey, which is predominantly Muslim, has a secular constitution, but the role of religion in public life is a divisive issue in the country of 70 million.
Hard-line secularists accuse the AKP of harbouring a hidden Islamist agenda by seeking to ease restrictions on religion. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan denies the charges, and points to his liberal reforms while in office.
Ahmet Akarli, an analyst for Goldman Sachs, said that while he does not expect in the short term a repeat of the political and economic turbulence that hit Turkey earlier this year, simmering tensions between the secularist camp and the government are bound to erupt again.
“It is difficult to predict the timing and the severity of the next bout of confrontation, but there is no doubt it will happen,” Akarli said. “Political risk has moderated after the court case but the fundamental conflict is there. These are two forces that have been at odds since the creation of modern Turkey,” Akarli said.
Last month, the country’s highest court narrowly ruled not to close down the AKP on charges of anti-secular activities. The case wiped billions of dollars off Turkish stocks and made some foreign investors hesitant about investing in the rapidly growing country, which hopes to join the EU.
In a speech before an audience that included Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, a former Islamist, Basbug said a segment in society was concerned that a new culture and lifestyle heavily influenced by Islam was emerging in Turkey.
The AKP, which draws its support from a rising Muslim middleclass that has challenged Turkey’s traditional Westernised elites, infuriated secularists by trying to lift a ban on Muslim headscarves at universities.
Since the AKP swept to power in 2002, a debate around Islam and how much space it should have in society has intensified. The secularists fear Islam, if unchecked, will erode Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secularist legacy; AKP supporters say the state should recognise the individual rights of pious Turks.
A widening police investigation into a shadowy, ultra-nationalist organisation, called Ergenekon, has forced the military onto the defensive for the first time in years. Two senior retired generals are among those arrested. Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based security analyst, said the outcome of the power struggle will shape Turkey’s future. “The end game is the role of religion in public life.”