BY OKAY GONENSIN
VATAN- A month filled with football is over, and now we have to get back to certain issues. During the football-filled days, certain news stories published by Taraf daily stirred little public reaction. The most important story concerned certain plans of the General Staff, which seemed like those of a political party. The General Staff all but confirmed the existence of the plans but indicated they had not been approved at the top level. Chief of General Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit said that people should know who controls Taraf's purse strings.
It's hard to conceive of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) performing actions to influence the public and government agencies and sway the nation, just like a party. But considering our recent history, one can't help but be not surprised that in our current atmosphere, which lacks a democrat, secular and progressive political power, the TSK is trying to fill this gap. Whenever politics loses its ability to govern the country and direct the people, in short, whenever it fails to fulfill its duty, the TSK takes this upon itself. Unfortunately, some people still think that the necessity to 'take this upon itself' constitutes 'direct intervention' into the government. These kinds of people still want to amass power through the TSK in order to cover their clumsiness, impotence, and lack of vision.
Of course, we can't know if Taraf has certain 'organizational' or capital relations outside the ones it has declared or if it's a vehicle to stir things up. We only know that Taraf's story was confirmed and was a journalistic success. The paper fulfilled its task of informing the public on important issues. If Taraf or another paper becomes a tool for an agenda, the importance of its stories will fade and its influence wane. It's not easy to cure diseases in a political arena where the center and center-left are completely empty, and make democratic institutions there. In hobbled democracies, concepts will continue to be muddled.