MILLIYET- Columnist Fikret Bila comments on Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok’s speech on Wednesday evening. A summary of his column is as follows:
As soon as Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok ended his speech at Wednesday’s press reception, news of the plane crash came from Diyarbakýr. A wave of shock and sadness suddenly fell over the crowd. The ripples from this accident continue to spread. I’d like to extend my condolences to the family of the victims. Even while the shock from this accident was still fresh, two F-4 jets from Malatya also crashed, killing all four of their pilots. Unfortunately, there is nothing to do but hope that they rest in peace.
Gen. Ozkok’s speech carried a number of important messages for our political world. Putting it in the trendy language of recent weeks, this speech served to lay down a number of ‘red lines.’ Gen. Ozkok’s words, an apparent echo of the Turkish Armed Forces’ (TSK) ‘memorandums’ to the government several years ago, were in effect warnings to the government and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Gen. Ozkok’s red lines were the fundamental principles of the Turkish Republic. He emphasized that nobody could be allowed to harm these principles, and that those who aim at this could not be forgiven. He referred to Prime Minister Abdullah Gul and Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul’s recent action putting reservations on dismissed decisions of the Supreme Military Council (YAS) and making headscarves into a political issue. Gen. Ozkok requested that the decisions of Constitutional Court and Council of State should be taken as a basis concerning the headscarf matter, and he described such reservations on YAS decisions as violations of the Constitution. He said that Gul and Gonul’s reservations served as encouragement to those pursuing reactionary aims. With these words, Ozkok drew another red line around the disciplinary mechanism of the TSK. He gave the message that reactionaries were trying to infiltrate the TSK and that the army was actively working to counter this.
Looking at Gen. Ozkok’s speech in detail, the following can be inferred: The TSK thinks that reactionaries have succeeded in working their way into many state institutions in Turkey, and that they have even entered constitutional institutions and become active in them. Gen. Ozkok thinks that among state bodies, the TSK has had the most success at holding back this infiltration. Its high-ranking officers have conveyed this situation through many channels to the AKP administrators and to government and Parliament leaders. Gen. Ozkok’s action laying out these red lines for public view on the occasion of the AKP government’s 50th day in power carries hopeful messages for the future.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION