PREVIEW: Turkey set to appoint new high command

By Jasper Mortimer Jul 31, 2011, 17:16 GMT

Ankara - Turkey's Cabinet will sit down with its military on Monday and try to overcome the shock of the resignation of its four highest generals by appointing a new high command as quickly as possible.

'I suspect it will go pretty smoothly,' said Kemal Kirisci, political scientist of Bosphorus University, of the High Military Council meeting, which will select the generals and senior officers to replace those that resigned or are retiring.

Disagreement over the selection provoked the chief of general staff, General Isik Kosaner, and the heads of the army, navy and air force to resign on Friday.

It was the first time in Turkish history that the four highest commanders in the armed forces had stepped down on the same day.

The government quickly appointed the fifth commander, General Necdet Ozel of the paramilitary gendarmerie, as head of the army and acting chief of general staff.

Ozel will lead the military delegation to the High Military Council, which will be chaired by President Abdullah Gul and attended by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and senior Cabinet ministers.

But who else would be in the military delegation was unclear on Sunday. The positions of head of the navy, air force and gendarmerie were vacant.

In a letter to colleagues, General Kosaner said he had asked for early retirement because he was unable to shield his fellow officers from prosecution and from being denied promotion over allegations of being involved in plotting coups.

He said the detention of 173 generals and lower-ranking soldiers did not meet international standards of due process.

But President Gul, who was foreign minister in the ruling Justice and Development Party until 2007, defended the investigation of the alleged plots, saying it was conducted by judges without any interference from the government.

Gul told reporters on the weekend that the High Military Council would appoint a new high command.

'The government has a very strong hand,' said Cengiz Aktar, political scientist at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University. 'They will just go ahead with their idea about the promotions and postings.'

Aktar did not expect the four resignations to have any impact on the military's long-running conflict with Kurdish insurgents in eastern Turkey.

General Ozel, who is certain to be appointed chief of general staff, has commanded the gendarmerie, and was 'very much involved in the combat against the guerrillas,' Aktar noted.

'He will just continue, so I don't think there will be any change' in the campaign against the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK - a conflict which has cost more than 40,000 lives, Aktar said.

The four commanders' resignations stunned Turkey. It what was seen as the latest round of the power struggle between the Islamic-oriented government and the military, which regards itself as the guardian of Turkey's secularism.

A western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of the government Sunday, 'they've won, hands down.'

Kirisci agreed, but argued that Prime Minister Erdogan had raised questions about his own democratic credentials through the government's controversial handling of the coup-plot investigations and the detention of 56 journalists on various charges.

In years to come, Kirisci said, the generals' resignation 'may be seen as a turning point in the evolution of Turkish democracy, but it may also be seen as a turning point for democracy being limited by the authoritarian nature of the prime minister. Time will tell.'