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You are in the army now
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Turkey’s generals should better change their social habits at once, or find the moles at the barracks. The visual material on their hobbies, now regularly leaked to the media, do not make good ammunition in psychological warfare, especially during days of mourning dead soldiers.
The Turks got to know the image of their air force commander, Aydogan Babaoglu, when his pictures were "leaked" to the press, showing him during a shot on a golf course - and on the same day the military headquarters was telling Turkey the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, had attacked a military outpost and killed 17 soldiers. The General Staff defended the commander with a statement that caused not-so-shy smiles: during the golf party the commander had not learned of the attack, when the rest of Turkey had.
More recently pictures of the deputy chief of staff, Hasan Igsiz, were seen splashed on the front page, featuring the commander and his family and friends going to a nice little picnic aboard a military helicopter, enjoying the beautiful landscape and escorted by military personnel. Ironically, more or less the same days, the military court of appeals overturned a lower court’s verdict which had acquitted a naval officer for "taking a civilian friend on a submarine ride all the way from the Mediterranean to Marmara." The military supreme court ruled that the submarine ride for the friend constituted abuse of authority.
Now, if an officer’s friend’s cruise aboard a submarine on duty constitutes abuse of authority what is another’s private travel aboard a military helicopter? Could the difference be that one is a junior officer and the other is number from the top? Do we have different military laws and regulations regarding different ranks? If the navy commander had taken a friend for a cruise aboard a frigate would the admiral not have abused authority? Would he be prosecuted? Are the military do’s and don’t’s valid only until an officer becomes a general?
How will the naval officer feel when he is -- naturally -- found guilty of abuse of power but a top general takes his family and friends for a helicopter tour and enjoys a pleasant picnic accompanied by military personnel? Can we expect him to be faithful to "the system?" That reminds me of a junior officer who, a few years earlier, knocked on my door, a total stranger with a weird proposal. He possessed highly classified military documents and wanted to "sell" them. The officer was "authentic." And so were the documents in his possession.
I turned down his offer and advised him not to knock on other doors because he was committing a very serious offense. He looked at me apologetically, and said, "Everyday I see my seniors making illegal gains and not being punished for that. I know what I am trying to do is wrong. But would it not be wrong if I am punished for this and the others are not?"
The system is not perfect at the bottom level either. Many people think that the average Turkish conscript is the poor village boy who has to endure and survive the bloody war fought against terrorists. Yes, thousands of them have died fighting the PKK. But they are the unfortunate minority, although some of the mourning relatives and friends tend to call them the fortunate martyrs. But hundreds of thousands of conscripts are engaged with other tasks. Once you are a conscript you can end up doing all sorts of non-military things, depending on your civilian profession. You can be a hairdresser for officers’ wives, teach English to officers’ children, cook or serve drinks at the officers’ club, peel potatoes in the kitchen, clean the toilets, do the accounts for the canteen or do plumbing for the officers’ residences. The options are endless.
If the conscript is luckier, he can always be tasked with collecting balls on a military golf base at the heart of Ankara, driving the commander’s kids to school, being a body guard for Mrs Commander, or escorting the commander and his family to a fancy picnic. But whatever the task is, in many cases it is not soldiering. The fact is disturbingly visible: the senior military personnel’s habit of keeping up with bad habits plus the headquarters’s now regular failure to keep its private parts private equals a loss of credibility of the "Turkish military myth." The indecent solution is to better keep private things private. A more decent solution would be not to have private things at all.
More recently pictures of the deputy chief of staff, Hasan Igsiz, were seen splashed on the front page, featuring the commander and his family and friends going to a nice little picnic aboard a military helicopter, enjoying the beautiful landscape and escorted by military personnel. Ironically, more or less the same days, the military court of appeals overturned a lower court’s verdict which had acquitted a naval officer for "taking a civilian friend on a submarine ride all the way from the Mediterranean to Marmara." The military supreme court ruled that the submarine ride for the friend constituted abuse of authority.
Now, if an officer’s friend’s cruise aboard a submarine on duty constitutes abuse of authority what is another’s private travel aboard a military helicopter? Could the difference be that one is a junior officer and the other is number from the top? Do we have different military laws and regulations regarding different ranks? If the navy commander had taken a friend for a cruise aboard a frigate would the admiral not have abused authority? Would he be prosecuted? Are the military do’s and don’t’s valid only until an officer becomes a general?
How will the naval officer feel when he is -- naturally -- found guilty of abuse of power but a top general takes his family and friends for a helicopter tour and enjoys a pleasant picnic accompanied by military personnel? Can we expect him to be faithful to "the system?" That reminds me of a junior officer who, a few years earlier, knocked on my door, a total stranger with a weird proposal. He possessed highly classified military documents and wanted to "sell" them. The officer was "authentic." And so were the documents in his possession.
I turned down his offer and advised him not to knock on other doors because he was committing a very serious offense. He looked at me apologetically, and said, "Everyday I see my seniors making illegal gains and not being punished for that. I know what I am trying to do is wrong. But would it not be wrong if I am punished for this and the others are not?"
The system is not perfect at the bottom level either. Many people think that the average Turkish conscript is the poor village boy who has to endure and survive the bloody war fought against terrorists. Yes, thousands of them have died fighting the PKK. But they are the unfortunate minority, although some of the mourning relatives and friends tend to call them the fortunate martyrs. But hundreds of thousands of conscripts are engaged with other tasks. Once you are a conscript you can end up doing all sorts of non-military things, depending on your civilian profession. You can be a hairdresser for officers’ wives, teach English to officers’ children, cook or serve drinks at the officers’ club, peel potatoes in the kitchen, clean the toilets, do the accounts for the canteen or do plumbing for the officers’ residences. The options are endless.
If the conscript is luckier, he can always be tasked with collecting balls on a military golf base at the heart of Ankara, driving the commander’s kids to school, being a body guard for Mrs Commander, or escorting the commander and his family to a fancy picnic. But whatever the task is, in many cases it is not soldiering. The fact is disturbingly visible: the senior military personnel’s habit of keeping up with bad habits plus the headquarters’s now regular failure to keep its private parts private equals a loss of credibility of the "Turkish military myth." The indecent solution is to better keep private things private. A more decent solution would be not to have private things at all.
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