The Guardian (London) – Final Edition
September 27, 2006 Wednesday

Turkey: General insists army has role in politics

Ian Traynor

A leading Turkish general issued a stinging attack on the
centre-right government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan by warning that the
danger of Islamism in the country was reaching "alarming" levels.

Defying EU demands for the military to keep out of politics, General
Ilker Basbug, chief of land forces, warned the Erdogan government
that the top brass still saw itself as the ultimate arbiter of
Turkey’s secularist constitution.

"The Turkish armed forces have always taken sides and will continue
to do so in protecting the national state, the unitary state and the
secular state," he told a ceremony for cadets at a military academy
in Ankara. Islamists were "patiently and systematically" seeking to
erode the secularist order.

The robust defence of the military’s role in Turkish politics is
certain to affect an EU assessment of Turkey’s bid to eventually join
the EU.

The European commission is to issue a report card on Turkey in
November, delayed from next month, and is concerned about curbs on
freedom of expression, persecution of the large Kurdish minority and
the military’s interference in democratic politics, as well as
Turkey’s dispute with the EU members Greece and Cyprus over trade.

Other incidents yesterday showed Turkey ignoring EU criticism,
suggesting a rise in hostility ahead of elections next year.

Prosecutors filed new charges against the Turkish Armenian editor
Hrant Dink for "denigrating Turkishness", an article in the penal
code used to muzzle writers and journalists and which Brussels wants
scrapped.

In the largest Kurdish city in Turkey, Diyarbakir, the state put 56
Kurdish mayors on trial for appealing to Denmark to allow a Kurdish
exile television station to keep broadcasting.