Stealth Victory for the Turkish Military?

Slate’s Steven A. Cook arguesTurkish military are still plenty powerful.

Their wings have been clipped, but they’re still the big winners in the EU membership process.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 29th, 2005 at 4:17 pm and is filed under A Few Euros More, The CIS and South Eastern Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1. Edward Says:
   November 6th, 2005 at 8:07 am

   If the Spanish example is anything to go by, my guess is that this quote from the article contains the key:

   “And while the Turkish prime minister formally presides over military promotions and retirements, the officers actually maintain exclusive control over personnel matters.”

   Maybe it took Gonzalez and co the best part of 20 years to do it, but once you establish the reality of democratic control over the appointment of senior General Staff officers, and ensure those who are there have a real commitment to the democratic process then the rest falls into place.

   I don’t know which Chapter of the accession process this falls under, but you can be sure it will be there. Of course, don’t underestimate Nato training programmes as one subtle and indirect way of achieving these changes. My guess is that Gonzalez’s U turn on Nato was precisely related to this factor: the impact on the officer corps mindset of being part of a democratic military structure.