Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Turkey’s Massive Military Trial Opens Old Wounds and New Anxieties

Certo che Erdogan ha aperto molti fronti.  Ha ambiziosamente proiettato 
la Turchia sul teatro internazionale quando ancora il processo di 
riequilibrio interno dei poteri tra civile e militare non è ancora 
consolidato.  Soprattutto ha aperto il fronte siriano, dal quale i 
militari possono riacquisire prestigio e influenza.
L'ipotesi è che abbia perso lucidità oppure che stia perseguendo una 
strategia molto sottile e difficilmente individuabile.
 
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Turkey’s Massive Military Trial Opens Old Wounds and New Anxieties
Claims of procedural and evidentiary anomalies in a huge trial of coup 
plotters raise criticism of the Erdogan administration. Is the Prime 
Minister trying too hard to bury the military—and Turkish secularism?
By Pelin Turgut / Istanbul | September 24, 2012
 
It was meant to be a milestone for Turkish democracy. In a trial that 
ran for 21 months, more than 300 senior military officers — including 
two ex-generals — were accused of seeking to overthrow Prime Minister 
Recep Tayyip Erdogan‘s Islamist-rooted government in 2003. Never again 
would hardline secularist generals — the arbiters of political life for 
decades by force of coups or behind-the-scenes coercion — be able to act 
with impunity. The trial — dubbed Sledgehammer — was to represent the 
end of an era when the top brass believed themselves beyond the reach of 
the law, justified in their actions because Turks needed protecting from 
radical Islam and could not know what was best for themselves.
 
On Friday a judge in a crowded purpose-built courthouse outside Istanbul 
handed down jail sentences ranging from 13 to twenty years against 325 
officers. But instead of writing an epilogue to a divisive era, a nation 
already bitterly polarized over its future became even further divided.
 
The defendants –including two former generals and a former admiral–were 
accused of planning to bomb mosques at prayer time and to shoot down a 
Greek fighter jet in an attempt to stir public unrest and cause the 
downfall of Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted government, now in its third term 
in power. But the trial was dogged from the start by allegations of 
improper conduct, false evidence and apparent anomalies, such as dozens 
of officers nowhere near an incriminating war games exercise or CDs said 
to have been recorded in 2002-3 but using Word 2007 software. The 
defense repeatedly complained that its counter-evidence was not heard 
and key witnesses were not called to testify. Erdogan, critics charged, 
used the trial as a pretext to lock away his former opponents.
 
“I am not convinced by the verdict and I don’t believe it is fair 
because the court ignored much of the counter-evidence that emerged 
during the trial,” says Sedat Ergin, columnist at the top-selling 
Hurriyet daily. “From here on there is a process of appeals that could 
go all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. Far from closing a 
chapter, the Sledgehammer case has just become an even bigger issue on 
Turkey‘s plate.”
 
Sledgehammer was seen by many as the final installment in Erdogan’s 
long-running campaign to rein in the military–once an archenemy that 
made little secret of its disdain for him and his pious cohorts. 
Headscarf-wearing wives of politicians were not allowed to attend 
official functions. High-ranking commanders would often refuse to shake 
hands with Erdogan allies. For the Prime Minister, who served a brief 
prison sentence while mayor of Istanbul for inciting religious hatred, 
it is a wound that clearly still rankles.
 
Dethroning the military is a mission that has defined his rule. 
Re-elected for a second term in 2007 with an almost 50% majority, he 
used that mandate to launch a series of investigations into officers, 
lawyers, politicians, journalists and others that exposed several 
alleged conspiracies against the government. The plots were based on 
plans to cause upheaval, loss of faith in the government and thus pave 
the way for a military takeover. A second mammoth trial—this one called 
Ergenekon–is still ongoing. Some of its defendants have been behind bars 
for four years pending proceedings.
 
The allegations against the military are believable to many Turks. 
Turkey’s generals staged three coups between 1960 and 1980, while a 
fourth government, the first Islamist-led, was pressured from power in 
1997. The country also has a long painful history of unsolved political 
murders and bomb attacks popularly ascribed to a sinister ‘Deep State’ 
motivated by nationalistic security concerns.
 
“Nobody denies that the military was in need of a clean-up,” Pinar 
Dogan, a Harvard professor and daughter of convicted ex-general Cetin 
Dogan, told me early on during the trial. “But this was done just to 
throw as many people as possible behind bars. It shouldn’t have been 
done in a spirit of political revenge.”
 
The power struggle between the military and Erdogan is also symbolic of 
a struggle over what a future Turkey will look like. Strict secularism 
was inscribed into the majority Muslim country by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 
the Westernizing commander who founded modern Turkey from the ruins of 
the Ottoman Empire. Under Erdogan, a devout Muslim, Turkey is changing. 
He has relaxed curbs on religious expression–such as a ban on 
headscarves at universities. Turkey now has one of the highest taxes in 
the world on alcohol and cigarettes. A radical recent change means 
schools now have to offer religion classes such as “The Life of the 
Prophet Muhammad.”
 
“The massive reckoning going on behind the scenes is over what kind of a 
country Turkey should be,” says Osman Ulagay, a respected journalist and 
author of Who Will Inherit Turkey? “Broadly speaking, Erdogan’s thesis 
is that by choosing Western-style modernization, Turkey made a mistake. 
He sees his government as more in tune with the people’s belief and 
envisages a wealthy country, more tied to its traditions… that also 
reclaims a place for Islam on the world stage.”
 
One final legacy of Turkey’s military-dominated past is its 
constitution, drawn up after a 1980 coup. It is currently being 
rewritten by a parliamentary commission and how Erdogan manages that 
process will be crucial to his democratic track record. He has made 
little secret of his aspirations to create a stronger office of the 
President—that he would presumably run for. Critics say that could turn 
him into a Turkish version of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Turkey’s future 
will depend to a large extent on whether he can forego his personal 
political ambitions and create a multi-cultural, inclusive document that 
enshrines tolerance and democratic rights.
 
http://world.time.com/2012/09/24/turkeys-massive-military-trial-opens-old-wounds-and-new-anxieties/?xid=rss-topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29
 
-- 
Sostieni Rete ECO
 
http://rete-eco.it/it/sostienici.html
 
 

strategia molto sottile e difficilmente individuabile.
 
comicissimo :-)