Analysis: Turkey's government puts generals in their place

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's government has called time on the days when civilian leaders would rubber-stamp changes in the military high command by rejecting a general nominated by a promotions panel to become the next army chief.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had no beef with General Isik Kosaner becoming chief of staff for the armed forces, but he did not want General Hasan Igsiz, the head of the prestigious First Army, succeeding him as army chief.

Last week, with the panel in session, a prosecutor called Igsiz to give testimony in an investigation into an Internet campaign to discredit the ruling AK Party and Islamic groups.

After several days of tension the Supreme Military Council, a body dominated by generals and admirals though chaired by the prime minister, reshuffled its options. Igsiz was dropped though there are no charges against him, and Erdogan was satisfied.

The assertion of civilian oversight in a country that suffered three coups between 1960 and 1980, and saw the military pressure an Islamist-led government to resign in 1997, on the face of it bodes well for Turkey's democratic values.

"The Turkish political authority has taken an important step in ensuring the military will gradually return to its barracks and exercise its main duty of defending the nation," said Lale Kemal, columnist with Today's Zaman newspaper.

But some analysts questioned whether Erdogan's AK Party, which has roots in political Islam though it eschews the Islamist label, was as motivated by democratic zeal as by consolidating its own power.

Voted in by a conservative, rising middle-class, the AK has governed for eight years, and will seek a third term in a general election due by July next year.

While the political opposition has been largely ineffectual, the AK has fought a long struggle with secularist old elites, notably generals, judges and educationists, whose influence in the Muslim nation of 73 million has waned in the past decade.

The military has seen itself as the guardian of secularism in Muslim Turkey, but reforms carried out as part of a bid for membership of the European Union have curbed its power.

And using democracy and the courts the AK Party has begun putting generals, like Igsiz, in their place.

"The problem with these kind of judicial interferences is they give the impression that for the AK Party this is not about reform but about revenge," said Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based security analyst.

"What we've seen now for the first time in 30 years is the government blocking someone they don't like.

"The next stage would be for them to start appointing someone they do (like), and that then becomes very dangerous."

SEEKING MORE SAY ON JUDGES TOO

The situation bears some parallels with the way the AK Party has taken on the senior judiciary, who like the military represented a bastion of the secularist old guard.

Citing the need for greater democratization, Erdogan called for constitutional reform to change the way judges are chosen and make the military more accountable to civilian courts .

Unable to get the changes through parliament, the government has called for a national referendum on its package, which also contains uncontroversial items like protection of child rights.

If the government wins the vote on September 12, coincidentally the 30th anniversary of the 1980 coup, Turkey's president, who is elected by parliament, will gain more say in the composition of the Constitutional Court's bench.

Critics say it will undermine the independence of the judiciary, though arguably the proposed system does not give the executive or the legislature more influence than systems prevailing in many European countries.

But, analysts say, Turkey's democracy is far more polarized.

Critics still suspect the AK's long term aim is to roll back Turkey's secularism, and frictions with both judges and generals have dogged the party since it swept to power in 2002.

In 2007, the Constitutional Court nearly banned the AK after finding it guilty of being a center of Islamist activity.

And seven years ago, a wargame seminar discussed a plan, known as "Operation Sledgehammer" to destabilize the government.

Prosecutors say it was a coup plot.

Last month, warrants were issued for the arrest of 102 retired and serving officers, including a former commander of the First Army, though last week those warrants were dropped.

The case is due to go to trial in December.

Given the level of tensions with the military, and the damage to morale in a army fighting an intensified Kurdish separatist insurgency in the southeast, Erdogan took a chance when he played hardball with the top brass last week.

"The risk here for the government is that they managed to antagonize the core of the military and alienate them further," said analyst Wolfango Piccoli from the Eurasia consultancy.

Kemal says more reforms were needed to bring the military fully under control. A bill, now pending in parliament, would open military spending to inspection by the court of auditors.

Another area of possible reform is the military curriculum, which owes its ideological basis to the secular system, developed out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire by modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

But that would take time and consensus building.

(Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Jon Hemming)