The question is however, these days, who is running the military?
A good question and I think we all know the answer after the purge in the ranks of Turkish Military from NCOs to all the way to top brass following the 2015 coup attempt.
However, we also should remember the fact that Turkish military brought it upon itself, in a way, by engaging Turkish political arena and resultingly social life and culture of the people in general, if not on a daily basis.
2007 was the last time Turkish military establishment attempted through another ultimatum to straighten up the political life of Turkey and resulted in something never happened before.
AKP after staying silent for an entire day gave their counter ultimatum, stating that elected ones would go nowhere whereas the appointed ones will continue to serve under people’s representatives.
Love ‘em, hate ‘‘em but that hit the right key there everyone danced to this tune because old fashion reshaping of society by military had to reach its end at one point after five decades. The “yat eşek, kalk eşek” societal restructuring by military ended then and there.
You see, I’ll never forget this rough definition of legitimacy (or should say when does it end) among thousand others.
It went something like this.
Actors involved in any given establishment, be it a governmental agency or even be a private organization, giving in, submitting to one actor’s authority will yield to the said establishment’s legitimacy.
However, as one of the actors pulls off it’s submission, the whole legitimacy damaged or destined to collapse entirely.
That was exactly what I had observed at 2007 counter ultimatum by AKP. Unlike previous numerous attempts, the elected government did not say “şapkamızı alır, gideriz”. Instead, for the first time in Turkish history an elected government said “buck stops here”.
That’s how I saw the Turkish military‘s Praetorian guard role ended and eradicated from Turkish political life. After that, it became one of the actors that was submitting to authority.
A military that lost its power and purged and filled with reactionary religious sects by political power that was elected by the people!
I don’t see this particular military can achieve such a task.