Turkey top council tries to solve army quandary

Incarcerated military personnel will have no chance to be promoted to a high rank as the only determining factor during the Supreme Military Council, or YAŞ, will be relevant laws regulating the appointments, government officials have said, Hurriyet reports.

“What we do is to implement the law,” a government source told the Hürriyet Daily News on Tuesday, the second day of the annual YAŞ, in which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with the military leadership, led by acting Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel.

Many questions remain about how the two sides will resolve deadlocks over the status of jailed generals and fill the posts of the top brass following their collective resignation last week. According the law on military personnel, imprisoned or prosecuted military personnel cannot be promoted to a higher rank or be appointed to another position.

The unprecedented resignations Friday of Chief of General Staff Gen. Işık Koşaner and the commanders of the land, air and naval forces stoked expectations that the government would be more assertive than ever in shaping the country’s military command, underscoring the army’s waning clout and boosting Erdoğan’s standing at this year’s YAŞ.

In a sign of the government’s growing self-confidence, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ played down the resignations and ruled out the prospect of continuing frictions with the military.

“I do not expect problems in civilian-military relations in the coming period... Turkey has reached a democratic maturity,” Bozdağ said in an interview Tuesday with daily Radikal.

The top brass resignations signify “the pangs that Turkey is experiencing in its process of democratization and normalization,” he said. “They are an indication of the progress our country has achieved in democracy.”

A key point of contention at YAŞ is the case of 14 generals in line for promotion, who remain in prison pending trial on coup charges. Their promotion is barred by law, but the military is reportedly opposed to sending them into retirement as the government demands, insisting that they should not be penalized without conviction.