Turkish prosecutor probes 2007 army memorandum Saturday, 04 February 2012 00:47

ISTANBUL:  A Turkish prosecutor has begun investigating a 2007 pledge by the army to protect secularism, resurrecting a controversy that ultimately gave the Islamist-rooted ruling party the upper hand in its long-running power struggle with the military.

The investigation into the army memorandum that was issued as parliament voted for the president is the latest legal move against generals accused of trying to undermine Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party since it swept to power in 2002.

The AK party portrayed the message as a thinly veiled threat from a military that had staged three coups between 1960-1980 and pressured an Islamist-led government to resign in 1997.

Parliament initially failed to elect the government’s candidate, Abdullah Gul, an AK Party leader with a background in political Islam whose wife wears an Islamic headscarf, sparking a political crisis.

Gul was elected in August 2007 after the AK Party easily won a national election that empowered Erdogan to assert authority over the military. “A preliminary investigation is currently being conducted following a petition regarding the April 27 (2007) memorandum,” a senior judicial source, familiar with the case said.

The petition, from an unknown individual, was one of some 2,000 related to military interventions ranging from the 1980 coup to the 2007 memorandum, the source said.  The petitions mostly complain about torture and breach of rights issues. After a preliminary investigation, prosecutors decide whether to launch a full investigation and legal action.

Media reports said the prosecutor was expected to call former General Yasar Buyukanit, head of the armed forces at the time, to give a statement in the investigation. However, the source said such a move would be premature at this stage.

Buyukanit said in 2009 that he wrote the memorandum, but said it was an assessment of the situation in Turkey at the time, and not a warning to the government.

The memorandum slammed what it said were efforts by “some circles” to undermine the state’s secular values and described those who challenged them as enemies of the Turkish Republic.

It cited the involvement of headscarved school children in religious ceremonies and plans, later abandoned, to hold a Koran reading competition on the same day as a national holiday to mark the foundation of the Turkish parliament.

In a separate case, prosecutors are demanding a life sentence for General Ilker Basbug, who headed the armed forces from 2008 to 2010, on charges he attempted to overthrow the government.

Reuters

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