TURKPULSE No:47..........AUGUST 26th, 2001
The priorities of the national security strategy have been under revision by the military and civilian members of the NSC for the last few months and this month’s sitting of the Council was a milestone in giving it the finishing touches. As revealed by PM Ecevit, Islamic fundamentalism and PKK separatism are no longer the top two items on the NSC’s agenda, but other topics, concerning the economy and the amendment of the Constitution in preparation for Turkey’s potential full membership to the EU, are. Deputy PM Mesut Yilmaz’s call for public debates on national security was in some ways a misguided step because public opinion is not shaped by the realities of national security but by a Disinformation Mechanism in Turkey. Nevertheless, useful results emerged from the NSC about giving a spur to Turkey’s constitutional amendments from Yilmaz’s initiative and for the prevention of the “dolarisation” of the country.
Deputy PM Mesut Yilmaz’s initiative to launch public discussions on national security made the National Security Council’s routine monthly meeting on Tuesday (21st) an especially important one constituting a milestone, if not crossroads, on domestic, economic and foreign policies.
Domestic security questions intermingled with foreign policy issues
As a matter of fact, it was an interesting, maybe historic NSC session where domestic national security issues had been totally intermingled with foreign policy security questions and it was doubtful that Mesut Yilmaz was even aware of it when he had taken his step at the ANAP national convention. This was because for the last three-four decades a superpower that was Turkey’s ally had waged a war against it, but no one was teaching or clearly speaking about it other than the War College in Istanbul.
True that it is not a conventional total war like the two world wars of the last century, but it is what the military describe “a low intensity war,” that cost Turkey a lot in the last few decades and that still constitutes a serious threat in many ways. Nobody other than the military experts exactly know what “low intensity war” means and what it involves.
How can people possibly make up their minds about national security questions when they are totally in the dark about what intelligence cooperation is, what it means in Turkish and American terminologies and where Turkish-American relations stand today in regard to mutual intelligence cooperation?
Again, what do people know about the PKK uprising that preoccupied Turkey for 15-16 years between August 15th, 1984 and the end of the century and cost the country over 30 thousand lives and more than $100 billion. The military knows that the guerilla warfare waged against Turkey involved superb war tactics as far as planning, intelligence, logistics and operations go on the part of the PKK. They know very well that neither Ocalan nor his deputy Sakik nor still any other PKK member did it. It was all superpower doing and only the superiority of the Turkish military could come on top of it, even that at a heavy cost to the nation.
Yet again who knows in Turkey or the world how Ocalan was arrested in Nairobi in February 1999 in order to put a decisive end to the PKK’s adventure. As the DYP Chairperson, Tansu Ciller, voiced in Parliament, most people wrongly think that the United States handed Ocalan to the Turkish security forces on a silver tray as a gift. What do they know about the American Embassy’s marine guards keeping a round-the-clock guard on Ocalan cornered by Turkish commandoes in the Greek Ambassador’s residence in Nairobi and how they outwitted all these obstacles with their brilliant planning and its execution much to the Americans’ great surprise and shock?
It is true that it does not pay to push Washington into the position of an enemy plotting all these things against Turkey and the Turkish civilian and military rulers are correct to keep quiet about it. But will the military now go a step forward and let the disinformation bombarded people decide about these delicate national security questions without any sound information of the facts and the background?
Tuesday’s NSC hearing was an answer to this question. The military will neither ignore these past experiences, nor will they fall into the trap of deciding future policies on the basis of the fallacy that every evil comes from the CIA. Ataturk’s historic words about the Anzacs in the Gallipoli War are a good lesson for Turkey’s rulers today. He described the Anzac martyrs as heroes who could rest in peace thousands of miles away from their homes along with the Turkish martyrs of that war.
Brief background to the national security concept
In addition to the Constitution, which makes Turkey a democratic, secular, social state ruled by law, there is a second “secret constitution” in Turkey called the “National Security Political Document” (NSPD) drafted and passed by the NSC since its foundation by the 1963 Constitution.
The number one item in this document that lists the threats and risks to national security was “communism and a potential aggression from the USSR” for many years. With the outbreak of the “low intensity war” as from the end of the Sixties and especially after the ASALA attacks on Turkish diplomats abroad along with the American arms embargo on Turkey in the Seventies, these priorities of “threats and risks to national security” began to change. Especially after the PKK’s replacement of ASALA as from the mid Eighties, “separatist terrorism and religious fundamentalism” occupied the first item in the NSPD.
During the 55th Government headed by Mesut Yilmaz, the NSPD underwent a major revision at the NSC’s sitting under President Demirel on October 31st, 1997. The revised NSPD compiled in two booklets and ten annexes at that meeting was regulating the highlight of Turkey’s national security. In addition to these principles defined by these secret documents there exists “strategies” for their implementation and they are classifiied as top secret in the military’s strong rooms that are off bounds even to top civilian rulers. These strategies contain the real secrets of the details of the threats and risks as well as the means and ways of how to fight them. The law bans leaking out information about NSC sessions and deliberations other than the authorized press releases and the efforts to counter disinformation, a relatively new item on the list of threats and risks. Within these counter-disinformation efforts, the highlights of the 14 resolutions of the NSC’s historic session in October 1997 are revealed as follows:
1. Separatist terrorism and reactionary religious fundamentalism are two threats to national security of prime priority and they have equal rating.
2. Political Islam continues to constitute a threat for Turkey.
3. There are attempts to transform Turkish nationalism into racism by certain quarters. Ulkucu mafia wants to take advantage of this. This, for its part, turns out to be a threat factor.
4. The extreme Left continues to be a source of threat, though it appears to be in the process of softening up.
5. The threat perception in relations with Greece should be kept in sight. That there might be a confrontation with Greece, though it is not Turkey’s preference, should not be let out of sight.
6. Turkey may be facing a threat from Syria in case of a potential confrontation with Greece.
7. Turkey’s appraisals concerning its neighbours should be retained unchanged.
8. Readjustments should be made for the promotion of local and cultural characteristics of the country, provided that they will not be permitted to transform into a nationwide nature.
9. Defects and shortcomings in the State management and the Judiciary should be urgently eliminated.
10. There should be no change in Turkey’s west oriented facets.
11. Turkey’s target to be a full member of the EU should be safeguarded. But the unconstructive stances and behaviours of certain European countries in this regard should not be ignored.
12. (An unrevealed top-secret item in accord with the principle of not antagonizing certain powerful quarters.)
13. Turkey’s economic efforts for integration into the globalisation process, including privatisation, should be stepped up.
14. Relations with Turkic republics should be reinforced and the governments of these countries should be supported.
At this biggest revision of the NSPD and at its follow-up sessions, five new items were included in the traditional domestic threats to national security – separatist terrorism and religious fundamentalism. These new items were “the prevention of economic crimes”, “the fight against organised crime and corruption”, “Turkey’s overseas image and elimination of the lack of publicity abroad”, “counter disinformation” and “prevention of social uprising due to the economic crisis and the development of the east and southeast”.
Noteworthy about these economic topics is the fact that business quarters in especially Istanbul are uneasy that the Government is not doing its duty about checking the rise of the dollar’s value. They complain of the “dolarisation” of Turkey with everyone transferring their savings into dollar accounts and the Central Bank and the Treasury under Kemal Dervis standing by and watching. Today there are in Turkish banks TL saving deposits totalling the equivalent of $32 billion and $52.5 billion in foreign exchange deposits. On Saturday, four days after the NSC meeting, PM Ecevit held a press conference to invite the people to join in the Turkish business world’s efforts to stop this disastrous “dolarisation” of Turkey, which results in the soaring of the dollar value in its TL parities.
Foreign policy questions of national security
On foreign policy issues, the principle of confederation was accepted for Cyprus at the January 1999 session during Ecevit’s minority government before the general elections. That issue also involved countering the other side’s tactics on the Cyprus issue, that is to say, including Southern Cyprus in the EU as a full member. It was viewed as a roundabout way of realizing Enosis, union with Greece within the European Union, as while there is no question of Turkey’s accession to the EU before 2010, the Greek Cypriot accession is round the corner.
Again that issue brought about another important foreign policy security question about ESDI (European Security and Defence Identity). Turkey has been using its veto rights in NATO over this issue for the first time in its nearly half a century membership in the Alliance. Last week the MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) issued a statement to correct the disinformation on this question and stressed that Turkey’s ESDI policy had not been changed. It announced in diplomatic language that the matter required a resolution of the NATO Ministers’ Council and these resolutions are taken unanimously. Turkey would not backtrack on this issue, it was confirmed.
The MFA statement also rejected claims that the MFA and the TGS (Turkish General Staff) had differences of opinion about ESDI. On the recently held joint committee work of the two departments on this issue it was confirmed, upon PM Ecevit’s instructions, that NATO’s and the EU’s views would be kept in sight, but “the principle in this regard is Turkey’s interests and national security”. The statement affirmed that the basic parameters on this topic were determined at NATO’s summit in Washington in 1999. “Turkey’s views and expectations about the European Security and Defence Policy are clear and justified. Turkey expects its allies and partners to observe these resolutions.”
Tuesday’s NSC session was an occasion of reviewing all these security questions with particular emphasis on full membership to the EU. The principle has been retained that this membership should not be prejudicial to Turkey’s individual foreign policy strategies such as the Cyprus problem and the relations with and policies about its neighbours, new central Asian republics and the other regions such as the Gulf and the Middle East. uras@ada.nt.tr - August 26th, 2001