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| Europe |
| Turkey's military education hinders professionalism |
| 2009-05-17 |
| Retired Gen. Yaþar Büyükanýt, former Turkish chief of general staff, admitted early this month that the military's involvement in politics up to its neck was the main reason for the Ottoman Empire entering into a process of collapse, as well as the period of Committee of Union and Progress, between 1908 and 1918. He made those remarks as well as other revelations during a program aired by local Channel D on May 7. Turkish Armed Forces' (TSK) continuous emphasis of its “special place in Turkey” that has been standing as an obstacle not only in Turkey's democratic progress, but also as an obstacle to the transition of the TSK into a professional armed forces able to meet the needs of the 21st century onward. The problem behind these phenomena lays TSK's education system, i.e., its ideological curriculum that teaches the young brains starting the military school at the age of 14 that they are the ones who are tasked to defend secular republic principle laid down by Turkey's founder Kemal Atatürk. As a novelty to this rhetoric, Gen. Baþbuð stressed the “secular democratic” character of the nation that the TSK attaches importance to. Turkey's civilian education system is also problematic in the sense that it does not allow pupils to argue what they are thinking but, rather, they learn the textbooks by heart. The military education system is more problematic as it gives a task to the military members in the very beginning of their career at the military schools to defend and to be the guardians of the secular Turkish Republic and, if necessary, to intervene in politics through different sorts of coups under Article 35 of the TSK's Internal Service Law. “Military students are brought up with an ideology that they are the defenders of Atatürk's secular principles and that civilians constitute a danger for the republic. Military students are taught: ‘You have to be at alert all the time against the political authorities elected by the unconscious public. This is your historical duty,'” said former military Prosecutor Ümit Kardaþ in an interview with Sunday's Zaman. This mission imposed by the military resulted with five different sorts of military interventions in Turkey, he recalled. Technological innovations applied within the TSK do not seem to help, either, to transform the military in a positive sense. “The TSK used to have their statements read after each coup through the then-state-owned radios. But now there are hundreds of radio channels as well as television stations. Instead, now the TSK releases memorandums issued against the governments through their own Web sites. This is how TSK uses technological innovations,” Kardaþ noted, referring to the April 27, 2007 e-memo posted on the Web site of the TSK. The fact that TSK has a problematic and an outdated curriculum came to be known by the public when a circular was issued to all of the military headquarters by then-Turkish chief of general staff, now retired Gen. Hilmi Özkök, a circular which was published in Radikal daily on July 8, 2004 and not denied by the military. In this circular, Özkök ordered the TSK to change its education system to catch up with the needs of the 21st century and to adopt themselves to the changing concepts of the threats. Almost 16 years ago, the TSK set up an Education and Doctrine Command (EDOK) in Ankara similar to the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), which has been updating the Turkish military's doctrines in line with changes taking place in the world. There is a US lieutenant general based at EDOK in Ankara, assisting the Turkish officers in updating the TSK to the new sorts of threats. The TSK's training is now much better than in the past, said a Western military officer familiar with the Turkish military, adding, however, that even if EDOK is about 16 years old, these kinds of headquarters take time to mature. |
| Posted by: |
| #2 So, what, they should change? This is why Turkey is a semi-modern country and not a craphole like Syria or Libya or the rest of them. |
| Posted by: gromky 2009-05-17 06:36 |
| #1 Turkey's military education Is the only thing that kept Sharia away for 80 years---but all good things end. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-05-17 06:01 |