The symbolism was inescapable. To the left stood Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Turkey’s prime minister for almost a decade and who more than any other
has brought to heel the generals who have mounted coup after coup in
the country’s history.
To his right on a hospital bed – eyes closed and tubes trailing around him – lay retired general Ergin Saygun,
former deputy chief of staff and ex-commander of Turkish land forces,
who was sentenced to 18 years last September for plotting against Mr
Erdogan’s government.
The two men were holding hands.
Mr Erdogan’s weekend call on Gen Saygun and the photo of the event
have continued to make waves in Turkey, despite official protestations
that it was a purely compassionate visit.
“He was a senior bureaucrat [the prime minister] worked with,” said
Sadullah Ergin, Turkey’s justice minister. “I do not see any greater
meaning in this visit.”
But it came at a particularly sensitive time. An apparent car bomb on the Syrian border
on Monday, with reported Turkish fatalities, served as a deadly
reminder that the country is located in a particularly dangerous
neighbourhood.
Furthermore, Mr Erdogan has already voiced fears that the country’s
imprisonment of hundreds of officers and former officers weakens
Turkey’s military capacity at a time of great instability on its
borders.
Late last month Admiral Nusret Guner, the number two in the Turkish
navy, resigned, speaking out against the court case in which Gen Saygun
and 329 other military officials were convicted and saying that he
wanted to leave before plots against him could be “constructed”. Since
then, the Turkish general staff and the defence ministry have sought to
play down – but have not clearly denied – reports that 110 fighter
pilots have also resigned.
Against this backdrop, many analysts have seen Mr Erdogan’s recent
moves as a sign that the prime minister is running out of patience with
judges, prosecutors and police officials who have put hundreds and in
some cases thousands of people behind bars in high profile mass trials.
Such impatience has consequences: Mr Erdogan’s ruling party has just unveiled plans that would put the appointment of judges more firmly under political control,
and his cabinet is this week considering proposals that could lead to
the release of prisoners by, among other things, narrowing Turkey’s
notoriously wide definition of terrorism.
Such a move could also help defuse Turkey’s battle with the Kurdistan
Workers party, or PKK, since as many as 8,000 of those imprisoned are
held as part of an investigation into a shadowy Kurdish organisation.
But insofar as they affect the military, Mr Erdogan’s recent comments
have put him at odds with the followers of Fethullah Gulen, an
influential Muslim preacher whose supporters argue that the danger of
coups is not past in Turkey and that the mass trials, known by names
such as Sledgehammer and Ergenekon, need to reach their conclusion if society is to be protected.
Some of the defendants in the cases allege they are the victims of
fabricated evidence, often on computer files – a claim judges in the
Sledgehammer military trial have rejected.
Lale Kemal, a writer for Taraf, the Turkish newspaper that first
published documents that led to the Sledgehammer trial, argues that the
real danger is the mindset that has led the military to overturn
governments repeatedly in the past half century.
“First the mentality should be changed,” she said. “My fear is that
these suspects, these alleged coup planners, may all be acquitted
despite clear evidence against some of them that they actually committed
a crime against the constitutional order.”