A double edged sword

Walking down the streets of Turkey it’s almost impossible to miss the police presence, but the military on the other hand is another story. As a guy on the street told Alex before the rest of our group showed up, “Where the Military starts, common sense ends.” This statement can go both ways actually. Much of the youth population is not in favor of the military, most likely because Turkey’s military is based off of conscription. After men in the country turn 18 they are required to serve in the military for a 15-month shift. However, the tour of duty can be delayed if you are entering university. There are two ways out; 1) you can choose to serve for only 8 month as a private doing all the grunt work that no one else would want to do, 2) draw out your university career until your mid 30’s and at that point you are considered to old to begin serving in the military. In addition to being required to serve in the military there seems to be a consensus amongst those who have either served or are about to serve that there is an abnormal amount of inane and unnecessary beaurocratic red tape, which also leads to a greater distaste for the military. On the flip side however, in Turkey, the military tends to be viewed as the ultimate guardians of secularism. Actually over the course of Turkeys history, the military has been responsible for a number of coups when it felt that the countries government has become to Islamic. In fact, over the last several decades there has been a coup almost once every ten years (1960, 1971, 1980). So the military appears to be viewed a necessary but still unwanted here, a double-edged sword if you will (ha ha, get it? It’s a pun). However, the negative aspects clearly seem to be more personal problems with the military, as opposed to the pro’s which are much more altruistic in nature.

The discussion of having a military coup has recently been coming up more and more now in Turkey. This is because with last years elections the Islamist party (AK party) in the country won both the prime ministership and presidency as well as an overwhelming majority of the parliament, and as a result there is a general consensus amongst seculars that things are becoming to Islamic for their liking. As a result of the AK parties control of the parliament over the last year, things have been changing quite rapidly within the country, almost to rapidly for some, and not always for the better. Since the republics inception, the presence of religious insignia in the public spheres has been banned, however now as a result of the AK party, universities have the right to ignore these laws if they so choose. Also, public advertisements of women wearing bikini’s was just recently outlawed, despite one of the largest swimsuit manufacturers in Europe being based out of Turkey. Conversely, the AK party has also been one of the largest proponents of joining the EU, despite some having alleged their motives being less than altruistic.

One of the many reasons that has been previously discussed as to why the EU does not to want to allow Turkey into the union is its civil rights problems. Although on paper, there has been a great effort to fix many of the civil rights issues with in the country, the changes have been in name only. Today there still exists a great amount of disparity between actual rights of various groups within the country; the issue of covering with Islamists, and the Kurds being treated as 2nd or even sometimes 3rd class citizens.