By Aliza Marcus, Halil Karaveli
The Turkish military wasn’t supposed to matter anymore. Over the past three years, many of Turkey’s senior military officers were tried and imprisoned on charges of planning coups against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s democratically elected government. The trials came after Erdogan successfully moved to reduce the military’s role in political decision-making and put it under the firm control of civilian rule. Together, these actions not only reduced the threat of a coup against the Islamist-leaning Erdogan, but also helped the prime minister cement popular backing from other Islamic conservatives and Turkey’s liberals, all of whom were happy to see the armed forces pay for their past abuses.
The power struggle that broke out a few months ago between Erdogan and his former allies in the Islamist conservative camp, the followers of the Pennsylvania-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, changed the dynamic. Erdogan started to reconsider his moves to undercut the generals. He and his officials took steps and made statements that appeared to support a renewed role for the military as political actors, albeit hand-in-hand with him.
Source: nationalinterest.org
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