What can be
learned from comparing the political roles that the military played in Pakistan
and Turkey?
Barry
Gilheany ©
This essay in comparing the political roles that the
institution of the military has played in Pakistan and Turkey raises the possibility
that military interventions in politics are not always inimical to democracy
contrary to conventional wisdom. In
looking at these respective experiences, it examines how the military legitimates their interventions as guardians
of order and good governance in the state; the historic roles of the military in both countries; the
military as significant economic actors in both and the prospects for future
military interventions in both countries considering the changing geopolitical
climates affecting both. The essay
debates the apparent similarities in both case studies of the military as
political players: the Islamic heritage of both countries, the birth of both
modern nations in wars of independence and resultant ethnic conflict which
created imperatives for national territorial integrity and avoidance of
fragmentation; the self-image of both militaries as agents of modernization and
the strategic importance for both to Western security interests; Turkey as a
member of NATO and Pakistan as Cold War and post 9/11 ally of the United
States. There are important differences
though; most notably the formal circumscribing of the powers of the Turkish
military in the first decade of the 21st century. The essay
concludes by discussing the exceptionalism of both Pakistan and Turkey in
military interventions in politics.
To examine Pakistan at first, Pakistan’s armed forces
rank amongst the most modern, largest and well financed in the world. They are
also the only ones in the Islamic world to be endowed with nuclear weapons. By the 1980s, it had become entrenched in
crucial political decision-making and in the following decade its penetration
into the economy and society reached its nadir and has remained entrenched ever
since (Giunchi, 2014).
As of 2010, the military had 480,000 men (with another
304,000 serving in paramilitary units).
These are highly motivated volunteers and were Pakistan to collapse,
commentators fear, an inevitable result would be the flow of large numbers of
highly trained ex-soldiers, including explosive experts, to Islamist extremist
groups (Lieven, 2011).
Pakistan’s military spending in 2008 made up some 17.5
percent of the government’s budget.
However this expenditure was not remotely enough to compete with India,
whose expenditure on the military amounted to 14.1% in 2008 (Lieven:
p.166). And therein lays the rub. It is the widespread, almost primordial,
perception of India as an existential threat to its smaller neighbour that has been
a major, if not the major, driver of
the Pakistani military’s self-image of itself as national saviour.
After Pakistan came into existence after the Partition
settlement in the Indian sub-continent in 1947 and subsequent inter-communal bloodletting
following the secession of India from the British Empire, the military steadily
grew in strength due to several factors, some originating in colonial times.
From the end of the 19th century Punjab which was to become the
virtual epicentre of the new state had
become the major recruitment centre of the Indian Army as it extended
northwards after the 1857 Mutiny. The granting of land to servicemen
and retired soldiers by Britain created a
landowning class which became intimately related to bureaucratic and military
elites. (Giunchi: p.2).
Partition was to leave Pakistan with hardly any of the
military industries of British India, with an acute shortage of officers
(especially in the more technical services) and with a largely eviscerated
military infrastructure. This sense of
strategic disadvantage and embattlement has been with the Pakistani military
from the outset. However the
institutional and human framework inherited by Pakistan from the British proved
durable and effective. For the British
military system was able to implant itself effectively because it fused with
ancient local military traditions rather than sweeping them away as the British
did with education and law (Lieven: p.177).
The tens of thousands of men (and some women) in the
Pakistani officer corps make the armed forces Pakistan’s largest middle class
employer by far. In recent decades, it
has arguably become the greatest motor for social mobility in the country with
officers originally recruited from the .lower middle classes moving into the
educated middle class as a result of their service with the military. By contrast, political parties continue to be
dominated by ‘feudal’ landowners and urban bosses, many of whom are corrupt and
poorly educated. This increases the
sense of superiority to the politicians in the officer corps (Javid: 2014).
Defenders of Pakistan’s military’s role in politics
such as Aqil Shah in The Army and Democracy:
Military Politics in Pakistan expound a narrative of Pakistan always being saved
‘from
perdition by the intervention of the military the only institution with the
competence to tackle the ‘complex problems’ of war, systemic crises, ‘the
machinations of hostile external powers, and the deficiencies of civilian administrations(Javid, p.1). On this account, as Pakistan goes through yet
another concatenation of crises, might
the military have to step in again?(Javid: pp.1-2) . So do these claims stack up?
The armed forces took power on several occasions
invoking the need to reform the governance of the country for almost half of
Pakistan’s history(1958-70; 1977-88; 1999-2008), legitimised by the judiciary
and by the acquiescence of the civilian population. Party
factionalism and frequent changes of government (elections were first held in
1970) hardly boosted the image of politicians.
In contrast, the military projected an image of corporate pride and
appeared as a disciplined organised institution. Politicians contributed to the politicization
of the military by asking it to quell ethnic revolts in what is now Bangladesh
in 1971 and in Baluchistan in 1973-77.
While military repression was unsurprisingly unpopular in areas that
were targeted for intervention, the capacity of the military to deal with
natural disasters such as the 2010 floods greatly boosted its image as its
performance contrasted starkly with the inefficiencies of the state apparatus.(Giunchi: pp.3-4).
A crucial watershed in the history of the armed forces
in Pakistan was the development of the ‘military-mullah nexus’ in the 1980s and
onwards as a result of the President Zia’s “Islamification” policy; the rewards
he accrued from Washington for his participation in the anti-Soviet jihad
in Afghanistan and the taking control of Afghan policy entailing
building up the Afghan Taliban as a bulwark against Indian “expansionism” in
the region and the nuclear sector by the military high commands and the secret
service agency the ISI. Now the military
could declare itself the custodian of Pakistan’s Islamic credos (Giunchi: pp.5-6).
Despite the compliance of wide sectors of Pakistan’s
civil society with General Musharraf’s coup in 1999 (Giunchi: p.7), I would
agree with the contention that the military has inflicted serious damage on
democratic culture in Pakistan through proscription of political parties, the
initiation of presidential styles of government and the removal through dubious
constitutional amendments of
democratically elected leaders such as Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif when
they tried to reassert civilian control over areas such as regional policy and
army perks and privileges and the suppression of alternative, radical
viewpoints all represent the military’s systematic undermining of democracy in Pakistan. The military’s mission to take over
responsibility for dealing with the external and, critically, internal threats
faced by Pakistan deliberately cultivated contempt for civilian politics and
politicians (Javid: p.3) and, even more disastrously, a dangerous and
double-edged relationship with jihadists inside and outside the country.
Of import as well have been the military’s economic
interests. In addition to receiving
large plots of land, senior officers were rewarded with key public sector and
state corporation posts. Its network of welfare organisations are among the
largest business conglomerates in Pakistan.
During the eras of the Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif administrations, the
military diversified into new areas of activity such as broadcasting and
energy,serving and retired personnel became increasingly involved in public
universities and think tanks as civilian governments provided these economic
opportunities while attempting to reduce their political influence (Giunchi:
p.8). In these ways the military has become a huge family concern drawing
privileges from the state and disbursing them to its members(Lieven: p.167). As such, I would argue
that Pakistan’s military-business complex has been a retardant for economic
growth.
The notion of the military as “ultimate arbitrator
above the constitution and eventual saviour of the nation-state” which I have
discussed in relation to Pakistan originated with Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937)
(Aziz, 2008) is a useful template to analyse the role of the military in that country.
The experience of Turkey under its
founder Kemal Ataturk ‘imbued the corporate military identity with an explicit
mission extending far beyond the ideal-type role of the armed forces to
militarily defend the country’. Far
beyond its role as a ‘modernising agent’, the Turkish military, like its
Pakistani counterpart, sought to extend and formalise its role as the most
powerful actor in the state. (Aziz: p.42).
I now look at the trajectory of the Turkish military’s role as national
saviour and moderniser.
Defenders of the influence of the military in modern
Turkey argue that it helps
to maintain” the checks and balances that protect Turkish society” and caution
“well meaning reformers” seeing a road map for Turkish accession to the EU could undermine Turkey as a democracy” if
they insist on the removal of the military from Turkish society without coming
up with new means of protecting the constitution
(Capezza, 2009). To what extent is this claim true?
From the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1924, the
military assumed responsibility for guaranteeing its constitution. Article 35 of the Turkish Armed Services
Internal Service Code of 1961 declared that “the duty of the armed forces is to
protect and safeguard Turkish territory as stipulated by the military responsibility for the internal
and external protection of the Turkish state econstitution”. Each of the country’s four constitutions –
1921, 1924, 1961 and 1982 – gave this leading role to the military; a situation
changed by the constitutional amendments of 2001. Now, prior court review is required
before the military acts upon supposed unconstitutional acts.(Capezza: pp.13-14).
Since the country’s transition to a multi-party system
in the mid-1940s, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) have complicated democratic
processes by outright interventions in 1960, 1971 and 1980; by forcing the
government to resign in 1997 and by restricting the authority of civilian
governments (Karoasmanoglu, 2012).
Civil-military relations became an international issue
with Turkey’s candidacy to the EU. From
2002 to 2006, in order to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria for accession to the
EU, the parliament revised the Constitution several times and adopted new
legislation curbing the power and prerogatives of the military in political
matters including the oversight of control of all military resources and
spending, the abolition of State Security Courts and the civilianization of the
National Security Council. However it
may be too soon to speak of a complete withdrawal by the military from politics
(Karoasmanoglu: pp.149-50).
As in Pakistan, the ‘national saviour’ role of the
military has deep historical roots in the Ottoman military tradition, the
“Young Turk” revolutionary movement of the early 20th century and
the circumstances of the birth of the modern Turkish nation after the defeat of
the Ottoman Empire in World War I, division of Anatolia among the Allied
powers, international control of Istanbul and subsequent successful War of
Independence (and accompanying brutal ethnic conflict with Greece) waged by the
founder of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Ataturk (Capezza: p.17).
The military founded the Republic with popular
support. Ataturk took a pragmatic
approach to politics, imposing checks on his own power and the ideology of
Kemalism evolved into an amalgam of nationalism, populism, etatisme, secularism and reformism.
The military was formally
separated from politics through Article 148 of the Penal Code which
prohibited serving officers from party political membership or activity but
also simultaneously granted the military as “the vanguard of the revolution” to
make political interventions where the survival of the state was in question”
(Capezza: p.17).
However Ataturk did not foresee military involvement
in daily politics. However the growing volatility of the Turkish political
scene from the late 1950s necessitated (from their vantage points) army
intervention in 1960 in response to the protests against the authoritarianism
of the (elected) government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes; the street
violence between left wing and right wing factions in the 1960s and the
devaluation crisis in 1970 led to the March 1971 coup by ‘memorandum’ in which
the military took a
tutelage role in restoring the political system after the chronic instability
of the 1970s (eleven successive governments between 1971 and 1980) and the
murderous conflicts between left wing and right wing armed groups led to the
military coup of September 1980 and the enforcement of martial law to ensure
public safety (Capezza: pp.16-18).
After this latest intervention, the military opted out
of politics and lost some of its autonomy under President Ozal
(1983-1993). It only reasserted its
political role after the economic and social crisis of 1994 (during which
inflation reached 100%) After the government of Necmettin Erbakan adopted
noticeably pro-Islamist policies, the military enforced his resignation in
1997. It has been during the current
reign of the Islamist AKP party headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan (which came to
power in 2002) that the military has really struggled to reassert its guiding
role. As the AKP attempted to roll back
the separation between the mosque and state, the touchstones being the granting
of the right of Turkish women to wear Islamic headdressin schools and public
institutions and the equation between religious school degrees and those of
public high schools, a call by the chief of the Turkish General Staff in April
2007 for the next President to uphold the original principles of the Republic
was decisively rebuffed by the AKP who reminded the military that in
“democracies”, the military does not intervene in the political process
(Capezza: pp.19-22).
Since winning second and third terms in office, the
AKP has gone on the offensive pushing forward with the “Ergenokan” prosecutions concerning an alleged nationalist and Kemalist plot to
cause chaos in order to provide an excuse for military intervention, detaining
hundreds of journalists, academics, political rivals and retired military
officers. Thes “prosecutions
show how diminished the influence of the military has become. Should they represent an internal putsch by
the Erdogan government against their opponents, they illustrate how unbalanced
Turkish democracy could become without the military being able to act as a
countervailing force for checks and balances (Capezza: pp.22-23). The growing authoritarianism and arbitrary
behaviour exhibited by the Erdogan government currently suggests that such a
prophecy may be coming to fruition.
Worse still, the ambiguity (at the very least) of Erdogan in relation to
the conflagration in neighbouring Syria could ultimately negate the entire
Kemalist legitimacy basis for the Turkish state with grave consequences in an
increasingly unstable corner of the globe.
In conclusion, traditional custodians of democratic
values such as Freedom House, view greater military involvement in government
as detrimental to civil liberties, political rights and democratic governance
in any given country (Capezza: p.13).
This essay has evidenced the argument that Turkey may be an exception to
this rule, not least because the military has always returned power to civilian
authorities within relatively short periods of time in contrast to their
counterparts in Egypt, Syria, Libya; much of Latin America and even in
neighbouring Greece where the Colonels ruled with brutality for seven
years. Despite their surface
similarities, the political role of the Pakistani army has been far more
problematic and, just as inaction by the Turkish military may help to corrode
Turkish democracy and affect regional stability in the long run so the
coincidence of interests between the Pakistani military and certain Islamist
groups could have similar outcomes in South Asia.
Bibliography
Aziz, M. (2008). Military
Control in Pakistan. The Parallel State.
Routledge Advances in South Asian Studies.
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
Capezza, D. (Summer 2009). Turkey’s Military is a Catalyst for Reform. The Military in Politics. Middle
East Quarterly pp. 13-23
Giunchi, E. A. (July 2014) The Political and Economic Role of the Pakistani Military. Analysis
ISPI No. 269 pp. 1-10
Javid, H. (November 2014) COVER STORY: The Army & Democracy: Military: Politics in Pakistan https:
//www.dawn.com/news/1146181
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