Turkey: Military chiefs resign en masse

[Gerald]

The chief of the Turkish armed forces, Isik Kosaner, has resigned along with the army, navy and air force heads.

The reasons were not immediately clear but there has been a history of tension between the secularist military and the governing AK party in recent years.

Gen Kosaner had met PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan a number of times recently.

The meetings came ahead of next week's Supreme Military Council which will decide on promotions, and some reports suggested major disagreements.

It appears the senior military figures wanted to go ahead with scheduled annual promotions for some of the officers implicated in an alleged 2003 coup plot, but that the government had refused.

Gen Kosaner said he was resigning "as he saw it as necessary", the Anatolia agency reported.

The government says the commanders have asked to retire.

There is speculation Gen Necdet Ozel, head of the gendarmerie paramilitary force, may replace Gen Kosaner.
'Sledgehammer'

Gen Kosaner and his senior commanders quit hours after a court charged 22 suspects, including several generals and officers, with carrying out an internet campaign to undermine the government.

This case is the latest element of the so-called "Sledgehammer" conspiracy - a coup plan allegedly presented at an army seminar in 2003.

Seventeen generals and admirals currently in line for promotion were among those jailed in the Sledgehammer prosecutions. Altogether nearly 200 officers were charged with conspiracy.

Twenty-eight servicemen will go on trial next month.

Gen Kosaner was appointed overall head of the Turkish armed forces just a year ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14346325


Note: 29 July 2011 Last updated at 18:19 GMT

[Skybird]

With huge numbers of fundamentalists, by call of AKP key advisors, join the armed forces' for career in higher ranks, and eroding the army's constitutional role by taking it over from within that way, a continuing process of bleedout of high officers from all branches of the armed forces deletesa even the last hope to stop the fundamentalisation of Turkey and its backward course to pre-Kemalistic times. But when a fundamentalistic Islamic party with an extremely fundamentalist chief takes over a traditionally Islamic country - what else is to be expected anyway?

The EU does not consider Turkey as what it is. It considers Turkey as what it dreams it to be in its fairy-tale dreams. In other words, the EU is not adressing Turkey when talking with it, but the EU is fostering itzs own illusions, and deals wqith its own hallucinations instead.

Meanwhile, Erdoghan has called out a 6 months ice age in which Turkey refuses to talk with the EU since the EU will be headed ("presidency") by EU-member Greek Zyprus, and this diplomatic all out affront should tell even the last fool behind the hill what hour the churchbell has rung.

Forget Turkey. It is a lost cause. Germany has more experiences with relations and interactions with Turkey than any other EU nation - and Turkey means nothing but trouble and interference for us. Granted, the German state is dumb and spineless enough to swallow it time and time and time again, but still.

[Jimbuna]

The big positive factor for having Turkey as a Nato member was the fact it was the only country with a natura/physical border with Russia...I'm not so sure that is so important now.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

The big positive factor for having Turkey as a Nato member was the fact it was the only country with a natura/physical border with Russia...

[Highbury]

Maybe Jimbuna should have said a border that was not an arctic passage for much of the year

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Highbury

Maybe Jimbuna should have said a border that was not an arctic passage for much of the year

As opposed to a mountainous terrain that stopped the German Army in '43?

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Highbury

Maybe Jimbuna should have said a border that was not an arctic passage for much of the year

I stand corrected I should have said largest in the eastern sector