23.05.2013 09:09
Turkey's democratization drive, though limited, has been helping us Turks to question, to a certain extent, the reasons behind some grave incidents that have been taking place in this country.
Turkey's democratization drive, though limited, has been helping us Turks to question, to a certain extent, the reasons behind some grave incidents that have been taking place in this country. Yet, those institutions or individuals allegedly responsible for making grave security mistakes -- which have several times resulted in the death of many people or the causing of instability in the country -- are left unpunished. Among those recent incidents that have been left unpunished include: the controversial downing of a Turkish F-4 jet by Syrian regime forces, the Turkish F-16 bombing of Turkish Kurdish citizens said to be mistaken for terrorists -- resulting in the death of 34 people in the Southeastern town of Uludere -- and, lastly, the recent twin car bomb attacks in Reyhanlı township -- next to Syria, where the civil war continues -- that took the lives of 51 Turkish citizens.
Though motives behind all these incidents are different, the reluctance or the inability of the state to bring to light the perpetrators carries a similar mentality. This is to cover up the real reasons behind the incidents so that some influential names, either in military, security or intelligence organizations, can be concealed.
For example, in the Reyhanlı bomb attacks, it was the town's top police officer who was sacked while higher ranking intelligence and police officers were not touched, despite mounted speculation that the attacks were successful due to serious security flaws. Those higher-ranking officers should also be relieved from their duties, at least temporarily, for a healthy investigation to be conducted on the Reyhanlı incident.
Immediately after the Reyhanlı twin car bomb attacks, a prosecutor's office imposed a ban on media coverage of the incident, further demonstrating Turkey's depart from democratic governance. The International Press Institute's (IPI) Turkish National Committee on May 13 called the ban on news coverage a shame to democracy.
A valuable report was recently published by an İstanbul-based liberal think thank, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), elaborating the reasons behind weaknesses in the Turkish security sector -- i.e the military, the police and the intelligence organization -- while underlining the necessity for their reforms.* The report greatly helps us understand why all grave incidents, some of which are mentioned above, cannot be investigated in a transparent fashion as long as democratic rules are not installed.
After diagnosing the problems existing within those security organizations, Biriz Berksoy, Associate Professor at İstanbul University and the author of the TESEV report, gives a recipe for the urgent democratization of the state so that all three security institutions can be reformed and made accountable and transparent.
She stresses that though the military's autonomous status -- which has enabled it to intervene in politics -- has weakened, it still continues to assert power.
Since speculations have mounted over the security flaws of the police and intelligence which led to to the success of the attack in Reyhanlı, I will focus on the TESEV author's analysis of the Security General Directorate (EGM), i.e. the police and the National Intelligence Organization (MİT).
The human rights violations of the police have systematically been left unpunished and an effective institution to ensure the civilian oversight of the police organization is required to prevent police from resorting to high doses of violence.
"There is absolute and arbitrary oversight of the police on society that paves the way for police violence. Strategies based on preventing incidents through intelligence gathering since the early 2000s, within the framework of a new security mentality based on the prevention of risks and thwarting threats, has brought together an aggressive policing techniques. Due to the techniques applied in this new security concept, all individuals can be treated as potential threats, prompting the police to intervene in the form of harassment on grounds that it will prevent incidents from taking place," Berksoy says.
Turkey's once infamous MİT, which still enjoys a status that no elected government can touch, has perhaps, for the first time, been put under a spotlight by this recent TESEV report.
"The definition of MİT's authority and the areas of its activities have been left broad, allowing it to open the door to dangerously violate the human rights of all citizens and, in particular, political opponents," the report says.
The definition of a state secret is based on a highly vague concept of national security under a draft law submitted to Parliament on state secrets, which allows all kinds of documents and information to be treated as secret, Berksoy adds.
"The current oversight of MİT is very limited, and it has been carried out through internal auditing and through the prime minister's [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] personal decisions. The MİT is further protected against judicial scrutiny through a law adopted in 2012," she states.
As Berksoy underlines, the primary task in addressing the serious problems existing within those security institutions lies on the government.
*"Türkiye'de Ordu, Polis ve İstihbarat Teşkilatları: Yeni Dönem Gelişmeler ve Reform ihtiyaçları" (Military, Police and Intelligence Organizations in Turkey: Latest Developments and Need for their Reforms) by Biriz Berksoy, TESEV Democratization Program, April 2013
LALE KEMAL (Cihan/Today's Zaman)