Trial Is Latest Round In AKP Attack on Military
Tulin Daloglu writes that the current trial of former military leaders is another sign that the AKP’s democratization agenda is really about curtailing any threat from the military.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP)'s 2002 rise to power as Turkey's first Islamist-based, single-party government, ending a long period of coalition governments, came as the US was responding to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Since then the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with revolutionary changes in the Arab world, have thrown the region into turmoil. A political and economic disorder persists as actors in the region and from afar jockey to shape their preferred futures.
Meanwhile, Turkey is experiencing an incredible transition and it's unclear whether the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to start a counterrevolution against the nation's founding principles, or attempting to strengthen its democracy.
Since his government came to power, democratization in Turkey has been mostly about diminishing the military's role in politics.
