Heads roll at top of Turkey's military
The Turkish government reshuffled the top echelons of the military as the trial of more than 500 alleged coup plotters got underway.
After months of speculation, Turkey’s chief of the General Staff, Hulusi Akar, survived a shake-up of Turkey's top brass on Wednesday that saw the heads of the army, the air force and navy replaced. Doubt had fallen on the prospects for Akar’s continued leadership after the failed July coup attempt last year and conflicting accounts of his actions that day.
The commander of the Turkish Land Forces, Salih Zeki Colak, will be replaced by the commander of the gendarmerie, Yasar Guler, who was detained and interned by the rebel officers during the coup. Navy chief Bulent Bostanoglu will cede his position to Adnan Ozbal, a vice admiral, and Hasan Kucukakyuz, the commander of the Turkish Warfare Air Force, replaces air force commander Abidin Unal.
Guler’s shift to the Land Forces Command suggests that the path has been cleared for him to become the next chief of the General Staff when Akar, whose handling of the coup is seen by many as riddled with contradictions and incompetence, likely retires next year. As Al-Monitor columnist Metin Gurcan has noted, Guler is known for his ferocious opposition to Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based Sunni cleric the government has accused of orchestrating the July 15 coup.
At a panel in Washington last month, Guler described the botched putsch as a “terrorist act” and called Gulen the leader of a “radical terrorist organization.” Fellow panelists rejected the notion that Gulenist perpetrators had joined forces with militantly pro-secular “Kemalist” officers in the attempt.
