When you enter any gendarmerie post, Turkey’s paramilitary rural police force in 81 provinces and 957 towns, the first slogan on the wall is always Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s words: “The Turkish gendarmerie is an army of law.” The gendarmerie, with its 175-year history, has a current strength of about 190,000 (31 generals; 28,000 officers and noncommissioned officers; 40,000 professional specialist sergeants; 3,500 civilian workers/clerks and 117,000 conscripts). It is responsible for 80% of Turkey’s territory. With its commando brigades, air elements, special forces battalions and van-based corps, which is Turkey’s key unit for dealing with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Gendarmerie Command is a fully-fledged military machine.

But Ataturk’s words in every gendarmerie post may be removed in November, after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that the Gendarmerie Command would be detached from the Chief of Staff of the Turkish armed forces and attached to the Ministry of Interior. After anticipated parliamentary action, the era of a gendarmerie, which is currently commanded by a four-star general, will be history. All personnel action will be handled by a civilian organization that will probably be led by a civilian of governor rank.

On the eve of this major transformation, which will have deep implications for the security structure of the country, the debate on the subject is almost farcical. For example, nine daily newspapers that led on Oct. 23 with the report that the gendarmerie was to be put under the Ministry of Interior, found the most important issue to be discussed was what would be the color of the new gendarmerie uniform instead of its current khaki green.

Three major trends of opinion have developed around this major decision. The first group unconditionally supports the idea of attaching the gendarmerie to the Ministry of Interior, the second supports the decision for political and technical reasons and the third group, although agreeing in principle to putting the gendarmerie under civilian control, asks, “Why now?”