TURKEY'S DEEP STATE

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 008252

SIPDIS


E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/15/2012
TAGS: PREL PGOV PINS PINR TU
SUBJECT: TURKEY'S DEEP STATE

REF: A. ANKARA 7606

B. ANKARA 7230

C. ANKARA 2431

D. ANKARA 7682

E. ANKARA 7683

F. ANKARA 8165


(U) Classified by Ambassador W.R. Pearson; reasons: 1.5 (b,d).



1. (C) Summary: The Turkish Deep State, the behind-the-scenes machinery and power relationships among selected members of the military, judicial, and bureaucratic elite, has endured as an essential factor in political life and in citizens' wary calculations of their relation to the State. Now, however, Deep State supremacy is being challenged step by step with an openness rare in the history of the Turkish Republic. End summary.


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The Apparat of the Turkish State
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2. (C) Turks are statists in that they have been inculcated to believe in an immanent, authoritative State power disconnected from, and superior to, the role granted by the constitution to elected politicians. At the same time, the great majority of Turks is frustrated, distrustful, even fearful of the State as an increasingly out-of-date, authoritarian, inefficient and unaccountable brake on their freedoms.



3. (C) In describing this relationship, Ankara's reporting has distinguished between the formal, Kemalist State, whose unaccountability is problematic enough for the man in the street, and what Turks refer to as the Deep State (derin devlet),most recently in refs A and B. Turks use the latter concept to explain how real power is exercised -- through informal, para-judicial governance motivated by an expansive definition of national security. Deep State views, articulated through the military-dominated National Security Council (NSC -- constitutionally only an advisory body) and other organs, continue to shape the political landscape in Turkey.



4. (C) One former NSC staffer explained to us that the heart of the Deep State is the presidency (which on paper has limited powers),the military (which formally reports to the P.M.),and the (formally independent) judiciary. The staffer, who was also a member of the West Working Group which helped execute the "post-modern" coup against the Islamist Erbakan government in 1997, explained further that the elected government is only the Deep State's servant. While the Deep State influences government activity, the government has virtually no influence on the Deep State; if the Deep State really wants to keep someone (the staffer was referring to AK Party chairman Erdogan) out of power, that person will stay out, he asserted.


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The Special Problem of Unaccountability
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5. (C) The lack of accountability in the Kemalist State in general, and more specifically in the Deep State, is a legacy from three sources. First, centuries of Ottoman practice. Second, the tradition of Muslim brotherhoods (tarikats) and their emphasis on secrecy and discretion. Third, the cadre hierarchies of Marxism-Leninism and fascism, parallel to but more authoritative than institutions of the state; these models were prominent on the European stage in the 1920's as the founders of the Republic of Turkey set up their state.



6. (C) A variety of political, academic, and journalist contacts tells us that this unaccountability of the Deep State manifests itself in different ways.


--Senior politicians from several parties have described to
us the challenge Parliament faces in trying to keep track of
all aspects of the Deep State's activities, including the
budgets and expenditures of various military funds.


--Contacts remind us that at times the Deep State has relied
on extra-judicial enforcement of its views. While this
usually means use of hints or indirect intimidation, in the
past it has also involved an unsavory nexus among security
and intelligence services; the armed forces; and groups --
such as (Turkey's) Hizbullah and mafias -- fostered by them.
The Susurluk scandal, which broke in 1996, is emblematic of
this aspect of the Deep State (ref C and previous).


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The Military
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7. (C) The Turkish military has demonstrated its presence at
the heart of the Deep State not through any provision of the
constitution but through Article 35 of the Internal Services
of the Turkish Armed Forces Law, which states that the
military has the "duty to protect and safeguard the Republic
of Turkey." It has carried out four coups in 42 years. The
current (1982) constitution was drafted under military
direction. Moreover, the military has expanded its oversight
by penetrating in a significant way into the industrial and
financial sectors through its officer pension fund Oyak.
This monitoring function shows itself in other ways as well.
Referring to a report in Nov. 7 Kemalist "Cumhuriyet" that
the West Working Group has been reactivated, our former
NSC/WWG staffer contact told us the group has been up and
running under a new name since May 2002 "in monitoring mode
for now."



8. (C) While new Chief of the TGS Gen. Ozkok is showing
patience at the beginning of AK's tenure, we are hearing
reports that institutional interests, pressures from younger
officers to take a harder line, and suspicions of some senior
commanders that Ozkok is "too liberal" are making their
presence felt in the military hierarchy. That said, the
upper policy-making levels at TGS appear to share Ozkok's
perspective. At the same time, retired Navy CNO Ilhami
Erdil, who had just made a round of the service chiefs, told
the Ambassador Nov. 6 that the military leadership will be
watching AK carefully, paying particular attention to the
appointments of the next P.M. and ministers of defense,
justice, interior, and education. Erdil noted the importance
to the generals of "keeping parliamentarians in line" and
indicated that the generals have three red lines: Kemalism,
"secularism", and territorial integrity.


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The Judiciary -- and the Establishment Press
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9. (S) A long-serving Justice of the Constitutional Court
(the Turkish Supreme Court) recently described to us the
workings and influence of the Deep State, by which he meant
primarily military domination of the Turkish system. The
judiciary, he explained, is not independent, but a
subordinate, albeit important, part of the wider machinery
perpetuating the Kemalist status quo. As he described it,
the legal educational system is set up to produce
unimaginative, narrow-minded judges and prosecutors
indoctrinated with the State's official Kemalist ideology.
More important, judicial fealty to Kemalism and to the Deep
State is the result of a fear so pervasive, the Justice
asserted, that it is "difficult for Americans to appreciate."
Mindful of the threat of force implicit in the Deep State's
orders to civilians, judges and prosecutors fear that if they
deviate from the orthodoxy they will be entangled in
career-blunting reprimand procedures, demoted, hounded out of
office, or worse. Those relatively few judicial officials
willing to resist such pressure usually are transplants to
the judicial bureaucracy from outside that system.



10. (S) The Justice explained that while the Deep State can
make its views clear by directly communicating them through
"telephone justice" to judicial officials, word is most often
promulgated indirectly through the National Security Council,
and by senior journalists who are known to have special
relationships with the powers-that-be: he acknowledged Sedat
Ergin of mass circulation "Hurriyet" as an exemplar (in a
subsequent conversation, AK Party vice chairman Mercan spoke
in similar terms about "paid agents" in the press such as
"Hurriyet"'s Fatih Altayli). According to the Justice, Deep
State pressure and influence has transformed Turkish
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. In his view -- and in our
experience -- Sezer was much more willing to promote
democratic freedom and human rights during his tenure as
Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, where he served
before becoming Head of State. As President, however, Sezer
has been pressured into adopting the more restrictive line
set by the military-dominated NSC.


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The Bureaucracy at Large
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11. (S) In early October a 40-year-old Turk who has entered
center-right politics in the footsteps of his father after a
career in an elite ministry and in the presidency gave us
other insights into how the Turkish Deep State works. He
explained that, in every bureaucracy and every ilce
(provincial county),the Deep State has individuals it can
rely on to (1) keep tabs on internal developments and (2) to
make clear the Deep State position on particular issues that
concern national security. This system involves not only
ministries, such as Interior, that traditionally have been
associated with maintaining domestic peace and order, but
Education and others deemed to play an essential role in
maintaining the dominance of Kemalist institutions and ideas.
Someone in each ilce will have the keys to the local arsenal
("How do you think the right-wing nationalist MHP supporters
got their guns during the murderous clashes of the late
1970's?" he asked). A local Education Ministry rep will know
that he is slated to become rector of a certain university
some years down the line if he carries out his Deep State
functions well.


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Comment
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12. (C) Deep State views continue to exercise leverage over
the political game in Turkey, and as such constitute a major
obstacle to democratization and reform. However, Deep State
supremacy is not all-efficient: as one staunch secularist put
it, "the Deep State is very, very deep, like a diver under
the sea" (i.e., so deep it's unable to move in a supple way
in the faster-paced contemporary world). And the Deep State
is beginning to be challenged with an openness rare in the
history of the Turkish Republic. The push is step by step.
It must contend with centuries of ingrained habit and fear.
But various political strands, tapping the growing popular
dissatisfaction with the Kemalist status quo, are
slipstreaming behind Turkey's formal bid for EU membership to
push for sweeping changes in the current status of
civilian-military/individual-State relations and to challenge
other Kemalist verities (refs D,E).

PEARSON