Before being appointed as the Chief of the General Staff, Ilker Basbug was the target of a propaganda campaign initiated by some Islamist newspapers, which used a photo of him taken in front of the Western Wall, alleging with an openly antisemitic tone that he was actually a Jew.
The former head of Turkey's armed forces, General Ilker Basbug, was arrested on charges of trying to overthrow the government.
Followers of this blog know that I criticized Basbug and his threats, like I criticized the policies of our neoliberal/Islamist government, in the past.
However, I still find it hard to understand why they arrested him, as...
...Kenan Evren, a former head of Turkey's armed forces, had led the 1980 military coup. He is alive and free...
...Çevik Bir, the former number-two of Turkey's armed forces, had led the "post-modern coup" in 1997. He is alive and free...
And the most enigmatic one is Yasar Buyukanit, another former head of Turkey's armed forces, who had led a fierce anti-AKP campaign during his tenure from August 2006 to August 2008. He is alive and free now, after concluding his term with a 2.5 hours long secretive meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan...
I always prefer civilian power over military power, but I also know that power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely, whether military or civilian, like they're painfully experiencing in Hungary now.
That's why I'm concerned about the way Turkey is going, after seeing how Basbug was arrested as if it was just show-business; as if it served the purpose of twisting the real news agenda again, like the latest refusal to release jailed journalists in Turkey and recent developments about the Uludere incident.
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