Trouble is brewing in Turkey: for months in a row now, the Turkish government has arrested prominent retired members of the powerful and pro-secularism military, journalists, intellectuals and others. The AKP and its allies say the roughly 80 detained individuals are suspected of conspiring against the democratically elected government. This case is also known as the Ergenekon case.

Turkish police staged yet another round of arrests yesterday; three retired generals were arrested as well as one serving colonel. Since the army has had enough of all the detainments and possibly fears that the government is less interested in preventing any conspiracy than it is in oppressing the opposition, it held an emergency meeting Wednesday at which all top officers were present.

Army Chief Gen. Ilker Basbug then headed to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office today to talk about the latest wave of detainments. Although it is not clear what Basbug said exactly, most believe he expressed his and the army’s grave concerns about the latest wave of detainments. Basbug then had a similar meeting with President Abdullah Gul; both Gul and Erdogan are members of the AK Parti which many Turkish secularists, and the army is the country’s bulwark of secularism, suspects of desiring to overthrow the country’s secular system and replace it with one rooted in Sunni Islam.

Now, the Turkish military has staged several coups in the past. One of the bloodiest coups was the carried out in 1960, which was aimed at the administration of then Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. Menderes came to power on a platform of democratic and pro-free market reforms, but he gradually changed into a typically Turkish authoritarian ruler, who used the police to silence the opposition and he made Turkey increasingly dependent on the West (economically). He spent more than he could afford, thereby weakening the Turkish economy, which in the end caused tremendous economic problems; at the height of his authoritarian rule, the army staged a coup, disposed of him, and took over for one year, after which new democratic elections were held. Menderes was, against the wishes of the country’s secularist politicians by the way, executed in 1961.

Erdogan reminds me in many ways of Menders. The Ergenekon case reminds me greatly of Menderes’ arrests of political opponents; Erdogan too ran on a platform of democratic reforms with ‘more room’ for religion in public life; Erdogan too is in favor of the free market, and has denationalized several important companies formerly controlled by the government. I cannot help but get the impression that he may also suffer the same fate as Menderes; no executions, probably, but a coup is possible indeed.

On the other hand, as most experts will agree with me, the Turkish army has learned from history. The last coups it has staged against democratically elected government were bloodless, soldierless, even. They simply wrote a note to the sitting prime minister in the 1990s, for instance, telling him that his policies, etc. were unacceptable to the army. Since Turkish prime ministers too normally know how powerful the army is, a note was enough in the 1990s to suddenly see a PM announce his resignation. 

One wonders what the army told Erdogan in the meeting. Could it have been the equivalent of the note (if my memory serves me well, I believe it even published the note on its own website back then) mentioned above? Did the army tell Erdogan he had to be careful, and that it is watching him closely? Or was it less of a warning and more of an attempt to reach out? Nothing is sure at this point in time, but I would not be surprised if we see Erdogan change his behavior considerably in the coming days and weeks or… the tensions between army and the government increase significantly, possibly resulting in a change of leadership.