Policy Note/ Dr. Nihat Ali Özcan "Tension Between AKP-TSK, Where Are We Heading?"

Confronted by the earthshaking developments experienced in Turkish political life in recent months, everybody is asking the same question. When will Turkey emerge from this crisis and when will matters fall into shape? Actually the pace and complexity of events complicate efforts to forecast the future.  What were these developments in brief? Republican demonstrations, e-intervention, failure of the Presidential elections, decisions of the Constitutional Court on the Presidential elections, the call for early general elections, the election alliance of the parties on the left, the rising number of  PKK (Partiya Karkara Kurdistan - so called "Kurdistan Liberation Party" ) attacks and failure of the central right parties to form an election alliance. How shall we forecast the future in this case?

Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) are one of the parties involved in the Presidential elections of April 27. The first step in predicting the future is to make an analysis of the policies of the TSK. The TSK obtained the results it had aimed at in the Presidential elections process. The Army has blocked an "Islamist" member of the AKP [Justice and Development Party] from occupying the presidency, to which its institutional culture attaches "strategic" importance. The AKP was not able to install the planned name to the Presidential seat which it wished to occupy effortlessly. Looking at the political developments, it seems that AKP will not enjoy such an opportunity in the forthcoming process. Consequently, the probability of experiencing a crisis like the one on 27th April 2007 is quite low and TSK has already started to withdraw to its pre-crisis position.