Army must report to ministry: Coup panel

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ

Parliament’s Coups and Military Memorandums Commission finalized its report, which will be introduced to the Parliament Speaker’s office this week, and suggested the General Staff report to the Defense Ministry rather than the Prime Ministry.

Among the report’s many suggestions, the Parliament’s Coups and Military Memorandums Commission claims the General Staff would work better under the Defense Ministry rather than reporting to the Prime Ministry as it currently does.

“In consideration of the position which should exist in a democratic regime, the General Staff should be answerable to the Defense Ministry,” the report says.

AKP’s initiative

When the issue was raised on Nov.24 while speaking to reporters, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ indicated that it would also be covered during work by the Parliament’s Constitution Reconciliation Commission upon initiative of the deputies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).“The General Staff is at the moment answerable to the Prime Ministry; an administrative structure exists according to our current Constitution. As long as I know, in the draft prepared on behalf of our group by the [Constitution Reconciliation] commission member deputy fellows from the [Justice and Development Party] AKP, there is a proposal for tying the General Staff to the Defense Ministry,” Bozdağ was quoted as saying by Anatolia news agency.

“This is also an important and historical step in the name of our country’s democracy. We hope that other parties also hold a positive approach at this point,” Bozdağ said.

Parliament’s Coups and Military Memorandums Commission’s report says that a permanent parliamentary commission should be formed in order to review in detail all coups staged in Turkey.
According to the report, an institute for examining coups which dysfunction democracy should be established at a public university in Ankara.

An undersecretariat assigned with preventing coup attempts should also be formed and the notion of domestic threat within the National Security Policy Document (MGSB) should be elaborated and redefined. The report also called for a statue of freedom and democracy symbolizing objection to coups be erected in the Parliament campus and for “coup museums,” displaying the history of the nation’s past coups, to be opened in metropolitan cities.

The National Intelligence Organization (MİT) should be entirely civilianized and should assume a coordinator role concerning domestic intelligence in addition to foreign intelligence, the report also argued.