Paid military service bill to be worked

Work on a bill to introduce paid military service will commence after the end of the upcoming Kurban Bayram holiday, Turkish Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz said.

“We will submit the result of our work to our prime minister, and he will make necessary statements,” he said. Yılmaz refused to elaborate further about the content of the work in a statement given during his ministries’ budget talks at a parliamentary commission.

The bill to potentially exempt thousands of would-be draftees from compulsory military service will be drafted without weakening the military or hurting public sensitivities, deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said earlier.

“There are tens of thousands people who would oppose the paid military service at a moment when Turkey is fighting against terror and martyrs have fallen [in the fight against terror],” said Arınç. “Therefore, we should draft such a law to, on the one hand, respond to the people’s feelings and, on the other, to the needs of the chief of the General Staff.”

Without directly opposing the idea, the General Staff urged the government several times to pay utmost attention not to weaken the military’s deterrence capabilities and debilitate its ability to provide security for the country. Yılmaz also said work to removed landmines on the Turkish-Syrian border would commence next year and be completed in four years.