US embassy cable - 02ANKARA8252

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 008252 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/15/2012 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PINS, PINR, TU 
SUBJECT: TURKEY'S DEEP STATE 
 
REF: A. ANKARA 7606 
     B. ANKARA 7230 
     C. ANKARA 2431 
     D. ANKARA 7682 
     E. ANKARA 7683 
     F. ANKARA 8165 
 
 
(U) Classified by Ambassador W.R. Pearson; reasons: 1.5 (b,d). 
 
 
1. (C) Summary: The Turkish Deep State, the behind-the-scenes 
machinery and power relationships among selected members of 
the military, judicial, and bureaucratic elite, has endured 
as an essential factor in political life and in citizens' 
wary calculations of their relation to the State.  Now, 
however, Deep State supremacy is being challenged step by 
step with an openness rare in the history of the Turkish 
Republic.  End summary. 
 
 
-------------------------------- 
The Apparat of the Turkish State 
-------------------------------- 
 
 
2. (C) Turks are statists in that they have been inculcated 
to believe in an immanent, authoritative State power 
disconnected from, and superior to, the role granted by the 
constitution to elected politicians.  At the same time, the 
great majority of Turks is frustrated, distrustful, even 
fearful of the State as an increasingly out-of-date, 
authoritarian, inefficient and unaccountable brake on their 
freedoms. 
 
 
3. (C) In describing this relationship, Ankara's reporting 
has distinguished between the formal, Kemalist State, whose 
unaccountability is problematic enough for the man in the 
street, and what Turks refer to as the Deep State (derin 
devlet), most recently in refs A and B.  Turks use the latter 
concept to explain how real power is exercised -- through 
informal, para-judicial governance motivated by an expansive 
definition of national security.  Deep State views, 
articulated through the military-dominated National Security 
Council (NSC -- constitutionally only an advisory body) and 
other organs, continue to shape the political landscape in 
Turkey. 
 
 
4. (C) One former NSC staffer explained to us that the heart 
of the Deep State is the presidency (which on paper has 
limited powers), the military (which formally reports to the 
P.M.), and the (formally independent) judiciary.  The 
staffer, who was also a member of the West Working Group 
which helped execute the "post-modern" coup against the 
Islamist Erbakan government in 1997, explained further that 
the elected government is only the Deep State's servant. 
While the Deep State influences government activity, the 
government has virtually no influence on the Deep State; if 
the Deep State really wants to keep someone (the staffer was 
referring to AK Party chairman Erdogan) out of power, that 
person will stay out, he asserted. 
 
 
--------------------------------------- 
The Special Problem of Unaccountability 
--------------------------------------- 
 
 
5. (C)  The lack of accountability in the Kemalist State in 
general, and more specifically in the Deep State, is a legacy 
from three sources.  First, centuries of Ottoman practice. 
Second, the tradition of Muslim brotherhoods (tarikats) and 
their emphasis on secrecy and discretion.  Third, the cadre 
hierarchies of Marxism-Leninism and fascism, parallel to but 
more authoritative than institutions of the state; these 
models were prominent on the European stage in the 1920's as 
the founders of the Republic of Turkey set up their state. 
 
 
6. (C) A variety of political, academic, and journalist 
contacts tells us that this unaccountability of the Deep 
State manifests itself in different ways. 
 
 
--Senior politicians from several parties have described to 
us the challenge Parliament faces in trying to keep track of 
all aspects of the Deep State's activities, including the 
budgets and expenditures of various military funds. 
 
 
--Contacts remind us that at times the Deep State has relied 
on extra-judicial enforcement of its views.  While this 
usually means use of hints or indirect intimidation, in the 
past it has also involved an unsavory nexus among security 
and intelligence services; the armed forces; and groups -- 
such as (Turkey's) Hizbullah and mafias -- fostered by them. 
The Susurluk scandal, which broke in 1996, is emblematic of 
this aspect of the Deep State (ref C and previous). 
 
 
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The Military 
------------ 
 
 
7. (C) The Turkish military has demonstrated its presence at 
the heart of the Deep State not through any provision of the 
constitution but through Article 35 of the Internal Services 
of the Turkish Armed Forces Law, which states that the 
military has the "duty to protect and safeguard the Republic 
of Turkey."  It has carried out four coups in 42 years.  The 
current (1982) constitution was drafted under military 
direction.  Moreover, the military has expanded its oversight 
by penetrating in a significant way into the industrial and 
financial sectors through its officer pension fund Oyak. 
This monitoring function shows itself in other ways as well. 
Referring to a report in Nov. 7 Kemalist "Cumhuriyet" that 
the West Working Group has been reactivated, our former 
NSC/WWG staffer contact told us the group has been up and 
running under a new name since May 2002 "in monitoring mode 
for now." 
 
 
8. (C) While new Chief of the TGS Gen. Ozkok is showing 
patience at the beginning of AK's tenure, we are hearing 
reports that institutional interests, pressures from younger 
officers to take a harder line, and suspicions of some senior 
commanders that Ozkok is "too liberal" are making their 
presence felt in the military hierarchy.  That said, the 
upper policy-making levels at TGS appear to share Ozkok's 
perspective.  At the same time, retired Navy CNO Ilhami 
Erdil, who had just made a round of the service chiefs, told 
the Ambassador Nov. 6 that the military leadership will be 
watching AK carefully, paying particular attention to the 
appointments of the next P.M. and ministers of defense, 
justice, interior, and education.  Erdil noted the importance 
to the generals of "keeping parliamentarians in line" and 
indicated that the generals have three red lines: Kemalism, 
"secularism", and territorial integrity. 
 
 
-------------------------------------------- 
The Judiciary -- and the Establishment Press 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
 
9. (S) A long-serving Justice of the Constitutional Court 
(the Turkish Supreme Court) recently described to us the 
workings and influence of the Deep State, by which he meant 
primarily military domination of the Turkish system.  The 
judiciary, he explained, is not independent, but a 
subordinate, albeit important, part of the wider machinery 
perpetuating the Kemalist status quo.  As he described it, 
the legal educational system is set up to produce 
unimaginative, narrow-minded judges and prosecutors 
indoctrinated with the State's official Kemalist ideology. 
More important, judicial fealty to Kemalism and to the Deep 
State is the result of a fear so pervasive, the Justice 
asserted, that it is "difficult for Americans to appreciate." 
 Mindful of the threat of force implicit in the Deep State's 
orders to civilians, judges and prosecutors fear that if they 
deviate from the orthodoxy they will be  entangled in 
career-blunting reprimand procedures, demoted, hounded out of 
office, or worse.  Those relatively few judicial officials 
willing to resist such pressure usually are transplants to 
the judicial bureaucracy from outside that system. 
 
 
10. (S) The Justice explained that while the Deep State can 
make its views clear by directly communicating them through 
"telephone justice" to judicial officials, word is most often 
promulgated indirectly through the National Security Council, 
and by senior journalists who are known to have special 
relationships with the powers-that-be: he acknowledged Sedat 
Ergin of mass circulation "Hurriyet" as an exemplar (in a 
subsequent conversation, AK Party vice chairman Mercan spoke 
in similar terms about "paid agents" in the press such as 
"Hurriyet"'s Fatih Altayli).  According to the Justice, Deep 
State pressure and influence has transformed Turkish 
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.  In his view -- and in our 
experience -- Sezer was much more willing to promote 
democratic freedom and human rights during his tenure as 
Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, where he served 
before becoming Head of State.  As President, however, Sezer 
has been pressured into adopting the more restrictive line 
set by the military-dominated NSC. 
 
 
------------------------ 
The Bureaucracy at Large 
------------------------ 
 
 
11. (S) In early October a 40-year-old Turk who has entered 
center-right politics in the footsteps of his father after a 
career in an elite ministry and in the presidency gave us 
other insights into how the Turkish Deep State works.  He 
explained that, in every bureaucracy and every ilce 
(provincial county), the Deep State has individuals it can 
rely on to (1) keep tabs on internal developments and (2) to 
make clear the Deep State position on particular issues that 
concern national security.  This system involves not only 
ministries, such as Interior, that traditionally have been 
associated with maintaining domestic peace and order, but 
Education and others deemed to play an essential role in 
maintaining the dominance of Kemalist institutions and ideas. 
 Someone in each ilce will have the keys to the local arsenal 
("How do you think the right-wing nationalist MHP supporters 
got their guns during the murderous clashes of the late 
1970's?" he asked).  A local Education Ministry rep will know 
that he is slated to become rector of a certain university 
some years down the line if he carries out his Deep State 
functions well. 
 
 
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Comment 
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12. (C) Deep State views continue to exercise leverage over 
the political game in Turkey, and as such constitute a major 
obstacle to democratization and reform.  However, Deep State 
supremacy is not all-efficient: as one staunch secularist put 
it, "the Deep State is very, very deep, like a diver under 
the sea" (i.e., so deep it's unable to move in a supple way 
in the faster-paced contemporary world).  And the Deep State 
is beginning to be challenged with an openness rare in the 
history of the Turkish Republic.  The push is step by step. 
It must contend with centuries of ingrained habit and fear. 
But various political strands, tapping the growing popular 
dissatisfaction with the Kemalist status quo, are 
slipstreaming behind Turkey's formal bid for EU membership to 
push for sweeping changes in the current status of 
civilian-military/individual-State relations and to challenge 
other Kemalist verities (refs D,E). 
PEARSON