Pakistani wine in a Turkish
bottle By K Gajendra Singh
President General Pervez Musharraf, when asked
during his January visit to Ankara in Turkey whether
Pakistan perceived Turkey as a model country, responded:
"No, Turkey is a brother country to us, but not a model
country. Political facts of the two countries are very
different. Turkey's model doesn't work in Pakistan. We
may take some lessons from Turkey, but we adopt these
lessons to our own conditions."
Nevertheless,
the general has successfully institutionalized the role
of the Pakistan armed forces in top decision-making by
having the National Security Council (NSC) legalized.
Musharraf created the NSC on the Turkish model soon
after overthrowing prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a
bloodless coup in October, 1999, when the latter tried
to dismiss Musharraf as chief of army staff, a position
he still holds.
On Wednesday, Pakistan's upper
house of parliament approved the creation of the NSC,
with pro-government members passing the bill by a simple
majority in the 100-seat Senate while opposition members
were out of the chamber, having stormed out in protest
against a separate issue.
Criticizing the
bulldozing of the bill in their absence, opposition
leaders said that it would cement the military's role in
politics. "This is the worst incident in Pakistan's
history and the history of the Senate. This is permanent
martial law, and this country has become a military
state," the opposition claimed.
The pro-military
government of Prime Minister Zarafullah Khan Jamali has
said that the NSC would have only an advisory role in
politics, and would include provincial governors,
members of the opposition and senior military officers.
But the opposition counters that the council, to be
headed by Musharraf, will be used to run the country and
override civilian leaders.
Addressing a press
conference in Islamabad at the weekend, Muhammad Raza
Hayat Hiraj, minister of state for law, justice and
human rights, said that the NSC would strengthen
democracy and end once and for all conspiracies to
weaken democratic institutions. He said issues of
democracy and weakening of democratic institutions would
not possibly arise under the purview of the NSC. Nor
would political issues like the dissolution of national
assemblies .
The council is aimed to serve as a
forum for consultation between the president and the
government on matters of national security, including
the sovereignty, integrity, defense and security of the
state, and crisis management. Hiraj added that any
proposal on an issue deemed to be of national importance
requiring implementation would be referred by the NSC to
the National Assembly or the Senate for appropriate
action.
Hiraj stressed that the NSC would be a
consultative forum, with the president as chairman and
members including the prime minister, the chairman of
the Senate, the Speaker of the National Assembly, the
Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, the
chief ministers of the provinces, the chairman Joint
Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Chiefs of Staff of the
Pakistan army, navy and air force.
The NSC bill
now awaits the formality of the signature of the
president, who has described it as an "insurance"
against future military coups.
The creation of
the NSC comes soon after the United States rewarded
Musharraf as an ally in the "war on terror" by declaring
Pakistan a major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization
ally (the Indians were miffed as Secretary of State
Colin Powell gave no inkling of this decision when he
went to Islamabad via Delhi.)
The passage of the
bill also coincides with heated debate on a promise by
Musharraf to step down as head of the army by the end of
the year. In an interview with the BBC, Musharraf
declined to commit himself to stepping down, but
information minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed later clarified
that Musharraf would stand by his decision to step out
of uniform by the end of the year.
Musharraf
rejected a call from within his ruling coalition to stay
on as head of the army. He agreed last year to quit the
army post by the end of 2004, in a deal with the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) Islamic alliance of
religious parties that will keep him in power as
president until 2007. The deal was sealed by a
constitutional amendment, ending a standoff with the
opposition that had virtually paralyzed parliament after
the October 2002 elections.
Before the
clarification, Musharraf had told the BBC: "But I am
certainly cheesed off with the MMA's attitudes after the
agreements that we had reached with them. They are not
participating with us on my vote of confidence which
they had promised, and also on the National Security
Council." MMA parliamentarians have refused to support
Musharraf, both in a vote of confidence and in a vote
creating the NSC.
Many analysts feel that
severing links with the military could weaken
Musharraf's position at a time when he faces opposition
from Islamists over his support for the US-led war on
terror and from secular parties angered about being shut
out of politics. But there is still time before former
commando Musharraf crosses that bridge.
Turkish political model The
attraction of the Pakistani military for the Turkish
military's institutionalized role in politics through a
body such as the NSC is old and abiding. It stems from
the days of general Zia ul-Haq in the late 1970s, if not
earlier, because of close interaction between their
military brass as Cold War allies of the US.
Many senior Pakistani generals have been posted
as ambassadors to Ankara. Zia wanted to create a NSC,
but he was dissuaded from doing so. But in 1985 Zia did
introduce a proposal, but parliament was strong enough
to reject it. President Farooq Leghari, under military
prodding, issued a decree in January 1997 creating an
NSC on the Turkish pattern, but Sharif, on being elected
in 1997, allowed it to lapse. It re-emerged on November
6, 1999 to be reconstituted by the National Security
Council Ordinance 2001.
At his very first press
conference after taking over as chief executive,
Musharraf spotted some journalists from Turkey. Speaking
fluent Turkish, Musharraf told them that he was a great
admirer of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish
Republic and its first president. "As a model, Kemal
Ataturk did a great deal for Turkey. I have his
biography. We will see what I can do for Pakistan."
Not only is he more at home with Turkish than
Pakistan's national language, Urdu, Musharraf also
admires Turkey's generals and the country's political
model, having spent his most impressionable school years
in the early 1950s in Ankara, where his father was
posted as a junior diplomat. Ataturk's legend of forging
a new, vibrant, modern and secular Turkey out of the
ashes of the decaying deadwood of the Ottoman Empire
left an indelible mark on young Pervez. Like Pakistan,
Turkey is predominantly Muslim.
But as
Musharraf's January statement shows, after ruling
Pakistan since 1999 he has learnt that conditions in
Pakistan are not quite the same as in Turkey. But he has
managed nevertheless to save the core of his model for
Pakistan, the NSC.
The NSC came into being in
Turkey after a coup in 1960. The new 1961 constitution
transformed the earlier innocuous National Defense High
Council into the National Security Council. The
president of the republic, instead of the prime
minister, was made its chairperson, and the
"representatives" of the army, navy, air force and the
gendarme became its members, apart from the prime
minister and four other ministers. The council now
became a constitutional body and offered "information"
to the Council of Ministers (cabinet) concerning the
internal and the external security of the country.
After constitutional amendments following the
1971-73 military intervention, it submitted its
"recommendations" to the Council of Ministers. The 1982
constitution, a less liberal product and the result of
the 1980-1983 military intervention, further
strengthened the NSC's role by obliging the Council of
Ministers to give priority to its "recommendations".
Threats from the military members of the NSC had made
premier Suleyman Demirel resign in 1971, and the
first-ever Islamist premier, Necmettin Erbakan, was
forced to resign in 1997, thus avoiding direct military
takeovers.
The Turkish armed forces enjoy total
autonomy in their affairs. The chief of general staff
(CGS) ranks after only the prime minister, and along
with the president forms the troika that rules the
country. Since the 1960 coup, Turkish politicians have
slowly worked out a modus vivendi with military
leaders, with incremental assertion of civilian
supremacy. Since 1923, except for president Celal Bayar
(ousted in the 1960 coup), all Turkish presidents had
been retired military chiefs. But first Turgut Ozal
(1989-1993) and then Demirel (1993-2000) strengthened
civilian ascendancy by getting themselves elected as
president. The current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is
a former president of the Supreme Court.
In
Pakistan, the position of the army's CGS, originally
based on the British colonial pattern but modified after
55 years of experience since independence in 1947,
during which the military has directly governed for more
than half the period, is even more decisive and
certainly more arbitrary than the Turkish equivalent. In
mooting a NSC in 1998, with a say for the armed forces
in decision-making, General Jehangir Karamat was only
stating a political reality, which might have avoided
unsavory confrontation. Now it will legalize the de
facto position of the military and make its role more
predictable and even accountable.
After the 1971
Turkish coup, with the top military command's views
expressed in the NSC, putsches by colonels, tried a few
times in the 1960s, disappeared in Turkey. The 1971
intervention was a result of pressure from middle-level
officers. So the claim that the creation of the NSC will
reduce the chances of direct takeover have some basis.
Like Turkish politicians, Pakistanis will have
to slowly work out a modus vivendi with military
leaders for an incremental assertion of civilian
supremacy. But while the Turkish armed forces, a bastion
of secularism, annually expel officers suspected of any
Islamic proclivities, Pakistan's armed forces and the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have become
"Islamized" at the lower and middle levels, and even
higher, thus making even political stability difficult.
At best, Musharraf can be said to have succeeded
in emulating his publicly undeclared role model, General
Kenan Evren, and that not too well. Kenan carried out
the 1980 coup, debarred and jailed top politicians, and
remained head of state for nine years. Musharraf tried
to meet him when he turned up in Ankara in November,
1999 soon after his own takeover, but was dissuaded from
doing so.
There are, though, some similarities
with Ataturk. Delhi-born Musharraf's family comes from
east Uttar Pradesh (India). Blue-eyed Ataturk was born
in Salonika (Greece) and his family came from Macedonia.
Ataturk was able to rally the World War I-weary Turks,
whose land had been occupied by foreigners. At first he
battled the Ottoman Sultan's forces sent to kill him,
and then vanquished friend-turned-foe rebel Cerkes Ethem
and his ragtag army, which had helped fight off invading
Greeks who had almost reached Ankara. This was something
like the various jihadi forces and foot-loose groups
that Musharraf now faces. Later, Ataturk ruthlessly
crushed religious revolts led by feudal Kurdish tribal
chiefs and others. And to fulfill his vision, he even
got rid of his earlier nationalist comrades, who were in
favor of continuing with the caliphate.
Musharraf, too, has succeeded in sidelining many
unreliable generals, but not completely. Despite his
belief in his avowed destiny, his proclaimed good luck
in escaping helicopter mishaps, not being in the plane
crash that killed Zia in 1988 and victory in the
standoff with Sharif, he has not shown the boldness and
ruthlessness of Ataturk. September 11 and December 13,
2002 (terror attack on the Indian parliament) provided
him with a golden opportunity to go the whole hog in the
fight against the virus of fundamentalism, and usher in
a new era in Pakistan along the lines of Ataturk's
reforms, in which he received unstinted support from the
US-led West, India and others.
Ataturk had
boldly and ruthlessly carried out "Westernizing" and
modernizing reforms against religious obscurantism and
dogma, and forged the remnants of the Ottoman Empire
with a 99 percent Muslim population into a secular
republic in the 1920s. The Ottoman sultan was also the
caliph. Ataturk abolished both the offices. But he kept
his external ambitions in check, he did not claim former
Ottoman provinces lost in World War I, and had
concentrated on building a new Turkey from the bottom
up.
Musharraf, a child of his times, after
September 11, had to step down from the fundamentalist
tiger he was riding and had helped nurture. Two attempts
by jihadis to assassinate him have shaken him up. India
reportedly warned him in time of another attempt. But it
is doubtful that he has given up the idea of control of
Afghanistan, and support for Kashmiri insurgents.
Somewhere along the way, Musharraf got lost. He might
still survive, and the US might remain beholden to him
for its plans to capture Osama bin Laden and others,
which might be a major coup in George W Bush's plans for
re-election. (But it is the fast deteriorating situation
in Iraq that will more likely determine Bush's destiny.)
Turkish politicians roll back role of armed
forces Ironically in Ankara, taking advantage of
Turkey's desire to join the Europe Union, Turkey's
parliament passed a "harmonization package" in August
2003 which will help bring the country closer to EU
norms in preparation for a decision towards the end of
this year on Ankara being given an accession date to
talk about joining the body. The package rolled back the
hitherto decisive political role of the Turkish armed
forces, almost to the levels of the 1950s. While the
armed forces could not oppose it openly, the move left
them very agitated. The Turkish military considers
itself the guardians of the secular republic and
custodians of the legacy of Ataturk.
The reforms
reduced the military's hold over the NSC, and the
measures stress that the council will in the future be
strictly an advisory body, with no executive powers. The
number of times that the council meets is now limited,
and a civilian is allowed to head its secretariat,
rather than a general. Further, greater parliamentary
scrutiny of military expenses was introduced.
Ironically, and perhaps dangerously, these
drastic changes in the Turkish political system have
been introduced by the Justice and Development party
(AKP), a party whose leadership has emerged from
Turkey's openly Islamist parties, which were banned in
the past. For the first time in the secular republic of
Turkey, the AKP won a massive two-thirds majority in
last November's national elections, receiving 34 percent
of the votes cast.
Not surprisingly, the armed
forces remain unhappy with the reform package. For the
time being the critical situation in Iraq has kept
tensions between the politicians and the military from
boiling over. Turkey, even 80 years after Ataturk's
sweeping reforms and a secular constitution in place
since 1923, is still vulnerable politically. The
ramifications of the constitutional amendments carry
with them the seeds of deep political turmoil, although,
should the AKP and the armed forces not take extreme
positions, there are signs that democracy can further
evolve in the country.
This is obviously of
importance to Turkey, but also to other countries,
especially Sunni Islamic ones struggling to establish
democracy on Western models. The crux of Turkey's
challenge is whether it can really institutionalize its
secular constitution when the ruling political party has
Islamic antecedents.
And this against the
backdrop of an ever-vigilant - and somewhat marginalized
- armed forces. Simply putting into place a "democratic"
constitution in a Muslim country does not usher in
democracy and at one swipe banish the soldiers to their
barracks. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country,
is an example where the military continues to exert
influence beyond traditional democratic processes.
It is common in the West to glibly suggest that
democracy be adopted in Muslim countries. It has now
been described the Greater Middle East Initiative. The
project is based on the US intention to bring democracy,
liberalism and modernization to the Islamic world: With
a shift in the US position on the Israeli occupied
territories during the visit of Israeli Prime Minister
Sharon this week, the initiative appears no more than
another gimmick .
"The war in Iraq is the most
important liberal, revolutionary US democracy-building
project since the Marshall Plan [for rebuilding Europe
after Word War II]. It is one of the noblest things this
country has ever attempted abroad," wrote Thomas
Freidman in the New York Times recently. How much more
cynical can one get! Turkey's zig-zag on the path of
democracy and Pakistan's regression shows how difficult
it is to usher in democracy in Muslim nations.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador
(retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August
1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as
ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is
currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic
Studies. Email Gajendrak@hotmail.com
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