Being gay in Turkey's army

If you haven't seen it already, Emre Azizlerli from the BBC has produced a comprehensive and accurate account of what Turkish gay men have to endure before they can clinch a much-cherished exemption from military service.

"They asked me when I first had anal intercourse, oral sex, what sort of toys I played with as a child," one man is quoted as saying. Have a read, or listen to the whole documentary here.

The Turkish general staff refused to give Emre Azizlerli an interview. They didn't even provide a comment. This is hardly surprising: for all the talk about the army "defending" secularism against a pious government, it is still an extremely conservative institution that fiercely resists any form of progressive thought. It had an entirely separate judiciary as recently as three years ago. Soldiers would always be tried in military courts, irrespective of whether they attacked a superior or stole a car.

The conservatism applies to its approach to gay recruits too. Their defintion of homosexuality comes from an Amercian Psychiatric Association paper in 1968, Azizlerli writes. That's clearly outdated and wrong, and needs to change.

Turkish society is a only little more open-minded than its armed forces. Homosexuality is not a criminal offence - which, for a Muslim-majority country, is saying something - but that doesn't make Turkey an easy country to be gay in, especially outside towns like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. Most families would consider a gay son a disgrace; homosexuality in women is barely acknowledged.

There are, however, signs of shifting attitudes, albeit at a glacial pace. When Selma Aliye Kavaf, a cabinet minister for women and family issues, said in a 2010 newspaper interview that she believed homosexuality is "a biological failure, an illness" and "something that needs treatment", she was widely censured. Gay rights groups protested her comments and a lively debate about homosexuality ensued in television chat shows. She was even publicly criticised by a cabinet colleague, health minister Recep Akdağ, who said Turkey is not an easy place to be gay.

Ms Kavaf's AK Party deselected her from the party list ahead of last year's election. The vehemence of the reaction against her, and Mr Akdağ's subsequent comments, demonstrates Turkey is no stereotypical Muslim country. But there is so much more to do, and enshrining sexual orientation in the new constitution would be a start.

Three things that can lose you a referendum

It's referendum time in Turkey again. On 12 September, 49 million or so Turks will be asked to approve the latest package of substantive changes to the constitution drafted 28 years ago by the country's last military junta. In the best traditions of irony, voting day wil also mark thirty years since the coup that put that junta in power.

The last time Turks were consulted on constitutional change was October 2007, when the headline reform was to the presidency. "We want a president elected by the people," the AK government proclaimed, "and may he hold office for two five-year terms." 69 percent of voters agreed. Changes relating to parliament's voting rules and term in office were bundled into the same package. All said, an easy win.

Three weeks tomorrow, voters will be called back again, but this time it won't be as straightforward for the AK Party. Opinion polls indicate the yes vote is ahead, but only narrowly so, and a large proportion of voters are still undecided. Three reasons help explain why 2007 won't be repeated again.

The first is the Turkish army, which is not a factor in this referendum. In 2007, the General Staff published its notorious "e-coup" online, criticising the government and the threat it posed to the secular state. The gamble back-fired: AK called a snap poll, was returned by an increased majority, and went through a honeymoon period that helped it comfortably win the referendum too. Many AK supporters then were simply those alarmed by the prospect of a military intervention.

This time, there is no stand-off with the military. Aside from a spat surrounding the appointment of one particular general to the post of Land Forces Commander, the government and army have been in full agreement - over the fight against the PKK - and there is no anti-coup sentiment to exploit.

This helps partly explain the second reason why history won't be repeated - that the government's support base is shrinking. 2007 saw a strong government with a strong mandate presiding over a strengthening economy; 2010 brings us a weaker government with a nearly-expired mandate, presiding over an economy out of recession but facing unemployment above 10 percent. Put another way, the people are bored with this government and aren't all that richer than they were three years ago. Besides, they now have a credible alternative.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was elected leader of the opposition CHP in late May. Turkish voters were interested: here at last was a personality to rival Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister, who spoke colloquially about jobs and public services, and didn't have that aura of elitism that followed the former CHP leader around.

Mr Kılıçdaroğlu has maintained his party's support of a no vote, not entirely out of a compulsive rejection of anything proposed by AK, but also because of rational argument: why, for instance, is a package of such diverse reforms being voted as a whole, rather than as individual clauses? The CHP leader's voice will sway many in the next few weeks.

The third reason why this referendum will be no easy win is that the proposed reforms are hideously complicated. I certainly can't profess to understanding them all yet, and I suspect a lot of the Turkish public is with me. Part of the reason for this is the lack of any headlining reform: in 2007, people were promised the right to elect their own president. Most people understood that. In 2010, people are being promised that senior judges will be appointed in a slightly different way. A marketing dream this is not.

As it stands, the governing AK party is supported by the far-right Great Union Party (BBP) and the religious Felicity Party (SP) in a yes vote. Aside from the CHP, the major parties urging a no vote are the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), the centre-right Democrats (DP) and the centre-left DSP. The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) are currently boycotting the vote, but have incidated they may switch to a yes if some of their demands are met.

But more on that in a future post. Over the coming weeks, I'll examine the arguments of the yes and no camps, cover the political machinations as Mssrs Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu campaign, and come to a - no doubt highly influential - conclusion over what verdict Turks should reach on 12 September.

In they march

This is the photo that is splashed across the front of nearly every Turkish newspaper this morning. Released on the Turkish Armed Forces website, it shows troops marching over the snowy border into Iraq. There are reported to be another ten thousand of them.

Newspapers outside Turkey have been covering it too. This morning's Independent called it "the new invasion of Iraq ... it threatens to destabilise the country's only peaceful region". It is indeed, as The Times says, Turkey's biggest incursion into the country for more than a decade. And as Radikal points out, the operation is taking place under "assurances" from Ankara and "understanding" from the rest of the world. No major political leader - not even the Iraqi president, himself a Kurd - has called this an illegal invasion.

Details of what is happening remain sketchy. The terrain is mountainous, temperatures are subzero, and the constant exchange of fire means there are no independent reporters in the region. All we have is what the Turkish army and sources close to the PKK tell us and, perhaps predictably, the information conflicts. The Turks say five of its troops have been killed in action, the PKK puts that figure at twenty. The Turks say they've killed 24 fighters, the PKK says it has no losses. Who to believe?

Alone in its opposition to the incursion was Birgün, which carried the headline "No! - to war, to conditions of war, to the noise of war". It says the land operation will "affect our side of the border more than it does the other. The powers of peace and democracy are wary for young lives and the spirirt of living among one another." There is, in this, a message that is conceded even by Turkish generals: Turkey's Kurdish problem cannot be solved purely by military means.

Murat Yetkin writes in today's Radikal that the time is right to take measures "other than military steps, to take political, legal and economic steps to combat those conditions that create the PKK." Iraqi president Jalal Talabani was invited yesterday to Ankara, he says, with this in mind. This diplomacy is perhaps more important than the strikes.

Turkey has so far been playing this effectively, and by the book. The current operation is expected to last a fortnight; there might be more to follow in the coming months. But it is vital not to lose perspective, and ensure that any solution is a lasting one. Diplomacy and reform is the way to do it.

A time to be rational

Yesterday saw the acceptance by the Turkish people of a package of reforms that brings about some important changes to Turkey's executive command, and more subtle - but no less substantial - changes to the workings of parliament. Unofficial results gave a solid "Yes" vote (69 percent), although turnout (67 percent) was the lowest recorded for a Turkish referendum.

The public consultation comes as Turkey is in the news for very different reasons, be it terrorism on the Iraqi border or Armenian bills in the US House of Representatives. The referendum has its roots in a government angry at not being able to elect its choice of president. Since then, there has been a general election, followed by a president one, and the number of dead in the southeast has been topped up by another few hundred. So the original motive for a public vote is gone, and there are other pressing things to worry about. Was the referendum worth it?

Of course it was. One of the reforms - electing the president by the people - is material to the way Turks are governed, and we now know Turks do want to choose their president in future. Turkish presidents from now on, including the incumbent Abdullah Gül, will serve no more than two five-year terms.

A less-trumpeted reform reduces the term of parliament to four years. This serves to formalise what has already been something of a tradition for Turkish parliaments for decades; it also reduces the possibility of a new president and parliament being chosen in the same year.

The other changes relate to quorum and voting procedures in parliament. The number of MPs needed for a session to be quorate is explicitly set out at 184 - a third of the total number of members plus one. This should prevent future brawls over the constitution like the one in the spring that annulled an attempt to elect Mr Gül and triggered an early general election.

Critics have dismissed the last change - and therefore the entire referendum - as a redundant, technical matter. They point to Mr Gül's election, the fresh AK mandate, and the work on a new constitution. One critic on NTV last night described it as "madness" that any party would willingly want to reduce its own parliamentary term. But let it not be forgetten that it was a mere "technical" argument over 184 or 367 votes that gridlocked Turkish politics for a fortnight. It was all worth it if only to prevent that from happening again.

The decision to push ahead with the referendum is also a show of principled politics on the part of the AK party: it shows consistency and a belief that a public vote is a way to put issues to the people, not just an avenue to push their man to the top.

The critics do have one very important point. It had not been entirely clear whether Mr Gül would have to immediately step down and contest a direct president election if there was a yes vote. Parliament voted just last week to clear up that anomaly, but voters based outside of Turkey had already been voting on the original text at border checkpoints since September. You can't change the rules after the game has started, however small the change might be.

The Turkish press has been remarkably uninterested in the news this morning, and that is unsurprising. The referendum coincided with the deaths of twelve Turkish soldiers in a PKK attack on the village of Dağlıca, close to the Iraqi border. Up to thirty terrorists were killed in the hot pursuit that followed, but army sources estimate there were up to 150 PKK members involved and most of them had disappeared back over the border. No country can tolerate attacks of this size and frequency for long.

The big question is whether the AK government will use its fresh parliamentary approval to launch a cross-border raid into Iraq and seek out the PKK camps. The answer is that Turkey has about as much right to enter Iraq as coalition forces did in 2003. The reality is that a raid would probably have little effect, just like the twenty-four attempts that preceeded it. But this is a country that is getting impatient and insecure. Acumen doesn't come into it.

This is not a crisis

The past week will go down as one of the most exciting in Turkey's history. It began on Tuesday with the ruling AK party's nomination of foreign minister Abdullah Gül as its presidential candidate. It ended yesterday with a high court challenge and a stark military warning.

Here is what has happened in the last 48 hours: there were 361 votes cast in Friday's first round. Abdullah Gül received 357 votes, ten short of what he needed to win. Of the remaining four ballots, three were spoilt and one was blank.

The main opposition CHP took the election to the Constitutional Court, claiming the legal requirement for attendance (367 MPs, they say) was not met. AK says the 367 figure is irrelevant, but also slyly claims the attendance was 368, thanks to CHP members coming in to observe the ballot.

The court has promised a judgement before Wednesday's second round. If the CHP claim is upheld, the first round will be annulled and all further rounds cancelled. The likely route from there is an immediate general election. If, however, the court dismisses the CHP claim, Wednesday's second round will go ahead as planned, and Mr Gül will be elected president by round three, when the vote requirement is dropped to a simple majority of 276.

Hours after the CHP's case was handed to the court, the military weighed in. In a statement released at midnight, timed so that it would miss the evening news bulletins but appear on the morning front pages, the army said that the presidential election was turning into a discussion of the secular system. It went on: "The Turkish Armed Forces is watching the situation with concern. It must not be forgetten that the armed forces is party to these discussions and is the absolute guardian of secularism."

The government's response to the statement was just as blunt and angry: "We cannot accept an anti-government declaration from the General Staff, an office answerable to the prime minister. This midnight statement can only be interpreted as an attempt to influence the judicial process." The European Union responded too, saying that the presidential election was a test case for the army to respect democracy.

Today, tens of thousands of people have gathered in Istanbul for a secularist rally. It follows a similar demonstration in Ankara two weeks ago, when around 300,000 people attended to protest Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's potential candidacy.

Three important points must be made about this weekend's developments. Firstly, this is indeed the first presidential election in Turkey's history to be taken to court, but that is nothing to be ashamed of. Rather, it demonstrates that Turkey is a democratic state operating under the rule of law. Politicians frequently bicker; the fact that the judges have been called in to settle this dispute shows that power in Turkey does operate horizontally as well as vertically.

Second, there might be more to the army's position than meets the eye. It is true that this is the bluntest statement since Yaşar Büyükanıt became Chief of the General Staff, but it could have been a preemptive measure. Today's secularist rally is sure to feature demonstrators calling for the army to intervene. Perhaps the statement was designed to placate those demonstrators.

Where the army is most certainly wrong is in its resolute insistence that the secular system can never be up for discussion. To discuss does not mean to dismantle. In fact, discussion could strengthen the secular system. A public debate on the role of religion in the state can help remind Turks why secularism is important without having to resort to Kemalist dogma. More on that in a later post.

Third - this is not a crisis. It is a serious debate concerning issues far more fundamental than a voting technicality, but everyone is playing calmly and by the book. Talk of a direct military intervention is, at this stage, nothing but rumour.

It is difficult to predict what the Constitutional Court's decision - expected on Tuesday - will be. My personal opinion is that the CHP challenge is baseless, because the constitution contains nothing to suggest the attendance for a presidential vote should be any different from any other session. My feeling is that the case should be dismissed, but I cannot wholeheartedly say that I expect the court to rule against the CHP. As BadTyrpist wrote in a comment on Friday, the text of any pro-CHP ruling will have to be read very closely.