BirGün

[Jay]

 

[Jay]

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It’s easy to romanticize generals. Especially in moments of national crisis, when the institutions of liberal democracy appear fragile, corrupted, or outmatched by rising strongmen, the military offers a seductive fantasy. That of order, secularism, even salvation. But for those of us with an internationalist memory, who see beyond the immediate headlines and into the recurring structures of global power, this fantasy is as dangerous as it is false.

The recent purge of over 800 Turkish officers and the dismissal of 60,000 soldiers is being framed by foreign media and local liberals alike as an authoritarian overreach by President Ayşe Arslan’s communist government. The idea that the Turkish Armed Forces are the rightful guardians of democracy is a real fiction.

For a century, the Turkish military has acted less like a national institution and more like a client force for international capital and Western strategic interests. From the NATO-backed 1980 coup to the quiet complicity in the Syrian conflict, Turkish generals have routinely placed the demands of Washington, Brussels, and domestic oligarchs above the will of Turkish workers, peasants, and the Kurdish and Alevi communities who have long borne the brunt of elite violence.

This army has overthrown elected governments, massacred leftists, and suffocated democratic experiments whenever they’ve emerged from below. It has not been the shield of the republic, it has been the bayonet of fascism.

So when we hear whispers that America, another deeply compromised regime, may be aiding anti-government elements within the Turkish military, we shouldn't be surprised. This is part of the pattern. Whether it was Operation Gladio in Italy, the CIA's fingerprints on coups in Latin America, or NATO’s complicity in anti-leftist crackdowns across Europe and the Middle East, military forces across the so-called “Free World” have been conditioned to view socialism, especially domestic socialism, as the real enemy.

President Arslan’s government, for all its flaws, represents something terrifying to those entrenched forces: a break. A break from the old comprador elite. A break from the Military's chokehold. A break from capitalism’s logic of endless accumulation and foreign dependency. Her decision to empower the People’s Revolutionary Guard Corps isn’t simply a power grab, it’s an attempt to build a new state on new foundations. One where the workers not only own the means of production but the levers of state including the military.

Critics say this is authoritarian. But let us be honest, was it not authoritarian when generals shut down unions, when tanks rolled into Kurdish towns, when police disappeared students in the name of “stability”? Why is it only now, when the army is being dismantled, that commentators find their voice?

No revolution is immune to corruption or excess. But we must also remember, revolution is not always orderly, and democracy does not always wear a suit. Sometimes it comes with calloused hands, in the form of paramilitaries born out of popular movements, reclaiming power from centuries of imperial and domestic tyranny.

The Turkish people have a long history of being ruled in the name of “order” and “stability.” Maybe it’s time they get the chance to rule themselves.