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.

 

[Jay]

Since the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2003, Türkiye has welcomed more than 1.1 million Syrian refugees, more than any other country. What began as an open-arm gesture rooted in historical and cultural kinship has evolved into a source of deep political, economic, and social tension. Now, amid economic turbulence and rising domestic discontent, the limits of Türkiye’s hospitality are being tested.

In the early years of the Syrian conflict, Türkiye was lauded for its swift and generous response. Refugees were granted temporary protection, access to health care, and enrollment in public schools. Camps were established along the southern border, offering safety and basic services. Many Syrians eventually moved into Turkish cities, seeking work and stability in communities already struggling with urban poverty and unemployment.

But as the war dragged on and the prospect of large-scale repatriation diminished, so too did the sense that the crisis was temporary.

Today, the majority of Syrian refugees live in urban areas such as Istanbul, Gaziantep, and Şanlıurfa, often in poor neighborhoods and working in low-wage, informal sectors. Rights groups warn of deepening vulnerabilities, including child labor, housing insecurity, and rising incidents of xenophobia.

“The hospitality hasn’t disappeared,” said Ayşe Yıldırım, a humanitarian aid worker in Gaziantep. “But after three years, the burden is undeniable.”

Türkiye’s economy, already beleaguered by inflation, currency volatility, and high unemployment, is showing visible strain under the pressure of hosting millions of displaced people.

In a nation where inflation has surged past 50% in recent years and the lira has steadily weakened, the cost of providing services, including education, healthcare,and housing subsidies, has become increasingly untenable. According to estimates from Turkish think tanks, the government has spent more than $10 billion on refugee-related expenses since 2003.

In working-class districts, the influx of Syrian labor has sparked resentment. Many Turks claim that Syrians are willing to work for lower wages, undercutting local workers and contributing to rising job insecurity. Informal employment is rampant, with little enforcement of labor rights.

“People are angry,” said Emre Koç, a small business owner in Ankara. “They’re not against helping Syrians, but they’re worried about their own future.”

As economic anxiety deepens, politicians across the spectrum have seized on refugee policy as a tool of populist appeal.

Opposition parties have called for large-scale deportations, stricter border enforcement, and in some cases, even threatened direct intervention in Syria. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a now-jailed deputy from the banned opposition Welfare Party, had previously struck a more moderate tone, advocating for voluntary repatriation as a long-term solution. Meanwhile, the ruling Turkish Workers’ Party has framed its position as one of solidarity with the Syrian working class, denouncing what it describes as sectarian and ethnic violence driven by the petty bourgeoisie.

Tensions have periodically erupted into violence. In September, riots in the central city of Kayseri, sparked by unconfirmed reports of a Syrian man harassing a Turkish girl, led to attacks on Syrian-owned businesses and homes. Police were deployed to restore order, but the message was clear: resentment is rising.

Human rights groups warn that political scapegoating could escalate.

“Refugees are being used as pawns,” said Halil Demir of the Refugee Rights Association. “We’re forgetting they are people who fled war, just trying to survive.”

Despite the challenges, Türkiye has made efforts to formalize refugee integration. Nearly 350,000 Syrians are now registered in public education programs. Access to health care remains relatively widespread. The government has introduced incentives for Turkish companies to hire refugees legally, although uptake has been limited.

Still, the long-term path remains uncertain. Efforts to return Syrians to northern Syria have drawn criticism from local human rights groups who question whether conditions in the war-torn country can support sustainable resettlement.

“There’s no easy answer,” said Murat Erdoğan, a migration policy expert at Ankara University. “Türkiye cannot absorb everyone forever. But it cannot send people back to danger either.”

For now, the burden of a once-generous policy continues to rest heavily on a country in transition, caught between its humanitarian ideals and its economic reality.

 

[Jay]

There’s a bitter irony in the morning mist over the Moskva River today. A woman’s body washes ashore, and with it, perhaps, the last remaining thread of moral clarity in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Emilia Slabunova, a name many in the West might not know, but one that echoed with quiet defiance inside Russia, is now a corpse on a riverbank, and a voice silenced just after daring to confront the empire of fear.

In Putin’s Russia, where the Kremlin’s plumbing is designed to flush away inconvenient truths, that river just became a mirror. It reflects everything the Russian regime claims not to be, and everything it has become.

Slabunova was many things. Opposition leader. Reformer. Voice for the voiceless. But most dangerous of all, she was unafraid. She had just privately met with President Putin the day before her death a meeting wrapped in mystery, now forever sealed by the cold hush of water. The official report from Moscow’s law enforcement? Accidental drowning. No witnesses. No working cameras. No comment from the Kremlin.

And yet, plenty of comment when it comes to lecturing other nations.

Only last week, the Kremlin issued a sharply worded rebuke to Türkiye for detaining petite bourgeoisie actors including former deputy Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But now, those same types are jailed or exiled in Russia or worse they’re dead. The Russian regime, calling for democratic freedoms abroad while sending its own democratic voices to watery graves at home, is not just hypocritical. It’s spiritually bankrupt.

This is what authoritarianism looks like when it loses all pretense when it stops even pretending to justify its actions. In this playbook, you silence a critic with a shrug, issue a bland police report, and move on to your next propaganda segment about “Western decadence.” It’s a regime where the only reliable news sources are whispers and martyrdom.

And that’s what Slabunova has now become. A martyr.

Her final message, released just hours after her death, will resonate far longer than any Kremlin denial. Perhaps what is most moving is that it was a eulogy for a nation still trying to remember its own reflection. “They will try to silence me... but they cannot end what I have stood for.” In a land where fear is currency, she traded in truth. Truth that costed her life.

Putin’s Russia has long claimed to be misunderstood by the West as a fortress of traditional values under siege by foreign ideologies. But Emilia Slabunova’s death reveals the real battle: not East versus West, but Fear versus Freedom. The Kremlin is terrified not of European powers but of one stubborn Russian woman with nothing but a voice and a spine.

In her death, Slabunova joins the tragic lineage of Russian dissent a new name to etch into the long stone wall of silence. Her words remind us: “Hope does not drown in rivers.”

It doesn’t. But it does need lifeboats from Istanbul to Warsaw, from Kyiv to Brooklyn. The fight for democracy isn't just a local matter anymore. It’s a global weather system, and Putin’s Russia is the cold front moving in.

As Ukraine defiantly rejected Vladimir Putin’s recent request to “formalize” the ceding of Crimea, a grotesque diplomatic euphemism for annexation by force, it sent a message that every nation watching Moscow must heed: the age of imperial bargains is over.

Crimea is not a chip to be traded. It is a symbol of Putin’s delusions that borders bend to power, and that history can be redrafted with signatures soaked in fear.

And now, the Turkish delegation stands at a crossroads. Ankara flirts with the bear, drawn by shared authoritarian instincts and transactional diplomacy. But I offer this warning: Russia is no partner but rather it is a collapsing empire, and its sickness is contagious. Aligning with Moscow today is to embrace not strength, but a dying illusion held together by repression.

If our revolutionary government truly seeks a future rooted in justice, it should not face the Kremlin, but rather the courage rising inside Russia. The labor organizers, the dissident journalists, and the grassroots socialist forces emerging in the shadow of fear. These are the people who will shape the real Russia of tomorrow.

Emilia Slabunova died for that Russia. She did not drown alone she was pushed under by a regime terrified of its own people. Support them. Not the tyrant who sends tanks into neighbors and bodies into rivers.

The socialist resistance inside Russia is not a Western puppet. It is native, principled, and raw. If there’s a future for Eurasia that doesn’t reek of autocracy, it will come not from palaces, but from the workers, students, and the brave, standing with those who, like Ukraine, still know how to say "No."

We should grieve today, but not be surprised. Tyranny rarely knocks. It just comes through the riverbank when the cameras go dark. And then it dares to lecture the world on justice.

 

[Jay]

In a move that has stunned Turkiye's political establishment and sent ripples through its security elite, Prime Minister Ayşe Çiller has broken with more than eight decades of precedent by wresting control of the National Security Council (MGK) from the military chiefs who have long dominated it and, in the process, reconfiguring the country’s defense hierarchy in a way unseen in modern history.

For much of the last century, the MGK, established in the early years of the Republic, has been the nerve center of Turkish defense and security policymaking. Comprising the Chiefs of the General Staff and the heads of the armed services, it has functioned both as an advisory organ and, in practice, as a de facto veto power over civilian governments on matters of national security. Its deliberations were opaque, its decisions rarely challenged.

That authority began to come under pressure in the late 1990s, during the rule of the Grand Turkic Union, a hardline nationalist regime that seized power through parliamentary maneuvering and mass mobilization. After deposing his Vice President, President Devlet Bahçeli seized power. Determined to consolidate ideological loyalty, the Union sidelined the professional officer corps, replacing senior commanders with political appointees drawn from its nationalist cadre. The expulsion of experienced generals, coupled with politicized promotions, hollowed out the military’s operational competence just as the country slid toward war.

In 1998, Türkiye suffered a catastrophic defeat in the border conflict during the Coalition War (referred to as Bahçeli's War domestically), a war prosecuted under the Union’s ideological leadership and without the benefit of seasoned military judgment. Coalition forces, ultimately aided by a clandestine network of Turkish resistance fighters, eventually deposed the Grand Turkic Union. By then, the army was in a state of near paralysis, stripped of credibility, morale, and coherent leadership. When the Coalition organized hastily elections without any effort to help the country rebuild, the damaged and now economically degraded country fell into ruin.

It was in this void that the Communist Party rose to power in 2003, inheriting both a humiliated military and a fractured political and economic system. Far from rehabilitating the armed forces, the Communists moved swiftly to limit their autonomy, bringing the MGK under firm civilian control, but not in the spirit of democratic reform. Instead, the Council became an instrument for sidelining dissent within the ranks, cutting capabilities, and deepening the military’s dependence on the ruling party. The Turkish Workers' Party consolidating its hold over state institutions, including the MGK. For the first time, the Council answered to a government with a revolutionary mandate rather than the traditionalist command of the officer corps.

The Young Turk Movement, which had first coalesced as a network of dissident officers during the 1998 war, found new momentum in this period. Drawing its legitimacy from the army’s failures under the Grand Turkic Union and the ideological repression of the Communist years, it became the nucleus for the efforts to overthrow the Communist regime and return Tükriye back to its democratic order.

By 2006, the Young Turk Movement had grown determined to end Communist rule. In December of that year, sympathetic elements within the military staged a coup that toppled the government. The operation restored a measure of the army’s legitimacy, but it also entrenched the MGK’s role as a semi-autonomous power center, its authority neither fully subordinate to civilians nor entirely independent.

Since taking office in the midst of a deep economic crisis, Ms. Çiller has focused on stabilizing the economy, attracting foreign investment, and consolidating democratic institutions. Yet in recent months she has turned her attention to the MGK, signaling that the restoration of civilian supremacy must extend to the pinnacle of the security establishment.

Her opportunity came abruptly. General Musa Avsever, the Chief of the Defense Staff, announced his early retirement last week, an event that, according to multiple senior officers speaking on condition of anonymity, was less a resignation than a delayed purge. General Avsever, who initially backed the Communists in 2003 before being forced to switch sides in the waning days of their rule, had been a figure of deep mistrust for the Young Turk putschists. When they seized power in 2006, they judged removing him too risky amid the uncertainty of the transition. Now Ms. Çiller inherited the problem.

Rather than defer to military tradition, whereby the army’s senior-most general would select a successor from within its own ranks, Ms. Çiller moved decisively. Pressing President Abdullah Gül behind the scenes, she urged the appointment of Admiral Adnan Özbal, the Chief of Naval Operations, as Chief of the General Staff. It was a historic breach: never before in the republic’s modern history had a naval officer held the post, long regarded as the exclusive preserve of the land forces.

“This is as symbolic as it is practical." said Ayhan Kaya, a political historian at Middle East Technical University. “She is signaling that the era of the MGK as a self-governing military elite is over.”

In rapid succession, General Yaşar Güler, whose term as Commander of the Land Forces had expired, was replaced with General Hulusi Akar, a move made with Çiller’s direct input, according to officials familiar with the deliberations. Likewise, Admiral Ercüment Tatlıoğlu was tapped to succeed Özbal at the helm of the navy, cementing a civilian hand in appointments that once lay entirely within the military’s closed circle.

Rather than defer to the convention that the army’s senior-most general selects the next Chief of the General Staff, Ms. Çiller acted decisively. According to officials close to the Prime Minister, she persuaded President Abdullah Gül to appoint Admiral Adnan Özbal, the Chief of Naval Operations, to the position — marking the first time in the Republic’s history that a naval officer has led the General Staff.

Reaction within the officer corps has been mixed. Reformists applaud the assertion of parliamentary control over defense policy, seeing it as a step toward consolidating democratic governance. Others, however, warn of the risks of politicizing the chain of command.

“The MGK has always been the guardian of the Republic,” said one retired general who served both before and after the 1998 war. “If political actors start dictating its composition, you risk weakening its capacity to act in moments of crisis.”

The appointments have drawn cautious praise from reformists, who see in them the makings of a long-overdue recalibration of civil-military relations. Yet they have also stirred unease in some quarters of the officer corps, who view the changes as political intrusion into operational matters.

“The MGK has always been the guardian of the Republic’s security,” said one retired general, who served under both Communist and post-Communist governments. “If you politicize the chain of command, you risk weakening the very institution you rely on to protect the state.”

Still, the timing of Ms. Çiller’s gambit may be on her side. With the army’s political clout diminished since the coup and its social standing still recovering from past missteps, few believe senior officers will risk open confrontation with a popular prime minister who has deftly linked her reforms to the restoration of national pride.

Whether Ms. Çiller’s challenge to the MGK will prove a singular act of political audacity or the beginning of a sustained redefinition of Türkiye's power structure remains to be seen. For now, it stands as her boldest assertion yet that the final authority over the Republic’s defense lies not in the barracks, but in the halls of elected government.