Turkish military at uncomfortable crossroads

There has never been much love lost between the Turkish military and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which came to power in 2002.

The generals believe the AKP has a hidden agenda to subvert the country’s secular system.

The AKP, for its part, sees the military as standing in the way of democratic reforms essential to Turkey’s attempt to join the European Union.

But a string of allegations about coup plots by the military – and this week’s arrest and formal indictment of seven senior military officers, including four admirals, a general and two colonels – have brought these tensions to a new level.

They raise fundamental questions about whether peaceful cohabitation is possible between the staunchly secular military and a governing party with Islamist roots.

And for Turkey’s Western allies, they raise troubling questions about where the country could be heading.

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