Mumia Abu-Jamal is without doubt the United States’ most well-known prisoner. After living on death row for 30 years, Abu-Jamal’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in early 2012 after decades of advocacy by anti-death penalty and anti-racist activists.

It comes as something of a shock, then, that despite Abu-Jamal’s status as a cause célèbre, there is no comprehensive biography of the man’s life and achievements. “Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal”, a new film by Stephen Vittoria, fills that gap.

The film’s interviewees include such luminaries as Alice Walker and Cornel West alongside noted independent journalists Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, and Dave Zirin and a host of other cultural and political icons. Through a combination of meticulous research and heavy use of archival footage, Vittoria constructs a powerful narrative of Abu-Jamal’s life and career as a journalist and social critic.

Vittoria came to make “Long Distance Revolutionary” somewhat serendipitously. While working on a different documentary project called “Murder Incorporated: Empire, Genocide and Manifest Destiny”, he interviewed left-wing intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, and Abu-Jamal.

“We were going to attempt to tell the 500-year story of the march of empire,” Vittoria told IPS, “from the time Columbus set foot on Hispaniola to the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Sensing that the scope of that narrative was too ambitious for a feature film, Vittoria sidelined the project and decided instead to tell the story of Abu-Jamal’s life.

Other films about Abu-Jamal have focused primarily or in some cases exclusively on the controversial murder conviction for the shooting of a police officer that landed him on death row. “Long Distance Revolutionary” takes the polar opposite approach. It treats the case the same way that Abu-Jamal seems to: as a fact of his life. As the film emphasises repeatedly, Abu-Jamal has never used his platform to protest his own conviction.

“Whether the case existed or not, this guy is a brilliant journalist who over the course of the last three decades has evolved into a brilliant social critic,” Vittoria says.

Although Mumia is a household name to many progressives and leftists, little attention is paid to his life beyond his case. Vittoria calls his film “an untold history of Mumia”.

True to its subtitle, “Long Distance Revolutionary” takes the audience on a journey through Abu-Jamal’s life. The narrative flows through his career, beginning with his start as a journalist for the Black Panther newspaper at the age of 15 to his career as a reporter for the Philadelphia National Public Radio affiliate.

We follow his meteoric rise as a successful broadcaster, becoming a featured reporter on NPR’s show All Things Considered. Then, Abu-Jamal was elected president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and turns down a lucrative offer to become a television reporter because the station would have required he cut off his dreadlocks.

Along the way, the film’s impressive cast paints a picture of a Philadelphia filled with overt racism and police brutality, obscured, in Temple University professor Linn Washington’s words, by “a veneer of liberalism and a Quaker mystique.” At the centre of this tension is Abu-Jamal, whom Philadelphia police make a point of watching closely.

Filming Abu-Jamal has not been permitted since 1996. To shoot a documentary with your primary subject unable to be filmed presents a unique set of challenges. Vittoria jests that “it’s like filming Jaws without being able to show the shark.” But it is in working through these limitations that Vittoria’s art as a director shines.

One way Vittoria brings Abu-Jamal to life while he is physically absent is having the film’s pundits read aloud selections from the books Abu-Jamal penned from behind bars. “I wanted to see how Mumia’s words came from the people we had in the film,” Vittoria says. In addition to the regular interviewees, a crew of spoken word artists also take turns reading and interpreting Abu-Jamal’s words.

Even with this, Vittoria still had to grapple with the inability to film Abu-Jamal in his prison cell, which is a defining part of his existence for the past three decades. To not show the cell would be to not accurately portray Mumia. Vittoria made the risky artistic decision to stage a recreation of the cell using a lookalike actor, Troy Alcendor.

“I’m not a huge fan of recreations in films,” Vittoria tells IPS. “But recreations work if they are done in a very stylised manner so you’re just giving the audience a hint of what you’re representing. You’re not trying to make it a docudrama; you’re almost trying to make it like a painting. I wanted those scenes to be poetry. And the poetry is beautiful as he’s writing or it’s ugly as he’s just existing in this cinderblock cage.”

The risk pays off as those scenes provide a uniquely human element to the film, which is sorely lacking in other portrayals. Although the producers of the film are all sympathetic to Abu-Jamal’s politics, it refrains from being an exercise in hero worship. The film is about who Abu-Jamal is as a human being as much as anything else.

In one scene, we are told that visitations to Abu-Jamal at prison are “non-contact”. Actor Giancarlo Esposito remarks, “I imagine he must be extremely sensitive on his skin and on his touch,” offering viewers an opportunity to ponder a side of Abu-Jamal not often seen. The film is full of such moments and succeeds in humanising a man who has been so violently dehumanised.

Despite their close relationship that has blossomed through the film-making process, Abu-Jamal has not seen the film and according to Vittoria had no editorial say over its production. They are currently co-writing “Murder Incorporated”, which has been turned into a book, trading off chapters and mailing them to each other in and out of prison.

Stephen Vittoria is also the director of “One Bright Shining Moment”, a 2005 film about George McGovern’s 1972 grassroots-based presidential bid. Following a successful festival run, “Long Distance Revolutionary” opens in New York City on Feb. 1 and Los Angeles on Mar. 1.

The village of Hasankeyf lies above the Tigris River, whose flow has carved out rock formations over the course of millenia. Credit: Jay Cassano/IPS

By Jay Cassano
HASANKEYF, Turkey, Jun 10 2012 (IPS)

Hasankeyf, a small village in southeastern Turkey, has been under threat for 15 years. Home to approximately 3,000 people, the site is one of the oldest continuously inhabited human settlements, with an archaeological record going back at least 9,500 years.

Now, the Ilisu Dam – part of a massive hydroelectric project undertaken by the State Hydraulic Works – will flood Hasankeyf and the surrounding region, effectively washing away millennia of history.

In addition to destroying a historical site, which includes vestiges of every empire that ever inhabited Mesopotamia, the dam will also cause immense ecological harm to the Tigris River valley.

Derya Engin, who staffs the Hasankeyf office of the Nature Society, a Turkish NGO, told IPS that numerous endangered species will lose their habitat if the dam is built.

“The Tigris is the only untouched river ecosystem in Turkey and it is vital that it remain that way,” she warned. “It is well-known that dams dramatically change the climate of entire regions. This dam will destroy the habitats of fish, birds, and plant life, some of which are unique to the Tigris valley.”

Construction of the dam began in earnest in 2008, but plans for its implementation date back even further.

The dam was originally conceived in the 1950s as part of a plan, called the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), intended to develop the infrastructure of largely rural and Kurdish southeastern Turkey. Since 1997, several European finance consortia have attempted to fund the project, only to withdraw support before anything concrete materialised.

The European banks and companies pulled out in large part due to massive solidarity campaigns against the dam in their respective home countries. In 2009, the German, Austrian and Swiss governments revoked the export credit guarantees to the final consortium because the Turkish government failed to meet the ecological, social, and cultural heritage standards set by the World Bank.

For a while, activists in Turkey and throughout Europe believed they had won the fight and that construction of the dam would stop. To their surprise, construction is continuing to this day.

It was later revealed that the Turkish government had quietly secured funding from two of the country’s largest private banks, Akbank and Garanti, making the project still viable.

Water Wars

The Turkish government’s reasons for pressing ahead with the controversial project are not what one might expect. Projections place the amount of hydroelectric power the dam will produce at less than 2 percent of Turkey’s total energy needs. Not an entirely insignificant amount but certainly, according to various sources, not enough to justify the destruction of an entire ecosystem, invaluable cultural heritage, and the livelihoods of several thousand people.

The Turkish government has openly proclaimed that the main function of the dam system is to bolster the country’s counter-insurgency strategy against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which mobilises from the mountainous Iraqi-Turkish border. Together, the strategically placed dams created by GAP will form a massive wall of water close to Turkey’s border with Iraq.

Having flown through the Hasankeyf for millenia, the Tigris has created a vast canyon topography that is not only visually spectacular but also provides necessary cover for militants. In addition to raising the water level of the Tigris, flooding from Ilisu Dam will spill over into nearby canyons that are currently dry.

With canyons filled and massive lakes created where rivers once flowed, the terrain will become impassable by foot.

Furthermore, the effects of the dam will extend beyond Hasankeyf, well across national borders. By virtue of being upstream from Iraq and Syria on both the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers, Turkey effectively controls the flow of water southward.

With the Euphrates already heavily dammed, the Syrian and Iraqi governments have raised serious concerns about dam projects on the Tigris. Twice the region has been on the verge of water wars, once in 1975 and again in 1990. Restricting water flow from the Tigris could prove to be a tipping point in the incendiary region.

Activists believe that, ultimately, the dam will turn water into a political tool both inside and outside Turkey’s borders. “We know that the dam is really about security,” Mehmet İpek, a young local activist, told IPS.

Down the road, Mehmet Ali, a shopkeeper selling tourist souvenirs, lamented the imminent loss of his home. “They are condemning a place like this, with no equal in the world, for a dam that will only operate for 50 years.”

An invaluable site

Today there is little recourse left to stop construction. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) could theoretically put a hold on the project. A case was brought before the court in 2006 but rejected on the grounds that the ECHR protects human rights, not cultural heritage, ignoring the approximately 35,000 people who will all be forced to give up their way of life if the dam is constructed.

A new case is being submitted to the ECHR after a Turkish regional court rejected it this week. Locals hope that it will work, but are not deceiving themselves. They have learned from experience how determined the state is to continue with the project.

Ömer Güzel, a shop owner and local activist in Hasankeyf, told IPS that at one point the villagers held protests every week. “It didn’t accomplish anything,” he said. “In the end the dam is still being built right now.”

The government has kept the construction site, 16 kilometres downstream from Hasankeyf, under heavy security. However, sources with access to the site, who spoke to IPS on the condition of anonymity, claim that the dam is already half completed.

There is still a chance that the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) might list the area as a World Heritage site, effectively guaranteeing its protection.

To qualify for World Heritage status, a site must meet one of 10 criteria for outstanding universal value in an area of cultural or natural significance. Hasankeyf, as the only site in the world that meets nine of the 10 criteria, is an exceptional candidate for inclusion.

Unfortunately, that fact alone is not enough to be listed. “In order to be included as a World Heritage site, the country in which the site is located must submit an application to UNESCO. The Turkish government has not done this,” Engin explained.

A UNESCO delegation previously visited Hasankeyf and, upon taking stock of the area, urged the Turkish government to apply. The implication was that if Turkey applied, Hasankeyf would be accepted.

“But the government does not want to protect this area, so why would they apply? The dam project is too important to the state,” Engin pointed out.

(END)

By Jay Cassano and - -
ISTANBUL, Oct 28 2011 (IPS)

Following the attacks by Kurdish rebels against the Turkish military last week, the Turkish press has openly struck a nationalist and militaristic tone.

Headlines in Turkish papers the day after the attacks were universally sensationalist and partisan.

Zaman, the most widely read daily in the country, condemned the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) with “They Crossed the Line” as its front page headline. The article went on to state, “The PKK, which massacres soldiers, civilians, women and children, showed its barbaric face in Çukurca last night.”

Habertürk referred to the attack as a “Crime Against Humanity” in large font in another front page headline.

The liberal daily Radikal ran “The Cursed Face of Terror” superimposed over a photograph of a crying woman hugging a young girl.

Posta, a tabloid with readership of nearly half a million, picked up on this theme with articles entitled, “Turkey is Full of Crying Mothers” and “How Long Will We Keep Suffering?”

The socialist daily BirGün ran the only non-provocative headline, “Peace is the Only Way.” Various other papers described the attacks as “vicious” and the PKK militants as “treacherous” or “traitorous”.

According to Garen Aram Kampril, coordinator of the Media Watch and Hate Speech Project at the Hrant Dink Foundation, “the media have a nationalist point of view and there is a militarist mentality in the headlines and articles.”

Founded in 2007 in honour of assassinated Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the Foundation directs much of its energy towards highlighting and exposing hate speech and bias in the media.

Most papers made the editorial decision to visually emphasise a selection of quotes from President Abdullah Gül’s speech after the attacks, namely: “The revenge for these attacks will be great.”

“This is the language of war,” Kampril told IPS.

Furthermore, each publication used the Turkish and Arabic words for “martyrs” to refer to the slain soldiers. In contrast, the number of PKK guerillas killed was only mentioned further down in the article, referred to simply as “the dead.”

Kampril believes that the use of the word martyr is “a religious saying, but even the so-called secular military is now using this term.”

He takes this as a strong sign of bias “because one side is martyrs and the other is terrorists. No one cares about people dying on the other side. They are considered subhuman.”

Two days after the attacks, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan convened a meeting with the five major Turkish news agencies and most of the national newspapers to discuss how best to cover the ‘Kurdish issue’.

Because this media meeting was limited only to representatives of large publications, its end results are unknown. The joint statement released by the five major news agencies makes it seem that the government’s aim was to curb the sensationalism in news reports.

The agencies present pledged not to “broadcast news that incites the public to violence, panic, chaos, hate or enmity.”

However, many people have expressed concern about the goals of this meeting.

Several newspapers critical of the government – ultra-secularist or far-left publications – were not invited to the meeting.

Kampril believes that “Erdogan excluded them because he thought that he could not control them and they would not obey. Erdogan wants a homogenous media. He wants one voice to control society and to create a common opinion on this issue. This is contrary to democracy.”

After the meeting Erdogan announced “we have evaluated together the ways in which media will not serve the aims of terror by knowingly or unknowingly propagandising.”

In another example of government control over citizens’ access to independent information about the conflict, Firat News Agency’s website remains banned.

Based in the southeast, Firat is the only agency that has ties to the Kurdish movements.

Because its primary website has been banned for some time, Firat established several mirror websites at different domains. The morning after the PKK attacks, none of the mirrors were accessible inside Turkey.

Following the attacks, much of the Turkish public retaliated with anti-PKK demonstrations. Some attacked the offices of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which supports equal rights for Kurds and is viewed by an overwhelming majority of Turkish society as a mouthpiece for the PKK.

BDP offices in Istanbul, Izmir, Antalya, Konya, Aydin, Adiyaman, Osmaniye, and Sakarya were vandalised amidst nationwide anti-Kurdish demonstrations.

Rather than report on the backlash against the PKK objectively, Turkish media made the decision to effectively fan the flames for further violence.

Hürriyet, the second most popular daily in the country, printed, “The rage has spilled over to the streets.”

“The media provokes nationalism,” Kampril told IPS. “Of course, these are people who are very ready to be provoked. But the media is contributing to the problem.”

After the devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the seat of the Kurdish minority in the southeastern city Van, the effects of this partisan media coverage were clearly felt.

Habertürk news anchor Duygu Canbas opened a segment reporting on the earthquake by saying, “Even though this news comes from the East, from Van, it has really shaken and upset all of us in Turkey.”

Müge Anli, host of a daytime talk show, commented, “whenever they [Kurds] feel like it, they throw stones at soldiers and hunt them in the mountains like birds, but whenever something bad happens they say let the soldiers and police come to their rescue.”

Kampril said he noticed trends of hate speech on social media such as Facebook and Twitter that have been spurred on by the media.

“There is a direct link between media coverage and hate speech because the people who are posting these tweets or creating these Facebook pages are the people in society.”

“The media in a way reflects the tendencies in society but also produces stereotypes and nationalist tendencies,” he added.

*Cihan Tekay contributed to this report.

Excerpt:

Four months ago, the international media were replete with reports of Syrian civilians fleeing Bashar al-Assad’s regime into southern Turkey. Today, media both in and outside of Turkey appear to have forgotten the plight of these refugees.

In June, when the Syrian army seized control of the border city Jisr al-Shughour, an estimated 10,000 Syrians fled into the southern Turkish province of Hatay.

Turkish authorities believe that an additional 9,000 refugees have arrived since June. However, many fled only temporarily and have already returned to Syria. In a press release originally dated Oct. 11 and updated Thursday, the Turkish Directorate of Disaster and Emergency Management put the total number of Syrian citizens currently in Hatay at 7,580.

Meanwhile, as the Syrian government continues its brutal crackdown on dissidents, relations have noticeably soured between Damascus and its long-time ally in Ankara.

After the United Nations Security Council failed to pass a resolution condemning the violence and threatening sanctions against Syria last week, Turkey decided to press ahead with its own unilateral set of sanctions.

In response to the controversy around this decision, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an repeatedly assured that the sanctions would affect Assad’s government and not the Syrian people.

“The Turkish government first began dialogue with the Syrian government, relying on their cordial relations,” Meltem Müftüler-Baç, professor of international relations at Sabanc? University, told IPS.

“When this did not seem to work, the Turkish position began to shift towards sanctions. Turkey has been careful (to ensure) its sanctions do not penalise the Syrian people.”

However, while the international media has fully dissected Turkey’s diplomatic sanctions, it has seemingly forgotten about the thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled north across the Turkish border.

An uncertain fate

Hatay’s population is neatly divided between ethnic Turks and Arabs, with sizeable Christian minorities of various backgrounds.

Because Hatay was historically part of Ottoman Syria and, later, the French Syrian Mandate, Arabic is commonly spoken throughout the province.

Through a series of agreements with France, Turkey annexed Hatay in 1939. Until recently, Syria maintained that the annexation was conducted illegally and continued to lay claim to the border province.

This contested history has forged strong connections between many Syrians and their families, relatives or acquaintances in Hatay. Some Syrians even own second homes in the city of Antakya there.

One such individual is Rami Suleiman, who fled to Hatay three months ago to become a refugee twice over: born in Damascus to Palestinian refugee parents, Suleiman is now himself a refugee in Turkey, having fled Assad’s violent repression.

Suleiman said that he had worked as a financial manager in Damascus until the uprising, when he began providing demonstrators with cell phones to coordinate with each other and contact the media.

“I came to Hatay when I felt it was no longer safe for me in Syria,” he told IPS.

Although Suleiman lives in his own house in Antakya, he is able to visit the camps during an hour-long window each day, the only time slot during which refugees are allowed to travel outside the camps.

“If I tell a camp director that I want to visit a specific person inside a camp, such as a friend or family member, they let me in,” Suleiman said.

“But if someone in the camps wants to go out they have to give a specific reason and be back within the time period, otherwise they may not be allowed to go out again. (So) most people just stay in the camps.”

Journalists have not been allowed into the camps; only NGOs working closely with the Turkish government have access.

Suleiman believed that “the Turkish government is definitely trying to control the information coming out of the camps”, though he assured IPS that camp conditions were “excellent”.

“There is an abundance of food, water, and medical supplies. People are treated well. But you have to understand that (the majority of the more than 7,500 refugees) have been in these camps for four months,” he said.

“These (may be) good conditions for a refugee, but it’s not a life for a human being,” he added.

After the initial wave of army violence in Syria, particularly at Jisr al-Shughour, many citizens have returned to their homes. Others flee only temporarily to better conditions across the Turkish border.

Still, if or when the bulk of the refugees will be able to return is unclear.

In an apparent acknowledgment that the camps may have to exist longer than anyone foresaw or hoped, the Turkish government has established schools for the over 2,300 school-aged children in the camps.

Suleiman told IPS that the authorities are outfitting the camps to make them habitable for long-term stays.

“They have laid internet cables in some places. The schools look excellent. There are classes in Arabic as well as a Turkish language course.”

The latter indicates that the government is anticipating the possibility of Syrian citizens experiencing protracted stays in Turkey.

Although the conditions in the camps are laudable, the refugees are ultimately longing to return to their homes. When most fled, they did not imagine living in tents or formerly abandoned buildings for months on end.

“We are waiting for the regime to come down,” Suleiman said. “We want to build a new Syria. We are just waiting.”

While the world waits for Assad’s regime to either crumble or institute reforms, these refugees are stuck in limbo, neither incorporated into Turkish society nor able to return home.

The simultaneous resignations of Turkey’s top military brass last week indicates that the civilian government may finally have more sway over politics than the top generals, according to analysts and activists.

The resignations that took place just before the annual Supreme Military Council Meeting mark a boiling point in the history of relations between Turkey’s military and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

While this gradual transfer of power from the country’s military elite to democratically elected representatives worries some who covet the military as guardians of the secular republic, others perceive the events as natural side effects of a process of demilitarisation within Turkey’s decision- making structures.

Turkey’s military has long been a dominant force in both society and politics. All Turkish men are conscripted for military service, and this is seen as a rite of passage into adulthood. Furthermore, the military has long seen itself, according to secularist Kemalist Turks, as “the sole guardian of republican values and secularism.”

“Turkey has been notorious for military dominance over politics, but this dynamic between the military and the rest of the branches of the state has not remained fixed, as in other countries that undergo rapid political transformation,” Berna Turam, a researcher on state-society relations in the Middle East, told IPS. “To the contrary, the military’s interaction with the other parts of the state, particularly the parliament, has been shifting dramatically since 1998.”

AKP’s Democratic Reforms

Erbakan’s Welfare Party was the first openly Islamic party to rule in Turkey, a fact that the military did not readily accept. AKP also comes from Islamic roots. Given the events of 1997, it comes to many as a surprise that AKP has managed to rule – uninterrupted by the military – since it first came to power through a sweeping victory in the 2002 general elections.

Mensur Akgün, director of the Istanbul-based think tank Global Political Trends Centre explained to IPS how AKP has persevered in the face of a military establishment opposed to its rule: “Firstly, AKP learned their lessons from the process with the Welfare Party in 1997. Secondly, they have been supported by the people in the country because of their reform policies.”

AKP has undertaken massive economic reforms, privatising billions of dollars worth of formerly state- run enterprises. Since 2002 Turkey’s per capita GDP has nearly tripled and its economy has grown from the world’s 26th largest to the 16th. But it is AKP’s broad liberal, democratic reforms that have won the trust of the people.

The resignation of Chief of General Staff I?ik Ko?aner and other top generals shows how far democratisation and demilitarisation have come in Turkey.

After the 1960 coup, the military established the National Security Council (MGK). The MGK is ostensibly a weekly security meeting between the top military leaders and the heads of the government.

However, it has long been a well-known fact that the military use the MGK to explicitly set the agenda for elected politicians. Last fall, AKP publicly announced that it would no longer be taking orders from MGK.

The Turkish constitution is the most significant target of AKP’s democratisation project. The country’s current governing document was drafted by the military government after the 1980 coup, and as such has many anti-democratic provisions in it. One such provision is Article 15, which grants immunity to coup instigators from being tried for their actions during the coup.

Following a referendum in September 2010 in which the Turkish people overwhelmingly voted in support of changing a number of articles in the constitution, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an’s AKP was given a clear popular mandate for drafting a new constitution.

The Roots of the Conflict – Between Secularism and Democracy

These initiatives have drawn the ire of the secularist military establishment. However, in AKP’s first term, the possibility for cooperation seemed brighter. It was only with the candidacy of Abdullah Gül in 2007 for president that the relationship between AKP and the military visibly soured.

Although the president of Turkey is a largely symbolic role, the president does retain the right to veto parliamentary decisions. Prior to 2007, secularist president Ahmet Necdet Sezer was viewed as a check on AKP’s power. The candidacy of Gül, a devout Muslim, jeopardised that check.

In response, secularist citizens demonstrated around the country en masse and for a time it seemed that AKP would be forced to rescind power. However, it was later revealed that the military had engineered the protests, largely through the clever use of websites to manufacture the appearance of dissent. In the aftermath, the military was discredited and the public’s trust in them was severely weakened.

“I see 2007 as the end of engagement and constructive contestation and the beginning of conflict and discord,” Turam said.

The generals tendered their resignations in protest of an ongoing investigation into a coup plot. The plan, called ‘Sledgehammer’, dates back to 2003, shortly after AKP was first elected. Nearly 200 active duty and retired military officers have been arrested for suspected involvement in ‘Sledgehammer’.

Prior to the yearly Supreme Military Council Meeting, which handles the promotions of all senior military personnel, Erdo?an made it clear that no officer under suspicion would be promoted. When Ko?aner and his cohort realised they could not have their way, they resigned.

“As we know from various court cases, they were obviously trying to topple to government – not through a military coup – but this time through soft power. Moreover, they objected to the election of President Gul,” Akgün says. “But now we have a totally different climate thanks to the transparent judicial process that Turkey is going through. The generals are now able to accept finally the supremacy of politics over the military.”

“Because the fact that the Chief of Staff’s resignation did not cause the scandal it would have caused just five years ago shows us once more that the military is slowly returning to their barracks and their impact on politics is decreasing steadily,” Merve Al?c?, a spokesperson for the pro-democracy group Young Civilians, told IPS.

During this year’s Supreme Military Council Meeting, which went ahead as planned, Erdo?an also signalled that AKP would pursue legislation that will entirely forbid the Turkish Armed Forces from making political statements. If such legislation goes through, it will signal a dramatic shift in the way politics is conducted in Turkey.

Akgün remains cautiously optimistic: “This is certainly not the final step, but it is an important step for the democratisation of the country. There are still issues regarding human rights and freedom of expression. This is most probably not the final round of confrontation with the military.”