Does Turkish President Erdoğan Now Have Full Control Over The Army?

From the very outset, the question was obvious: When Turkey's political Islamists under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were elected to rule the country 16 years ago, it was anybody's guess how the tug-of-war between the powerful generals and his party, the AKP, would end. 

Until 2002, Turkey was ruled in what is known as 'military tutelage', which kept the Turkish General Staff (TGS) as a 'controller institution', with a de-facto domination over civilian politics. The officers simply called the shots on issues of national security and domestic order.

Now, after 16 years under the AKP rule, the answer is clear: Erdoğan has won, and the consequences of his taking control over the army, known as the bastion of secularism, will be vast.

During the first years that the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, was in power, Erdogan proceeded cautiously, convinced that he risked being ousted by a military coup. It was only in 2007, after then-chief of staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit failed to follow through on his threat to stage a military takeover...that Erdogan finally realized what most of the generals had known for years—that the era of military tutelage was over. 

But not fully. The arms wrestling continued, with patchy rifts, more or less until the attempted coup in July 15, 2016. It was the minor scale military uprising that night, which Erdoğan—calling it a 'Gift from God'—would use as a final 'coup de grace'.

Two years later, the official narrative about what happened on the night of the attempted putsch still leaves many questions unanswered. What is clear is that, as he stated publicly on July 17, 2016, Erdogan saw the coup as an opportunity not only to assert his personal control over the military but to try to reshape the officer corps in his own self-image. 

A restructured army with Sunni Muslim values will be his legacy that Turkey will in a decade or two will pay a hard price for, argues Gareth Jenkins.