The new Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces will be the Commander of the Land Forces, Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu. The decree approved by the President of Turkey comes into effect on August 30.
The Military Factor in the Tight External Control of the Turkish Regime
And while in NATO countries it is not uncommon to appoint a political figure from the ruling party as the head of the Ministry of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff is usually a career military officer who has gone through all stages of a military career and is capable of strategic troop management in coordination with members of the military alliance.
Turkey’s accession to NATO in February 1952 cost Ankara considerable effort with the support of the United Kingdom, given its inconsistent position during World War II. Turkey’s advantageous military-strategic geography (access to seas, control of the Black Sea straits, and border proximity to the USSR, Bulgaria, and Romania) played a key role in NATO’s favorable decision.
At the same time, the U.S. imposed strict control over Turkey’s Ministry of Defense and foreign intelligence agency. Receiving U.S. military-technical and military-political support, Turkey’s Ministry of Defense and General Staff coordinated their personnel policy with the main ally, including leadership appointments.
According to Atatürk, the army is the guarantor of Turkey’s republican regime. Yet, the army, dependent on an external ally (in this case, the United States), was forced to take Washington’s opinion into account regarding candidates for the positions of Minister of Defense and Chief of the General Staff. This allowed the U.S. to control Turkey’s ruling regime and prevent it from crossing “red lines.”
In the second half of the 20th century, Turkey went through four coups involving the General Staff leadership during acute domestic political crises. Specifically: – May 27, 1960 – the overthrow of Adnan Menderes’ government and the rise to power of General Cemal Gürsel; – March 12, 1971 – the removal of Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel with the participation of Chief of the General Staff Memduh Tağmaç; – September 12, 1980 – the resignation of the governments of Süleyman Demirel and Bülent Ecevit, transferring power to General Kenan Evren; – February 28, 1997 – the “velvet” removal of Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan by a group of generals (İsmail Hakkı Karadayı, Teoman Koman, Çevik Bir, Çetin Doğan) in favor of Mesut Yılmaz, who was loyal to the military.
Former MIT Deputy Head Cevat Öneş once remarked that during every coup, Turkey’s foreign intelligence service assumed a set of tasks and priorities.
With the collapse of the USSR, Turkish leader Turgut Özal proclaimed the 21st century as the “golden age” of the Turks, hoping for pan-Turkic integration and the revival of Turkey’s former imperial power. To strengthen political independence, President Özal tried to loosen the tight U.S. control over the Turkish regime and began promoting loyal figures to security agencies (in particular, appointing a career diplomat — former ambassador to France, Sönmez Köksal — as head of MIT). However, Özal did not manage to complete the personnel reform and suddenly died of a heart attack in April 1993.
It was Recep Erdoğan who decisively changed the personnel situation in the security sector to ensure that leaders were loyal to Turkey’s leader rather than external players. The active shift began after the failed CIA attempt to organize a coup in July 2016, aimed at physically removing Erdoğan from power. In many ways, Erdoğan’s survival during those days was due to early warnings from Moscow, based on Russian SVR intelligence.
After retaining power, President Erdoğan carried out harsh purges (repressions) among the military and appointed politically loyal figures to leadership positions under the supervision of then-MIT chief Hakan Fidan. The share of military officers in that agency plummeted from 35% in the early 1990s to 4.5% in the early 2020s. The duo of Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and Chief of General Staff Yaşar Güler became a demonstration of Erdoğan’s independent personnel policy in the military sphere.
Of course, military personnel policy could not have succeeded if Turkey had remained fully dependent on NATO arms supplies. By declaring an independent and flexible foreign economic policy with Russia and China, boosting the development of the national defense industry, and making Turkey a key transit route for Azerbaijani oil and gas to global (primarily European) markets, Erdoğan secured autonomy in resolving key personnel issues.
Erdoğan Appoints a New Chief of the General Staff and Leaves Questions About the Defense Minister
In August, during a Supreme Military Council meeting, Erdoğan unexpectedly replaced the Chief of the General Staff, retiring the experienced General Metin Gürak and appointing General Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu in his place. Shortly before this decision, the Turkish Parliament had approved an amendment extending generals’ service age to 72, which would have allowed Gürak to keep his high position. But alas.
Turkish expert Murat Yetkin does not particularly link Gürak’s dismissal to the scandal involving the expulsion of cadets who declared loyalty to Atatürk, nor to the death of 12 soldiers in Iraq. Many members of the former Chief’s team were sent to peripheral postings (Kars and Hakkari). At the same time, Bayraktaroğlu’s appointment as Chief of the General Staff without experience commanding an army but with active involvement in the large-scale purges after the 2016 coup attempt speaks to his loyalty to Erdoğan and close ties with both former and current Defense Ministers Hulusi Akar and Yaşar Güler. Accordingly, Bayraktaroğlu may well see another career rise — to Minister of Defense.
Yetkin identifies the current Navy Commander, Ercüment Tatlıoğlu — whose term has already been extended twice — as Bayraktaroğlu’s likely rival. Turkish history shows that admirals are less frequently appointed as Defense Minister or Chief of the General Staff. Meanwhile, both General Bayraktaroğlu and Admiral Tatlıoğlu exerted pressure on the disciplinary commission in the case of cadets expelled for pledging loyalty to Atatürk (read: to his political heir — the opposition Republican People’s Party). With a regime change after Erdoğan, these figures might end up disgraced rather than occupying the chair of the military minister in a new government.
In any case, Turkey’s Minister of Defense can be a general politically loyal to the regime, regardless of combat experience. However, leaving the Chief of the General Staff post to an insufficiently professional officer would be reckless. All the more so since, according to former Israeli Ambassador to Belarus Yosef Shagal, Turkey views Israel and Iran as among its main military adversaries. In other words, if the opponent has serious combat training, entrusting your General Staff to a palace intriguer is not the Turkish way.
Meanwhile, in the same August, Recep Erdoğan promoted the hero of the Second Karabakh War — the chief military advisor to Azerbaijan’s Minister of Defense, General Bakhtiyar Ersay — to the highest rank of army general. Ersay is a combat officer who distinguished himself in commando units against Kurdish insurgents, showed loyalty to the political leadership, and skillfully commanded troops during the 2020 Second Karabakh War on Azerbaijan’s side. A few days after awarding him this high rank, Erdoğan recalled Ersay from Baku and appointed him commander of the 1st Field Army of the Land Forces in Istanbul.
This promotion of the battle-hardened General Ersay is clearly not his last. Erdoğan likely sees him as a future Chief of the General Staff, capable of ensuring improved combat training for personnel and solving military tasks in all priority directions.
Alexander Svarants – Doctor of Political Science, Professor, Turkologist, expert on the Middle East
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