In the early hours of Monday morning, the Turkish police arrested ten retired admirals who had put their names under a manifesto signed by 104 retired military personnel criticizing some measures and debates initiated by the government.
Four others have been called to testify, but have not been arrested by officers due to their advanced age.
The retired soldiers showed their opposition to opening the debate on a possible withdrawal from the Montreux Convention - which regulates the passage through the maritime straits that Turkey controls - and had denounced the participation of an active admiral in his uniform in a ceremony of an ultra-conservative religious leader as a violation of the secular principles of the Turkish Armed Forces.
Several ministers in the government of Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned these statements over the weekend and accused the military of "coup leaders."
Although the debate is reminiscent of the conflicts between the Executive and the Army General Staff of more than a decade ago, the situation is different.
In fact, the opposition has accused the Government of exaggerating this incident to distance the debate from the economic problems that the population is experiencing.
As an example, he uses the fact that before the military manifesto, 126 retired ambassadors had published a similar letter criticizing opening the Montreux debate and the government had not even deigned to comment on it.
The controversy originated as a result of Turkey's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention against sexist violence.
The fact that a simple decree of the president could erase the country from an international treaty prompted journalists to ask the president of Parliament, Mustafa Sentop, if Erdogan could also order the cancellation of the Montreux Convention overnight. that he replied: “I could do it.
But there is a difference between possibility and probability ”.
The Montreux Convention, signed in 1936, put an end to the so-called “question of the Straits” of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, which connect the Aegean and the Black Sea.
From the 19th century until then, the control of the straits had been a constant in the debates on the strategy of the European powers and one of the main reasons for the wars against the Ottoman Empire.
The convention granted Turkey sovereignty over these maritime crossings - which it had lost in the previous decade - and is, therefore, considered an essential piece of the legal architecture of the Republic, together with the Treaty of Lausanne.
In return, the convention guaranteed free transit through them for civilian ships, as well as the transit of military vessels from countries bordering the Black Sea, while restricting the passage of military fleets from non-riparian countries. something for which the United States (which is not a signatory to Montreux) has never welcomed the treaty.
Erdogan increases his distance with Europe
In 2019, Erdogan dropped that he could revise the Montreux Convention, since it does not provide Turkey with economic benefits for marine traffic through the straits.
The Government of Turkey has started the project to build an artificial canal parallel to the Bosphorus that would require the payment of fees for its use, but that is considered environmentally crazy and that, moreover, would not make much sense as merchant ships free passage through the Bosphorus is guaranteed.
In fact, the Russian ambassador to Ankara, Alexei Yerjov, stated that his country would not say anything about the new canal "as long as it does not violate Montreux", since free passage through the straits is essential for the Russian fleet to access to the Mediterranean.
The admirals who signed the document belong to different factions, although the majority are embedded in the Eurasianist current, that is, they are secular and extremely nationalist officials who view NATO with suspicion and bet on strengthening ties with China and Russia.
Although they were opposed to Islamists in the past, after the 2016 coup attempt, Erdogan forged an alliance with active and retired military members of this current, who filled the gaps left by the great purges in the Armed Forces.
Military members of this current, for example Cem Gürdeniz, who was arrested on Monday as a signatory of the manifesto, are the ideologues of the Turkish expansionist strategy in the eastern Mediterranean that has caused clashes with the European Union.
The Party of the Fatherland (VP), an ex-Maoist and Eurasianist formation that has great prestige among these soldiers and good connections with certain circles close to the governments of Russia and China, has condemned as “irresponsible” the manifesto of the retired admirals, but he has also criticized the arrests. This dispute could endanger the alliance between Erdogan and the Eurasianists that has given so much influence to a formation like the VP, which hardly has electoral weight, but whose leaders continually appear on the main Turkish television channels (where most of the voices opposition have disappeared).