ISTANBUL: Turkey’s former army chief — a secular general and a strong advocate of NATO — will be the country’s next military commander, the military said yesterday. Gen. Ilker Basbug, 65, will replace the current chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit at the end of August, it said.
The decision was announced after a four-day annual military council meeting attended by the prime minister, the defense minister and the country’s top military officials.
Basbug is a graduate of the NATO Defense College and an advocate of a strong North Atlantic alliance. He also supports the continuation of solid ties with Israel. Basbug’s appointment was announced along with a flurry of other promotions and retirements after the annual meeting of Turkey’s Higher Military Council, chaired by Erdogan.
Board decisions will be sent to President Abdullah Gul for approval. Paramilitary gendarmerie commander Gen. Isik Kosaner, also considered a hawk, takes over the land forces command.
Basbug oversaw February’s ground incursion into neighboring Iraq to hit Kurdish rebels there, the first such operation by Turkey since the US-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
More than 200 rebels were killed during the eight-day-long incursion, the military later said, a claim denied by the rebels.
“He’s a commander with great discipline and experience at NATO,” said Necati Ozgen, a former Turkish Army general who worked with Basbug at the Turkish Military Academy in the late 1970s. “No tolerance should be expected from him in the fight against the terrorists.”
The rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the PKK, is considered a terrorist group by Turkey as well as the United States and the European Union.
Basbug’s term as head of the land forces also saw an ongoing military reform designed to train special forces to combat the PKK.
