Ankara, Turkey - A top general said on Monday Turkey faces a growing Islamist threat and he strongly defended the army's right to speak out on the issue despite
European Union criticism about military "interference" in politics.
Turkey's military, which drove a government from power as recently as 1997, views itself as the ultimate guardian of the country's secular order, but it has seen its considerable powers trimmed in recent years by EU-inspired reforms.
"Today I am sorry to say that, even if some circles do not accept it, the reactionary (Islamist) threat is reaching alarming proportions," General Ilker Basbug, head of the land forces, told trainee officers at the Ankara military academy.
"Turning religion into an ideology will politicize it and religion will then be the biggest loser," he said, accusing the Islamists of "patiently and systematically" eroding secularism.
His comments seemed aimed at Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's ruling centre-right AK Party, whose roots in political Islam have long made it an object of army distrust.
The army especially opposes government efforts to relax restrictions on religion in the field of education, including a ban on women wearing Muslim headscarves inside universities.
In the first AK Party reaction to Basbug's comments, senior lawmaker Faruk Celik said it was for the government, not the army, to tackle any Islamist threat.
"If there is a going backwards in Turkey, if there is (religious) reaction, I want everybody to know the government of the Turkish Republic is the leading force to counter this," the state Anatolian news agency quoted him as saying.
He said the AK government, in power since 2002, had pressed reforms aimed at modernizing Turkey, not pushing it backwards.
REBUKE TO EU
In his response to EU criticism, Basbug, who is number two in the military hierarchy, said the generals had a duty to intervene in politics when defending secularism and nationalism.
"The Turkish Armed Forces has always taken sides and will continue to take sides in protecting the nation state, the unitary state and the secular state," he said.
Turkey began EU entry talks last year. The EU is expected to repeat in its annual progress report on Turkey's reforms, due to be published on November 8, its criticism that the armed forces still meddle in politics.
Last week, the EU Commission's envoy to Ankara, Hans-Joerg Kretschmer, sharply criticized the army's habit of expressing its views "on almost every aspect of public life" including education and religion.
"In my view, the big challenge for Turkey is to create stable institutions able to deliver services, including security, to the citizens of this country in a way that respects democratic principles," Kretschmer said.
The Turkish military has intervened directly in politics four times in the past 50 years, most recently ousting a government it viewed as too Islamist in 1997.
Turkey's present constitution, much criticized by the EU, was drafted under army auspices following a 1980 military coup.