The Supreme Military Council (SMC) is meeting this week, as we reported in our recent related article, pointing out that Chief of General Staff Yaşar Güler’s term will be extended by one year.
Term extension is also on the agenda for Air Force and Navy Commanders Hasan Küçükakyüz and Adnan Özbal.
However, according to Turkish media, if there is no extension, their replacements will be Wing Commander Atilla Gülan and Admiral Ercüment Tatlıoğlu.
Lieutenant generals under promotion are the Commander of the 1st Army Kemal Yeni, the Commander of the 3rd Army Yavuz Türkgenci, the Commander of EDOK (Land Forces Training and Doctrine Command) Sinan Yayla, the Director General of Security of the Turkish Ministry of Defense İrfan Özsert.
The General position selection will be made between Air Training Commander Cemal Kadıoğlu, Air Force Chief of Staff İsmail Güneykaya and Air Force Evaluation Chief Mehmet Özlü.
Nureddin Nebati, Minister of Finance and Finance, Mahmut Özer, Minister of National Education and General Musa Avsever, who was Commander of the Ground Forces last year, will attend this year’s meeting for the first time.
President Erdogan, National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu will be present.
In the meantime, reports from the neighboring country refer to a protagonist of the Imian crisis.
According to the Turks, “Kardak’s hero, SAT commando Vice Admiral Ercan Kireçtepe, who was jailed for 5 years for FETO conspiracy cases, is also on the promotion list this year.”
It is reported on Twitter that Ercan Kireçtepe, who placed the Turkish flag on the Kardak rocks, has been appointed to the Command of the SAT Team. Rear Admiral Ercan Kireçtepe Beykoz was appointed to Command the SAT Group. Rear Admiral Ercan Kireçtepe was imprisoned for the FETO conspiracy. One of the 12 SAT Commandos that landed on the Kardak Rocks in 1996.
Also a Turkish publication says that Ercan Kireçtepe and Turhan Ecevit, naval officers who had been imprisoned for years in the Poyrazköy trial, were promoted to the admiralty.
Kireçtepe was imprisoned for 4.5 years and Ecevit for 7.5 months.
In addition, two names from non-commissioned officers were promoted to Senior Officers
Kireçtepe and Ecevit were in the SAT team that planted the Turkish flag on the Kardak rocks during the 1996 Kardak crisis.
Ercan Kireçtepe was appointed to the SAT Commando Command in Beykoz Anadolu Kavağı with the rank of Vice Admiral 24 years later.
Anadolu Kavağı, is a neighborhood on the northern end of the Bosphorus in the Beykoz district of Istanbul, Turkey.
“Anadolu” is the Turkish name for Anatolia, and “kavak” meant “pole of control” in Ottoman Turkish, indicating the strategic importance of its location.
In our previous article, we mentioned the fact that the 67-year-old Turkish A/GETHA Yaşar Güler was going to be demobilized by September due to his age limit.
With an emergency law in June, the AKP raised the age limit by 5 years, thus keeping it in place….
We pointed out at the time that this is a serious indication of Erdoğan’s intentions, who advocates increasing Turkey’s aggression against Greece in the coming summer months with a very likely outcome of a heated episode, even a generalized Greek-Turkish military conflict.
It is well known that when a country prepares for a military confrontation with another, it does not change its military Hierarchy sooner, let alone Turkey.
Reinforcing or not the fact that Erdogan will exercise even greater aggression in the coming months until the 2023 elections at the expense of our country, the crises in the Turkish army will be, since the possible stay of A/GEN and A/GEA will be an important development towards this direction.
For those in the know in the Turkish Armed Forces, the dominant role has always been played by the Ground Army, the so-called Anti-Turkish Ground Forces, and not by the Air Force or the Navy.
The otherwise much-vaunted multi-branching by the Turks does not apply at the level of “chair” of High Officials and it is certain that the Land Forces of Turkey, assisted by YPAM Akar, have the primacy, something that Erdogan would not like to disturb at this stage , which is critical for Turkey, both internally but mainly in its external relations and developments in Syria vis-à-vis the Kurds and in Greek-Turkish relations.
Another point to note is that Guler and Akar have always had a very good level of cooperation with each other.
Also in the “coup” of 2016, it is known the key role played by the coup plotters at the Murted air base, near Ankara, causing the anger of Erdogan, who then dismantled it, sending its fighter jets to other air bases of Turkey, while the arrests of Turkish fighter pilots were numerous, on the charge that they belonged to Gülen’s FETO organization, which is alleged to be responsible for organizing the coup.
In general, Erdogan does not trust his Air Force and the role it can play in internal developments in the country, but also in the event of a military conflict with Greece.
However, the resumption of the issue of Imia by the Turkish media, with the promotion of Ercan Kireçtepe and the placement in the Administration of the Turkish SAT, tends in the direction of further escalation of the tension on the part of Turkey.
However, this may also have a political connotation, wanting to express through it the unity of the Turks against the common enemy, Greece.
We await the rest of the judgments in order to draw safer conclusions, since any remaining in his current position of the Commander of the 1st Army based in Istanbul and in the Eastern Thrace sector, or his promotion to a higher position than the other candidates we mentioned earlier, will constitute a yet another serious military indication of further escalation with our country, as is the fate of the Commander of the 4th Aegean Army.
