Turkey calls itself a democracy but the military has always hovered in the wings. Military coups have removed elected governments from power three times in the past 50 years.

As a result, Turks know the commander of the armed forces has the fate of their nation in his hands every bit as much as any elected prime minister.

So the appointment of a new chief of the general staff is always a closely monitored event. Seldom have Turks watched more closely than at this moment.

The next chief of the armed forces is being chosen this weekend at the end of a tumultuous week. Two terrorist bombs exploded last Sunday night in Istanbul, killing 17 people, including five children whose bodies were riddled with shrapnel.

Turkey managed to step back from the brink of political chaos last Wednesday after the country’s highest court rejected an application to close the governing party on the grounds that it was seeking to introduce Islamic laws in violation of the secular constitution. Even so, a majority of the judges found the party guilty of eroding secularism.

Adding to the crisis, two senior retired generals are in jail pending charges of involvement with a group dedicated to overthrowing the government.

To choose a new armed forces supremo and make other senior military appointments, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is chairing a meeting of the supreme military board at army headquarters in Ankara, the capital.

The meeting started on Friday and will last four days. The name of the general who is to be promoted to the top job will be announced when it ends tomorrow.

He is widely expected to be General Ilker Basbug, commander of the army, who is called in military circles the “ice warrior” because he has a reputation for being calm and pragmatic.

Sandhurst-trained Basbug, 65, will have the top job for the next two years. He is a formidable military figure and an ideological hardliner who will ensure that Erdogan’s government - which was elected last year with 47% of the vote but is mistrusted by the military, which sees itself as guardian of a secular society - walks a narrow political line.

For these reasons Basbug is almost certainly not the general Erdogan would choose to promote. The outgoing chief of the general staff, General Mehmet Yasar Buyukanit, was also a hardliner but he was impulsive and could be outmanoeuvred by the prime minister.

“Erdogan will find Basbug is a much more formidable opponent than his predecessor. He is a lot more subtle,” said a military source.

The prime minister has the constitutional authority to oppose Basbug’s appointment - this authority has been invoked in the past but has almost always backfired - and Erdogan knows last week’s dramatic events have left him politically vulnerable.

“Erdogan is wary of Basbug and would have preferred to have appointed someone else, but I’d be very surprised if he would be stupid enough to try to stop Basbug. This is no time to upset the armed forces’ hierarchy,” said the military source.

Last Wednesday Erdogan narrowly survived legal moves to ban him and the president Abdullah Gul from politics and to close his governing party on the grounds that they were steering the country towards Islamic rule.

After three days of deliberations, the 11 judges of Turkey’s constitutional court decided against an indictment accusing the Justice and Development party (AKP) of pursuing an Islamic agenda and undermining Turkey’s secular constitution.

The court punished Erdogan’s party for its Islamic tilt by cutting in half its public funding for next year, but a verdict against the AKP had been widely expected.

The court had already overturned AKP efforts to lift a 1989 law that banned women from wearing Islamic headscarves in universities.

Erdogan’s secularist opponents, who dominate the military and judiciary, claim his policies mask plans to make Turkey more like Iran or Saudi Arabia.

In Turkey, the military has traditionally had multiple pressure points on the civilian government, through the chief of the general staff’s weekly meetings with the prime minister and president, and through the twice-monthly meetings of the national security council.

Manipulating the civilian government, sometimes through thinly veiled threats, is a subtle art that Buyukanit was not good at.

However, Basbug is expected to be more effective in influencing Erdogan’s government without giving the prime minister the excuse to complain he has come under undemocratic pressure. Basbug is known for well-crafted public statements that do not alienate the government.

The decision of the constitutional court not to ban Erdogan and his party clears the way for the prime minister to pursue democratic reforms and his goal of European Union membership. As a prerequisite for membership, the EU has demanded a reduction in the military’s influence in Turkish politics.

Erdogan is expected to start work on a new constitution, but the court’s verdict has served notice that it and the military will be watching his party closely for any signs of Islamic activity and he will have to be careful how he goes about constitutional reform.

If he tries to go too far there is no doubt, regardless of the EU’s disapproval, that Basbug and the military will come down hard, just as the armed forces have in the past.

Additional reporting: Gareth Jenkins

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