Preface

Translating for Lt Gen Yamak (just promoted to 4 stars), 1984.
 At a dinner in honor of Major General Marine (3).

In late September 1972, three US Army officers—Major Robert F. Hervey, Captain F. Paul Butler and I—dressed in the Army Green uniform, walked up the steep cobblestone road leading to the almost century-old buildings of Yıldız Palace in Istanbul, Turkey. (Situated on a ridge high above the shimmering Bosporus, Yıldız Palace was built in the late 1800s by the last consequential Ottoman sultan, Abdulhamit II.) We were on our way to report in to the Turkish Army General Staff Officer Course (Kara Harp Akademisi) for a year of study with an elite group of Turkish Army captains and majors who had already completed the first year of the two-year course.[1] As the first American Army officers to attend this course for over a decade, we were the advance guard for American officers who would follow us—one or two per year, in most years—in attending this prestigious institution.

Turkish officers from all three military services who graduated from their service’s General Staff Officer Course attained the coveted kurmay (general staff) designation and were on the path to staff and command assignments at increasingly higher levels. (Until very recently, over ninety percent of Turkish one and two-star flag officers came from this group, the remainder being non-kurmay specialists with logistics and/or procurement-related backgrounds. [2]  Only kurmay officers were promoted to three and four-star rank.)

The commanders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Jandarma, as well as the Chief of the General Staff, were selected from this senior group. Thus, we three Americans were joining a contingent of young Turkish officers who could expect to rise to the very top of the Turkish military command structure some twenty-five to thirty years in the future.

With friends Bob Hervey and Azmi Ates

In my case, I was at the beginning of a relationship with Turkey that would have a major impact on my life.  During the period 1972-1992, my family and I would spend a total of 13 ½ years in Turkey, as I served in four different military assignments there, including eight years in the Turkish General Staff (TGS) Headquarters as the Liaison Officer for NATO’s Southern Region Command (Allied Forces South, or AFSOUTH for short). During this time, I was the only foreign officer assigned to TGS.

Since retiring from the Army in 1992, I have continued to remain very interested in Turkey and in Turkish-American affairs. For much of this time I was active in the American-Turkish Council, serving as the Chairman of the Defense and Security Affairs Committee for several years during most of the first decade of the 21^st century. Also, between 1992 and 2016, I visited Turkey at least once a year and sometimes twice, including seven trips on which I took 10-20 family members and friends to spend a couple of weeks seeing and experiencing the country I had come to love. Throughout this time, I also have continued communicating with and visiting Turkish friends, military as well as civilian, and have also closely followed developments in Turkey.

Today when I think of Turkey, some 45 years after I first set foot there, I think first of my deep affection for the Turkish people who have come into and touched my life and the lives of all in my family over the past 45 years. I will mention many of them in the pages ahead.

Next is my admiration for and amazement at what the Turks, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, achieved in the first few years after the disaster of World War I. The vision and accomplishments of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and those who worked with him in the years following the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, to establish within a Muslim society a new country with a secular, democratic-oriented government and to facilitate Turkey’s social and economic development along western lines, were truly remarkable.      

On a trip with son Jonathan

Among the many other reasons I have come to love Turkey are: its pre-republican history, visibly represented by archeological monuments from ancient and more recent empires; its natural beauty, from the incomparable Bosporus to statuesque Mount Ararat and so much more;  its fantastic cuisine—just the thought of İskender Kebap (meat sliced very thinly from a vertical spit, served over pide and garnished with hot melted butter and tomato sauce) with chilled ayran (a slightly salty yogurt drink) or a grilled çipura (sea bream) or levrek (sea bass) with roka (from the rocket/arugula family) and a glass of milky rakı (a fruit-based [mainly grapes] anise-flavored alcoholic drink much like Greece’s ouzo), followed by baklava, and then Turkish coffee, can make me click on the Turkish Airlines website to see if there are any reduced fares from the US to Istanbul.

But I digress (and daydream and fantasize).  What I want to share with you, the reader, in this book is not only a story of personal and family adventures in Turkey but also my observations regarding Turkey’s social and political transformation since my first arrival there in 1972. I hope also to shed some light on the evolution of the US-Turkey relationship from the early 1970s until the present—an evolution that has taken the relationship far (distressingly so, in my view) from what it once was and what it could have been.  I hope that what I have written will give you a greater understanding of the special place that is Turkey, the special people who are the Turks and some of the issues that have affected the US-Turkey relationship.      

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[1] The Turkish Army General Staff Officer Course (Kara Harp Akademisi) was established in 1848 during the reign of Sultan Abdulmecit. Originally called Erkan-ı Harbiye Sınıfları, it was first co-located with the Turkish Military Academy (Kara Harp Okulu), which was at that time in Istanbul. In 1909, it was moved to buildings within the Yıldız Palace grounds. In the 1930s, the Navy and the Air Force General Staff Officer Courses were also established at Yıldız. Beginning in 1949, the combined Army, Navy, and Air Force General Staff Courses (Kara, Deniz and Hava Harp Akademileri) operated under one command, the Harp Akademileri Komutanlığı (War Academies Command). In 1975, the Staff Officer Courses moved to new facilities in Yeni Levent, a few miles north of Yıldız Palace.

[2]Following a military coup attempt on July 15, 2016, changes have been made to the Turkish officer training program, including the General Staff Officer Courses, and to the flag officer promotion system. At the time of this writing, the General Staff Officer Courses are no longer functioning.