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Officers

Every institution is a mirror of the society it springs from; the Turkish military is no exception. There is a lot of shouting around and brandishing of rules, but underlying everything is a total lack of organization and real purpose. Everyone does the minimum possible to keep things going, with fear, excepting of course those who do more than their fair share. It's mostly through the efforts of those few that anything gets done.

Appearances are everything in the army. As long as it looks like something is happening, or something looks the way it should, everybody is happy. I find it hard to believe the officers are not sincere in their belief in this institution. Most appear to want to believe in an institution that nevertheless is valiantly crumbling. I think that this baffles them. There is a lot of pointlessness in what they make us do; we gather in the central area every morning, noon and evening, just to be counted. Sometimes a senior officer is scheduled to come to "inspect us." They are usually not on time, if they appear at all, but we wait.

One day, a rumour began to circulate about a surprise inspection visit by the overall commander of the Aegean army (of which we were a part). Despite the contradiction inherent in the privious sentence, our officers apparently took it seriously. They decided that it would be best if our battallion could sing the "10th year March" (a nationalistic marching tune that dates from 1933) while we marched. Needless to say most of the privates were not extermely motivated to learn the words, let alone sing it in tune, or all together or at the top of their voices (all of which were being demanded). This led to frustrated officers, even more frustrated NCOs and a lot of marching up and down the square while singing the 10th Year March.

To top this all, the officers then decided that the fountains outside our barracks building looked ugly and needed re-tiling. (The general was unlikely to inspect inside the barracks, but what if he happened to pass by the building?). So they started asking around for people who had experience with laying tiles. Since that meant that you got to skive off from marching up and down the square all day, singing (shouting?) the 10th Year March at the top of your voice, quite a few "experts" volunteered to re-tile the fountains. Sadly, their work efficiency was not the best that it could be and it took three days for "Operation Re-tile" to be completed.

Now, I should explain that our battalion's facilities comprised about half a dozen wash basins inside the barracks and the ten fountains outside for all 200+ of us (excepting the officers who had their own quarters). Furthermore, since we were not permitted to go inside during the day, the fountains on the outside were the only places where we could wash and/or get water until after dinner. Needless to say, the fact that the outside fountains could not be used while they were being re-tiled had somewhat of a negative impact on our ablutions. If one was lucky, one could fight oneself to a wash basin (often shared with one or two other people) in the morning. The overflow had to either walk to the cafeteria or try to get into other battallion's restrooms.

At the end of the three days, the fountains had been re-tiled. They gleamed, clean and white. They really were the best-looking fountains in the whole unit. Imagine our surprise and consternation then, when we found out that the "experts" had not connected the water mains to the outlets! When asked, they replied that they were tile-layers, not plumbers, so they could not be expected to do the plumbing too, could they? Totally reasonable, of course. So we had to do without water from our beautiful new fountains until after the inspection. Then the newly laid tiles could be broken again and the mains reconnected.

It should not surprise anybody that the rumoured inspection day came and went by without the big general showing up.

I believe that one of the officers was certifiable. If he didn't like you, he would throw your towels on the floor during dormitory inspection and step on them, and then tell you to get them cleaned. People have told me that if he found pictures of girlfriends or wives, sometimes he would stare at them for minutes. It was also rumored that he put a gun into some private's mouth for some unknown crime.

These were the people who had power over us for a whole month.

Copyleft notice: Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Mustafa Ünlü. This information is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

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