TURKEY – What consequences will there be for the country’s political and social situation following the resignation of Turkey’s chief of staff and highest-ranking military officers? According to Soli Özel, a political analyst and professor of international relations at the Bilgi University and Kadir Has University in Istanbul, these resignations are the culmination of a demilitarization process in Turkish politics that has lasted for almost ten years. Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party seems to have managed to overturn – to the advantage of civilian authorities – the previously unshakable power of the Turkish military in politics, mostly in the name of defending secularism. Even when faced with the Arab Spring and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Turkish government has assumed advantageous positions, even recently defending state secularism. Soli Özel analyzes the new Turkey and its international relations, from Syria to Libya to the United States, identifying Turkey’s strategies and objectives as it furthers its new and already decisive political global role.Soli Özel was interviewed by Giancarlo Bosetti in Rome on September 12th, 2011.Read the full interview here