Turkey's former army chief – a secular general and a strong advocate of NATO – will be the country's next military commander, the military said Monday. Gen. Ilker Basbug, 65, will replace the current chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit at the end of August, it said. The decision was announced after a four-day annual military council meeting attended by the prime minister, the defense minister and the country's top military officials. Basbug is a graduate of the NATO Defense College and an advocate of a strong north Atlantic alliance. He also supports the continuation of solid ties with Israel. Basbug oversaw February's ground incursion into neighboring Iraq to hit Kurdish rebels there, the first such operation by Turkey since the US-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. More than 200 rebels were killed during the eight-day-long incursion, the military later said, a claim denied by the rebels. “He's a commander with great discipline and experience at NATO,” said Necati Ozgen, a former Turkish army general who worked with Basbug at the Turkish military academy in the late 1970s. “No tolerance should be expected from him in the fight against the terrorists.” The rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, also known as the PKK, is considered a terrorist group by Turkey as well as the United States and the European Union. Basbug's term as head of the land forces also saw an ongoing military reform designed to train special forces to combat the PKK. Under current rules, regular conscripts with little or no fighting experience can be sent to Turkey's southeastern region where fighting with the PKK is intense. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the fighting since the PKK took up arms in 1984.
