In the 1960s my mom used to carry water buckets on her fragile shoulders from the bottom of Ankara’s Altýndað to the very top of Hýdýrlýk Tepe where my grandparent’s gecekondu (a sort of shanty house), was located.

Mom now owns a cell phone, she has children who carry iPods, surf the Internet, update their status on Facebook and tweet to the world on a daily basis. Within a few decades, life in the center of our 87-year-old republic has transformed dramatically. Turkey is a rapidly transforming country. I know it is a cliché, but the only thing constant in Turkey is change itself.

Turkey’s private sector has changed, civil society has burgeoned, its bureaucracy continues to change and even we politicians are trying hard to keep up with the times. Yet our armed forces seem to be little impacted by the changes of the recent decades. When I entered the Turkish Air Forces Academy in 1982 the armed forces held a very respectable position in our society. I was too young and not politically conscious enough to understand the real ramifications of the 1980 coup, but I distinctly recall that being a man in uniform -- at least to the ordinary man in the street -- was a respectable thing during those days. The national narrative was, as it has been for decades, that the armed forces were the vanguards of modernization and Westernization in Turkey’s domestic politics.

Eighty years after the establishment of the republic, they are under severe criticism from a rapidly transforming and equally demanding society. Turkey’s men in uniform appear to have totally missed the historical process taking place since Prime Minister Turgut Özal liberalized the Turkish economy. They seem to have thoroughly misread the societal urge to become a normal democracy. The institution that once proclaimed to lead the country toward modernization has become a force of reaction, intellectually left behind regarding what its place in a normal democracy should be. Worse, rather than acknowledging that they have been on the wrong side of history, they insist on stubbornly repeating the same mistakes. As was evidenced regarding the Republic Day reception, they maintain their positions and become increasingly marginalized in the eyes of the Turkish public. This situation, apart from being a source of criticism, is becoming a cause for concern. As a taxpayer, I am concerned about the capability and role of our armed forces in the future. The constant unearthing of scandals and inappropriate behavior is damaging this institution. Despite more than two decades of anti-terror experience, the Turkish public has been shocked by the revelations of unacceptable practices in the fight against terrorism.

The fundamental challenge facing us today is the need to rewrite the ethos of our armed forces. What is the essence of its existence? Who is it tasked to deter and fight? What sort of role should it have in the normal democracy we all aspire for? How can it come to terms with its recent past and how can it look forward and become the respectable institution it once was? All of these questions require not only strong leadership but also the acknowledgement that something is terribly wrong with this institution. Their recent decision not to attend the Republic Day reception does not bode well for the possibility of such self-criticism.

I think the generation of my mother was amazing for adapting to the changing times with remarkable serenity and dignity. They accepted change and progress as a normal development. What prevents our armed forces from doing the same?