Construction of civil-military relations in Turkey
Author(s)
Advisor
Şatana, Nil SedaDate
2011Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
Maintaining civilian control over military constitutes the classical
problematique of the civil-military relations (CMR) scholarship. Besides, the
relationship between military and civilians are taken as conflictual. Constructivist
approach, on the other hand, argues that roles of social actors are not constant but
they are socially constructed through an interaction process. Building on the
constructivist approach, this thesis aims to focus on the relationship between military
and civilians as an outcome of a process. Its argument is that the nature of
relationship between civilians and soldiers are socially constructed within the social
interaction process. Thus, it uses constructivism as its theoretical framework to
provide insights to the factors determinant on the role of military in the political
system. It uses a “theory-building case study” method and intends to make some
theoretical implications derived from Turkish case. It analyzes the role construction
of military in two domains: Organizational domain; societal domain. While
organizational domain focuses on the legal status and self-perception of Turkish
Armed Forces, societal domain is composed of political sphere and citizenry. The
study shows that instruments such as ideology, compulsory military service system,
education and media are used to build a strong military role. It makes a comparison
of two periods. First period is between 1980 and 2001. The thesis argues that a strong
and active military role can be observed in the first period. The second period is post-
2001 period. In the second era, it is observed that there is a structural and discursive
change in the military‟s role in Turkish political system with the effect of the
relations with European Union. The thesis makes a modest contribution to the civil-
iv
military relations literature by using a theoretical framework which has not been used
very often in the literature.
Keywords
Civil-military relationsSocial constructivism
Role construction
Turkey
Turkish Armed Forces
European Union