Browsing by Subject "Civil-military relations"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11

Open Access
Bargaining in institutionalized settings: the case of Turkish reforms
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2010) Sarigil, Z.
By analyzing the case of a bargaining situation in an institutionalized setting, which derives from Turkey's reform process in a sensitive issue area (civil-military relations), this study assesses the explanatory power of competing models of bargaining: rational, normative, and discursive/argumentative. The bargaining outcome in this case was puzzling because despite the existence of a strongly pro-status quo veto player (i.e. the military), the bargaining processes led to a new status quo.This study shows that the veto player simply failed to prevent a shift to a new status quo because such an action would do substantial damage to the military's ideational concerns (normative entrapment). The rational model remains under-socialized, while the discursive model is over-socialized in analyzing this bargaining situation. Although the normative model sheds more light on this puzzling outcome, a synthesis between normative and rational models would provide us with much better insight. © The Author(s) 2010.
Open Access
Civilianization in Greece versus "demilitarization" in Turkey: a comparative study of civil-military relations and the impact of the European Union
(Sage Publications, Inc., 2006) Duman, Ö.; Tsarouhas D.
The civil-military-relations literature has long concentrated on domestic factors in explaining the relationship between civilians and the military. This article concentrates on the effect of an external actor, the European Union (EU), on civil-military relations in Greece and Turkey. The main findings reveal that the two countries shared similar characteristics until the mid-1970s. However, their path of civil-military relations diverged considerably as soon as Greece's EU membership prospect became tangible. While in the Greek case, "civilianization" took place, Turkey had witnessed a mere "demilitarization" of its regime. However, the article also shows how EU membership paves the way for the improvement of civil-military relations in the Turkish case. © 2006, Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. All rights reserved.
Open Access
Construction of civil-military relations in Turkey
(2011) Halistoprak, Burak Toygar
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.
Open Access
Deconstructing the Turkish military's popularity
(Sage Publications, Inc., 2009) Sarigil, Z.
Why is the military so popular in Turkish society? By using World Values Survey data, this study explores the impact of several political, social, and personal factors on societal confidence in the military. Empirical results indicate that there is a significant variance in confidence in the military across certain political groups. Although the military's popularity is high among nationalists, it is rather limited among pro-Islamic and pro-Kurdish groups. Interestingly, however, religion cuts both ways in the formation of confidence in the military. Pro-Islamic groups do not have much confidence in the strictly secular military, but being a devout Muslim does not reduce the military's popularity. Another interesting finding is that trust in civilians and support for democracy do not necessarily reduce military's popularity. A brief discussion of some implications of these findings for the civil-military relations and prospects for the consolidation of democracy in the Turkish Republic is also provided. © 2009 Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society.
Open Access
The flagship institution of Cold War Turcology, Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü, 1961-1980
(Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2017) Aytürk, İ.
The study of the cultural Cold War, the untold story of how the USA and the USSR employed and often exploited the academia and the arts for war purposes, is now a particularly fruitful line of inquiry, but it has scarcely reached the field of Turkish studies. This article focuses on the Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü (TKAE), founded in Ankara in 1961. Ostensibly, the TKAE was an academic institute, doing research on the Turkic world; however, its political objectives, as I attempt to show, went far beyond the scholarly confines of academia. I will first describe the Cold War environment in which the TKAE was born by putting this institution into its international and domestic contexts in two separate sections. Proving the convergence of American interests and the interests of right-wing Turkish elites is going to be my goal here. Next, I will provide information about the foundation of the TKAE, its institutional structure, membership, aims and activities. Finally, I will conclude by discussing what the TKAE episode teaches us in understanding Cold War Turkey.
Open Access
Non-material sources of Turkish Armed Forces' political power : a "military in society" approach
(2007) Biltekin, Gonca
This thesis is an attempt to understand the non-material sources of Turkish Armed Forces’ political power. For that purpose, the thesis looks at theories of power and relevant civil-military relations literature and illustrates that the current civil-military relations literature employs an institution-based formal decisionmaking approach to military’s political power, where non-material sources of armed forces political power is mostly overlooked. Moreover, current literature presumes the existence of a conflictual relationship between the military and the society where interests of the society and the military clash. Therefore, there is a theoretical gap which makes it problematic to study armies like Turkish Armed Forces, which enjoy a long-term and considerable support from their societies. In order to provide for an answer to such a gap, the thesis develops a “military in society” approach and establishes that the political power of the Turkish Armed Forces emanates from its distinctive relationship with its society which has historical, cultural, social and discursive dimensions.
Open Access
“Only strong states can survive in Turkey's geography”: the uses of “geopolitical truths” in Turkey
(Pergamon Press, 2007) Bilgin, P.
Following Critical Geopoliticians' re-formulation of geopolitics as discourse, this article historically traces, politically contextualizes, and empirically analyzes the linguistic practices as found in myriad actors' formal geopolitical writings and public articulations in Turkey. It shows how the production and dissemination of a particular understanding of geopolitics as a "scientific" perspective on statecraft, and the military as an actor licensed to craft state policies (by virtue of its mastery over geopolitical knowledge) has allowed the military to play a central role in shaping domestic political processes. Subsequent to the erosion of bi-partisan consensus on foreign policy from the mid-1960s onwards, civilian actors also began to tap geopolitics but as a foreign policy tool. By the end of the 1990s, geopolitics had become rooted in the discourses of both military and civilian actors shaping (for "better" or for "worse") Turkey's "foreign" relations with the European Union as well as "domestic" political processes.
Open Access
Opening the blackbox : the transformation of the Turkish military
(2016-03) Gürcan, Metin
The existing research on Turkish civil-military relations (CMR) in general and on civilianization process since the early 2000s in particular tends to neglect the military side of the story. Despite the fact that the literature on Turkish (CMR) has expanded enormously in the last decades, the literature is dominated by mostly descriptive and argumentative “ outside-in” insights, provided by the "civilian" researchers. Indeed, the absence of internal empirical insights from within the Turkish military, which is still a black box waiting to be opened in scholarly terms, would be listed as the first shortfall in the literature of Turkish CMR. This research aims at opening the blackbox of the Turkish military and emphasizes that not only exogenous factors but also endogenous factors from within the military should be taken into consideration when analyzing the changes in the Turkish civil-military relations. The following research questions direct this study: Why, how, to what extent, in which domains, and through which mechanism has Turkish military been transforming itself? How does this transformation affect first the military's organizational culture, and then Turkish CMR? To answer these questions, this research is based on the eclectic theoretical design benefiting both from the model of gradual institutional change and culturalist approach to the military. This research seeks to follow an approach from multiple angles (e.g., TAF as a security organization, as a social institution and officership as a profession) as well as from multiple levels (e.g., institutional, individual) with the use of original and primary data (in-depth interviews with 82 officers from different ranks and services and surveys applied to 1,401 officers, a representative sample of officer corps in terms of rank and service distribution). This multi-method design reflecting insights from different levels of analysis provides an opportunity to the research for triangulation of the findings for more external validity. Simply, by revealing the High Command's attempts to transform TAF's security culture, elucidating dynamics influencing change in the TAF's social culture and examining differentiation within the officer corps, this research provides a snapshot of the Turkish military and an empirical discussion of those endogenous factors influencing the Turkish CMR. The findings show that differentiation among the TAF's security culture, social culture and officer corps' professional culture in terms of change types (layering, drift, conversion, displacement), change agents (subversives, opportunists, symbionts, insurgents) change pathways (emulation, adaptation, innovation) creates a power-distributional effect of change, which according to this research, yields to gradual institutional transformation within the TAF. This research suggests that while TAF’ u u u d culture have been changing, as of May-September 2015, as the ranks decrease, there are some major trends influencing the professional culture of the officer corps, such as the increasing heterogenization and diversification of the attitudes and opinions of the officer corps and change from value-centric officership to focusing on financial goals and career opportunities. The findings of this research also falsify taken-for-granted assumptions in the literature conceptualizing the TAF is a rigid organization immune to change and a homogenous entity with a fixed institutional order.
Open Access
Soldiers in legitimate politics: the Israeli case
(2021-07) Aksoy, Kaan
Why do officers enter politics after retiring from service, and how do they choose which political party to join? This thesis addresses these questions by looking at the Israeli case. Israel is an atypical case in this regard due to the large ratio of retired generals entering politics compared to other advanced industrialised countries. The answers to these questions are explored through a two-pronged method. First, an historical institutionalist perspective is employed, by looking at the institutional evolution of the Israeli state to see what practices were entrenched as institutions. Second, a pool of 84 generals from various positions was collected and coded by their dates of service and entry into politics, as well as which parties they were in. This was combined by data from the Manifesto Project on the 24 different political parties they entered. As a result of this analysis, it was found that retired generals prefer, overwhelmingly, secularist parties. A plurality just short of a majority prefers left-wing, Labour Zionist parties, while the remaining portion is almost equally divided between centrist/liberal parties and right-wing parties. With the data at hand, it is concluded that the generals prioritise security issues, though economic issues may also play a crucial role. Overall, the findings indicate that retired Israeli generals enter politics to preserve the IDF’s privileged space in Israeli society and economy, under the sense that the IDF’s position is necessary for Israel’s long-term prosperity. In doing so, this thesis aims to contribute to the field of civil-military relations and more specifically, applying theories of motivation for entering politics to the Israeli case.
Open Access
The study of militarism: English-speaking world scholarship and Turkey’s scholarship compared
(2019-07) Özcan, Berika
Militarism has attracted academic attention since late seventeenth century. Scholars have defined and studied militarism in different ways. While during the First World War, militarism was studied as an ideology, in the post – Second World War period civil-military relations was the focus of analysis. Since the 1970s, the scholarship on militarism began to diversify. During the late 1980s, scholars started to study militarism as a sociological and historical phenomenon. This thesis aims to analyze how militarism has been studied in (English-speaking) world scholarship and in Turkey. By adopting meta-study technique, the thesis identifies the similarities and differences between the two bodies of scholarship. In the concluding section, the thesis discusses what Turkey’s scholarship on militarism has focused on and overlooked in comparison to world scholarship.
Open Access
The Turkish military: principal or agent?
(Sage Publications, Inc., 2012) Sarigil, Z.
One of the defining features of Turkish politics has been the strong influence of the military in civilian politics. However, since the early 2000s, we have seen unprecedented developments, substantially constraining the political powers of the military. How can we interpret this period from a historical perspective? What are the continuities and discontinuities in Turkish civil-military relations? Do these developments mark the end of military guardianship in the country? Employing the principal-agent framework, this study shows that the path of Turkish civil-military relations has been cyclical, where the status of the military has swung between agent and principal. Such swings have led to a significant degree of variance in the nature of the military guardianship. Thus, this study identifies two distinct stages of military tutelage during the Republican period: symbolic (1924-1960) and overt/assertive (1960-2001). It is further argued that the recent reversion of the military back to agent of the civilian principals has initiated a post-guardianship era in Turkey. © The Author(s) 2012.