Browsing by Subject "Turkish military"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

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
Praetorian army in action: a critical assessment of civil–military relations in Turkey
(Sage Publications, 2021-01) Esen, Berk
With four successful and three failed coups in less than 60 years, the Turkish military is one of the most interventionist armed forces in the global south. Despite this record, few scholars have analyzed systematically how the military’s political role changed over time. To address this gap, this article examines the evolution of civil– military relations (CMR) in Turkey throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Based on a historical analysis, this article offers a revisionist account for the extant Turkish scholarship and also contributes to the broader literature on CMR. It argues that the military’s guardian status was not clearly defined and that the officer corps differed strongly on major political issues throughout the Cold War. This article also demonstrates that the officer corps was divided into opposite ideological factions and political agendas and enjoyed varying levels of political influence due to frequent purges and conjectural changes.
Open Access
Public opinion and attitude toward the military and democratic consolidation in Turkey
(Sage Publications, Inc., 2015) Sarigil, Z.
The political influence of the Turkish military has substantially declined in the last decade, triggered by the European Union’s decision during the Helsinki Summit in 1999 to grant candidacy status to Turkey. This study illuminates Turkey’s democratization process in the post-Helsinki period by empirically analyzing a relatively underinvestigated aspect of civil–military relations: public opinion and attitude toward the military and civil–military issues. Empirical analyses, based on original and comprehensive public opinion data, indicate that despite impressive reforms and improvements in the legal and institutional structures in Turkish civil–military relations in the past ten years, democratic transformation in the political culture has been lagging behind. This gap is likely to complicate democratization process in Turkey. The article also provides a discussion of broader theoretical and practical implications of empirical findings.
Open Access
Securing the ground through securitized 'foreign' policy: the Cyprus case
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2005-09) Kaliber, A.
Particularly since the beginning of the new millennium, the Cyprus issue that had hitherto been successfully securitized and bureaucratized has turned out to be the main 'discursive battlefield' of the polarization among ruling elites in Turkey. Framed within a historical perspective, the present article re-examines Turkey's security discourse on Cyprus with particular reference to its implications for the (re)configuration of political balances and power relations between the conservative state elite - namely, the civilian and military bureaucracy - and the reformist political elite in Turkey. It concludes that the security language devised by the Turkish 'foreign' policy and security establishment has been operational in both inscribing the legitimate boundaries of the political sphere and crippling the manoeuvring ability of governments vis-à-vis the strong bureaucratic establishment in Turkey. The article also aims at encouraging the reader to critically reflect on power politics of 'foreign' policyrnaking in Turkey and its implications for domestic politics.
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.