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ABSTRACT
This paper aims at opening the blackbox of the Turkish military by presenting the findings of a survey conducted among 1401 officers in May–August 2015. The findings, which could be defined as the snapshot of the Turkish military’s officer corps views, show that, as the ranks decrease, there are some major trends influencing the officer corps. These include heterogenization and diversification of opinions from collectivist to an individualist understanding of life, from an elitist to an egalitarian view of society, and change from value-centric service to a focus on financial goals and career opportunities. The findings also indicate that the Turkish Army, Air Force and Navy’s organizational cultures are dissimilar regarding their stance towards military transformation, organizational restructuring and some socio-political issues such as the extent of secularist sentiment, religiosity and political orientations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Metin Gurcan is a researcher at the Istanbul Policy Center of Sabanci University. In 2016 he received a PhD in political science from Bilkent University, and this article derives from his dissertation. He served as an officer in the Turkish Armed Forces and specialized in counter-insurgency warfare. From 2010 to 2014, he was a research analyst for the Turkish General Staff. He has published numerous articles on the Turkish military and counter-terrorism campaigns in journals such as Perceptions, Turkish Studies, and Small Wars Journal, and is the author of What Went Wrong in Afghanistan? (Helion 2016). He is also a contributor to the online journal, Al-Monitor.
Notes
1 Carreiras and Celso, Qualitative Methods.
2 Ibid., 18–24.
3 Birand. Shirts of Steel.
4 Jenkins, Context and Circumstances, 15.
5 Ibid., 17.
6 Harris, “The Role of the Military.”
7 Jenkins, Context and Circumstances, 15.
8 Birand, Shirts of Steel.
9 Ibid.
10 Among those works written by the military personnel on the CMR, Staff Major Hakan Şahin's unpublished PhD dissertation (Society and Politics in Turkey) First Lieutenant Ömer Eryılmaz's master's thesis (Turkey in the Triangle) First Lieutenant Mustafa Uygun's master's thesis (Civil Military Relations in Turkey) and First Lieutenant Nihat Dumlupınar's master's thesis (Private Military Companies In Iraq) may be defined as in the domain of Turkish military as a subject of cultural and organizational studies. The literature produced by still-serving or retired military personnel seems more promising. These include Varoğlu and Bicaksiz, “Volunteering for Risk”; Soeters et al., “Turkish–Dutch Encounters”; Güngör, “Analysis”; Yalçinkaya, “The Nongovernmental Organizations”; and Ramazan Akyürek and Salih Bıçaksız, Sivil-Asker İlişkileri (Turkish), Ahmet Yavuz and I. Hakki Pekin, Asker ve Siyaset (Turkish) These may be counted as prominent examples in the literature, yet all mostly fall short in the provision of insights from within the Turkish military.
11 Is the TAF's strategic culture immune to change or not? To show that the TAF's culture is not immune to change, Ugur Güngör, for instance, suggests that international peace operations, which the TAF has been involved in throughout the past two decades, have played a major role in the transformation of the TAF's mentality in line with emerging security conceptualizations. This suggests human, societal, and global dimensions of security. As a concluding remark, he asserts that the TAF's high visibility and large-scale involvement of peace operations such as the ones in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Lebanon, and Somalia have not only enhanced Turkey's soft power image in the globe but has also increased the experience and know-how of the TAF. Similarly, Soeters et al. (“Turkish–Dutch Encounters”) placed emphasis on how the Afghanistan experience impacted thinking patterns as well as the modes of operations of Turkish officers. He and his colleagues suggest that particularly junior Turkish officers, have been becoming so adept at working with militaries from other nations, especially if they are deployed in areas that are culturally distant from their own. Lastly, in his qualitative article, Ali Karaosmanoğlu (“Turkish Security Culture”) asserts that the Turkish military and its organizational culture can change.
12 Please note that there has been no drastic change in the numbers and ratios of the services and ranks within the TAF since April 2014.
13 This included a three-star general and a brigadier general, 4 colonels from each service, 11 officers from the Army, 4 officers from the Navy, 4 officers from the Air Force, and 5 officers from the Gendarmerie Command were chosen as POCs.
14 For more information on this comparison, please refer to TUİK's 2014 educational year: http://www.tuik.gov.tr/basinOdasi/haberler/2015_34_20150609.pdf (accessed December 2, 2015).
15 Please see for the official regulation of contracted officers (Turkish): http://www.mevzuat.gov.tr/Metin.Aspx?MevzuatKod=7.5.11974&MevzuatIliski=0&sourceXmlSearch= (accessed September 14, 2015).