Transformation of Turkey's Civil-Military Relations Culture and International Environment

Abstract

In Turkey, civil-military relations are often understood and explained from a binary and confrontational perspective. Although this conceptual framework is not completely irrelevant, it is far from being adequate to explain the close collaboration that has characterized civil-military relations since 2007. The principal reason for this gap in the literature is that the mainstream approach overemphasizes the power political aspect of civil-military relations while it overlooks their historical-cultural and international-structural dimensions.

Notes

The Cabinet spokesman Cemil Çiçek unequivocally stated that the generals are subordinated to the government and, therefore, they are not in a position to make such political statements. See Milliyet (April 29, 2007).

Gareth Jenkins, Context and Circumstance: The Turkish Military and Politics, Adelphi Paper 337 (Oxford: Oxford University Press/IISS, 2001), pp. 15, 21.

Osman M. Öztürk, Ordu ve Politika [Army and Politics] (Ankara: Fark Yayınları, 2006), pp. 147–57 and 268; Mehmet Ali Kışlalı, “Avrupa Birliği, TSK Kaygısı” [The European Union, the Concern of the Turkish Armed Forces], Radikal (November 3, 2006), p. 8.

For example, Tanel Demirel, “Soldiers and Civilians: The Dilemma of Turkish Democracy,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1 (January 2004), p. 145.

Ibid., p. 127.

Ibid., p. 128. For the approach, see also Ahmet Insel and Ali Bayramoğlu, eds., Türkiye'de Ordu (Istanbul: Birikim, 2004).

Ümit Cizre, “Democratic Control of Armed Forces on the Edge of Europe: The Case of Turkey” in Hans Born, Karl Haltiner, and Marjan Malesic, eds., Renaissance of Democratic Control of Armed Forces in Contemporary Societies (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2004), p. 113. See also Ümit Cizre, “Ideology, Context and Interest: The Turkish Military” in Reşat Kasaba (ed.), Turkey in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 301–32.

Cizre, “Democratic Control of Armed Forces,” p. 110.

Ibid., pp. 104, 106. For the role of the military in “securitization,” see also Kemal Kirişçi, Turkey's Foreign Policy in Turbulent Times, Chaillot Paper no. 92 (Paris: Institute for Security Studies, September 2006), pp. 32–8.

Wim van Eekelen (chairman) and David Greenwood (rapporteur), Turkish Civil-Military Relations and the EU: Preparation for Continuing Convergence, Final Report of a Task Force (Groningen: CESS, November 2005), p. 12.

Karabekir Akkoyunlu, Military Reform and Democratisation: Turkish and Indonesian Experiences at the Turn of the Millennium, Adelphi Paper no. 392 (London: Routledge/IISS, 2007), p. 36.

Şerif Mardin, “Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today: Continuity, Rupture and Reconstruction in Operational Codes,” Turkish Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (June 2005), p. 146.

Douglas L. Bland, “Your Obedient Servant: The Military's Role in the Civil Control of Armed Forces,” in H. Born, K. Haltiner, M. Malesic, eds., p. 25.

James Burk, “Theories of Democratic Civil-Military Relations,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Fall 2002), p. 15.

Ibid., p. 17. For contemporary theory, see also Peter D. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter 1996), pp. 149–78; Douglas L. Bland, “Patterns in Liberal Democratic Civil-Military Relations,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Summer 2001), pp. 525–40; Andrew Cottey, Timothy Edmunds, and Anthony Forster, “The Second Generation Problematique: Rethinking Democracy and Civil-Military Relations,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Fall 2002), pp. 31–56; and Rebecca L. Schiff, “Civil-Military Relations Reconsidered: A Theory of Concordance,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Fall 1995), pp. 7–24. For Schiff's “concordance” theory's application to Turkey, see Nilüfer Narlı, “Civil-Military Relations in Turkey,” Turkish Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2000), pp. 107–27.

Financial Times, October 14–15, 2006, pp. 1–2, 6; and The Guardian, October 18, 2006, p. 1. For the civil-military tension in the U.S., see Michael C. Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 3 (May/June 2007), pp. 97–108.

Hew Strachan, “Making Strategy: Civil-Military Relations after Iraq,” Surviva l, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn 2006), p. 67.

Ibid., p. 76.

Ibid., pp. 79–80.

Hew Strachan, “Strategy and the Limitation of War,” Survival, Vol. 50, No. 1 (February–March 2008), p. 34.

Michael C. Desch, Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 19.

Ibid., p. 113.

Ibid., pp. 6 and 15.

Ibid., pp. 12 and 118.

Nihat A. Özcan, PKK-Kürdistan İşçi Partisi: Tarihi, İdeolojisi ve Yöntemi [The PKK-The Labor Party of Kurdistan] (Ankara: ASAM, 1999), pp. 55–68.

Ümit Özdağ and Ersel Aydınlı, “Winning a Low Intensity Conflict: Drawing Lessons from the Turkish Case,” The Review of International Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Spring 2003), p. 108.

Ibid., pp. 110–11.

Reported by Murat Yetkin, “Gül: Askerlerin AB Desteğinden Memnunuz” [Gül: We are Happy with the Military's Support to the EU Project], Radikal (June 15, 2006), p. 6.

Briefing (June 18, 2007), p. 6.

Ibid.

Milliyet (July 20, 2007), p. 16.

For the emphasis put on the non-military aspects of security, see the Opening Address of International Symposium by the Commander of Turkish Armed Forces General Yaşar Büyükanıt (Istanbul, May 31, 2007); and the Opening Address of the Academic Year 2007–2008 of the War College by the Turkish Land Forces Commander General İlker Başbuğ (Ankara, September 24, 2007). For the texts, see the website of the Turkish General Staff: http://www.tsk.tr/KOMUTANKONUSMALAR.html

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 52.

Mark I. Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman, eds., Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure Second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); David Pion-Berlin, ed., Civil-Military Relations in Latin America: New Analytical Perspectives (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 131.

Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu, “Turkish Security Culture: Evolutionary or Carved in Stone” in Peter M.E. Volten, ed., Perceptions and Misperceptions in the EU and Turkey: Stumbling Blocks on the Road to Accession (Groningen: CESS, 2009), pp. 27–46. See also Gencer Özcan, “Türkiye'de Cumhuriyet Dönemi Ordusunda Prusya Etkisi” [The Prussian influence on the Army in Turkey's Republican Period] in Evren B. Paker and İsmet Akça, eds., Army, State, and Security Policy in Turkey (Istanbul: Bilgi University Publication, 2010), pp. 175–222.

Şerif Mardin, Religion, Society, and Modernity in Turkey (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006), p. 182.

William Outhwaite, “Hans-Georg Gadamer” in Quentin Skinner, ed., The Return of Grand Theory in Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 34.

Şerif Mardin, “Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today,” p. 160.

Kemal H. Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 420.

Abdi İpekçi and Ömer S. Coşar, İhtilalin İçyüzü [Inside of the Revolution] (Istanbul: İş Bankası Yayınları, 2010), pp. 3–18.

Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu, “Officers: Westernization and Democracy” in Metin Heper, Ayşe Öncü and Heinz Kramer, eds., Turkey and the West: Changing Political and Cultural Identities (London: Tauris, 1993), pp. 19–34.

Muhsin Batur, Anılar ve Görüşler [Memoirs and Opinions] (Istanbul: Milliyet Yayınları, 1985), pp. 213, 557–9; Nevzat Bölügiray, Sokaktaki Asker [Soldier in the Street] (Istanbul: Milliyet Yayınları, 1989), p. 17. For the views of the last three Chiefs of General Staff, Hilmi Özkök, Yaşar Büyükanıt and İlker Başbuğ, see Murat Yetkin, “Atatürkçü Düşünce Sistemi ve Kemalizmin Reform İhtiyacı” [Atatürkist Thought and the Need for Reform in Kemalism], Radikal (September 28, 2004), p. 6; Murat Yetkin, “Büyükanıt: Kapıkulu Değiliz” [Büyükanıt: We are not the Palace Guards], Radikal (March 29, 2007), p. 6; Murat Yetkin, Interview with General Hilmi Özkök, “AB, Atatürk'ün Vizyonu”, Radikal (August 27, 2005), p. 6.

See the interview with General Hilmi Özkök, Fikret Bila, Komutanlar Cephesi [The General's Front] (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2010), pp. 182–4.

The Chief of General Staff, General Başbuğ's annual speech at the Military Academy, Istanbul, April 14, 2009.

Ernest Lopez, “Latin America: Objective and Subjective Control Revisited” (translated by Ian Barnett), in Pion-Berlin, ed., Civil-Military Relations in Latin America, pp. 88–107.