Challenges Facing Turkeys Unique Democracy (original) (raw)
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The History of Turkey's Civil-Military Relations: Lessons for the European Union
CMR in Turkey, 2022
Under the scope of the EU, militaries are distinct from civilian power, but they are indisputably subordinated to civilians, as well as completely depoliticized. Because Turkey’s CMR practices do not conform to this outlook, many believe that Turkey cannot acquire EU membership, due to the poor quality of her democracy, especially from the CMR perspective, since the army has excessive political power. On the other hand, most of the Turks believe that Turkey has been governed by a sui generis democracy for almost ninety years. To underpin this view, they refer to her long-lasting memberships to many democratic international organizations, such as her about six-decade-year membership to NATO, which also requires some certain democratic criteria to be met. Besides, some also argue that democracy in Turkey should ineluctably be different from the western practices, as her population is Muslim in 99.8%, and the first condition of democracy, secularism, has not yet been sufficiently internalized by her politicians and people. Because of this, Turkey, like most other Muslim majority countries, is constantly vulnerable to the threat of sharia. With the contributions of her unfavorable geography, they claim that her democracy should be distinct from traditional western democracies in order to contain threats arising from those factors. What makes the issue even more complex and interesting is that this odd model is perceived as normal by not only the military but also the majority of the civilian elites. Although the anti-militarist looking Justice and Development Party has recently gathered about fifty percent of all popular votes, most Turks seem to have no problem with this military flavored democracy, according to public surveys. This is in part because they view their army as the “Founder of the Republic” and “Savior of the Nation,” but also because more educated Turks believe that Turkey has tried a brand new democratization model during a time when the wall separating mosques and politics necessarily erects and the democratic culture of devout people sufficiently flourishes. They also persistently emphasize that unless simultaneous democratization of other civilian institutions accompany the reformation in CMR, as well as a genuine separation of powers, is achieved, Turkey could slide to an authoritarian regime with an Islamist autocracy. As noticed, the role of TAF in Turkish politics and society differs from the traditional roles and liberal-democratic practices outlined by the EU, while its intervention in the political realm differs from the Southeast American, Asian and African Juntas that demonstrate their hunger for power by directly ruling their countries for years. Furthermore, there seems to exist a considerable gap between the perceptions of the EU circles and Turkish Elites, as well as the majority of Turks. Thus, to shed light on all aspects of the problem this dissertation attempted to analyze cultural and historical roots of the CMR that is considered one of the major obstacles that Turkey must overcome to realize her EU membership goal.
The History of Turkey's Civil-Military Relations: Lessons for the European Union , 2022
Under the scope of the EU, militaries are distinct from civilian power, but they are indisputably subordinated to civilians, as well as completely depoliticized. Because Turkey’s CMR practices do not conform to this outlook, many believe that Turkey cannot acquire EU membership, due to the poor quality of her democracy, especially from the CMR perspective, since the army has excessive political power. On the other hand, most the Turks believe that Turkey has been governed by a sui generis democracy for almost ninety years. To underpin this view, they refer to her long-lasting memberships to many democratic international organizations, such as her about six-decade-year membership to NATO, which also requires certain democratic criteria to be met. Besides, some also argue that democracy in Turkey should ineluctably be different from the western practices, as her population is Muslim 99.8%, and the first condition of democracy, secularism, has not yet been sufficiently internalized by her politicians and people. Because of this, Turkey, like most other Muslim majority countries, is constantly vulnerable to the threat of sharia. With the contributions of her unfavorable geography, they claim that her democracy should be distinct from traditional western democracies in order to contain threats arising from those factors. What makes the issue even more complex and interesting is that this odd model is perceived as normal by not only the military but also the majority of the civilian elites. Although the anti-militarist looking Justice and Development Party has recently gathered about fifty percent of all popular votes, most Turks seem to have no problem with this military flavored democracy, according to public surveys. This is in part because they view their army as the “Founder of the Republic” and “Savior of the Nation,” but also because more educated Turks believe that Turkey has tried a brand new democratization model during a time when the wall separating mosques and politics necessarily erects and the democratic culture of devout people sufficiently flourishes. They also persistently emphasize that unless simultaneous democratization of other civilian institutions accompany the reformation in CMR, as well as a genuine separation of powers, is achieved, Turkey could slide into an authoritarian regime with an Islamist autocracy. As noticed, the role of TAF in Turkish politics and society differs from the traditional roles and liberal-democratic practices outlined by the EU, while its intervention in the political realm differs from the Southeast American, Asian and African Juntas that demonstrate their hunger for power by directly ruling their countries for years. Furthermore, there seems to exist a considerable gap between the perceptions of the EU circles and Turkish Elites, as well as the majority of Turks. Thus, to shed light on all aspects of the problem this dissertation attempted to analyze the cultural and historical roots of the CMR which is considered one of the major obstacles that Turkey must overcome to realize her EU membership goal.
Turkey: The Rise and Fall of the Influence of the Military in Politics
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2020
The continued influence of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) on politics characterized the political history of the Turkish Republic, until such influence was first bridled and then ultimately broken by the Justice and Development Party governments during the 2000s. When the new regime was established in 1923, the military identified itself with its founding ideology, namely Kemalism, which was built on the ideas of modernism, secularism, and nationalism. Because the TAF assumed the roles of guardian of the regime and vanguard of modernization, any threat to the foundational values and norms of the republican regime was considered by the military as a threat to the constitutional order and national security. As a self-authorized guardian of the regime and its values, the TAF characterized itself as a non-partisan institution. The military appealed to such identity to justify the superiority of the moral and epistemological foundations of their understanding of politics compared with that of the elected politicians. The military invoked such superiority not only to intervene in politics and take power (1960, 1971, 1980, 1997, and 2007). They also used such identity to monitor and control political processes by means of the National Security Council (established after the 1960 military intervention) and by more informal means such as mobilizing the public against the elected government’s policy choices. In the context of the Cold War, domestic turmoil and lasting political polarization helped legitimate the military’s control over security issues until the 1980s. After the end of the Cold War, two threats to national security drew the TAF into politics: the rising power of Islamic movements and the separatist terrorism of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which posed threats to the constitutional order. Turkey’s EU membership bid is one of the most important aspects that bridled the influence of the TAF on politics. Whereas the democratic oversight of the military and security sector constituted a significant dimension of the EU reforms, events that took place around the nomination of the Justice and Development Party’s candidate, Abdullah Gül, for the presidency created a rupture in the role and influence of the military on politics. Two juristic cases against members of the TAF in 2008 and 2010 made a massive impact on the power of the military, before the ultimate supremacy of the political sphere was established after the coup attempt organized by the Gülenist officers who infiltrated the TAF during the 2000s.
Democracy and Authoritarianism in Turkey: Determining the Dividing Line Between the Two
The aim of the present paper is to look into the matter by concentrating on the – admittedly – effective and occasionally even remarkable way in which Turkish politics have been able to attain a delicate long-run equilibrium between sticking to parliamentary rules while, in parallel, resorting to the help of the military for all “corrections” deemed as necessary to retain the secular character of the political environment in the country. The paper plans to follow the course of this fragile political structure until 2003 when the overwhelming victory of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) marked the end of this era in the Turkish political scene. To do so, we shall start by offering a brief historical overview since the establishment of the first nationalistic state of the Turks led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, followed by a description of the role of the armed forces in Turkish politics and the peculiar compromise between the military and the political regime. The next section will describe the rising role of religion in Turkish politics, while section IV will deal with the country’s EU full membership outlook followed by the conclusions derived.
The Role of the Military in Turkish Politics and European Union Membership Negotiations
This research paper analyzes the civil-military relationship in Turkey with regard to civilian control over the military establishment. Main purpose of it is to evaluate the following question: What are the effects of the EU membership process on Turkish civil-military relations? In order to address this question, following subordinated questions are explained. What is the position of army in Turkish Politics? Which reforms have been taken by Turkish government to make closer its civil-military relations to European practices? How far these reforms are successful for the full civil control over military? Through these subordinate questions, main research question is analyzed in the conclusion of paper. The research paper starts with analyzing the position of army in Turkish politics by looking at historical context. The works of Ahmad (1993) and Hale (1990) show that it is important to understand the historical context of Turkish army. Feroz Ahmad suggests that “apart from the immediate circumstances which are used to explain the military’s role in current political affairs, this involvement is also rationalized in the context of Ottoman-Turkish history”. (Ahmad, 1993, p.2) In this respect, the research paper also focuses on the vanguard role of army in the establishment of Republic. Turkish army played important role in the process of adoption of radical reforms by accomplishing the Young Turks Revolution of 1908 and by creating the Modern Turkish Republic in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who was also military officer. However, this role of army has caused dilemma in Turkey-EU relationship because, the EU principles are completely against military involvement in politics. As a result, civil-military relations constitute one of the major issues for both democratization of the civil military relations and accession to the EU. In the second part, the research paper is based on main EU reforms for changing Turkish civil military relations. The important changes which takes place in the function of the National Security Council, removal of the military representatives from the civilian boards and in the functions of military courts are analyzed. However, according to some observer, the army still continues to exercise influence through “informal” channels. Especially in the area of military budget, accountability and the position of chief of staff are still matter of discussion. As a result, in the last part, the adequacy of these reforms is evaluated. In the light of these arguments, the effects of the EU membership process on Turkish civil-military relations will be examined. In order to understand the position of military in Turkish politics, works of Hale and Heper are used. Moreover, the official documents of the EU which are the Accession Partnership Document and Progress Reports provide explanation of civil-military relation in the EU perspective. Some other sources are going to be added in order to provide enough data for research paper.
Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey
Stepan provides an important contribution to the understanding of the nexus between democracy and democratization, religion and secularism in the context of Turkey, arguably the most stable Muslim-majority democracy in the greater Middle East. The volume features a select group of scholars and policy makers and is a product of two conferences held at Columbia University with the subsequent meetings and a thorough review and revision process. Among the contributors to the volume is Ergun Özbudun, the head of the academic commission for the new constitutional draft, whose chapters problematize the conflict between the pluralist nature of the Turkish society and monolithic state as well as the dynamics of the legal constitutional developments in the country. Prominent Ottomanists Karen Barkey and Şükrü Hanioğlu from Columbia and Princeton Universities, respectively, examine the origins of the state-sanctioned multiculturalism in the Ottoman lands and its applicability to the current milieu of the Turkish Republic as well as the origins of Kemalism. Ümit Cizre, a leading specialist on the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), in her essay argues that TAF is currently switching its emphasis from the top-down to a bottom-up tactical approach in order to secure its role in the society. In other words, TAF applies its efforts