Praetorian Army in Action: A Critical Assessment of Civil–Military Relations in Turkey

• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20931548
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Berk Esen
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Praetorian Army in

Action: A Critical

Assessment of Civil–

Military Relations

in Turkey

Berk Esen

1

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Turkish military, 1960 coup, 1971 memorandum, National Unity Council, _

Ismet

_

Ino

¨nu¨, Cemal Gu¨ rsel, Turkish politics

1

Department of International Relations, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

Corresponding Author:

Berk Esen, Uluslararası _

Ilis¸kiler Bo

¨lu¨mu¨, Bilkent U

¨niversitesi, A Binası, 06800 Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey.

Email: berk.esen@bilkent.edu.tr

Armed Forces & Society

2021, Vol. 47(1) 201-222

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20931548

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Since Turkey’s transition to multiparty rule, the armed forces toppled civilian gov-

ernments on four occasions (1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997) and staged three unsuc-

cessful interventions in 1962, 1963, and 2016. While scholars welcomed the

emergence of “liberal” civil–military relations (CMR) under the Justice and Devel-

opment Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) rule (Aydinli, 2009; Gu

¨rsoy, 2012;

Heper, 2011), the 2016 coup attempt demonstrated that the interventionist tradition

is still alive within the officer corps (Aslan, 2018; Esen & Gumuscu, 2017). Mean-

while, the plotters’ alleged ties to the religious Gu

¨len movement challenges the

Turkish military’s widespread portrayal as a homogenous organization committed

to Turkey’s founding leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and his p rinciples (for an

exception, see Gu

¨rcan, 2018). Many of these allegedly Gulenist officers had joined

the Turkish military in the 1980s and subsequently rose through the ranks of the

armed forces even before the Islamist AKP first took office. Under the AKP rule,

they finally reached the military’s upper echelons and, in turn, were used by the

government to neutralize its opponents.

The existing literature on CM R in Turkey centers on two prim ary questions

(Aslan, 2018, p. 1): the categorization and modeling of Turkish CMR (Aydinli,

2009; Cizre-Sakallıog

˘lu, 1997; Heper & Gu

¨ney, 1996) and case studies of successful

coup d’´etats during the Republican era (Aslan, 2016; Demirel, 2003; Harris, 2011).

Earlier works have claimed that the military’s primary motivation in staging coups

was to restore public order and preserve the secular regime (Heper & Gu

¨ney, 1996).

The literature took a critical turn after the military’s 1997 intervention against

Turkey’s first pro-Islamist government. These scholars have asserted that the Turk-

ish military increased its institutional privileges after each coup d’´etat to gradually

establish tutelage over the political system and society (Cizre-Sakallıog

˘lu, 1997;

Cook, 2007; Kuru, 2012). However, this critical scholarship rarely accounts for coup

outcomes in failed attempts (for exceptions, see Aslan, 2018; Esen & Gumuscu,

2017) and does not engage the broader literature to explore why and how CMR

varied over time. Similarly, there is limited interest on how the Turkish military’s

political role and ideological stance changed during the course of the Republican

era. To fill this gap, this article reassesses the Turkish military’s political activities

through a detailed case study of CMR between the 1960 and 1971 coups, which

constitutes the most praetorian period in republican history.

1

Based on a historical analysis, this article makes several arguments that depart

from the extant Turkish scholarship and also contributes to the broader literature on

CMR. While acknowledging that the Turkish armed forces exhibited strong praetor-

ian characteristics (Sarigil, 2014), this article asserts that the military’s guardian

status was not clearly defined and that the officer corps clashed with each other on

major political issues throughout the Cold War years and beyond. Accordingly, the

ideological disposition of the officer corps was subject to major changes due to

frequent purges and conjectural shif ts. After the 1960 coup d’ ´etat, for instance,

strong fissures erupted within the junta between radical officers who wanted long-

term military rule and moderates who favored speedy return to parliamentary rule.

202 Armed Forces & Society 47(1)