Towards More Democratic Civil-Military Relations in Turkey

Turkish civil-military relations have been going through a drastic transformation recently. The dominant role of the Turkish Armed Forced in politics through direct and indirect interventions as well as institutional and noninstitutional mechanisms since 1960s has dramatically eroded. Starting with the initiation of the EU reforms that aimed at democratizing the civil - military relations and continuing with a series of investigations called Ergenekon and Balyoz in which military officers have been accused for planning interventions to overthrow the current government, the military has lost both its prerogatives in politics and credibility in the eyes of the public.

Although the Turkish civil-military relations seems to be moving towards a more democratic direction as the military is becoming firmly subordinated to civilian control, however, it looks as the civilians are not treating the armed forces fairly through the ongoing investigations. Therefore, despite all these positive changes, it is not apparent whether Turkey is moving towards a more democratic governance of civil-military relations or not.

This article is contained within a special issue entitled 'Dossier: Les 90 ans de la République de Turquie / 90 Years of the Republic of Turkey'.

• Primary Source

CIFE: Information about L'Europe en Formation. Journal of Studies on European Integration and Federalism http://www.cife.eu/en/5/europe-en-formation_99-1

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