The evolution of civil‐military relations in post‐war Turkey, 1980–95

Abstract

If there is one element on which all researchers of Ottoman and Turkish history seem to agree, this is the assumption that the military institution has been the most important force behind the evolution of the social, economic and political structure of the Turkish state. 'It was the military corps that named and the military prestige that sustained the leader - once a Sultan Caliph, now a President', argue Lerner and Robinson about the role of the military institution in the political development of the Ottoman and the Turkish states.' Hence, any attempt to define the type of civil-military relations in post-war Turkey would be incomplete without observing and understanding the role of the military during the earlier periods. The settlement of Turkish nomadic populations in Anatolia in the eighth-ninth century AD, the formation of their first states and the expansion of their territorial borders over neighbouring lands had a profound effect on their political organization. Two broadly defined socio-political groups dominated the political life of the Ottoman state: the askeri or ruling class, composed of the Sultan, the higher ranks of the military and the bureaucracy and the ulema, and the re'aya, composed of the Muslim and non-Muslim population which resided inside the state and had no direct role in government.2 The dominant role which the military institution played in the formation and preservation of the Ottoman Empire has been emphatically pointed out by Lybyer. According to him, 'the Ottoman government had been an Army before it was anything else ... in fact, Army and Government were one. War was the external purpose, Government the internal purpose, of one institution, composed of one body of men.'3 The expansion of the Empire into three continents and its subsequent disintegration, led to an increase in the level of contest for political power among the members of the ruling group. The result of these contests had a serious effect on the foundations of the modern Turkish state. As the Empire expanded, the attempts of the Sultans to maintain political control over the cavalry corps, the Sipahis,' led gradually to the formation of a salaried infantry corps under their direct command, the