Turkey’s Melancholy Economic Indicators Camouflaged by Militarization as a Foreign Policy

Abstract

After Ataturk’s death (November 10, 1938), the Turkish military saw itself as the unquestioned sole guardian of Ataturk’s principles - secularism and national unity. The Turkish military protected the country against authoritarian and anti-secular policies in the 1950s, extreme anarchy in the 1960s and 1970s, and rise of Islamist-based political parties with anti-secular ideologies in the 1990s. The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) had gained certain prerogatives and privileges after each coup, but the 1982 Constitution drafted by the military ensuing the 1980 coup d'etat created formal (institutional) and informal (non-institutional) mechanisms for the military to exert power in domestic, foreign, and defense policies. The developments in 2007 marked the starting point for a shift in balance of power in civil-military relations; in spite of the military’s high alert on the AKP’s anti-secular ways, the April 27 midnight e-memorandum (e-coup) failed to deter the AKP to select Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as the ruling party's candidate for the presidency in 2007; but more importantly, the military failed to protect the country’s laicistic – secularist order. Then Prime Minister Erdogan waged a legal war against senior military officers including four-star generals for allegedly plotting a coup against the AKP government in 2003 and 2004. The military lost this battle too, through Ergenekon and Balyoz (Sledgehammer) investigations and related trials, many high-ranking military personnel had been accused, arrested, and prosecuted for plotting to overthrow the AKP government; and for the first time in Turkish history, and to everyone’s disbelief, senior military officers were actually prosecuted in civilian courts by civilian prosecutors. According to President Erdogan’s new foreign and defense policies, today Turkey is not backing away showing its military muscle even this may mean irritating many of its neighbors and NATO allies. The AKP government under President Erdogan’s leadership has devoted itself through relentless efforts to reduce the TSK’s political power; in the process, the Erdogan administration has taken full advantage of the EU’s Copenhagen Criteria (i.e. civilian control of the military is a condition for EU accession negotiations) to strip of the military’s both formal and informal mechanisms. Today, the military is bent to President Erdogan’s will, who selects military personnel and gives orders to commanders of the armed forces; additionally, Erdogan has made a number of structural changes to reshape the military as he has envisaged. As Turkey insists spending on military ($20.4 billion in 2019), a sustainable economic recovery remains a distant dream.