Civil‐military relations in Turkey

Turkey's military and political elites have long combined in an uneasy partnership to oversee the Republic's affairs. A number of factors have enabled the military to influence Turkish politics in the name of protecting national unity, democracy, and secularism, including the legacy of the vertically organized Ottoman social system, the role of the army in liberating, building, and modernizing the nation, relatively immature democratic culture and institutions, and numerous constitutional tools. In order to understand Turkey's complex civil‐military relations, especially at a time when Turkey's European Union membership prospects are in limbo, it is important to study the composition of the Turkish officer corps, the military's conscription method, and military style, in conjunction with the political decisionmaking process.