The Soldier and the Turkish State: Toward a General Theory of Civil-Military Relations

The study of civil-military relations remains dominated by Samuel Huntington’s 1957 book, The Soldier and the State, but it is unclear if the work retains external validity when applied in a contemporary context. Turkey’s volatile history of civil-military relations makes it a useful case with which to test Huntington’s propositions. Specifically, I examine the 28 February Process of 1997 and the subsequent shift in Turkey’s civil-military relationship to test the propositions that military autonomy and professionalism are the keys to civilian control of the military. These propositions are supported by underlying assumptions that privilege ideational factors and establish a division between different forms of civilian control. The Turkish case undermines these assumptions and contributes to the pursuit of a more generalisable theory of civil-military relations

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  • * The author would like to thank Roger E. Kanet, Joseph M. Parent, Bradford R. McGuinn, Alexander R. Arifianto, and Daren G. Fisher for tireless assistance with earlier versions of this article.
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  • Huntington, The Soldier and the State, p. 457.
  • Ibid., pp. 315-317.
  • Finer, The Man on Horseback, p. 196; Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, p. 277; Albright, “Comparative Conceptualization of Civil-Military Relations”, p. 554. Albright also picks up on this development.
  • Perlmutter, “The Praetorian State and the Praetorian Army”, p. 389. Perlmutter offers his own term: political institutionalisation.
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  • Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954, p. 232. “Wars occur because there is nothing to prevent them,” Waltz states.
PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs-Cover
  • ISSN: 1300-8641
  • Yayın Aralığı: Yılda 2 Sayı
  • Başlangıç: 1996
  • Yayıncı: T.C Dışişleri Bakanlığı