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Gonenc Uysal
Understanding the Impact of Modernity on Civil-Military Relations
This paper focuses on the formulation of the identity of the Turkish Armed Forces through
the articulation of the guardianship role which was formulated to maintain the Republican
state’s ideology based on modernity. Turkey had undergone several military coups; however,
the military managed to retain its image as the guardian of the modern Republic. However,
modernity is very much related to the notion of democracy, and civilian supremacy over the
military is one of the significant principles of democracy. Thus, this paper seeks to answer
the question of how the military managed to articulate democracy into its guardianship role
even during the coups or through behind-the-scenes political influence by unpacking the
state’s hegemonic project of modernity, one of the elements of which is democracy. This
paper argues that the political role of the military is historically contingent regarding the
understanding of modernity in accordance with the understanding of the state and its
ideology.
Turkish modernisation was shaped with articulation of collective but fragmentary political
choices. It involved modern elements of Turkish traditional culture and traditional elements
survived in the modern period. However, these traditional elements have been re-interpreted
and re-contextualised. This type of construction of modernity gave an ability of constant redefinition for the modernising elite. The project of modernisation and its elements have been
subject to diverse interpretations depending on the historical context. In its historical context,
Turkish politics has certain ‘disruptions’. These disruptions can be defined as key political
events which resulted in changes in the understanding of modernity and the role of the
military. This paper considers the establishment of the Republic in 1923 and the coup of 1980
as historical disruptions regarding the identity of the military based on modernity.
Furthermore, this paper also examines the post-modern coup of 28 February 1997 to give
insights about current Turkish politics, while refraining from the future predictions.
With the establishment of the Republic in 1923, the military had an important role as both the
object and subject of the Republican modernisation. The military’s guardianship role was
defined as protection and preservation of the Republic’s territories, the Republican regime
and its principles and reforms, against internal and external threats. It also served as a
national school for social-engineering embedded in Republican principles and reforms. Since
the project of the modern Republic identified the state with the nation, and since the nation
was identified with the military, the military was identified with the state. It should be noted
that despite the guardianship role, civilian supremacy over the military was secured and the
military was located above all political considerations during the early-Republican era.
However, the Turkish Army staged a coup in May 1960 and issued a memorandum in March
1971 which resulted in the resignation of the civilian government. These two military
interventions were very different, both in terms of their aims and their scope. Due to spatial
and time constraints I will summarise them in few sentences. With the coup of 1960, the
military managed to identify itself with the modern state positioned against tradition and to
articulate the element of democracy into the state’s ideology. The military legitimised the
coup by broadening the guardianship role to encompass the protection of democracy and by
establishing the institutions in the legal structure to grant autonomy to the military such as the
National Security Council and the autonomous Military Courts. However, the memorandum
of 1971 saw the democratic liberties granted with the Constitution of 1961 as the reason for
political violence and thus, began to articulate conservatism into the state’s discourse at the
social, economic and political arenas.
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Gonenc Uysal
The memorandum of 1971 was unsuccessful in terms of bringing stability to the country, and
the political violence between extreme left and right forces in the late 1970s almost brought
Turkey to the edge of a civil war. Since the military was identified with the state, and since
the state was identified with the nation, the military undertook the coup of 12 September
1980 to preserve the state’s authority and the national unity.
With the junta of 1980, the military abandoned its underlying legacy of the Republican
modernisation but re-defined its restoration project in the framework of conservatism. The
junta supervised construction and reinforcement of the restoration project at the state level
within the framework of the national security. This project demonstrated a shift away from
the early-Republican project of modernisation in order to articulate Islam into the state’s
ideology through the nodal point of morality based on Islam as a solution to political
violence.
It should be noted that until the 1980s, the state’s ideology equated modernisation with
secularism and progress whereas religion was considered traditional and reactionary. After
the 1980s, with the articulation of Islam into the state’s ideology, the role of religion was recontextualised and an enlightened interpretation of Islam was considered modern.
Consequently the public visibility of Islam was legitimised in the political stage. Both the
junta of 1980 and the following Anavatan Partisi (ANAP) governments promoted moderate
political Islam to formulate a unified identity, to control and domesticate the Islamist
movements, to pursue economic goals by integrating the Islamist bourgeoisie into the neoliberal agenda of the 1980s, to use Islamism as a bulwark against the perceived threat of
leftism in accordance with the US’s green belt project and to formulate an enlightened
understanding of Islam in accordance with the international post-modern critique.
In the 1990s, the legitimisation of the public visibility of Islam resulted in rise of the Islamist
movements and Refah Partisi as the representative of Islamism in the political arena. Most of
these Islamists, especially Refah Partisi, thought that the political system would transform
into an Islamic system once the Islamist ideology could hegemonise the state structure. The
military perceived the RP’s and its allies’ aim to substitute the secular political, moral, and
social order with an order based on Islam as a threat to the modern Republican state. Thus, it
acted as a pressure group to oust the RP and the Islamist movements from the political stage
and contribute to the formation of public opinion by supporting the secularist civil society.
The process is widely known as the post-modern coup of 28 February, named after the
meeting of the National Security Council on 28 February 1997.
The post-modern coup of 28 February can be regarded as the military’s attempt to maintain
the state’s hegemony based on secular modernity. The most significant element that was
articulated by the military to reinforce its guardianship role was democracy. In the 1990s, the
military understood secular modernity as the founding principle of democracy, and
legitimised its position to guard secularism, and thus, democracy.
The military’s discourse on modern secularism was legitimised by referring to the
Constitution and the Constitutional institutions within the democratic framework. Since the
military identified itself with the state, it also identified its discourse with the state’s
discourse on secularism intertwined with democracy. However, it should be noted that the
military’s equation of secularism with a particular life style remained problematic regarding
human rights and democracy. Moreover, the legitimisation of the guardianship role with
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democratic principles such as the rule of law inevitably brought the question of the place of
the National Security Council in the legal structure.
The military managed to articulate the discourse on democracy into its guardianship role and
maintain the Republican modernisation as a hegemonic project and legitimised its
guardianship role as above-politics to exert political influence the civilian governments until
the rise of Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP). With the consolidation of power of the AKP’s
government beginning in 2007, civil-military relations and the understanding of modern
democracy entered into a new era. In this context, the e-memorandum of 27 April 2007, the
following Ergenekon and Balyoz trials that began respectively in 2008 and 2010, and the
Constitutional Court’s overruling of these trials in June 2014 can demonstrate how the AKP
understood the civilian supremacy as a temporary governmental act but not as a continuous
cultural and institutional reform. Since the political stage under the current government is still
an on-going process, this paper refrains from predicting the future. However, as a conclusion,
this paper demonstrated that the political role of the military is historically contingent
regarding the understanding of modernity in accordance with the understanding of the state
and its ideology. The Turkish Armed Forces had often been associated with the modern
understanding of secularism whereas its interventions in 1971 and 1980 paved the way to
articulation of religion into the state’s ideology and subsequent rise of the Islamist
movements. However, by doing so, the military was still able to articulate modernity into its
guardianship role since it shifted the state’s ideology while redefining the understanding of
the modern by giving traditional and religious references and re-contextualising the public
visibility of Islam.
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Gonenc Uysal
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