A Comparison of Civil–Military Attitudes: The Case of Turkey

Abstract

It is a very challenging attempt to illuminate the structures and processes of the difference between civil and military attitudes in Turkey. The Turkish case is unique in many aspects because while Turkey is a Muslim country, which was founded on the historical tradition of Ottoman Empire, it has been also a secular country with a modern parliamentary system. On the one hand, Turkey had struggled to settle pluralism with the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Also, the military as an actor has always had a significant and active role in shaping the political culture in Turkey (Cizre, 1997). This study aims to understand the level of current gap between the civil–military cultures in Turkey. The main source of data for this study has been the data of European Research Group on Military and Society (ERGOMAS) project called “Cultural Dimensions of Civil–Military Relations in Democratic Societies” which was conducted on both the future elites consisting of civil and military college/university students and interviews from current elites. Turkish part of the data was conducted by the present team using questions from the ERGOMAS Project.

Citation

Akşit, B., Kalaycıoğlu, S., Varoğlu, K. and Çakar, M. (2007), "A Comparison of Civil–Military Attitudes: The Case of Turkey", Caforio, G. (Ed.) Cultural Differences between the Military and Parent Society in Democratic Countries (Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development, Vol. 4), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 319-325. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1572-8323(07)04023-4