CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 42

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA
the military was the National Security Council which made policy recom-
mendations concerning almost every aspect of life in Turkey. As Turkey
showed aspirations for EU membership the strong presence of the mili-
tary in Turkish politics emerged as a major obstacle which had to be over-
come. Since 2001 Turkey has implemented a number of reforms which
have signifi cantly decreased the political powers of the military. Nonethe-
less, 2016 saw another coup attempt in Turkey, again arranged by the mil-
itary. However, this time things took a diff erent turn as the military inter-
vention ended in failure. It was the government that got to consolidate its
power and purge the military. The paper will describe how the 2016 coup
was diff erent from the previous ones. Two hypotheses will be directing
the path of the study:
H1: Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU enabled the civilian govern-
ment to gain more control over the political sphere through reforms.
H2: Fragmentation in the Turkish military led to the failure of the coup.
Literature Review
Historically, the military had an established role, to protect the secu-
rity of a given country from external threat. Throughout centuries the
military institution became more complex and more accomplished. The
post-World War II period saw a number of military interventions in the
political life of many established as well as emerging states. Even in de-
mocracies like the United States, a need was felt to balance relations be-
tween the military and civilian authorities. It is widely believed that in
democracies the civilian government has control over the military. How-
ever, in some cases it is the military which has control over the civilian
government, like in Cuba, Iraq during Saddam Hussein, Turkey etc. Thus
the study of Civil-Military Relations (henceforth CMR) emerged, as there
was a need to explain the new conditions between the militaries and civil-
ian authorities of numerous states. The relationship between the military
and the civilian authorities becomes a dichotomy as the main challenge
lies in the following: how to establish a military which is strong enough
to protect the society from external threat, but which will at the same time
accept authorization from the civilian government. 1
For a long time the civil-military fi eld of studies has been dominated
by the theories of Samuel Huntington. Huntington believed that a profes-
sional army would never intervene in the political life of a state. The more
1
Peter Feaver, “The civil-military problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the question of
civilian control,” Armed Forces & Society 23, no. 2 (1996): 149.
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