CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 54

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA
profound role in politics. The Turkish military was described as a “deep
state” which had been the de-facto ruler of the country. 35 Such conditions
were not acceptable for a democratic country functioning under the rule
of law. Thus the EU demanded that Turkey amend its legislation to curb
the political powers of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF). In 1999 Turkey
became a candidate state for EU membership. Since then it had to imple-
ment a number of reforms concerning almost all spheres of life in Turkey.
Among those were the reforms concerning civil-military relations. There
was hope that with Europeanization the political activism of the Turkish
military would be eradicated. 36 The reform process was launched in Octo-
ber 2001 aiming at major constitutional amendments.
The reforms had to be carried out in line with the Democratic Control
of Armed Forces (DCAF) which is the Western type of balance of civil
military relations and is promoted by the EU as well as NATO. Although
there is no customized model of democratic control of armed forces for
each individual country there is a general idea what it entails. “Demo-
cratic control of armed forces refers to the norms and standards govern-
ing the relationship between the armed forces and society, whereby the
armed forces are subordinated to democratically-elected authorities and
subject to the oversight of the judiciary as well as the media and civil
society organizations”. 37 The eff ective democratic control of armed forc-
es entails the following aspects: civilian control, democratic governance,
civilian expertise, non-interference in domestic politics, ideological neu-
trality, minimal role in national economy, eff ective chain of command,
and respect for the rights of military personnel. 38 Thus it is assumed that
the military has to be an apolitical instituting with no stake in politics or
the economy. The military must have a certain degree of internal inde-
pendence to ensure its proper functionality however it should have no say
in the formation of national interest. The military should also stay out of
decisions concerning the state budget. Democratic control norms are im-
plemented through a number of mechanisms such as a clear legal frame-
work in which democratic control principles may be embedded in the
constitution or the parliament may adopt necessary laws for democratic
control, or the creation of institutional mechanisms which ensure that rule
of law is respected within the military, development of educational mea-
sures which educate the civilian and military societies on civil-military
35
36
37
38
Ünlü Bilgiç, “The military and Europeanization reforms in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Stud-
ies 45, no. 5 (2009): 804.
Ibid.
Democratic Control of Armed Forces, DCAF Backgrounder, 2008, https://www.fi les.ethz.ch/
isn/55845/17_bg_dem_control_armed_forces.pdf, (accessed March 12, 2018).
Ibid.
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