The Decade of the Military in Turkey: The Case of the Alignment with Israel in the 1990s
Author(s)
Ozcan, Gencer; Bengio, Ofra
Abstract
Contrary to some scholars’ premise that after 1983 Turkey’s military began to slowly disengage from politics so that by the 1990’s the Turkish army gradually halted its efforts to control the political system, Turkey’s military actually expanded its de facto and de jure authority. In the 1990’s the Turkish military established itself as the most important decision maker in domestic and foreign policy. This was made possible by the military’s traditional role as protector of Turkey, the legal rights it amassed over the years, and the wide security concept that applied to all political and societal arenas and was facilitated by developments in the regional and domestic environments.
