ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the historical dynamic of Turkey’s security and the domestic challenges that Turkey has faced in the new era, and examines how Turkey’s security is placed in the international setting and how it is responding to its realignment in global affairs. A growing body of scholarship illustrates how security has become an organizing principle in Turkish politics. Since the inception of the Republic in 1923, Turkey’s domestic political scene has been characterized by a permanent crisis of regime security. The historical background of Turkish identity can be loosely organized into three distinct eras, beginning with the foundational period during which fundamental principles of the modern-secular Turkish nation were established in the single-party regime from 1923 to 1950. Turkey’s sporadic experiment with multi-party politics faced criticism for its liberal stance prior to a ‘second trauma’. Turkey’s long-anticipated accession into the European Union has been marred by years of perceived duplicity from the Europeans.
