ABSTRACT
Any account of democracy and democratization in Turkey must also focus, among other factors, on civil-military relations and the role of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) in politics. The influence of the military could be analyzed from two perspectives. While the interventions and powers of the armed forces could be seen as obstacles to democratization, they can also be perceived as important indicators of lack of full democracy in the country. The TAF have had political autonomy since 1923 and intervened in politics through two different mechanisms; first, by staging overt coups (1960, 1980) and, second, by pressuring the elected governments to resign through implicit or explicit threats of coups (1971, 1997). For much of the republican period, the military also exercised tutelary functions without intervening in democracy. Such military influence in politics and coups has prevented the establishment of a stable democracy in the country. As Linz and Stepan argue, transition to democracy is not complete if the ‘elected government … [does not have the] de facto … authority to generate new policies, and when the executive, legislature and judicial power generated by the new democracy share power with other bodies de jure’ (Linz and Stepan 1996: 3). The involvement of the TAF in politics as a veto player and as a possible power that could overthrow the government has been a significant impediment of full democratization in Turkey since the Government and other elected bodies have had important limitations in generating certain policies, especially on security, and have shared power with the military.
