ABSTRACT
The founding fathers of the Turkish Republic in 1923 were the military officers of the Ottoman Empire. Since then six out of eleven of the nation’s presidents have had military backgrounds; the Turkish general staff means more than its counterpart in other Western democracies – so much so that the political class looks over its shoulder in fear of offending the military high command – and issues considered political, social, economic or cultural in normal democracies are turned into security issues about which the military institution has the decisive voice.
