ABSTRACT
Since the Second World War, the periodic takeover of states by their armies in a majority of countries outside Europe has spawned a huge body of theoretical literature. As Ruth First remarks, ‘coups have become a growth industry for academics as well as for military men’. 1 Over the last two decades both sides of the industry have passed through something of a depression: the spate of literature has abated, as the military regimes of the 1950s and 1960s have either given way to democratic systems (as in Latin America) or are attempting this process (as in Sub-Saharan Africa). In most of the Middle East they have tended to transform themselves into more complicated forms, in which coups have become rarer and the army either controls the state, without formally ruling it, or acts as an essential prop to an officially civilian regime. 2 In the wake of these changes, academic interest in the role of the military in politics has waned, but the topic is still relevant. It may, for instance, be as important to find out why coups fail, as in the case of the USSR in 1991, as to discover why they succeed. The Turkish experience, in which military or quasi-military regimes have alternated with periods of elected civilian government, may have something to tell us about relationships between the civil and military powers in other countries. Equally, the general theories can aid our understanding of the evolution of the military role in Turkey. An examination of this two-sided question is the theme of this chapter.
