The Missing Piece of the Puzzle: The EMASYA Protocol and Civil-Military Relations in Turkey

2022 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2110665
Author(s):  
Ayfer Genç Yılmaz

The civil-military relations literature on Turkey focuses predominantly on the guardianship role of the Turkish military, its interventions, and the role of the National Security Council as the main institutional mechanism of military tutelage. Yet, the existing studies lack a much-needed focus on the law enforcement or policing missions of the Turkish military. To fill this gap, this study discusses the EMASYA Protocol ( Emniyet Asayiş Yardımlaşma or Security and Public Order Assistance), a secret protocol signed in 1997. Emerging in the context of political instability and military tutelage of the 1990s, the Protocol enabled the military to conduct internal security operations without permission from the civilian authorities. This paper argues that the EMASYA Protocol provided a sphere of “reformulated new professionalism” for the Turkish military, enabled it to specialize in the war against rising internal threats such as reactionary Islam and Kurdish separatism, and created anomalies in civil-military relations in Turkey.

Author(s):  
Marco Bünte

Myanmar has had one of the longest ruling military regimes in the world. Ruling directly or indirectly for more than five decades, Myanmar’s armed forces have been able to permeate the country’s main political institutions, its economy, and its society. Myanmar is a highly revealing case study for examining the trajectory of civil–military relations over the past seven decades. Myanmar ended direct military rule only in 2011 after the military had become the most powerful institution in society, weakened the political party opposition severely, coopted several ethnic armed groups, and built up a business empire that allowed it to remain financially independent. The new tutelary regime—established in 2011 after proclaiming a roadmap to “discipline flourishing democracy” in 2003, promulgating a new constitution in 2008, and holding (heavily scripted) elections in 2010—allowed a degree of power-sharing between elected civilian politicians and the military for a decade. Although policymaking in economic, financial, and social arenas was transferred to the elected government, the military remained in firm control of external and internal security and continued to be completely autonomous in the management of its own affairs. As a veto power, the military was also able to protect its prerogatives from a position of strength. Despite this dominant position in the government, civil–military relations were hostile and led to a coup in February 2021. The military felt increasingly threatened and humiliated as civilians destroyed the guardrails it had put in place to protect its core interests within the tutelary regime. The military also felt increasingly alienated as the party the military had established repeatedly failed to perform in the elections.


Author(s):  
Florina Cristiana Matei ◽  
Carolyn Halladay

Civil–military relations—particularly the principles and practices of civilian control of the security sector—have changed significantly since the 1990s as more and more states around the world seek to consolidate democracy. The scholarly focus and the policy that it informs remain stuck in a mid-20th-century model, however. While civilian control remains central, this civilian oversight must, itself, uphold the requirements of democratic governance, ensuring that the uniformed forces are well integrated into the democracy that they are sworn to protect. Moreover, this democratic civilian control also must ensure the effectiveness of the security sector in the sense that soldiers, law enforcement officials, and intelligence agencies can fulfill the range of their missions. Thus, democratic civilian control requires ongoing attention from both the civilian and the military sides.


2019 ◽  
pp. 222-249
Author(s):  
Anit Mukherjee

This chapter examines defense planning in the Indian military. It begins with a conceptual discussion on the role of civilians in defense planning, mainly by examining the experience of other democracies. Next, it describes the history of defense planning in India, focusing on the formulation and implementation of five-year defense plans. There are three main arguments in this chapter. First, effective defense planning requires a close partnership between civilians and the military. Second, defense planning in India is marked by a lack of civilian guidance and institutional discordance, creating friction in civil–military relations. To an extent, this is because of a lack of expertise, on the part of civilians, and an institutional design that creates strong civil–military silos. Third, notwithstanding the above, there have been periodic attempts at reforming defense-planning structures. Progress has been achieved in some sectors, but much remains to be done.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-200
Author(s):  
Segun Joshua ◽  
Daniel Gberevbie ◽  
Kester Onor

Since independence on October 1, 1960, Nigeria has been a victim, at one time or the other, of intra-ethnic, inter-ethnic, religious, and communal conflicts which have undermined the human security of her citizens. Nigeria’s corporate existence had also been threatened by 3 years (1967–1970) civil war which impacted negatively on the well-being of its people. In addition, the inability of the Nigerian Police to cope with the magnitude of the surge of violence in recent years has brought about the idea of involving the military, a core component of traditional security apparatus to deal with internal insecurity. This article is anchored on human security paradigm with reliance on secondary data to analyze the operations of the Nigerian Military in counterviolence campaigns between 1999 and 2017. This article points out that the involvement of the military in internal security has worsened the problem of insecurity due to the military’s unprofessional approach and, at times, deliberate targeting the civilian populace which it is supposed to protect. It, therefore, recommends among others, the need for the Federal Government of Nigeria to urgently review the role of the armed forces in addressing internal security situations in a way that will bring about respect for the rule of engagement in internal security operations and adherence to global best practices.


1982 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 778-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos Perlmutter ◽  
William M. LeoGrande

This article is an effort to establish a comparative theoretical framework for the study of civil-military relations in communist political systems. Although the literature on civil-military relations in polyarchic and praetorian polities is theoretically as well as empirically rich, theories of civil-military relations in the field of comparative communism are still at the preliminary stage of development. It is argued that civil-military relations, like all the fundamental dynamics of communist political systems, derive from the structural relationship between a hegemonic Leninist party and the other institutions of the polity. Although the party directs and supervises all other institutions, its political supremacy is necessarily limited by the division of labor among various institutions. The relative autonomy of the military and its relations with the party vary from one country to another and can be described as coalitional, symbiotic, or fused. These relations are dynamic, changing over time in each country in response to contextual circumstances. The role of the military in politics is complex and variegated: on ideological issues, there is usually little conflict between party and army; on issues of “normal politics,” the military acts as a functionally specific elite engaged in bargaining to defend its perceived institutional interests; and in crisis politics, the military is a political resource that various party factions seek to enlist against their opponents.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (7) ◽  
pp. 1033-1047
Author(s):  
Furkan Halit Yolcu

The main paradox of the civil–military relations theory has been the protection of the political sphere from the military, which is administered by the politicians. The new dilemma lies under the paradox that occurs when the political sphere is entirely co-opted by the military, which is legitimized through democratization instead of protection of the civilian sphere. The question regarding the continuity of the pathology, the military superiority over the civil administration, has been largely omitted. This study is an attempt to respond to this conundrum related to the continuity of pathological civil–military relations. The main focus is the pathology that occurs when the military is the modernizer or the democratizer in a country. The study uses process tracing to collect the data as research attempts to unravel the rationale behind the continuity of military dominance in politics. In doing so, it will attempt to trace the causality between the lack of democratization and military dominance over politics in the case of Algeria.


1993 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Walter ◽  
Philip J. Williams

The recent coups and attempted coups in Haiti, Venezuela, and Peru serve as a sobering reminder of the military's central role in the political life of Latin America. Earlier assessments of the prospects for democratic consolidation now seem overly optimistic in light of these events. At a minimum, they point up the need to focus on the role of the military during transitions from authoritarianism and the consolidation of democratic regimes. As Stepan has suggested, prolonged military rule can leave important legacies which serve as powerful obstacles to democratic consolidation (Stepan, 1988: xi-xii). Understanding these legacies and the problems they present is essential in developing strategies aimed at democratizing civil-military relations.This is no less true in El Salvador, where the prospects for democratization are closely linked to the future of the country's armed forces.


2019 ◽  
pp. 97-136
Author(s):  
Anit Mukherjee

This chapter examines civil–military relations and the weapons procurement process in India. It begins with a conceptual discussion, using illustrations of other democracies, on the role of civilians in weapons procurement highlighting the importance of a constant and “iterative” dialogue between civilians and the military. Thereafter, it analyzes major trends in India’s weapons procurement process, highlighting the inability of state-owned domestic industry to meet the demands of the military. Problems emerge from weaknesses on the part of both civilians and the military. Civil–military relations and the pattern of interaction between them, intrinsic to the absent dialogue argument, accentuate the difficulty inherent in the weapons procurement process.


2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-85
Author(s):  
J. Mark Ruhl

AbstractThe Guatemalan military dominated the country's politics for nearly half a century, but its political power declined during the 1990s. Democratically elected presidents Alvaro Arzú (1996–2000) and Alfonso Portillo (2000–2004) subordinated the armed forces to their authority and thereby gained an unprecedented opportunity to reduce the role of the military and institutionalize democratic civil-military relations. Unfortunately, neither of these tasks was accomplished. An analysis of the level of democratic control, combining Alfred Stepan's military prerogatives indicators with a newer system of measurement and classification designed by Samuel Fitch, shows that the armed forces retained substantial institutional autonomy and de facto legal immunity when Portillo left office in 2004. The role of the military in Guatemalan society, moreover, expanded again under Portillo after declining under Arzú. This study finds that the lack of sufficient civilian commitment to reform, rather than resistance from the armed forces, was the principal cause of these disappointing outcomes.


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