6 research outputs found
The Gezi Park protests illustrate the fall of the military as a political actor in Turkey
A series of protests took place in Turkey this summer following a dispute over the redevelopment of the Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul. Burak Kadercan writes that one largely overlooked aspect to the protests was the absence of Turkeyâs military, which has traditionally played a strong role in Turkish politics. Tracing the rise and fall of the military as a political actor in the country, he argues that direct military intervention in politics is now no longer an option. Nevertheless, Turkeyâs political situation is so fluid that the possibility of a military resurgence cannot be ruled out long-term
Turkeyâs ongoing protests may yet lead to a backlash from the governmentâs supporters and a new âTurkish winterâ
As street protests in Turkey continue, and the governmentâs response has begun to harden, many are now talking about a coming âTurkish springâ. Burak Kadercan warns against such an analysis of these events, arguing that the protestors have no collective vision of change, and that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄan remains a relatively popular leader. He writes that if the ruling AKP party is able to mobilise thousands of its supporters against the protestors we may well see the onset of full-blown authoritarianism and civil strife
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Strong armies, slow adaptation: civil-military relations and diffusion of military power
Why are some states more willing to adopt military innovations than others? Why, for example, were the great powers of Europe able to successfully reform their military practices to better adapt to and participate in the so-called military revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries while their most important extra-European competitor, the Ottoman Empire, failed to do so? This puzzle is best explained by two factors: civil-military relations and historical timing. In the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of an institutionally strong and internally cohesive army during the early stages of state formationâin the late fourteenth centuryâequipped the military with substantial bargaining powers. In contrast, the great powers of Europe drew heavily on private providers of military power during the military revolution and developed similar armies only by the second half of the seventeenth century, limiting the bargaining leverage of European militaries over their rulers. In essence, the Ottoman standing army was able to block reform efforts that it believed challenged its parochial interests. Absent a similar institutional challenge, European rulers initiated military reforms and motivated officers and military entrepreneurs to participate in the ongoing military revolution
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Making sense of survival: refining the treatment of state preferences in neorealist theory
The assumption that âstates' primary goal is survivalâ lies at the heart of the neorealist paradigm. A careful examination of the assumption, however, reveals that neorealists draw upon a number of distinct interpretations of the âsurvival assumptionâ that are then treated as if they are the same, pointing towards conceptual problems that surround the treatment of state preferences. This article offers a specification that focuses on two questions that highlight the role and function of the survival assumption in the neorealist logic: (i) what do states have to lose if they fail to adopt self-help strategies?; and (ii) how does concern for relevant losses motivate state behaviour and affect international outcomes? Answering these questions through the exploration of governing elites' sensitivity towards regime stability and territorial integrity of the state, in turn, addresses the aforementioned conceptual problems. This specification has further implications for the debates among defensive and offensive realists, potential extensions of the neorealist logic beyond the Westphalian states, and the relationship between neorealist theory and policy analysis
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Military competition and the emergence of nationalism: putting the logic of political survival into historical context
This essay aims to make a contribution to the conversation between IR and nationalism literatures by considering a particular question: What is the relationship between interstate military competition and the emergence of nationalism as a potent force in world politics? The conventional wisdom among international security scholars, especially neorealists, holds that nationalism can be more or less treated like a âtechnologyâ that allowed states to extract significant resources as well as manpower from their respective populations. This paper underlines some of the problems involved with this perspective and pushes forward an interpretation that is based on the logic of political survival. I argue that nationalismâs emergence as a powerful force in world politics followed from the âmutationâ and absorption of the universalistic/cosmopolitan republican ideas that gained temporary primacy in Europe during the eighteenth century into particularistic nationalist ideologies. This transformation, in turn, can be best explained by the French Revolutionâs dramatic impacts on rulersâ political survival calculi vis-Ă -vis both interstate and domestic political challenges. The analysis offered in this essay contributes to our understanding of the relationship between IR and nationalism while also highlighting the potential value of the political survival framework for exploring macrohistorical puzzles