Civil-military relations in Turkey A critical investigation in the light of mentalities

Historically, the military men have been at the forefront of Turkey’s political and social scenery, enjoying a position of great respect from people of all classes since the days of the Ottoman Empire. This was not simply due to the fact that almost all founding fathers of the newly established Republic had a military background, but also the ideology upon which the new state had been established, Kemalism, envisioned the military as the conveyor of the positivist and progressive ideals that would guarantee the firm establishment of a politically non-Islamic, secular, and westward-looking Turkey. However, nearing the new millennium, the representation and/or the projection of these ideals into the reality was/were not somehow fit enough to guarantee Turkey a membership at the EU. How did this end up here? What could have been a perspective that would guide us in understanding this whole process? Does such a perspective need to be reductionist and thus exclusive or, on the contrary, a little more encompassing and thus inclusive than one might imagine? These questions laid the necessary basis of and led to a research process of which, the outcome is this text. The concept of mentality is the nucleus around which the research is structured and conducted. It is functionalised via the mentality analysis perspective borrowed from Werner Sombart by Sabri Ülgener, which consequentially emphasises the importance of Verstehen in social sciences, rather than Erklären.