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Dr. Nil Satana is a Visiting Associate Professor at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), Department of Government & Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the co-author of “Alternatives in Mobilization. Religion, Ethnicity and Political Conflict” published by Cambridge University Press. Dr. Satana received her B.A. from the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey and her M.A. & Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo. Her research interests include identity politics, civil conflict, religious/ethnic extremism and terrorism, democratization and civil-military relations. Nil Satana has published several book chapters, opinion pieces as well as articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Armed Forces and Society and Turkish Studies. Nil Satana has held various grants from The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, and a START grant funded by the Department of Homeland Security.
Following the AKP’s rise in 2002, civil-military relations in Turkey began to change significantly. The military’s tutelage over Turkish politics was gradually replaced with the AKP’s control over the Turkish Armed Forces. The July 2016 coup attempt put an end to the military’s prestige and popularity and ushered in a new era, with Erdoğan and his AKP asserting full civilian control over the military. This paper explores the factors that paved the way for the new civil-military relations between 2002 and 2016, reviews how the 2016 coup attempt became an opportunity for the AKP to further eliminate all opposition, and analyzes the impact of the upcoming 2023 elections and the opposition’s stance on civil-military relations.
From the standpoint of Turkish civil-military experts, the concern has never been whether Turkey should civilianize but rather what civilianization would lead to when it was finally achieved. Following the 2013 Gezi protests and the government’s harsh response to the protesters, Turkey’s success in the civilianization of its politics is quickly snowballing into uncertainty.
