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Swords and Ploughshares: The Turkish Army as a Modernizing Force

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Daniel Lerner  and
Richard D. Robinson
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Extract

Military predominance in public life has a long and strong tradition in Turkey. Lybyer has told us: “The Ottoman government had been an army before it was anything else. … in fact, Army and Government were one. War was the external purpose, Government the internal purpose, of one institution, composed of one body of men.” And Gibb quotes el-Gazali, at the end of the eleventh century: “Government in these days is a consequence solely of military power, and whosoever he may be to whom the holder of military power gives his allegiance, that person is the caliph.”

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , October 1960 , pp. 19 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1960

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References

1 Lybyer, A. H., The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent, Cambridge, Mass., 1913, pp. 90–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Gibb, H. A. R. and Bowen, H. L., Islamic Society and the West, London, 1950, p. 31.Google Scholar

3 Quoted in Orga, I., Phoenix Ascendant, London, 1958, p. 38.Google Scholar See also “Ataturk,” Islam Ansiklopedisi, Istanbul, Ministry of Education Publishing House, 1940, p. 271; and L. V. Thomas, “The Political Leader: Ataturk: A Case in Point?” a paper presented to a conference on “The Near East, Social Dynamics and a Cultural Setting,” sponsored by the Committee on the Near and Middle East, Social Science Research Council, at Princeton University, October 1952, p. 5 (typewritten).

4 Orga, , op.cit., p. 39.Google Scholar

5 Kemal, Mustafa, Speech of October 1927, Leipzig, 1929, p. 692.Google Scholar

6 See Law No. 5398, May 30, 1949.

7 Article 8, Election Law of 1946; Article 9, Election Law of 1950.

8 Ataturk Diyor Ki [Ataturk Speaks], Istanbul, Varlik Yayinlari, 1951, p. 86.

9 Cumhuryet (Istanbul), November 26, 1958.

10 Laqueur, W. Z., Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East, New York, 1956, p. 22.Google Scholar

11 Thomas, L. V. and Frye, R. N., The United States and Turkey and Iran, Cambridge, Mass., 1951, p. 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Rustow, D. A., “The Army and the Founding of the Turkish Republic,” World Politics, XI, No. 4 (July 1959), p. 533.Google Scholar

13 Creasy, E. S., Turkey, New York, 1906, p. 377.Google Scholar

14 Ataturk'un Askerligi Dair Eserleri [Ataturk's Military Writings], Ankara, Is Bankasi, 1959.

15 Rustow, , op.cit., p. 535.Google Scholar

16 Figures are taken from Mali Istatistikler [Financial Statistics], Ankara, Basbakanlik Istatistik Genel Muduru, 1947, and Commentary on the 1950 National Budget by the Ministry of Finance, trans. from the Turkish by the Economic Cooperation Administration Special Mission to Turkey, Ankara, 1950.

17 Rustow, , op.cit., p. 550Google Scholar; see also the Album for 1950, 1954, and 1958, published by the Grand National Assembly in Ankara. An article entitled “Military Deputies in the Assembly,” in Halkci (Ankara), February 3, 1955, gives short biographies of the fifteen retired military men sitting in the Tenth Assembly. Two of these had also pursued civilian careers in law and government administration.

18 Rustow must mean 27—Ataturk from 1923 to 1938, Inonu from 1938 to 1950.

19 Rustow, , op.cit., p. 530.Google Scholar

20 See Robinson, R. D., “American Military Aid Program,” New York, Institute of Current World Affairs, November 15, 1948Google Scholar; idem, “Impact of American Military and Economic Assistance Programs in Turkey,” New York, American Universities Field Staff, 1956. For a graphic account of the relatively low level to which the army had fallen by World War II, see Humbaraci, A., Middle East Indictment, London, 1958, pp. 36–40.Google Scholar

21 Robinson, “American Military Aid Program,” op.cit.

22 Hoskins, H. L., The Middle East, New York, 1954, p. 37.Google Scholar See also press statement by Major General Horace L. McBride, Joint Military Mission for Aid to Turkey, Ankara, August 18, 1950.

23 Robinson, R. D., “Americans in Turkey,” letter to the Institute of Current World Affairs, New York, June 1952.Google Scholar

24 Based on interviews with Lt. Col. Leon D. Marsh, Classification Officer and Assistant G-I, TUSAG, Ankara, during January 1952.

25 Stirling, P., “The Structure of Turkish Peasant Communities” (Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 1951Google Scholar; reproduced in Ankara by R. D. Robinson, mimeographed), p. l65.

26 Shortly after the arrival of the American Military Aid Mission in 1947, a number of technical schools were established or greatly expanded, including schools designed to train technicians in naval electronics, naval ordnance and gunnery, mine warfare and sweeping, naval damage control and fire fighting, naval shipyard and industrial operations, submarines, anti-aircraft defense, army signal work, army medicine, army ordnance, infantry, artillery, army motor transport, army engineering, pilot training, radio communications, aeronautical mechanics, meteorology, aeronautical supply, and the operation of heavy highway equipment.

27 No exact figures are available as to the number sent abroad, but as of early 1951 over 1,000 Turkish military personnel had been trained in American methods either in the United States or in Germany. (Hartman, R. T., Uncle Sam in Turkey, New York, Turkish Information Office, 1952, p. 14–Google Scholar a reprinting of articles published in the Los Angeles Times during September 1951.) Early in 1958, the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs announced that 300 Turkish jet pilots had been trained in Canada alone. (Zafer [Ankara], February 26, 1958.)

28 Humbaraci, , op.cit., p. 39Google Scholar n, attributes the improvement of conditions in the Turkish army during the 1950's to a short spell of political liberalism and the experience of several thousand soldiers in Korea, where they had seen armies with very different standards, as well as to the influence of the U.S. Military Mission.

29 Helling, George, “A Study of Turkish Values,” a paper delivered at the Conference on Turkey, Harvard University, June 1959.Google Scholar

30 Interview with Colonel Mithat Ceylan, officer in charge of the program, Ankara, October 2, 1959; see also Emin Hekimgil, education in Turkey,” a paper prepared for the 22nd International Conference on Public Education, Geneva, July 1959, pp. 33–34.

31 Walz, Jay, in New York Times, April 17, 1959.Google Scholar

32 Wofford, K. Y., “Report on Rural and Primary Education and Related Teacher Training in Turkey,” a report to the Turkish Ministry of Education, Ankara, 1952, p. 30Google Scholar (mimeographed).

33 Reported in Zafer, February 25, 1958.

34 Described in Cumhuryet, July 16, 1957.

35 The impact of roads on the spread of Turkish mobility is described in Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society, Glencoe, Ill., 1958Google Scholar, chs. 1, 4, 5.

36 Robinson, R. D., “Tractors in the Village,” Journal of Farm Economics, XXXIV, No. 4 (November 1952), p. 451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Described in Robinson, R. D., “Upheaval in Turkey,” Foreign Policy Bulletin, XXXIX, No. 20 (July 1, 1960), pp. 153ff.Google Scholar

38 As an apparent step to curtail popular participation in political life, a temporary law went into effect on July 4, 1960, which forbade political parties to set up or maintain branch organizations of any sort other than those located in provincial seats and municipalities. This move was obviously designed to break the organizational strength of the ousted Democrats in Turkey's 38,000 villages, wherein dwell 70 per cent of Turkey's population. Preceding the move were recurrent reports of arrests in rural areas occasioned by uprisings and demonstrations in favor of the jailed leaders.