Paper presented at the MEI-NUS Annual Conference, Singapore, 3-4 September 2015

1. Media and the Armed Forces in Turkey
Lars Haugom
Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies
Oslo, Norway
Paper presented at NUS-MEI Conference
Singapore, 3-4 September 2015

2. Civil-military relations in Turkey
• Civilianisation since ca. 2000
• The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK)
▫ Institutional autonomy reduced
▫ Political influence curbed
• TSKs ‘Guardianship role’ in Turkish politics
seriously questioned and challenged

3. Purpose of the paper
• Examine the development of military – media
relations in Turkey
• Discuss which role the media have played in
Turkish civil-military relations.
• Relatively little previous research
• Mostly secondary sources

4. Theoretical approaches
• Functional separation theory
▫ Huntington: Institutionalism
▫ Janowitz: Military sociology
▫ Feaver: Principal - agent
• Criticism of functional separation theory
▫ «Outdated» (Moskos 1999)
▫ «Western-biased» (Schiff 1995)
• Fusion-approach
▫ Schiff: Concordance theory
▫ Bland: Civil-military relations as a regime

5. Military leadership Political leadership
External partners Citizenry
Principles
Norms
Rules
Decision-making
procedures
Civil-military relations ‘regime’ in Turkey
Rebecca Schiff (1995); Douglas Bland (1999)
EU, NATO
YAS Executive
power
Body of citizens in TUR

6. Military leadership Political leadership
External partners Citizenry
The
Media?
Civil-military relations ‘regime’ in Turkey
Rebecca Schiff (1995); Douglas Bland (1999)
EU, NATO
YAS Executive
power
Body of citizens in TUR

7. Military-media relations
• Moskos (1999): The Postmodern Military
• Military-media relations one of the variables
Military form: Modern
(before 1945)
Late-modern
(1945-1990)
Postmodern
(after 1990)
Civilian media: Incorporated
Censored
Controlled
Manipulated
Courted
«…the changes taking place, of course, are not simply confined to the
military or the realm of war. On the contrary, we are dealing with a
general reorganisation of postindustrial societies.» (Moskos et al.
1999:3)

8. A question of causality
• Possible roles of the media in CMR
• Media -> CMR
• CMR -> Media
• Background variables -> Media and CMR

9. Military-media relations in Turkey
• Military and population in Turkey:
Strong bond of almost mythical proportions
• The media as a two-way channel:
▫ Opinions of the military leadership
▫ Public opinion of the military

10. Military-media relations in Turkey
• The military’s media approach
▫ Before 1990: ‘Tutelage’ and control
▫ After 1990: Consent and legitimacy
• Media coverage of military and security issues
▫ Before 1990: Respect and support
▫ From late 1990s: More critical and questioning

11. Military-media relations in Turkey
Nokta:
«We avoided
two coups in
2004»
Coverage of the coup-cases in the
Turkish press
Taraf: «Fatih-mosque would be
bombed»

12. Why the change in mil-media relations?
1. Commercialisation of the media sector
2. A more permissive media environment
3. Advent of online media
TRT 6 – in KurdishDogan Media Group Social media

13. Conclusions
• Similar to the development outlined by Moskos
▫ Before 1990: Censorship and manipulation
▫ After 1990: TSK interacting with the media
• Role of the media in CMR
▫ Before 1990: Mechanism for informal influence
▫ After 1990: Driving force for civilianisation
• One aspect of more general changes taking place
in Turkish politics and society

14. End of presentation