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Mercantile Militarism in Turkey, 1960-1998

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Taha Parla*
Affiliation:
Boğaziçi University, Department of Political Science and International Relations

Extract

It was in 1974 when I first took a look at mercantile militarism in Turkey, emergent in the form of OYAK-Ordu Yardımlaşma Kurumu (Armed Forces Mutual Trust and Pension Fund) (Parla 1974). In the first section of this paper, I shall present the case as it then appeared. In the second section, I will update the data on the phenomenon of OYAK as of 1998. In the third, I shall examine aspects of the second, complementary wave of Turkish mercantile militarism that has manifested itself in the form of TSKGV-Türk Silahlı Kuvvetlerini Güçlendirme Vakfı (Foundation for Strengthening the Turkish Armed Forces). The concluding section will suggest a way in which this subject can be put in the larger context of an all-pervasive militarism in Turkey—political, constitutional, cultural—as well as some of the ways in which critical appreciation of this phenomenon seems crucial for understanding Turkish politics and political economy better.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 1998

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