Institutional Change in Turkey

The Impact of European Union Reforms on Human Rights and Policing

L. Piran

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349452286, 9781137298096
• eBook ISBN: 9781137298102
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How do state institutions reform themselves in the face of outside pressures? This study undertakes an in-depth analysis of the institutional and human rights reform process within the Turkish National Police, which faces pressure from the EU as part of Turkey's EU membership process, and examines the challenges and consequences of the process.

Chapter 1

The Theoretical Terrain

Introduction

Turkey is a culturally and religiously diverse nation-state stretching between two continents, Asia and Europe. Its history is as unique as its geography. As early as AD 330, Emperor Constantine, who established Constantinople, had realized the region’s importance and for the next millennium Constantinople remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Ottoman Turks renamed the city as Istanbul after capturing it in 1453. For the next 450 years, Istanbul served as the capital of the Ottoman Empire, which stretched from the Middle East and North Africa to Central Europe. After World War I, the Empire disintegrated, but a military hero, Mustafa Kemal Pasa, later known as Ataturk, built the modern Turkish Republic on its remnants in 1923. In order to modernize Turkey, Ataturk initiated a series of unprecedented reforms known as the six arrows. These reforms consisted of-but were not limited to—abolishing the caliphate and sultanate, outlawing the fez (traditional Ottoman headgear), changing the Turkish alphabet from Arabic to Latin, and adopting European style civil and criminal law codes.

After his death in 1938, his successor allowed other parties to enter the political arena in 1945. In 1950, the first competitive election took place, and the Democratic Party led by Adnan Menderes took office. Unfortunately, the transition to two-party rule introduced Turkey to an unstable era and it subsequently witnessed four coups d’etat. The military deposed Menderes and executed him in 1960. Although civilian rule had been restored quickly, his successor, Suleyman Demirel, was overthrown in 1971. Another civilian government began to take shape in 1974; however, that coalition government proved incapable of effective rule. Once again, the military intervened in 1980. Three years later, Turgut Ozal took over as civilian prime minister until his death in 1993.¹ The post-1980 coup era resonates with many Turks for Ozal’s remarkable market reform policies. Significantly, his role in addressing the threat of Kurdish nationalism that culminated in the military’s counterinsurgency campaign against the PKK remains overlooked. Therefore, this study focuses on the internally driven police reform during his administration, and elucidates the gradual path of reforms later enhanced by Turkey’s European Union accession process.

First, this chapter presents an overview of the elite contestation over Tanzimat in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and civil-military relations as they pertain to the evolution of the TNP in its contemporary form. The second part puts forth a theory of gradual institutional change drawn from historical institutionalism on police reform within a military-dominated regime in the early 1980s. The third part presents a review of rival explanations emerging from democratization and Europeanization literature. The fourth part puts forth key theoretical findings that make contributions to democratization, Europeanization, and police reform literature.

The Historical Background

The roots of the military’s privileged position in Turkey go back to the end of the thirteenth century when it began to play a crucial role in establishing the Ottoman Empire. Surrounded by two rival civilizations and religious traditions, the Ottoman state emerged as a gazi (warrior) state. In its earlier era, the military’s role in politics of the Empire persisted. Therefore, the Ottoman ruling institution became synonymous with this name, Askeri (the military). Naturally, the military’s role in political affairs stretched well into the Empire’s decline, starting from the second part of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. At that time, an oligarchy consisting of the military, the civil bureaucracy, and the religious institution ruled the Empire. In the nineteenth century, the military went through massive modernizing reforms, and a little later, it emerged as the modernizing actor.²

Understanding the military’s progressive role requires a deeper exploration of the Ottoman elite’s perceptions of reform. The traditional Ottoman elite perceived the Tanzimat as bringing cosmetic changes, in the sense that while the state formed new military corps and introduced new taxes, the old institutions were not abandoned even as new ones replaced them.³ This institutional pattern, which Eric Schickler, a prominent scholar of institutionalism, defines as “layering,”⁴ had another principal characteristic: The scope of reforms remained limited in order to avoid powerful opposition from an elite with stakes in the old institutions. Consequently, proponents of reforms continued to create new positions and introduced new weapons (for example, rifles) to military forces only to meet specific needs. When a new weapon was introduced, a new officer corps was established simultaneously to try the new rifles. Neither a massive overhaul of the administration of the Empire nor a thorough reformation of its military took place. Instead, each sultan built on his predecessor’s legacies of reforms. The destruction of the Janissaries, an institutional innovation known as “the auspicious event” to Turks, marks a sudden consequential change that removed a major threat to the sultan’s authority and opened the possibility for introduction of more western reforms in the Empire.

This investigation adopts a path-dependent approach that emphasizes the importance of actors’ choices during critical junctures for institutional reforms and long-term processes of change over time and space. Thus, the destruction of the Janissaries represents a critical juncture since Sultan Mahmut II chose this option from a set of available alternatives. Initially, he did not intend to destroy the army, but to institute a new Western style army that would incorporate a limited number of Janissaries over time.⁵ Shortly thereafter, the sultan transferred policing duties to the new Mansure army. For the first time, Istanbul witnessed the establishment of a special police force. By 1826, the development of the first separate police force had laid the foundation for a modern national police force later known as the TNP.⁶ Under the new municipal governing system, the new police force was not a civilian one since those who were hired by the Ihtisap Ministry to fulfill policing practices in the Empire were still recruited from the military.⁷

The sultan’s decision to abolish the Janissaries represented a setback for the old Ottoman elite that had lost its bastion of power. Yet they remained defiant and expressed resistance through their very existence and constant influence on the new class of reformers and the masses.⁸ Historical evidence from the end of Mahmut II’s reign in 1832, however, indicates that the new reformers had begun to accept that modern European society was more superior to theirs; therefore, they thought that it was best to destroy old institutions prior to building new ones resembling their European counterparts. In contrast, the old Ottoman elite forced the new reformers to reconcile the old with the new, providing the groundwork for the creation of institutions that were traditional yet adaptable enough to meet the demands of Empire.⁹

During the nineteenth century, the Ottoman state faced multiple challenges and pressures from the Great Powers to modernize. In response, the civil bureaucratic elite established representative assemblies in Istanbul and its regional localities. They justified their motives for extending liberties to non-Muslims, assisting the progress of tax collection, and boosting military recruitment, all as means of appeasing the Great Powers, thereby curtailing the sultan’s authority and strengthening their own role in the Empire’s affairs.¹⁰

After the Turkish Republic was established in 1923, Ataturk’s charisma and leadership represented the state. The contention between the state elite¹¹ and the political elite has persisted over time. Each group’s political culture was formed by its unique understanding of the role of the state in politics, a patrimonial legacy from the Ottoman era reinforced by the guardians of Kemalism who supported the rule of law more than parliamentary deliberation. After Ataturk’s death, the guardians based the ethos of the state on Ataturk’s thoughts and actions instead of allowing the nation to practice sovereignty through the Grand National Assembly. This laid the foundations for the 1961 Constitution that pitted the civil bureaucratic elite against representatives of the people.

Turkey has enjoyed a strong state tradition in the sense that, from the time of the Ottoman Empire to the present, there has always been a particular group of elite that has made policies to preserve the state through the assumption of nearly full independence from other groups in society, specifically the political elite. In the Ottoman Empire, the state elite paid full attention to the problem of reforming the Ottoman administration and military according to the latest European innovation. Since the establishment of the Republic in 1923 until present, the state elite, consisting of the intellectual-bureaucratic elite and military, have played an effective role in implementing Western reforms in the administrative and socioeconomic sectors. As defenders of Ataturk’s legacy, the state elite have remained committed to the project of Westernization and secularization reforms, especially in education, economy, and social progress.

The Ottoman elite believed in a strong state whose main purpose was to provide public order and welfare. Naturally, the elite focused on maintaining a strong state whose interests preceded those of civil society groups.¹² The Ottoman strong state tradition is unique, yet comparable to France and Germany. There is one distinct difference: The Turkish state remained independent from social groups; therefore, the Ottoman state was far stronger and more autonomous than its French and German counterparts. Cleary, the strong centralized state has set significant barriers to democratic consolidation in that country despite of the demands from civil society for democratic reforms. The political elite and state (i.e., military) elite have clashed in the Ottoman and the republican eras. In fact, instability and democratic breakdown led to chaos and disorder, which the military viewed as sufficient reason for intervention in the 1960, 1970, and 1980 coups. Heper believes that the political elite acted above the law; therefore, the military, as the guardian of the nation, had to intervene to protect the state sovereignty and indivisibility. The friction between the military and state elites has gone through ebbs and flows; therefore, I am not implying that the strong state tradition is a permanent feature of the Turkish state nor am I arguing that its strength is constantly the same.¹³

Historically and in recent times, the state elite have treated the political elite as insignificant. Therefore, the political elite thought that “the mixed constitutions” drafted by the state elite in the aftermath of the 1960–1961 and the 1980–1983 military interventions were “imposed” on them.¹⁴ In order to maintain prudent governance, according to their interpretation of Kemalism, the state elite, including the military, justified frequent interventions in politics necessary to regulate democracy in Turkey.¹⁵ The 1961 Constitution reflected their low level of confidence in the parliament as a mediating institution between state and society.

Still, the state elite did not give the political elite room to breathe. Following a period of several unstable coalition governments, Turkey appeared to have gained a stable, popular government. Toward the end of the 1960s, extreme Right and leftist groups appeared on the political scene partly because the 1961 Constitution granted extensive civil liberties to political parties. Following increasing acts of political violence, a group of radical military officers who disagreed with the ruling party, the Justice Party (JP), ordered its resignation through a coup designed to carry out radical social reform in 1971.¹⁶ Restoration of civilian rule did not usher in an era of stability. Instead, Turkey suffered from an unprecedented degree of terrorism that led to protracted instability and violence, undermining the public’s confidence in the democratization process. Law and order collapsed, particularly when ideological divisions between the extremist Left and extremist Right groups intensified, thereby spreading to the other segments of society to the extent that moderate members of parliament, journalists, university professors, as well as a former prime minister fell victim to the situation and the number of assassinations rose to 30 a day.

At this time, the strong and centralized Turkish state generally maintained public order effectively. Faced with mounting violence and widespread public disorder in the 1970s, the state turned to the army to declare martial law. Although public order falls under the police’s jurisdiction, the state could not trust the police as it became apparent that extremist groups had infiltrated the police and managed to divide the force. Therefore, the lack of respect for police in contemporary Turkish society partly stems from its lack of impartiality and legitimacy, while the public views the military as the savior since it has rescued the country from chaos and civil war.¹⁷ Most people breathed a sigh of relief when the military staged a coup on September 12, 1980. They believed that the military would restore law and order immediately, while protecting the secular democratic regime in the end.¹⁸

The military, as the ultimate guardian of the Republic, wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1 The Theoretical Terrain
• 2 Overview of the Turkish National Police: Historical Continuities and Changes
• 3 Research and Findings
• 4 Institutional, Legal, and Policy Changes
• 5 Conclusions and Implications
• AppendixThe Turkish Police: Organization and Functions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index