The New Turkey and its Nascent Security Regime

Abstract

Much attention has been paid to the ongoing Islamisation under AKP rule in Turkey. Yet while President Tayyip Erdoğan nowadays relies more on coercion, the focus on the aforementioned ideological transformation overlooks the key relevance of the new security regime now dominating Turkish politics. Efforts to establish the New Turkey have culminated in the politicisation of the military and the militarisation of politics. Erdoğan backtracked on the European Union's proposed path of establishing "objective control of the military" in legal-institutional terms and opted instead for its "subjective control," specifically by fusing together the civilian and military spheres and politicising the latter. Along with a highly militarist discourse, Erdoğan is diversifying the country's military and paramilitary instruments in both domestic and foreign politics as a strategy of coup-proofing and regime survival. The nascent security regime is not without its defects. Beside fractures within the ruling coalition that might endanger loyalty to Erdoğan, the effect of paramilitarisation on coup-proofing is open to question. European Union authorities need to build a more comprehensive approach that covers such a diverse array of armed organisations, and considers the militarisation of domestic and foreign politics together. They should be in political dialogue with the Turkish state for a full-fledged civilianisation of the regime along the Copenhagen criteria.