Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Mercantile Militarism in Turkey, 1960-1998

1998; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 19; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0896634600003010

1305-3299

Taha Parla,

Turkey's Politics and Society

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.