1 OSW COMMENTARY NUMBER 275 www.osw.waw.pl Centre for Eastern Studies NUMBER 274 | 26.06.2018 Cadres decide everything – Turkey’s reform of its military Mateusz Chudziak Over the last two years, the Turkish Armed Forces (Türk Silahlı Kuvvetlerı – TSK) have been sub- ject to transformations with no precedent in the history of Turkey as a republic. The process of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) subordinating the army to civilian government has accelerated following the failed coup that took place on 15 July 2016. The government has managed to take away the autonomy of the armed forces which, while retaining their enor- mous signifcance within the state apparatus, ceased to be the main element consolidating the old Kemalist elites. However, the unprecedented scale of the purges and the introduc- tion of formal civilian control of the military are merely a prelude to a much more profound change intended to create a brand new military, one that would serve the authorities and be composed of a new type of personnel – individuals from outside the army’s traditional power base. This refects the reshuffe of the elites that happened during AKP’s rule. However, due to the fact that the TSK are a highly complex structure and the political situation both in Turkey itself and in its neighbourhood is tense, the military needs to retain its signif- icance within the state system. Military actions are being carried out in northern Syria and in the south-eastern part of Turkey. In a situation of profound distrust between the political leadership and the military, the government is trying to impact the internal divisions within the TSK by favouring anti-Western, pro-Russian and nationalist groups. At the same time, it is consolidating the interior ministry’s structures, which could potentially defend it against an- other possible coup. It is also forming voluntary structures subordinated to it. This means that the process of the armed forces’ reconstruction and redefnition of their role in the system, alongside the ultimate creation of a new army, are markedly elevating the potential for inter- nal conficts and translating into a weakening of Turkey’s institutional ties with the West by gradually weakening its involvement in NATO. The planned purchase of S-400 systems from Russia, which the government intends to use to defend itself against its own army, is another manifestation of this trend. TSK – the institutional core of the Turkish Republic The signifcance of the armed forces for the po- litical system of contemporary Turkey is deter- mined by the central role they have unceasingly played in the Turkish state since the frst half of the 19th century. The issue is multifaceted and cannot merely be reduced to the role of ‘the guardian of secularism’, the mantle which the TSK have traditionally assumed in the Republic. Due to its strong Kemalist identity, the military has traditionally gathered political, clerical and economic elites, as well as opinion-forming groups around it. In this way it has served as a keystone of the system as a whole, in which political hegemony (combined with an econom- ic and cultural one) was held by elites stemming