Civil -Military relations İn Turkey: February 28th 1997 & April 27th 2007 processes

The relation between military and politics and how this relations should be are important topics in political philosophy. The military influence on politics and military interruptions have been seen after the transition to a multi-party system in Turkey. This thesis explains the relation between military and politics conseptually, examines the details of civil-military relations in Turkey, discuss the military interruptions of democracy, analyzes the postmodern coup and memorandums (February 28th process and April 27th ememorandum) which are different forms of classic military coups. First chapter of the article explains important concepts and includes the definitions of basic concepts like democracy, political culture, military coup, memorandum, militarism, praetorianism. Second chapter of the article examines historical, political, economical and legal background of military coups in order to explain relations between military and politics in Turkey. This chapter also includes the processes of military coups happened in late Ottoman Empire period to Turkey's May 27th 1960, March 12th 1971 and September 12th 1980 coups in chronological order. Third chapter of the article analyzes the causes, process and aftermath events of the February 28th 1997 coup. Fourth and the last chapter of this article analyzes the causes, process and following events of April 27th 2007 military intervention and the reforms happenned in relations between military and politics. The article concludes with the analysis of the civil-military relations in Turkey. Literature review is the main searching method in this thesis. Primary sources, books, journals, articles, reports, translated articles, master's thesis and doctoral thesis are the main sources for literature review in this thesis. The article analyzes obtained informations with cause and effect relationship. All the interpretations in this thesis are faithful to original sources. KEYWORDS: Military Coups, Postmodern Coup, E-memorandum, Democracy.