Theories explaining civil-military relations and the military coup of September 12, 1980

The relation between the civilian and the military has historically been discussed in the political science literature since the 19th century. In this context, the security provided by the military is important for both individuals and states to defend themselves. Citizens within the state mechanism have given the monopoly of using weapons to the military institution in order to ensure their security. In countries like Turkey, which are on a journey towards democracy, the army positions itself as the main constituent element. For this reason, it emphasizes that the political will has a say in the field of duty as a result of its interventions. Classical civil-military relations theorists Samuel Huntington, Morris Janowitz and Wright Mills have been important sources of reference in analyzing civil-military relations in the Turkish literature. Peter Feaver and Rebecca Schiff, on the other hand, contrary to the classical approaches to civil-military relations, especially Schiff has expressed an opinion and conducted studies on the necessity of including the citizen in the system. In this sense, both theorists contribute to the literature on modern civil-military relations. Based on this situation, the main purpose of the study is to analyze the military coup of September 12, 1980, which occurred in Turkey and left deep traces in all areas of society, through the civil-military relationship theories of these five different theorists. In this thesis, historical analysis method and case study were used. Considering civil-military relations as an equation with two unknowns, the September 12 coup was analyzed in detail in order to examine the perspective of the military as well as the civilian political will. Considering the literature on civil-military relations within the limitations of the thesis, the research findings show that the September 12 coup has been explained with many theories and analyzed individually with different theories. Although the military coup of September 12, 1980 is a historical case, it is possible to reconsider it with new approaches.