Lessons of Military Regimes and Democracy: The Turkish Case in a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This article aims to highlight the point that the nature of an outgoing authoritarian regime does matter for a new democracy. It discusses the Turkish case. The military interludes in Turkey have hardly been perceived as highly repressive by a significant proportion of civilians, nor have those periods been regarded as failures in political, economic, or military terms. This very experience with the military regimes was one of the reasons why civilians and soldiers have found it difficult to see democracy as the only game in town. The lack of a negative evaluation of military rule has helped civilians and soldiers alike to consider the military intervention as a low-cost option, and this belief generated deleterious consequences for the democratic regime.

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