Ataturk and military culture: What Ataturk says about war, soldiering andcivil-military relations?

The founder of Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has a unique place for the Turkish military culture. However, this commitment has mostly remained symbolic and the military has acted highly different to what Ataturk had desired. Following his death in 1938, the military claimed a guardianship duty to preserve Ataturk's secular republic. They implemented periodic interventions against democratically elected governments. Yet indeed, Ataturk had been known with his critical stance against military interventions. He had frequently emphasized the importance of civilian supremacy. Indeed, with these periodic interventions, there emerged a paradox between the military implementations and Ataturk's ideas. To elaborate this paradox, this paper will compare Ataturk's opinions with military implementations. To do this, the paper will firstly analyze Ataturk's ideas about war, soldiering and civil-military relations. Secondly, the paper will define the relationship between military culture and Kemalism. Lastly, the paper will make a general evaluation of Turkish civil-military relations.