Abstract:

The Turkish State of Emergency originated following the military coup in 12 September 1980 and lasted until the end of November 2002. Initially, the emergency state created a different set of administrative and legal rules in the areas where it was mainly implemented in the Kurdish populated regions in Turkey. However, the suspension of the norm under the emergency state that lasted almost for two decades caused a perpetuating shift in the civil and military administrations in Turkey. Moreover, it caused the emergency state to be not solely a legal and administrative implementation but a continuous reflection of Turkish reason of state when it faces a crisis. This continuous reflection is also apparent in Turkey’s national threat perception and attribution of civil and military roles in public and political spheres. The attribution of civil and military roles under the emergency state, thus, both blurred the line between the distinct civil and military roles, as well as, the line between the norm and exception. In order to trace back the origins of the idea on the state of emergency in Turkey and derive the necessary empirical argument in the theoretical discussion, this article analyzes minutes of the National Security Board (National Security Council) and Consultation Assembly (Consulting Council) during the relevant discussions. In order to explore the impact of the state of emergency on the successor civil governments, the article also analyzes relevant parliamentary minutes and statements. Moreover, this study makes an analytical survey of the Turkish emergency state and highlights that, due to the long course of emergency rule; the line between 'exception' and 'norm' became blurred. We also focus on how the Turkish Armed Forces stepped into the civilian domain to restore state authority while the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) advanced its military campaign against the Turkish state in the 1980s and 1990s. We also shed light on the changing military tactics, strategies and their consequences by referring to the emergency of state in the early 1990s. We argued that Turkish General Staff was the practical state institution to decide upon the declaration of the state of emergency through the National Security Council. At the end of the paper we claim that the emergency state emerged as not solely a legal and administrative implementation but a continuous reflection of Turkish reason of state when it faces a crisis.

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