Unpacking Turkeys Unilateral Military Interventions: Law, Politics and Security Identity

Military interventions, be it for humanitarian purposes or in the UN context, have never ceased to be a contested issue both in academic and policy circles. The scholarly debates regarding foreign armed interventions have generally focused on the purposes and ethics of interventions; their success or failure; effectiveness and effects in the long-term; and political and strategic interests involved. Going beyond the existing literature based on normative assumptions on one hand, and political realist analyses on the other, this chapter will argue that unilateral military interventions have been far more complex and requires a nexus thinking, which links both law, politics and identity. Assuming that norms, power and security identity are interconnected in the context of military interventions, the chapter will focus on the Turkish unilateral uses of force, which have become a frequent instrument of Turkish policies abroad. In line with this book’s theoretical standing, this chapter will build on a critical constructivist approach and critical security studies literature, and will argue that military intervention is a political action that takes place in a legal and cultural context, discursively framed and practiced in security terms. It will contend that the invocation of security discourses such as “self-defence” and “fight against terrorism” bestows the government the right to use all necessary means to eliminate a threatening development and/or incident. Within this context, it will inquire how Turkish government in roughly last 20 years has redefined Turkish self, reframed Turkish interests, and contested the order in and out of Turkey. Thus, this chapter will seek answers to the following questions: 1) How was it possible for Turkish policy makers to position use of force as a key means of foreign policy? 2) In what ways has the Turkish policy-makers transformed republican security culture/identity? 3) To what extent does the redefined security culture/identity reflect and constitute Turkish political elites’ understanding of legality and legitimacy in foreign policy? I 4) In what ways, do law, culture and politics mutually constitute each other through Turkish practices of the use of force? To this end, the chapter will critically analyse the most recent Turkish military interventions, and contend that the security loaded discursive strategies and the practices of military interventions have been mutually constitutive. In return, military interventions constitute the legitimacy of the government in power at home, since the idea of security and the state are inherently interconnected. This chapter will be based on an understanding of security as a social and political concept that has temporal and spatial elements, and thus assumes that discourse and practice of security produces and reproduces particular orders.