İbrahim Efe

Ali Balcı’s Militarist State Discourse in Turkey is an adaption of the second chapter of his PhD thesis that surveyed the period between 1960 and 1983 in Turkey, which witnessed three military coups in row. Following Michel Foucault’s understanding of discourse, Balcı analyzes the militarist discourse between 1960 and 1983 that thoroughly dominated the state discourse. The main argument of the study is that the militarist discourse dominated all spheres in Turkey, from the state apparatus to society and the economy, in this period of history. Although the book can be read as part of the growing critical literature on civil-military relations in today’s Turkey, it differs from other studies by situating the dominant militaristic discourse within a specific period.