The global order established after the fall of the Berlin Wall has long passed its expiration date. Far from addressing new crises, the current system itself has become a mechanism that generates problems. A transition to a new world order has become unavoidable. If today’s impasses are handled with brute force, as they were in the World Wars, the resulting destruction could be of cataclysmic proportions.
As in the past three centuries, Turkey finds itself on the brink of global transformation and conflict at perhaps its weakest point. Its social fabric is frayed, its economy collapsed, its military fragmented, and it is dragged down by a web of internal and external crises.
In Turkey, the system itself is a mechanism that produces and amplifies problems, relentlessly obstructing solutions. At the root of this lies the fact that the peoples of this geography never succeeded in organizing and founding a state; instead, those who established the state sought to construct a nation or people to fit it. This process of “state-building the nation” has continued for a century, ensuring a constant state of conflict.
Turkey was built as a unitary state — a structure based on the supremacy of the central authority. This raises the question: what exactly is the “center” of the state? In some unitary states like Turkey, alongside the formal institutions of the legislature, executive, and judiciary, there are other bodies — sometimes called the “state” or “deep state” — that steer or influence these institutions, often invisibly. Though ostensibly “for the people despite the people,” such structures inevitably turn into tools of domination by specific elites.
These states typically have a “secret constitution,” known in Turkey as the “Red Book” — officially, the National Security Policy Document. This document, known and enforced only by those “with a need to know,” effectively serves as an untouchable constitution, setting red lines and national myths that shape the country’s course, often without public understanding or consent.
While unitary systems resist both federal and universalist frameworks, the Ottoman Empire, though not unitary, adopted increasingly centralized governance under Sultan Mahmud II’s reforms. Paradoxically, this centralization hastened the empire’s collapse. In the Ottoman system, the state’s center was the palace — first Topkapı, later Yıldız — which housed the legislature, executive, and judiciary alike.
With the founding of the Turkish Republic, the center shifted from the palace to the Grand National Assembly (TBMM). The 1921 Constitution emphasized this, declaring that “the executive power and legislative authority are vested solely and genuinely in the Grand National Assembly, the true representative of the nation.” Even after the establishment of the presidential Çankaya Mansion, the TBMM remained the state’s core until 1960.
From 1923 to 1950, the TBMM was dominated by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which crushed dissent by shutting down rival parties and banning the Communist Party. In 1937, CHP’s six guiding principles — embodied in its emblem — were enshrined in the Constitution as “Kemalism,” defining the state’s official ideology.
The rise of the Democrat Party between 1950–60 marked a major power shift, prompting the military — which had not previously seen the TBMM as a threat — to intervene via the 1960 coup, allegedly to “secure” the state center. The post-coup constitution established the National Security Council (MGK), through which the military effectively ran the state from 1960 to 2003.
From the moment he came to power, Erdoğan sought to redesign and control the state center. After 2010, these efforts intensified. While reforms were sold as democratization, Europeanization, and the dismantling of military tutelage, they also laid the groundwork for building a new, Erdoğan-centered order. One key element was transforming the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) into an alternative power center, bolstered by new appointments and expanded legal powers. Hakan Fidan’s 2010 appointment as intelligence chief marked the first step; Hulusi Akar’s controversial rise to army chief consolidated Erdoğan’s control over both institutions.
The Roboski massacre — where 34 civilians were bombed by F-16s based on faulty MİT intelligence — was the first major sign of this new order. Some even speculate whether MİT deliberately set a trap for the military. Similar questions surround the 2021 Gare operation, where 13 security personnel held by the PKK were killed.
In 2012, the military’s electronic intelligence systems were handed over to MİT, blinding the armed forces. Other security services — police, gendarmerie, and intelligence units — were gradually subordinated to MİT’s National Intelligence Coordination Board. By 2014, MİT agents were shielded from investigation or prosecution, granting the agency unprecedented impunity. For example, even the parliamentary committee investigating the 2016 coup attempt could not summon a key informant who had transferred to MİT — a level of untouchability that once belonged only to the military.
Today, it is fair to say that the state center has shifted from the military to MİT. While soldiers, from sergeants to generals, can have their homes raided on live television, no one dares touch even the most junior MİT officer. Erdoğan’s selection of Akar now seems clear in hindsight.
With MİT as the new nerve center of the Turkish state, the agency has a hand in everything: from appointing university rectors and research assistants, to approving loan recipients and business contracts, to steering political parties, labor movements, and religious organizations. While Erdoğan’s signature may be on every decision, the decisive role belongs to MİT. Remarkably, even opposition parties have turned to MİT when seeking political clearance, as seen when Meral Akşener appealed to the agency for a clean record for one of her provincial leaders.
Just as the military once reshaped political life through purges and coups, MİT today reshapes parties (remember the CHP and MHP tape scandals) and social movements. The leaked “Diyanet secret report” is just one example of its reach.
While these shifts serve Erdoğan’s desire to protect his regime, two factors likely drove the transfer of power from the military and parliament to MİT: the growing influence of Kurds in the legislature and the perceived Gülenist infiltration in the army. Turkey’s deep state — the old İttihatçı mindset — is thus working to insulate the state from the public and preserve its grip on power.
They believe they are safeguarding the founding pillars of nationalism and secularism. And while they currently ally with Erdoğan against the Kurds and Gülenists, they may one day discard him as well.
The new Turkey is, in effect, a “mukhabarat state” — an intelligence-driven regime. The gulf between state and society, always wide, has now deepened. Mutual distrust has led to a surge in police-state tactics, which in turn erodes public confidence. Turkey now increasingly resembles Syria’s intelligence state, and a similar spiral of chaos is not unthinkable.
As the world teeters on the edge and arms feverishly for a third world war, Turkey faces its own moment of reckoning, driven by a crisis of paradigm, vulnerability, and authoritarian unionist (İttihatçı) incompetence. And tragically, those in power no longer seem capable of changing course.
