Guardians or Oppressors: the Israeli and Turkish Armies in neoliberal contexts
Résumés
Dans cet essai, Uri Ben-Eliezer rappelle le caractère central de l’institution militaire au sein de l’État d’Israël et apporte deux interprétations possibles d’une telle importance dans un contexte néolibéral. Il esquisse au passage une comparaison avec le rôle et la place de l’armée en Turquie.
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1In this short essay, I will cover the issue of involvement of the Israeli army into politics, emphasizing its evolution over time, and questioning it within a mainly neoliberal context. It will be thus looked at in light of the democratic theory in general, and the civil-military relations paradigm in particular. In order to give some perspective to this issue, I will also add some comparative insights regarding army and politics between the Israeli and Turkish cases.
2Israel was constituted in 1948 as a result of war. This by itself would have been enough to endow the Israeli army with a unique place in the new state. But that was not all. Being aware of the difficulties that the new state would face, the Israeli leadership initiated two crucial steps: first, it constructed a new centralist and strong system of domination which was called “statism” (the Turkish equivalent for it being kemalism); and second, it gave the army a special place in the new state, turned it into an army- nation and making Israel a nation-in-arms (“military-nation” in your case).
- 1 See Uri Ben-Eliezer, “The Meaning of political participation in a non-liberal democracy. The Israel (...)
3Regarding statism and the question of nations in arm, both Israel and Turkey share a representation of armies as “the true guardians of the Republic”, although this led the Turkish army to intervene directly into the political life of the country, leading a number of military coups, something that never happened in Israel. One possible reason for this difference may lie within the contrasted natures of political regimes, a particularly complex issue as far as Israel is concerned. As opposed to Turkey, Israel has, from the beginning, been a democracy, at least procedurally and even more so; although never a liberal democracy. To explain the concept of non-liberal democracies simply, I would say it is a democracy which regards society as a community and the individual as one that is expected to contribute to the collective will1. Practically, there are free elections, multi-parties, interest groups and even free press, debates and controversies; but there is a consensus, and always conformity around basic values, and expectations from everybody to go along one major line. In this kind of a democracy, the distinction between state and society is blurring. There is no real civil society, just a mobilized society that is very attentive to the leadership demands, be it political or military. In Israel it meant that there was large consensus around the labor party, which ruled for many years.
4In non liberal democracies, the army usually does not have the need to intervene directly in politics but has a political influence in what that is called “security and foreign issues.” In Israel, the Labour party, under the charismatic leadership of Ben-Gurion, succeeded in creating a partnership with the army generals, which somewhat resembled the Soviet or the Chinese model of relations between the party and the army: namely, the army had an influence, especially in questions of security, and maybe foreign policy, but it did not have real power in internal politics. Moreover, the large army enjoyed a great number of privileges and prestige, and stood at the center of society, so much so, that generals or colonels did not need think about military coups.
5The 1980’s marked a big change in Israel. I am seeing this change into the context of what Huntington and Diamonds called “the third wave of democracy.” The 1973 Yom-Kippur war, the downfall of the Labour Party in 1977 and the changing government, for the first time in Israel’s history, the 1982 first Lebanon war, and most of all the economic crises with more than 400% inflation rate, brought along an institutional change in the 1980’s. It appeared through the downfall of statism, a change from a collectivistic democracy to a more liberal democracy, a decline in the nation-in-arms model, and the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) being less an army-nation and more a professional or neo-professional army, “smart and slim” as chief of staff Ehud Barak called it. This crisis of legitimacy turned Israel to be – almost within one night – neoliberal. And also to globalization, privatization, pluralism, an outburst of NGOs, social movements and identity politics, reflexive modernization, and a new culture which put the individual at the center. The end of the Cold war also accelerated these processes as in many other places.
6My purpose in the following is to present the consequences of this neoliberal transformation to the relations between army, society and politics in Israel.
7The societal outburst emerging from the bottom during the 1980’s created a drastic cleavage between two sectors: the civil society on the one hand, and the militaristic-religious society on the other. This was a drastic conflict around Israel’s collective identity, about its way of life, its organizing principles, and its future. The focus of the conflict was around the destiny of the territories Israel conquered in 1967. The militaristic and religious society regards them as part of the Biblical Israel, a sacred land that must not be given to the Palestinians at any price. Against this fundamentalist religious perspective stands a civil, secular, cosmopolitan and even a liberal society, which believes in negotiations, compromises, principles of real-politic, a two-state solution and a genuine peace.
8Indirectly, the division within Israeli society was connected to the IDF in as much as it created ambivalence towards the army which found itself in the middle of the internal political struggle. Already in the 1982 War, the army was condemned, for example, for its indirect involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Later on, IDF soldiers were many times accused for using severe methods of oppression towards the Palestinians. Generally, the army from the 1980’s on was regarded as an executer of a controversial policy, and as one that takes part in wars which are “choice wars” and not existential wars.
9My question is: if armies are losing some of their prestige in a post-hegemonic, neoliberal and more democratic era, if they are functioning in a state that is weaker and less sovereign (compared to the past), and in societies which are more divided and pluralistic, in what way these transformations may influence the army’s political role?
10I will give a possible answer to this question through the presentation of four elements retrieved from my analysis of the Israeli case.
- 2 Yagil Levi, From the “People’s Army” to the “Army of the Peripheries”, Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing (...)
11First, during the 1987 First Intifada, the settlers felt that the army did not protect them appropriately and that the Israeli society did not stand behind them. Following the instructions of their Rabbis, they started to see the IDF as a target and a destination for them. They have developed high motivation for the military service and many of them even had an army careers. Soon, the new phenomenon of religious officers made its presence felt. Their influence was so vast upon the IDF’s organization and spirit that Yagil Levi, an Israeli political scientist claimed that the IDF became “the army of the peripheries.”2
12Second, obviously, the army easily accepted this high motivated religious youth for military service and military careers, showing willingness to sacrifice their life for a national cause in times of wars or national conflicts. Even more so, the settlers movement induced a unique romance between the army and the ideological and religious movements, that certainly do not represent the whole Israeli society but whose political view stands at the center of a public severe controversy.
13Third, when Rabin signed the Oslo Agreements he was wise enough to involve the army in the negotiations and agreement. He knew that it would be difficult for him to convince the Israeli public for such a compromise without the army’s support, which indeed was given to him. Rabbin, however, was assassinated and the public, partly because of the Hamas blasts which occurred all over Israel in 1994 and 1996, voted for the right-winger Benyamin Netanyahu as new Prime Minister. In these years, the IDF was exposed to intense political criticism from Netanyhu and from some of his ministers rejecting the legitimacy of army involvement into the Oslo Agreements. The lesson was learned: since then, the IDF rallied the idea that peace with the Palestinians is impossible, that the Palestinians must not be trusted, that “the Arabs understand power only,” and that Israel must stay in the territories and support the settlements because they are essential to Israel’s security.
14Of course, such an army perspective was not presented as a manifest nor even clearly declared. But I have evidence that the IDF’s high echelons have adopted the militaristic-religious perspective to reality and how it had discursive and non-discursive practices of influence. This was particularly clear by the way two chiefs of staff, Shaul Mofaz and later on Moshe Ya’alon, suppressed the Intifada and supported the settlers during the second Intifada.
15Fourth, the settlers pushed hard upon the government to oppress the Palestinian upheaval drastically. Their slogan in those days was “Let the Army Win,” which of course was an indication for the romance that was already created between the army, the settlers and the religious circles, whose members were now high in the military pyramid and started to have some influence from within. As a result, when PM Sharon, decided that Israel must withdraw from Gaza, he removed Ya’alon from his position as Chief of Staff, and initiated a series of steps in order to avoid any military objection – especially from the religious soldiers – to the withdrawal. This political manoeuvring aiming at preventing military resistance is ample evidence of the changes that Israel has been going through in the neoliberal era.
16The subtext of these evolutions is that in the neoliberal context, the IDF could no longer retain its position as “the guardian of the nation.” But neither could it stay above internal politics as it did in the past. So, the army was dragged unnoticeably in this conflict. To say it differently, in the post-hegemonic period, when Israel is extremely divided, the army is expected to take sides.
17There are two main political results of this evolution.
18First, neoliberalism is not a promise that armies in the third wave of democratization will follow the Anglo-Saxon model of non-political armies. On the contrary: neoliberalism raises sometimes acute conflicts which leave the army no choice but to take part in them.
19Second, even though military coup is remaining an option in the third wave of democratic states, politics does not start or end with this question: .the examples I have brought in the previous pages are not related to military coup but to informal connections between the army and some societal groups, and the danger of this kind of relations to democracy since it puts the army not above and beyond internal politics but within it, thus making the army a possible instrument of segmental and narrowed political interests only.
20As for Turkey, my interpretation is that like in Israel, statism or kemalism does not exist in neoliberal or global, or post-modern Turkey, which is divided between religion and secularism, and that the position and prestige of the army is also in decline. If this is the case, I would not be surprised if the Turkish army – now or in the near future – is connected to some segments of the Turkish society and thus turning to be the carrier of segmental interests only.
21In such a scenario, the Turkish army does not express an irreversible withdrawal from the political arena as some scholars think. Based on my arguments about Israel, I believe we can be more skeptical about Turkey as well.
22So if a possible scenario, which already exists in Israel is a military political partnership on the basis of narrowed interests, the Israeli and Turkish armies are or would be neither “guardians,” nor “oppressors,” but guardians to some, and oppressors to others at the same time. Long are the days in which third waves democracies will succeed in avoiding a misuse of the new pluralism not necessarily by strong sectors of society on the one hand, or by the army on the other, but by a coalition of both.
Notes
1 See Uri Ben-Eliezer, “The Meaning of political participation in a non-liberal democracy. The Israeli experience”, Comparative Politics, vol. 25, no 4, July 1993, pp. 397-412.
2 Yagil Levi, From the “People’s Army” to the “Army of the Peripheries”, Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing House, 2007.
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Uri Ben-Eliezer, « Guardians or Oppressors: the Israeli and Turkish Armies in neoliberal contexts », Études arméniennes contemporaines, 3 | 2014, 127-132.
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Uri Ben-Eliezer, « Guardians or Oppressors: the Israeli and Turkish Armies in neoliberal contexts », Études arméniennes contemporaines [En ligne], 3 | 2014, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2014, consulté le 23 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/eac/598 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/eac.598
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