The Turkish Army traces its origin to the
Ottoman Army. A theory accepted officially was that the Ottoman Armed Forces had been founded in 1363, when the Pençik corps (the predecessor of the
Janissary Corps, the first full time professional military force established in Europe after the
Roman legions) had been formed and, in this context, on 28 June 1963, it celebrated the 600th anniversary of its foundation. In the same year, one of the prominent
Pan-Turkists,
Nihal Atsız, asserted that the Turkish Army had been founded in 209 BC, when
Modu Chanyu of the
Xiongnu is thought to have formed an army based on the decimal system. In 1973, when the Turkish Army celebrated the 610th anniversary of its foundation, Nihal Atsız published his claim again. After the
1980 Turkish coup d'état, the Turkish Army formally adopted the date 209 BC as its year of foundation. The foundations of the modern Turkish Army were laid during the reign of Sultan
Mahmud II. After the Janissary Corps, which was outdated and could not adapt to the times, was abolished with the
Auspicious Incident (15 June 1826), Sultan Mahmud II ordered the establishment of
Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye (Victorious Soldiers of the Prophet Muhammad). By embarking on a rapid modernization effort that took the military and technical developments in Europe as an example, the new army decree was approved by Sultan Mahmud II on 7 July 1826, and the Asâkir-i Mansûre-i Muhammediyye Army, the modern army of the empire, was established. After this date, Sultan Mahmud II accelerated his reform efforts and started to establish schools and institutions to support the new army. The
Seraskerlik institution, a high military command, was established by Mahmud II in 1826 to fulfill the duties of the commander-in-chief, and on 14 March 1827,
Imperial Military School of Medicine, which is the basis of Turkey's first
medical faculty and modern military hospital
Gülhane Training and Research Hospital, was established to meet the army's need for physicians and surgeons.
Harbiye Military School was later established in 1834 as a modern officer school modeled on the French and Prussian armies, taught by European instructors. The name of the army was changed to
Asâkir-i Nizâmiye-i Şâhâne (Royal Regular Soldiers) by Sultan
Abdülmecid on 14 June 1843. From this date onwards, the army began to be known simply as the
Nizami Ordu (Regular Army).
Kuleli Military High School was opened in 1845. In 1848,
Erkan-ı Harbiye Military Academy was opened to train Staff Officers. In 1880,
Erkân-ı Harbiye-i Umûmiye Riyaseti, which is equivalent to today's
General Staff, was established. In 1908, the name of the Seraskerlik institution was changed to the
Ministry of War and the reform efforts reached their peak.
War of Independence The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns waged by the
Turkish National Movement after parts of the
Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in
World War I. These campaigns were directed against
Greece in the west,
Armenia in the east,
France in the south,
loyalists and separatists in various cities, and
British and Ottoman troops around Constantinople (İstanbul). The ethnic demographics of the modern
Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier
Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian
Rum people. The Turkish National Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native
Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and
other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%. While
World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the
Armistice of Mudros, the
Allied Powers occupied parts of the empire and sought to prosecute former members of the
Committee of Union and Progress and others involved in the Armenian genocide. According to the terms of the agreement, it was decided to limit the number of soldiers in the Turkish army to 50 thousand. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the
Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. This crisis reached a head when
Sultan Mehmed VI dispatched
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a well-respected and high-ranking general, to
Anatolia to restore order. With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and
Edmund Allenby, he assigned
Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the
Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in
Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919. Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the
Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. He was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. His new assignment gave him effective
plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government. Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of
Turkish National Movement against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and Christian minorities. On 3 May 1920,
Birinci Ferik Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak) was appointed the Minister of National Defence, and
Mirliva İsmet Pasha (İnönü) was appointed the Minister of the Chief of General Staff of the
government of the Grand National Assembly (GNA). The modern Turkish Army has its foundations in nine remnant Ottoman Army corps. In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies persuaded
Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos to launch an expeditionary force into Anatolia and
occupy Smyrna (İzmir), beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist
Government of the Grand National Assembly (GNA), led by Mustafa Kemal, was established in
Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was backing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople into suspending the
Constitution, shuttering the
Chamber of Deputies, and signing the
Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty that the "
Ankara government" declared illegal. In the ensuing war,
Kuva-yi Milliye irregular militia defeated the
French forces in the south, and undemobilized units went on to
partition Armenia with
Bolshevik forces, resulting in the
Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war was known as the
Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. The Turkish military units that were hastily formed in 1920 consisted of 20 infantry divisions in eight corps. The number of soldiers in the units was small. The divisions consisted of three infantry regiments and one artillery regiment. (
Büyük Millet Meclisi Ordusu) launched the general offensive known as the Great Offensive (
Büyük Taarruz) against the
Greek forces around
Kara Hisâr-ı Sâhip.
Nurettin Pasha's
1st Army and
Yakup Şevki Pasha's
2nd Army encircled the main body of Major General
Nikolaos Trikoupis's group and defeated it near
Dumlupınar.
Fahrettin Pasha's V Cavalry Corps entered
Smyrna (
İzmir) on September 9, 1922.
Şükrü Naili Pasha's
III Corps entered
Constantinople (
Istanbul) peacefully on October 6, 1923. Subsequent to the founding of the
Republic of Turkey, the Army of the GNA was reorganized. According to the "Hazar Project" dated August 5, 1923, the Turkish Land Forces were organized as three army inspectorates, nine corps, 18 infantry divisions, and three cavalry divisions, and this structure continued until the 1970s. Later, after the tensions with Greece, it was decided to establish a
fourth army. the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the
abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with
Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the
Ottoman caliphate was also abolished. s on their rifles
First Kurdish rebellions and lead-up to Second World War There were several
Kurdish rebellions in the
South-East of Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s, the most important of which were the 1925
Sheikh Said rebellion and the 1937
Dersim rebellion. All were suppressed by the TAF, sometimes involving large-scale mobilisations of up to 50,000 troops. Associated atrocities against civilians include the
Zilan massacre. In 1935,
Turkey purchased 60
T-26 modified 1933 light tanks from the USSR (also, two twin-turreted T-26 mod. 1931 were presented to the Turkish government in 1933–1934), along with about 60
BA-6 armoured cars to form the 1st Tank Battalion of the 2nd Cavalry Division at
Lüleburgaz. The Armoured Brigade of the Turkish Army consisted of the 102nd and the 103rd Companies armed with the T-26 mod. 1933 tanks (four platoons in a company, five tanks in the platoon) at the end of 1937. The reserve group of the brigade had 21 T-26 tanks also. At the beginning of 1940, the Turkish Army had the Armoured Brigade in
Istanbul, which belonged to the 1st Army, and the 1st Tank Battalion, which belonged to the 3rd Army. Turkish T-26 tanks were taken out of service in 1942. The Annual Report of the British Embassy in Ankara for 1937 said that the Army's manpower included 22 divisions but "progress in mechanization was slow." The shortage of tanks and other armoured vehicles was marked: "units are known to have been transported from Thrace to Anatolia for manoeuvres and reviews." The total strength of the forces was given as 120,000. Exercises were held in the
İzmir area to practice defence against a landing from a hostile country "tacitly recognized as Italy." Separately, when war broke out, another report said that the motorised transport of the army consisted of 28 different types of old lorries.
World War II During
World War II, Turkey mobilized more than a million personnel. The
Turkish Army order of battle in 1941 shows a number of formations. Turkey had been severely stretched by its actions in World War I and the leadership wished to avoid such a costly commitment. The Army was also poorly equipped and somewhat rigidly out-of-date. Neutral for most of the war, Turkey declared war on
Nazi Germany in February 1945, after being given an ultimatum by the
Allies of World War II to do so by March 1, 1945, if Turkey wanted a seat in the future
United Nations.
Cold War era In August 1947, the
American Military Mission for Aid to Turkey (later prefixed Joint, thus becoming JAMMAT) was established in
Ankara. Hastened by the Soviet threat during the
Turkish Straits crisis, large amounts of United States military aid began arriving. JAMMAT began giving significant amounts of advice on the reorganisation and modernisation of the Turkish Army. In December 1948, the Turkish Army was described as three armies, 13 army corps, 35 infantry divisions; three cavalry divisions, six armoured brigades, and four fortress commands at 33% of war strength; and 309,300 strong. There were also additional security troops. The command of the Turkish Army was formed on July 1, 1949, and Nuri Yamut was appointed as the first
commander of the Turkish Army. After Turkey joined NATO, U.S.
M24 Chaffee light tanks (238) and
M47 Patton medium tanks began arriving.
Korean War The Turkish Army participated in the
Korean War as a member state of the
United Nations. Of the 5,000 soldiers of the
Turkish Brigade there, 731 were killed. They fought in the
Battle of Wawon where it was credited with saving the U.S.
2nd Infantry Division from encirclement. The brigade also fought at
Gimnyangjang-ni, '
Operation Ripper,' or the Fourth Battle of Seoul, and the
Battle of the Hook. "By 1960, with the military already deeply involved in political affairs because of the government's use of martial law to enforce its policies, the senior command concluded that the government had departed from Kemalist principles and that the republic was in imminent danger of disintegration. On May 27, 1960, Turkish army units, under the direction of the Chief of General Staff,
Cemal Gürsel, seized the principal government buildings and communications centers and arrested President Bayar, Prime Minister Menderes, and most of the DP representatives in the Grand National Assembly, as well as a large number of other public officials. Those arrested were charged with abrogating the constitution and instituting a dictatorship. The coup was accomplished with little violence and was accepted quickly throughout the country." The Turkish Land Forces became deeply involved in
Counter-Guerrilla covert preparation for resistance. Counter-Gurrilla was the Turkish component of the US/NATO "
Operation Gladio" covert preparations against any Soviet/Warsaw Pact occupation of Western Europe. During the 1970s, the
Special Warfare Department was run by General
Kemal Yamak. In his memoirs he stated that the United States had set aside around $1m worth of support; part munitions, part money. This arrangement continued until 1973–1974, when Yamak decided the munitions did not meet the department's needs. Yamak wrote the Americans said that the U.S. were footing the bill, and therefore could choose the munitions. Yamak left the meeting and expressed his concerns to the
Chief of General Staff,
Semih Sancar, and the agreement was subsequently annulled.
Turkish invasion of Cyprus In July 1974,
Turkey landed substantial forces suddenly in
Cyprus. The invasion followed a coup organized by
EOKA-B and led by
Nikos Sampson who ousted the democratically elected Cypriot President
Archbishop Makarios III in order to establish
Enosis (Union) between Cyprus and
Greece. The coup was backed by the
Greek military junta in Athens. The 1974
Turkish military operations in Cyprus can be divided into two distinct Turkish offensives, the first being "Atilla 1", which commenced in the early hours of 20 July 1974, with an amphibious landing force, directed by the
6th Corps, forming a beachhead at
Kyrenia's Five Mile Beach. It comprised only infantry troops, but was supported by rolling air and naval artillery attacks, and met with limited resistance from the
Cyprus National Guard, which was in disarray as a result of the 15 July 1974 coup. The majority of fighting ceased on 23 July, though sporadic clashes continued after this date until 14 August. "Atilla 1" successfully achieved its objective of forming a bridgehead with the
Turkish Cypriot enclave of Agyrta-Nicosia. The second Turkish offensive began on August 14, 1974, as Greek and Turkish Cypriot representatives met in
Geneva to discuss the situation on the island. Though a United Nations ceasefire was in place (several had already been disregarded), The conflict in Cyprus resulted in the de facto division of the island between the
Turkish Cypriot controlled north and the
Greek Cypriot controlled south. Turkey still maintains troops in Cyprus, since a political solution could not yet be achieved and since many members of the Turkish Cypriot community fear a return to the intercommunal violence which occurred between 1963 and 1974.
Historical units and structure (1828) in
Istanbul is the headquarters of the
First Army of the Turkish Land Forces. The modern Turkish Army has its foundations in nine remnant Ottoman Army corps after the
Armistice of Mudros at the end of
World War I. After the rise of
Turkish resistances,
Kâzım Pasha's
XV Corps was the only corps which at that time had any combat value. The Turkish Army has since the mid-1960s operated on a corps-division-brigade system, with a varying number of divisions and brigades assigned to a corps. The IISS Military Balance 1966–67 recorded a total strength of 360,000, with 16 infantry divisions (14 NATO assigned), 4 armoured brigades (Zırhlı tugay) with
M47 Patton tanks, armoured cavalry regiments, and two parachute battalions. It appears that infantry training divisions included the
57th in
Manisa, which commanded between the years 1965 to 1967. At some point in the 1960s the Army apparently utilised the
Pentomic structure for a period, before adopting the American ROAD divisional organisation. The U.S.
Area Handbook for the Republic of Turkey, written by Thomas Roberts, said in late 1968 that the army had 425,000 men (p. 385), three field armies (First: Istanbul, Second: Konya, Third:
Erzurum), thirteen infantry divisions, one armoured division (with M-47s and M-48s), four armoured brigades (
M47 Patton tanks), two armoured cavalry regiment, two mechanised infantry brigades, and two parachute battalions. There was a trained reserve of 450,000. In 1971, the Army with the other branches of the Armed Forces imposed the
military memorandum to change the civilian government's policies. According to official British military reports in 1974, the Turkish Army included the
First Army (
2nd,
3rd,
5th, and
15th Corps),
Second Army (
4th,
6th, and
7th) and
Third Army (
8th,
9th and
11th Corps). There were also three
Interior Zones with three recruit training divisions and four recruit training brigades. For a long period, these formations were grouped under the
NATO headquarters
Allied Land Forces South-Eastern Europe (LANDSOUTHEAST) in İzmir, led by a Turkish Army four-star General. In mid-1982, the Army had two mechanised infantry divisions, and fourteen Infantry Divisions, six armoured brigades, and four mechanised brigades, with 3,000
M48 MBTs, 500
M47 MBTs, as well as 50 Leopard 1A3s, plus another 20 on order, for a total of 3550 main battle tanks. There were another 100
M26 Pershing heavy tanks. Until the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact in 1990, the Army had a static defense mission of countering any possible attack on Thrace by Soviet/Warsaw Pact forces and deterring Greece, and any attack by the Soviet
Transcaucasus Military District on the Caucasus frontier. The
Third Army was responsible for holding the Caucasus line with about a third of the Army's total strength of one armoured, two mechanised, and fourteen infantry divisions (1986 data). Soviet forces immediately facing the Third Army in the Caucasus were the
31st Army Corps in the
Georgian SSR and the
7th Guards Army in the
Armenian SSR. Together the 31st Corps and 7th Guards Army had six divisions (roughly three Category "B" and three "C") plus some immobile fortified defence areas. Nigel Thomas's
NATO Armies 1949–87, published in 1988, attributed the
2nd,
3rd Corps,
5th, and
15th Corps to the First Army; the
6th and
7th Corps to the Second Army, the
4th,
8th, and 9th Corps to the Third Army, and the 11th Corps to the
Aegean Army. He wrote that the 11th Corps comprised the 28th and 39th Divisions. "During 1992 the army introduced a sweeping reorganization, shifting from a predominantly divisional and regimental structure to one based on corps and brigades. The personnel strength of the army was reduced in 1994 to about 393,000 (including about 345,000 conscripts)." When the General Staff attempted to shift 120,000 troops to the frontier with Iraq in 1990, they discovered that there were serious deficiencies in the Army's ability to respond to crises that could erupt suddenly in distant regions. After the fall of the
Soviet Union, LANDSOUTHEAST in İzmir became Joint Command Southeast for a period; it became
Allied Air Component Command Izmir in 2004. The headquarters' land-focused roots were revived in the 2010s when NATO's two air commands were reduced into one (at Ramstein, Germany) and
Allied Land Command was established at the site. Lieutenant General Zafer Özkan, the last commander of the 15th Corps in Izmit, retired after serving for two years in August 2005. At that time, the corps was converted to the level of a division. The TLF has seen frequent recent combat within Turkey and beyond its borders. It is fighting a conflict in south-eastern
Turkey against the prolonged Kurdish
PKK insurgency, and monitoring
ISIS, Russian intervention in Syria, the Kurdish
YPG, as well as multiple other elements, in Syria. The TLF took responsibility for Kabul from the British soon after the beginning of the
International Security Assistance Force deployments in 2002–2003. It continued to command
Regional Command Capital in Kabul for a long period.
Updating equipment MBT IFV MRAP Towards the end of the 1980s, a restructuring and modernization process has been initiated by the Turkish Armed Forces, which still continues today. The final goal of
Turkey is to produce indigenous military equipment and to become increasingly self-sufficient in terms of military technologies. The then-Army Commander,
Gen. Büyükanıt, said of further modernization efforts in 2006: {{Blockquote The targets for our land forces are to be realized through 'Forces 2014' project. This project aims to shrink the forces without undermining its combat capabilities. On the contrary, under the plan, the efficiency of the force will increase. Within this period of time, the Land Forces will gradually decrease by 20 to 30 percent in terms of the number of personnel and forces formations. It will be equipped with modern arms and war devices as the distinct features of this new formation. Thus the battle capability will be given to high-ranking brigades. Moreover, with the Combat Zone Management System, the land tactical map will be numerically formed in real-time or close to real-time and a constant tracking will be provided. At present, the primary
main battle tanks of the Turkish Army are the
Leopard 2A4 and the
M60T. There are also around 400
Leopard 1 and 750
M60 Patton variants in service (excluding the M60T which were upgraded with the 120 mm
MG253 guns), but the Turkish Army retains a large number of older vehicles. More than 2,800
M48 Pattons are still in service (upgraded with the 105 mm
M68 guns) though only around 1,300 of these are stored as reserve MBTs. The rest of the M48s are mostly transformed into other types of military vehicles (such as cranes, MBT recovery vehicles and logistical support vehicles) or used as spare parts resources. Turkey plans to build a total of 1,000 new
Otokar Altay MBTs, in four separate batches of 250 units, with the
MİTÜP Turkish National Tank Project. The tanks will be produced by the Turkish firm
Otokar, and share some of the systems that are used in the
K2 Black Panther main battle tank of
South Korea. Turkey has signed an agreement with the US to buy fourteen CH-47F Chinook helicopters, for $400 million. Because of financial constraints, however, the Undersecretariat for the Defense Industry, or SSM, Turkey's procurement agency, later wanted to only buy six CH-47Fs, five for the Army and one for the
Special Forces, leaving a decision on the remaining eight platforms for the future. Contract negotiations between the SSM, the U.S. government and Boeing were launched in July 2011. The length of
compulsory military service is six months for private and non-commissioned soldiers (the service term for reserve officers chosen among university or college graduates is 12 months). All male Turkish citizens over the age of 20 are required to undergo a one-month military training period, but they can obtain an exemption from the remaining five months of their mandatory service with a paid exemption option. Turkey has chosen a Chinese defence firm to co-produce a US$4 billion long-range air and missile defence system
FD-2000, rejecting rival bids from Russian, US and European firms. The Turkish defence minister announced the decision to award the contract to China Precision Machinery Import and Export Corp (CPMIEC) in a statement on Thursday, September 26, 2013. NATO has said that missiles should be compatible. In 2017, Turkey has bought the anti-aircraft
S-400 missile system from Russia. ==Structure==