Turkish Armed Forces

The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF; , TSK) are the military forces of the Republic of Turkey. The TAF consist of the Land Forces, the Naval Forces and the Air Forces. The Chief of the General Staff is the Commander of the Armed Forces. In wartime, the Chief of the General Staff acts as the Commander-in-Chief on behalf of the President, who represents the Supreme Military Command of the TAF on behalf of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.Federal Research Division, Turkey: A Country Study, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, , p. 337. Coordinating the military relations of the TAF with other NATO member states and friendly states is the responsibility of the General Staff.

The history of the Turkish Armed Forces began with its formation after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish military perceived itself as the guardian of Kemalism, the official state ideology, especially of its emphasis on secularism. After Soviet threats to the Turkish Straits after the Second World War, large amounts of U.S. aid initiated a modernization process. The Turkish Army sent the Turkish Brigade to fight in the Korean War. Towards the end of the 1980s, a second restructuring process was initiated. The Turkish Armed Forces participate in an EU Battlegroup under the control of the European Council, the Italian-Romanian-Turkish Battlegroup. The TAF also contributes operational staff to the Eurocorps multinational army corps initiative of the EU and NATO.

Turkey is the second largest standing military force in NATO, after the United States. Turkey is one of five NATO member states which are part of the nuclear sharing policy of the alliance, together with Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

As of 2026 Turkey's military budget is $27.34 billion (or 2.33% of GDP), an increase of 30% compared with 2025. The Turkish armed forces employ 481,000 active personnel and 380,000 reserve personnel.

History

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 (Istanbul).

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 populationsa continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I.*

Levon Marashlian, "Finishing the Genocide: Cleansing Turkey of Armenian Survivors, 1920–1923," in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), pp. 113–145: "Between 1920 and 1923, as Turkish and Western diplomats were negotiating the fate of the Armenian Question at peace conferences in London, Paris, and Lausanne, thousands of Armenians of the Ottoman Empire who had survived the massacres and deportations of World War I continued to face massacres, deportations, and persecutions across the length and breadth of Anatolia. Events on the ground, diplomatic correspondence, and news reports confirmed that it was the policy of the Turkish Nationalists in Ankara, who eventually founded the Republic of Turkey, to eradicate the remnants of the empire's Armenian population and finalize the expropriation of their public and private properties."

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.Zürcher, Erik Jan. The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement, 1905–1926. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984. 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 Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia on paper to restore order and enforce the armistice; however, Mustafa Kemal was on a secret mission as an enabler and eventually became the leader of the 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).Harp Akademileri Komutanlığı, Harp Akademilerinin 120 Yılı, İstanbul, 1968, pp. 26, 46.

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. The 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 parliament, and signing the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty that the Ankara government declared illegal.

In the ensuing war, irregular militia defeated the French forces in the south, and demobilized units went on to partition Armenia with Bolshevik forces, resulting in the Treaty of Kars, signed in 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. However, İsmet Pasha's organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to attack Ankara, stretching their supply lines. On 3 August 1921, the GNA fired İsmet Pasha from the post of Minister of National Defence because of his failure at the Battle of Afyonkarahisar–Eskişehir and on 5 August, just before the Battle of Sakarya, appointed Mustafa Kemal as commander-in-chief of the Army of the GNA. The Turks checked the Greek advance in the Battle of Sakarya and counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the Turkish capture of Smyrna and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of the Armistice of Mudanya.

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, and the Ottoman sultanate was subsequently abolished. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. Further consequences of the war included a population exchange between Greece and Turkey as well as reforms carried out by newly-elected president Mustafa Kemal that developed Turkey into a modern and secular nation-state. The Armenian Genocide, along with the killing of Assyrians and the expulsion of the Anatolian Greeks, laid the ground for the more homogeneous nation-state that arose from the ashes of the empire. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was formally abolished.

First Kurdish rebellions

There were several rebellions southeastern Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s, the most important of which was 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.

World War II

Turkey remained neutral until the final stages of World War II. In the initial stage of World War II, Turkey signed a treaty of mutual assistance with Great Britain and France.See Murat Metin Hakki, "Surviving the Pressure of the Superpowers: An Analysis of Turkish Neutrality During the Second World War ", Chronicon 3 (1999–2007) 44–62, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, But after the fall of France, the Turkish government tried to maintain an equal distance with both the Allies and the Axis. Following Nazi Germany's occupation of the Balkans, upon which the Axis-controlled territory in Thrace and the eastern islands of the Aegean Sea bordered Turkey; the Turkish government signed treaties of friendship and non-aggression with Germany on 18 June 1941.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Turkish government sent a military delegation of observers under Lieutenant General Ali Fuat Erden to Germany and the Eastern Front.Hüseyin Hüsnü Emir Erkilet, Şark cephesinde gördüklerim, Hilmi Kitabevi, 1943. Following the German retreat from the Caucasus, the Turkish government then moved closer to the Allies and Winston Churchill secretly met with İsmet İnönü at the Adana Conference in Yenice Train Station in southern Turkey on 30 January 1943, with the intent of persuading Turkey to join the war on the side of the Allies. A few days before the start of Operation Zitadelle in July 1943, the Turkish government sent a military delegation under General Cemil Cahit Toydemir to Russia and observed the exercises of the 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion and its equipment.Johannes Glasneck, Inge Kircheisen, Türkei und Afghanistan, Dt. V. d. Wissenschaften, 1968, p. 139. But after the failure of Operation Zitadelle, the Turkish government participated in the Second Cairo Conference in December 1943, where Franklin D. Roosevelt, Churchill and İnönü reached an agreement on issues regarding Turkey's possible contribution to the Allies. On 23 February 1945, Turkey joined the Allies by declaring war against Germany and Japan, after it was announced at the Yalta Conference that only the states which were formally at war with Germany and Japan by 1 March 1945 would be admitted to the United Nations.Mustafa Aydın, SAM, "Turkish Foreign Policy: Framework and Analysis", Center for Strategic Research, 2004, p. 47.

Korean War

Turkey participated in the Korean War as a member state of the United Nations and sent the Turkish Brigade to South Korea, and suffered 731 losses while displaying exceptional valor in combat. On 18 February 1952, Turkey became a member of NATO.For some of the NATO command structure discussions re-entry of Turkey, see Sean Maloney, Securing Command of the Sea, Masters' thesis, University of New Brunswick, 1992 The South Korean government donated a war memorial for Turkish soldiers who fought and died in Korea. The Korean pagoda was donated in 1973 for the 50th anniversary of the Turkish Republic and is located in Ankara.

Cyprus