{"title":"Metin Gurcan","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"opening-the-black-box-book-metin-gurcan-9781912390151","title":"Opening the Black Box","description":"As any other modern militaries of the world, Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) is a complex organization relying on human force and other resources provided by society, being strictly founded on both an institutional setting and a framework of values, norms and rituals, and producing security with means and ways available to achieve the strategic objectives of Turkey. This inherent complexity reflecting the structure-culture-action nexus often means that scholars study modern militaries of the world with separated disciplines: Political Science, International Relations, Sociology, Anthropology, History, Administrative Sciences, Economics and Security Studies. With this book, the author's hope is to make these connections explicit to better understand the military change both within the Turkish military and the Turkish Civil-Military Relations (CMR) before and after failed military uprising on July 15, 2016. To better understand TAF's change before and after July 15, this book, which has benefited a lot from the author's PhD research, seeks to follow a pragmatic multi-method approach at different levels of analysis (i.e. data and method triangulation) and eclectic theoretical design which borrows theoretical elements from both institutionalist literature and literature on military sociology. In the book, relying on both his 20 yearlong insider experience within the Turkish military (both on the field and at the strategic corridors of the Turkish General Staff) and academic career, the author provides two snapshots, one about the pre-July 15 TAF and the Turkish CMR and other post-July 15 TAF and the Turkish CMR. It is worth noting that these snapshots have been enriched by empirical and qualitative scholarly insights seeking to examine the TAF as a security organization, TAF as a social institution and officership as a profession. In these snapshots, one would also find scholarly insights about the evolution of Turkish CMR over the last decade with a specific focus on the impact of the July 15 Military Uprising on the institutional identity of the Turkish military and the nature of the Turkish CMR.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737446293777,"sku":"NGR9781912390151","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53560807031057,"sku":"CIN1912390159G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1912390159.jpg?v=1751282456"},{"product_id":"what-went-wrong-in-afghanistan-book-metin-gurcan-9781911096009","title":"What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?","description":"Since 20 December 2001 - the date which marked the authorization of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to assist the Afghan Government - hundreds of thousands of coalition soldiers from around 50 different states have physically been and served in Afghanistan. Roughly 20 rotation periods have been experienced; billions of US dollars have been spent; and almost 3,500 coalition soldiers and 7,400 Afghani security personnel have fallen for Afghanistan. In this badly-managed success story, the true determiner of both tactical outcomes on the ground and strategic results was always the tribal and rural parts of Muslim-populated Afghanistan. Although there has emerged a vast literature on counterinsurgency theories and tactics, we still lack reliable information about the motivations and aspirations of the residents of Tribalised Rural Muslim Environments (TRMEs) that make up most of Afghanistan.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The aim of this book is to describe some on-the-ground problems of counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts in TRMEs - specifically in rural Afghanistan - and then to propose how these efforts might be improved. Along the way, it will be necessary to challenge many current assumptions about the conduct of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Most generally, the book will show how counterinsurgency succeeds or fails at the local level (at the level of tactical decisions by small-unit leaders) and that these decisions cannot be successful without understanding the culture and perspective of those who live in TRMEs.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Although engaging issues of culture, the author is not an anthropologist or an academic of any kind. He is a Muslim who spent his childhood in a TRME - a remote village in Turkey - and he offers his observations on the basis of 15 years' worth of field experience as a Turkish Special Forces officer serving in rural Iraq, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. Cultures in these areas are not the same, but there are sufficient similarities to suggest some overall characteristics of TRMEs and some general problems of COIN efforts in these environments. In summary, this book not only challenges some of the fundamentals of traditional counterinsurgency wisdom and emphasizes the importance of the tactical level - a rarely-studied field from the COIN perspective - but also blends the firsthand field experiences of the author with deep analyses. In this sense, it is not solely an autobiography, but something much more.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49738526818577,"sku":"NGR9781911096009","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1911096001.jpg?v=1751631501"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-metin-gurcan.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}