Contenu du sommaire : Pouvoir des armées, armées au pouvoir

Between 2011 and 2021, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia experienced political transformations following massive popular mobilisations, but also the rise of terrorism and the resurgence of Algerian-Moroccan rivalry. At the heart of these transformations, the relations between political institutions, armies and security forces have both participated in the unfolding of events and evolved under their pressure. Through the study of civil-military relations, this article explains the reasons why these political regimes have retained or regained their own identity: political- military oligarchy, pluralist monarchy and authoritarian nationalist- conservative presidentialism. They therefore continue to be part of a “durable authoritarianism”, notably through the action of the armed forces and internal security, signalling the failure of the various popular mobilisations aspiring to democratisation.

The security and intelligence services play a central role in the various countries of the Arab world. This article proposes to present their common characteristics, the first of which is the protection of the regime based on a culture of impunity, without neglecting the specificities of the different geographical areas and the conditions in which these States were born. We will then propose a typology of services according to their place within the government. Finally, we will look at their role – or not – during the 2011 protest movements.

This article aims to demonstrate the difficult relationship between the Turkish government and the military due to several coups carried out between the 1960s and 2016. The central hypothesis of this work is that after the failed coup of 2016, the relationship between the army and the government marks a break in favour of the latter, with the army gradually becoming a useful partner of the government especially in foreign policies. The army is now seen as a strategic lever for creating hard-power dynamics in the policy-making process according to the international context. This study shows that it is nevertheless difficult to affirm the establishment of normalised and coherent relations because ideological issues between the army and the government are still present.

This article reviews the process of politicization of the Tunisian army since January 2011. It shows how the political control evolves from a strict subordination of the army to politics under Bourguiba and Ben Ali to its interference in political disputes through its officers. The position of the senior military hierarchy in the authoritarian takeover of power by Kaïs Saïed reinforces this dynamic of politicization.

From the spring of 2019, in the context of the Algerian “Hirak”, the refusal of the Chief of Staff, General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, to accept a democratic transition beyond the current authoritarian Constitution, led to the emergence of the demand for a “civilian, non-military state”, a corollary of that of “popular sovereignty”. Although this slogan has its roots deep in the Algerian war, it was nonetheless demonised by the military authorities, to the point of consecrating the army as the guardian of the “vital and strategic interests of the country” (art. 30, para. 4), on the occasion of the constitutional amendment of 2020, in other words, the very negation of one of the Hirak's major claims.

“Al jaych houwa al hall” [“The army is the solution”]: this slogan highlights the crucial role occupied by the military institution within the Lebanese State. But if the army is the “solution”, particularly through the election of its commander-in-chief as President of the Republic, it is mainly due to the lack of legitimacy of the political elite. In a State that is on the verge of collapse, it appears as the only institution that can provide stability. This article looks at the sources of the institution's legitimacy and at the challenges that it faces due to the current crisis in Lebanon.

This article aims to investigate the role played by TV series in the communication apparatus developed by the Turkish State, particularly after the attempted coup of July 15th, 2016. While the research and consulting firm Konda describes Turkish society as a “television society” and series constitute an interface between the public domain and private life, a spy series broadcast on TRT1 featuring the Turkish armed forces in Syria is not insignificant. The aim is to legitimise the interventions, and more generally Turkey's Syrian policy, while showing the reorganisation of the security apparatus in favour of the intelligence services. Finally, the “Teşkilat” series is a a serial staging of the New Security Concept that reassures and familiarises the audience with a history-based rhetoric, and normalises violent practices authorised by the permanent state of exception established since 2016.

Ever since the current Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former general in the armed forces, came to power in 2014, the military has been gaining power, dominating several areas, including the economy, politics and the national narrative. Using primary material, such as newspapers and the political discourse of politicians and government representatives and media in Egypt, this paper will answer the following questions: What political, economic and discursive changes has Sisi made since 2014? How has this contributed to building a dominant military society? Using Anouar Abdel-Malek's description and analysis of Gamal Abdel Nasser and the military society of Free Officers, I answer the above-mentioned questions while outlining the processes and procedures that led to the current domination of the military despite Sisi's initial promise that this would not happen. I argue that Sisi's regime is attempting to incorporate the military apparatus into all aspects of social, economic and political life, while attempting to build a neo-military society that hegemonizes these areas. Using Sisi's discourse, and that of political and media figures, I provide evidence for my argument and analysis. As fieldwork has been almost impossible since 2013 in Egypt, I mobilize ethnographic material collected online and through numerous visits to Cairo, Egypt since 2014 and until 2021.

The UAE army has made an impressive progress over the past twenty years. There are two main reasons for this development. The first is the determination of the leaders to counter threats to their regime coming from the hegemonic tendencies of powerful neighbors and to defend the economic interests of their country as a regional trade and logistics hub. The second is the Arab Spring, which has accentuated the perception of threats to the regime's security resulting from the rise of political Islam and the expansion of Iran's regional influence. The modernization of the army was based on several pillars, at the top of which the conclusion of defense partnerships with the Western powers, the increase in purchases of advanced weapons, the establishment of solid training, the introduction of military service and civic education programs aimed at adolescents and pre-adolescents to encourage them to enlist in the army.

Officially called Israel defense forces, the Israeli army is at the same time the shield of a Jewish State surrounded by enemies, the melting pot of the newborn nation and the backbone of the Israeli society. Strong of 160000 soldiers and 425000 reservists, 2600 tanks, 400 fighter jets, 200 helicopters, an operational nuclear weapons capability, never officially acknowledged, it is today the strongest army in the Middle East, and on the technological field, one of the most advanced in the world. In real time intelligence gathering and analysis, in cyber war and telecommunication, it has very few equivalents. Due to the high reputation of its special forces units, it has also become an exporter of military and security knowhow mainly in the Third World. Since dozens of years, it has built a very close security relationship with the USA in research and development and their joint effort has contributed to improvements among others on the F-15, and some breakthrough on the high energy laser weapons and the Arrow system of anti-missile considered as more effective than the US made Patriot. Based on the principle of conscription of men and women since its creation, it plays a prominent role in the Israeli society due to its influence, namely on the political and economic scene. Four of the 15 prime ministers who headed the government since the birth of the State in 1948 were former generals. But, because of this very important role it must also share the failing or drifting of the Israeli society, namely its sliding towards the right, the unpunished violence against the Palestinians because of the growing influence of the ultra-nationalist settlers and religious extremists.

This article focuses on the ongoing ideological changes within the Turkish military, analysing the central role played in this process by the post-2016 organizational reforms. The ideological alignment of the military with the AKP government is reflected in the gradual institutionalisation of Islam within the Armed Forces. We thus highlight the changes in the daily life of the military: prayers, use of takbir, end of certain discriminations, new status given to piety. However, this new place of Islam does not mean a total break with the Kemalist nationalist heritage, which persists in particular in the training courses. This institutionalisation, if it is the result of an authoritarian practice of power, must also be understood as the deconstruction of an army judged to be too Kemalist, in favour of a greater convergence towards the religious values and practices of the majority.

How can a Kurdish utopia be formed and maintained in history in the most varied territorial and political configurations? Based on documents produced by Kurdish actors and preserved in French archival repositories, the construction of a Kurdish utopia is studied in three distinct contexts. First of all, the settlement of the First World War, which organized the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, was interpreted by Kurdish nationalists as a recognition of state. Then, the Republic of Kurdistan, proclaimed in Iran in 1946, renewed the Kurdish imagining by making concrete the objectives of Kurdish autonomy and independence. Finally, during the 1960s, the various memoranda drafted by Mustafa Barzani and his supporters in Iraq reveal the transformations induced by contexts in which the armed struggle alternated with negotiations between Kurds and Iraqi leaders. Rather than considering that the Kurdish utopia mutated during the twentieth century from a revolutionary programmatic vision to a reformist one for the purpose of political integration, it is important to highlight the flexibility of symbolic production adapted to contexts in which Kurds resist by armed force or seek to free themselves from political integration within nation states.