The First Door to the Court of Justice: “The Gendarmerie” (2) Civilian Gendarmerie

When discussing the policies produced to modernise the Gendarmerie, we noted that deductive and palliative approaches are not right. Let us try to examine this subject in a little more depth. 

The Gendarmerie organisation, founded, developed and brought to the present in the light of experience, has its own particular features. Throughout my service I tried to explain one thing to my superiors and to the comrades-in-arms I worked with, and to perform my duties in my own area of responsibility with this in mind: With urbanisation, social transformation and the development of ideological thinking, law enforcement units too must necessarily become differentiated. The biggest mistake would be to try to make these law enforcement units resemble one another. Although there is no exact equivalent, if we look at America, for example, we will see many law enforcement units independent of one another (police, FBI, Marshals, local sheriffs and so on). Let this not be taken to mean that I am proposing an American-style system. The point I want to draw attention to is this: Just as every society’s state institutions have developed in keeping with certain features of that society, social needs must not be ignored in developing an important internal security unit such as law enforcement.  

Instead of an approach that offers the same prescription to every unit, the development of law enforcement units should be considered with the differences in their areas of responsibility in mind. It must always be borne in mind that uniformity will do more harm than good.

Let me briefly try to explain this difference. We all know that the units that provide security services are briefly called “law enforcement” units. In this context, the Regulation on Judicial Law Enforcement, published in Official Gazette No. 25832 of 01.06.2005, sought to clarify the judicial law enforcement duties of law enforcement units.

Unfortunately, however, the particular features of the Police and the Gendarmerie were always ignored during this work. In the Gendarmerie organisation the basic building block is the station.  This is not quite so in the police. The police have a structure that works with a central administration and in which most of its units work together. The Gendarmerie, by contrast, is an institution that largely operates in a decentralised structure. That is, while the station is the basic building block of the Gendarmerie, this is not the case in the police. While the police, because of their central management, have attained a professional structure in equipping their public order, organised crime, terrorism and similar units with judicial law enforcement duties and using them in judicial law enforcement services, the units in the Gendarmerie do not work in the same way.

It is this mistake, which begins at the most basic level, that causes the policies produced for developing the Gendarmerie to be produced wrongly.

In the police, the station makes the first response to incidents and secures the scene. It then hands the incident over to specialised units, and these specialised units personally solve the case, handle the necessary correspondence and follow the file, whereas in the Gendarmerie all the work is carried out by the station. In the Gendarmerie all the work begins at the station and ends with the District Gendarmerie Command attaching a cover letter to the final summary report. Meanwhile, the units of the Provincial Gendarmerie Command only support them. All the responsibility in fact lies with the station. This does not mean, of course, that the units of the Provincial Gendarmerie Command do no work. On the contrary, I am trying to show how Gendarmerie personnel produce excellent work despite all the systemic flaws and lack of means. Just like Major Mehmet Kemal, who drew attention years ago to the importance of gendarmerie stations:

“The work of Major Mehmed Kemal, who in his published work describes the gendarmerie station as the first door through which one enters the court of justice, a temple that keeps alive faith in duty and the true symbol of the government, deserves study for expressing sincerely the duties of the gendarmerie stations serving under the difficult post-war conditions and their relations with the people. The work, 19 pages in total and printed at the Gendarmerie press, was priced at 5 kuruş, its proceeds left to the Gendarmerie press. Mehmed Kemal, who begins his work by touching on the importance of gendarmerie stations and identifies the station with the word law, which keeps it alive in prosperity and happiness, states that there is nothing in the stations but security and peace; that in lonely fields and on desolate mountains its small, silent roof offers those looking from afar a sight of protection and refuge. For this reason, it must be well known what the whole country wants and what service it expects from the stations charged with maintaining public order (Mehmed Kemal, 1335, 2).” [1]

That is why it is important to train the cadres who will provide the service Major Mehmet Kemal described and to assign those who merit it to the stations.

[1] Ali SÖNMEZ, Binbaşı Mehmet Kemal’in Eserine Göre Mahkeme-i Adalete Duhul Edilen İlk Kapı: Jandarma Karakoları, Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, vol. 13, no. 69, pp. 483-491, 2020 (Mehmed Kemal (1335). Jandarma Karakol Kumandanları, Dersaadet: Jandarma Matbaası)

Part One: The First Door to the Court of Justice: “The Gendarmerie” (1) Military Gendarmerie