Backgrounder: Turkey - The Deep StateThe Turkish Deep State, the behind-the-scenes machinery and power relationships among selected members of the military, judicial, and bureaucratic elite, has endured as an essential factor in political life and in citizens' wary calculations of their relation to the State. Now, however, Deep State supremacy is being challenged step by step with an openness rare in the history of the Turkish Republic. The "deep state" in Turkey is a vague, ill-defined network of like-minded people (including former military personnel and government officials) with ties to Turkey's ultra-nationalists that purports to provide an "alternative" to state power. Allegedly, this extra-legal grouping works to influence and deliver public support behind actions by overt state actors, often the military. To some, the workings and influence of the Deep State means primarily military domination of the Turkish system. ...