Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Turkey’s civilian government has gained the upper hand in its power struggle with the country’s military after four top generals of the Turkish armed forces tendered their resignations last Friday. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is at a point where it would like to put the domestic balance of power to rest so as to be able to use the military for its assertive foreign policy agenda. However, it will be many years before the civilian government in Ankara will be able to do so, because it’s a long process to go from the military having dominance over the political system to a civilian government using the military on the foreign policy front.

Initially, when the top four generals of the Turkish armed forces – the air chief, the army chief, the naval chief, and the joint chief – all tendered their resignations collectively, it appeared that we were at the cusp of yet another and much more fierce civil-military tug-of-war in Ankara. But the way in which the civilian government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan handled the situation and the fact that there has not been a backlash from the military establishment shows that civilians are finally gaining the upper hand in what has been a decades-long struggle between the men in uniform and the civilians in Turkey.

From the point of view of the ruling party, with the military seemingly under civilian control, the AKP will want to move from the domestic arena to the foreign policy front. And on that foreign policy front, the AKP has already been pursuing an assertive agenda in terms of trying to bring the country back onto the world stage, at least in terms of the regions that Turkey straddles: the Caucasus, Southeastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia.

The intent and desire of the AKP is one thing, but the reality is that it takes a long time to prepare a military to become an instrument of an assertive foreign policy agenda. In the case of Turkey, it is much more difficult because this is a military that was heavily geared towards securing or being the guardian of the country’s secular foundations, and now it has to move from that role to one in which: a) It respects the constitutional government in Ankara and pledges loyalty to it; and b) Serves the agenda of that government onto the foreign policy front. And that requires a lot steps and a lot of changes that will take time – if not decades, at least several years.