ABSTRACT
Objective
This study examines how career military families in Türkiye navigate competing institutional demands, how military community structures foster resilience, and how military identity is transmitted across generations.
Background
Military families must negotiate the demands of two greedy institutions—the armed forces and the family—yet research remain largely Western-centric. As a non-Western NATO member state with collectivist family traditions and a distinctive military housing (lojman) system, Türkiye offers a culturally distinct context for understanding military family processes.
Methods
In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 men (born 1956–1986) whose fathers served as career military personnel in the Turkish Armed Forces and who themselves served as commissioned or noncommissioned officers. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Results
Three themes emerged: (a) Caught Between Two Institutions—families managed relocation, paternal absence, and the permeation of military discipline into domestic life through maternal resilience and adaptive routines; (b) A World Behind Fences—military housing compounds provided safety and community while constraining social horizons; and (c) Following in Father’s Footsteps—military identity was transmitted intergenerationally through environmental socialization, parental influence, and identity formation, with varying degrees of agency.
Conclusion
Core concepts in military family scholarship—greedy institutions, family resilience, intergenerational transmission—take culturally specific forms in the Turkish context that extend current Western-centric frameworks.
Implications
Findings underscore the need for culturally sensitive military family support programs that address cumulative relocation stress, recognize mothers’ community-sustaining labor, and attend to the complex dynamics of occupational inheritance in non-Western settings.