Security Forces Radicalisation Report

This report expresses how seven D.Rad countries; UK, France, Germany, Austria, Israel, Serbia and Georgia have tackled radicalism and extremism in their armed forces. Although these nations considered radicalism and extremism as security threats, they adopted formal or informal policies in order to tackle with them. On the one hand, countries such as the UK which was an example for a formal policy established PREVENT mechanism in order to institutionalize de-radicalization process within the armed services (HMICFRS, 2020). On the other hand, nations such as Germany which was counted as an informal case aimed to tackle with the far-right radicalism by sending the soldiers into the Holocaust memorial places in order to display the destructive memories of Nazi past (Murray, 2022). Therefore, this report focuses on how political elites adopted informal/formal mechanism in order to combat with the radicalism or extremism within their armed services.

The structure of this report begins with the introduction. The second section introduces the concept of Democratic Control of Armed Forces. The third section examines the theoretical framework and methodology. The fourth part explains how political elites tackle radicalization within the armed forces (training programs etc.). The fifth underscores how political elites perceived threat of radicalization in each country. The fifth underlines the constitutional background of armed forces and judicial implications that seek to prevent the radicalization and extremism within the military. The sixth explores our cases about the radicalization within the armed forces of seven different nations. In the last section, we summarize our findings and conclude this report.