Stratejik Istihbarat ve Ulusal Guvenlik.

• Author: Aslan, Murat
• Position: Book review

By Merve Seren

Ankara: Orion Kitapevi, 2017, 560 pages, [??]45,00, ISBN: 9786059524056.

Reviewed by Murat Aslan, The Middle East Technical University

In Stratejik Istihbarat ve Ulusal Guvenlik (Strategic Intelligence and National Security), Merve Seren scrutinizes intelligence by its 'own' strategic relevance and displays the mutual interaction of 'strategy' and 'intelligence.' The subject matter is the construction of strategic intelligence and its role in the course of history, with a clear focus on its ideational evolvement. The main design of the study is to highlight the sine qua non feature of 'strong' and 'realistic' strategic intelligence for national security strategies and the policies of state actors.

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The author successfully fills the literature gap of intelligence studies with a vast research into the roots of strategy and intelligence via discourse analysis. The foundation of the book rests upon the process of tracing how strategy and intelligence perceptions have emerged and evolved in differing parts of the globe. The author provides examples of strategy and intelligence culture in the depths of history alongside contemporary ones by a contextual analysis of events, spanning the breadth between modernity and post-modernity. In that way, she aims to increase the awareness of security and intelligence practitioners and theoreticians, as the target audience of the book, by reviewing conceptual and hypothetical notions of strategy and intelligence to conclude with a synergy of both. Members of epistemic circles of Security Studies, Intelligence and the International Relations discipline in particular will enjoy the high quality of the research, which Seren makes accessible to interested individuals wishing to explore the comprehensive intersection of both strategy and intelligence.

The book is based on a vast review of the literature on political history that contributed to the development of intelligence practices and security perceptions. In this sense, intelligence, particularly strategic intelligence, is taken as the hub of the research in identifying national security strategy, while linking the discussion to the concept of 'strategy' by the 'requisiteness' and 'functionality' of both fields. What makes the book distinct and unique is its method of examining the long historic process of strategy and intelligence along the axes of historic events, personalities, actors, and factors in a phenomenological...