Gendarmerie General Command
public order (police) institution of Turkey
The Gendarmerie General Command (Turkish: Jandarma Genel Komutanlığı) is the national gendarmerie force of Turkey. It is a service branch of the Ministry of Interior responsible for the maintenance of the public order in areas that fall outside the jurisdiction of the General Directorate of Security (generally in rural areas), as well as assuring internal security along with carrying out other specific duties assigned to it by certain laws and regulations.
The Commander of the Gendarmerie reports to the Minister of the Interior.
The Gendarmerie has its roots in the Ottoman Empire military law enforcement organization "Subaşı" (later known as the "Zaptiye"). A similar, earlier force called "Şurta" existed during the medieval Seljuk Empire.
History
Ottoman era
After the abolition of the Janissary corps of the Ottoman Empire in 1826, military organizations called Asâkir-i Muntazâma-i Mansûre, Asâkir-i Muntazâma-i Hâssa, and, in 1834, Asâkir-i Redîfe were established for security and public order in Anatolia and in some provinces of Rumelia.
As the first use of the term Gendarmerie was in the Assignment Decrees published in the years following the 1839 Edict of Gülhane, it is assumed that the Gendarmerie organization was founded after that year, but the exact date of foundation has not yet been determined. Therefore, the date on which the name Asâkir-i Zaptiye Nizâmnâmesi was adopted, June 14, 1839, is usually considered the foundation date of the Turkish Gendarmerie.
After the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, Ottoman prime minister Mehmed Said Pasha decided to bring police officers from Britain and France to establish a modern law enforcement organization. The Gendarmerie was used to great effect after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, particularly in Rumelia.
“Gendarmerie General Command” enters the record as public order (police) institution of Turkey. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gendarmerie, General and Command can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q620636. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1826, 1834, 1839 and 1877.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gendarmerie General Command” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.