Author(s)

Murat Kocanli¹, Aytul Kasapoglu^2*

¹Crime Studies Center, Gendarmerie and Coast Guard Academy, Ankara, Turkey.
²Department of Sociology, Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey.

This study focuses on the stress levels as an expression of the difficulties experienced by the personnel working in a janus-faced mixed organization with both military and civilian characteristics. In order to overcome the “institution” and “occupation” distinction which is essential in military sociology studies, the focus has been on “uncertainties” rather than “essentialism” from a relational sociological perspective. In this context, both uncertainties in social relations (ambage) and uncertainties in values (ambiquity) have been tried to be analyzed by making use of sociology literature. The originality of this study is that it was conducted with a law enforcement force with military status trying to cope with foreigners coming as a result of irregular migration in their own country, instead of military personnel who were previously employed in a foreign society outside their own country (Azari et al., 2010). Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, an online survey study was carried out with 44 people, including officers and non-commissioned officers. With the advantage that one of the researchers is a senior officer and the other is a senior sociologist, the data were analyzed and interpreted with the SPSS/25 program. Analyzes using advanced statistical techniques revealed that there was no significant relationship between stress and tenure and status, in other words, perceived stress did not differ according to these independent variables. Factor analysis results revealed that while the staff working in an organization with liminal status were more affected by both “institutional” and” occupational” stress factors, they were in a more positive situation in terms of stress measured by scale items that could be considered personal. At the end of the research, some suggestions were made for the development of military sociology.

Military Sociology, Gendarmerie, Stress, Liminality, Uncertainties, Turkey

Kocanli, M. and Kasapoglu, A. (2021) The Stress Levels of Employees in an Organization with Liminal Status: The Case of Gendarmerie in Turkey. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 9, 87-105. doi: 10.4236/jss.2021.94009.