The new book
- Length
- ~145,000 words
- Structure
- Ten chapters, ten figures
- English
- Translation complete
- Status
- Author revision in progress
- Precedent
- Fifth in a connected sequence
In editorial revision · Seeking English-language representation
StrategicSituation Change
Why Victory Is Invalid in the Age of Sovereignty Drift
Stratejik Durum Değişimi: Egemenlik Kayması Çağında Zafer Neden Geçersizdir
Great powers have stopped fighting for victory. They fight to change the situation — to engineer conditions of control that outlast any battlefield outcome, and that no surrender ceremony is required to secure.
Where most strategic writing asks who is winning, Strategic Situation Change argues that the question itself has expired: that across the wars of the last decade, dominant powers have pursued not territory or capitulation but durable, engineered advantage — control over straits, nuclear material, energy pricing, and trade routes — and that the generations of warfare explain why this became the operative method now rather than always.
The book reads the ongoing US–Iran and Russia–Ukraine wars as live laboratories, and builds three connected arguments on them: sovereignty drift, in which short-text memoranda quietly register erosions of sovereignty that no treaty ever announced; situation engineering, a formalized cycle of small touches, tracked reactions, and cumulative convergence, given a mathematics in evolutionary game theory; and sixth-generation warfare, defined by the order of life it targets rather than the weapons it fields.
It is written from a vantage the Anglophone strategy literature rarely has: US doctrine, Russian theory, and Middle Eastern ground truth read simultaneously, in real time, from Istanbul — by a former head of Turkish Air Force Intelligence who has spent fifteen years arguing these theses in public.
The book has a specific origin. On a television panel discussing the Iran war, Tokmakoğlu argued that the United States was not pursuing victory but engineering a change of situation — pressure alternating with talks, control over Hormuz, nuclear material, and oil pricing. The editor-in-chief of a leading national newspaper answered him: "I'm not interested in explanations dressed up in fancy words. The matter is clear. The US lost!"
He was, at the time, writing a book about the Iran war. He set it aside to write this one first.
It enters a conversation that includes Everett Dolman's Pure Strategy, Robert Mandel's The Meaning of Military Victory, and Sean McFate's work on durable disorder — and departs from them in treating victory's obsolescence not as timeless theory but as a periodized, testable claim, with an operational cycle attached.
Sample chapters and the full English manuscript are available to publishers and agents on request — grsl@tkmkgl.com
About
Service
Gürsel Tokmakoğlu is a Turkish strategist, columnist, and former Turkish Air Force intelligence officer. Born in 1961 in Çan, Çanakkale, he graduated from the Turkish Air Force Academy in 1982 with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, then trained at the Armed Forces Intelligence School and built a career spanning intelligence instruction, operational research, and staff command.
His postings included counter-terrorism and internal-security duties in Diyarbakır (1995–1999), NATO service in Italy and participation in the Bosnia and Kosovo operations, command of the Air Force Intelligence School (2001–2002), and service as Turkey's Military Attaché to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan (2002–2004), where he founded the Asia Platform and conducted international work on Caspian regional security. He concluded his military career as Head of the Air Force Intelligence Department, retiring in 2007 as a General Staff-qualified Colonel (Kurmay Albay).
Method
His method is first-hand and deliberately multi-vantage. He has studied American power in the United States, looked at the world from the Russian "heartland," placed China at the center and examined it from there, and works continuously across Europe and the Middle East. He has witnessed wars of every kind at close range, and counts the fight against terrorism among his subjects.
The question is not who is winning. It is what was the essence of the world's affairs.
Strategic Situation Change, preface
The books
He returned to public life as a writer and commentator in 2017, after a decade in senior private-sector roles. His strategic writing now runs to four books: Barış Pınarı (2019/2020, Sahi Kitap), on Syria as a theater of proxy war; Politik Uyanış (2024, Destek Yayınları), on power accumulation as a political discipline; Polemoloji (Destek Yayınları), which introduced polemology — the science of war — to Turkish readers and set out fifth-generation warfare in full; and Kaos Stratejisi (Destek Yayınları), on controlled chaos as a deliberate instrument of statecraft.
An earlier sequence of philosophical works, published from 2011, examined conscience, selfhood, and vicegerency. He has published eleven books in all.
Today
He writes a regular column at Independent Türkçe, the Turkish-language sister publication of The Independent (UK); publishes English-language essays developing his Strategic Situation Change framework on Substack; appears as a television commentator on A Haber; and has contributed analysis via Anadolu Ajansı, Turkey's state news wire. His current book project extends this framework into a full-length study of the changing nature of strategic advantage and warfare, engaging directly with the work of Western strategists including John Mearsheimer, Henry Kissinger, Samuel Huntington, and Thomas Schelling.
He lives in Istanbul, and is married with two children.
Selected books
Strategy, political philosophy, and poetry. Editions at İz Yayıncılık and idefix.com.
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Kaos Stratejisi
Destek Yayınları
Controlled chaos as a deliberate instrument of state strategy, read through Trump-era U.S. policy.
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Polemoloji
Savaş Bilimi ile Küresel Güvenlik Analizi · Destek Yayınları
Establishes polemology as a discipline for global security analysis, and sets out fifth-generation warfare in full.
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Politik Uyanış
Stratejik Güç Birikimi ve Akılcılık Üzerine · Destek Yayınları, 2024
A study of politics as a strategic discipline of national power accumulation.
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Barış Pınarı
Vekâlet Savaşlarının Pençesindeki Suriye · Sahi Kitap, 2019/2020
Syria as a theater of proxy warfare in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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Benlik, Bilinç ve Vicdan
İz Yayıncılık, 2012 · ISBN 978-975-355-885-3
Conscience (vicdan) as the throughline of human self-understanding.
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Cephe
İz Yayıncılık
The inner spiritual battlefront against the self, not the worldly one the title evokes.
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Halife
Bir Âdem Öyküsü · İz Yayınları, 2012
Examines vicegerency (halifelik) as a foundational existential category.
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Muttaki
İz Yayınları, 2012
The founding work of his "Muttakilik" philosophical framework.
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İnsanlar ve İnsancılar
İz Yayıncılık, 2011
The modern self-sufficient individual set against the muttaki (God-conscious) ideal.
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Gözlerim
Kitapsal · Poetry
A collection of 41 poems.
Platforms
- Independent Türkçe Regular columnist, "Türkiye'den Sesler" (Voices from Turkey) — the Turkish-language sister publication of The Independent indyturk.com/gürsel-tokmakoğlu
- Substack English-language essays developing the Strategic Situation Change thesis substack.com
- A Haber Television commentator, Turkuvaz Media Group ahaber.com.tr
- Anadolu Ajansı Contributing analyst, Turkey's state news wire aa.com.tr
- Politik Merkez Long-form political and strategic commentary archive politikmerkez.com/author/tokmakoglu
Contact
For publishing inquiries, rights, interviews, or speaking requests