The paper explores the main causes of military interventions in Turkey during the Cold War, with a special focus on the institutional and ideological conditions that form the basis of the civil-military relations pattern. The narrower definition of the concept of civil-military relations enables to focus on the relations between the military and political elites. The article is based on the theory of civil-military relations by Samuel Huntington and it proves the existence of imbalance in the pattern of Turkish civil-military relations that can explain the frequent military interventions in Turkey's politics in the Cold War period. The professional feature of the Turkish officer corps is demonstrated by the data on characteristics of the military educational system, the military staff system, the requirements for entry into the officer corps and means of advancement within the officer corps and profesional spirit and competence of Turkish military officers. The power level and the ideological level of Turkish civil-military relations are analysed. Based on the relations among professionalism, power and ideology, it is possible to follow the changes of the pattern of civil-military relations in Turkey during the Cold War period. One of the major obstacles in achieving a well-balanced pattern of civil-military relations was the growing ideological incompatibility between professional military ethics and dominant ideologies of the political elite, resulting in a growing mistrust of the army towards ruling elites and society.