Municipal Politics in Turkey

Local Government and Party Organisation

Charlotte Joppien

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351772327
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

There is a large and growing literature on Turkish politics in general, and the AKP in particular. However, local government and party organization, although very important topics, are strikingly understudied.

This book compares local politics in two Central Anatolian cities, Konya and Eski?ehir, ruled by different governmental parties, the AKP in Konya and the CHP in Eski?ehir. It analyzes how national political parties adapt to local contexts ('culture of everyday politics') and how they seek to influence local culture ('politics of everyday culture'). By examining how municipal politics is practiced on a daily basis, it illuminates more fundamental aspects of Turkish politics such as political mobilization, establishing links between voters and politicians, various practices of decision-making and the role of civil society. All of this has been critical for the AKP's continuous electoral success since 2002. The findings are based on over 1.5 years of fieldwork in the two cities, as well as over 50 interviews with national and local political actors. The main fields of research are mayoral biographies, municipal practices, particularly with regard to welfare and service provision, the cooperation with other municipal actors as political parties or civil society organizations; urban planning activities and cultural policy. The study helps to comprehend more fundamental aspects of Turkish politics such as political mobilization, the establishing of links between voters, municipalities and parties as well as decision-making processes.

Municipal Politics in Turkey fills a gap in existing literature by illuminating the fundamental aspects of Turkish politics, such as political mobilization, the establishing of links between voters, municipalities and parties as well as decision-making processes. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in Turkish Politics and political parties, municipal/local politics and comparative politics.

1
Introduction

I have known Ali, an ever-smiling, short man in his late sixties and grandfather of three, since my very first day in Istanbul when I stumbled helplessly into his little café after I had lost my way in the back streets of Istanbul’s Sultanahmet neighbourhood. I didn’t know much Turkish back then and he had no English; however, we managed to understand each other with a lot of sympathy and good will. As the level of my Turkish increased, so did the complexity of our discussions. Most of our conversations dealt with Turkish politics as Ali was a fierce AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party) supporter. Whereas he perceived that previous governments had restricted basic freedoms, and discriminated against major parts of society, he felt that with the AKP, the country ‘started to breathe again’. Another topic he could speak about for hours were his plans to renovate his café and turn it into a small hotel. One day though, I found him devastated. He had just come from the AKP-run municipality where a civil servant had told him in no uncertain terms that he could receive the necessary papers, however a considerable ‘off the record payment’ would be required to process his application. Ali’s objection that he was a fellow AKP member did not lead to the effects he had hoped for. How, he asked me, could that be? Did not the AKP promise to do everything better and to put the service to the citizens [hizmet] on the forefront of their politics? Didn’t they promise to make politics more transparent and abolish corruption? Could it be that they were just as dishonest as other parties before them?

This book analyses how municipalism, the government of cities and districts, is practiced on a daily basis and how actors conceptualise and experience it as part of their everyday. Its comparative approach seeks to point out similarities and differences between two cities, Konya and Eskişehir, ruled by different parties, the AKP and CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Republican People’s Party). The two cities are comparable in many aspects (geography, population structure, unemployment numbers etc.) but ascribed very different images by the people in Turkey. Whereas Konya has an image as a conservative-religious city – being a fortress of the AKP in particular and the Islamist Milli Görüş Movement more generally – Eskişehir is perceived as ‘modern’ and ‘European’. Within the cities, four district municipalities – Meram and Selçuklu in Konya ruled by the AKP, as well as Tepebaşı ruled by the CHP, and Odunpazarı ruled by the AKP, in Eskişehir – were part of the analysis. The study has an inclusive approach that perceives different local actors – the mayor; municipal institutions and staff; political parties; formally organised civil society, as well as looser ethnic or religious groups; local elites and the citizens – as linked in a discourse on municipal politics. It demonstrates how they influence municipal decision-making by both formal and informal means, and argues that informal practices support institutional structures thus are an indispensable part of system stability.

Further, the book demonstrates that municipalism does not happen in a vacuum but in very precise local contexts with particular habitus, morals and power relations. In order to be successful actors need to take them into consideration. Political analysis often limits itself by arguing that such and such a context produces a certain result, e.g. that in a ‘conservative city’, people vote predominantly for conservative parties. This study suggests taking the local context seriously as a category of analysis by asking what the factors in the making of a local context are. How does it influence the formal and informal ways of doing politics? And how do municipalities adapt to the local context, reinforce it or challenge it by their municipal practice? This also points to the question of the autonomy of the local. I argue that the perception of Turkish politics as divided into a ‘centre’ and a ‘periphery’ most prominently argued by Mardin (1973) is shortsighted.¹ Instead, the state can only be ‘strong’ if it entertains manifold relations between ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ and if vertical ties between various actors and coalitions of interest exist. Thus the ‘local–national’ is not only a story of domination but also one of cooperation.

Research that focuses on party programmes, that uses surveys or that seeks to apply theoretical models, often has difficulty explaining what happens ‘on the ground’. On the contrary, my research was led by the question of how municipal politics were practiced on a daily basis. Focusing on these aspects fosters our understanding of more fundamental aspects of Turkish politics that extend the ‘purely municipal’ such as political mobilisation, establishing links between voters and politicians, as well as various ways of decision-making and the role of civil society. Despite its relevance, municipalism in Turkey is a largely understudied subject. Literature on the subject may be divided into three main approaches. The first takes a public administration perspective and focuses on how municipalism is performed from a legal-administrative, financial or historic point of view (Göymen, 2006; Keleş, 2012; Köker, 1995; Löffler & Kösecik, 2011; Marcou, 2006; Massicard & Bayraktar, 2009; Palabıyıyk & Kapucu, 2008; Parlak et al., 2008; Sözen, 2005; Yavas & Palabıyıyk, 2006; Güner, 2006; Tekeli, 2009). Second, a group of studies produced mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, a highpoint of municipal administration studies in Turkey, focused on the urban poor. Authors such as Erder & İncioğlu (2008); Erman (1998); Heper (1987, 1989); Karpat (2004); Keyder & Öncu (1994) and White (2002) focused on how municipal politics faced the immense challenges of massive rural-to-urban migration. They traced how informal politics related to ethnic or religious networks, as well as how identity and patronage politics led to new alignments between citizens, municipalities and political parties. Jenny B. White’s (2002) comparison of municipal practice by the Refah Partisi (RP, Welfare Party) and the CHP, a major reference for this book, added much to the knowledge of how municipal politics actually ‘worked on the ground’. Third, more recent studies have focused on questions of urban transformation. Especially after the Gezi protests in 2013 many authors have asked about the future of Turkish cities, the creation of rent [rant] and the extent to which citizens are involved in planning decisions (Elicin, 2014; Kuyucu, 2014; Pérouse, 2015; Sönmez, 2013; Türkün, 2011; Unsal & Türk, 2014). Studies that take a multi-level perspective in examining municipal politics are an exception and appeared mainly in the form of articles focusing on limited aspects of municipalism (Bayraktar, 2007a, 2007b; Bayraktar & Altan, 2013; Doğan, 2007; Kadırbeyoğlu & Sümer, 2012; Kemahlıoğlu, 2012; Tuğal, 2009). With the exception of the studies by Bayraktar, Kadırbeyoğlu and Sümer, as well as Doğan, all studies cited above deal with either Istanbul or Ankara. By focusing on Central Anatolia, an understudied region despite its political, economic and social importance, this book provides many new insights into the functioning of politics. It further distinguishes itself from previous research by its comparative approach which seeks to identify, analyse and explain differences and similarities among different local contexts and political parties. As a result, more general principles of Turkish municipalism (e.g. with regard to authoritarianism, the importance of informal relations or the personalisation of politics), but also specific factors (e.g. the influence of a particular ethnic or religious group, or context-specific decision-making processes), can be pointed out.

This study builds on participant observation which took place in both cities from October to November 2010, from April to December 2011 and from January to December 2013. The original plan to solely focus on the municipalities and to observe institutional processes there had to be abandoned due to the heated political climate that was characterised by distrust and suspicion not only towards the political opponent but also towards research, particularly research with a comparative approach. The insights I gained relied much on the people I had contact with, and less on a general institutional access. It was significant that access to the municipality and party was much better in Konya, maybe because the AKP felt ‘safe’ there. Access to other municipal actors such as political parties’ organisations or civil society organisations and citizens was less problematic. During fieldwork I participated in a wide range of party and municipal activities, became a member of Eskişehir’s Kent Konseyi (city assembly),² took classes in a municipal centre and attended the Political Academy organised by the AKP. The advantages of a participant observational approach clearly lie in the fact that it takes the viewpoint of the researched. Living in the city and having no contact with other ‘foreigners’ meant to fully immerse myself into peoples’ life worlds and their social web. Not being able to discuss first hypotheses with other ‘outsiders’ felt frustrating or even claustrophobic at times, however ‘being trapped’ in the subject led to important insights over time. It provided data not only on what people did but also how and why, and exemplified the extent to which ‘the political’ and ‘the private’ are interlocked in the actors’ practice and conceptualisation as part of their coherent identity. Apart from literature and media research, as well as law review, fieldwork was complemented by over 50 interviews. Generally, interviews (apart from few expert interviews) were conducted in Turkish and recorded. Interviews with low-ranking municipal staff or party members normally took place in the form of personal conversations, as they preferred not to be recorded in which case I took notes either during or immediately after. Expert interviews were conducted in English or Turkish mainly towards the end of 2013 to discuss hypotheses and first findings or to obtain particular information, e.g. on legal issues that could not be found elsewhere.

Culture of everyday politics

Turkey is a country characterised by major differences in ethnic privilege and class-related lifestyles that also manifest geographically. The successful adaption to different local contexts through taking into account patterns of social interaction and by adapting political messages to local practices and understanding seems to be a competitive advantage of the AKP. The RP, one of the predecessors of the AKP, has been perceived as the founder of a conservative municipal practice [muhafazakar belediyecilik] relying on primary identities (ethnic, religious, kin [hemşehrilik]³) for political mobilisation and activism; as well as extensive welfare provision. Many of those active in the AKP today started their career in the RP, e.g. President Erdoğan acted as RP mayor of Istanbul (1994–1998). As prime minister (2003–2014) he trusted the expertise of the many people upon whom he depended as mayor. His early fellow municipal campaigners included, for example, prime minister Binali Yıldırım or ministers Mehmet Ali Şahin, and Erdoğan Bayraktar (Açikel & Balcı, 2009, 109).⁴ This study explores whether the AKP is part of a conservative municipalism tradition founded by the RP, how it adopts to local contexts and to which extend such practice might have contributed to its political success, particularly in comparison with the main opposition party CHP.

That research on municipalism and local party activism in Turkey and elsewhere has not well-addressed the question of how nationally organised political actors respond to local contexts is due less to the assumption that such a question is not important, but rather to the difficulty in defining the ‘specificity’ of a city and analysing its influence on urban politics. Nevertheless, images, the ‘sum of beliefs, ideas and impressions’ (Gertner & Kotler, 2004, 50), or, to put it differently, the simplification of a large amount of data (e.g. geography, climate, history, economy, society, culture, architecture) are regularly ascribed to different cities. Paris for example is ‘romance’, Istanbul is ‘the bridge between East and West’. These unique images are not a coincidence; cities are not ‘just there’, but the product of particular political, historical, social and economic actors and processes.⁵ Lynch was the first to draw a relation between a city’s architecture and its image (1960). Lee expanded the analytical scope and used Bourdieu’s term ‘habitus’ to describe the uniqueness of a city (1997).⁶ Bockrath then suggested the term ‘city habitus’ to express a correlation between city structures and related practices of urban actors (2008). Similar suggestions were made by Dangschat who compared the character of a city to that of a human being (2000). Lindner argued that cities have a biography (2000, 262), while Berking used another of Bourdieu’s terms, namely ‘doxa’ to describe how every city has its own position towards the world, a sense of its own that influences how things are perceived and done. The extent and effects of city doxa become clear in the confrontation with other cities, for example when moving from one city to another (2008, 27–28). Sociologist Löw argued that cities have an ‘intrinsic logic’ [Eigenlogik], determining which ideas are generated in a city, and which decisions are finally accepted (Löw, 2008a, 2008b; Löw, Steets, & Stoetzer, 2008).⁷ The intrinsic logic functions as a constitution of meaning reproduced in the collective self-generating patterns of interpretation and interaction (Löw, 2008b; Zimmermann, 2008). Similarly, anthropologist Schiffauer discerned that when analysing how urban cultures are different from each other it is not enough to focus on cultural practices and symbols as these constantly change, but on how urban cultures organise this change and what their intrinsic logic is (Schiffauer, 1997). In addition, urban habitus is not static but responds to changes of practice as it is situated in a triangle of conflicting priorities between continuity and change, adaption to changing conditions and compliance with established patterns of interaction (Anderson, 1990).

If every city has an intrinsic logic, a sense of its own, then this uniqueness is likely to influence how things are conceptualised and done in that city. It is not a coincidence but due to the different urban habitus that d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A tale of two cities – Konya and Eskişehir
• 3 Becoming a mayor in Turkey
• 4 Municipalism between local and national
• 5 ‘Doing’ everyday municipalism
• 6 Relations of benefit: service, welfare and patronage
• 7 Planning the urban(s)
• 8 Cultural policies, shaping locality
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Index