Exit from Democracy

Illiberal Governance in Turkey and Beyond

Kerem Öktem, Karabekir Akkoyunlu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138504004
• eBook ISBN: 9781351381840
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Democratic government is facing unprecedented challenges at a global scale. Yet, Turkey's descent into conflict, crisis and autocracy is exceptional. Only a few years ago, the country was praised as a successful Muslim-majority democracy and a promising example of sustainable growth. In Turkey's Exit from Democracy, the contributors argue that President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and the Justice and Development Party government have now effectively abandoned the realm of democratic politics by attempting regime change with the aim to install a hyper-presidentialist system. Examining how this power grab comes at the tail end of more than a decade of seemingly democratic politics, the contributors also explore the mechanisms of de-democratization through two distinctive, but interrelated angles: A set of comparative analyses explores illiberal forms of governance in Turkey, Russia, Southeast Europe and Latin America. In-depth studies analyse how Turkey's society has been reshaped in the image of a patriarchal habitus and how consent has been fabricated through religious, educational, ethnic and civil society policies. Despite this comprehensive authoritarian shift, the result is not authoritarian consolidation, but a deeply divided and contested polity. Analysing an early example of democratic decline and authoritarian politics, this volume is relevant well beyond the confines of regional studies. Turkey exemplifies the larger forces of de-democratization at play globally. Turkey's Exit from Democracy provides the reader with generalizable insights into these transformative processes. These chapters were originally published as a special issue in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

Understanding Turkey’s democratic breakdown: old vs. new and indigenous vs. global authoritarianism

Murat Somer

ABSTRACT

Turkey’s ‘authoritarian turn’ in recent years indicates a democratic breakdown that can best be analysed by analytically distinguishing between two simultaneous developments. The first is the reproduction of Turkey’s long-existing semi-democratic regime – which the article calls old authoritarianism – in a new historical and dominant political–ideological context and under an Islamist-leaning government. The second is the emergence of a new type of authoritarianism – dubbed new authoritarianism – that is in many respects unprecedented for Turkey, is in need of better comprehension and displays important parallels with contemporary troubles of democracy in the world. Focusing on political society and institutions is insufficient to adequately examine the emergent authoritarian regime, for example to identify it as a regime type, to explain its popular support and to foresee how durable and repressive, and to what extent party-based rather than personalistic, it may become. It is necessary to combine insights from the new political economy of welfare, transition and communication with those from political and institutional democratization. Doing so suggests that new authoritarianism generates a new kind of state–society relationship where, paradoxically, political power becomes simultaneously more particularistic, personalized and mass-based. Hence, new authoritarianism has democratizing potential, but can also become more oppressive than any other regime Turkey has previously experienced. Oscillation between these two outcomes is also possible.

1. Introduction

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the predominant view among scholars of Turkey was that, despite the continuation of important democratic deficits and red flags, the country was successfully democratizing and was on its way to become consolidated pluralistic democracy. In fact, Turkey was held up as a potential model for other Muslim-majority countries. With the beginning of the second decade, these optimistic assessments began to be replaced with growing scepticism. In recent years, an expanding body of studies, which will be reviewed below, has argued that Turkey is shifting towards authoritarianism.

But what kind of an authoritarian shift or democratic reversal is Turkey experiencing? Is this yet another of the many reversals the country has suffered during its long and checkered democratic transition since – at least – the 1950s? (Rodriguez et al. 2014). Is it thus reverting to its long-existing regime of partial democracy ‘with an adjective’, (Collier and Levitsky 1997; Merkel 2004) perhaps the main qualitative difference from the previous reversals being that this time it is occurring under an explicitly Islamist-leaning government? Alternatively, should we conclude that the authoritarian shift represents a complete democratic breakdown and the emergence of a new type of authoritarian regime? If so, what will be the nature of this new regime and how stable and durable can it be? What are the prospects, if any, for a return to democratization?

As I will review below, most studies conceptualize Turkey’s authoritarian turn in terms of its decades-old, and widely analysed, semi-democratic regime. Hence, the shift to authoritarianism is argued to result, for example, from the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a predominant party within the parameters and dynamics of this regime (Kalaycioglu 2010; Müftüler-Baç and Fuat Keyman 2012; Gumuscu 2013; Ayan Musil 2014). Hence, these studies analyse authoritarianism mainly as some kind of a resurgence or reproduction of Turkey’s long-existing authoritarian features, while paying due attention to some new ideological features based on the Islamic orientation of the ruling AKP, and, sometimes exclusively, the personality and worldview of its leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In turn, a growing body of other studies maintains that what Turkey is undergoing amounts to a complete democratic breakdown and a transition from semi-democracy to a new type of political regime such as competitive authoritarianism under a hegemonic party (Somer 2014b; Başkan 2015; Esen and Gumuscu 2016).¹ In support of this view, these analyses rightly highlight developments such as the erosion of the institutional checks on the executive power, the weakening of the distinctions between state and party, government restrictions of civic freedoms and the skewing of the electoral playing field in favour of the incumbent party.

As I will discuss below, Turkey’s recent shift to authoritarianism indeed features many elements of what may be called its ‘old authoritarian regime’ in reference to its semi-democratic political system with military-bureaucratic tutelage. Thus, its authoritarian turn can partially be described and explained as an Islamist-leaning government and charismatic-populist leader reproducing its long-existing authoritarian habits and institutions with some new Islamist ideological prerogatives.

I argue in this article, however, that thinking about Turkey’s recent trajectory in this way would mean missing crucial elements of its contemporary challenges. This is because the country’s current democratic breakdown and authoritarian makeover also entail the emergence of a new kind of authoritarianism, which I will label ‘new authoritarianism’ or ‘the new authoritarian regime’. The latter is in many respects novel and unprecedented for Turkey and is in need of better comprehension and theorization. Many of these novel dimensions are ‘new’ also in the sense that – in addition to having indigenous origins – they display important parallels and seem to interact with the contemporary trends and troubles of democratic governance in the world.² Recent research has had difficulties in understanding and conceptualizing Turkey’s new authoritarian regime because researchers have tried to analyse a (partially) new phenomenon in terms of ‘old’ categories and based on an inadequate conceptualization of Turkey’s previous democratic transitions.

I will further maintain that in order to properly understand and theorize the new authoritarianism, it is insufficient to focus on changes in political society and institutions, as extant critical research has so far done. Political and institutional changes are, of course, critical to identifying and explaining the democratic breakdown and are important to be studied in their own right. But some deep-cutting causes of the breakdown and the major clues to understanding the nature of the emergent regime may lie in fundamental transformations occurring in economic and informational societies. These may have structural and lasting impacts on state–society relations, thus enabling and sustaining the changes in political society. Researching these fields is also important so as to foresee how stable and durable new authoritarianism may be and to what extent it may become party-based (versus personal-patrimonial) – and whether it has any democratizing potential.

Examining the new political economy of welfare, transition and communication, as I do below, helps to address a critical question that scholars investigating Turkey’s authoritarian turn need to answer. This question pertains to the popularity of new authoritarianism, which, after all, is led – if not produced – by an elected government. While it is true that recent elections in Turkey have been far from ‘free and fair’ and the playing field has heavily favored the ruling AKP, it is also true that the AKP and President Erdogan seem to be highly popular among major segments of society. They enjoy massive and highly mobilized constituencies. What explains this apparent popularity of an increasingly authoritarian government?

While I do not pretend to offer a full answer to this last question in this article, I hypothesize that the political–economic and informational undercurrents of the new authoritarianism may be key components of an explanation. I build on the existing literature and evidence and produce a number of theses to be explored by further theoretical and empirical research. In doing so, I also try to bring together prior and comparative work on political economy, communication and democratization.

The changes in the areas of political economy and communication seem to generate a new kind of state–society relationship. This new relation necessitates the government to weaken democratic institutions while at the same generating the belief among the government’s constituencies that the continuation of the benefits they enjoy as citizens depends on a particular party and particular politicians, and on the active ability of the citizens to keep these in power, rather than on state institutions. As a result, and paradoxically, wide segments of society enjoy a new sense of inclusion, empowerment and agency, but are nevertheless induced to seeing their unequal relationship with the government as unchangeable, and the ruling party and particular political personalities as indispensable.

In other words, political power becomes simultaneously more particularistic, personalized and mass-based. This implies that new authoritarianism could become more durable and oppressive than any other authoritarian regime Turkey experienced in the past. Meanwhile, however, it also generates a potential for democratization. This happens because previously passive constituencies are now being mobilized, and may be in the process of becoming more active citizens with political agency. At least they seem to be in the process of perceiving themselves as such. These newly activated groups may over time join others and demand truly democratic institutions. Hence, paradoxically, new authoritarianism can in the long run give birth to either a more firmly rooted democracy or an even more repressive regime. Oscillation between these two outcomes is also possible.

2. The endurance of Turkey’s old authoritarianism

In a nutshell, the still partially prevailing old authoritarian regime of Turkey is based on a certain state tradition and particular set-up of the state–society relationship. The state and the ruling state elites – whoever they are in a particular period – harbour unequal, top-down transformative and ‘dismissive’³ power over society.⁴ These powers are exercised via a series of intrusive-authoritarian and insufficiently accountable institutions. The most salient example of these institutions has been the armed forces. In the background, however, numerous other institutions play crucial roles to reproduce old authoritarianism, some important current examples being the Council of Higher Education, the Presidency of Religious Affairs and, pending more discussion below, the Judiciary. Furthermore, the ruling elites who control these institutions are either unwilling or unable to seek consensus with rival elites in opposition. It might be fruitful to conceptualize all this as the influence of ‘history’ (Capoccia and Ziblatt 2010) in Turkey’s democratization because in their foundational moments these institutions were mainly built unilaterally, with little broad-based elite or popular consensus (McLaren and Cop 2011; Somer 2014a, 2016).

The forms of these institutions and the balance of power between them have undergone many and important alterations over time. The concomitant development of such important principles – if not always their actual implementation – as national sovereignty, division of powers, secularism and electoral democracy have undoubtedly been extremely significant in their own ways as well. Nevertheless, the core of old authoritarianism, i.e. the operational logic of the governing institutions in terms of exercising top-down power to control, categorize, transform and ostensibly modernize society ‘for the people regardless of the people’ has not necessarily changed. The possible historical-sociological, cultural and structural roots and causes of old authoritarianism require better understanding but are outside the scope of this article.⁵

In the light of the insufficiently interrogated theories of democratic transition, many scholars explicitly or implicitly examined Turkey as a case that had completed a democratic transition – depending on each analyst’s evaluation – either in 1987–1991 or in 1997–2002.⁶ Turkey had its first free and fair multiparty elections in 1950. Civilian competitive politics was, however, challenged soon afterwards by elected government majoritarianism. It was then interrupted by the military coup of 1960, after which military tutelage and periodic interventions were institutionalized. However, these ‘old’ military interventions – from which the July 2016 military coup attempt appears to have significantly differed – were mainly aimed at ‘protecting’ and resuscitating the secular-Turkish and developmental republican regime based in old authoritarianism, which was established during the 1920s and 1930s. Hence, in accordance with its self-identification as the guardian of modernizatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Exit from democracy: illiberal governance in Turkey and beyond
• 1. Understanding Turkey’s democratic breakdown: old vs. new and indigenous vs. global authoritarianism
• 2. Existential insecurity and the making of a weak authoritarian regime in Turkey
• 3. Decoding the authoritarian code: exercising ‘legitimate’ power politics through ruling parties in Turkey, Macedonia and Serbia
• 4. Examining state capacity in the context of electoral authoritarianism, regime formation and consolidation in Russia and Turkey
• 5. Strong presidents and weak institutions: populism in Turkey, Venezuela and Ecuador
• 6. Populism as the problem child of democracy: the AKP’s enduring appeal and the use of meso-level actors
• 7. Turkey’s Diyanet under AKP rule: from protector to imposer of state ideology?
• 8. Creating a pious generation: youth and education policies of the AKP in Turkey
• 9. Conflict and reconciliation between Turks and Kurds: the HDP as an agonistic actor
• 10. The ambiguities of democratic autonomy: the Kurdish movement in Turkey and Rojava
• Index