Erdoğan’s Turkey

Islamism, Identity and Memory

M. Hakan Yavuz, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, M. Hakan Yavuz, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367759056
• eBook ISBN: 9781000479676
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This book explores the role of religion in the transformation of Turkey under the reign of President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and his Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi, AKP). It attempts to come to terms with the current political crisis in Turkey and the government's move toward authoritarianism. The chapters included in this book examine various ideological, political and social factors that have driven the transformation of the AKP. The book seeks to answer questions about how and in what direction have the AKP's objectives and strategies changed in the last two decades the party has been in power, and the divergence between professed ideals and practices. The book also focuses on the major repercussions that the 15 July 2016 coup d'état attempt has had on key Turkish state institutions and policies, and how it has also affected Turkish foreign policy toward regional and international powers. The book addresses the many gaps and omissions in earlier studies of the AKP, and posits that there have been a more complex set of circumstances impacting Turkish politics since 2002 and that it makes little sense to continue to view Turkish politics as just a clash between Islam and secularism.

Erdo?an's Turkey is a significant new contribution to the study of Turkish politics and politics in general, and will be a great resource for academics, researchers and advanced students of Political Science, International Relations, History, Geography and Sociology.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Middle East Critique.

Faulty Assumptions about Democratization in Turkey

Paul Kubicek

Abstract For most of the first decade of its rule, the AKP touted itself as an agent for democratization, receiving much support both inside and outside of Turkey. More recently, the AKP has taken a clear authoritarian turn, raising the issue of why many observers of Turkey, including myself, did not see this coming. This paper looks at some of the blinders that I, among others, wore as we assessed the AKP and prospects for democracy in Turkey. These included excessive faith in the European Union as an external force for democracy, a belief that the military and militant secularism were the primary obstacles to Turkish democracy, confidence that what the AKP represented was an archetype of an Islamic-oriented party that had been ‘moderated’ by political inclusion and its own ‘learning,’ and a belief in the democratic promise of modernization theory. The article’s objective is to open up a wider discussion of lessons learned from the AKP’s years in power and how scholars may wish to revise some of their assumptions about Turkey as well as the broader literature on democratization.

In 2002, when the Justice and Development Party [Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP] came to power in Turkey, many scholars and others were optimistic about the country’s political future. Partially, this was because the 2002 elections ousted a three-party coalition government that voters held responsible for corruption and a severe economic crisis. However, it was also because of what the AKP appeared to be. It campaigned on a platform that, among other items, favored democratizing reforms to advance Turkey’s bid to join the European Union (EU). Its leaders had a largely positive record in municipal government, and disavowed the Islamist rhetoric of the banned Refah [Welfare] Party, its predecessor. In the words of Abdullah Gül, one of the AKP’s co-founders and Turkish President (2007-2014), the AKP rejected the ‘alien imports’ in Refah’s ideology in favor of ‘liberalism, human rights, and the market economy.’¹ It portrayed itself as a ‘conservative democratic’ party to appeal to center-right voters, but also sought the support of Kurds and secular-oriented liberals who hungered for political liberalization.

¹ Quoted in Güneş Tezcür (2010a) Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey: The Paradox of Moderation (Austin: University of Texas Press), p. 157.

For the first few years, this optimism seemed vindicated. The government passed numerous reforms, and the EU opened accession talks with Turkey. The AKP survived significant challenges from the Kemalist establishment, and took the unprecedented step of directly confronting the military tutelary regime. The economy grew, which seemed to bolster both the AKP and Turkey’s prospects for democracy. Foreign leaders, including both Presidents Bush and Obama, upheld Turkey as a model for other Muslim countries. One analyst hailed it as the best example of ‘Muslim democracy.’²

How different things looked by 2020. The AKP’s retreat from its reformist vision, and the subsequent turn toward intolerant authoritarianism, is well-known. By 2018, Freedom House ranked Turkey as ‘unfree,’ a designation it had not had since military rule in the early 1980s. The country’s EU bid is moribund. Its political system has been substantially altered and now is extremely centralized, with few checks on President Recep T. Erdoğan. The state exercises control over much of the media, opposition leaders have been imprisoned, and tens of thousands more people were jailed or dismissed from their jobs in a massive purge after the failed coup attempt in July 2016.

Many developments have weakened democracy in Turkey since the AKP’s reforms of the early 2000s, and various studies have described and tried to account for them.³ This article reflects upon these phenomena, but is concerned less with the actions of the AKP itself and more about how many observers of Turkey were taken in by the AKP and how developments under the AKP have challenged or even contradicted some assumptions about Turkey as well as general theories about democratization. In other words, it seeks to explore what much of the scholarly community may have missed in earlier studies of the AKP. Let me state from the outset that I do not absolve myself. In both my writings on Turkey and in my general outlook toward the AKP in the 2000s, I was, in hindsight, overly optimistic, perhaps even naïve. For example, on multiple occasions I approvingly quoted Erdoğan’s 2004 statement that he sought to make ‘European values Ankara’s values’⁴ and assumed that the greatest obstacle to Turkish democratization was the ‘deep state.’ I celebrated the Ergenekon and Balyoz cases as positive steps. Even as I began work in 2012 on a comparative volume on democracy in the Muslim world,⁵ my assumption was that Turkey would be a prime example of a relatively successful democratizer—an assumption that I was compelled to question as the project unfolded. This article, therefore, constitutes an example of self-criticism, although, to be sure, there were others who were bullish, at least early on, about the AKP and Turkish democracy.⁶

² Seyyed Vali Resa Nasr, (2005) The Rise of Muslim Democracy, Journal of Democracy 16(2), p. 23. ³ See, for example, Cengiz Erişen & Paul Kubicek (eds) (2016) Democratic Consolidation in Turkey: Micro and Macro Challenges (London: Routledge); Bahar Baser & Ahmet E. Ôztürk (eds) (2017) Authoritarian Politics in Turkey: Elections, Resistance and the AKP (London: I. B. Tauris); and Soner Cagaptay (2017) The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris). ⁴ See Paul Kubicek (2005b) Turkish Accession to the European Union: Challenges and Opportunities, World Affairs 168(2), p. 70. ⁵ Paul Kubicek (2015) Political Islam and Democracy in the Muslim World (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner). ⁶ For examples see Ihsan Daği (2008) Turkey Between Democracy and Militarism: Post-Kemalist Perspectives (Ankara: Orion); M. Hakan Yavuz (2009) Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); and William Hale & Ergun Ozbudun (2010) Islamism, Democracy, and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP (London: Routledge).

Let me add as well that not all were ‘duped’ by the AKP. Some academic analysts, as well as ordinary Turkish citizens, remained leery or fearful.⁷ This was seen in protests in 2007 against the selection of Abdullah Gül as President and the 2008 Constitutional Court case brought against the AKP for threatening the secular (laic) nature of the state. Opposition was largely framed against Islamization, either from the AKP itself or by Islamist groups (e.g., the Gülen movement), which the AKP arguably emboldened. However, while some elements of Islamization, particularly in education, have been part of the AKP’s more intolerant, repressive turn, the nature of Erdoğan’s regime should be understood not as a theocracy but in terms of populism, consolidation of power, and breakdown in the rule of law similar to that of Vladimir Putin in Russia or Viktor Orban in Hungary. In this respect, Turkey shares features with numerous democratic backsliders across the world.

This article examines various sources of my/our lacunae about Turkey and, more particularly, about the AKP. It first discusses factors such as how motivational biases and ambiguities led both to rosy assumptions and a misdiagnosis of obstacles facing Turkish democracy. Secondly, it explores how heady assumptions about social science theories/causal arguments, in particular modernization theory, the often-invoked inclusion-moderation hypothesis, and the transformative power of the EU, failed in the Turkish case. It will briefly conclude with some reflections about lessons that may be learned from this analysis.

Ambiguities, Biases and Misdiagnoses

The failure to foresee what has occurred in Turkey can be attributed to a number of factors. Political scientists (and others as well) are notorious for being bad at predicting the future. In addition, many warning signs of a democratic breakdown, such as an explicit rejection of the democratic rules of the game, endorsement of violence, denial of legitimacy of political opponents, and support for restrictions on media and civil liberties, were not apparent in the early 2000s. Yes, Erdoğan, the AKP’s leader and Prime Minister (2003-2014), said some things that, taken out of context, might give some pause—the most well-known being that democracy is merely a vehicle [araç] that you can leave once you reach your destination⁸—but he had served well as mayor of Istanbul (1994-1998) and broke with the more committed Islamists from the Refah Party who eventually formed the Saadet (Felicity) Party. He told an international democracy symposium in 2004: ‘Nobody should try to shape society from the head of the table. Democracy is a dialogue of tolerance and reconciliation. Instead of the peculiar democracy we currently have in Turkey, pluralism, harmony and tolerance must be established.’⁹ Early on, the AKP attempted to assemble a broad coalition, including liberals and Kurds, and pushed reforms on issues such as the political role of the military and Kurdish language rights, moves that previously would have been inconceivable and addressed the country’s most serious democratic deficiencies.

⁷ See Angel Rasaba & F. Stephen Larrabee (2008) Political Islam in Turkey (Santa Monica CA: Rand Corporation); Binnaz Toprak (2009) Being Different in Turkey: Religion, Conservatism, and Otherization. (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University and Open Society Foundation); Nur B. Criss (2010) Dismantling Turkey: The Will of the People?, Turkish Studies 11(1), pp. 45-58; and Banu Eligur (2010) The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). ⁸ The complete context here is that he added that human happiness and peace are the ultimate goals. ⁹ The Guardian (2019) From re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Faulty Assumptions about Democratization in Turkey
• 2 Populism and the Politics of Belonging in Erdoğan’s Turkey
• 3 Understanding Contemporary Turkey’s Nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire and Neo-Ottomanist Approaches in Turkish Politics
• 4 Governing Anxiety, Trauma and Crisis: The Political Discourse on Ontological (In)security after the July 15 Coup Attempt in Turkey
• 5 The Evolving Kurdish Question in Turkey
• 6 Positive and Negative Diaspora Governance in Context: From Public Diplomacy to Transnational Authoritarianism
• 7 Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy Toward Syria: The Return of Securitization
• 8 The Turkish-Armenian Historical Controversy: How to Name the Events of 1915?
• Index