Turkey's Democratization Process

Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Avalos, Hakan Yilmaz, Ana Planet, Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Avalos, Hakan Yilmaz, Ana Planet, Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Avalos, Hakan Yilmaz, Ana I. Planet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415836968
• eBook ISBN: 9781135044367
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the end of the 1980 coup d'état Turkey has been in the midst of a complex process of democratization. Applying methodological pluralism in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of this process in a Turkish context, this book brings together contributions from prominent, Turkish, English, French, and Spanish scholars.

Turkey's Democratization Process utilises the theoretical framework of J.J. Linz and A.C. Stepan in order to assess the complex process of democratization in Turkey. This framework takes into account five interacting features of Turkey's polity when making this assessment, namely: whether the underlying legal and socioeconomic conditions are conducive for the development of a free and participant society; if a relatively autonomous political society exists; whether there are legal guarantees for citizens' freedoms; if there exists a state bureaucracy which can be used by a democratic government; and whether the type and pace of Turkish economic development contributes to this process.

Examining the Turkish case in light of this framework, this book seeks to combine analyses that will help assess the process of democratization in Turkey to date and will be of interest to scholars and researchers interested in Turkish Politics, Democratization and Middle Eastern Studies more broadly.

Part I

Introduction and context

1 Democratization processes in defective democracies

The case of Turkey

Carmen Rodríguez, Antonio Ávalos, Hakan Yılmaz and Ana I. Planet

In the 12 June 2011 elections in Turkey, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party) claimed its third consecutive victory at the ballot box, winning a comfortable majority that once again made it possible to form a single-party government. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the head of the AKP, is the first political leader in the history of Turkish elections to increase the percentage of votes won by his party in three consecutive general elections. In the elections, the AKP received 49.83 per cent of the votes, giving them 326 seats. However, this overwhelming victory at the polls did not translate into the two-thirds majority needed to unilaterally adopt a Turkish constitution (which would require 367 seats) or even the 330 seats that would allow the party–after agreement in the Parliament on procedures for adoption and the president’s approval–to call a referendum to endorse the change.

The main opposition parties, CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Republican People’s Party), MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, Nationalist Action Party) and the independent candidates backed by the BDP (Barış ve Demokrasi Parti, Peace and Democracy Party), were allocated 135, 53 and 36 seats respectively, corresponding to the percentage of votes they won: 25.96 per cent, 13.01 per cent and 6.63 per cent. After the elections, however, the YSK (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu, Supreme Electoral Board) decided to strip deputy (MP) Hatip Dicle, a candidate backed by the BDP, of his seat, since he had been sentenced to one year and eight months in prison for disseminating propaganda on behalf of the banned PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, Kurdistan Workers’ Party). This decision was very controversial, since it was not clear why the YSK had allowed Dicle to run in the first place. His seat was filled by Oya Eronat, an AKP candidate, thus increasing the number of deputies representing that party to 327.

The newly formed Grand National Assembly of Turkey confronted a tough challenge: to draft and approve a new constitution to replace the 1982 Turkish constitution written under the auspices of the military junta that ruled the country after the coup d’état in 1980. Although the different political groups agreed that a new constitution was needed, there was no doubt that the debates in Parliament were nonetheless going to be intense. The political parties that made up the Grand National Assembly of Turkey spoke for very different sectors of society, which made reaching an agreement more complex. However, as other authors have noted before, a successful constitution requires the greatest possible consensus. In Turkey, then, it is crucial to reconcile different viewpoints: liberal, conservative, Turkish and Kurdish nationalist, and religious and rigidly secular sensibilities, among others. This fact is extremely important. Ozbudun and Gençkaya have already asserted that ‘the Turkish experience in constitution-making can be described as a series of missed opportunities to create political institutions based on broad consensus’ (2009: 3). Indeed, in a discussion of this issue in a comparative study on Italy, Spain and Turkey, McLaren asserted: ‘it is consensual rulemaking that would ultimately seem of utmost importance in explaining differential consolidation in Italy, Spain and Turkey’ (2008: 268).

Thus, in its third term, the AKP Government faced a key moment for the Turkish political system. The objective of this book is to contribute an analysis that can help to make an assessment of the process of democratization in Turkey to date.

Theoretical framework

Gunther, Diamandouros and Puhle have singled out the different dimensions of an overall process of democratization: ‘the breakdown of the previous regime,¹ democratic transition, regime consolidation, and democratic persistence’, specifically noting that the transition process ‘entails the creation of the basic political institutions of a new democratic system and the drafting of new rules for regulating the political behaviour of citizens, organisations and governing elites’ (1995: xii). This is what O’Donnell would call the first transition, from ‘the previous authoritarian regime to the installation of a democratic government’ (1989: 20). During this transition process, there are expectations, as Linz says, ‘that political authority will soon be derived only from the free decision of an electorate’ (1990: 28). This political moment is characterised by its uncertainly, and there is no unanimity in academia in terms of establishing the end of the transition process, which includes free non-fraudulent elections and usually also involves the establishment of a new, democratic constitutional framework (Linz 1990: 28), (Huneeus 1994: 35). Linz and Stepan consider transition complete

When sufficient agreement has been reached about political procedures to produce an elected government, when a government comes to power that is the direct result of a free and popular vote, when this government de facto has the authority to generate new policies, and when the executive, legislative and judicial power generated by the new democracy does not have to share power with other bodies de iure.

(Linz and Stepan 1996a: 3)

It follows, then, that the authors caution that it is possible for a democratic transition to remain incomplete, since there may be non-elected institutions, such as the army, that unlawfully control part of the political sovereignty or there may be such a high degree of disagreement between the elites and the majority of the population about the new democratic institutions that normal evolution and consolidation are impeded by a serious threat of illegitimacy (Linz and Stepan 1996a: 4). Gunther, Dia-mandouros and Puhle also note in this respect that a transition ‘may culminate in a new regime but that regime may not even be fully democratic’ (Gunther, Diamandouros and Puhle 1995: 3).

This situation gives rise to serious disputes regarding the application of the concept of democratic consolidation to those regimes that do not possess the basic characteristics to be qualified as fully democratic. O’Donnell speaks of a second transition ‘from this [democratic] government to the consolidation of democracy or, in other words, to the effective functioning of a democratic regime. I am speaking of political democracy (or polyarchy, according to Robert Dahl’s useful and widely used definition)’ (O’Donnell 1989: 20). Regarding democratic consolidation, Gunther, Diamandouros and Puhle argue that ‘democratic consolidation, as we define it, requests full conformity with all the criteria inherent in a demanding, multifaceted procedural definition of democracy’ (Gunther, Diamandouros and Puhle 1995:3). Also these authors suggested that the study of democratic consolidation is an even more complex phenomenon than that of transitions. The most recent research lines in this topic have focused on the actions of elites and on agency,² while ‘consolidation is much more complex and it involves a much larger number of actors in a wider array of political arenas’ (Gunther, Diamandouros and Puhle 1995: 3).

Linz and Stepan clearly state that it is not possible to speak of democratic consolidation unless the following three conditions are met: the existence of a state; a democratic transition that has been brought to completion (this is not the case if the freely elected government cannot impose, either de iure or de facto, its authority in certain areas because of confrontations with ‘authoritarian enclaves’, ‘reserve domains’ or military ‘prerogatives’); and finally, the implementation of a democratic government that respects the constitutional framework and fundamental rights and freedoms. The authors assert that ‘only democracies can become consolidated democracies’ (Linz and Stepan 1996b: 14).

Schedler is one of the authors who have made an exhaustive study of the use of the term ‘democratic consolidation’, analysing some of the difficulties in its application. For some academics, it connotes a process, while for others it implies a point of arrival, a result, a target. This author suggests that the meaning of this concept, termed ‘nebulous’ by Pridham (1995: 167), depends on our empirical viewpoints and ‘the type of regime we want to avoid or attain’ (according to our normative horizons) (Schedler 1997: 2). For Schedler, democratic consolidation (in accordance with other authors like O’Donnell (1996) and Schneider (1995), who had already made note of this) is ‘indeed an intrinsically teleological concept’ (Schedler 1997: 5). The author lists five concepts of democratic consolidation: avoiding democratic breakdown, avoiding democratic erosion, institutionalising democracy, completing democracy and deepening democracy. If liberal democracies must face the challenge of preventing an ‘erosion of democracy’ then semi-democratic regimes³ not only must prevent a regression to authoritarianism, but they must continue to push the evolution of the regime towards full democracy (Schedler 1998: 95). Moreover, for Schedler

in semi-democracies which face the task of democratic completion, any talk about “the consolidation of democracy” is misleading. It suggests that a democratic regime is already in place (and only needs to be “consolidated”) when in fact the issue at hand is constructing a fully democratic regime.

(Schedler 1998: 99)

Merkel (2004) and Puhle (2005) use the term defective democracies to describe regimes that hold elections with a series of democratic requisites but that at the same time lack one or more of the characteristics shared by ‘embedded democracies’.⁴ The authors note four types of defective democracies: 1) Exclusive democracy, which contains criteria for excluding the suffrage of certain groups, usually based on questions of ethnicity, religion or gender. 2) Tutelary democracy, characterised by the existence of reserved domains outside the scope of democratically elected governments and veto players that may exercise their powers either by constitutional or extra-constitutional means, such as the military or oligarchic groups. 3) Delegative democracies, where ‘the mechanisms of horizontal accountability, the checks and balances between the different powers, are out of order’. In this case, for example, a lack of judicial independence would be one of its symptoms. 4) Illiberal democracy, where the practice of the rule of law does not work well, constitutional norms are not properly implemented and human rights and fundamental liberties are not guaranteed. Some cases of defective democracies have a mixed profile that combine the characteristics defining each category.

In a regime with a defective democracy, if what Schedler calls ‘completing democracy’ (1998: 95) is to be produced, some alteration must occur in the existing institutions and regulations that are impeding the development of a fully democratic regime. As Valenzuela (1990) has noted, the process of democratization in this case cannot be based on the ‘habituation, assimilation, or routine’ of these non-democratic institutions, but some alteration must occur in the existing institutions. This alteration can be encouraged by the political class or by civil society–not just internal groups, but also external actors.

This work will study the case of a particular defective democracy, Turkey, which is undergoing a democratization process whose ideal goal would be to accomplish a full democratic regime. The term ‘embedded democracies’ as defined by Wolfgang Merkel (2004) and the members of the ‘Defective Democracies’ research project is very useful in terms of making the desired type of liberal democratic regime operational. This concept goes beyond other well-known definitions of democracy such as the one coined by Dahl as polyarchy in 1971. Still, it focuses on a specific and limited list of elements necessary to establish a democratic regime that can be taken separately, but that are also connected and mutually reinforcing.

Bearing in mind all of the positions, Linz and Stepan’s theoretical framework (1996a) serves as a very useful analytical element to examine the process of democratization in Turkey at the present time, although this particular case is not one of democratic consolidation but about a prior stage. For these authors, consolidated democracies–within the essential framework of a sovereign state–have five interacting arenas in place that reinforce one another:

first, the conditions must exist for the development of a free and lively civil society; second, there must be a relatively autonomous and valued political society; third, there must be a rule of law to ensure legal guarantees for citizens’ freedoms and independent associational life; fourth, there must be a state bureaucracy that is usable by the new democratic government; fifth, there must be an institutionalised economic society.

(Linz and Stepan 1996a: 7)

The analysis in this book focuses on the evolution of these five arenas in the Turkish case.

As noted on p. 5, there is some controversy regarding the use of the term democratic consolidation for regimes that are not fully democratic. However, this book starts from the premise that the arenas defined by Linz and Stepan to analyse problems of democratic transitions and consolidation are equally valid for the analysis of democratization processes in defective democracies.

In conclusion, the challenge before us is to analyse the processes of democratization that do not fully correspond to either the concept of transition or the concept of consolidation. The starting point is a regime that holds elections that meet a minimum of the democratic criteria for pluralism, inclusivity and transparent, open and contested elections, but which nonetheless have severe restrictions in other spheres, such as the existence of reserved domains, serious problems in the implementation of the separation of powers and their reciprocal control, and severe restrictions in the spheres of political and civil rights. We agree with Schedler when he asserts that if these political regimes are undergoing a democratization process, this process entails ‘democratic completion’ and is not about consolidating the current features of the regime (1998: 95–96).

The Turkish case

A 2012 report from Freedom House qualified Turkey as partly free, giving it a score of 3 for both political rights and civil liberties (on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 representing the most free and 7 the least free). The Turkish state can claim prior democratic experience, a full institutional framework and a civil society capable of channelling significant proposals for change. Its history, however, has also been marked by coups d’état and severe restrictions in the sphere of political liberties and fundamental rights.

After the 1980 coup when a military junta seized power, the country underwent a transition overseen by the army that ensured that members of the military would play a decisive role and substantially cut back on individual rights and freedoms, as evidenced by the constitution approved in a 1982 referendum. This would have produced, according to the criteria of Linz and Stepan (1996a:3) mentioned pp. 4–5, an incomplete transition. The regime that emerged after the coup could be considered a ‘defective’ democracy (Merkel 2004 and Puhle 2005) that produced important restrictions in the sphere of rights. This defective democracy combined elements of ‘tutelary democracy,’ in which non-elected actors (the military establishment in Turkey’s case) maintain reserved domains and act as veto players, and those of ‘illiberal democracy’, in which there are severe limitations in the exercise of public freedoms and fundamental rights and the effective rule of law. Although the political parties banned in 1981 were slowly rebuilt over the course of a decade, institutional weakness and/or a lack of will and conviction hindered any substantial reform of the political system. Though the democratization of the political system will continue to advance, any resulting reforms could be of limited scope and the fruit of difficult transactions between parties.

The Helsinki European Council’s decision to recognise Turkey as an EU candidate country in 1999 served as a catalyst for the political parties to undertake a comprehensive process of political and economic reforms. Between 1999 and 2002, they were promoted by a difficult coalition of three parties and, after the AKP won an absolute majority in the 2002 gene...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Political parties
• Part I Introduction and context
• Part II Political Society
• Part III Civil society
• Part IV Economic arena
• Part V State apparatus
• part VI Rule of law
• Part VII Conclusions
• Index