Introduction
Turkey has served as a paradigmatic case in comparative politics ever since the discipline’s emergence in the mid-20th century. Because Turkey is frequently characterized as the most developed Muslim country, scholars of the time expected Turkish politics to show a more rapid response to the transformations that were reaching Anatolia from the West. And that response did indeed come. Seen as the defining story of Modernization Theory, Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East drew on the country as a case study. Locating the young republic as the fastest modernizing country in the “traditional” world, both Lerner and his followers expected that Turkish politics would evolve into democracy rather quickly, if not necessarily at a pace as fast as that of its economic modernization.Footnote 1 However, since the publication of Lerner’s book, Turkey has been shaken by three military takeovers, and as a result democracy did not follow in the wake of the country’s socioeconomic modernization.
Democracy dragged its feet in other parts of the world as well. The fall of the Soviet Union led to optimism for those studying the dynamics of political regime change: the transition to the post-Soviet era gave birth to a body of literature on the transition to democracy, thereby creating a somewhat premature expectation that dictatorships would fall and be followed by the rise of democracies. Yet the direction of transition navigated away from democratization and toward hybrid regimes that simultaneously incorporated practices of both democracy and authoritarianism. Depending on the theoretical prioritization of the respective scholar, these regimes have been characterized as “semi-democracy,” “pseudo-democracy,” “illiberal democracy,” “semi-authoritarianism,” or “soft authoritarianism.”Footnote 2
Scholars expected Turkey to respond to the end of the Cold War faster than the rest of the world. However, Turkey failed to institutionalize democracy and instead jumped on the bandwagon of regime hybridization, swinging back and forth between authoritarianism and democracy. Moreover, the persistence of the Turkish military’s intervention in everyday politics institutionalized another political regime hybridity, one commonly termed “tutelary democracy.”Footnote 3 But in the first decade of the 21st century, the military lost its prerogatives and the tutelary character of the regime disappeared. This has even been discussed as a model: “Turkey’s successful exit from a military tutelage demonstrated that a mild and peaceful transition away from autocracy is possible.”Footnote 4
At a time when the academic literature was focused on the dissolution of the country’s military tutelary regime, on July 15, 2016 Turkey faced another coup attempt, this time organized and executed by Gülenist officers and their collaborators in the army and elsewhere.Footnote 5 The success of civilian moves toward the dissolution of the military’s political power, however, contributed—paradoxically—not only to the emergence but also to the failure of this coup attempt. The overpowering of the coup plotters by the secular army did not result in the reinstutionalization of military tutelage; on the contrary, the chief of staff of the Turkish armed forces was placed under the political responsibility of the Minister of Defense, and then, following the 2017 referendum, under the president.
The slow-paced erosion of the military’s control was followed by a fast-tracked emergence of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey. As soon as the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) was certain of the end of the tutelary regime, it changed Turkey’s political direction from democracy to authoritarianism in three successive steps. First, it de facto froze the EU accession process, thus limiting the country’s openness to Western pro-democratic influence. Second, the party introduced a process of judicial reform that weakened checks and balances within the regime, resulting in a phenomenal increase of political control over the judiciary that was more suitable for silencing and/or punishing political dissent. And third, following Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s contested and narrow victory in the referendum of April 2017—the first “victory” of the AKP that was not conceded by the opposition—Turkey’s regime transformation was steered toward a full authoritarianism that may, in the future, immensely limit or even effectively close off the legal channels through which the opposition can contest for political power.
Since the end of the tutelary regime, the political science literature has aimed to provide analysts with a concept that would lend itself to comparative perspectives, and to this end scholars have been pursuing theoretical attempts to describe Turkey’s new political regime and its transformation. These efforts have opened a valuable discussion in the literature on Turkey’s new political regime by defining this regime as “electoral authoritarianism,” “illiberal democracy,” “delegative democracy,” “rising neo-fascism,” and “weak authoritarianism.”Footnote 6
Following Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, scholars such as Ozan Örmeci, Koray Çalışkan, Ergun Özbudun, and Berk Esen and Şebnem Gümüşçü have presented a convincing empirical framework within which to locate a “drift” to or “rise” of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey.Footnote 7 Contributing to this literature, this article argues that Turkey’s new political regime qualifies and is indeed institutionalized as competitive authoritarianism. It demonstrates that, out of a total of eleven qualifications within a set of three indicators of competitive authoritarianism as theorized by Levitsky and Way, between 2010 and 2017 Turkey’s political regime repeatedly displayed nine such qualifications, a performance surpassed by only five other countries: Armenia, Cameroon, Madagascar, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. During and after the 2017 constitutional referendum, all eleven qualifications of competitive authoritarianism were observed for the first time since 2010.
However, the aftermath of the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016 and the 2017 constitutional referendum structured a new path of political regime transformation in the country, creating a clear drift toward full authoritarianism. Full authoritarian regimes mark political contexts where the opposition’s ability to compete for power is restricted in real terms to the extent that elections become structurally non-competitive.Footnote 8 In such settings, which narrow the formal channels through which the opposition can contest for political power and in which the incumbent mobilizes formal and informal means of neither sharing nor abandoning political power, opposition parties open channels of participation that move beyond formal politics and mimic social movements on the ground. After discussing these contemporary developments, the article concludes with a discussion of the consequences of the constitutional amendments following the 2017 referendum and analyzes the drift toward full authoritarianism in Turkey.
The theory of competitive authoritarianism
An extensive political science literature has described the forms of encounter between democracy and authoritarianism as “disguised dictatorship,” “semi-authoritarianism,” “hybrid regimes,” “semi-democracy,” “the gray zone,” “pseudo-democracy,” “defective democracy,” and “semi-dictatorship”.Footnote 9
Much of the literature presents convincing case studies, yet very little of it provides a working concept that would lend itself to robust comparative analysis. Andreas Schedler has offered the notion of “electoral authoritarianism,” defining such regimes as follows:
Electoral authoritarian regimes play the game of multiparty elections by holding regular elections for the chief executive and a national legislative assembly. Yet they violate the liberal-democratic principles of freedom and fairness so profoundly and systematically as to render elections instruments of authoritarian rule rather than “instruments of democracy.”Footnote 10
Effectively narrowing the theoretical focus, this definition includes those regimes that use democracy as a façade that conceals electoral authoritarianism, and thus risks flattening the categorical distinction between those authoritarian regimes where elections are merely devices meant to save face and those regimes where elections are contested but still competitive. The concept of competitive authoritarianism addresses the problem of flattening more effectively. Theorizing competitive authoritarianism as a response to the formal expansion and substantial decline of democracy after the end of the Cold War, Levitsky and Way defined it as follows:
In competitive authoritarian regimes, formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority. Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such an extent, however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy […] Although elections are regularly held and are generally free of massive fraud, incumbents routinely abuse state resources, deny the opposition adequate media coverage, harass opposition candidates and their supporters, and in some cases manipulate electoral results.Footnote 11
Incumbents in competitive authoritarian regimes tolerate competition as long as they are almost sure to win.Footnote 12 However, the electoral character of the regime does not create a mere façade of democracy: elections are competitive and real. Remaining in the game instead of choosing an exit strategy, the opposition knows, or at least believes, that it has a chance to win.Footnote 13 In competitive authoritarian regimes, election procedures are rarely openly violated; instead, “incumbents are more likely to use bribery, co-optation, and more subtle forms of persecution, such as the use of tax authorities, compliant judiciaries, and other state agencies to legally harass, persecute, or extort cooperative behavior from critics.”Footnote 14
In elaborating on competitive authoritarianism’s defining characteristics, Levitsky and Way posit that, if incumbents are restricted by such unelected tutelary powers as the military, regimes cannot be qualified as competitive authoritarian.Footnote 15 Thus, an empirical test of competitive authoritarianism is possible only if the tutelary character of such a regime disappears.
Levitsky and Way locate three areas in reference to which a given political regime’s competitive authoritarian character can be empirically tested: the electoral arena, civil liberties, and an uneven playing field.Footnote 16 In connection with these areas, they argue that competitive authoritarianism can be observed if the ruling party in a given regime breaches at least one of the following attributes of democracy: (1) free elections, (2) the general protection of civil liberties, and (3) a reasonably level playing field.Footnote 17 In competitive authoritarian regimes, the electoral arena may be compromised if any one of the following indicators can be observed: (1) at least one major candidate is barred; (2) electoral abuse is centrally coordinated or tolerated; (3) the opposition is prevented from campaigning on an equal footing with the incumbent; and (4) electoral authorities evidence systematic bias in favor of the incumbent.Footnote 18
Violation of civil liberties takes form through the following attributes: (1) frequent harassment of the media for political reasons (including censorship, legal harassment, the use of unfair taxation, and discretionary use of broadcasting licenses for the purpose of punishment or control); (2) political attacks on the media within a one-year period, which is meant to curb press independence (such as initiating legal action in terms of tax fines); (3) occasional engagement in actions that restrict the freedom of speech or of association; and (4) attacking opposition actors within a one-year period, which has a “chilling effect” on civic activity.Footnote 19
Finally, a regime can be considered competitive authoritarian if one of the three ways of creating an uneven playing field is observable: (1) the state is deployed to control the opposition’s ability to compete; (2) there is uneven media access (such as control of state-owned media and “packing” a significant share of private media); and (3) there is uneven access to resources during election campaigns.Footnote 20 Overall, a regime is competitive authoritarian if at least one of the eleven qualifications above is met, if elections are not merely a façade, if there exists broad adult suffrage, and if the regime does not display a tutelary character.Footnote 21
Competitive authoritarianism in Turkey
The beginning of the dismantlement of Turkey’s tutelary regime also marked the beginning of the transformations that have since institutionalized competitive authoritarianism in the country. The theory of competitive authoritarianism has only become relevant for an understanding of Turkey’s politics following the tutelary regime’s end. Under tutelary democracy, Turkey’s political regime could not be qualified as competitive authoritarian, not because it was not yet a hybrid authoritarian regime, but rather because civilians were competing on a level playing field for political power that would be shared with the military. Soldiers never allowed civilians to compete with them on matters of structural importance.
Following the constitutional referendum of 2010 and after three general elections (2011, June 2015, and November 2015), one local election (2014), one presidential election (2014), and one constitutional referendum (2017), the Turkish political regime no longer qualifies as a tutelary democracy.Footnote 22 The country’s tutelary regime was a democracy that succeeded in achieving an acceptable level of separation of powers, press freedom, and regular elections, but the civilian regime had to share its power with the military on matters of structural importance, such as military promotions and the defense budget.Footnote 23
In the first decade of the 21st century, the tacit consent between Turkey’s civilians and soldiers came to an end as a result of the dissolution of military prerogatives. Beginning in 2005, the army began to lose its rights to intervene in politics as well as the tools and social support for such intervention.Footnote 24 By 2010, the military had a limited say only on matters concerning the defense sector, and by 2012 the political science literature had begun to discuss the dynamics of the end of the tutelary regime.Footnote 25 As it had lost all of the prerogatives theorized by Alfred C. Stepan,Footnote 26 it was no longer possible to describe Turkey as a tutelary regime.Footnote 27
However, the end of the tutelary nature of the regime has not resulted in further democratization of the country. New developments, as well as the reproduction of older authoritarian political threads in the country, have displayed attributes of competitive authoritarianism in all three of the areas mentioned by Levitsky and Way; namely, the electoral arena, civil liberties, and an uneven playing field. As discussed below, the 2017 referendum—being the first civilian-organized voting process since 1950 to be declared illegitimate and to be neither recognized nor conceded by the main oppositionFootnote 28 —constituted a turning point in Turkey’s political regime. It was precisely then that a drift toward full authoritarianism began to be observed.
The electoral arena
Of the four indicators that Levitsky and Way defined as testing competitive authoritarianism in the electoral context for any given polity, it was not until 2017 that credible international and national observers were able to prove the existence of the first two; namely, the barring of at least one major candidate and centrally coordinated or tolerated electoral abuse. The existence of the other two indicators, however—i.e., the presence of significant formal or informal impediments to prevent the opposition from campaigning nationally on an equal footing and uneven access to resources and media during election campaigns—has been well documented.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitors all elections in Europe’s 57 countries and presents the most authoritative assessment of any given election. Observing the 2014 presidential election in Turkey, the OSCE concluded that the then Prime Minister Erdoğan enjoyed “a significant bias” as compared to the other candidates and parties.Footnote 29 This bias was based on the existence of the aforementioned impediments of preventing the opposition from campaigning on an equal footing and providing only uneven access to resources and media. The OSCE’s media monitoring results showed that “three out of the five monitored TV stations, including the public broadcaster, TRT1, displayed a significant bias in favour of the Prime Minister.”Footnote 30 The report concluded as follows:
The overall disproportionate coverage on television, the main source of political information, in favour of the Prime Minister, including live broadcasting of his events and speeches, coupled with the limited amount of paid political advertising featuring the other two candidates, gave the Prime Minister a distinct advantage, and limited pluralistic information on political alternatives for voters.Footnote 31
The Turkish state news agency (Anadolu Ajansı, AA) also exhibited bias towards the AKP’s presidential nominee, Erdoğan, during the 2014 presidential elections. When the vote count still covered less than 25 percent of all ballot boxes, the AA’s general manager—himself an AKP candidate in the 2015 general election—announced a landslide victory for Erdoğan at 63 percent, showing the opposition candidate, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, at 26 percent. In doing this, the AA aimed to psychologically compel opposition supporters to leave the ballot boxes; later, toward the end of the count, the agency decreased the “final result” of Erdoğan’s numbers to the actual 51.7 percent.
Impediments preventing the opposition from campaigning increased in frequency during the elections of June and November 2015. In both elections, the OSCE documented that the great majority of broadcasters favored the incumbent, thereby keeping the opposition from reaching the electorate on an equal footing with the incumbent.Footnote 32 Furthermore, in both elections, the Supreme Electoral Council (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu, YSK)—the body that administers elections in the country—as well as lower election boards refused to open to the media and to international observers.Footnote 33 In addition, following the November 2015 election, the constitutional court ruling prescribing that YSK “decisions cannot be reviewed, even for violations of fundamental rights and freedoms, further restricted the opportunity for stakeholders to seek judicial redress.”Footnote 34 Finally, in both elections President Erdoğan actively campaigned for the incumbent despite the fact that the president is required by Turkey’s constitution to be non-partisan and impartial toward campaigns within the country. According to the OSCE, Erdoğan’s campaigning in this manner contravened paragraph 5.4 of the 1990 OSCE Copenhagen Document and Section I.2.3a of the Venice Commission’s Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters.Footnote 35
Composed of active-duty judges, the YSK is funded by the Ministry of Justice, thus making it financially dependent on a ministry under the control of the incumbent. Additionally, the series of judicial reforms that was launched between 2011 and 2014 had already increased government control over the judiciary, thus decreasing the YSK’s autonomy. The Ministry of Justice holds the authority to discipline and dismiss judges, thereby giving it control over election administrators who are also active judges. Despite numerous formal demands from the opposition and independent observers, the AKP insisted on removing the YSK’s decisions from judicial review and set no final legal deadline for the council’s adjudication of electoral disputes, thus leaving the timing to the heat of public discussion and criticism. Coupled with the removal of the right of the media and observers to monitor the council’s activities, this has made the voting and counting process more inscrutable and accordingly decreased the transparency of elections.
According to the OSCE, the YSK also used its power in favor of Erdoğan by shortening the campaign period for the 2014 presidential election by three weeks, with “[t]he resulting 10-day campaign period benefitt[ing] the Prime Minister and [being] insufficient to adequately ensure equal opportunities for all candidates to compete in the election.”Footnote 36 Finally, the OSCE report reveals that Erdoğan used state resources for his campaign, thus gaining an unjustifiable advantage over other electoral contestants. In addition to the deployment of state resources, Erdoğan’s campaign also violated election law by drawing on the AKP’s distribution of food parcels and vouchers, a violation that went undenied by several AKP officials.Footnote 37
Similar instances of compromised election practices had been reported in the 2011 general election as well. One OSCE report demonstrated that, during this election, the “legislation continued to unduly limit freedom of expression, freedom of association, and electoral rights” in Turkey.Footnote 38 However, overall this election was largely regarded as being more in compliance with democratic standards than the two elections of 2014. Both the OSCE’s election observation report and that of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly confirm this conclusion.Footnote 39
The 2014 local elections suffered from YSK-related problems concerning compromised autonomy and fairness. A report by the Association for Monitoring Equal Rights (Eşit Haklar İçin İzleme Derneği, ESHİD), based on research at 466 ballot stations around the country, observed various forms of potential election fraud believed to have been carried out by the incumbent.Footnote 40 Discontent regarding the YSK’s handling of the election was in fact so widespread that, for the first time in Turkey’s history, a series of demonstrations and sit-ins blocked entry to the council’s building, resulting in the street being closed and police fencing off the YSK’s offices.
The 2014 local election in the capital of Ankara is still, even three years later, being contested by the opposition candidate, Mansur Yavaş, and might serve as something of an emblem of Turkey’s compromised election process. The actual voting was overshadowed by frequent power cuts that occurred during the ballot count, by allegations of ballot stuffing and the disposal of opposition votes, by police harassment, and by election day campaigning, all of which resulted in the widespread belief that the election was compromised. Losing to the incumbent by a margin of just 1 percent, Yavaş’s legal objections and the evidence he presented regarding 23 percent of all counted votes were not accepted by the YSK. His petition to the Constitutional Court was also dismissed by a decision that contained a preamble explaining the dismissal as being due to “the court’s limited jurisdiction over election administration.”Footnote 41
Growing public criticism of the YSK’s administration of the 2014 local elections led to the cancellation of local elections in thirteen districts, with reelections taking place on June 1, 2014 and resulting in a decline of votes for the incumbent. In these regions, the elections not only went ahead with no reported abuse, but also led to the success of opposition candidates. Nevertheless, these elections covered less than 1 percent of the country’s local administrative regions.
Civil liberties
According to Levitsky and Way, under competitive authoritarianism the violation of civil liberties takes the form of four general attributes, as outlined above. Since 2010, Turkey’s political regime has featured various and repeated instances of civil liberty violations falling under all four of these general attributes. For instance, a recent Freedom House report has shown that, since 2008, Erdoğan’s government, “unable to suppress the temptations of authoritarianism, […] has increasingly employed a variety of strong-arm tactics to suppress the media’s proper role as a check on power.”Footnote 42 These tactics have been documented as falling under five categories: intimidation, mass firings, the buying off or forcing out of media groups, wiretapping, and imprisonment.Footnote 43 These tactics aimed at controlling the press date back to at least 2009, when a newspaper from Doğan Group—a secular news group owned by Aydın Doğan—criticized then Prime Minister Erdoğan’s political allies on the basis of charges of corruption. Just a few weeks after the criticism, Doğan Group was fined USD 2.5 billion for supposedly “unpaid taxes,” a record fine that corresponded to the market value of all of its publications combined and that led to a stock market dive for the group’s shares, resulting in a loss of 20 percent in less than a week.Footnote 44 Three weeks later, the tax authorities increased the fine to USD 3.2 billion, forcing the group to sell off its major assets.Footnote 45
Though openly criticized for these actions by the European Union, the European Commission, the International Press Institute, and the OSCE, Erdoğan’s government dismissed these criticisms and refused to revise the tax fine until the group decided to sell two of its three major newspapers, Milliyet and Vatan, to a partnership led by Yıldırım Demirören, a businessman who was very close to Erdoğan. Following this sale, the second-largest media group, Sabah-ATV, was sold to the Çalık Group, whose CEO, Berat Albayrak, is now Erdoğan’s son-in-law and the minister of energy.Footnote 46
During the same period, such economic harassment of the free press was accompanied by the firing, imprisonment, and detention of journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported that the number of journalists receiving prison sentences declined to 40 in 2012, but then increased again to 81 in 2016—the highest number in any one country at any time since the founding of CPJ in 1981 and accounting for one-third of all journalists jailed worldwide for the year 2016.Footnote 47 The AKP government strongly denied the CPJ’s reports, arguing that no journalists were imprisoned in the country, despite the fact that the Venice Commission reported the arrest of 151 journalists in Turkey in 2017.Footnote 48 The imprisoned journalists were charged with “knowing and being willing to aid someone who commits a crime in the name of a [criminal] organization,” a vague penal clause that the government has repeatedly used to prosecute journalists and academics.Footnote 49 Such legal measures against journalists resulted in a steep drop in Turkey’s press freedom index score according to Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF), from the 99th rank in 2002, when the AKP formed its first government, to 151st in 2016 and then to 155th in 2017, out of a total of 180 countries.Footnote 50
The overall state of media freedom in Turkey has recently been described as follows in a report by the European Commission:
At present journalists in Turkey still face threats to their safety and professional independence from overly restrictive laws, hundreds of questionable criminal investigations and a number of new prosecutions of journalists, limitations on access to the Internet, improper government interference with the work of the media, and intolerance of criticism on the part of the government.Footnote 51
Declining media freedom in Turkey has paralleled declining freedoms of expression, association, and demonstration in the country. The Gezi movement in 2013 marked the beginning of a new era in terms of civil liberties in Turkey.Footnote 52 Protesting Erdoğan’s decision to construct a shopping mall over the only public park in Taksim, İstanbul’s most important square, demonstrations engulfed the country: protests occurred in 78 of 81 provinces, resulting in the death of 10 demonstrators and more than 8,500 injuries and 3,000 arrests.Footnote 53 The government’s repression of the peaceful demonstrations drew criticism from around the world, even to the extent that the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called on the government to defuse tensions in the country.Footnote 54 Since the Gezi movement, the government has continued to suppress the freedoms of expression and peaceful demonstration through recourse to police brutality, with Turkey becoming the world’s largest consumer of tear gas for three consecutive years from 2012 to 2014. In the latter year, Turkish police utilized tear gas on 224 days of the year, and in response to nearly any sign of social unrest.Footnote 55 Overall, since 2002, the Turkish police have used at least 628 tons of tear gas and a minimum of USD 21.2 million has been spent on this item alone.Footnote 56
According to the Turkish Human Rights Association (İnsan Hakları Derneği, İHD), the mass punishment of public dissent has also entailed the disappearance or death of 183 persons since 2006, with no substantial punishment being meted out to police officers who committed homicide during demonstrations and/or detention.Footnote 57 Developments in 2014 further escalated the violence in the country: in the span of less than one month in October, demonstrations against the government’s alleged support for the Islamic State (IS) in the Syrian town of Kobanî resulted in the death of 50 civilians, but no special government investigation was subsequently launched despite demands by both the opposition and the international community. The AKP government’s response was to pass a new internal security bill in 2015, giving governors and district heads the right to detain suspects without the order of a judge or prosecutor and relaxing the conditions under which the police and gendarmerie may use live ammunition.Footnote 58
Additionally, the government’s weak response to the issue of terrorism resulted in a significant increase in the number of terror attacks, which also had an impact on elections. Just a few weeks before the November 2015 election, a suicide bombing targeting a peace rally in the capital of Ankara claimed the lives of 109 people, making it the deadliest terror attack in the country’s history. The bombing targeted voters of the two largest opposition parties, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP) and the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), subsequently resulting in a tarnished campaign period for both parties.Footnote 59
The extraordinary contraction of press freedoms and civil liberties in Turkey has been accompanied by a historic collapse of the separation of powers that makes it very difficult for the government and police force to be held accountable for their decisions and practices. In response to investigations of corruption initiated against four AKP ministers by various public prosecutors, Erdoğan’s government launched the most widespread overhaul of the judiciary and police force in the history of the republic. Presenting the Gülenist movement’s influence over the judiciary and police force as the reason for this overhaul, the government demoted all prosecutors, judges, police officers, and investigators who were legally pursuing the corruption charges against the AKP ministers, one of whom was the Minister of the Interior, Muammer Güler, who refused to resign until he himself had overhauled the police department that was investigating the corruption charges against himself and his son.
Furthermore, in 2014, with the aim of increasing its political control over the judiciary, the government enacted a new law to restructure the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (Hâkimler ve Savcılar Yüksek Kurulu, HSYK), the highest body responsible for judicial promotions, appointments, and severances.Footnote 60 This move was made possible by a new law that had given politicians the right to appoint 10 of the 22 members of the HSYK, presided over by the Minister of Justice.Footnote 61 The rest of the members were elected by judges and prosecutors, but this was an election that was heavily influenced by the AKP’s informal network, thus further contributing to the politicization of the judiciary.
An uneven playing field
Levitsky and Way argue for three indicators to evaluate the presence of an uneven playing field: deployment of state resources to control the opposition’s ability to compete, uneven media access, and uneven access to resources. Turkey has exhibited all three of these indicators since 2010 as well as during the general elections of 2011, June 2015, and November 2015, the local elections of 2014, the presidential election of 2014, and the 2017 constitutional referendum. During all of these voting processes, the incumbent mobilized state resources in order to win votes. Furthermore, autonomous state institutions whose neutrality is a precondition for a working democracy—such as the YSK and the judiciary, as explained above—have consistently been further politicized, thereby decreasing the credibility of elections and compromising their political and economic autonomy.
As discussed in the previous section, uneven media access has been one of the best documented pieces of evidence regarding competitive authoritarianism in Turkey. The incumbent single-handedly controls and exerts direct influence on “40% of all newspaper sales, including major, and seemingly mainstream, Turkish dailies. Likewise, major TV channels are all either directly controlled by Erdoğan or influenced by his great sway over the network’s broadcasters.”Footnote 62 Finally, the incumbent has also been observed to use public resources in order to curb the opposition’s ability to compete on a reasonably equal footing. These developments have resulted in a complete sea change in the way in which credible international institutions and ad hoc observational bodies have assessed the country’s democratic performance.
The 2017 Freedom House Report presented Turkey as having the largest one-year decline in democratic performance in the world for that year, downgrading Turkey’s press freedom from “partly free” to “not free” while maintaining the regime’s freedom status as “partly free”; in 2018, however, this was also downgraded to “not free.” Similarly, describing Turkey as a “hybrid regime,” the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has observed the country’s unprecedented drop in democratic ranking, situating it at 98th among 167 countries:
[T]he deterioration in [Turkey’s] score last year [from 5.63 to 5.12] was outstripped by just two other countries in the world: Libya and Thailand. This reflects the continuing fraying of the social, political, and institutional fabric as Turkey becomes steadily more polarised under the increasingly unchecked rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.Footnote 63
What is more, Human Rights Watch, which has issued two reports regarding the country’s democratic performance, as well as the European Commission and the OSCE, which had previously considered elections in Turkey democratic, now observe authoritarianism in the country.Footnote 64 In addition to these indicators, the OSCE also documented that a massive increase in cases criminalizing criticism of and libel against the president has, at an ever increasing pace since June 2015, been limiting freedom of speech and campaigning in Turkey.Footnote 65
The 2017 referendum and the drift toward full authoritarianism
The constitutional referendum of April 16, 2017 marked a turning point in Turkish politics. Prepared by the AKP and endorsed by the leadership of the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), the reform proposed 18 amendments to the 72 articles of the constitution, to be voted on as a single package. Removing from voters the opportunity to differentiate the various parts of the amendments that might be either endorsed or opposed, the ballot itself lacked any explanation regarding the nature of the choice that the voters were to make. In fact, the ballot had just two words on it: “Yes” and “No.” Furthermore, in contradiction to Article 175 of the constitution and Article 94 of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, TBMM) procedural rulebook, the secrecy of the parliamentary vote concerning the proposed amendments was not respected, with many AKP members of parliament displaying their votes publicly on social media.Footnote 66 Following the TBMM’s acceptance of the amendments, the YSK announced that the referendum was to take place on April 16, 2017.
Building on the political opportunities granted by the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016, on July 21 the AKP had declared a state of emergency, subsequently extending it six times, each time for three months. The referendum thus took place during the state of emergency, thereby providing the AKP with potent instruments enabling it to silence or punish political dissent. The AKP’s first target was the HDP, one of whose co-chairpersons had declared, “Erdoğan, you won’t be the president as long as the HDP continues to exist.”Footnote 67 In less than nine months, a total of 2,165 HDP party members and local administrators, as well as both of its chairpersons, 83 of its mayors, and 13 of its members of parliament were arrested.Footnote 68
Moreover, ever since the initial declaration of the state of emergency, over 100,000 individuals have been detained; more than 40,000 have been arrested; more than 150,000 civil servants have been dismissed; and 312 academics who had signed a petition criticizing the AKP’s handling of the Kurdish issue have been fired from their universities, with all signatory academics being sued by public prosecutors in high penal courts. Additionally, 60 television and radio stations, 19 newspapers, 29 publishing houses, and 5 press agencies have been closed down. These arrests and closures were not limited to journalists or media outlets connected to the Gülenist movement or the coup plotters: 12 administrators and journalists working for the newspaper Cumhuriyet—a national secular newspaper openly critical of both Gülenists and the AKP—were arrested for alleged Gülenist activities, a fact that testifies to the ever broadening authoritarian agenda in Turkey. Documenting these developments, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights described the government’s move against the press as a “mass liquidation of media outlets.”Footnote 69
The AKP and the judiciary under the incumbent’s influence began to use legal instruments to silence freedom of expression with increasing frequency. The instruments most frequently deployed for this purpose have been cases concerning either libel against the president or insult of the dignity of state organs, both of which are felonies defined in strategically vague fashion in the Criminal Code. In 2016 alone, public prosecutors opened 46,193 criminal investigations drawing on these laws, and they brought a total of 4,939 persons to court, including 240 children. Of these cases, 64 percent had reached a verdict by 2017, with 34 percent of these resulting in prison terms. Again, of the latter, 27 percent deferred the prison term on the condition that the accused not commit the same “crime” again within five years. In the remainder of the cases, the accused were either found not guilty or had their cases referred to the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay).Footnote 70
These developments took a new turn following the sentencing of an influential CHP member of parliament and the former editor-in-chief of the influential secular daily Hürriyet, Enis Berberoğlu, to five years and ten months in prison on charges of espionage: he was accused of stealing information from the state and giving it to journalists. The information in question, which had already been published multiple times in the national press, was based on coverage of the illegal transfer of weapons and ammunition from the Turkish government to the Islamist opposition in Syria.Footnote 71 Contrary to both expectations and judicial traditions, the court decided to arrest Berberoğlu rather than wait for appellate procedures to take place. The arrest marked the first time that the AKP-influenced judiciary had jailed a member of parliament of the main opposition party.
Following the verdict, the CHP took an unprecedented oppositional stance: on June 15, 2017, the CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu began a 450-kilometer march from Ankara to the prison in İstanbul where Berberoğlu was being held. The Justice March (Adalet Yürüyüşü), as the CHP called it, mobilized thousands of people and signaled the beginning of a new era in mainstream party politics. Even during the high tensions and passions of the Gezi movement in 2013, the CHP had formally steered clear of street politics and social movements, limiting its politics at the time to legal and institutional political instruments. The Justice March, however, marked the first time that the CHP openly displayed full distrust in the formal institutions of Turkey, including the TBMM and the judiciary themselves.
Signaling a significant erosion of belief in the electoral capacity to effect any transfer of power, and of belief in the power of the TBMM itself, the CHP thus moved toward non-institutional politics by resorting to organizing a social movement outside of the formal political framework. Together with the fact that the CHP did not concede the 2017 referendum but instead declared it illegitimate, this most recent turn toward social movement politics by the main opposition party has made more visible not only the narrowing of formal channels of political power contestation, but also the main opposition’s increasing skepticism of the incumbent’s capacity and willingness to either share or abandon political power. It is in this post-referendum context that the drift to full authoritarianism has emerged in Turkey.
This drift has also entailed a radical reorganization of the country’s judicial and institutional framework in such a way as to go beyond competitive authoritarianism, a trend that was made possible by Erdoğan’s narrow and disputed victory in the April 2017 referendum. Keeping referenda out of their field of focus, Levitsky and Way present an analysis of competitive authoritarianism that draws on qualifying elections and the nature of the political environment around them. Yet referenda also provide researchers with a valuable opportunity to test for the presence of competitive authoritarianism. Of Levitsky and Way’s eleven indicators to test for the nature of authoritarianism, only one draws directly on the nature of voting in elections; namely, the electoral arena may be compromised if at least one major candidate is barred. But with just a minor rethinking of the first of the qualifications for competitive authoritarianism, one can identify the advent of competitive authoritarianism during Turkey’s 2017 referendum.
The preliminary findings of the OSCE delegation observing the 2017 referendum open with a clear statement that is worth quoting at length:
The 16 April constitutional referendum took place on an unlevel playing field and the two sides of the campaign did not have equal opportunities. Voters were not provided with impartial information about key aspects of the reform, and civil society organizations were not able to participate. Under the state of emergency put in place after the July 2016 failed coup attempt, fundamental freedoms essential to a genuinely democratic process were curtailed. The dismissal or detention of thousands of citizens negatively affected the political environment. One side’s dominance in the coverage and restrictions on the media reduced voters’ access to a plurality of views. While the technical aspects of the referendum were well administered and the referendum day proceeded in an orderly manner, late changes in counting procedures removed an important safeguard and were contested by the opposition […] Although the Supreme Board of Elections (i.e., the YSK) adopted regulations and instructions to address some aspects of the process, the legal framework remained inadequate for the holding of a genuinely democratic referendum.Footnote 72
Of the eleven qualifications of competitive authoritarianism theorized by Levitsky and Way, in 2017 Turkey’s political regime displayed all of the qualifications for the first time since 2010. Firstly (1), both co-chairpersons of the second-largest opposition party in Turkey, the HDP, had been arrested and hence, together with other arrested HDP members of parliament, were effectively barred from campaigning during the referendum. Secondly (2), there was centrally tolerated electoral abuse in the sense that, according to the YSK’s official results, 2,398 ballot boxes displayed votes that exceeded the number of electorates assigned to that ballot box, while in 960 ballot boxes the number of “yes” votes supporting the incumbent’s agenda amounted to 100 percent.Footnote 73 The YSK, however, blocked a legal survey of these proven irregularities. Furthermore, under political pressure by the incumbent, the YSK breached the laws governing its procedures by accepting ballot envelopes and ballots that had not been officially stamped. Thirdly (3), the opposition was prevented from campaigning on an equal footing with the AKP and its supporters. And finally (4), the systematic bias of the electoral authorities favored the AKP’s choice to the extent that, upon the AKP continuing to petition even during the vote count, the YSK decided to rule against its own law so as to change the referendum’s counting procedure under political pressure by the incumbent.Footnote 74 Changing the rules of the game during the game itself thus created an uneven playing field for the opposition.
The OSCE also documented President Erdoğan’s breaching of the constitution during the campaign period. According to the Turkish constitution, which went into force in 1982 and is still de jure in effect, the president is required to remain non-partisan and to perform his duties without bias. The OSCE, however, concluded that “[t]he president became the face of the ‘Yes’ campaign and toured the country extensively, holding nearly daily events in support of the amendments.”Footnote 75
The violation of civil liberties that occurred immediately before and during the campaign period drew on (5) frequent harassment of the media for political reasons, (6) political attacks on the media within the preceding one-year period in order to curb press independence, (7) occasional engagement in actions restricting the freedom of speech or association, and (8) attacking opposition actors within the preceding one-year period, resulting in a “chilling effect” on civic activity. The OSCE delegations documented the presence of all four of these indicators multiple times, ultimately reaching the following conclusion:
Freedom of expression was curtailed under the state of emergency; the arrest of an unprecedented number of journalists and the surge of media outlet closures has led to widespread self-censorship. OSCE media monitoring results showed that the “Yes” campaign dominated the media coverage.Footnote 76
Furthermore, AKP-appointed governors prohibited various political meetings and campaigns on the part of the opposition, and at times public officials even joined the “Yes” campaign, which prompted OSCE observers to argue that “[t]hese instances blurred the line between the party and the state.”Footnote 77
Finally, immediately before and during the campaign period, (9) the state was deployed to control the opposition’s ability to compete, (10) uneven media access was observed,Footnote 78 and (11) there was uneven access to resources.Footnote 79 According to the OSCE:
Public ceremonies, such as those opening infrastructure projects, were used for campaigning. Public transport was regularly made free for the day of the event in the cities concerned. Moreover, the president and other officials linked the outcome of the referendum to the government’s support for the regions hosting the events. This all contributed to the lack of equal opportunities, contrary to paragraph 7.6 of the 1990 OSCE Copenhagen Document.Footnote 80
This analysis of the uneven nature of the campaign environment and the counting procedures of the 2017 referendum thus demonstrates the further institutionalization of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey. However, the nature of the constitutional amendments themselves—which were accepted by only a slim majority—can shed more light on the future of authoritarianism in Turkey.
The 18 amendments, which would result in the modification or repeal of 72 articles of the 1982 constitution, categorically change the nature of the relationship between the judiciary, the executive, and the legislature in Turkey. Describing the new system of government as a Turkish-style presidential system, the AKP government has thus managed to forge a new system wherein the fundamental checks and balances and separation of powers of a working democratic regime are radically compromised.
Endowing the presidency with an excessive concentration of executive power, the amendments preclude any possibility of effective democratic accountability on the part of the president. The TBMM is deprived of the vote of confidence for the president. The possibility of interpellation is blocked. Furthermore, members of parliament can only ask written questions addressed to vice-presidents, who would then send these questions on to the president. While impeachment would be possible, it would have to be decided on by the Constitutional Court—whose members are either directly or indirectly appointed by the president.
A formal separation of powers is guaranteed, but this is effectively compromised because the president has the power to choose both ministers and an unspecified number of vice-presidents, some of whom can also be members of the legislative branch. This endows the president with powerful instruments with which to influence the legislature. The TBMM will have no role in appointing or approving the president, ministers, or vice-presidents. Furthermore, the president has the power to rule via presidential decree, which, according to the constitution, must pertain to “executive matters of concern.” Yet the vagueness and absence of a definition of the nature of “executive matters” allow the president to freely interpret the nature of the executive character of her orders. Thus, the executive can constitutionally bypass the legislature and legalize its political choices by means of decrees.
The amendments limit the length of the presidency to ten years, with elections scheduled to take place every five years. However, the relevant amendment also makes it possible for the president to run for a new term if the current term is not completed on time owing to a new election. Theoretically, this can extend the term for as long as elections are called prior to the end of an executive term. Reviewing the constitutional amendments in detail, the Venice Commission described this situation as follows: “In such a case, the president could stay in office for a potentially unlimited period of time.”Footnote 81
By effectively destroying the fundamental checks and balances of Turkey’s political regime, these constitutional amendments have created an opportunity structure for the executive to further develop and deploy the instruments of expanding authoritarianism in Turkey. In concluding its evaluation of the amendments, the Venice Commission found that they “would introduce in Turkey a presidential regime which lacks the necessary checks and balances required to safeguard against becoming an authoritarian one.”Footnote 82
Conclusion: Whither Turkey?
For the 60 years between 1950 and 2010, Turkey’s political regime was a tutelary democracy. The regime’s “tutelary” character came from the fact that the military institutionalized a number of prerogatives in order to be able to produce and deploy in politics various instruments of power. Yet the regime was simultaneously democratic because the military steered clear of everyday politics and did not intervene in free and fair elections. Civilians thus were able to pursue democratic competition on a level playing field in order to gain political power, though this power had to be shared with the military on matters of structural importance, as defined by the military.
The end of the regime’s tutelary character spelled the end of democracy itself. Once the AKP government had removed the military’s prerogatives, Turkey’s political direction was reversed, going from democracy toward authoritarianism. Levitsky and Way’s theory of competitive authoritarianism provides the most accurate and useful theoretical tools for an assessment of the nature and future of authoritarianism in Turkey. Drawing on their work, this paper has shown that Turkey qualifies as such in all three of the relevant indicators. Of a total of eleven qualifications across these indicators, through the time of the 2017 referendum Turkey’ political regime demonstrated the existence of nine of the relevant qualifications. Moreover, the political context of the 2017 referendum further institutionalized competitive authoritarianism in the country by displaying all of the eleven qualifications for the first time in the political history of Turkey.
Levitsky and Way identified 35 competitive authoritarian regimes extant between 1990 and 1995. Because Turkey was a tutelary democracy at that time, they did not include the country in their analysis. Since 2008, two of Levitsky and Way’s countries, Belarus and Russia, have evolved into full authoritarianism; 14 have evolved into democracy; and 19 continue to be classified as competitive authoritarian. Between 2010 and 2015, only five countries surpassed Turkey’s performance in terms of competitive authoritarian governance—Armenia, Cameroon, Madagascar, Malawi, and Zimbabwe—but in 2017, Turkey joined this group in displaying all the qualifications of a “perfect” competitive authoritarian regime.
Levitsky and Way identified two structural variables that have an effect on the future of competitive authoritarian regimes. First, if linkage to the democratizing effect of the West is limited, as is the case in most of Africa and in the post-Soviet countries, a weaker democratizing process is to be expected. Second, if the organizational power of the state and the incumbent are strong, it is less likely for a regime to democratize. In Turkey, the AKP has institutionalized the deployment of state power during and between elections by drawing on an unusually strong party organization, and with the changing of the constitution in 2017 to allow for Erdoğan to serve as the party chairman, the AKP’s organizational strength can only be expected to increase.
On April 25, 2017, in criticizing the democratic standards of the 2017 referendum, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) downgraded Turkey’s status and reopened a monitoring process, one that will be continued until the country succeeds in meeting the Copenhagen Criteria. On June 6, 2017, the European Parliament voted in support of the latest progress report concerning Turkey’s bid for membership. This report suggested a suspension of negotiation talks between Turkey and the EU. Furthermore, owing to the AKP’s actively distancing itself from the EU, it is unlikely that the competitive authoritarian character of the regime will weaken and allow for democratization in the near future. In addition to these two variables, both the new amendments to the constitution, which upset the country’s checks and balances and damaged the already frail rule of law, and the main opposition’s decreasing trust in the AKP’s willingness to share or transfer power as evidenced by the implementation of non-competitive elections, have cleared the way for the emergence of a clear drift toward full authoritarianism in Turkey.
The April 2017 referendum that signaled the rise of full authoritarianism in Turkey created a transformation reminiscent of Russia’s swing from competitive to full authoritarianism in 2008. Benefiting from an authoritarian political opportunity context created by the state of emergency declared and subsequently renewed multiple times following the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016, the AKP issued 30 emergency decrees in the course of 17 months. Despite a clear constitutional requirement for TBMM approval of such decrees, only six of them were actually debated in parliament;Footnote 83 the remainder have failed to reach a conclusion due to the absence of TBMM approval, thus rendering 24 of the decrees unconstitutional as of December 2017. Incorporating a total of 1,199 articles amending 369 laws and 1,199 regulations, these illegal and/or illegitimate emergency decrees have now replaced everyday legislation even in matters of concern that are irrelevant to emergency contexts, such as the regulation of civil servants’ employment conditions, urban traffic, and the moving of the town of Gemlik to a new location.Footnote 84 The decrees have also been frequently deployed to remove dissenting academics and educators from private or public universities and schools.
Full authoritarianism is a repressive regime in which effective channels for the opposition to contest for power either disappear or are reduced to a mere façade. In Turkey, in areas ranging from local administration to the TBMM itself, the AKP has been employing various instruments to either make the opposition obsolete or to bypass the constitution, which would guarantee a transfer of power in the country. As the first election process since 1950 not to be conceded by the main opposition, the 2017 referendum and the substantive changes it entailed not only resulted in a stronger execution of authoritarianism, but also paved the way for a constellation of power that may end up reducing the effective formal channels through which the opposition can contest for power, which would in turn amount to an institutionalization of full authoritarianism in Turkey.
