Introduction
Since 2002, under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), Turkey has gone through tumultuous times as well as regime oscillations. Intellectual and scholarly debates on the nature of these regime dynamics have also been deeply divided. In this taking stock article, I refer to a range of books and articles written on the issue, highlighting the three books under review. I classify the literature on the Turkish political regime during AKP rule as two waves of studies, and a potential third wave. Footnote 1
The first wave of studies on Turkish regime dynamics under the AKP was prevalent at least until the Gezi uprisings in 2013. Footnote 2 I argue that, in this wave, the main debate was between two rival and largely culturalist perspectives with conceptual toolkits that tended to read regime change through the lens of social transformations (de-emphasizing factors related to political competition). These two perspectives were based on the modernization and the center–periphery (and the related state–society) approaches, with the latter maintaining the hegemonic position during that period. These approaches, from opposite directions, emphasize socio-cultural factors as well as political and symbolic inclusion issues (of conservatives and Islamists) as primary arenas of democratization, and largely disregard procedural and institutional aspects of democracy that accentuate processes that enable fair competition between the incumbents and the opposition. Özbudun and Hale’s comprehensive study on the AKP constitutes one major example of the hegemonic perspective of the first wave. Footnote 3 I maintain that this hegemonic perspective, utilizing a narrow range of concepts from the democratization literature (defective democracy to democratic consolidation), studies burgeoning autocratization as democratization. Additionally, their lack of focus on political competition dynamics, and studying autocratization as democratization (or as failures of democratic consolidation), deprived Turkish political studies from providing contributions to then incipient studies of democratic decline and autocratization in political science.
The Gezi uprisings, and the government’s heavy-handed reaction to it, brought to the fore already existing authoritarian facets of the Turkish political regime (even for the social scientists and intellectuals who hitherto excessively focused on societal factors, or who singularized the military as the only problem of democracy in Turkey) and became one of the main propellants of the second wave of studies. In this second wave, the contemporary Turkish political regime is increasingly interpreted through frameworks that utilize procedural and political institutional definitions of democracy, emphasizing the playing field where the incumbents and the opposition compete. Many of these later studies focus on naming this new political regime not as a diminished subtype of democracy but of authoritarianism, and also describe different facets of this political regime, as it is done in Başer and Öztürk’s comprehensive edited collection under review here. Footnote 4 In addition, a number of studies in this wave utilize leverages like neoliberalism and/or populism to make sense of the recent authoritarian politics in Turkey, like the edited collection Turkey Reframed under review here, which constitutes a major example of this line of inquiry. Footnote 5 These studies and many others of the second wave include thick descriptions of different facets of this new and evolving authoritarianism in Turkey. These contributions were crucial in changing the course of the debates and brought to light several aspects of autocratization in Turkey. However, many of them do not provide explicit explanatory frameworks, or tend to treat authoritarianism as a perennial feature of Turkish politics, and therefore do not provide clear mechanisms that would elucidate Turkey’s recent autocratization.
In light of these discussions, I suggest that there is a need for a third wave of studies that is strongly embedded in the comparative politics literature, and that builds on the studies that started to appear more recently. These new studies on Turkish regime dynamics have the potential to develop into a wave that would contribute to the autocratization literature by focusing, among other things, on: clarifying the mechanisms of autocratization, Footnote 6 the durability and stability of electoral/competitive authoritarian regimes, the role of opposition in electoral/competitive authoritarian regime dynamics, Footnote 7 and the impact of autocratization on other aspects of politics and society, such as partisanship,Footnote 8 IslamizationFootnote 9 (bringing culture back in, carefully), and gender relations.
In what follows, unlike many other review articles, I begin by presenting a brief narrative that focuses on the interaction of ideas and institutions to make sense of the autocratization process in Turkey under AKP rule. I do so because this account provides the background of the debates, as well as the critical perspective that enables me to bring into focus the problems in the very structure of the Turkish political regime dynamics debate that have persisted until recently. In this account, I accentuate two factors: first, the seeds of authoritarianism that were inscribed in the existing Turkish political institutional framework that was inherited, and then subsequently deepened by the AKP; and second, the exaltation of the democratic status of the elected executive branch, intrinsic to the political ideas of the AKP’s leaders. In this section, I maintain that autocratization of a particular kind (via “executive aggrandizement”) Footnote 10 occurred in Turkey through the interaction of the existing political institutional framework with the populist political ideas of elected rulers. For the rest of the article, I delineate my conceptualization of the main debates of the literature on the recent Turkish political regime oscillation, integrating discussions on the books under review.
Ideas and institutions in the making of autocratization in Turkey
I begin this section by providing a procedural definition of democracy, followed by an account of the evolution of political institutions in Turkey during the AKP’s rule, and this party’s populist conception of democracy. I maintain that autocratization in Turkey under AKP rule is best understood through the prism of the interaction of ideas and institutions: the AKP came to power in an already executive-centric political institutional framework, and it further exalted the executive branch, eradicating institutional checks in line with its authoritarian populist vision of democracy.
Democracy, democratization, and autocratization
Procedural definitions of democracy define the regime along two dimensions: competitive elections and liberties that make elections genuinely competitive by allowing the opposition to challenge the incumbents – freedom of expression, information, and association. Footnote 11 In the regime definitions literature, cases where regimes carry out competitive elections yet have problems with their implementation, or do not fully adhere to the liberties dimension, are considered to be situated between democracy and authoritarianism. Footnote 12 In addition to these two dimensions, modern democracies also include a number of constitutional mechanisms that prevent arbitrary and abusive exercise of that power, such as checks and balances, an independent judiciary, “relative autonomy of local government,” and “a relatively autonomous administrative system.” Footnote 13
Therefore, if we consider the whole political institutional architecture of modern democracies, elected representatives and experts (bureaucrats, judges) together form the ruling groups. Also, modern democracy may be said to work in backward chains, where the institutional arrangement of checks and balances protects the liberties from the encroachment of power-holders (most importantly, oppositional liberties from the government-in-power), which in turn make possible genuinely competitive elections. Based on this definition, any movement toward this type of political regime is referred to as democratization, and any movement away from any aspects of this regime (no matter what the level of democracy is at the time) is called autocratization. Footnote 14 Below, I first outline that what I argue is the first propellant of the autocratization process in Turkey (an executive-centric political institutional framework), then briefly its second, the executive-centric political ideas of the rulers in Turkey (right-wing populism).
Political institutional framework: aggrandized executive branch
By the time the AKP came to power in 2002, two features of the basic political institutional framework prescribed by the 1982 constitution were intact: first, the exalted status of the executive branch (the president and the cabinet); second, the enhanced position of the military. Footnote 15 Both of these presented challenges for democratization, yet, their coexistence also generated a balance of power.Footnote 16 This defective democratic framework started to transform in the late 1990s, as the military’s constitutional power began decreasing by constitutional reforms. Footnote 17 Additionally, the military’s power was further delegitimized by large-scale trials of military officers (the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer trials). Footnote 18 This rendered the already strengthened executive branch free of the fetters of the military, and as such it also reinforced its dominance in the system.
In terms of the vertical divisions of powers, in the 1982 constitution, in keeping with historical tradition, Turkey was defined as a highly centralized unitary state. In fact, the 1982 constitution further increased the control of the center over the local levels of administration. Footnote 19 In terms of horizontal divisions of power, Turkey remained a parliamentary system but with an unusually strong presidency for such systems, with critical appointment powers to the high courts such as the Constitutional Court and the highest administrative court of the country, the Council of State (and the AKP acquired the position in 2007). Footnote 20 This made it possible for the party to acquire control of the executive and legislative branches as in parliamentary democratic systems, while also enabling it to considerably extend its powers to the judiciary. Still, one additional factor increased the pace of concentration of power: the 2010 constitutional referendum (approved by a 58 percent of the vote).
The most important aspects of the 2010 constitutional amendments vis-à-vis checks and balances were the changes regarding the Constitutional Court, and the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors, which controls appointments and promotions, as well as disciplinary mechanisms within the judiciary. These constitutional amendments enhanced the executive branch’s control over these two institutions, and therefore the judiciary, via several mechanisms: (1) the number of appointments allotted to the executive branch (or to the institutions heavily influenced by it) were increased; (2) the initial expansion was carried out during single party rule; and (3) in the High Council elections (where judges and prosecutors vote for ten out of twenty-two members of the council) the executive branch managed to exert influence. Footnote 21 All of these developments, in turn, further increased the power of the executive over the judiciary.
In addition to the concentration of power at the center and weak limits on that power, hierarchically organized parties, de facto controlled by the party leader, have been a lasting feature of Turkish political parties. Footnote 22 For the AKP, in 2010, Ayan argues that it instantiates “a hegemonic type of [intraparty] authoritarianism.” Footnote 23 Finally, we should also consider the party system, where the longer a party remains in power, the more advantages it acquires. In fact, the post-2002 Turkish party system is aptly described as a predominant party system, especially after the AKP satisfied Sartori’s predominance rule of “a three consecutive majority with a wide interval” in 2011. Footnote 24 Greene highlights two major sources of incumbency advantage in predominant party systems: an “incumbent’s resource advantages” (such as outspending on campaigns, and distribution of patronage goods to voters) and an incumbent’s ability to raise the costs of participation for the opposition – such as advantages for joining the dominant party and targeting opposition politicians. Footnote 25 Additionally, Çarkoğlu mentions that in dominant party systems, the distinction between the state and the party weakens, and state bureaucracies lose their autonomy. Footnote 26
Therefore, in this political institutional design, governmental power is concentrated in the hands of the rulers at the center, and in there, in the executive branch, fully controlled by a highly hierarchical and increasingly predominant political party. This made autocratization possible. However, it did not require it. To better make sense of how particular rulers used that power for autocratization, we need to consider their vision of ideal democracy as well.
The AKP’s vision of democracy: power to the elected executives
One of the distinguishing features of populists-in-power is their conception of competitive elections as the singular institution of democracy. According to populists, elections are “the ultimate expression of people’s will.” Footnote 27 Along the same lines, from very early on, the AKP leadership, and particularly its leader Erdoğan, have maintained that the concentration of power in the elected executive branch at the center is democratization. Erdoğan has often claimed that there is “nothing higher than the national [popular] will in the human realm,” Footnote 28 and that popular will also constitutes the core of democracy: “democracy is the reflection of popular will in power.” Footnote 29 Erdoğan also often claimed that popular/national will is transferable to the government through elections: “The national will is a nation’s proclamation of its preferences through elections”. Footnote 30 He also repeatedly pointed out that the elected officers are the rulers to whom the people “hand over” or “consign” their will. Footnote 31 Therefore, Erdoğan equalized democracy by the rule of the people’s authentic representatives, and in turn, to him, the concrete measure of “authenticity” is the ballot box. This also meant that the constitutional mechanisms of checks and balances (and bureaucratic autonomy) are illegitimate as long as they are impediments against the people’s elected representatives. For example, as early as his second year in power in 2004, Erdoğan expressed his frustration with bureaucratic autonomy:
Do you know what the real problem in Turkey is? Bureaucratic oligarchy. This is the real problem. As the executive we are trying to carry out things. Do you think we are comfortable like the private sector? Believe me we don’t have that kind of comfort, that kind of peace of mind. We argued that we would carry out the executive duty with a merchant mindset. We are still thinking the same way. Footnote 32
He similarly argues against institutions of checks and balances, contending that their legitimate function is to serve the people, by becoming the instruments of the elected representatives. For example, after the aforementioned 2010 constitutional referendum that consolidated the executive branch’s control of the judiciary, Erdoğan argued that “a handful of elite used to say to the people, you should not interfere with the government, you don’t know democracy, but now, the nation took control of the government … Politics under tutelage has ended. Today, democracy became meaningful. The national [popular] will start to work in the most potent way.” Footnote 33
Therefore, considering the powerful executive-centric institutional and ideational frames together, during the first two terms of the AKP’s rule (2002–11), the modern democratic chain had already significantly eroded. These interconnected mechanisms of autocratization are well illustrated on the issue of media and politics. While already controlling large sections of the media in 2008, the government sent tax inspectors from the Ministry of Finance to the then biggest media group of the country (Doğan Media), and hit the group with a record tax fine. This compelled the group to largely acquiesce to the government. Further, especially after the expansion of the government’s control over the judiciary with the 2010 referendum, not being able to effectively challenge the exorbitant fine legally, Doğan Media was forced to sell the majority of its outlets to capital under the control of the government.Footnote 34 As such, even during the second term of the AKP, processes of autocratization started to be reflected in Turkey’s declining rankings on democracy and liberties indexes. To exemplify, Turkey’s press freedom showed declines starting in 2008 when it was placed 103rd out of 173 countries, falling all the way down to 148th out of 179 in 2011/12, and to 157th out of 180 in 2019. Footnote 35 Similarly, in V-dem’s liberal and electoral democracy indexes, Turkey’s score declined steadily starting in 2006 (autocratization), and becoming one of the most prominent cases of autocratization in the next decade.Footnote 36
In sum, the AKP came to power and won successive elections in a political institutional framework that exalted the elected executive branch at the center, and the party’s vision of democracy was the rule of the elected without limitations. This was the institutional and ideational context of the autocratization process that started early during the party’s rule. Below, I overview how political and social scientists have interpreted these regime processes and review the books in focus.
Interpretative frames of the AKP’s ideology and Turkish political regime
At different times during the AKP’s rule, the political institutional and regime transformations outlined above have been interpreted differently by divergent conceptual frameworks. I posit that in the first wave of studying the Turkish political regime under AKP rule (roughly until the Gezi uprisings), political regime debates were filtered by the language of dominant socio-cultural perspectives/approaches. In this debate, the contestation issues that are a part of the mainstream definition of democracy (i.e., oppositional liberties that are protected by checks and balances) remained secondary to the issues of the inclusion/incorporation of conservative/Islamist masses into politics (as for or against). During this same period, for the most part, scholars have used a narrow range of concepts from the democratization literature to explicate the regime dynamics in Turkey: ranging from a diminished subtype of democracy (e.g., defective democracy or tutelary democracy) to democratic consolidation. Interpretations and descriptions of Turkish regime oscillations using a full spectrum of political regime possibilities (i.e., from democracy to full authoritarianism) were rare. Utilizing a larger range would have enabled the study of Turkish regime processes not only as a case of democratization, but also of autocratization, perhaps at times simultaneously. It was not until after the Gezi uprisings in 2013, and especially after the repeat election of November 2015, that the literature decidedly yet belatedly turned first toward identifying the Turkish regime experience as a diminished form of authoritarianism, and then to illuminating different facets of the new political regime in Turkey. While this second wave has largely focused on naming and thick descriptions, there does seem to be an evolution toward studies with a clearer explanatory focus, and as such may develop into a promising third wave.
The first wave: evaluating the Turkish political regime along cultural divisions
As with other new political phenomena, in its first decade political scientists and analysts tried to make sense of the AKP’s ideology and of where the Turkish political regime was heading under the AKP’s rule using familial categories. Below, I review these interpretative frames of AKP rule, and the broad culturalist and dualist perspectives/approaches that underline them.
Cultural modernization as democratization
The first framework of analysis was mostly influenced by the modernization approach to Turkish history generally used by Kemalist intellectuals and academics. Footnote 37 According to this cultural approach, the engine of Turkish history is primarily the struggle between proponents of enlightenment and reactionary forces. Footnote 38 To a considerable extent, this perspective implicitly or explicitly aligns democratization with the process of cultural modernization, namely, the process of the transformation of the Turkish people from subjects to citizens. As such, in this account the relationship of the concept of democracy with modern democratic mechanisms and contestation issues (competitiveness of elections and oppositional liberties) weakens. According to this perspective, a government that undertakes cultural transformation may end up reinforcing democratization (as in the Kemalist single-party period). On the other hand, a government that comes to power with fair competitive elections may represent an era of democratic decay if it slows down or precludes cultural modernization or secularization (as in periods of rule under the Democrat Party). For example, Kili argues that the national action that Ataturk started in 1919 was “based on the national sovereignty, and the nation’s, the people’s volition. This, undoubtedly, is a democratic action, and will develop towards democracy, and have its direction as the democratic pluralist political organization.” Footnote 39 Similarly, but for the whole competitive period, Akşin argues that the Turkish Republic can be clearly divided into two periods: “the first is the period of the Ataturk revolutions from 1919 to 1950, and the second is the period of partial counter-revolution that has been present from 1950 on [the competitive period].” Footnote 40 As such, this perspective shifted the terrain of democracy away from the procedures of democracy and issues of contestation, toward the identity and cultural policies of rulers.
Many of the AKP’s critiques made use of themes from this perspective, claiming that the AKP is a covert Islamic party that aims to establish sharia rule. Footnote 41 These critiques, not trusting the AKP, argued that the party’s “goal is concealment, not a sincere shift to a truly post-Islamist politics.” As such, “the AKP may have come to power through democratic means, but it is not inclusive vis-à-vis non-Islamist other.” Footnote 42 This perspective was also influential among parts of the secular public and in certain segments of the bureaucratic elite. Massive Republican demonstrations of various secularist groups against the AKP’s possible capture of the office of the presidency in 2007 exemplify the former. The latter is instantiated in the chief prosecutor of the Turkish Republic’s indictment to ban the AKP in March 2008 “on the grounds that the AKP was covertly seeking to impose sharia by dismantling the secular reform of Mustafa Kemal.” Footnote 43 In the indictment, it is stated that the AKP was following the precepts of “political Islam, which does not restrict itself to the relationship between the individual and God but also encompasses the state and social order, hence it is totalitarian.” Footnote 44 This interpretation of the party’s rule is confronted by another frame that is based on a different approach to Turkish politics.
Democracy as the rule of the periphery’s authentic representatives
The second interpretive frame of the first wave is based on another dualistic cultural approach, and this one has become the hegemonic interpretive model of this wave. Scholars and experts who have used this framework argue that the AKP is a conservative democratic party (as its program states), and that the rule of this party enlarges democracy in Turkey and places Turkey on the path to democratic consolidation, albeit with challenges and issues. Footnote 45 Many of these evaluations of the party’s rule were based either on another cultural approach to understanding Turkish politics (the center–periphery paradigm) Footnote 46 or the related state–society perspective (the state tradition thesis). Footnote 47 According to the center–periphery approach, the fundamental dichotomy of Turkish society is not based on class, but is instead the conflictual (and/or disjointed) relationship between the center and the periphery of society. In this framework, the center is inhabited by the increasingly secularized (especially during the Republican period) bureaucratic state elite, and the periphery is composed of more religious, economically more productive yet politically excluded masses. Footnote 48 Studies that utilize this perspective have been demonstrably successful in making sense of voting behavior in Turkey. Footnote 49 However, as with the modernization perspective, when this approach is utilized to understand regime dynamics, the relationship between the democratic regime and political institutions tends to become tenuous, because it somehow collapses the notion of democracy down to the question of the identity of the rulers: the rule of the forces of the periphery (or the authentic masses) via its representatives. Even Mardin, in his nuanced analysis, states: “There were now good reasons to claim that the Republican People’s Party represented the ‘bureaucratic’ center, whereas the Democrat Party represented the ‘democratic’ periphery.” Footnote 50
This is an idea that has become commonplace in debates of democracy under AKP rule. For example, Yıldırım et al. argue that “by forcing the ‘White Turks’ to share power, the AKP symbolizes the march of a new population emanating from transformations in the population.” Footnote 51 In an even a more pronounced fashion, İnsel, a left-wing liberal intellectual, writes after the AKP’s first electoral victory that “the JDP’s [AKP’s] ‘unstoppable march to power’ could be understood as a more authentic and humble continuation of the process that started with Özal [a former right-wing conservative leader of Turkey] … Among the political leaders prominent in the history of the Turkish Republic, Erdoğan was the person most clearly and authentically ‘one of the people’.” Footnote 52
Along the same dualistic lines, predicated upon the state–society approach in Heper’s work, the state in Turkey is viewed as autonomous, and the military and civilian bureaucratic elites are construed as not responsive to the demands of the relatively weaker society. Heper writes as follows about the first of “two interconnected ways” that “the difficulties of democracy manifest themselves” in Turkey: “the state elites are sensitive to the crisis of integration, and therefore not sympathetic towards the periphery.” Footnote 53 Although Heper’s framework is more complex, in general the state–society approach, when employed to the problems of democracy in the first decade of AKP rule, characterized the military and civilian bureaucracy as a powerful monolithic entity. Furthermore, this monolithic and all-powerful “establishment,” with the military at its center, is depicted as confronting the relatively weaker elected political rulers (who are rooted in society) that struggle to free themselves from the fetters of their guardianship. For example, Dağı conceptualizes Islamists as actors “anxious for protection against the secular-Kemalist establishment,” Footnote 54 and characterizes the AKP as standing “squarely in the center-right band of the political spectrum, representing rising forces that have considerable numbers and growing weight in society … but who have long felt relegated to the sidelines of public life by strongly entrenched bureaucratic state elites.” Footnote 55 In fact, in 2013 Heper himself argued that “while engaged in a life and death struggle against the Republican establishment, Erdogan … as the representative of the pious periphery, contributed to the periphery’s walk to the centre, and put an end to the hegemony of the Republican establishment in Turkey”.Footnote 56 According to Heper, this removal of the establishment’s (the military’s and the judiciary’s) roadblocks was Erdogan’s (as the periphery’s representative) most important contribution to Turkish democracy, and made him a proponent of democracy on the national level.Footnote 57 As such, this framework not only fits well with the AKP’s populist conception of society as divided between the elites (degenerated) and the authentic people, but it also neglects the capacity of elected rulers to concentrate power in their hands and potentially lead to autocratization by generating an uneven playing ground.
Studying the AKP-in-power as a downtrodden anti-authoritarian actor
Hale and Özbudun’s book represents one of the most influential works of the first wave of studies. In the book, the authors carry out a highly informative and in-depth analysis of multiple facets of the AKP as a political party, as well as the AKP-in-power. The authors first outline the history of Islamist parties in Turkey, largely serving the purpose of differentiating the AKP from the previous parties of the Islamist tradition. In the second chapter, the authors argue that the ideological differences between the AKP and the Islamist party tradition on the issues of democracy, pluralism, and secularism “are real and profound.” Footnote 58 For each of these issues, they maintain that the AKP’s ideology is both conservative and democratic and is in line with the center-right tradition of Turkey. They argue that “the most that can be said is that the AKP’s commitment to liberal and pluralist values seems stronger, and its sensibilities to religious values deeper than the past or present center-right parties.” Footnote 59 Their explanation for the transformation of the AKP from Islamists to conservative-liberal democrats is based on a number of factors that are primarily related to the power of the “secularist establishment.” They state that the “learning process associated with the February 28 events” Footnote 60 rendered democracy for the AKP “a protective shield against the repressive actions of the secularist establishment,” Footnote 61 also pointing out the Islamist bourgeoisie’s fear of losing its gains with “a confrontation with the secular establishment and the state elite.” Footnote 62
Although these external factors (the power of the so-called establishment) may very well propel an ideological transformation, unless the secular establishment is conceived of as all-powerful and undefeatable, and as long as the relative power level of political actors change, it must also be possible for the AKP’s ideology to be reversed/retransformed. Indeed, by the end of the first decade of the 2000s there were already strong signs that secularist factions were losing the power that they had in a limited number of critical institutions (demonstrated by their inability to even secure due process in the Ergenekon trials, or to prevent the mounting control of the media by the government), and the executive branch’s control over them was increasing. In addition, in the third chapter, Hale and Özbudun carry out a strong and thorough study of the AKP’s social bases, where they point out that “the superimposition of the class, center-periphery, and the secularist-religious cleavages has led to a particularly deep and potentially explosive division, a real dichotomy, in Turkish politics … a particularly serious challenge to democratic stability.” Footnote 63 If this were the case, and given that the AKP’s constituency represented the larger segments of the voters in these uneven cleavages, the electoral logic would work to the AKP’s benefit and against the opposition, extending its time in power and further eroding the so-called establishment’s power. Finally, they firmly place the AKP within the center-right tradition in Turkey. However, this tradition not only includes conservatism and liberalism as they argue, but also a strong executive-centric populism. However, because the authors construct their account to prove the aforementioned claims that the “AKP is an Islamist pro-Sharia party and conservative democracy is only their cover” wrong, they neglect the populism component of the AKP’s ideological platform that had significant regime repercussions.
In chapter 4, the authors portray the AKP’s party organization. Based on careful examination, they argue that the AKP is approaching the mass party model, and that like most other Turkish parties it has a highly centralized, hierarchical party organization with personalistic leadership. Footnote 64 However, the AKP was not just any party but the ruling party with the presidency, and one that had a single party majority for two successive terms at the time. It was also well positioned to continue to be in power as the major party of the larger side of the electoral cleavages. As such, it would have been illuminating if they had elaborated on the regime repercussions of such a party organization.
The second part of the book is devoted to different facets of the AKP’s rule. Particularly relevant for regime discussions are reforms, and the party’s relationship with the military. However, while they detail the reforms, they do not connect these changes with the power of the elected rulers and checks on them. This omission could be because of the implicit trust that the authors had for the ideological transformation of the leaders of the AKP – the leadership’s internalization of democracy though their struggles against the establishment. This omission could also be explained by the authors’ belief that the secular establishment, with the military at its center, was there to stay, rendering a civilian elected authoritarian regime impossible. For example, in the concluding chapter the authors write: “the party appeared to stand at a crossroads, faced with a choice between continuing its commitment to liberalism and internationalism, or reverting to an accommodation with more nationalist and authoritarian currents, which still appeared to dominate in much of the Turkish state establishment.” Footnote 65 However, the power of the AKP leadership at the time, as well as their power prospects (continuing to win elections and capturing the state), made it such that these were not the only two options in front of the party. They had the power to confront the opposition in state institutions without a commitment to liberal democracy, but with a commitment to the exaltation of elected rulers (a particular kind of autocratization). This option was not only inscribed in the executive-centric political institutional framework of the country but also in the AKP leadership’s political ideas. Furthermore, this authoritarian option was also signaled by their actions (and the manner in which they have carried them out) against the military (e.g., the Ergenekon trials discussed in the book) Footnote 66 as well as the oppositional media – neither of which could be impeded by the secular factions within the judiciary.
These problems were common among studies in this wave and led many scholars of this hegemonic interpretation to view incipient and even apparent autocratization as democratization. Despite these, Hale and Özbudun’s clear study presents a comprehensive and exemplary work, one that shaped the debate on AKP’s rule significantly. Below, I focus first on the alternative accounts to this debate of the first wave, and then delineate the second wave of studies that changed the focus of regime studies significantly.
Alternative accounts of the first wave
While many scholars were less generous in their accounts of the democratic content of the AKP’s policies than Hale and Özbudun, this vocabulary of democratization, and democratic consolidation (and its challenges), remained the main frame of reference in the political regime literature until well into the third term of the AKP. Footnote 67 Nevertheless, there were still some voices in this period whose accounts deviated significantly from the dominant debate of the AKP’s ideology (Islamism versus conservative democracy) and/or political regime discussions located within the narrow democratization and democratic consolidation frame. To name a few, Taşkın, in Reference Taşkın2008, argued that the populist lineage of the AKP carries the “tendency of silencing the real plurality of the people in favor of a fictitious notion of a unified nation.” Footnote 68 Sözen, in a 2008 paper entitled “Turkey between tutelary democracy and electoral authoritarianism,” argued that clashes between Kemalism and the neo-conservative populism of the AKP resulted “in a clear movement from tutelary democracy to populist competitive authoritarianism.” Footnote 69 In 2011, he similarly argued that three ideological components of the AKP, neoliberalism, conservatism, and populism, form a ruling “ideology of autocratization” that deepens authoritarianism in Turkey. Footnote 70 Yıldırım, in Reference Yıldırım, Uzgel and Duru2009, argued that the AKP adopted a neoliberal populist strategy, which always has “an authoritarian and repressive side.” Footnote 71 Aslan-Akman, in her study on the 2011 elections and the dominant party system in Turkey, claimed that “following the transition to democracy in 1983, imperfections in its [Turkey’s democracy’s] functioning render its affinities with “hybrid democracies’ more striking than ever.” Footnote 72
While the structure of hegemonic debate largely neglected these issues in the first wave, in the second wave all of these themes became central in discussions of both the AKP’s ideology and Turkish political regime developments.
The second wave of studies: naming and studying the decline into authoritarianism
The regime debate significantly shifted after the Gezi rebellion, and especially after the repeat elections in 2015. After those events, many accounts that emphasized procedural aspects of political regime dynamics, and that named the Turkish regime as a diminished form of authoritarianism, began to appear. In other words, deepening autocratization, and social/political crises resulting from that, forced regime studies to turn away from culturalist perspectives, and/or the language of democratization. For example, Özbudun, in Reference Özbudun2014, noted “the AKP’s recent drift towards an excessively majoritarian conception of democracy, or even an electoral authoritarianism of a more markedly Islamic character.” Footnote 73 Esen and Gümüşçü argued that in Turkey, “first, tutelary democracy ended; second, a competitive authoritarian regime has risen.” Footnote 74 Somer brought to focus the dynamics of “democratic breakdown” and the rise of “new authoritarianism” in Turkey. Footnote 75 Scholars have also employed a number of different conceptual tools to study this authoritarian regime. Through the books in focus, below, I discuss some of the main themes of this new wave: different facets of authoritarianism, the debate on the timing of regime change, and the conceptual tools used to make sense of autocratization. I also maintain that in this second wave the new political regime type is named, described, and its different facets are unpacked; however, the need for clearer explanatory work is still present. This would constitute a new wave of studies that is focused more on hypothesis generation, as well as on clarifying the mechanisms of autocratization in Turkey, and there is recent research that indicates this third wave may be in the making.
Making sense of authoritarian politics
Başer and Öztürk’s Authoritarian Politics in Turkey is a comprehensive and insightful edited collection that focuses on “the retreat of democracy” in Turkey, the processes that enabled “a democratically elected political party … to implement increasingly autocratic measures,” Footnote 76 as well as the durability of this new authoritarian regime. The book is not organized around a singular theoretical framework, nor does it have a harmonized set of conceptual tools. Therefore, although thematically bound, the chapters are relatively independent from each other conceptually, so the book is not to be evaluated as a whole. However, it offers “a dozen chapters of original reflection and research,” Footnote 77 not only on general regime dynamics, but also on many aspects of politics under the contemporary authoritarian regime in Turkey. These include a wide range of subjects such as electoral integrity in Turkey, public finance and elections, freedom of information, freedom of assembly, the relationship between Sunni Islamic groups and the AKP, freedom of religion, minority politics, the Kurdish question, and foreign policy. Although all of the chapters are relevant to understanding the contemporary dynamics of authoritarianism in general, here I focus on the chapters that speak directly to the political regime question as defined above.
The first two substantive chapters of the book discuss regime change in Turkey. First, Bakıner, provides a stylized political history of contemporary Turkey and provides insights into “Turkey’s slow shift to authoritarianism.” Footnote 78 This chapter informs the reader by compiling and organizing Turkey’s scores from various democracy and human rights indexes under AKP rule. This compilation reveals that Turkey’s deterioration in terms of basic rights has been in place since 2006–7, although it has exacerbated recently. The author offers the hypothesis that changing opportunity structures (fallout with the EU and elimination of illiberal rivals) Footnote 79 make sense of the AKP’s shifts to and from liberalization reforms. This depiction also positions the author against the idea that the AKP’s authoritarian shift occurred abruptly around 2013. Footnote 80 This claim refers to an important debate on the timing of the authoritarian turn.
Although Bakıner does not delve into this debate, the claim that the AKP “drifted” into authoritarianism around 2013–14 has been widespread in public political debates and is expressed in a scholarly setting in the above-mentioned article by Özbudun in Reference Özbudun2014. The narrative that I formed above that points out the strong presence of the seeds of authoritarianism from much earlier, concurs with Bakıner’s disagreement with the notion of transformative authoritarian shift around 2013–14. Also, all of the alternative accounts of the first wave of studies that point out the autocratization early on (before the early 2010s) are by necessity against the claims of an authoritarian shift after Gezi. Footnote 81 Therefore, arguments of the late authoritarian/majoritarian drift belong to the hegemonic position of the first wave. This position had originally claimed that the AKP was a democratizing force; consequentially, this was the only way to explain autocratization (now apparent to them) without contradicting their own earlier arguments.
The third chapter of the book by Akkoyunlu is entitled “Electoral Integrity in Turkey: From Tutelary Democracy to Competitive Authoritarianism.” Footnote 82 While it does not aim to be explanatory of the regime change in Turkey, the chapter provides a needed discussion on the integrity of the very first dimension of democracy in Turkey. Gözaydın’s epilogue is another chapter that broadly discusses regime transformations in Turkey. As it is an epilogue, she does not have a clear argument; however, her narrative broadly aligns with the position that is critiqued above, namely, the AKP’s late shift to authoritarianism (in 2013–14). She states that “if the Gezi protests were a very significant milestone, the so-called ‘17–25 December process’ [2013] was the penultimate stage of Turkey’s clear path in the direction of authoritarianism.”Footnote 83
The book also includes a number of chapters that offer illuminating thick descriptions or theoretically embedded accounts on various aspects of politics that are directly related to the formation and reproduction of a competitive/electoral authoritarian regime in Turkey. For example, in their work on the relations of public finance and elections Erkoç and Civan conduct an illuminating study that connects theoretical frameworks on economic voting and the AKP’s electoral success via the party’s public spending. Footnote 84 Atak provides an empirically grounded study on one of the crucial aspects of the second dimension of democracy, freedom of assembly. Footnote 85 Sözeri describes the developments on another aspect of the procedural definition of democracy in Turkey, freedom of information. Footnote 86 Çiçek’s chapter on the Kurdish movement and elections under the AKP’s rule, is an informative chapter that discusses the transformations of the “Kurdish political region” and the HDP’s success in expanding and deepening this region.Footnote 87 However, the chapter is not on the relationship of the Kurdish political movement and the political regime dynamics in Turkey, although the issue and the political movement were significant both in the formation of authoritarianism and the politics after its establishment.
Overall, the book does not offer a clear theoretical framework or a consistent explanation of development and reproduction of authoritarianism in Turkey under AKP rule. Also, at times it does not distinguish the processes and factors that led to authoritarianism in Turkey and the politics after the establishment of authoritarianism. Still, with its accessible narrative, breadth, and several informative chapters, the book contributes significantly to regime studies in Turkey, and represents well the changing orientation of Turkish regime studies.
Neoliberalism (and populism) and authoritarianism in Turkey
Differently than Authoritarian Politics in Turkey, the chapters in Turkey Reframed follow a singular conceptual framework to study neoliberal hegemony in Turkey. While this framework is not perfectly coherent across the chapters, the level that it achieves is nevertheless formidable for a book with thirteen independent chapters by different authors. The book takes the perspective that “there is an ontologically intrinsic relationship between the state, politics, and classes,” Footnote 88 and utilizes the Gramscian conception of hegemony “as the construction of contingent unity among the economic, political, cultural, and ideological phases of capitalist relations of production, is produced within each spheres of civil society, political society and the state.” Footnote 89 This understanding of hegemony informs the authors’: (1) specific criticisms of the state-centric (state–society) approach, which treats the state outside and above the society; and (2) conception of the neoliberal experience in Turkey after the 1980s, particularly the economic, social, ideological, and political components of the AKP’s neoliberal hegemony. Footnote 90 As such, the key concept of the book used to understand the post-1980 period is neoliberalism, and its main argument regarding the AKP era is that it represents the reconsolidation of neoliberal hegemony. Footnote 91
This book also contains multiple illuminating chapters on different facets of neoliberal hegemony in Turkey, such as foreign policy, the role of spatial (re)production in neoliberal politics, and family, sexuality, and gender. Here I focus on those chapters that speak directly to the political regime question of this review. The first two chapters of the book represent general accounts of politics, state, and the economy of the post-1980 period. Akça, in the first chapter, studies changing forms of authoritarianism in post-1980 Turkey. As in many other chapters of the book, this one is a stylized historical study of the whole period. In Akça’s periodization, the last subperiod relates to the hegemonic project of the AKP, emphasizing its “neoliberal, conservative, and authoritarian populism.” Footnote 92 This subsection gives an account of political events as they unfolded in this period, referring to them as “a case of preservation of the authoritarian state form.” Footnote 93 He positions his account against the views that the AKP is a democratizing force, and argues that “the AKP’s main concern was conquering the state apparatuses by a new neoliberal-conservative elite group rather than reforming the authoritarian state form.”Footnote 94 This argument brings to light several features of neoliberal authoritarianism during AKP times, like the technocratization of economic/social issues, penalization of dissidence, and repression of the social and political opposition. However, as the chapter depicts Turkey after the 1980s as perennially neoliberal authoritarian, regime change (autocratization) during AKP rule loses its specificity.
Bekmen’s chapter then shifts the focus to the relations of state and capital, specifically the “response of state and capital to ‘ungovernability’ in Turkey that emerged in the 1970s.” Footnote 95 He maintains that neoliberal hegemony has relatively stabilized under the AKP, which unified sectors of capital as well as manufactured the consent of subordinate classes. Footnote 96 He adds that the AKP’s policies were shaped by the International Monetary Fund and the EU in its first term in power, but that later on, “the AKP’s attitude towards the institutions and administrative features of regulated neoliberalism turned out to be ambiguous in character,” and economic management was recentralized again “around the executive power.”Footnote 97 This is also a useful discussion in understanding the political regime transformation in Turkey after the second term of the AKP. However, this chapter does not focus on the particular mechanisms and proximate causes of autocratization in Turkey either.
In addition to these two general chapters, the book includes other relevant chapters for studies of autocratization in Turkey. Öztan’s chapter describes differences between the AKP’s nationalism and other nationalisms in Turkey. He states that, “the neoliberal alliance grouping under the power of the AKP realized that the thoroughly archaic official nationalism and the associated unofficial Kemalist nationalisms were failing to satisfy the needs of Turkey’s rising middle class.”Footnote 98 This, he argues, provided the stage for rapid reforms and “the AKP ultimately established its power, but then adopted an increasingly authoritarian policy, internalizing the “‘state’s reflexes’ and delegitimizing all its opponents.”Footnote 99 Therefore, although this is an illuminating analysis that distinguishes different forms of nationalisms in Turkish politics, it also emphasizes the continuity of authoritarianism in Turkey and as such deemphasizes the current autocratization under the AKP (also, his claim of the AKP’s internalization of “state’s reflexes” is reminiscent of the “authoritarian drift” arguments of the first wave).
Among other chapters on aspects of autocratization in Turkey, Aydın’s chapter on the media is an excellent study on the role of neoliberal policies in restructuring the media in Turkey, as well as “the role of the media in the formation of neoliberal hegemony.” Footnote 100 This chapter also brings to light the new authoritarian politics of the media under the AKP. Özden’s chapter cogently discusses the successful convergence between neoliberal social policies and populism under the AKP. Footnote 101 This convergence probably constitutes one of the underlying reasons for autocratization by electoral means. Doğan and Durak, based on strong research, provide a detailed study of the Islamic bourgeoisie, an essential component of the AKP’s ruling coalition, and particular labor control mechanisms that should be further explored by authoritarianism studies. Footnote 102
Overall, the book utilizes two concepts to understand Turkey’s political regime under the AKP: neoliberalism and populism. The latter concept, populism, has recently become common in making sense of the electoral/regime dynamics in Turkey. Footnote 103 However, in Turkey Reframed this concept is secondary for most of the chapters that deal with regime dynamics, because it is treated only as one of the expressions of the neoliberal hegemonic project, not as an explanatory mechanism. Footnote 104 However, to the extent that this is a problem it should be considered that in most of its uses in social/political science the boundaries between the concept’s descriptive and explanatory features are vague.
Finally, the book’s main concept to make sense of authoritarianism under the AKP is neoliberal hegemony (in fact, its reconsolidation). This concept is successfully employed to bring light to authoritarianism in many different aspects of social and political life. Some chapters also refer to more specific mechanisms connecting neoliberalism to authoritarianism, like the neoliberal tendency to enhance executive powers. Footnote 105 The main problem with this framework, however, is that neoliberal hegemony is a multidimensional concept, and this makes it challenging to pinpoint specific mechanisms of regime autocratization in a particular period. The lack of a consistent use of a shared definition of democracy across the chapters also exacerbates this problem. Finally, as I exemplified above, the book’s larger historical narrative of post-1980 perennial authoritarianismsFootnote 106 also contributes to the book’s ambiguities on the issue of specific explanatory mechanisms of autocratization during the AKP period. However, this book is an exemplary collection of studies of neoliberal authoritarianism in Turkey (which continues to flourish), Footnote 107 with its theoretical depth, and conceptual richness.
In lieu of conclusion: from second to third wave?
Studies of Turkish political regime dynamics have shifted significantly in the second wave. In the first wave of studies, dualistic and broadly culturalist frames dominated the debate. Scholars in the hegemonic position of this wave interpreted the executive aggrandizement under the AKP as freeing the elected representatives from the fetters of the establishment, and hence studied autocratization as democratization (or as challenges to democratic consolidation). Nevertheless, after the AKP’s unabated deployment in several crises all of the authoritarian instruments that it had already accumulated for over a decade (most significantly during the Gezi uprisings, the 17–25 December process, and the repeat elections in 2015), regime literature belatedly turned toward studying Turkish regime processes as autocratization. This turn constitutes the second wave of studies. As emphasized above highlighting the two books under review, this wave contributed greatly to our understanding of the new political regime in Turkey and its several facets. However, there is still need for hypothesis-generating studies that clarify the mechanisms of autocratization and democratic collapse, as well as the impact of autocratization on politics and society, and the durability/stability of this competitive/electoral authoritarian regime.
Some more recent studies have offered explanations of Turkey’s autocratization and democratic breakdown, employing leverages like polarization,Footnote 108 populism,Footnote 109 and neoliberalism.Footnote 110 Also, research that emphasizes the impact of autocratization (and the new authoritarian regime) on other aspects of politics and society have started to appear.Footnote 111 Studies on these issues, and on different aspects of autocratization, as they proliferate, carry the potential to develop into a new wave of studies that would both illuminate Turkish political regime dynamics, and contribute to the field of comparative regime studies.
As a final note, perhaps the evolution of the debate on political regime dynamics in Turkey provides us with an important insight: even if political conflict is expressed in cultural and moral terms, political scientists should avoid dualistic and culturalized frames in explaining political regime dynamics, at least not until after careful examination of the power levels, power prospects, and interest calculations of relevant actors. Bermeo writes that “politicians who engage in executive aggrandizement and strategic electoral manipulation already know this [that democracy can be taken apart piece by piece]. Political scientists must learn it too or risk their own slide into irrelevance.” Footnote 112 Along these lines, until recently, the structure of the debate on political regime dynamics in Turkey generated a crucial lag in studying autocratization dynamics in the country, and even worse, democratization literature remained the main frame of reference studying these dynamics, significantly limiting the discipline’s contribution. However, currently it looks like Turkish regime studies is developing the potential of becoming a major contributor to comparative political regime studies.
