Securitization and Authoritarianism: The AKP’s Oppression of Dissident Groups in Turkey 9819905052, 9789819905058

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Securitization and Authoritarianism The AKP’s Oppression of Dissident Groups in Turkey Ihsan Yilmaz · Erdoan Shipoli Mustafa Demir

Securitization and Authoritarianism

Ihsan Yilmaz · Erdoan Shipoli · Mustafa Demir

Securitization and Authoritarianism The AKP’s Oppression of Dissident Groups in Turkey

Ihsan Yilmaz Alfred Deakin Institute Deakin University Burwood, VIC, Australia

Erdoan Shipoli Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Georgetown University Washington, D.C., USA

Mustafa Demir Department of Politics University of Surrey Guildford, Surrey, UK

ISBN 978-981-99-0505-8 ISBN 978-981-99-0506-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0506-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Alex Linch shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

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Autocratic Survival and Securitization Introduction Autocratic Survival Securitization Structure of the Book Bibliography

1 1 3 5 8 10

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Securitization Theory and Its Expansion Introduction Securitization Theory Building Blocks of Securitization The Purpose of Securitization The Level of Analysis The Geographical Expansion The Domain Expansion Conclusion Bibliography

15 15 16 18 21 22 22 26 29 30

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Turkish Securitization Culture Introduction Turkey and the West: Collective Traumas and Ambivalence The Siege Mentality Securitized Minorities The Making of Erdo˘ganism

37 37 38 44 47 50 v

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CONTENTS

Erdo˘ganism: Insecurities, Anxieties, and Fears Conclusion Bibliography

54 57 57

Securitization of Kemalists, White Turks, and Leftists Introduction White Turks, Secular Elites, CHP, IYIP Conclusion Bibliography

63 63 65 78 79

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Securitization of Islamic Groups and Parties Introduction Gülenists Furkan Foundation Former AKP Politicians Other Islamic Dissidents Conclusion Bibliography

87 87 87 100 103 107 109 110

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Securitization of the Kurds Introduction The De-securitization of the Kurdish Politics Failure of Co-optation The Re-securitization of the Dissident Kurds Conclusion Bibliography

117 117 118 121 125 127 128

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Securitization of the Alevis Introduction The Securitization of Alevis The De-securitization of Alevis The Re-securitization of Alevis Conclusion Bibliography

133 133 134 138 142 148 149

CONTENTS

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Fruits of Securitization The Authoritarianization of the AKP Regime Change Transnational Securitization Bibliography

Index

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155 155 157 162 168 173

CHAPTER 1

Autocratic Survival and Securitization

Introduction Autocratic survival is complex, and authoritarian regimes use multiple, non-exclusive survival strategies. Why and how autocracies remain stable have been two of the main questions in research on authoritarianism. In addressing these questions, the literature, based on empirical studies, identifies legitimacy, repression, and co-optation as three tools that authoritarian regimes use to secure their continuing rule (Gerschewski 2013). Coercive capacity is central to authoritarian resilience, and the greater a regime’s capacity to prevent or crack down on opposition activity, the greater its prospects for survival. Securitization is one of the instruments that the authoritarians use to repress the opposition. Securitization is a speech act, which politicians use to construct an issue as a ‘high-politics’ issue that can only be understood by the elite, not the masses, thus it is above politics. The issue also needs the politicians’ immediate attention and expertise to use any means possible to deal with that issue. Political elites sometimes use the tool of securitization to convince the public when they want to resort to extraordinary measures, by arguing that there is an existential threat to the community, nation, or the state, known as the referent objects in the securitization theory. In this narrative, only coercive, repressive, and extraordinary measures will suffice to deal with the threat(s) and to secure the referent object. By uttering the word ‘security’, a ruler claims a special right to use whatever © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 I. Yilmaz et al., Securitization and Authoritarianism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0506-5_1

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means are necessary to prevent the threat. Sometimes, the word security is substituted with nation, motherland, threat, defence, or similar words. In the case of Turkey, these words can be ‘nation’, ‘state’, ‘religion’, which are always associated with security, and security threats from ‘the foreign powers’, ‘the domestic collaborators’, ‘the Sevres treaty’ keywords but not limited to them (see in detail Yilmaz 2021). These and similar keywords such as ‘Allah,’ ‘Islam,’ ‘Ummah’ and ‘the Muslim World’ are embedded in peoples’ minds with security issues. The issues may or may not correspond to a real security situation, but that becomes secondary to the securitization of that particular issue through speech(es). As a result, not only is the realm of possible threats or insecurity enlarged, but so are the threatened actors or objects. Thus, the security issues, actors, and objects can be extended to include actors and objects well beyond the military security. Securitization has always been an important tool in Turkish politics. Since the establishment of the republic, securitization has been an important piece of the political narrative. The fear that Turkey would be divided by the Great Powers along ethnic lines, similar to the multiethnic Ottoman Empire, are founding insecurities, fears, anxieties, and siege mentality that informed the nation-building policies at the birth of the Turkish Republic in 1923 (Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022). Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan has used securitization since the beginning of his political career. Starting with securitizing the Turkish conservative mindset against the establishing pro-Western secular nationalist elite of the republic, today his main concern is to convince his supporters that if he doesn’t win elections there will be an existential threat to Turkey, Turks, Islam and the Muslim World. Erdo˘gan is no stranger to de-securitization when he tried to win the hearts and minds of Kurds (Yilmaz et al. 2021) and Alevis (Yilmaz and Barry 2020), and resecuritization when that strategy didn’t work (Yilmaz et al. 2022). Since his political inception, Erdo˘gan uses instruments of historical trauma, conspiracy theories, and fear to securitize political issues to ensure his political survival. In his road to authoritarianism Erdo˘gan has put together a clear synthesis of securitization and authoritarianism, the former being a tool for the latter. This study contributes to securitization theory by shedding light on the effect of these instruments, namely traumas, conspiracy theories, and fear, in the securitization process, in legitimizing securitization, and the role of the functional actors. This book also contributes to the extant literature

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on Turkey’s authoritarianization under the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—Justice and Development Party), through the lens of securitization and exploitation of past traumas, fears, and conspiracy theories. Second, in an attempt to provide a holistic picture, it analyses how the AKP has securitized, de-securitized and re-securitized different sociopolitical groups and identities in Turkey, according to the time and need for its political survival.

Autocratic Survival There is considerable research on the tools that autocracies use to remain secure and stable internally. Having examined many empirical cases, the literature highlights that they use certain strategies to maintain their hold on power (Maerz 2020). The available literature mainly refers to three instruments, utilized by autocracies in maintaining stability: legitimacy, repression, and co-optation (Gerschewski 2013; Schneider and Maerz 2017). Scholars stress on coercive capacity of the autocratic regimes, “the greater a regime’s capacity to prevent or crack down on opposition activity, the greater its prospects for survival” (Yilmaz et al. 2022, 3). However, it is an empirical fact that building stability on solely repressive policies would be very costly. Therefore, holding power would require further efforts to legitimize practising it. Legitimacy, for autocrats, is about converting their power into the right to rule. Because strength is a temporal phenomenon and is not enough to hold, keep, and wield power permanently. That is why after grasping power, autocratic regimes offer decreased repression in exchange of political support and maintain the public/majority’s consent. Because such regimes need political support of the citizens to reduce the threats such as political plots, military coups, and violent rebellions against their rules (Magaloni 2008, 728; von Soest and Grauvogel 2017, 288). At this stage the most relevant issue is the source of legitimacy. Many contemporary autocracies, for instance, see winning elections as the main source of legitimacy to rule over the people and the state (Gandhi 2015; Saikkonen 2017; Kneuer 2017). For such regimes, elections are means to capture the state and the society rather than a means of democracy. Thus, for them winning elections is crucial at any cost. They are ready to

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employ any means, legal or illegal, to win elections or silence the opposition when they are in the government and can use government resources for their party needs (Cheeseman and Klaas 2018; Harvey and Mukherjee 2018). Because, losing an election is a great sign of weakness for an electoral authoritarian regime, especially for its self-interested supporters and partners. Thus, such a regime cannot afford to lose an election and will do anything to prevent failure. Another strategy practised by autocratic regimes to survive is cooptation, which is based on mutual benefits between the power holders and influential figures among the elites, especially within the opposition (Gandhi and Przeworski 2006). Compared to its alternatives, such as threats or crack downs, co-optation is highly cost effective in consolidation of power and legitimizing authoritarian actions (Geddes 1999; Boix and Svolik 2013; Pepinsky 2014). Thus, it might be seen as a way of legitimizing holding and wielding the power. Co-optation is “the [ability and] capacity to [buy the loyalty of] tie strategically relevant actors (or a group of actors) to the regime elite” (Gerschewski 2013, 22). Different strategies and techniques are used in co-optation processes that require further research. However, we leave this gap for some future research. Briefly, co-optation is a process, which is run by the authoritarian elite to integrate/buy loyalty from politicians (Buehler 2015, 367) or influential public figures. Efforts of co-optation can also be interpreted as a sign of authoritarianization in a relatively democratic setting. This means that in a democratic polity, the ruling elite resorts to co-optation as an intention to further consolidate their power and invoke authoritarian measures. This process is not limited to influential figures. Sometimes a powerful group might need to support a relatively less powerful but influential group. In doing so, they sometimes might need to compromise their ideological manifestation or provide some benefit to appeal to their support (Piven and Cloward 1977, 30). When the process is completed, the theory argues that the co-opted small partner will gradually be absorbed and the co-opting force will have painted the small partner with its colour, ideology-wise (Holdo 2019, 444). However, there might be some exceptions. For example, in Turkey during the 2015 elections, it was not the smaller nationalist party; but the powerful ruling party that changed its ideological stance on some sensitive issues such as the Kurdish question. In other words, ideologically, the ruling party shifted towards a more nationalist tone, setting a

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more conducive environment to be able to co-opt the smaller nationalist far right Nationalist Action Party (Yilmaz et al. 2021). In doing so what we have observed was that securitization has been the key instrument both in co-optation of the nationalist party and in legitimation of a nationalist tone in the eye of the ruling party’s traditional support base. The extant research fails to report this aspect of co-optation, which is an ideological shift of the ruling party towards the smaller party, and the use of securitization in co-optation. At the same time, this might reveal the populist nature (Yilmaz 2018) of the larger ruling partner. Seeking an electoral populist opportunity in adopting the new narrative of the small partner can motivate the big partner to operate the co-optation process unorthodoxically. Relying on empirical data, the book highlights that both securitization and de-securitization can be used for co-optation. Securitization has been an indispensable instrument in Turkish politics. Erdo˘gan has successfully securitized the possibility of losing elections, which means he persuaded his followers that his loss of elections will create an existential threat to Muslim Turks, Turkey, Islam and the Muslim World. However, at the beginning of this political career he used the opposite, de-securitization, in gaining the hearts and minds of masses in his ascend into power in the face of the staunch opposition from the Kemalist military tutelage. In the early 2000s to win the votes of liberal leftists, Kurds, and Alevis he used de-securitization and when he needed the support of nationalists and Islamists, he re-securitized the Kurds and Alevis with the help of conspiracies, national traumas, and fear. In doing so this research also offers new insights into the theory of securitization in relation to the strategies utilized to legitimize acts of securitization. Another contribution of this research is to the scholarship on autocratization of the AKP regime. This contribution is twofold. First it examines how securitization has been employed as a strategy in the process of authoritarianization, second it looks at how securitization is utilized to eliminate AKP’s socio-political opposition. On this matter, there is a need for an introduction of what securitization is, its building blocks, and the process.

Securitization According to the theory of securitization, security is seen as a rhetoric, an act of speech (Buzan et al. 1998; Waever 1995; Buzan and Waver 2003, 2009) rather than a commodity. It is a consequence of a process rather

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than a product or a status. In the hands of incumbents, it’s a way of persuading the masses about the use of exceptional measures on certain issues by referring to existential threats to the referent objects such as the nation, the state, or the community. In the process of securitization, the ruling incumbents draw a picture of a state of emergency using words. In doing so, they aim to ‘egitimize and claim the use of any sort of measures including extra-legal measures (exceptional/security/military) in dealing with the highlighted existential threat, which can be real, exaggerated, or imagined (Waever 1995, 55; Buzan et al. 1998, 26). The meaning attributed to the security is quite important as well. It sometimes means the security of the state, nation, official religion, or culture. These issues are securitized by the words of securitizing actors who are influential political or bureaucratic figures, depending on the audience. Using security words, they sometimes construct exaggerated, and even imagined, existential enemies threatening the security of the nation, the motherland, or any other referent objects that are seen invaluable by the audience, the people. Therefore, the security issues “can be extended to include actors and objects well beyond the military security of the territorial state” (Williams 2003, 513). The theory of securitization has been first introduced in the 1990s with a narrow scope. As a theory it has mainly been used in Eurocentric analysis. However, over the last decade it has been further developed, its scope has been enlarged and used in various cases across the globe and its philosophical dimension is further deepened and strengthened. One commonly debated issue in securitization is the actors of securitization, such as who the audience is and who the securitizing actors are. Traditionally, the political elite have the power to securitize an issue and persuade the audience, which in traditional securitization theory are usually the people. Through feelings, needs, insecurities, and interests, the political elite tries to get a consent, usually silent, to use extraordinary means to tackle a political or a security issue (Balzacq 2011a, 9; b, 34; Adamides 2020). However, in the recent literature we can see more focus on the ‘functional actors’ (Floyd 2020) who have been neglected so far, but who have the power to veto the use of extraordinary means, or who can counter-securitize. They could be experts, academics, and other political parties in a country. These functional actors can be used as allies to securitize an issue. Sometimes they need to be pursued to come on board, so they are considered as an audience. In some cases, the role of the securitizing actor is claimed by actors that have not been assigned that

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role in the first place, but through speech act and mobilization they can claim that authority (Philipsen 2018; Balzacq 2019). We will show in our empirical section that this is the way that co-optation of MHP and AKP worked, where the AKP has shared the authority of securitization with MHP so they can securitize political issues together and separately. Usually, the grievances of domestic groups, such as minorities, are framed as the conspiracies of an enemy state or states and are claimed to pose a clear and present threat to the nation, its identity, economy, or the state’s security and territorial integrity. Thus, the grievances, demands, and identities of these minority groups are constructed as being beyond political deliberation and processes (Williams 2003). After these issues are set in the agenda and the audience has accepted them as issues of existential importance, the security actors build coalitions that will help them broaden the concern about the issue among different audiences (Leonard and Kaunert 2011, 67) and political supporters (Balzacq 2005; Roe 2008). De-securitization, on the other hand, is described as the shifting of issues out of emergency mode into the normal bargaining processes of the political sphere. In other words, de-securitization is the reverse process of securitization that shifts the securitized issue out of emergency (Emmers 2007, 111) and broadens the boundaries of politics. Contrary to securitization, the objective of de-securitization is to remove certain issues from the security agenda (Buzan et al. 1998, 4). Sometimes the lack of securitizing speech acts alone can suffice for de-securitization (Behnke 2006). When de-securitization is employed, political issues become decoupled from the imagined or real agendas of security actors, permitting political discussion in the public sphere. Thus, issues that were previously considered taboo “are shorn of their existential character and acquire legitimacy, enabling them to be addressed and debated through ‘normal’ political processes” (Weiss 2016, 569–570). Normalization of strained relations between antagonistic countries, recognition of ethnic minority rights after civil war or terrorism, and normalization of a group, such as immigrants that were previously constructed as threats, are some examples of de-securitization (Hansen 2011). However, de-securitization is often more difficult than securitization (Shipoli 2018). Although there is a big theoretical debate about the process of both securitization and de-securitization (Balzacq 2019; Baysal 2020; Tulumello 2020, 6), there is an agreement that securitized actors need to have a ‘counter-securitization move’ to be able to de-securitize

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themselves and their causes (Shipoli 2010; Jamal 2020; Paterson and Karyotis 2020). In the Turkish case, as mentioned-above, fearing that Turkey would be divided by the Great Powers along ethnic lines are founding insecurities, fears, anxieties, and siege mentality that informed the nation-building policies at the birth of the Turkish Republic in 1923 (Yilmaz 2021; Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022). The Turkish political elite (the Kemalists) tried to homogenize the nation and undertook a ‘Turkification’ project as part of its ‘modernization’ (Jongerden 2007, 213). Kurdish identity was constructed as an existential threat to the Turkish national identity, the territorial integrity of the state, and the homogenous nation myth (Bilgin 2008, 593). Turkey’s domestic collaborators or internal enemies are defined widely as any group not among the designated desired citizens (Yilmaz and Barry 2020; Yilmaz et al. 2021). Thus, they could be nonMuslim minorities, Kurdish political movement members, and heterodox Muslims such as Alevis or, more recently, Gülenists. As a result, Kurdish identity was securitized after the establishment of the Turkish nation state, which aimed at homogenization of the population to prevent foreign interference (Birdisli 2014; Romano and Gürses 2014; Geri 2017; Martin 2018; Ozpek 2019). This has resulted in several Kurdish insurgencies, revolts, and terrorist organizations, which in turn have been used by the state to justify its securitization of the Kurdish identity. Just after its establishment in 2001, the AKP promised to break this vicious cycle by undertaking pro-EU and multicultural democratizing reforms that would de-securitize not only the Kurdish issue but also the Alevi issue, nonMuslim issue, Islamist issue and so on. As a result, the AKP came to power in November 2002, after receiving strong support from the antiKemalist groups and minorities that were locked in the realm of security and suffering from the state’s injustices and victimizations. However, once they consolidated the power, the AKP used the old method of securitizing minorities and constructing threats to further their authoritarian regime stability.

Structure of the Book The book starts with an introductory chapter introducing the issue that it is tackling: the use of securitization in authoritarian stability, through the case of AKP regime of Turkey. Chapter 2 sets the theoretical background of the book, the latest literature and development on the theory, its

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expansion and where it is heading. The third chapter analyses the culture of securitization in Turkey, how it has been historically employed, and how it is used today for the authoritarian grip of power by the governing Islamist–nationalist coalition. Fears, insecurities, and conspiracy theories are of utmost importance when analysing the securitization of different groups at different times in Turkey, so much emphasis has been given to them. In the following four chapters we separately analyse the securitisation of four groups: (a) Kemalists, White Turks, and Leftists; (b) Islamic groups and parties; (c) Kurds; and (d) Alevis. Why we categorized them as such is because of the way they are being ‘handled’ by the AKP government and how they have been ‘served’ to their constituencies. For the AKP’s Islamist base, the Kemalist, the White Turks, and the Leftists represented the rich pro-Western establishment and were not representative of the Turkish people. They were to blame for gatekeeping government positions, businesses, and the resources of Turkey from the general public. In this narrative, they were also co-conspirators of the Western hegemony in Turkey and did not want Turkey to remain religious. The dissident Islamic groups and parties are labelled as traitors who colluded with other groups to sell out their ‘cause’ (Yilmaz 2022; Yilmaz et al. 2020). In the securitized environment it becomes sufficient to leave the ‘herd’ without even criticizing them to be called a security threat. Moreover, if an old partner doesn’t support all the policies of the securitizing actors, then they have committed some sort of ‘blasphemy’ and they become even worse than the worse enemy. That is the case of AKP’s dissident Islamic groups, including the Gülen Movement, Furkan Vakfi, and new parties by former AKP leaders. The Kurds were always the ‘usual suspects’ in Turkey when it came to securitization. Why we focused on dissident Kurds in particular is because for AKP and Erdo˘gan, Kurds that vote for them are good and need to be de-securitized, but when they don’t vote for the AKP then they are re-securitized. As far as Alevis are concerned, like the Kurds, they are the usual suspects of securitization in Turkey. Moreover, they are labelled as the ones who have committed blasphemy, have left Islam, and have established an unclean version of Islam, colluding with foreign powers. After analysing the securitization of opposition groups in Turkey, we conclude with a simple question: why? In the conclusion we analyse what

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were the ‘fruits’ of securitization for the AKP and Erdo˘gan. Securitization is done for a purpose and then extended. That is what happened in Turkey, which brought an authoritarian power grip for Erdo˘gan.

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Magaloni, B. 2008. Credible Power-sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule. Comparative Political Studies 41 (4–5): 715–741. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0010414007313124. Martin, N. 2018. The A.K. Party and the Kurds Since 2014: A Discourse of Terror. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 45 (4): 543–558. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2018.1430531 Ozpek, B.B. 2019. The State’s Changing Role Regarding the Kurdish Question of Turkey: From Consistent Tutelage to Volatile Securitization. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 44 (1): 35–49. Paterson, I., and G. Karyotis. 2020. We Are, by Nature, a Tolerant People: Securitisation and Counter-securitisation in UK Migration Politics. International Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820967049. Pepinsky, T. 2014. The Institutional Turn in Comparative Authoritarianism. British Journal of Political Science 44 (3): 631–653. https://doi.org/10. 1017/S0007123413000021. Philipsen, L. 2018. Performative Securitization: From Conditions of Success to Conditions of Possibility. Journal of International Relations and Development 23 (1): 139–163. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0130-8. Piven, F.F., and R.A. Cloward. 1977. Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. New York, NY: Vintage. Roe, P. 2008. Actor, Audience(s) and Emerging Measures: Securitization and the UK’s Decision to Invade Iraq. Security Dialogue 39 (6): 615–635. Romano, D., and M. Gürses. 2014. Conflict, Democratization, and the Kurds in the Middle East. London and New York: Routledge. Saikkonen, I. 2017. Electoral Mobilization and Authoritarian Elections: Evidence from Post-Soviet Russia. Government and Opposition 52 (1): 51–74. https:// doi.org/10.1017/gov.2015.20. Schneider, C.Q., and S.F. Maerz. 2017. Legitimation, Cooptation, and Repression and the Survival of Electoral Autocracies. Zeitschrift Für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 11 (2): 213–235. Shipoli, E. 2010. International Securitization: The Case of Kosovo. Saarbrucken, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing. Shipoli, E. 2018. Islam, Securitization, and US Foreign Policy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tulumello, S. 2020. Agonistic Security: Transcending (De/re)constructive Divides in Critical Security Studies. Security Dialogue. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0967010620945081. von Soest, C., and J. Grauvogel. 2017. Identity, Procedures and Performance: How Authoritarian Regimes Legitimize Their Rule. Contemporary Politics 23 (3): 287–305. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569775.2017.1304319. Waever, O. 1995. Securitization and Desecuritization. In On Security, ed. Ronnie D. Lipschutz, 46–86. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Weiss, M. 2016. From Constructive Engagement to Renewed Estrangement? Securitization and Turkey’s Deteriorating Relations with Its Kurdish Minority. Turkish Studies 17 (4): 567–598. Williams, M.C. 2003. Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics. International Studies Quarterly 47 (4): 511–531. Yilmaz, I. 2018. Islamic Populism and Creating Desirable Citizens in Erdogan’s New Turkey. Mediterranean Quarterly 29 (4): 52–76. https://doi.org/10. 1215/10474552-7345451. Yilmaz, I. 2021. Creating the Desired Citizen: Ideology, State, and Islam in Turkey. New York: Cambridge University Press. Yilmaz, I. 2022. Authoritarianism, Informal Law, and Legal Hybridity: The Islamisation of the State in Turkey. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Yilmaz, I., and J. Barry. 2020. The AKP’s De-securitization and Re-securitization of a Minority Community: The Alevi Opening and Closing. Turkish Studies 21 (2): 231–253. Yilmaz, I., M.E. Caman, and G. Bashirov. 2020. How an Islamist Party Managed to Legitimate Its Authoritarianisation in the Eyes of the Secularist Opposition: The Case of Turkey. Democratization 27 (2): 265–282. https://doi.org/10. 1080/13510347.2019.1679772. Yilmaz, I., M. Demir, and E. Shipoli. 2021. Securitisation via Functional Actors and Authoritarian Resilience: Collapse of the Kurdish Peace Process in Turkey. Australian Journal of Political Science 57 (1): 1–16. https://doi.org/10. 1080/10361146.2021.2007848. Yilmaz, I., Mustafa Demir, and Erdoan Shipoli. 2022. Securitisation via Functional Actors and Authoritarian Resilience: Collapse of the Kurdish Peace Process in Turkey. Australian Journal of Political Science 57 (1): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2021.2007848. Yilmaz, I., and O.F. Erturk. 2021. Populism, Violence and Authoritarian Stability: Necropolitics in Turkey. Third World Quarterly 42 (7): 1524–1543. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1896965. Yilmaz, I., and E. Shipoli. 2022. Use of Past Collective Traumas, Fear and Conspiracy Theories for Securitisation and Repression of the Opposition: The Turkish Case. Democratization 29 (2): 320–336. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13510347.2021.1953992. Yilmaz, I., E. Shipoli, and M. Demir. 2021. Authoritarian Resilience through Securitisation: An Islamist Populist Party’s Co-optation of a Secularist FarRight Party. Democratization 28 (6): 1115–1132. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13510347.2021.1891412.

CHAPTER 2

Securitization Theory and Its Expansion

Introduction Despite being written about it since the 1990s, the securitization theory has been largely under-theorized for a well-established theory. Many scholars, among them Ole Waever and Barry Buzan who have pioneered the theory, argue that there is a need for much more research to expand the theory and test it in different domains, different countries, and with different audiences (McDonald 2008, 573). Balzacq et al. (2016) lay down a good overview of the securitization theory, its main concepts and premises, its empirical application, theoretical implications, as well as challenges that securitization scholars face and how to overcome them. Recently, securitization theory has expanded in five main directions. This work contributes to the first and the second directions of the theory, namely the role of functional actors as well as the effect of fears, traumas, and conspiracy theories in securitization (see Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022). Firstly, theoretically, securitization scholars have tackled the securitizing actors, the audience, the speech act, and the process of securitization. Secondly, scholars have used securitization theory to explain other security phenomena such as ontological insecurities, deterrence, conspiracy theories, and other emerging trends. This direction of expansion of the securitization theory has combined securitization with other theories to explain the bigger picture in the security studies. Thirdly, securitization scholars have suggested different levels of analysis of the theory, which © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 I. Yilmaz et al., Securitization and Authoritarianism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0506-5_2

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differ in securitizing actors, audiences, and the process of securitizing an issue. Fourthly, securitization theory has been applied to different countries, regions, and situations to explain its applicability outside of the Western world and answer the criticism that the theory is very Eurocentric. Finally, the theory has been used to analyse and explain other international relations policies such as migration, religion and politics, economics, healthcare, and others.

Securitization Theory Authoritarian regimes and leaders have used securitization extensively to extend their power, and to legitimize both their regime and their repression of the opposition. It is a profound element that helps maintain authoritarian regimes’ resilience. The core claim of traditional securitization theory is that security must be understood as a speech act, not only a sociological and explanatory tenet. The political elites use securitization as a tool to convince the public when they want to use extraordinary measures, by arguing that there is an existential threat to the community, the nation, or the state and only coercive or repressive measures will suffice to deal with the threat(s) (Buzan et al. 1998; Waever 1995; Buzan and Waever 2003). By uttering security keywords, a ruler claims a special right to use whatever means necessary to prevent the threat (Waever 1995, 55; Buzan et al. 1998, 26). There are three main ways of dealing with political issues: non-politicization constructs an issue as unimportant and not worth discussing; politicization accepts the importance of an issue but leaves it to the public to debate before policymakers decide; and finally, securitization fills an issue with an existential importance to be dealt with by higher levels of government (Buzan et al. 1998; Buzan and Hansen 2009). Securitized issues are not open to public debate, but rather policymakers are granted the sovereign right to take any measures they deem necessary to deal with the issue. To get this right, and legitimize the use of any measures they deem necessary, the securitizing actors present their case to the audience, which usually means to the people, who then give them the right to use extraordinary means that would not normally be used against the threat. However, the audience does not need to give written or verbal consent, silent consent means that securitizing actors (in this case the government) feel entitled to use any means against the perceived threat to secure the existence of the referent object.

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In some cases, association with certain groups, discrimination, marginalization, and context can securitize an issue more effectively than the traditional securitization means of associating the referent object and threat with security keywords. Two of the most essential features in securitizing certain policy areas are the vilification of opponents, and the conspiracy that foreign ‘others’, together with their domestic collaborators, are plotting against ‘us’. Among the most important building blocks of securitization is the referent object, which is given existential importance. The survival of the referent object is linked to the survival of the wider community, usually the nation and the state, but not always limited to them. The actors or objects that are threatened “can be extended to include actors and objects well beyond military security of the territorial state” (Williams 2003, 513). After an issue is set in the agenda and the audience has accepted the reference objects’ existential importance, the security actors build coalitions among different audiences (Leonard and Kaunert 2011, 67), including different publics, political audiences, and political supporters (Balzacq 2005; Roe 2004). De-securitization is described as the downgrade of issues out of emergency mode into the normal political processes and discussions. In other words, de-securitization is the reverse process of securitization, whereby it shifts the securitized issue out of emergency and into the normal bargaining process of the political sphere (Emmers 2007, 111). Contrary to securitization, the objective of de-securitization is to remove an issue from the security agenda (Buzan et al. 1998, 4). De-securitization is also defined as the lack of any speech acts related to securitization (Behnke 2006). When de-securitization is employed, political issues become decoupled from the imagined or real agendas of foreign powers, permitting political discussion in the public sphere. Thus, issues that were previously considered taboo “are shorn of their existential character and acquire legitimacy, enabling them to be addressed and debated through “normal” political processes” (Weiss 2016, 569–570). However, de-securitization is often more difficult than securitization to achieve (Shipoli 2018, 211–232). When not translated into actual practice, de-securitization can often remain only in speech, and it can be reversed to re-securitization very quickly (Yilmaz and Barry 2020; Yilmaz et al. 2021a, b). Donnelly (2017) and Donnelly and Steele (2019) argue that there is a whole process of de-securitization, which includes a desecuritization move, a new speech act, and the responsibility of the

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experts, policymakers, and the securitized to take the lead in the new effort of de-securitization. But the securitization theory has developed a lot since the traditional literature of the theory, as we mentioned in the introduction. Below we will elaborate on these five directions of development separately.

Building Blocks of Securitization Firstly, securitization theory has expanded in analysing the ‘building blocks’ of the securitization process, such as the securitizing actors, the referent objects, the audience, the threats, and the speech act. Balzacq et al. (2016) demonstrate that the securitization theory has been developed far beyond its initial focus on the speech act, into practices and processes of governments and other institutions. In this direction of expansion, a special focus has been given to the audience because ultimately it is the audience that needs to be convinced and that gives the right for the use of extraordinary means. The securitizing actors need to persuade the audience through feelings, needs, and interests (Balzacq 2011b, 9) thus the use of media, fear, ontological (in)securities, and conspiracy theories enter this domain. A particular debate about the audience is the consent that it gives. Although most of the scholars argue that a silent consent is enough for the securitizing actors to use the extraordinary means to secure the referent object, there are others who don’t agree with this (Balzacq 2011a, 34; Adamides 2020a). Rita Floyd (2020) examines what she rightly calls the “neglected category of functional actors”. Most of the securitization theory literature is focused on the main actors such as the audience, the threat, the referent object, and the securitization actors, but the role of functional actors is downplayed. These actors, according to Floyd, have the power to veto the securitization and the use of the extraordinary means. While the traditional securitization literature sees this ‘veto power’ only in the audience and the referent object, actually actors such as activists, academia, experts, bureaucrats, and institutions can intervene and either prevent securitization or endorse it. Not always will these functional actors be successful, but their influence is significant (Floyd 2020, 7–12). Some scholars have questioned the process of securitization and how that happens. They’ve questioned the process of securitization at different levels (Shipoli 2010, 2018) and they’ve questioned the process of the opposition towards the securitization act or even counter-securitization,

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which defer in terms of the definition of securitization, the construction of securitization, and the action towards securitization (Baysal 2020). One commonly neglected part of securitization is the price of securitization, and as longer as it continues as costly it gets. At a certain point of time, the securitization actors need to measure the cost-benefits of securitization because the cost might supersede the expected benefits in many cases (Tulumello 2020, 6). One of the most pressing questions in securitization is to predict when and how does securitization fail or succeed. Usually securitizing acts are studied after the finished act, but some recent literature has started asking the question of how to predict if a securitization will fail or succeed or what to do to make sure it succeeds. While the traditional literature suggests that securitization is successful when the extraordinary means are employed to tackle that security issue or threat, Rita Floyd (2016) argues that it is more complicated and it requires the securitizing actor to identify a threat that requires a security-based response, acting upon that identification, and finally justified and accepted by the audience. Baele and Thomson (2017) suggest that we need an experimental study on securitization, a quantitative study of large numbers of securitization cases that will bring data to the securitization theory and find a pattern. Securitization theory has mainly been a qualitative study theory, but this new approach can use data to understand and maybe predict the success rate of a securitization. They argue that the questions that need to be answered are: which types of securitizing moves are more likely to succeed or fail? (Baele and Thomson 2017, 652–655) What types of interactions between securitizing actors and audience increase or decrease the likelihood of successful securitization? (Baele and Thomson 2017, 655–659) And, which types of contexts make securitization more likely to succeed or fail? (Baele and Thomson 2017, 659–661). While this debate questions the success of securitization, Philipsen (2018) argues that unlike the traditional belief that only actors with certain authorities can ‘speak security’, securitization makes it possible for some other actors to ‘claim authority’ and make it possible for them to become securitization actors. So, according to Philipsen, securitization as a performative act is not limited to constructing an issue into a security issue, but to also perform the act of claiming authority. Thierry Balzacq (2019) argues that the current debates fail to bring solutions and develop the securitization theory. The two main debates that Balzacq sees in the securitization literature are the debate about the

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‘right’ to securitize, between those who claim that the elite securitizes versus those that claim that the elite and the target audience securitizes; and the debate about the (de)politicization of securitization, between those who claim that securitization is a step further from politicization and those who claim that we cannot divide the two. Balzacq argues that these debates are not always helpful because they don’t propose solutions or developments. As a solution he introduces the ‘regime of practices’ concept, which explains how securitization is created and transformed, tightly bounded to the politics of extraordinary, which Rita Floyd (2016) questions. According to this concept, securitization is done by two mechanisms: speech act and non-discursive practices, that he called “regime of practices” (Balzacq 2019, 340). The regime of practices includes the dimensions of visibility, knowledge, techniques, and practices (Balzacq 2019, 344). If one wants to analyse the securitization of a particular issue then, he must look at spoken words and non-spoken practices that include the visuals on that particular issue, the prior knowledge about that issue, the techniques employed to securitize it, and the related practices. One of the most repeated questions about the theory is the relation between securitization and de-securitization. While traditionally the theory claimed that de-securitization is the anti-thesis, if we may call it that way, of securitization, some authors question this claim. Austin and Beaulieu-Brossard (2017) claim that securitization and de-securitization can be simultaneously enacted and are in no way mutually exclusive. Moreover, they claim that de-securitization is not always ‘positive’ and if simultaneously enacted with securitization (for example both processes enacted on different groups in the society) it can lead to short term violence in politics. This can be confirmed with cases in Turkey since the AKP has enacted multiple levels of securitization and de-securitization simultaneously but also separately. Moreover, re-securitization is an understudied process, as we can see it more often since the securitization theory started to be studied more. Yilmaz et al. (2021a) studied the re-securitization of Kurds in Turkey, but similar cases can be studied in Russia vis-a-vis the ethnic minorities, such as the Chechens; America vis-a-vis the white supremacy; and other cases. In another study, Stritzel (2021) studied the securitization and de-securitization of Afghanistan by the United States, and concluded that they cannot be studied as distinctly linear processes, but as dynamic processes that are interwind with legitimacy, negotiations, violence, and authority. This part of the theory promises to be a venue for further study and development.

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However, as these above cited scholars of securitisation argue, securitisation theory continues to face many challenges in theoretical framework that upcoming scholars can tackle to answer the still unanswered questions about the building blocks, the roles of the agents, the processes, and the practices.

The Purpose of Securitization The second direction that the theory has developed in recent years is the use of the securitization theory and the purpose behind that. The most common use of the securitization theory is to set the political agenda. But sometimes securitization is used for deterrence (Lupovici 2018), legitimization of past actions, to control the narrative (Vuori 2008), or preserve the status quo. Securitization theory has also been used in tandem with studies that analyse the use of conspiracy theories and propaganda in politics (Chernobrov and Briant 2020). Since the beginning, Buzan et al. (1998, 21) claimed that the security issues don’t stand alone and that they are constructed as such so they can later be transformed into security policies. These policies move to the security level by convincing the audience that the importance of tackling those particular issues supersedes the importance of public debate (Waever 1995, 55; Leonard and Kaunert 2011, 66). This way the securitizing actors set the agenda of which policies are important, which policies are open for public discussions, and which are matters of national security. Securitization is a negotiation process between the policymakers and the audience, and sometimes between the securitizing actors and their quest to find allies to ‘co-sponsor’ the agenda of securitizing an issue (Leonard and Kaunert 2011, 67; Balzacq 2005; Roe 2008). Lupovici (2018) incorporates the securitization theory into the study of deterrence. He argues that deterrence is a result of multipole securitization moves by different actors. He particularly argues that securitization theory helps in studying the deterrence success, credibility, and the effects of use of force or the threat of it. Michael Phan Minh Nguyen (2019) has analysed the global surveillance programme by comparing two theories, or combining them, the risk theory and the securitization theory. Whereas Jori Pascal Kalkman (2019) compares the crisis-as-claim model developed by Bert Spector in 2019 and the securitization theory to understand the social construction of crisis, the negotiation of crisis, the reality that is constructed through crisis perception, and the measures taken from

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both the crisis-as-claim model and the securitization theory. Donnelly and Steele (2019) combine the securitization and the ontological security approaches to address the difficulties and limitations of the critical security history and the security studies. Bryan Taylor (2020) bridges the securitization theory and the communicative reflexivity theory in analysing the state of communication and social media, particularly focused on the deepfake and disinformation campaign. Taylor argues that the securitization of deepfake technology in liberal democracies is a result of a perceived threat to their ontological security. This work sheds light on the effect of the conspiracy theories that the Turkish people in Turkey have grown up with, the fears that have been historically instilled in them, and the trauma that they have lived for many years in the securitization of different groups at different times.

The Level of Analysis Thirdly, the level of analysis. Securitization is done differently at different levels of analysis. Advocating for more research at different levels, Buzan and Waever differ between different scales of securitization and what they called “macrosecuritization” (2009). Shipoli argues that securitization is done differently at domestic level, at international level (2010), and at systematic level (2018). International level takes more time, includes more agents of securitization, and is more sophisticated than domestic securitization (Shipoli 2010). Whereas systematic securitization is a wellstrategized campaign, with a much larger scope, and more agents than the international securitization (Shipoli 2018). Balzacq (2011a) argues that there are three levels of analysis in securitization, categorized under: acts, including securitization move and speech act; agents, including the securitization actors and the audience; and context, including the process and the political environment that securitization takes place. Constantinos Adamides (2020b) argues that depending on the nature of the conflict there are four types of securitization: routinized, institutionalized, horizontal, and bottom-up.

The Geographical Expansion Fourthly, securitization theory has expanded to include different regions, different countries, and different examples. The theory has been accused of being Eurocentric and even racist (Howell and Richter-Montpetit

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2020; Donnelly and Steele 2019). But the matter of fact is that the theory has been applied in different regions, different countries, and has been utilized to analyse different examples of securitization from Europe to Africa, to Asia, America, Australia, and even on extraterritorial disputes. This literature has contributed little to the theory itself but has shown the applicability of the theory in different case studies. Lekunze (2020) has used the securitization theory to analyse the perspective of security in Africa, where it is argued that in African context referent objects define the levels where securitization happens, which are interdependent in a more complexed way (Lekunze 2020). In another study, Lakunze argues that the different levels of analysis of security issues in Africa is a necessity due to “multi-layered identities” of African population and nation states. Thus, identity politics in Africa is going to continuously challenge the security in the continent. Other scholars such as Olesker (2018) have studied extensively the application of the securitization theory in the Arab–Israeli war and peace. Olesker (2018), in particular, argues that the never-ending peace talks between Israel and Palestine exceed the claims of a political game of derailing the peace process by Israel, into constructing Israel’s Jewish identity as a matter of national security. In the case of Israel, Jamal (2019) links counter-securitization with asymmetrical power relations. He argues that the securitized subjects in Israel, the Palestinians, use counter-securitization to construct their own securitization, physical and ontological, as a resistance to asymmetrical power relations. The Palestinians, argues Jamal, did not have a chance to securitize their physical and ontological being because the power relations between Israel and the Palestinian citizens have been asymmetrical. Instead, they used countersecuritization to construct their well-being and their indigenous identity as a political and security matter. An article by Neo (2020) examines the internalization of the securitization discourse employed by the US President, Donald Trump, and its effect on US politics. He argues that the opposing politicians against Trump also use a securitization discourse and try to portray the Trump administration as a national security threat. Furthermore, both camps have internalized their versions of securitization and have not questioned their camp’s discourse. A considerable literature has emerged from and about Turkey. Secen (2020) has analysed the perception of Syrian refugees in Turkey and Lebanon. Analysing the portrayal of the Syrian refugees in the media in Turkey and Lebanon, Secen has found that their framing coincides

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with domestic political atmosphere. In Lebanon for example, there was a different portrayal when the government followed an open-border policy versus when they adopted a controlled-borders policy, thus the securitization of the refugees increased. In Turkey, the favourable portraying of the Syrian refugees coincides with the domestic political atmosphere where the incumbent Islamist party portrayed itself as the bearer of the transnational co-religious responsibilities. Özkut and A¸sçı (2020) have studied the emergence of the State of Emergency in Turkey in the aftermath of the failed coup in 2016, and how securitization has been used to consolidate power in the incumbent government. Other scholars such as Lord (2019) and Yilmaz and Barry (2020) have analysed the sectarian securitization of the Alevi community in a Sunni-majority Turkey. Yilmaz and Barry (2020) show how a de-securitization move that remains only in speech and doesn’t reflect in practice, can easily lead to the resecuritization of that issue, as is the issue of Alevis in Turkey. Especially in the cases of Turkey, the biggest contribution to the securitization theory is the applicability of the theory in different scenarios, rather than the expansion of the theory itself, with some exemptions. Other scholars have applied the theory on different region, such as the change in relationship between Uzbekistan and Russia, Japan, and China (Dadabaev 2020), the securitization of heritage and ‘the past’ in the Balkans and the role of ontological security (David 2019), the international community’s intervention in ex-Yugoslavia (Shipoli 2010), the securitization of the Roma minority in the current socio-political landscape of Europe (van Baar et al. 2019), the multifaceted securitization between Norway and Russia, which underlines the negative spiral that these two countries enter in identifying each other as a security threat (Wilhelmsen 2021), the securitization of ‘memory’ comparatively in Germany, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Gorgia, Ethiopia, and Rwanda (Budryte et al. 2020), the securitization of Hizb-ut Tahrir in Indonesia (Rikza 2020), the securitization of minorities and violence in the Xinjiang province of China (Trédaniel and Lee 2017), and the shift from state security to human security in South Asia (Lahiry 2020). Holger Stritzel (2021) has put forward the interwind connection of securitization, legitimacy, and violence in the US invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the de-securitization process that was used to open the way for the US exit of Afghanistan. He has linked not only securitization to legitimacy and violence, but also de-securitization to negotiations, violence, and authoritarianism. Basar Baysal (2019), on the other hand, argues that the

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securitization of Iraq prior to the invasion has been mostly done by fear and in a similar vein Shipoli (2018) argues that fear has played an overall important role in the securitization discourse in the United States since the 9/11. In 2020 the fiercest debate that got most scholars of securitization involved was the debate between Howell and Richter-Montpetit (2020) on one hand and Waever and Buzan (2020) on the other. Other scholars such as Lene Hansen (2020) also weighed in, but the main discussion was between the former accusing the securitization theory of being racist and the later advocating for more research and application of the theory on different cases, while rejecting the accusations of the theory, and its authors by association, being racist. In their 2020 article (firstly published online in 2019 and then published in 2020 with very few revisions) “Is securitization theory racist? Civilizations, methodological whiteness, and antiblack thought in the Copenhagen School” published in Security Dialogue, a journal that is considered as the host journal of securitization theory and studies, Alison Howell and Melanie RichterMontpetit accused the securitization theory and the Copenhagen School for being structural racist, civilizationist, methodological white, and antiblack. Furthermore, they argue that the securitization theory portrays the state of nature as uncivilized, and securitization is a move by countries to go to that stage from the ‘normal politics’ which is the desired and civilized state of the Western countries. In their original work on securitization, Ole Waever and Barry Buzan have considered the European Union as an example of successful de-securitization. Howell and Richter-Montpetit argue that this mindset privileges Europe as the civilized de-securitized state, clears it from its violent, racist, and colonial past. Moreover, they argue that by speech act, the securitization theory promotes the idea that being like Europe means being progressive and morally right. In their conclusion they suggest the abandoning of the theory and the term of securitization as a whole. In response, Ole Waever and Barry Buzan rejected all these accusations made by Howell and Richter-Montpetit by pointing out argumentation flaws, lack of evidence, biases, as well as instances when they misquoted Waever and Buzan to serve their purpose. Rejecting the claims that they as authors or the securitization theory is racist, civilizationist, and antiblack, Waever and Buzan argued that they are being declared guilty by association because they have quoted some key authors when they

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were constructing the securitization theory, which Howell and RichterMontpetit consider as racist. Moreover, according to Waever and Buzan, Howell and Richter-Montpetit have misquoted them to serve the purpose of their accusations. They’ve also said that in the article that accuses them of racism, the authors have not used relevant sources of the securitization theory and that they cherry picked articles by Waever and Buzan that serve their purpose instead of using the articles and books that they’ve written as foundations of the securitization theory. Finally, Waever and Buzan claim that the article by Howell and Richter-Montpetit uses false arguments and twist concepts to generate racism out of their writing and the theory itself. Both authors wrote a longer answer of about 90 pages where they highlight all the answers, flaws, and accusations of the article. Further elaboration of this debate would be too much for this work. Another scholar who has written on the securitization theory extensively, Lene Hansen, also penned a response article to Howell and Richter-Montpetit (Hansen 2020) and their accusations of the securitization theory. She was also accused by the authors that her article “The Little Mermaid” reaffirms racist thoughts of the securitization theory. While she rejected those accusations, she argues that everyone should think more about race and racism in International Relations. While everyone should be more careful about the role of race, gender, ethnicity, and other backgrounds, it has also become very easy to accuse someone with these major accusations that will affect their careers. Securitization theory, as Waever and Buzan have said many times, is a work in progress and the initial idea behind the theory has evolved by people from different regions and backgrounds. Although there is much work to be done, accusing the theory of being racist and calling for it to be abolished is beyond comprehension.

The Domain Expansion Finally, the theory has been expanded in analysing different international relations and political science issues through securitization. While this literature has used the securitization theory to mainly explain the approach of policymakers towards migration, religion, science, economy, and healthcare, it has also expanded the literature in its application to different domains as well as the way how securitization is done in those domains.

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When it comes to political matters, securitization theory has been widely used to study migration and how has it been constructed as a threat to nation states by populist leaders. As a new societal security agenda, migration has been widely securitized (Bourbeau 2013) in countries such as Hungary (Miholjcic 2017; Ahmed 2020), Germany (Cadena 2020), Canada (Vigneau 2019), Slovakia (Zvada 2018), the United Kingdom (Paterson and Karyotis 2020), and the European Union countries (Ferreira 2018; Hintjens 2019). In these cases, the securitization of migration and migrants has been mostly done by speech act of populist politicians, some in power and others in opposition, and the securitization theory is used as a tool to explain their approach towards global migration. However, Donnelly (2017) argues that we need to use speech act to actually de-securitize the migrants, the refugees, and the internally displaced persons and protect them. In similar arguments, Scheel (2020) argues to re-think the expert knowledge of migration and de-securitize that knowledge, which has been securitized ever since. He argues that the current expert knowledge has portrayed the migrants as ‘tricksters’ deceiving the West through ‘document fraud’ and ‘visa shopping’, whereas that is not always true. To change this, he argues, there is a need of a de-securitized narrative, thus it is important now to work on the methods of de-securitization and develop that part of theory more. Elections have been increasingly securitized, be it in the developing countries or in the developed countries. However, major studies have been done about the 2016 US elections and Brexit, and the effect of misinformation. Securitization theory was used in a few of these studies, most notably by Faye Donnelly and Bao-Chau Pham, who argue that elections are usually a time where all political matters are discussed, whereas in Brexit, in the US elections since 2016, in the French elections, and other elections of importance around the world, many political debates were shut off around national security, fear, and the politics of securitization. Utilizing computational models, Unver and Kurnaz (2022) have studied the disinformation in the discourse around NATO decisionmakers. They argue that what NATO has identified as security issues are mostly bounded to what US policymakers have identified as such, particularly vis-a-vis Russia and the Baltics. Another often studied topic is the securitization of religion. Especially after 9/11 securitization scholars have worked extensively on securitization of Islam (Cesari 2012; Shipoli 2018; Ahmad 2020) and religion in general (Fox et al. 2019). According to these studies religious minorities

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have been securitized all over the Western countries and they have been portrayed as ‘others’ in relation to the West. Liam Gearon (2018) argues that the securitization of religion, or of the sacred, has happened through the education of sociology and political theology first and foremost, and then the others have followed. The biggest securitized religious group are the Muslims who have been portrayed as the anti-thesis of what the West stands for. The attacks of Islamically identified terrorist groups have also played an important role in this securitization. This securitization has increased Islamophobia in the West and the increase of Islamophobia has fed back the securitization of Islam and Muslims, in a vicious cycle. The relation between Islamophobia and securitization has been a large topic of study by Western and non-western scholars alike (Zvada 2018). Lene Hansen (2011) analyses the securitization of the cartoons of Islam’s prophet, Muhammed, published in a Danish newspaper in 2005, to argue the need to study the securitization theory through a post-structuralist perspective. The securitization theory, Hansen argues, is influenced by many schools and authors, but the post-structuralist influence has received less attention in comparison to the influence from Schmitt, Austin, and Derrida. Through the example of the Prophet Muhammad’s cartoons, Hansen puts forward the modalities of the kind of an issue that security problems are and how to recognize them. With the emergence of the Corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic, the securitization theory has been utilized to explain its political effects. The main claim of the securitization theory is that security studies need to shift from merely military-linked situations to explaining how security is constructed in different disciplines, such as environment, health, economy, and others. During the COVID-19 pandemic many studies have emerged that analyse the securitization of the pandemic on ideological basis. Some have also made comparative studies between countries with different approaches towards fighting pandemics, not limited to COVID-19, (Rubin and Baekkeskov 2020) and explained how different securitizing actors have made securitization speech acts without prior authority to claim the use of extraordinary means, such as scientists and medical professionals. Nunes (2020) has analysed the unveiling of global security vulnerabilities and the crisis of the neoliberal system during the COVID-19 pandemic when health was securitized. Hoffman (2019) has analysed the situation of the pandemic in the Middle East in particularly and how it became a security issue, or rather how it was merged with other security issues in the region. Cui and Buzan (2019) have argued

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that the management of pandemics, such as Ebola, is linked to the securitization and the merger of the great power management and global governance. Other topics that are analysed from the securitization theory include the securitization of climate change and how successful or unsuccessful it was to gain the consent of the audience to use extraordinary measures (Warner and Boas 2019); international energy politics (Wilson 2019); securitization of science and technology (Evans et al. 2020), etc. Warner and Boas (2019) argue that the dramatization of the climate change made the audience believe less in the possible rate of success even if the extraordinary means are used, thus the climate change was not successfully securitized and it actually backfired, making people believe less in it. Jeffrey Wilson (2019) argues that the current international energy policies cannot be explained well with the mainstream theories such as realism and liberalism, thus we need alternative theories to explain this. Securitization, according to him, is useful because it explains the framing of energy as an existential component to the state because energy issues are of economic, geopolitical, social, and regime concerns. Many countries employ nationalist discourse to construct energy as a security issue and some of them enter international conflicts because of energy. Evans et al. (2020) have analysed the (de)securitization of science and technology and how it led to a critical collaboration with security as both science and technology today play a crucial role in the governance of security.

Conclusion These are five directions that we have categorized, however some might not agree with these categories and some we might have missed. One thing is sure though, that the securitization theory has developed in multiple directions in the recent years, especially in the recent decade. And there are no signs of stopping. Everyone who works on the theory agrees that it is underdeveloped and that it needs to be developed and tried in different cases. That is what we are going to do in this book as well, and contribute to the overall development of the theory. While we have tried to paint a broad picture in the recent scholarship in the securitization theory here, in the next chapter we dive deep into the securitization culture in Turkish politics.

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CHAPTER 3

Turkish Securitization Culture

Introduction Widespread use of national security in everyday life and across the sectors in Turkey well explains the securitization culture embedded in its politics, culture and society. For the opposition, Erdo˘gan himself is regarded as a matter of national security, across the sectors from football to popular art in Turkey it is becoming a popular expression to put stress on the importance to take measures against the further authoritarianism of the government. Observing this phenomenon, Bora (2017) highlights its negative impact on human security in Turkey and draws attention to the danger of using national security to this extent and scale, be it from the AKP regime or from the opposition. Historical experiences led fear and nostalgia to be the two main sentiments not only shaping the security conception(s) but also the future conception(s) of political and sociological collectives in the republic. These two sentiments have also become the foundational stones in the construction of the Turkish political identity and helped the elite to designate the significant other in the process of identity-building, or nation-building (Yilmaz 2021). These two sentiments have also created competing oxymorons that didactic and assertive elites have not hesitated to challenge the sociological realities. Therefore, a political culture, which makes authoritarian politics an inevitable end and a ‘requirement’, was born. Interestingly these two dominant sentiments, fear and nostalgia, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 I. Yilmaz et al., Securitization and Authoritarianism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0506-5_3

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have taken their roots from the Ottoman Empire, which gave birth to the Republic, experiences with the Western world. The West has been simultaneously but paradoxically seen as an ideal to emulate and also an existential threat to build defence against. Thus, competing conceptions of the West have created political and sociological fault-lines in Turkish politics, each camp accusing the other as being puppets and pawns of the West.

Turkey and the West: Collective Traumas and Ambivalence Turkey’s goal to become a part of the West emerged long before the foundation of the Republic in 1923, and most of the late Ottoman intelligentsia shared the view that the only way to secure the Empire from collapse and disintegration was through Westernization (Bagdonas 2012: 117). Since the nineteenth century, Turkey has been trying to overcome this insecurity of disintegration at the hands of the West by espousing, emulating, and transplanting Western educational, political, and legal constructs and institutions to be powerful and be at the same civilisational level with the West. On the other hand, the deep suspicions about the West’s true intentions in relation to the Empire, and later Turkey, have been embedded and still remain in the mind of the Turkish people, fortified by the popular culture and national curriculum. In this context, Turkey’s ambivalent relationship with the West and the international system has been repeatedly debated (Ahıska 2003; Rumelili 2003; Bilgin 2009; Yanik 2009; Zarakol 2010, 2011, 2013; Bagdonas 2012). However fierce the debates are, Turkish political leaders saw Western civilization as the only civilization to be emulated, although this determination has not detracted from anxieties, insecurities, and fears about the true intentions of the powerful Western states. Among these fears and anxieties, the fear of loss of territory is an important one, as it was a major concern for the late Ottoman Empire and continues to be a major concern in the current Turkish national psyche as well (Göçek 2011, 41; Alaranta 2020, 269). In the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, there are now 62 nation states. The Empire’s main decline came with the Treaty of KuchukKainarji in 1774, and resulted in the Ottomans accepting the supremacy of European powers by 1921. In the 1800s, millions of Muslims escaping ethnic cleansing in the lost territories in Crimea, the Balkans, and the

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Caucasus fled to the Ottoman heartlands, creating additional trauma for the local population. In the meantime, the Great Powers (including Russia) were constantly interfering in the domestic affairs of the Ottoman empire on behalf of the non-Muslim minorities of the Empire. The shrinking of the Empire left its traumatic mark on the national memory and motivated the subsequent Kemalist Turkish nation-building project. All these traumas, anxieties, and fears were perpetuated in education (especially history), media, and popular culture to create desired citizens, warn them against external and internal existential threats, and mobilize them for the nation state. The Kemalists sought refuge in a narrative about external forces, internal citizen enemies, and constant anti-Turkish conspiracies, traps, plots, and games. The fear and victimhood discourse have been well consolidated in the Turkish national psyche and many believe in this collective victimhood of Turkish people as a nation, especially at the hands of Western imperialist forces. An essential aspect of the Kemalist habitus (Bourdieu 1977) is its perpetuation of the Kemalist experience of external ¸ 2020: 77). This conspiracy and internal betrayal (Jung 2001: 149; Sirin deeply internalized mentality is based on the deep suspicion of the true motives of Western countries over the possible annihilation, abandonment, or betrayal of the Turkish state (Kalaycıo˘glu 2005, 37; Göçek, 2011, 99; Nefes 2015, 575; Sirin, ¸ 2020, 75). Kemalists viewed ethnic and religious diversity as being inherently dangerous because of its potential to fracture the Republic (Kehl-Bodrogi 2003, 64; Göçek 2011, 131; Adar 2018, 741; Çapan and Zarakol 2019, 272). Despite Turkey’s participation in NATO and the EU accession process, Turkish nationalism has been accompanied by intense isolationism and suspicion of outsiders. Even at the peak of Turkey’s EU accession period, opinion polls still showed fear and distrust of foreigners imbedded in cultural memories of European interventions during the last years of the Ottoman Empire (Haynes 2009). Not only Kemalists, but other sections of society and especially the Islamists have also been under the influence of the deep mistrust towards the West. For the Islamists, the distrust of the West is beyond the anxieties of the Kemalists. While Kemalists’ anxieties have been about the land and borders, Islamist have perceived the West as an existential threat to Islam and their way of life. Thus, the West has been regarded as the patron of the Kemalist laicism to ‘remove Islam from this land’. The Kemalist regime, in the minds of Islamists, is securitized with reference to the West. Thus, the Islamists under Erdo˘gan have

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used these sentiments to legitimize Erdo˘gan’s growing authoritarianism and attempts to delegitimize the political opposition. This context demonstrates that the Turkish nation is plagued with ontological uneasiness in relation to the West. Wendt (1999, 235–236), in his widely cited book Social Theory of International Politics, classifies four basics of national interest that are similar to all states in relation to nations’ ontological (in)securities: (1) physical survival, (2) autonomy, (3) economic well-being, and (4) collective self-esteem. Self-esteemrefers to a state’s desire for respect and prestige (Wendt 1999, 215–219), whereas the previous three are described as material wants. Variation in a state’s self-image is dependent on relationships with significant others, because interests and identities are formed intersubjectively. The term ontological (in)security has also been used to investigate how nations develop response(s) to existential threats to their identity. The requirement for an individual to feel and perceive oneself as fulfilled to meet the desire for a self-assured and stable identity in relation to significant others is known as ontological security. This notion has been used especially for states to define their identities by names such as Giddens (1991) and others (Kinnvall 2004, 746; Steele 2005, 519–540; Mitzen 2006, 341–370). Ontological security-seeking is a stressful process characterized by a persistent urge to maintain or restore social order (Mitzen and Larson 2017). Turkey’s ontological insecurity by and large comes from its perception of the West, as its constitutive other, which it has always followed ‘behind’ in the modernization process (Çapan and Zarakol 2019, 269), despite beening viewed as uncivilized, savage, backward, and brutal by the powerful, dominant, and hegemonic West. Turkey’s international status in relation to the West has always been a source of concern for the country (Zarakol 2010, 8). This has driven the country in a never-ending competition, a strong desire to catch up with the West. Thus, Western orientation has been one of the most enduring features even for the foundation of modern Turkish foreign policy. It is important to mention again that the desire to become a part of the West existed even before the Republic was established, and most of the late Ottoman intellectuals believed that Westernization was the only way to rescue the Empire (Bagdonas 2012, 117). The new Republic of Turkey has attempted to address and overcome its historical insecurities vis-avis the West by Westernization of the state and the society by adopting,

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copying, and transplanting Western educational, political, and legal structures and institutions. On the other hand, it has had deep suspicions about the West’s true intentions in relation to the fate of the Empire and later Turkey. Throughout the twentieth century, the West has been both a role model and source of insecurity and suspicion in relation to the historical experiences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This contradiction of suspicion and respect is a sociological reality, not just at the upper level. The ambiguous relationship between Turkey and the West and the international system has been repeatedly highlighted in this context (Ahiska 2003; Rumelili 2003; Bilgin 2009; Yanik 2009; Zarakol 2010, 2011, 2013; Bagdonas 2012). This led to the emergence of an elite, the Kemalists, who were pro-western but suspicious about the true intention of West, that we can call ‘ambivalent Westernism’ (Yilmaz 2021: xx). This Westernism was upholding values of Western civilization while being suspicious about political intentions of Western powers. Thus, as Alaranta (2020, 269) highlights, the founding fathers of the Kemalist republic were working to realize a Western-style secular nation state, however, they were “at the same time anxious about western great power’s intentions”… “a possible threat to Turkish national sovereignty”. Originated in that political context the fear of being abandoned and losing territory has persisted throughout the early Republican years and is still intact and has been the main dynamic shaping Turkish politics (Göçek 2011, 41). It would be helpful to further elaborate the issue/fear of losing land to better understand the political psychology of Turkish nation. Historians divide Ottoman history into three stages as its rise starting from early fourteenth century; its expansion from the fifteenth upto seventeenth century; and its decline, which is marked with the Treaty of Karlowitz signed in 1699. The Treaty of Karlowitz remarks the first territorial loss of the Empire. The other treaty highlighted in the scholarship as a turning point within the decline period is the Treaty of KuchukKainarji, which ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 that the Ottomans experienced a costly and crippling defeat against the Russian Empire. This treaty was followed with constant defeats and land-losses throughout the following centuries. The overstretched Empire has shrunk constantly until its collapse in World War I. During the period of decline once mighty Empire of sixteenth century came to accept the supremacy of European Empires and powers. Also, territorial losses during this period led mass migration of millions of Muslims fleeing invasion and ethnic cleansingin Crimea, Balkans, and Caucasus and migrating to Anatolia,

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the heartland of the Empire. On the other side, Great powers on the pretext of using their granted (as war concessions after defeats of the Empire in the wars) rights of protection over non-Muslim minorities, to a level of granting citizenship, did not hesitate to impose pressure and get involved in internal matters of the Empire. All these developments, loss of land, massacres, forced migration, foreign involvement in the internal matters through the use of non-Muslim minorities, caused deep traumas. These traumas have defined the nation and shaped its social psychology that gave birth to an anxious and protective political culture. Therefore, understanding these traumas has always been key in making sense of the politics, especially the recent political developments in the AKP era, in Turkey. The debates over the Eastern Question, the diplomatic contest of the Western powers over Ottoman territories made the Ottoman elite further anxious and fed this trauma. The fate of the Empire, as the sick man of Europe, was in the hands of the Western great powers, who each had their own competing even conflicting calculations for the future of the Empire. The question was comprised of many interrelated elements such as the Ottoman military defeats, institutional insolvency, the ongoing political and economic modernization programme, the rise of ethno-religious nationalism in the Ottoman provinces, and the competition between the Great Powers (Anderson 1966; Macfie 1996). However, as we will repeatedly see throughout the book, in the Turkish national imagination, this question has been expanded to always include all Ottoman territories, not just during the period of the Empire’s decline. Thus, in the popular parlance, the Eastern Question refers to the constant attempts of ‘Crusader’ Europe to rid Anatolia of Turks, from their first arrival in 1071 to the present. This systematic securitization of past events has served well to the Turkish securitizing actors, as fear from the past is a useful tool at this level of securitization (Shipoli 2018). The decline and collapse of the Empire, which stretches over a period of more than 200 years, has left traumatic dents (fears, anxieties, and traumas) on people and the Kemalist elite, and it has shaped their strategic minds and guided the elite in re-building the state and the society. All these fears, anxieties, and traumas started from education are reflected in all sorts of popular media enterprises operating in the country (Yilmaz 2018). Thus, the elite managed to stimulate a popular discourse of the national ‘self’, which portrayed the desired citizens. As part of this nation-building process, the elite commissioned intellectual enterprises

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promoting this new imagined community as a historical fact, extension of ancient civilization, especially those who were born in Anatolia such as Sumerians, Hittites, etc., the Turkish historical thesis, as response to degrading Western accounts. In doing so, the elite wanted to show that Turks are the real owners of the lands and that their history goes back thousands of years as the producers of the ancient civilizations in Anatolia. This intellectual endeavour of the elite is developed as a response to the experience of the elite during the collapse of the Empire after WWI. The agreement signed between the Empire and alliance powers, the Sèvres Treaty, divided the Empire into small satellite, nation states among the ethnic and religious communities, some of whom were already upraised claimed and achieved their own nation states collaborating with alliance powers during the wars. This created a trauma, which is called Sèvres Syndrome, fear of losing land to ethnic and religious minorities. The elite, military, felt humiliated. The fall of Edirne (Adrianople) to Bulgaria, once a minority community within the Empire, then the occupation of Istanbul by British in 1918 further added to the humiliation that the military elite experienced. In response, a new history was designed to trace the Turkish history on the land much further back to the conquest of Anatolia in the second half of eleventh century and also before any minorities inhabited Anatolia. Thus, the Turks were portrayed as descendants of ancient Anatolian civilizations, ignoring the occupant Ottoman history and this new myth, being descendants of the ancient civilizations presented as the new history (Türkmen-Dervi¸so˘glu 2013, 677). Also, the incidents experienced during the War of Independence (from 1918 to 1923) and early years of the Republic such as the attack of Islamist fanatics on the national army (known as Menemen Incident in 1930), Kurdish uprising starting from 1925 shaped the future perception of the military elite (Zarakol 2010, 15). These experiences, fears, and traumas fed the elite’s strategic thinking, under which the nationbuilding process of the Republic has been put into action. When it comes to Ottoman history, the textbooks stress on its collapse and its occupation by the allied European/Western powers (Volkan 1997). This part of the history is particularly instrumentalized to pass the insecurities and anxieties as the founding components of the new Turkish identity. History has always been an emotional and sacred subject in secondary schools. The joy and frustration have clearly informed and shaped the sense of political self in modern Turkey. The Ottoman history in the

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Turkish educational system is instrumentalized to ‘motivate’ students and seeds the plants of joy with the Turkish Ottomans’ victories and frustration with its defeats culminated in its collapse. In talking Turkish victories or defeats, alternative or critical perspectives have always been ignored. Emotional aspects have dominated the official curriculum. The textbooks depicted all these victories as ‘liberating’ acts against the ‘tyrannies’ highlighting the Ottoman rule as the ‘will of the people’ on the conquered lands. On the other side, they portray all sorts of popular nationalist riseups against the Ottoman rule as conspiracies orchestrated by external rival powers. As for the decline of the empire, all the blame goes to ‘seduced [by the Western powers], inept, backsliding’ Ottoman elite. This historical background provided Kemalist cadres with the emotional tools to choose and use as the base of the projected ‘nation’ state, or as the vehicle in transition into a nation state. In this transformation, as Volkan (1997) highlights, the Kemalist founding cadres highlighted the trauma of the collapse of the Empire and its invasion by the allied powers, the British, French, Italians, and Greeks. Although the invasion has been challenged with the War of Independence in 1920s its affects have been kept intact and passed to the new generation as the base of national identity. Thus, it would not be wrong to argue that the modern Turkish nation is the by-product of these traumas, which built a siege mentality anchoring its national identity to the year 1918, the invasion and division of the Empire by the allied powers.

The Siege Mentality In defining the concept of ‘chosen trauma’ Volkan (1997, 36) refers to the carefully selected memories of tragedies and catastrophes that the forefathers of a collective had experienced. Collection of such memories provides emotional information and missions for collectives and function in development of national consciousness. Alongside tragedies/traumas there are also ‘chosen glories’ that help the leading cadres of collectives boost the national self-image and motivate the group to bear the challenges and difficulties in times of identity crisis and insecurities (Volkan 1997, 81–82; see also Volkan 1988). Thus, historical traumas and glories have travelled beyond their historical contexts and shaped comprehension of new challenges facing the nation in an anachronistic fashion. Kinnvall (2004, 756) underlines that they mainly appear in and spread through the narratives of nation and religion. They are deeply linked and appear in

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religious and national narratives. Therefore, the historical defeats, humiliations, animosities, shames, and glories emerged as reference points in modern Turkish politics and international relations of Turkey. As we highlighted above, in the narratives generated by the founding Kemalist cadres of the Republic, the collapse of the Empire and its invasion by the Allied Powers have been two reference points. These references allowed the designation of the West as a threat to the ontological security of the nation and it also fed the conspiracy theories about antiMuslim and anti-Turkish plots by the West. In this reading, the Empire collapsed because of the evil and unfair plans of the Great Powers (Barkey 2010, 240). Also, emerging nationalisms among the ethnic and religious elements of the Empire were regarded as manipulation of these Western powers. Ethnic and religious minorities have been seen as the ‘potential’ political instruments of ‘enemy’ powers. Thus, they have been regarded as the possible and usual suspects of any wrongdoing in the country. During the war, people went through calamities, millions lost their lives or had to migrate leaving behind all their possessions. The remaining land mass of the Empire, Anatolia, received millions of Muslim refugees, which constituted nearly half of the Anatolian population, from the lost Ottoman territories, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. Experiences and emotional states of these people have also contributed to emerging suspicions from non-Muslim minorities (Adısönmez and Onursal 2022, 291). Fear of losing land and possessions and the victimhood that the people experienced, laid the foundation for nationhood. Perpetuation of these fears has been key in keeping the collective as a nation in the ‘new’ republic ¸ 2020, 77). Therefore, it would not be wrong to (Jung 2001, 149; Sirin regard the modern Turkish nationalism as a victimhood nationalism. This allowed emergence of a mentality always suspicious about the true intention of the West and internal non-Turkish and non-Muslim minorities of ¸ the land (Kalaycıo˘glu 2005, 37; Göçek 2011, 99; Nefes 2015, 575; Sirin 2020, 75). As we highlighted above, one of the chosen traumas of the Kemalists was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which is shown in the Treaty of Sèvres, signed in August 1920 in Sèvres, France after its defeat in World War I. This treaty aimed at dismembering the Empire and ending its sovereignty. However, thanks to the nationalist resistance led by Mustafa Kemal, this treaty was not put into practice and three years later it was replaced by a new one, the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923. The new treaty to a great extent demarcated the borders of modern Turkey, except

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Hatay province, which is included in 1939. However, the trauma that the unrealized treaty of Sevres left, has perpetuated over the coming decades in Turkish politics as “a powerful symbol of the near-annihilation of the Empire’s Muslims and Turks” (Öktem 2011, 18). This powerful symbol has also emerged in the form of a syndrome, the Sèvres Syndrome (Jung 2001; Göçek 2011). This is a siege mentality, which urges the citizens to always be cautious, fearful, and make their state strong. Because the state is encircled by external enemies and their internal collaborators. When this siege mentality dominates the political culture, it is passed through generations via educational, cultural, political, and official religious channels and requires citizens to maintain their state of self-defence (Bar-Tal and Antebi 1992, 636). This led to a dichotomic perception of and relation with the West. When Western civilizationhas been designated as the role model for development and progress, intentions of the Western powers have been feared. In an interview, Mustafa Kemal expressed this perception of the West with the following words “it was an entity that, seeing us as an inferior society, has exerted its best efforts to encompass our destruction” (Hanio˘glu 2011, 57). In the following decades this dichotomic perception has played its part in international relations of the country. Turkey has joined NATO and applied for EU membership. However, the EU membership process has constantly been interrupted, and opinion polls have always highlighted distrust and fear of the Western powers. In this, references have always been to the collapse and invasion of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 (Haynes 2011). In a nutshell, these maintained emotions (Ülgen 2010; Türkyılmaz 2011; Yilmaz Z. 2017; Yilmaz 2018; Yilmaz 2021; Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022) and siege mentality have influenced and shaped not only the political culture and national identity but also everyday life of the citizens (Scheff 1994; Berezin 1997; Bonikowski 2016) as reflected in the popular saying ‘Turks have no other friends but Turks’ (White 2017, 28) or ‘we are surrounded by the sea in three sides and four sides by the enemy’. This state of insecurity has helped the state unite the people, however, pushed the nation in isolation that suspiciously dominated any cultural exchanges and international relations. Additionally, it allowed many antiWestern conspiracies to take root and dominate the political behaviour

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of the nation (Jung 2001; Mendenhall 2011; Herzog 2014, 196; Çaylı 2018, 261). This siege mentality together with the feeling of victimhood deprived ordinary Turkish people from seeing the victimhood, inflicted by security conscious policies of the state, experienced by ethnic and religious minorities (Çapan and Zarakol 2019, 272). Furthermore, they have been seen potential suspects as collaborators of external enemies aiming at breaking the country into pieces (Kehl-Bodrogi 2003, 64).

Securitized Minorities In the Turkish context, the state elite decided that backward interpretation of Islam and ethno-religious heterogeneity were the fundamental reasons of the Ottoman collapse, humiliation, and hence trauma, so they decided to securitize them and deal with them with extraordinary measures. The loss of Ottoman territories in Europe by the end of the nineteenth century led the Young Turks to conclude that the Ottoman attempts to catch up with the Western civilizational standards of equality among different ethno-religious and linguistic groups had been a failure. Thus, especially after the 1913 coup, in which the Young Turks established a one-party regime, they promoted a nationalist ideology that was modernist, statist, socially Darwinist, and relatively secularist (Hanio˘glu 1996, 2001; Zarakol 2010, 13). While transitioning into a nation state, Islam, especially its Hanafi sect, is considered as the defining characteristic of Turkishness. This has been well highlighted in the first founding parliament by an MP with the following words, “Our authentic citizen belongs to the Hanafi sect of Sunni Islam and speaks Turkish” (Adar 2018, 741). Islam has been especially instrumental in uniting the Muslim majority Turks especially against non-Muslim minorities. Because non-Muslim minorities were seen as the political instruments of the enemies, the Western powers aimed at tearing up the country into pieces as suggested by the Sevres Treaty in 1918. In defeating the invaders, religion played and important part, it united and motivated the people, and facilitated the building of the projected nation state and became the inevitable component of the Turkish nationalism, which is defined as the synthesis of Turkishness and Islam. Thus, Turkish nationalism was born as a type of ‘Muslim nationalism’ (Zürcher 1999, 2010; White 2012). This understanding has been popularized and it gradually dominated the Turkish

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political landscape especially after World War II (Toprak 1990; Çetinsaya 1999, n.d). Therefore, as White (2017) pointed out, simplifying the tension between Islamists and secularists as the tension between secularism and religion is not useful in “understanding political developments in Turkey” (White 2017, 23). Because the conflict is between the state and non-official version of Islam, which is the non-Turkified Islam, out of the sphere of the state control. The nationalist state envisioned a secular, highly nationalist, and statist Islam (secularism-friendly) for its citizens. This was a religion not shaping the state and its policies but being shaped and controlled by the state. Those versions and groups that stayed out of these spheres are seen as security vulnerability and threats. In building up this understanding, religiously motivated uprisings against some certain state policies in the early years of the Republic have been highly effective (Azak 2010). Another point related to this understanding is that religion was seen as one of the main reasons behind the failure of modernization attempts in the late period of the Empire (Bilgin 2009, 603). Thus, it is thought that it should not have been left out of the process of state-led modernization in the early years of the Republic. The aim was to modernize the religion as a force not hindering; but motivating projected version of Turkish modernization, that has projected a secular Western style nation state. As a result, those religious groups, mainly Alevi and Sufi brotherhoods that have resisted state control of their affairs, have also been seen as potential security threats, similar to non-Muslim minorities. Not only non-Muslims and non-state-controlled religious groups but also ethnic communities, particularly Kurds, resisting state control and projected modernization were regarded as ‘internal’ enemies. This understanding disseminated through the state-controlled channels of communication, such as education, media, and the sermons at the state-controlled mosques prepared by the state’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) (Yilmaz 2021; Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022; Yilmaz et al. 2020). They have been either assimilated or securitized as ‘internal’ enemies and seen as existential threats. These policies led many of these groups to organize and operate underground. It is also crucial to note that these groups were seen as potential point of contacts for the Western enemies, therefore as vulnerabilities of the Republic. Thus, it is believed that there has always been a ‘Western master’ behind any sort of rise-up by any of these groups (Hurd 2008, 66). While this understanding motivated the state to further increase its censorship and oppression of such groups, it has also allowed to

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keep national victimhood intact and operational. This created a strategic blindness ignoring the victimhood stemming from state oppressions experienced by these groups. In other words, this perceived national victimhood has been veiling the sense of sympathy towards those groups and the victimhood inflicted on them is overlooked. The nationalism that the founding fathers espoused to, cultural nationalism, has required a unity in language as well. Therefore, as part of state sponsored modernization those speaking different languages have also been invited to adopt Turkish as their language and not to pass their language to the coming generations. In this language assimilation, educa˙ 2012, 39; tion and educational institutions have played key roles (Ince Bayar 2011, 114–115). Under these circumstances, majority of non-Muslim minorities, especially after 6–7 September 1955 plot against them, left the country, and the remaining minority of the minorities were isolated from the politics and society. In September 1955, a state sponsored fake news spread in Istanbul that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, where also Mustafa Kemal was born, is bombed. People, provoked by this news, were allowed, and even encouraged to assault the remaining Greek minority community, and ransacked their properties for revenge. This incident had majority of the remaining Greeks of Istanbul leave Istanbul (Benlisoy 2000). This allowed the state to turn their focus on remaining internal elements, non-state-controlled Islam, Kurds, and Alevis. In the changing context of 1970s, we saw the emergence of an Islamist political movement, National Outlook Movement (NOM) led by Necmettin Erbakan (Yavuz 2003; Yildiz 2003). For the Kurds and Alevis, we saw their political rise first in the leftist (Socialist, Leninist) movements and political parties which were more tolerant to ethnic minorities compared to Kemalist state ideology. Thus, both political movements have been seen as a security threat to the very unity of the state and its secular characteristic. Seeing the challenges that these alternative ideologies and political movements posed against the state ideology, the military began to intervene in politics in the second half of the twentieth century. Sometimes, these interventions came in the form of full-fledged military coups, which created a military tutelage over the politics in Turkey for the coming decades. However, the global context of the Cold War era and the Western camp that Turkey allied with, encouraged the Kemalist state to soften its approach to Islam and Islamic movements. Because under the Cold War conditions religion had been an antibody to Communist

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ideology. This has been particularly salient after the coup of September 1980. Aggressive secularism practised in the first half of the twentieth century left its place to state sponsored Islam, which showed itself as increase in Diyanet’s budget. In this era, we see further stress on the Turkish Islam (Yilmaz 2005; Yilmaz and Albayrak 2021). This means that in this new global context Islam is tolerated and even promoted if it has served national unity and increased a sense of belonging and loyalty to the state. This understanding helped the state elite see the power of religion to defy the influence of the socialists, leftists, and Kurdish separatists on the society via religion (Saleem 2015, 352; Ünlücayaklı 2012, 99–108). When the Cold War ended, the threat that communism posed to Turkey came to an end as well. Under these new circumstances the aggressive secularism of Kemalist ideology has revitalized in the 1990s. This culminated in a ‘soft’ coup in 1997 against the Islamist Erbakanled coalition government. The Islamic movements, groups, and business enterprises encouraged during the Cold War have been confronted and oppressed. The victimhood inflicted upon Islamic circles motivated them to gather around a new pro-Muslim political party and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan. Interestingly, this time, the rise of Erdo˘gan coincided with the changes in global politics invoked by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the war on terror. In this new context ‘soft’ Islam has been promoted to challenge the threats posed by radical Islam. Built upon the intersection of these global and internal contexts we have witnessed the rise of Erdo˘gan into power. This has been followed by successive election victories, crowned by referendum victories, and consolidation of power in his hand.

˘ The Making of Erdoganism In summer 2013, just at the beginning of the second decade of the AKP era, Prime Minster Erdo˘gan and his close circle faced a popular uprising, the Gezi Protests, which marked a critical point for the future of Turkey. These protests were harshly suppressed. Once soft, inclusive, and understanding voice of the government left its place to a harsh, polarizing, and nationalist voice. These protests were followed by 17–25 December police operations against close circles of Erdo˘gan in the very same year. As a reaction to these two incidents, the second decade of the AKP rule has hanged into a growing authoritarianism.

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First signs of the growing authoritarianism appeared in government’s response to Gezi Protests, which was very brutal and resulted in death of eight protesters. Erdo˘gan’s direct involvement and acting as the head of police forces during the protests (Irak 2016) was particularly damaging for the credibility of democratic institutions in Turkey, but it was also very revealing for what was about to come. The protesters were portrayed as terrorists and accused of terrorism for the benefit of the Western powers (Cook 2017, 116). During the protests, Erdo˘gan ignored any alternative voices, criticizing government’s harsh policies and police brutality towards the protestors, within the AKP and emerged as the sole voice and the leader of the party. The following decade witnessed banishment of such figures from the control cabinet of the party and the government. The following years have seen that all liberal democratic names either left the party or were co-opted by authoritarian politics and espoused a hawkish position. Erdo˘gan-led government gradually took the control of key state institutions checking and controlling the power entrusted to the government to ensure democratic the rule of law. This led to the weakening of democratic checks and balances, and opened the way to an authoritarian power grip. This unchecked power first and foremost was practised against potential dissidents to eliminate political opposition (Karakaya-Stump 2014; Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 506; Önba¸sı 2016, 276; Günay and Dzihic 2016, 14). As its next step the regime has tried to justify its authoritarian practices via dissemination of propaganda based on conspiracies and fake news (Özen 2020, 12) to emotionally appeal to its conservative and Islamic support base. In doing so, the media outlets were either bought by partisans or controlled by appointed executives. As for the critical media outlets and dailies, they were exposed to hefty tax fines and either closed or governed by appointed pro-regime trustees. For example, during Gezi Protests pro-government media made up stories, which turned out to be fake afterwards, that protesters who were escaping police brutality entered a mosque and stepped with their shoes on and drank alcohol inside the mosque. Another pro-government headline blamed some protestors of assaulting and urinating on a headscarf wearing woman with a baby waiting at a bus stop near the Gezi Park. Via these stories the protest was portrayed as a direct threat to “conservative religious way of life” (Özen 2020, 12). This populist language and these narrated stories were used to successfully polarize the society and further consolidate AKP’s conservative support base and Islamist groups behind Erdo˘gan.

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Having witnessed the way Erdo˘gan practised political power during the Gezi Protests resulted in disappointments among the liberal and leftist circles who had once supported Erdo˘gan and his democratizing reforms. Consequently, liberal and leftist figures left the party. In the same year, the outbreak of a corruption scandal and relevant police investigations resulted in Gülenists’ breaking the collation with Erdo˘gan. As expected, Erdo˘gan perceived and portrayed the probes as a ‘coup’ against his rule. Between a rock and a hard place, Erdo˘gan grew his authoritarian grip even more. He went further and interfered with the judiciary process and fired the leading police chiefs and public prosecutors. He accused Gülenists of being behind the investigations. Then, having taken the control of judiciary he started a purge in the state to eliminate all suspected Gülenists within the state. However, this has not satisfied him, and he has taken the purge to a societal level. Gülenists and anyone affiliated with Gülenists have been securitised with the help of conspiracies and a governmentsponsored witch hunt. Schools, universities, organizations, newspapers, publishing houses, and private businesses associated with the Gülen movement, or its supporters, have been raided and shut down. In doing so the regime did not even wait for any court orders. Once allies, the Gulen movement was portrayed as a national security threat and a terrorist organization by Erdogan. Gülenists have not been the only target of these authoritarian practices. Kurds, following a short break due to the Kurdish opening initiative, have been re-targeted. This was mainly because of the pro-Kurdish HDP’s (Halkların Demokrasi Partisi, Peoples’ Democratic Party) opposition to Erdo˘gan’s plan to change the parliamentary system into an a la Turca presidential system. It is a la Turca because it was designed as a powerful presidential system with lack of democratic checks on the power of the president. A frustrated Erdo˘gan, against HDP’s unexpected stance against his plan, he abandoned the Kurdish peace process in 2015 and re-adapted hawkish nationalist and authoritarian state policies towards the Kurds. He established links between the outlawed PKK and the Kurdish politicians (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016) through PKK leader’s brother, Osman Ocalan, who gave an interview on public TV to support the presidential system. Not only Kurdish politicians, but also any pro-Kurdish civic movements have been targeted since then. For example, in the beginning of 2016 hundreds of academics (known as the Academics for Peace) in and out of Turkey have initiated and signed a petition campaign calling on the government to put an end to the oppressive policies towards the

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Kurds in the Kurdish-dominated southeast Turkey. Infuriated by this civic attempt, Erdo˘gan turned his anger towards these academics and pressured universities to fire them and ordered state prosecutors to file probes against them (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 5; Irak 2016, 342). Since 2015, to be able to justify his authoritarian turn, Erdo˘gan has employed more religious rhetoric. He has depicted any protests and criticism of his policies as attacks of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ enemies of Islam against Islam and Muslims. In this way, he has very much benefitted from infamous, oppressive legacy Kemalist secularists left on conservative Muslims in the previous decades, especially in the early decades of the republic. He has portrayed himself as the guarantor of Muslims and Islam in Turkey. In showing this, he has hugely invested in Diyanet (the Directorate of Religious Affairs) and its projects. This has helped him justify his authoritarian actions targeting and eliminating political opposition. Within this context, a failed mysterious coup attempt of July 2016 further played in Erdo˘gan’s hand. It became a ‘gift from God’ (as Erdo˘gan called it) for him to use this device to further design the political spectrum complacent to his political interests. Looking at the favour this coup attempt did to Erdo˘gan, many raised eyebrows about the way it had unfolded and what it resulted in. Defying this coup attempt strengthened Erdo˘gan and he managed to eliminate and silence the whole political opposition. During these years he also further invested in his coalition with the ultranationalist MHP, which resulted in an unwavering alliance between Erdo˘gan and MHP’s leader Bahceli. Within this context he took the country to a referendum in 2017, which he won with a narrow margin (51.4) and introduced Turkish style presidential system, further consolidating his power. This coalition has pictured anyone opposing the change in political system as conspirator and collaborator of the foreign forces who sponsored the coup attempt. Then in the following year, in June 2018, Erdo˘gan won the presidential election by a narrow margin (52.39%). This well demonstrated how the political landscape is divided into two distinct/opposition camps, and became the first elected president with exceptional powers. This had legalized the extraordinary power Erdo˘gan had been practising for a while. As his first action, he appointed new members loyal to him to the Supreme Court and relevant courts of judiciary via whom he had taken the control of judiciary. In the following years of his presidency, he ruled the country and alienated the parliament, abolished the prime ministry, and introduced new positions for his closed circle.

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Through the help of pro-government media, he emerged as the new hero who led the second war of independence against the internal ‘enemies’. Many TV series, dramas, and documentaries have been shot to embed this perception of him. He has been compared to the founder of the Republic, Atatürk; likened to Sultan Abdulhamid II, who is seen as the patron and an ardent protector of Muslim Ummah against the Zionist conspirators, Crusaders and their internal (such as the Gülen Movement) and external collaborators (social media platforms etc.) (Cook 2017, 118–119). TV shows and documentaries helped conservative Muslims to draw parallels between Erdo˘gan’s persona and these historical figures and consolidate unquestioned support around him against ‘international conspiracies’ plotted against Muslim Ummah and its Turkish ‘protector’. The co-opted media outlets, majority of the media in Turkey, have played a crucial role serving the regime to “reinforce Erdo˘gan’s worldview and self-projected image as an embattled leader moulding Turkey into a global power” (Tahiro˘glu 2020, 2). The remaining critical media have already had discredited tapping “into long-held suspicions among Turkish society and invent Western efforts to undermine Turkey” (Tahiro˘glu 2020, 4).

˘ Erdoganism: Insecurities, Anxieties, and Fears The Islamists’ fears resemble that of Kemalists: there is a sense of being the victim, and a sense of insecurity pervades their identities; the difference being that while the Kemalists abhor the Ottomans whom they associate with backwardness, the Erdo˘ganists idolize the Ottoman Empire and the institution of the caliphate (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 510). On the other hand, Kemalists are ostracized and viewed as an insidious apparatus of the West, an enemy of Muslims and sense of Muslimhood (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 510). The decades old apathy of Kemalism towards Islamists contributed to the sense of being the victim on the part of Erdo˘ganists and Islamists in general (Yilmaz Z. 2017). This perception was supported by the prohibition on Muslim women’s headscarf by the state apparatus and banning of past Islamist parties such as Refah Partisi (Welfare Party). Furthermore, the fact that Kemalists opposed Abdullah Gul’s becoming the president, because of his wife, Hayrunnisa Gul’s headscarf, also contributed to this sense of being the victim on the part of the Islamists. Independently, Erdo˘gan belittled Gul on many occasions while he was the president and after he left the position.

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Hence, Kemalists organized ‘Republican rallies’ and all of this strengthened Erdo˘gan’s hand when he ostracized the participants of the Gezi Protests in 2013, and managed to create a monster out of them (a group perceived as collaborators with the West) when it came to at least 40% of his voter base at the time. The disconnect that happened between AKP and Gülen supporters was different than the divide between Islamists and Kemalists in that while the AKP and the Gulen movement had been close and were a part of a coalition since 2002, their fallout was more severe and manifested itself as a ‘fratricide’ and caused much upheaval among Muslims (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 515). While the cooperation between Gülenists and Erdo˘gan came to a close, Erdo˘gan consolidated his ties with Homeland Party (Vatan Partisi), with the far-right Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), and hardcore Kemalists right after the attempted coup. The common denominators of the partners of this collaboration were being anti-intellectual, illiberal, antiKurdish, anti-Gülenist, anti-leftist, and anti-Western. Furthermore, this alliance between AKP, MHP, and ultranationalist Kemalists “is shaped around loyalty to the leader and an existential threat narrative based on nationalist-religious myths, societal resentments and conspiracy theories” (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 515; see in detail Yilmaz et al. 2020). The coup against Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated president of Egypt, also created a sense of fear among the AKP and Islamists, as it had a geopolitical and psychological impact on them (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 518). This further exacerbated the feelings of insecurity and a perceived loss of influence in the Middle East among Islamists, as a fellow Islamist was overthrown and imprisoned (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 518). Furthermore, the different reactions on the part of Western media to the coup in Egypt and the Gezi protests in Istanbul also contributed to the lack of trust in the West on the part of the AKP regarding their sincerity on democratic initiatives in the Islamic world (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 518). The attempted coup of 15 July 2016 created a sense of trauma for Erdo˘ganists as well (Adısönmez and Onursal 2022, 298). Despite this, Erdo˘gan managed to garner support from the masses thanks to a clever utilization of the ‘rally around the flag effect’ and consolidated the

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support of the conservatives by depicting his opposition and critics as existential threats to their very sense of being, throwing fear into their hearts (Özen 2020, 1–3). He thus managed to securitize all criticism towards his government and rule as heinous attempts to harm Islam and Muslims, and attempts at destroying the nation, and all the positive values that the nation stands for. During a speech he gave on 21 July 2020 for the second anniversary of the new presidential system, he said that: The Turkish nation and the Republic of Turkey have been passing through a historical period. In this period, there are all kinds of traps , all kinds of attacks, all kinds of conspiracies, all kinds of betrayal , all kinds of pain and all kinds of trouble. (Erdo˘gan 2020, 2) The Turkish Nation, with its citizens and security forces, is carrying out its struggle for its independence and future, step by step to victory. We are determined to continue this struggle forever for the future of all our friends and brothers (the Muslim World)… Yes, we, as a nation that shed our sweat and blood when necessary, believe that we will be gifted with God’s good tidings. (Erdo˘gan 2020, 7) We are well aware that the attacks that we have been experiencing for the last 7 years have aimed at our belief , history, culture, unity, togetherness, ezan, flag, and all our sacred values. We have no doubt that from the turmoil in the streets to the coup attempts, each attack meant shotgun shots for the same target. Our nation with its wisdom acquired through a thousand years of experience has seen this reality and has decided to join the ranks of its future and independence. It is our duty to pay our debt against this sacrifice of our nation by working with sacrifice, diligence and perseverance that will spoil all the conspiracies. (Erdo˘gan 2020, 80)1

As such, it can be said that the anxiety, insecurity, and fear on the part of the Erdo˘ganists regarding the secularists were not entirely baseless, as they were excluded and discriminated against before the AKP era (Özen 2020, 11); however, the fact is that Erdo˘gan has carefully managed to utilize such fears, insecurities, and anxiety for his ends.

1 As in all quotations from the AKP, Turkish state, or Diyanet sources, italics and clarifications within the brackets are ours.

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Conclusion Any criticism against the AKP has been framed by the AKP as an existential threat to the nation, Islam and the Muslim World, an act of terrorism, and treachery to the state, especially since the Gezi Protests in mid2013 and reached its peak after the coup attempt in July 2016 Following the Gezi Protests, Erdo˘gan made the claim that he was representing the ‘people’, by which he meant the religious and especially conservative groups of people in Turkey, pitted against left leaning population, as well as liberals, Alevis and those who consider themselves seculars, all of whom were presented as threats to the nation (Özen 2020, 11; Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022). These groups were not securitized only during this time, which might be considered the peak of securitization, but they were also topics of securitization since the inception of AKP and Erdo˘gan’s political career. Because of their image as the ‘elite’ of Turkey, the Kemalists, white Turks, and leftists were always present in security speeches as ‘the other’ from what ‘people’ stand for. For this reason, it is important to start with these groups when we analyse the securitized communities in the AKP, and Erdo˘ganist, discourse.

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CHAPTER 4

Securitization of Kemalists, White Turks, and Leftists

Introduction Erdo˘gan has always used populism to securitize segments of the society since the 1970s. He utilized populism to create an image of practicing Muslims and himself as the actual inheritors of the nation, inheritors of the Ottoman Empire and leading people of the Muslim World who have always been victimized by the Kemalists. Especially between 2009 and the Gezi protests, this populism became the heart of Erdo˘gan’s rhetoric (Dinç¸sahin 2012; Bozkurt 2013; Aytaç and Öni¸s 2014; Yilmaz 2015; Günay and Dzihic 2016; Selçuk 2016; Türk 2018; Yilmaz 2018a, b; Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018). The aftermath of the Gezi protests saw Erdo˘gan mixing his populism with the revival of his Islamist ideology (Onba¸sı 2016) coupled with an anti-Western narrative (Yılmaz and Bashirov 2018), with roots in Necip Fazil Kisakurek, with a powerful religious and moral core that posited that practicing and conservative Muslims were suppressed and were moral and ethical exemplars compared to the rest of the population (Tu˘gal 2002). Other studies discuss the populist tendencies of the AKP in detail and from different perspectives (e.g. Selçuk 2016; Yabanci 2016; Kirdi¸s and Drhiemur 2016; Özpek and Ya¸sar 2018; Yilmaz 2018; Castaldo 2018; Özçetin 2019; Sawae 2020; Ta¸s 2020; Yilmaz and Erturk 2021). Thus, we will not be detailing them here, but refer the reader to these resources. Rather, we focus on the securitization aspect of AKP’s populism in regard to its targeting and elimination © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 I. Yilmaz et al., Securitization and Authoritarianism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0506-5_4

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of its political opponents, mainly CHP as the representative of this group of people (Kemalists, white Turks, and the left). Therefore, this hapter examines AKP’s populism in tandem with its strategy of securitization to eliminate its political enemies. We use Erdo˘gan’s and his inner circle’s direct speeches of securitization, to analyse how they securitized this part of the society. Populism is understood by many scholars as a scattered set of ideas rather than a complete ideology like communism or liberalism (Barr 2009; Hawkins 2009; Moffitt and Tormey 2014; de la Torre 2013). At the heart of these disparate ideas lie (a) an animosity between ‘the exemplary people’ and the elite groups, and (b) the moral superiority of the popular will (Mudde 2004). Here ‘the people’ is understood in line with the political leanings and interests of the populists (Laclau and Mouffe 2014) pitted against the corruption of the elite. But this group of people with virtues are not understood to comprise the entirety of a nation (Lefort 1988). This in turn helps with securitization. Therefore, it is highly helpful to set a scene to securitize. This means it would not be wrong to argue that creating a populist political landscape would be the main facilitating factor for a successful securitization of a political enemy. As such, it can be said that to successfully securitize a political opponent, one needs to utilize populism as a political weapon and create such an atmosphere of antagonism. In the Turkish context, it can be added that securitization became a synonym for criminalization as well. In this and other contexts, there have always been minority groups, immigrants, critics, and opposition that were ostracized and labelled as demons and enemies of the state. It can be said that populism creates a divided society, with one side labelled as ‘us’, ‘friends’, and the other side as ‘them’ and ‘antagonists’ (Mudde 2004, 543; Stanley 2008, 103), and through the lens of such a weltanschauung, “opponents are not just people with different priorities and values, they are evil! Consequently, compromise is impossible, as it ‘corrupts’ the purity” (Mudde 2004, 543). The populism of Erdo˘gan can be traced back to playing the victim that Islamists use when referring to the previous Kemalist regimes (Laclau 2005). In Turkey, the Kemalists and Islamists always saw each other as opponents and political enemies to be securitized and antagonized and labelled as threats to be taken care of (Yilmaz 2021). As such, Erdo˘gan

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used this fear of conservatives and religious people and built a barrier between CHP and their voter base, preventing CHP’s initiatives to reach the conservative population, by reminding past injustices of the Kemalists and CHP.

White Turks, Secular Elites, CHP, IYIP The resentment and vindictiveness of Islamists towards the West extends “to the Kemalist regime, viewed as a product of western cultural imperialism and an oppressor of Turkey’s Muslims” (Öktem and Akkoyunlu 2016: 510). Kemalism’s aggressive secularization rhetoric, policies, and embrace of Western lifestyles drove the Islamist perception of the Kemalists as enemies of true Turkish culture, values, and traditions that are embedded in the Ottoman past and Islam. In the Erdo˘ganist populist political imagination, the ‘outsider’ groups that have been co-conspirators of the Kemalists and the West also include non-Kemalist secular Turks such as leftists, liberals, democrats, and most of the urban and educated people. These are often cast as elites (Beyaz Türkler, White Turks) that Erdo˘ganists accuse of being out of touch with the ‘real’, authentic values of ‘the people’ (Çapan and Zarakol 2019: 276). The arrogant, elitist, and anti-Islamist White Turk is a particularly popular theme among Turkish-Islamist media intellectuals. The spectre of the past Kemalist regimes plays an important narrative role, illustrating what would happen to ‘the people’ if Erdo˘gan loses power (Çapan and Zarakol 2019: 276). The pejorative figure of the White Turk is constructed as someone who sees practicing Muslims as provincial, lower class, and ignorant to define its own (secular, civilized, and westernized) identity and to justify its authority. In the Erdo˘ganist narrative, the White Turks are portrayed as responsible for anything that goes wrong in the country (Yilmaz Z. 2017: 499). Although rarely in official statements, the White Turks include the Turkish Jewish, Armenian, and Greek communities, who are considered as the owners of wealth in Turkey. There are three main referent objects that Erdo˘gan securitizes against the nation, the state, and religion. This is true for this category of the society as well as the others, that we have covered in the following chapters. It is important to give some examples, from the many recent cases, that portray this narrative against the White Turks, better. Erdo˘gan in securitization of CHP and secular elite has hugely benefitted from the religious elements and religion itself. In doing so he

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equated his and his party’s image and polices with religion. For example, on a special occasion referring to secular Kemalist elites criticizing his policies he said: Mr. Kemal (the current leader of the CHP), we do not believe them, we know who is who (who is a real Turkish Muslim and who is only acting as one). If you’re sincere, get up and shut up those barkers. We will show the limits of those who will attack our religion and our Diyanet in this country, and we will hold them accountable. How are you different from street terrorists? You are the same! You bring them and make them talk, and you watch from behind. This nation I know will hold accountable those who attacked our religion and our Diyanet in 2023. (Politik Yol 2022)

But one event defined Erdo˘gan’s portrayal of this category of the Turkish society in the last decade, the Gezi protests. As part of the campaign to label the Kemalists, the white Turks, and the leftist as a threat to the nation, Erdo˘gan labelled the Gezi Park protests, and its supports, including the CHP, as the co-conspirators against the nation who were puppets of the West and Zionists. Commenting on the protest in the Gezi Park, then Prime Minister Erdo˘gan tweeted from his official twitter handle @rterdogan “What is happening in Taksim is not only about the Gezi Park. These are events that have links outside and inside of Turkey”. For Erdo˘gan, the Gezi Park protests were a milestone. He knew that if he can survive that, he will be well-positioned to consolidate his authority. That is why he was particularly harsh during the Gezi protests, and when he saw that he was winning, he increased the tension. Since 2013, he has used the Gezi protests in nearly all his securitization processes against the Kemalists, the white Turks, and the leftists. In 2019, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a tree-planting ceremony he targeted the Gezi protestors, who he called “so-called environmentalists”: In the past, some have destroyed our cities claiming that they wanted to protect the environment. We are here planting trees. So, where are they who claimed that they care about trees? None of them is here. (Erdo˘gan 2019)

Even in 2022 Erdo˘gan did not forget about Gezi, and referred to it in a speech, echoing a lie that he uttered at that time that the protesters entered a mosque with their shoes on, and drank beers inside the mosque

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(the imam of that mosque has declined these allegations and was then disciplined by Diyanet for declining them). He said “Everyone is now understanding who the powers behind the Gezi protesters were. They are together with the terrorist-lovers” (Erdo˘gan 2022a, b). A particular case has been linked to Gezi protests, that Erdo˘gan has used to securitize this group of the society, that of Osman Kavala, a philanthropist who has been imprisoned since late 2017. Paris born, Kavala is accused of masterminding the 2016 alleged coup, and financing the Gezi protests. He is given a life-sentence for both counts and is accused of being the ‘hand’ of George Soros, who for the Turkish regime is the ‘Amecian Jewish Zionist’ evil that wants to destroy Turkey. Kavala was a philanthropist who established many educational and cultural foundations in Turkey. He was a symbol of the ‘white Turks’, and he has become even more so today. Through him, Erdo˘gan is exemplifying to the white Turks what he can do to them, and he is securitizing them towards his base. The United States, the European Union, and other Western countries and organizations have called for his release, while the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that his imprisonment is unbased and has asked Turkey to release him immediately. Erdo˘gan did not oblige. So how has Erdo˘gan securitized Kavala, and the white Turks through him? In the Turkish Parliament in 2020 Erdo˘gan had this to say about Kavala: We [AKP] will never walk together with terrorist organizations. We will never come together with those who financed the Gezi protests, with the Kavalas… We will never advocate for those [PKK] who killed our Kurdish brothers and sisters in Diyarbakir. (Erdo˘gan 2020)

With this, he was associating Kavala with terrorist organizations, the PKK, and the killings of Kurds. Commenting on the decision by the ECHR that Kavala’s imprisonment is a human rights violation, Erdo˘gan said This guy was Turkey’s Soros. He was the coordinator of the Gezi protesters behind the curtain, he financed the Gezi protests… when it comes to the Gezi protests our judiciary did not only satisfy the consciousness of the Turkish people, but it also drew a lesson for those who have similar intentions. (NTV.Erdogan 2022a).

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Commenting on the same ECHR statement in the Turkish Parliament Erdo˘gan again accused Kavala of being the “domestic Soros”, the financier of Gezi protests, whose aim was to overthrow the government, and vowed to “make him pay” (TCCB 2022). For Erdo˘gan and his regime, the Gezi protests became the chicken that lays golden eggs. Targeting the protests of Bogazici University students against the appointment of a pro-government rector, with no ties to the university, and without elections, Erdo˘gan said These youngsters [Bogazici protestors] who are members of terrorist organizations, do not represent our national and moral values. Are you students or are you terrorists who wanted to occupy the office of the rector? We won’t let terrorists to take over this country. Mr. Kemal [Kilicdaroglu] you can continue your journey with your terrorist friends, but we will never be together with terrorists. There is no such a thing as LGBT. This country is moral, and it will go into the future with these values. This country won’t bow to terrorists and will never live another Gezi protest. (NTV.Erdo˘gan 2021)

He called them “terrorist youth, communist youth” and vowed to find and expel them because “universities would not educate terrorist youth, universities should educate the youth that will serve the motherland and the nation” (Cumhuriyet 2018). Erdo˘gan targeted CHP Istanbul chair, Canan Kaftancioglu, who is credited for CHP’s victory in Istanbul mayoral elections, because she supported the protests of students and academics at Bogazici University, “Unfortunately we see the chair of Istanbul’s branch of CHP, who has no relations to the students, but anyway she is a militant of DHKP-C [Marxist-Leninist communist party, identified as a terrorist organization by Turkey]” (Erdo˘gan 2021). The next day Turkish Interior Minister, Suleyman Soylu, tweeted: Canan Kaftancioglu is the clown of terrorist organizations. The chair of CHP’s Istanbul branch is a personnel of DHKP-C, PKK/KCK and MLKP terrorist organizations. She already has a sentence of 1 year and 8 months for propagating for PKK/KCK and DHKP-C, according to Istanbul’s 37th Criminal Court, file no 2019/171. (Soylu 2021)

In 2021, in the Turkish Parliament Erdo˘gan again targeted Kavala, and now his wife, when he was talking about the protests in Bogazici University:

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The wife of this guy, Osman Kavala, who literally has a Soros office in this country, is also engaged with these provocateurs at Bogazici. Now do you expect us to say ‘OK take this good university and do whatever you want with it?’. (TCBB 2021)

Similarly, the Gezi protest were part of all the cabinet’s narrative. It is worth to quote Numan Kurtulmus, vice-president of AKP, who claimed that “Gezi Park was an example” where the “foreign powers” lured some innocent youth to protest, then the FETO police used excessive force against them to raise tensions just so they can sabotage the Turkish economy, using international media and portraying Turkey as a country in chaos, because the aim was “to overthrow Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan, and prevent a strong Turkey” (AA 2020). The securitization of this group is always linked to the economic security, among others. That is because, among the general Turkish public, it is believed that the wealth of Turkey is in the hand of the Kemalists, the white Turks, and the leftists. Erdo˘gan and his regime often claim that this wealth was unfairly distributed and that sooner or later it will go back to the ‘Anatolian people’, of course ‘if’ he beats all the odds. Whenever there is a devaluation of Turkish lira against the US dollar or Euro, Erdo˘gan claims that this is a ‘foreign powers’ attack on him and Turkey, Now everyone knows that there is an economic side of the attacks that Turkey faces. There is no difference between those terrorists who have weapons in their hands, and those who have dollars, euros, and [financial, banking] interests. Their goal is to bring Turkey to its knees, to own Turkey, and to derail Turkey from its goals. They use the exchange rate for this purpose. (NTV 2017)

The economy is very important for Turkish voters. There is an important assumption that long-lasting regimes change only by economic crisis. However, that has not happened during the Erdo˘gan regime, and that has been one of the leading differences that set Erdo˘gan apart from others. Despite the deep economic crisis, Erdo˘gan remains in power and that is thanks to the authoritarian grip that he has managed to consolidate and the securitization he has managed to create. Whenever there is a devaluation of lira, or an economic crisis, Erdo˘gan securitizes the economy as an attack to Turkish national security,

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Whenever Turkey faces national security threats, we always see foreign exchange-interest manipulations emerging, to keep producers and investors away. What do you think lies behind the credit rating agencies? They are constantly working on economic terrorist attacks thinking of how to scare Turkey. (Cumhuriyet 2017)

But also, the media in his control, that make up the majority of media in Turkey, propagate about a severe economic crisis in western Europe and the United States, portraying the situation in Turkey as relatively better. Erdo˘gan’s coalition partner and the chair of the ultranationalist MHP, Devlet Bahceli, targets TUSIAD, the business confederate representing the biggest Turkish companies, who are perceived as being ‘white Turks’: Look at the head of TUSIAD, he left his business to side with Sweden and Finland. Where does TUSIAD’s allegiance stand? For once be national [Turkish]. If you can’t be Turkish, at least be humans. Sweden, whom TUSIAD salutes, became the finance bank of Kandil [PKK]. (Bahçeli 2022)

He also argued that TUSIAD is the “hit man” of the opposition: “Kemal Kılıçdaro˘glu’s (the leader of the CHP) only hope is economic hitmen, terror organisations, the conspiracies of oppressors, the actions of traitors, the projects of Turkey’s enemies” (AA 2021). To label this group of the society as a threat to the state, Erdo˘gan and his regime linked them to other threats that have been labelled before, namely FETO (Gülenists) and PKK (the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party), to portray them as a threat to the state, not only the nation. Cabinet ministers, such as Fikri Isik also joined the narrative of linking CHP with the Gülenists “The parallel establishment [Gulenists] are a gang, and CHP is working with them. Until today we have not let any gang operate inside the state, and from now on we won’t let any of them operate either” (Pusula 2014). Among others, Besir Atalay, who served as a deputy prime minister also joined the chorus “We know even from before, that this parallel establishment [Gulenists] are in contact with CHP and its leader, Kilicdaroglu. They are providing them with leaked documents, which CHP is using against us” (TGRT 2014). Furthermore, he accused the CHP and its leader, Kilicdaroglu, for being a spokesperson of the parallel establishment [Gulenists] and reading their statements as official CHP stands (Beyaz Gazete 2015). In a similar tone Erdo˘gan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, as a Minister of Energy often associated CHP

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with terrorists and argued that the main opposition party is a threat to national security “Today we have a main opposition party that has become a threat to the national security. Today there is a CHP that is in the same side with the terrorists who target our soldiers and uses the same language as them” (Ensonhaber 2018). Erdo˘gan regime’s strategy for the 2019 elections was to securitize the coalition of the opposition as a whole. This way they aimed at preventing a successful campaign of the opposition to unite small and big opposition parties in Turkey. Through this strategy, the regime securitized anyone that would support the opposition coalition, officially called the National Coalition, but referred to by the regime as the Mortification (Zillet) Coalition. On 27 February 2019, one month before the municipal elections in Turkey, Erdo˘gan tweeted a picture and an explanation that these elections were about two opposing alliances in Turkey: the Republican Alliance, of his AKP and MHP, and the Mortification Alliance, referring to the National Alliance, namely the Republic Party (CHP), the Good Party (IYI), and Felicity Party (SP) aligned alliance to oppose Erdo˘gan and the MHP. Erdo˘gan chose to substitute the word that the opposition alliance used, Millet (National), with Zillet (Mortification) to give another meaning to the opposing alliance, while in front of the Republican Alliance he put the star and crescent of the Turkish flag. This picture that Erdo˘gan tweeted claimed that his Republican Alliance was established in the street on 15 July 2016 (referring to the people rising against the coup attempt); that the party is at the disposal of the nation; that it is the advocate for the right and truth; that it stands with the oppressed against the oppressors; that it will last to the grave and not only to when financial interests end; and that all it wants is to serve the people. Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu targeted the National Coalition claiming that they (the AKP) are entering into these elections as a coalition of the Republic, that his coalition does not include any terrorists, whereas the opposition’s coalition includes HDP, terrorists, and enemies of Turkey who want to destroy rather than build Turkey (Antalya Bugun 2019): “All of terrorist organizations in Turkey, all of those traitors and enemies outside of Turkey who want to divide Turkey, they are all in the mortification coalition. Will the people that love their homeland and nation permit them this?” (AA 2019). At a speech in the parliament, Erdo˘gan went further to claim that both CHP and Saadet Party (a smaller Islamist opposition party) collaborate with the PKK (TCCB 2019). Not too long apart, Erdo˘gan again accused the main opposition party of

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collaborators with the PKK, but this time together with the Kurdish HDP, and the nationalist Iyi Party: The terrorists in Kandil [PKK] sent orders to HDP, saying ‘you will enter in the elections together with CHP so you can bring AKP to its knees.’ Together with them there are these tiny parties, Iyi and Saadet. These are the four-gang. Against whom they come together, against the republican coalition. What is special of the republican coalition: we are national, patriotic, and we have Rabia [Egyptian revolution symbol]. (DHA 2019)

In a campaign trail, he accused CHP of hypocrisy: On one side you claim you are a party of Ataturk, and on the other side you enter into a coalition with Kandil’s [PKK] extension party. CHP claims they are republican but at the same time side with those who target the republic and our state unity. They claim they are respectful to the belief of the nation [people] and on the other side they use words such as ‘terror coming from the Muslim world.’ (CNN 2019)

At another meeting he targeted the CHP chair directly “Mr. Kemal [Kilicdaroglu] you are a putschist, a putschist… now you are siding with separatist terrorist organizations” (Erdogan 2019b). By linking her to ‘terrorists’, Erdo˘gan also threatened Meral Aksener, a secular nationalist opposition leader who formed the Good (IYI) Party after she left the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which is now in alliance with Erdo˘gan. He called Aksener to ‘Look at the ones serving time in prison, the FETÖ members serving time, you can find yourself in the same position’ (Ahval 2019). Losing Istanbul and Ankara in the mayoral elections was the biggest blow to Erdo˘gan in recent years. Istanbul and Ankara were not only important politically but also financially. As it comes out, many progovernment civil society organizations were given grants from these metropolitan municipalities. Pro-government media were given a tremendous amount of advertisement budgets from these municipalities. And they also served as the biggest employers of the pro-government social media trolls and supporters. Erdo˘gan accused the new mayors, from the opposition CHP, of making a deal with the PKK and HDP, a part of which is to run the municipalities together:

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We are as determined to end economic terrorism as we are determined to end armed terrorism. Those who want to turn the ballot boxes into a tool to blow the future of our country and nation, have already started threatening. They talk about co-presidency [with HDP] in return for their support for the Istanbul and Ankara metropolitan mayorships. This is the people who rely on Kandil’s support. (Iletisim Ba¸skanlı˘gı 2019)

He went further to give made-up statistics in securitizing these municipalities: “According to one account, they fired 13,500 people, and according to another account, they fired 15 thousand people and took [employed] 45 thousand people, including those affiliated with the terrorist organization” (Euronews 2021). Erdo˘gan’s coalition partner, Bahceli, also amplified this false narrative that Istanbul’s mayor is employing PKK members “these terrorists employed by the Municipality are threatening National Security” (T24 2021). Since 2016, when the alleged coup attempt happened, Erdo˘gan has used every occasion to accuse CHP of being putschists. Especially in the coup attempt anniversaries, but also the anniversaries of other coups in Turkey, Erdo˘gan targets the CHP by associating them with coups. On the anniversary of the 1960 coup, Erdo˘gan again said: They constantly vow to bring us down. They have threatened me with the same end as Menderes. All the initiatives to threaten us with coups are being done with the help of CHP… Coups and walking together with the enemies of the state have become part of CHP leaderships’ genes. (Birgün 2021)

Securitizing elections and framing the main opposition CHP as the main threat is a common occurrence for Erdo˘gan. The use of direct security language when referring to the CHP, association with terrorist organizations, and claims of them being the main national security threat, without any evidence, is so common in Erdo˘gan’s narrative. But this narrative is not exclusive to the political opposition. Since 2013, when the Gezi protests happened, Erdo˘gan makes sure to securitize any uprising, any protest, or anything that can escalate. He is scared that he cannot control a Gezi-like protest anymore, so he makes sure to first securitize it, and second to crack down on it. In 2016 a group of academics formed a platform called “Academics for Peace”. They signed a petition against the government’s crackdown in southeast Turkey and for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue. The signatories were expelled from the universities

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due to the government’s pressure, and many of them were jailed. Erdo˘gan securitized the issue in the harshest way: Despite all these realities [Turkey’s development], a self-appointed academic horde published a statement that accuses the state. Not only this, but they also invite foreigners to follow the events in our country… Turkey was introduced to this mentality a hundred years ago. Even then there was a horde that thought that only foreigners can develop Turkey. Our nation gave them an answer with the national liberation victory. But unfortunately, after we established the republic, these same settlers came in and set at highest places… Today we are face to face with the betrayal of these so called enlightened, most of whom are being paid by taxpayers’ money, who hold the national ID cards and passports of this country, and who live a far better life than the average people. (TCCB 2016)

He also accused them of siding with PKK terrorists and betraying the state and the nation (CNN Türk 2016). As a result, a large number of people were exposed to defamation, and many were detained, arrested, and their jobs suspended as part of a smear campaign that followed (Ba¸ser et al. 2017, 274). Not only have they lost their jobs, but they also lost the chance to be employed anywhere even outside academia. Trials took place by the hundreds and many academics suffered the consequences (thirtytwo of these academics were handed prison sentences of up to three years) (Karakas 2019). A full-fledged securitization would not be satisfactory, in Erdo˘gan’s standards, without the added existential threat to Islam. Erdo˘gan’s main security categories, knowing well what is popular for the Turkish voters, are: nation, state, and religion (Islam). In this category of perceived threats, namely the Kemalists, the white Turks, and the leftists, Erdo˘gan and his regime targeted the political opposition by labelling them as threats to Islam, social opposition such as civil society organizations, by framing them as puppets of Turkey’s enemies who want to harm Islam, as well as any other critics whose ‘real’ target is Islam. Targeting Huseyin Aygun, a CHP deputy, Turkey’s Minister of Justice, Bekir Bozdag, said: Recently, one of their deputies used a language that insults the Messenger of Allah, the Prophet. If you respect the spirituality, religion and values of this country and this nation, o Kılıçdaro˘glu, then you have to put this presumptuous faithless to his place. (Merhaba Yozgat 2014)

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Bozdag continued to target CHP and label them as enemies of Islam: Unfortunately, CHP representatives both blame the Diyanet, which teaches our children the Qur’an, and see Qur’an teaching as a manifestation of the medieval mentality. Opposing the teaching and learning of the Qur’an is a manifestation of the real medieval mentality in the CHP. The stance against the teaching and learning of the Qur’an is disrespectful to the Qur’an. I condemn the CHP representatives for their disrespect and medieval mentality. (Hürriyet 2022)

Erdo˘gan himself targeted a prominent Turkish diva, Sezen Aksu, for allegedly disrespecting Adam and Eve, in a song, after she did not publicly support the regime and was targeted by AKP trolls, No one’s tongue can reach our Prophet Adam [Hz. Adem]. It is our duty to cut those stretching tongues when the place comes. No one’s tongue can reach our mother Eve. It is our duty to give them what they deserve. (Erdo˘gan 2022b)

When commenting on the deteriorating Turkish economy, Erdo˘gan targeted TUSIAD, the biggest confederate of Turkish businesses, again. But this time with a religious narrative “You wonder how you can overthrow this government and bring a government that you can exploit… What is it? we are reducing interest rates. Don’t expect anything else from me. As a Muslim, I will continue to do whatever ‘nas’ [Islamic orders] requires us to do. This is a verdict (of Allah)” (NTV 2022b). When it comes to the threat to the religious values, Erdo˘gan has especially targeted the LGBT community, and has associated them and their cause, with the political opposition. The white Turk, Kemalists, and leftists, are commonly depicted as supporters or even enablers of the LGBT community, that conspire to make the Turkish people (especially the youth) prone to it. Especially when securitizing the religion and the moral well-being of the society, Erdo˘gan uses this discourse as the upcoming threat to the Turkish youth if the opposition comes to power. Talking to AKP youth branches Erdo˘gan said “You don’t represent the LGBT youth. You are not the broken youth, on the contrary, you are the youth that raises the broken hearts. I believe in you, I trust you” (Diken 2021). Especially in 2022, when Turkey was preparing for elections in 2023, if not early elections, interior minister Suleyman Soylu specifically targeted the LGBT community in numerous of speeches. He claimed that

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the ‘foreign powers’ started financing LGBT groups as the last resort against Turkey and its values, after they capitulated in other methods of destabilizing Turkey (Independent Türkçe 2022). Targeting the banned Pride March, Soylu claimed that they want to march on orders of the United States and Europe, on the purpose of de-gentrifying the Turkish youth, against the nation’s religious, moral, and civilizational values and understanding, “We are not LGBT children like you, we are the children of Ayetel Kursi [a Quranic verse]. They do not know this nation” (Cumhuriyet 2022). Erdo˘gan used the rise of Islamophobia in the world to target anyone who criticized him or Turkey. For example, when the terrorist attack in a New Zealand mosque coincided with the local election campaign of Erdo˘gan, he did not hesitate to use it to incite the past traumas of the Turkish nation. The whole world united in refusing to show footage of the attack in New Zealand, which the attacker livestreamed through Facebook. Social media companies deleted hundreds of thousands of posts of the video that were being shared on various platforms, but Erdo˘gan used the footage at two local election rallies to construct a CrusaderChristians-attacking-Muslims narrative and claiming, ‘Together with all Muslims, our country, our nation and myself are targeted’ (New York Times 2019). Furthermore, Erdo˘gan showed a picture of the main opposition party leader, CHP’s Kemal Kilicdaroglu, straight after the New Zealand footage, subliminally linking the ‘Crusader’ New Zealand attack to the main opposition leader. Erdo˘ganist media were quick to echo what Erdo˘gan said. Daily Sabah published infographics of what the writings on the weapons used in the attack meant in the so-called civilizational attack of Crusaders against the Muslim identity and ummah and how they were related to the leader of the Muslim World, Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan. But the most vocal proponent was Fahrettin Altun, the head of communications at the Turkish Presidency, who tweeted and then reiterated in an interview: Today, our President Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan is in the aim of the neoCrusaders, neo-Nazis, and neo-Zionists. Together they want to take our president off his path [the right path]. They are trying every way. Neither death threats nor anything else can turn our president from his path. Period!

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These and similar statements were present everywhere, in every election rally (Okatan 2019). Direct securitization speeches like these are innumerable. These quotes were chosen as a reflection of the narrative that the politicians in the highest positions use to securitize the Kemalists, white Turks, and the leftists. However lower-level politicians (such as AKP mayors, deputy ministers, etc.) have amplified this narrative in numerous ways. Moreover, imams in mosques, Diyanet personnel, pro-government civil society leaders, and pro-government journalists have also pushed on this narrative after Erdo˘gan and his ministers. Quoting all of them would be impossible for a qualitative study, that is why we chose to limit the direct securitization to Erdo˘gan and his cabinet ministers but it is important to note that this widespread securitization requires previously well-thought scenarios and plans (Shipoli 2018), which Erdogan and the AKP planned and executed well. The procedure functions as follows: Erdo˘gan and/or the ministers utter the securitization speeches against a particular group for a particular event. After that, the government spokesperson utters the same. Then the coalition partners, political actors, and bureaucratic institutions issue similar statements. Afterwards, journalists, pro-government civil society groups, pro-government Islamic groups, and pro-government community leaders, backed by online trolls, increase the tension. They call for prosecutors to take measures against those that are targeted by the initial securitizing actors: Erdo˘gan and/or the ministers. After these speeches, any measures that were planned to be taken by security forces, such as imprisonment, curfews (especially in Kurdish-populated cities), and other measures, are legitimized and then performed. This is what happened to the pro-Kemalist and leftist columnists, 13 of whom were sent to prison with charges of terrorism. Cumhuriyet staff faced accusations of giving support to terror organizations, PKK, the ultra-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, and the Gülen Movement (BBC 2018). A similar crackdown happened against the leftist and liberal journalists like Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan, Sahin ¸ Alpay, Mümtazer Türköne, and Nazlı Ilıcak (Amnesty 2019). Even an advisor of Erdo˘gan from his time as the mayor of Istanbul could not escape the crackdown was imprisoned (DW 2019). These crackdowns also targeted ordinary people in addition to columnists, intellectuals, politicians, and activists, with the force of a law that penalizes insults against the president. The application of the law was arbitrary and flexible, and any criticism considered to be harsh was seen as

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insulting. Since 2014, when Erdo˘gan was elected, upwards of 100,000 insult investigations have taken place, with 30,000 indictments as of March 2020 (Evrensel 2020). These people face prison sentences of four years if they are convicted, and longer if the insult is made publicly. To sum up, the Turkish courts penalized thousands for speaking critically ¸ Can Dündar, Kadri Gürsel, about Erdo˘gan (Bulut 2019). Ahmet Sık, Osman Kavala, and other liberalist and leftist opinion leaders were prosecuted, while the Gezi Park trials also became a symbol of attacks on leftists and liberals (HRW 2019).

Conclusion While securitizing the Kemalists, the white Turks, and the leftists, the AKP always linked them as an existential threat, or co-conspirators of the West, to the well-being of the nation, state, and religion. Not only were they a threat to these three referent objects, but they were ‘traitors’ to them because they decided to conspire with the enemies of the nation, the state, and religion, namely Islam, which makes up the identity of a ‘real’ Turk. Nothing is spared in its quest to securitize the opposition. They are portrayed as the co-conspirators of the West, as allies of terrorist organizations, and any tool, including lies, are used for this purpose. For the Erdo˘ganist AKP regime, it is a crime for the opposition to work with Erdo˘gan’s previous allies, such as the Gülenists; it is a crime for them to talk with an official Kurdish party who runs for elections, HDP, because allegedly they are the representatives of the PKK, but it is okay for the Erdo˘gan regime to use PKK founder’s brother to call for Kurdish votes in favour of Erdo˘gan; it is a crime to be associated with George Soros, while it is okay for Erdo˘gan to have met Soros multiple times at the beginning of his career before he became a prime minister; it is a crime for any politician to be associated in any way with the Jewish associations in the United States, but it is okay for Erdo˘gan to get honorary awards from the same organizations. This is because Erdo˘gan’s populism has portrayed him as the ‘real’ defender of the nation, of the state, and of Islam. He is the ‘only’ ‘real’ representative who does these things out of sacrifice to advance the well-being of the nation, the state, and Islam. Whereas others are co-conspirators who should not be trusted. The AKP’s antagonism towards the Kemalists, non-Sunni Muslims, foreigners, and even secular elites is not surprising given the history

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between these identities, but even practicing Muslims and Islamists can be seen as traitors and citizen enemies by the AKP. Erdo˘ganism is firstly driven by survival instinct, which uses securitization first and foremost, before any ideological drive. The best evidence for this is the securitization of ‘other’ Muslims and Islamists, for the survival of Erdo˘ganism. This will be discussed next.

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CHAPTER 5

Securitization of Islamic Groups and Parties

Introduction This chapter focuses on Islamic groups and movements in opposition such as Gülenists, Furkan Foundation, and influential figures such as once Erdo˘gan’s closest confidants, Ahmet Davutoglu, who then formed his own party. It argues securitization of religious figures and movements shows an important feature of political Islam in Turkey. This feature is ‘Islam [is] for politics’ rather than ‘politics in the ‘service’ of religion’.

¨ Gulenists Many Islamic groups were labelled as disloyal by AKP, however, one group that faced most attacks is the Gülen Movement (GM), named after its leader, Fethullah Gülen (Barton et al. 2013; Esposito and Yılmaz 2010; Yilmaz 2012). In the first few years of the AKP rule, the Gülen movement (GM) and the AKP were allies. However, they also kept a ‘safe distance’ as the memory of 28 February 1997 coup prosecution was fresh. GM avoided being in the same line as Islamists while AKP presented itself as the champion of Islamism (Ta¸s 2017, 397). AKP also did not want to be associated with GM. Despite this, GM took the side of AKP against the hegemony of Kemalism when AKP presented itself as “Muslim Democrats” (Yilmaz 2009) and began its reforms for improving democracy in the country. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 I. Yilmaz et al., Securitization and Authoritarianism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0506-5_5

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While the public saw the relationship between GM and AKP as a partnership, it was a strategic alliance with benefits for both parties, as both sides had been victims of the 28 February coup and its aftermath (Ta¸s 2017, 397). The AKP had the benefit of the educated human capital of the Gülen Movement, while the GM benefited from this alliance to increase its reach in bureaucracy, economic, and social areas. GM followers were accused of infiltrating the state at that time, while AKP decided to ignore the claims of such an infiltration (Ta¸s 2017, 397). During the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer trials, the Kemalist military generals and their supporters in the military were accused of a coup plot against the AKP, GM, and liberal groups and allies. GM media gave support to the Ergenekon trials during this time (Hintz 2016, 140–141). This resulted in the political position of the military becoming obsolete (Castaldo 2018, 477) and clearly the AKP and the GM were on the same side against the military tutelage. Erdo˘gan made a declaration that he is the prosecutor of the trials and Deniz Baykal in response said that he is the barrister of the defendants (the CHP leader at the time), representing the struggle between the AKP and the Kemalists (Castaldo 2018, 477). The Kemalists were also accusing the GM of pulling the strings in these trials, claiming that the prosecutors were all supporters of the movement. Erdo˘gan publicly shared his support for the job done well by the prosecutors in these trials, only to label them as “FETO” a few years later (Yilmaz and Albayrak 2021a, b) and prosecute them, imprison them, and purge any judge or prosecutor that did not abide by his understanding of justice. As Kemalists began to lose influence, the uneasy relationship between GM and AKP became a fistfight (Ta¸s 2017, 395). Erdo˘gan decided to centralize the state’s power with him at the helm, and control everything. The Gülen Movement did not want to give back the control they had especially with the schools in Turkey as well as the civil society and the media. In addition, while Erdo˘gan decided to negotiate with the PKK to solve the Kurdish Question, this went against the security-focused perspective of GM (Ta¸s 2017, 398). The fallout between the two started with the Gezi protests and peaked with the 17–25 December 2013 corruption scandals. Before that, the AKP and the GM had a few frictions among themselves, from the Mavi Marmara flotilla, which Fethullah Gülen criticized, and then the government policy to abolish the preparatory schools of university exams, which were GM’s main activity. By securitizing the movement and labelling it

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disloyal and untrustworthy, Erdo˘gan brought on death to the GM both economically and socially (White 2017, 33) despite the movement being popular among the public. Through discourse, Erdo˘gan securitized the Gülen Movement and its members, creating an image of traitors who seek to destroy the country by collaborating with external powers. For him, the movement ‘misused’ his trust and ‘tricked’ him in infiltrating the state. He argued that they were solely responsible for the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer courts, although Erdo˘gan has said that he is the prosecutor of these courts before. He claimed that the 17–25 December 2013 corruption scandals were orchestrated by foreign powers and carried by the Gülen Movement, to weaken Turkey. In this narrative, the tapes that were leaked, were edited products of these powers. Erdo˘gan’s second biggest fear, after the Gezi protests, was the 17–25 December 2013 corruption scandals. However, like Gezi, it turned out to be his biggest motivation as well after he saw that he is overcoming these scandals, like he did with Gezi. Believing in the mantra of ‘what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger’, he then used the Gezi protests to securitize the Kemalists, white Turks, and leftists mostly but all other groups as well; and the corruption scandals to securitize the Gülenists mostly but also others, especially the foreign governments. He reframed the corruption scandals as a coup against him: At the moment, we are eliminating a new coup attempt that started on December 17, and we are deactivating a new attack, a new sabotage. We have demonstrated with all the evidence that this is not a corruption issue, but a sabotage attempt against democracy, a strengthening economy, active foreign policy, and especially the solution [Kurdish and Alevi opening] process. (AA.Erdogan 2014)

After sacking every police officer that was involved in the corruption operation, every prosecutor, and every judge in every case, Erdo˘gan claimed that the Gülen Movement is now a parallel government within the Turkish government, who has infiltrated in every institution of the country. He called the leaked tapes of the ministers, their children, and his own son where the corruption is uncovered in every detail, as ‘voice editing’. On some occasions he accused the movement of running a parallel state for its interests, and in other occasions he claimed that this parallel structure (Gülen Movement) was working on behalf of the foreign powers:

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New Turkey means unity, togetherness, brotherhood. There are those who are jealous of our unity, our solidarity, our brotherhood, and those who want to divide us. This virus, which is called ‘parallel structure’, emerged to divide our unity. But they will not succeed. […] They are back in business these days. They are in the struggle of new provocations, new coup attempts. (Sabah.Erdogan 2014a) Those who take orders and instructions from other places, not from the nation, from gang leaders, interest lobbies and preacher lobbies are in clear treason. (Twitter.Erdogan 2014)

CHP’s previous chairman, Deniz Baykal, had resigned in May 2010 after a sexual content tape was leaked to the public. Erdo˘gan used this tape in every rally at that time against the CHP, which finally led Baykal to resign from the party and Kilicdaroglu to take lead. After the December 2013 leaked tapes, Erdo˘gan turned into Gülenists as the ones that leaked the tape of CHP’s leader. He claimed, without any evidence, that the Gülenists have a team that fabricates these tapes, they fabricated for him, and they fabricated for Baykal, who Erdo˘gan did not shy away from using them until Baykal resigned: These are blackmailers, they have data storages. They extract things from everywhere at any moment, and they are organized. They rent houses around [their targets] and listen and watch from there, they are such a treacherous organization. There is a treacherous terrorist organization right now. This is a terrorist organization. It is our duty to take the necessary measures against it. This Pennsylvania [referring to Gulen] took down the leader of the CHP by this type of tape. (Yeni Safak.Erdo˘ ¸ gan 2014)

This was the first time that Erdo˘gan called the Gülenists as a terrorist organization (Fethullahist Terror Organisation, FETO). There was no FETO at that time and he was generally referring to them as a ‘parallel structure’ within the state. Like with everyone else, Erdo˘gan threw these keywords in his rallies to see the effect it has on the audience as well as insert the idea of further securitization of the group. An important turning point for the Erdo˘gan regime vis-a-vis the Gülen Movement was the March 2014 elections. Gülenists were confident that the AKP will not take more than 25% of the votes, let alone the majority. There were so many scandals in the government. The Gezi Park protests had angered people. The corruption tapes, which clearly showed the

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corruption ring in the government were a big scandal. Erdo˘gan’s crackdown on the judiciary and released all the perpetrators, including Reza Zarrab who laundered Iran’s money in Turkey.1 Erdo˘gan, on the other hand, gambled hard and claimed that these are all conspiracies against the Turkish nation, the Turkish state, and Islam, by foreign powers and their domestic collaborators, mainly the Gülen Movement but not limited to them. At the end Erdo˘gan won. This was perceived as an approval for his rhetoric against GM. It was perceived as the acceptance of the securitizing move and Erdo˘gan could go ahead and use extraordinary means to fight this threat: The people patiently waited for March 30 [2014]. The people once again gave us a vote of confidence. Our people instructed us to fight the parallel structure. The nation has authorized us to liquidate this structure, whose treason has now been registered. We will not forget the betrayal. (Cumhuriyet.Erdo˘gan 2014)

From then on the Gülen Movement was securitized and Erdo˘gan wanted to push forward, labelling them as traitors, and vowing to liquidate them. As soon as July 2014, Erdo˘gan started operations against GM supporters, who rejected to support him in this fight. He initially gave them an option, especially to the media and the business world, but if they rejected to align with him in this hunt, then they were subject to prosecution. After the first major operation Erdo˘gan said: This process, which has begun, will continue even more intensely within the framework of the information to be obtained. There is no such thing as stepping back from here. This was something that threatened our national security. Whatever measures should be taken against those that threaten our national security, these measures will be taken and whatever is necessary against the elements that create this threat, those steps will be taken. (Haberler.Erdogan 2014)

1 Turkish law enforcement was tapping Reza Zarrab, with court orders, on suspicions of money laundering for Iran. However, Reza Zarrab was directly talking to Turkish cabinet Ministers and was giving cash bribes to Ministers’ children, which lead to the 17 December operation where the cash Money was found in houses of the children of Ministers. Zarrab admitted all these wrongdoings and giving bribes to everyone in the chain in command in Turkey, in a New York court in 2017 where he was tried for evading US sanctions.

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After Erdo˘gan was elected president, he concentrated all the powers around him. In his last speech as the prime minister, Erdo˘gan gave a good amount of space to Gülen, that portrayed how he was going to securitize them, and how this was going to shape his presidency. It is worth to quote some parts of it at length, so we can better understand his plan vis-a-vis the Gülenists, the keywords he used, and how he was going to approach them: Hey person in Pennsylvania [Gulen], do you love Turkey? If you love Turkey, why are you in Pennsylvania and not Turkey? Let me invite you to Turkey then. Pennsylvania could not possibly be more beautiful than the land of this homeland. Come to Erzurum, Istanbul, Ankara, Konya Edirne, why Pennsylvania and not here. If it is to retreat into seclusion, it will be much more meaningful here than there. Everyone should question why did an organization that started in the name of service and education target the National Intelligence Organization; why did it attempt a coup against the most successful government of the Republic of Turkey; why did CHP, MHP, HDP cooperate with them; question its international connections; question its approach to the headscarf; the democratic struggle; the Palestinian cause. Ask sincerely. If they do this questioning, I believe they will see the mistake and see that the AK Party, with which they have been walking for years, is their own party. May God open their minds and hearts. I pray that our brothers at the base of the parallel structure will restore our brotherhood. Brothers and sisters, I say this openly. I sincerely believe that the new Prime Minister, who will be elected at this congress and then appointed to form the government, will be extremely determined, determined and brave in the fight against the parallel state structure. […] Because the people expect this from us. On March 30 and August 10, our nation gave us the authority to do this. Those who took a treacherous stance against Turkey, our beloved Nation and the Government of the Republic of Turkey will definitely be held accountable, and they have started to do so. No one should expect a different stance from the new Government on this issue. Treason will be punished. It is my duty as the President to hold this treason accountable. I want you to know this. No one should expect me to remain silent on this issue in the office of the President. I believe that the government will continue this work without concessions. Games played in high judicial institutions have no meaning and will never have. I want everyone to know clearly and unequivocally that we will not turn a blind eye to the Hashashi [the Assassins] structure when it comes to betrayal. I know that our Judges and Prosecutors, looking

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in the same direction in our nation, will stand by Turkey in this process. I sincerely believe that this issue will be resolved. (Youtube.Erdo˘gan 2014)

This speech lays out the whole securitization of Gülenists actually. And it lays out what is awaiting them. At the beginning he questioned the Turkishness of Gülen and asked him why he lives in Pennsylvania rather than in Turkey. Then, and even more importantly, he was asking the Gülen Movement supporters to give up on the movement and join their ‘brothers’ in the Ak Party. He then tells them what will happen if they don’t and asks the new government to start using any means against the Gülenists, vowing his support on this. Erdo˘gan also cautioned the other parties in case they protest the upcoming witch hunt. He also asks the judges and the prosecutors to align with him if they don’t want to be labelled as part of the parallel structure, which he now labelled as Hashashi, the name of the first organized Assassins order in 1090s, founded by Hassan Sabbah. In the Islamic and Turkish history, they are known to be the first organization of assassins, based in the Shi-a Islamic ideology. He clearly paved the way for the upcoming decade in regard to portraying Gülenists as part of the national security threat, but not only that, he also paved the way to label anyone that doesn’t align with him fully as a GM supporter. This securitization would not be complete without the foreign links of Gülen with ‘Turkey’s enemies abroad’. That’s why in January 2015 he said: Shame on them [the base of the GM supporters, not the decision makers] if they can’t see that the parallel structure still cooperates with MOSSAD. This structure is not just a structure that attacked me. First of all, it attacked Turkey’s national security and integrity. […] They are not national. Those who do business with them will soon experience embarrassment. Whoever does not take a stand against them has done injustice to their country, conscience, and religion. (BBC.Erdogan 2015)

And linking the movement to previous traumas, foreign powers who want to destroy Turkey and Islam, was also a must for a complete securitization. Erdo˘gan’s portrayal of GM’s disobedience and disloyalty created intense hostility towards the movement members who were condemned to social and economic death (White and Herzog 2016). In 2014, when speaking at an academic year opening at Marmara University, Erdo˘gan talked about Lawrence of Arabia at length and explained how some Arabs betrayed

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the Ottomans by taking gold from Lawrence. Erdo˘gan then likened the Gülen’s followers to Lawrence: We see that new Lawrences are making efforts. They look like men of Service [a reference to Hizmet Movement as the Gülen Movement calls itself], journalist, writers, or terrorists. By saying service [hizmet ], freedom of press or jihad, they are trying to implement what was required by the secret Sykes-Picot agreement. (Sabah.Erdogan 2014b)

After this discursive construction of the Gülen Movement, Erdo˘gan’s next move was to separate the movement’s base from the decision-makers, asking them for support and asking them to side with him instead of the movement. It is safe to say that the base was actually politically AKP and socially GM. At this time the base did not understand what Erdo˘gan was plotting and was hoping for a re-approach. While the GM did not want to align with Erdo˘gan again, because he wanted full and unconditional allegiance from all and every Islamic movement, Erdo˘gan was also not interested in allying again with the movement, he wanted the support of the base (potential voters) and he wanted revenge for the corruption scandal, for which he blamed the GM decision-makers. Judging from Erdo˘gan’s previous votes when AKP and GM were allies, and the votes in March 2014 elections, it is fair to assume that some, if not most, of GM base supporters still voted for Erdo˘gan at that time. In one of his last calls for the base to detach from the decision-makers in the GM, Erdo˘gan said: On 17–25 December 2013, we came across a gang [Gulen Movement] within the judiciary and the police force, whose base is about worship, whose middle is about commerce, and whose ceiling is about betrayal, that was preparing a coup against the government and myself, we were deceived. Why [were we deceived]? We saw that there was worship at the bottom [the base of the movement], we saw the trade in the middle, but our weakness was not being able to detect betrayal on the top, on the ceiling. We have seen that the reforms we carried out to make the judiciary a truly justice-producing mechanism were abused by this group for their own purposes. Some people who are judges and prosecutors of this country have betrayed their own country, but thanks to your support and the support of the Turkish nation, they failed their attempt. These judges and prosecutors, who were subordinate not to the law and their consciences, but to a structure to which they were affiliated and to some

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people appointed as imams [leaders within the structure], really did serious damage to the justice system. (AA.Erdogan 2015)

He also said in this speech: “this structure is more dangerous than the others [we’ve seen so far]” signaling that harsher means should be used against them. Soon after, in May 2016, Erdo˘gan announced that these means include labelling the movement as a terrorist organization, and that time has passed for those who didn’t choose their side: The name ‘Fethullahist Terrorist Organization’ is officially recorded, and we sent the recommendation to the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers also made its decision and the decision came to us for approval. We approved it and now it is included in this National Security Policy Document. They tore this nation apart, we will not give an opportunity to those who tear this nation apart. They will pay for this. Some of them escaped, some are currently on trial in prisons. This process will continue like this. (DW.Erdogan 2016)

Erdo˘gan then ‘cautioned’ everyone who supports or listens to “the head terrorist in Pennsylvania” that they have accepted the consequences that will behold upon them (Bloomberg.Erdogan 2016). Other high-level politicians such as the head of the parliament, Mustafa Sentop, Ministers such as FIkri Isik, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Zafer Caglayan, Bekir Bozdag, and Egemen Bagis joined Erdo˘gan with similar statements immediately after. After the witch hunt between 2014 and 2015, in May 2016, the movement was labelled as a terrorist organization without any decision by the courts or due process despite there being no violence perpetrated by the movement members. GM’s TV stations, schools, and newspapers were seized, and civil society organizations closed. This was before the attempted coup in July 2016. On 15 July 2016 Turkey went through a bizarre alleged coup. While everyone was confused about it, its involvement, and its effect, more than six years onwards, there are more questions than answers about the coup that Erdo˘gan called ‘a gift from God!’ For securitization, it was indeed a gift from God, and Erdo˘gan now had the cart blanche to prosecute anyone that criticized him, starting from the Gülen Movement supporters to anyone that even questioned any of his decisions. When the coup attempt happened, the movement was seen as the perpetrator by Erdo˘gan who declared that GM was trying to topple the

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government and ruin the country for the last three years since 2013. A long and harsh purge followed, with any institution or private company suspected of being connected to GM was closed and its assets seized. More than half a million people were detained; more than fifty thousand among them were put into prison; and finally, about 125,000 civil servants were dismissed from their jobs with no pension or severance pay. Then minister of interior, Efkan Ala said that “On 17–25 December, 74 of the 81 provincial police chiefs were among them […] and we discharged them. We opened investigations to around 5 thousand people [in the police force]” (Haberturk.Ala 2016). As such, dissidents from different walks of life found punishment at the hands of the justice system, as well as being ostracized by the society (Özdemir and Özyürek 2019). From state bureaucracy, to businesses, to sport, and civil society, anyone that dared to question the state narrative was targeted. Minister of sports, Akif Cagatay Kilic, after accusing the ‘foreign powers’ for using the Gülenists to bring chaos in Turkey, said that the Gülenists infiltrated everywhere, including sports, and that is why the time has come to clear the Turkish sports from FETO, as a part of the overall fight against terrorism (Haber 7 Spor. Kilic 2017). In this pretext they imprisoned football players, dismissed football managers, and whoever was not in line with the regime’s interests. GM suffered most in this purge, as they were securitized before the coup, then their properties were confiscated, institutions closed, and many were imprisoned (see Kenes 2020), without any opposition because the securitization extraordinary means were employed against them (Yilmaz and Erturk 2021a, b). The AKP cabinet ministers echoed Erdo˘gan’s words. The media echoed them. And the prosecutors and judges carried out these ‘extraordinary means’ against the Gülen movement. After the securitization of the movement, all these measures were taken in public, not as secret prosecution but as lessons for others who dare not accept the official rhetoric. The minister of economy, Nihat Zeybekci, explained it best: We will punish them in such a way that they will say, ‘I wish we had died and gone’. They will not see human faces, they will not hear human voices. We know who’s behind them, by whom they were nurtured, by whom they were sent and manipulated. (Haberturk.Zeybekci 2016)

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Linking the 2016 coup attempt to foreign powers, and thus reinforcing that FETO is a foreign-made organization, Erdo˘gan said (TCCB.Erdogan 2019): They saw that, of course, this is not the case [they cannot weaken Turkey]. This time, a gang of betrayals nested in our army through the FETO terrorist organization attempted a bloody coup on July 15. Our nation took care of its independence and future and thwarted this coup attempt.

They also blamed the Gülenists for aiming to destroy Islam: FETO is a very insidious terrorist organization that hides behind the religion of Islam and looks like a modern face, but is actually bloody, tyrannical and aims to take over the world. For this reason, the organization does noly only concern [is a threat to] Turkey, but all countries in the world. The fact that FETO is organized in 160 countries helps us determine the goals of the organization.

One of the most important things that the Erdo˘gan regime did immediately after the attempted coup was to securitize the Gülen Movement, and their schools abroad. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met with ambassadors and foreign ministers of other countries, to ‘warn them that FETO will attempt coups in their countries’ and that they must have infiltrated their governments as well. He made this ‘warning’ to the Kirgiz ambassador as soon as two weeks after the attempted coup (BBC.Çavu¸so˘glu 2016). Thanking the countries that have been obliged by Erdo˘gan’s pressures to deport Gülenists that the regime has targeted, without any due process, Erdo˘gan often counts this among his successes in foreign policy: We caught 80 of them in total, among them 6 in Kosovo and 3 in Gabon. The situation of the head terrorist [Gulen], who thinks he has escaped to Pennsylvania, will be no different. Let me say that too. Sooner or later, we’ll get him too. Anyone who betrays this country, and this nation will eventually face the punishment they deserve. (TRT Haber.Erdo˘gan 2018)

Following the deportations from the Balkans, Erdo˘gan said: Working together, we will drive the FETO treason gang out of the Balkans as well. We know the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Albanians and all other

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segments in the Balkan geography as our friends with whom we have lived together for centuries and with whom we will cooperate in every field in the future. (NTV.Erdogan 2021)

Through the FETO narrative, Erdo˘gan also securitized all other opposition. We talk more about that in respective chapters and see that Erdo˘gan made FETO as the ultimate threat that he can label any opposition with it. Since the beginning he ‘warned’ everyone that anybody that dares to question the prosecution of the Gülenists, will be ‘burned’ and that is why Gülenists remained without any political support, despite the witch hunt that they experienced. And when he wanted to go after political opponents, the opponents didn’t find anyone to voice their prosecution this time. However, the FETO purge, like the Gezi Park protest, is a ‘chicken that lays golden eggs’ for Erdo˘gan and his regime. Every few months there are operations against critics and opposition, in the name of fighting FETO. After so many imprisonments and purges, for the regime, they still couldn’t find all the members of FETO. It has become a convenience to target anybody that questions the government narrative, and that is why he does not want ‘cut’ that ‘chicken’: This nation will not forgive betrayal, nor will it forgive the traitors, nor will it forgive those who stand behind the traitors. It does not forgive those who try to gather political interests by using them. This is why we say that no matter what happens, our struggle will continue until the last member of FETO is neutralized, punished and removed from the boilerplate of the ˙ sim Ba¸skanlı˘gı. Erdo˘gan) country and nation. (Ileti¸

Once the main opposition, CHP, called the coup as ‘controlled coup’ by Erdo˘gan, they were fiercely targeted by the regime, and labelled as FETO. We have covered these in the chapter about the Kemalists, but it is worth to quote one of AKP’s main political actors, Hayati Yazici: There is no one who does not see that FETO is in cooperation with the enemies of Turkey and uses all our values to achieve its goals. By calling it ‘controlled’ and so on CHP is referencing their narrative. This is an outright despicable coup attempt. (TGRT.Yazıcı 2017)

One of the most important elements in the regime established after July 15 was the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) (Yilmaz 2005; Yilmaz

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and Albayrak 2022). The budget and the number of personnel of the Diyanet were increased. In the process, they provided the needed religious legitimacy to the government for the call to establish the Caliphate, obedience to the Caliph, the Islamization of political arguments, declaring other Islamic communities as non-religious and heretics, amplifying and transmitting the thesis of the regime in mosques all over Turkey and abroad among the diaspora communities during sermons, and profiling and targeting opponents together with the intelligence, in Turkey and abroad (Yilmaz and Albayrak 2021a, b; Yilmaz and Erturk 2021a, b). Similar to the securitization of other groups, the process of speech act against the Gülenists is the same: Erdo˘gan says something, then his ministers reinforce that. Afterwards other party members make similar speeches in smaller towns, on TV programmes, and what not. Then governmentsupporting journalists and media amplify these speeches, and they start publishing ‘investigative’ pieces and op-eds that reinforce these allegations. Then the prosecutors are asked to act, and this is how any actions against the Gülenists are now legitimized. That is why we chose to cover Erdo˘gan’s speeches as primary resources, rather than other politicians and supporters from the media and civil society, who only amplify what Erdo˘gan says. Erdo˘gan has successfully portrayed Gülen as an agent of the United States and the mastermind of all conspiracies against him (Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022; Yilmaz et al. 2020). Erdo˘gan needed the audience to accept the measures that the government took against the Gülenists, and they did accept those measures, voting for Erdo˘gan despite the purges, authoritarian turn, and economic downfall of Turkey. This type of polarization and securitization has worked to further polarize the nation and solidify Erdogan’s support. This was done by constructing Gülenists as ‘domestic puppets’ of foreign powers. Erdo˘gan has used past traumas and victimization to securitize a former ally. It worked perfectly; firstly, when questioned about the former alliance he claims he was naïve and well-intentioned, and he trusted the Gülenists and worked together with them. And secondly, the narrative of ‘they turned out to be traitors’ has worked as part of the conspiracy theories that the Great Powers have domestic collaborators who cover themselves, infiltrate the highest ranks of the government, and control everything. Moreover, by turning against his allies, and suddenly revealing their true intentions, Erdo˘gan portrayed himself as a true leader who was able to uncover the plot of the Great Powers, despite his good intentions and naiveté. Securitization, for

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Erdogan is a system that needs to be well planned and executed (Shipoli 2018). However, Gülen’s base is conservative and, although more progressive than the AKP, the Gülenists shared their suspicion against the Kemalists with the other conservatives (Yilmaz 2021). Their alliance with the AKP was based on the idea that the Kemalists have ‘occupied’ what is rightfully theirs—the right of the conservatives to take part in the governance of Turkey. They also believed the conspiracies that the West had ‘appointed’ the Kemalists to establish a secular Turkey by abolishing the sultanate and the caliphate, by changing the alphabet to Latin, and by disregarding the Islamic and Ottoman legacy of Turkey and Turks. When the Gülenists– AKP alliance ended, the Gülen followers found themselves as ‘victim of the same conspiracies’. The securitization of Gülenists, although new (unlike the Kurds or the Alevis) was a long process and it wasn’t sudden. But by any measurements of success, the securitization of the Gülenists was a very successful process. It was not sudden, and it didn’t start with FETO (terrorism). It started with ‘they’re too powerful’, then with ‘they’re plotting against us’, then ‘they formed a parallel state with the people they infiltrated’, and finally with ‘they are terrorists’, and we should do ‘everything necessary to eliminate this threat to the state, the nation, and Islam (religion)’. Other Islamic organizations that did not declare allegiance to Erdo˘gan got the same fate as well. Erdo˘gan’s political allies, such as Ahmet Davutoglu who was the prime minister of Turkey from 2014 to 2016, and who formed an opposition party, were also securitized.

Furkan Foundation Erdo˘gan’s demonization of Islamic movements has not been limited to the Gülenists. Another example is Furkan Vakfı (Furkan Foundation). As an ultra-conservative group and vocal critic of Erdo˘gan, Furkan Vakfı has also been targeted. The leader of Furkan Vakfı has accused the AKP of being unjust and oppressive. A few days after making this claim, he was imprisoned, his followers harassed, and their Qur’an schools and dormitories closed. However, unlike with the Gülenists, Erdo˘gan decided that Furkan Vakfi was too small for him to be directly engaged with them. It is common for Erdo˘gan not to think that someone is worthy of his criticism, targeting, or securitization. He doesn’t engage in direct securitization if

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he doesn’t feel worth it. For Furkan Vakfi he left it to the ultranationalist far-right coalition partner, Devlet Bahceli, (see Yilmaz et al. 2021) and interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, to securitize them. However, two main channels were most commonly engaged: the media and the progovernment Islamic groups. They were the ones that targeted Furkan Vakfi the most before the arrest of their leader, Alparslan Kuytul, as well as afterwards to legitimize his arrest. Suleyman Soylu accused Kuytul for taking orders from others, when he legitimized his arrest: We really have a joker in front of us, I mean, he really is a joker. This is a man who actually took instructions from elsewhere. […] You must have seen his statement, he wants to be called Hoca [imam]. In other words, he enters politics calling himself Hoca, this is an open call to legitimize a coup. (Youtube.Soylu 2022)

Soylu wants to criminalize even the labels that people call each other. Demonizing a group without their right to express their opinion. Coalition partner, Bahceli, praised the Turkish police who didn’t let Furkan Vakfi followers to protest the closure of their Quran schools: Undesirable scenes were experienced as a result of the provocations of the organization named Furkan Foundation, whose hostility towards Turkey was known and who was closed with the Decree Law No. 701. Members of this so-called foundation, which violates the Law on Meetings and Demonstrations, praise the PKK, FETO, and wished ‘good luck’ to the coup attempt. The honorable Turkish police intervened in time for the unlawful actions of these religious traffickers, these agent provocateurs, and in our opinion, the sovereign subordination of the state has been accurately shown. (Yeni Akit.Bahceli 2022)

However, the government-controlled media were the biggest securitizing actors when it comes to the Furkan Foundation. The biggest government supporter, A Haber, called Alparslan Kuytul a “FETO hitman”, “agent provocateur”, and claimed that he supported the 2016 coup (A Haber 2018). Another media outlet, Aydinlik newspaper, published a news piece under the headline “FETO advocates Furkanists provocateurs” where it explains that under the Diyanet report, the organization is labelled

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as “FETO supporters” (Aydinlik 2020). The same newspaper in 2022 published a piece listing all the crimes that Kuytul committed: Alparslan Kuytul, the ringleader of the Furkanists, is hostile to Turkey at every opportunity. Kuytul, who tried to acquit FETO after the July 15 coup attempt, does not hesitate to stand up for ISIS members and PKK/HDP proxies. (Aydinlik 2022)

The mentioned report of Diyanet actually portrays Kuytul as a national security threat, who has anti-state discourse, who is a FETO and coup advocate, and who sides with Turkey’s enemies on many issues of ‘national importance’ (Cumhuriyet 2022). Diyanet reports do not portray a group or a person according to religious values or religious arguments. They portray them in tandem with the regime, with the national security decisions and statements by the president. Newspapers such as Yeni Safak, Sabah, and others published news pieces in the same narrative, that Kuytul is a big supporter of the Gülenists, the PKK, and the coup attempt ¸ 2022a). (Sabah 2022; Yeni Safak Yeni Akit, another government mouthpiece, targeted Alparslan Kuytul with the same narrative as Bahceli and Diyanet, claiming that Kuytul wanted to whitewash FETO and PKK, supported the 2016 coup attempt, and criticize Erdo˘gan despite his lack of political activity (Yeni Akit 2021a). It is worth stating that these narratives are echoed from the politicians and amplified by the media and the civil society organizations afterwards. Whenever regime politicians re-energize discussions against a group, then the media does the same. After a year, Yeni Akit targeted Kuytul again, right on time when Erdo˘gan announced new operations against FETO supporters. Yeni Akit then claimed that Kuytul was taking orders from FETO members abroad, to start a civil disobedience in Turkey, because Kuytul had announced that his followers shall continue their communal worship despite Diyanet’s call to do them individually because of Covid (Yeni Akit2021b). During Covid, the mosques in Turkey were open and people were praying together. Pro-AKP Islamist groups also securitized Furkan Foundation, outside the pro-government media. Especially Cubbeli Ahmet, who is a popular leader of a small conservative group, and is famous for his YouTube sermons. Referring to Kuytul he asks him “Are you an agent [of other countries]? Are you a provocateur? Why are you causing mischief and division in the nation?” (Youtube.Ünlü 2020). In another speech he also

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amplified the state narrative that the Furkan Foundation is closely tied to FETO and PKK, conspiring to divide the nation (Cumhuriyet.Ünlü 2021). As we can see, it doesn’t matter how religiously conservative a Sunni Turkish group is, if they question, or oppose the state narrative they are labelled as enemies of Turkey, Turkish people, and Islam. Once again, after state actors announce their opinion about a group, the media, the civil society, and other secondary actors amplify that rhetoric. Afterwards, the prosecutors and the judges act and imprison those targeted. Even the closest allies of Erdo˘gan, like previous Prime Minister Davutoglu, couldn’t get away with it, as we shall see below.

Former AKP Politicians After former prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, announced the establishment of a new political party in December 2019, Erdo˘gan’s ally and coalition partner, Devlet Bahceli of the MHP, claimed that the goal of the newly established political parties in the country was not to meet political and social need, but “to conspire against the country”. In a written statement, he stated that the complicated and dirty actions of those who want to sabotage politics have accelerated. He concluded that seeking new political parties was “a cheap order of inventors of conspiracy and fiction [plotting] on Turkey” (AA.Bahceli 2019). Erdo˘gan frames every election as one that will affect Turkish national existence and identity, as well as the survival of the global community of Muslims. Inspired by Erdo˘gan, AKP mayoral candidates have made the same links between their municipalities and important cities in Islamic civilization, including Mecca. Following Erdo˘gan’s discourse of comparing the elections in Turkey to battles that Prophet Mohamed fought, the AKP mayoral candidates compared their towns to Mecca and Medina, calling people to vote for them as if Mecca or Medina were at stake. For them, everything has become a matter of religious and national security. Being a practicing Sunni Muslim Turk or even an Ottomanist Islamist, like Davutoglu, is not sufficient to be considered a desired citizen by Erdo˘ganists—absolute loyalty to Erdo˘gan is necessary (see in detail Yilmaz 2021). Davutoglu was not exempt from being targeted, as he had founded a party in opposition to Tayyip Erdo˘gan. As a result, a private university founded by Islamist intellectuals under Davutoglu’s leadership (Sehir

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University) was seized and its administration was given to Marmara University, a state university, and eventually, it was closed completely on 30 June 2020, not unlike what happened to universities of the Gülen Movement. Commenting about the ex-AKP members’ resignation after the December 2013 corruption scandal, Erdo˘gan said: [Imagine] you come and be a candidate from the AK Party, you will be a deputy. And then someone will give you an order, you will resign from your party. This is outright betrayal, betrayal of trust, betrayal of the AK Party. Those who take orders from preacher lobbies [Gulen] and interest lobbies [Jewish financial groups] are in treason. Some deputies received authority from the nation, and then became slaves of other structures, acting according to their orders and instructions [not the peoples’]. People don’t even remember them. My nation will respond to those who take orders from the enemies of Turkey, not from their nation, on March 30. (Dünya.Erdo˘gan 2014)

Erdo˘gan has generally refused (with some indirect exceptions) to comment on the rumours that former prime minister Davutoglu, former president Gul, and former minister of economy and foreign affairs Babacan were forming their own parties or came together to form one party. Like with Furkan Foundation, Erdo˘gan let others do the securitization, because he knows that giving them his attention will give them the needed media coverage. That is why he left his ministers, the coalition partner leader Bahceli, and the media to do the securitization. In indirect targeting while these rumours were going on he said that there were traitors in AKP that infiltrated in the name of other powers and when the time came they were ordered to leave the party, and that FETO is so powerful that we need to be vigilant as people who we thought were our brothers could have been just ‘secret’ FETO members, referring to these dissidents. Because everyone praised Babacan for the right economy policies when he was a Minister, and because Erdo˘gan’s biggest fear is economy, Erdo˘gan targeted Babacan in one of his speeches, but he focused more on getting credit for the right economic policies rather than attack Babacan: When there was the 2008 economic crisis, I made a bold statement at that time, I said that this crisis will pass us tangentially. Some of my friends, who are currently working on establishing a party, were opposed to those

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who were with me. Because they were taking orders from the IMF. And I firmly held on what I believed. They were interest-rate profiteers. I wanted interest rates to be lowered constantly. Interest is the cause, inflation is the result and they’re directly proportional. The lower the interest rate, the lower the inflation. (Haber16.Erdo˘gan 2020)

AKP vice chair, Hamza Dag, attacked Abdullah Gul during these party forming rumours: “He is one of those who betrayed this movement. Until he is the official candidate we won’t say anything, he is our elder, our brother, but anyone who would think to run against Erdo˘gan is a traitor” (Habertürk.Da˘g 2018). We understand that a possible run of former president, Abdullah Gul, against Erdo˘gan was seen as a big risk by AKP and MHP. This is why they made anything possible to stop that, which at the end they did. Gul was rumoured to be the unifying candidate for presidency from the opposition. Then Erdo˘gan’s chief advisor, Ibrahim Kalin, and General Chief of Staff (now Minister of Defence) Hulusi Akar paid a visit to Gul, allegedly going to his residency in Istanbul with a helicopter descending in his backyard, to ‘convince’ him not to run (Odatv.Akar 2018). But it did not start with it. It started with the MHP, the AKP, and the media targeting Gul, because Erdo˘gan was so bothered that he will run against him, according to opposition deputies from CHP (Cumhuriyet 2018). Coalition partners from MHP accused Gul and Babacan for being pawns of the Queen of England: The men of the King and the Queen have no political distance to travel [future] in this country. People see the sources they feed on. All deciphered, there’s no place for them to go. (Independent Turkce 2019)

and: International actors have found new pawns, new tongs, beneficiaries and subcontractors, and have tied a rope to their waists playing them as acrobats. New parties and new formations began to appear on the stage. (Vatan 2019)

MHP leader, Devlet Bahceli, directly targeted Davutoglu saying that anytime Ahmet Davutoglu is in Turkish politics there always were problems in Turkey, that is why he needs to pay the price as an extension of dark groups in and outside the country (Twitter.Bahçeli 2021). In a speech in the parliament, he also accused Davutoglu of dividing the

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country, showing MHP as an enemy of Kurds and Kurdish, just to hide himself and his identity (A3 Haber.Bahçeli 2021). Similarly, one of the front people of AKP, Erdo˘gan’s chief advisor, Mariam Kavakci, attacked Davutoglu in her social media post: “We won’t forgive [we won’t make it halal] anyone who stands side by side with the enemies of religion, terrorists and traitors. You’ll all be gone [won’t exist] very soon” (Gazete Duvar 2022) while she included a picture of Davutoglu with a red X in his marketing banner. AKP deputies targeted Babacan as well: Let them be at the disposal of the queens, in the footsteps of their imperial friends and exploiters, and let them plan beyond the devil’s mind. Let them want to be the Middle East branch of the IMF and rule Turkey by putting new chains of bondage. God also has a plan and a trap. Our nation will never allow them, and they will close their notebooks in the first election. (Sabah 2021)

And: If he is trying to look for a cover for his betrayal, he is doing exactly what suits him. He is both betraying and covering it. This is exactly the style that suits Ali Babacan. He says ‘I was already against this presidential model.’ He also says ‘This is why I supported Abdullah Gul, Erdogan was not a candidate at that time.’ (Sabah.Metriner 2021)

The government-sponsored and controlled media in Turkey had the biggest job to securitize these new parties. They published numerous articles every day against Davutoglu, Gul, and Babacan. They accused them for taking orders from FETO, for being directed and controlled by the West, especially England and the United States (Aydinlik.Davutoglu 2020; Ugur 2021; Yeni Akit 2022a), and for being collaborators of the PKK (Aydinlik 2021; Yeni Akit 2022b). Erdo˘gan’s bet of not attacking them directly paid off any neither of the three are credible candidates or political actors today. However, it is important to analyse how that happened. They were securitized, demonized, and made irrelevant by associating them with the Turkish traumas and conspiracy theories, especially linking Babacan and Gul to Great Britain and the imperial states, because they both did their college studies in the United Kingdom. Then linking them to the already securitized FETO and PKK. This way the society, the opposition politicians, and the

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international community would refrain from declaring any support for them, but even if they did, it would prove the thesis of the regime, that they are supported by the already securitized enemies of Turkey.

Other Islamic Dissidents A medical doctor and a practicising Muslim human rights activist, Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu was dismissed from his profession after he tweeted a criticism of the extended state of emergency due to the alleged coup in July 2016. After being purged from his profession, Gergerioglu, whose name is known in Turkey due to his support for human rights, including those who now are deputies from the AKP but who were prosecuted by the military then. In 2018 he ran for a deputy with the pro-Kurdish HDP, and his tenure in politics was known for raising awareness about human rights violations in Turkey, such as strip searching in prisons. He became the voice of the voiceless as the only person to speak for the human rights violations of Gülenists, Kurds, and others prosecuted by Erdo˘gan. Often, he was left alone to voice these violations. Finally, he was stripped off his deputy immunity, with the votes of the opposition, and was given a sentence of two and a half years in prison (Al-Monitor 2021). He was targeted directly by the Interior Minister who called him a terrorist and called the judiciary to ‘act’: Gergerlio˘glu is a FETO terrorist. He only has a deputy cover on him. He speaks within the words of FETO. His mind is clouded, his mind is gone. He is a FETO terrorist... I’m telling you frankly. I am calling for the judiciary. Indeed, this man is a terrorist, we have filed a criminal complaint [against him]many times. [Judes and prosecutores] Do your job and do what’s necessary. (Evrensel 2020)

The head of the coalition partner, MHP, also targeted Gergerlioglu directly: The only desire and expectation of the nation’s conscience is that this court be restructured with a new and civil constitution. [...] Does the Constitutional Court see a greater Kurdistan as a right? If PKK terrorists gather and apply, will they also be under the umbrella of violation of rights? Then why is it necessary to discuss and decide on the immunity files pending in the Joint Commission?

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HDP’s Gergerlio˘glu returned to his position as a deputy after the decision about him was read in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey today, and took his seat in the General Assembly. The rights and the law were ignored. Indeed, a deeply painful process has bled the communal conscience. Those who did this should be ashamed. Those who enthusiastically applauded Gergerlio˘glu, who asked, “Where were we?” as soon as he got out of prison, were scoundrels from the PKK and FETO. The place where they stopped was the place of malice, the lair of disgrace, the abode of darkness. From now on, their path to continue was opened by the Constitutional Court. (AA.Bahceli 2021)

Bahceli was asking for a change in the constitution to ban Gergerlioglu and others to run for elections, and also bring back the death penalty in Turkey. Securitizing Gergerlioglu did not start, and it did not end with Soylu and Bahceli. Other pro-government mouthpieces, journalists, media, and civil society leaders have targeted and vilified him. He has been labelled as a FETO and PKK advocate, he has been vilified for speaking in a social media platform where a few listeners were allegedly supporters of the Gülen Movement or the pro-Kurdish HDP, and he has been portrayed as a separatist in the name of ‘foreign powers’ (Kucuk 2020; TRT Haber 2020; Yeni Safak ¸ 2022b). A similar campaign was run for Ihsan Eliacik, an Islamic theologian with leftist/socialist leanings, a dissident that questioned the state narrative of the Erdo˘gan regime. After he criticized the statist and nationalist discourse of the government, ultranationalist Bahceli was the first one to call him an enemy of the Turkish nation and a collaborator of Turkey’s enemies (CNN.Turk 2018). Ihsan Eliacik was targeted because he did not support the government narrative in the Gezi protests, in the corruption scandals, and in the alleged coup, despite of being an Islamic theologian. He has been called “Imam of the Gezi protests” by the pro-government media (Sabah 2015; Yeni Akit 2022c), because he voiced his support for the protestors, and he even led a Friday prayer in the Gezi Park. Others have called him “The Lawrence of Turkey” and accused him of being “an agent with an Islamic mask” (Odatv 2018). Among other things, he of course was also labelled as a FETO and PKK advocate (Yeni Akit 2021c, 2022c, d),an anti-Turkish and pro-Greek agent (Yeni Akit 2020), a provocateur and separatist Yeni Akit 2021d), and a heretic (Yeni Akit 2021e).

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Conclusion As demonstrated above, the AKP regime has not hesitated to use its religious populist toolbox to securitize its Muslim critics. This securitization of influential Muslim figures and movements in opposition by an Islamist regime reveals an important feature of political Islam in Turkey. This feature is ‘Islam for politics [political power]’ rather than politics being in the ‘service’ of religion. Erdo˘gan made sure that whoever he targets personally they are worth it. His biggest fear were the Gezi protests and the December 2013 corruption scandals. He targeted Gülenists, as former allies who decided not to give their allegiance to Erdo˘gan. He found this as an opportunity to blame any failure of his governance to the Gülenists, to portray an enormous threat that any means should be utilized to fight, and to also show to others what awaits them if they turn against him. Gülenists were very successfully securitized, and every extraordinary means was used against them. Moreover, the people ‘accepted’ and legitimized those measures against the Gulenists, by silent consent. They were also used to threaten other dissidents who feared being labelled as FETO terrorists. The opposition didn’t help as they also bandwagon on the government rhetoric against the Gülenists. When it came to other smaller groups, such as Furkan Foundation, or individuals including previous leaders within the AKP: Gul, Davutoglu, and Babacan, Erdo˘gan decided to remain in the backstage and let others do the securitization. He didn’t feel they ‘deserve’ his attention. Fast forward to today, no matter what ideology one is from, if they dare question the regime’s narrative, they will be targeted by the judiciary and the law enforcement immediately. Erdo˘gan made sure this was coming in his years-long securitization and restructuring the judiciary, the government, the system, as well as the elections. However, for other groups, such as the Kurds, this securitization is nothing new. Below we analyse the securitization of the Kurds, a topic that has been fairly studied, and which requires a focused summary, rather than details like the rest of the chapters.

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Yilmaz, I., and O.F. Erturk. 2021b. Populism, Violence and Authoritarian Stability: Necropolitics in Turkey. Third World Quarterly 42 (7): 1524–1543. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1896965. Yilmaz, I., E. Shipoli, and M. Demir. 2021. Authoritarian Resilience through Securitisation: An Islamist Populist Party’s Co-optation of A Secularist FarRight Party. Democratization 28 (6): 1115–1132. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13510347.2021.1891412. Yilmaz, I., M.E. Caman, and G. Bashirov. 2020. How an Islamist Party Managed to Legitimate Its Authoritarianisation in the Eyes of the Secularist Opposition: The Case of Turkey. Democratization 27 (2): 265–282. https://doi.org/10. 1080/13510347.2019.1679772. Yilmaz Ihsan and Ismail Albayrak. 2022. Populist and Pro-Violence State Religion: The Diyanet’s Construction of Erdo˘ganist Islam in Turkey. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Yilmaz, I., and E. Shipoli. 2022. Use of Past Collective Traumas, Fear and Conspiracy Theories for Securitisation and Repression of the Opposition: The Turkish Case. Democratization 29 (2): 320–336. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13510347.2021.1953992. Yilmaz, I., M. Demir, and E. Shipoli. 2021. Securitisation via functional actors and authoritarian resilience: Collapse of the Kurdish peace process in Turkey. Australian Journal of Political Science 57 (1): 1–16. https://doi.org/10. 1080/10361146.2021.2007848. Yilmaz, Mustafa Demir, and Erdoan Shipoli. 2022. Securitisation via Functional Actors and Authoritarian Resilience: Collapse of the Kurdish Peace Process in Turkey. Australian Journal of Political Science 57 (1): 1–16. https://doi. org/10.1080/10361146.2021.2007848. Youtube.Erdo˘gan. 2014. Cumhurba¸skanı Erdo˘gan dan Fetullah Gülen e soru, August 27. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTu2VzZhScM Youtube.Ünlü. 2020. Alparslan Kuytul’un Derdi Bayram Namazı De˘gil, Fitne Çıkarmak! May 23.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=polkwGtE318 Youtube.Soylu.2022. Süleyman Soylu: Alparslan Kuytul ba¸ska yerlerden talimat alıyor, March 21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ej_mQh5bOo

CHAPTER 6

Securitization of the Kurds

Introduction Securitization is not only used by authoritarian regimes. References to the securitization of ethnic minorities in electoral democratic settings have been made by several scholars, especially in the contexts of Sri Lanka and Colombia (Mata 2008; Rojas 2009; Radhakrishnan 2010; Satkunanathan 2015). In the Turkish case, fearing (Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022) that, similar to the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, Turkey would also be divided by the Great Powers along ethnic lines, the Turkish political elite tried to homogenize the nation and undertook a ‘Turkification’ project as part of its ‘modernisation’ (Jongerden 2007, 213). As a result, Kurdish identity was securitized after the establishment of the Turkish nation state, which aimed to homogenize the population to prevent foreign interference (Birdisli 2014; Romano and Gürses, 2014; Geri 2017b; Weiss 2016; Martin 2018; Ozpek 2019; Yilmaz 2021). This has resulted in several Kurdish insurgencies, revolts, and terrorist organizations, which are, in turn used, by the state to further justify its securitization of the Kurds (Yilmaz et al. 2022). Just after its establishment in 2001, the AKP promised to break this vicious cycle, adopting pro-EU and multicultural democratizing reforms (Yilmaz 2009) that would de-securitize not only the Kurdish issue but also the Alevi issue (Yilmaz and Barry 2020), nonMuslim issue, Islamists issue, and so on. As a result, the AKP came to

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power in November 2002 after getting strong support from the antiKemalist groups that suffered from the state’s previous securitizations and victimizations. This chapter focuses on the latest policy shifts of AKP towards the Kurds, namely the de-securitization and then the re-securitization of the Kurds, because the issue of the securitization of Kurds up until recently has been studied in great lengths by other authors, that we refer in this chapter as well.

The De-securitization of the Kurdish Politics During the 2000s, Turkey had a period of de-securitization of the Kurdish issue and the pro-Kurdish opposition (Karakaya Polat 2009, 133; Weiss 2016; Geri 2017a; Weiss 2016; Ozpek 2017; Martin 2018; Karakoc 2020). Negotiations were carried out between the PKK and the Turkish government. During this period, the political atmosphere was friendlier to the pro-Kurdish opposition and some issues that had once been taboo were discussed in a relatively non-securitized context. The government took several historic steps, initiating reforms to address the problems faced by Kurdish people in Turkey. The project envisioned that democratization would solve the Kurdish issue. Erdo˘gan accepted and convinced his supporters that the rights of the Kurds had been violated by the state (Yilmaz et al. 2022). As a result, Turkey made various reforms to resolve the Kurdish issue. Kolcak (2019, 31) lists them as: (i) the abolition of emergency rule in Kurdish-dominated provinces; (ii) the foundation of a compensation mechanism for harm caused by terrorism or fights against terrorism; (iii) the elimination of constitutional and legal prohibitions on Kurdish broadcasting rights; (iv) the establishment of a publicly funded television channel broadcasting in Kurdish for 24 hours a day; (v) the authorization of municipalities, private language centres, universities, and non-governmental organizations to offer Kurdish language courses; (vi) the authorization of public secondary schools to offer elective Kurdish language courses; (vii) the authorization of private schools to form bilingual (Kurdish-Turkish) education systems; (viii) the authorization of public and private universities to offer Kurdish degree programmes; (ix) the abrogation of the ultranationalist morning oath; (x) the removal of legal bans on the use of Kurdish personal and place names; and (xi) the elimination of legal bans on the usage of Kurdish in courts, prisons, and making political propaganda.

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The most recent attempt at a peace process took place between 2012 and 2015. The country was moving towards three scheduled elections (the March 2014 local elections, August 2014 presidential elections, and June 2015 general elections) (Candar 2019). However, because of the AKP’s authoritarian and Islamist (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018) shift, especially after the Gezi protests in mid-2013 and later corruption investigations in December 2013, most of the liberal intellectuals, proEU circles, Istanbul-based business associations, and conservative Gülen Movement members withdrew their support from the social coalition led by the AKP on the EU values (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018; Bashirov and Yilmaz 2020). Thus, to guarantee its majority in the parliament and to win the parliamentary elections, the AKP needed the support of HDP voters. Kurds make up roughly 20% of the population, and while about half of them vote for the AKP, the other half vote for the HDP. The AKP needed the HDP’s 10% to compensate for the previous losses. Thus, unlike the previous secret talks with the PKK, Erdo˘gan openly announced talks with the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, in a move that not only started a process of de-securitizing the Kurdish issue and the HDP, which had previously been accused of being a political wing of the PKK, but also de-securitizing Ocalan and even the PKK. The AKP decided to use the agency of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and asked members of parliament (MPs) from the pro-Kurdish HDP to meet with Öcalan. The HDP MPs were asked to visit the PKK headquarters in the Qandil Mountains in Northern Iraq, and work as envoys between the PKK, Ocalan, and the state. This was all applauded by the pro-AKP media. These envoy MPs negotiated and came to an agreement at the Dolmabahce Palace with AKP ministers and other government officials (the Dolmabahce Declaration or Dolmabahce Agreement). The state, the AKP, its media, and opinion leaders strongly supported all these de-securitization moves, which gradually took not only the HDP but the PKK and Ocalan out of the security box and constructed them as legitimate political players working for peace. Analysing the motives behind the AKP’s moves, Geri (2017a, 196) points to the AKP’s need for Kurdish votes to secure an absolute majority. In fact, the HDP leader Selahattin Demirta¸s, who ran as a presidential candidate against Erdo˘gan in 2014 and received 13% of the votes, “was asked to withdraw from the elections for president by Erdo˘gan, who sent envoys for that purpose… Erdo˘gan ask(ed), while the (Kurdish) peace

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process is underway, why is Demirtas running for presidency against me?” (Candar 2019, 262). Before the June 2015 general elections, Erdo˘gan made it clear that he was after a strong presidential system and seeking a majority government, demanding 400 seats (out of 550) to make this change. Erdo˘gan took every opportunity to talk about the benefit and need for a presidential system in Turkey. He did not shy away from lectures on how to adopt a presidential system, even down to the technical details (HDN 2015a) and, more interestingly, Ozpek highlights that Erdo˘gan was establishing a connection between a presidential system, the number of needed seats in the parliament and the Kurdish peace process (Ozpek 2019, 39). He used an issue linkage strategy and presented the AKP’s success in the elections as a pre-requisite for the peace process to continue, expecting to attract HDP voters with this strategy (Ozpek 2017, 47). Like many other reforms undertaken as part of the EU membership process, the negotiations carried out between the PKK and the Turkish state, and the whole Kurdish Opening, were the AKP’s attempts to coopt Kurdish votes. Results of elections held over that period show that Erdo˘gan largely managed to secure and enjoy the majority of Kurdish votes. The 10% parliamentary threshold worked in the AKP’s favour in Kurdish-majority cities. In this period, the political atmosphere was friendlier to Kurds and some issues that had once been taboo such as education in Kurdish or de-centralization of the state structure to allow local autonomy were discussed in a relatively non-securitized context. However, the HDP’s entrance in the general elections as a party, and surpassing the 10% threshold, as well as opposing Erdo˘gan’s presidency, demonstrated the failure of Erdo˘gan’s co-optation efforts. Shortly, desecuritization had not worked to co-opt the Kurds and gain their support for Erdo˘gan’s presidency. Having understood this, Erdo˘gan’s leadership took another turn—co-optation of the nationalists to support his presidency, but that came with a price of functional actors, ultranationalist MHP sitting in the steering wheel of securitization. The de-securitization of the Kurds was used by Erdo˘gan and the AKP to legitimize their move to co-opt the pro-Kurdish political party, the HDP, and political activists. As with the agenda-setting, securitization is a useful tool in legitimization of political moves by governments and

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political elites by claiming the need to either address an issue by security means or normalize it for the common good and the survival of the nation (Shipoli 2018). However, the de-securitization of the Kurds did not bring the legitimacy that Erdo˘gan had hoped for. Analysed together with the need for a new coalition, Erdo˘gan decided to shift alliances.

Failure of Co-optation En route to the June 2015 general elections, Erdo˘gan was vowing to change Turkey’s entire political system and didn’t shy away from using threatening language at his rallies. In February 2015, at a public gathering in Bursa, Erdo˘gan said: If we want the presidential system, then we have to have 400 lawmakers. If we want the resolution process [referring to the peace talks between the government and the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan] to continue, we have to have 400 lawmakers so that a strong party can come to power to realize it. (HDN 2015b)

Nevertheless, the HDP strongly objected to his plans. At the June 2015 elections, Erdo˘gan saw HDP’s potential to prevent his presidency, depriving him of his 400 seats in the parliament to change the system. Although the AKP government had consolidated its power while in office, and won the elections, it did not win enough seats to form a government by itself and change the political system. In the lead up to the elections, Erdo˘gan had assumed the HDP wouldn’t pass the 10 per cent threshold it needed, but the result was not in accordance with his electoral calculations, for the first time. His next strategy included the re-securitization of the pro-Kurdish opposition. It must be noted that the failure of cooptation of the HDP by the AKP regime was not the only reason the Kurdish issue came to the forefront as a matter of security, threatening the survival of the Republic. Other regional developments, such as the establishment of semi-autonomous Kurdish polity in the north of Iraq in 2005 resurrected traditional insecurities of the Turkish state, its founding, base, and facilitated this securitization (Geri 2016, 195). The first time that Erdo˘gan and Demirtas came face to face was in the 2014 presidential election, when Demirtas stood for the presidency. Although he lost the election to Erdo˘gan, the number and rate of votes cast for him were noticeable and concerning for Erdo˘gan and the AKP.

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Demirtas was getting support not only from Kurdish-dominated parts of the country, but from other large, Turkish-dominated cities in the west of the country. He was emerging as the new voice of liberals and leftist Turks and other minorities, as well as his Kurdish voter base. The HDP strongly objected to Erdo˘gan’s strategy of holding up his reforms and the peace process as instruments opportunistically employed in his attempt to conquer the state, to take it from the Kemalist elite but continue to roll back and contain the pro-Kurdish political movement (Jongerden 2019). The HDP was also aware that as an authoritarian populist leader, Erdo˘gan’s aim was not to democratize the state but to get rid of those bureaucrats and state institutions who had allegedly undermined the ‘organic’ relationship between ‘the people’ and its leader (Somer 2017). Thus, in March 2015, Demirtas, at the HDP’s weekly parliamentary party meeting, strongly declared: “Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan, you will never be able to be the head of the nation as long as the HDP exists and as long as the HDP people are on this soil. … We will not make you the president” (Bianet 2015). Demirtas’ speech went viral with the hashtag #SeniBa¸skanYaptırmayaca˘gız (We won’t let you be elected as the president) and became Twitter’s worldwide second-top-trending hashtag that day. Demirtas repeated this vow at every opportunity. The elections of June 2015 were a blow to Erdo˘gan. Although the AKP government had consolidated its power while in office, it did not win enough seats to form the government by itself and change the political system, although it did win more seats than any other party. Kurds, even those that voted for Erdo˘gan in previous elections, voted for the HDP. Parliament gained 80 staunchly pro-Kurdish legislators and the ruling AKP lost its majority in the parliament for the first time since 2002. Almost a month later, the violence was back (Candar 2019, 262). With the HDP’s refusal to support the constitutional overhaul that would create an authoritarian presidency, “one of the most important incentives for, and the main common goal of, the peace process went missing” (Resch 2017, 11). Geri (2017a, 196) argues that the June 2015 election results demonstrated that appealing to and gaining Kurdish votes to secure an absolute majority for constitutional amendments (to introduce a strong executive presidential system) was not possible. As Ozpek (2019, 38) underlines, the AKP wanted the HDP candidates to run in the June 2015 general election as independent candidates instead of as a political party. Thus, half of the seats won by the HDP would be won by the AKP. When it was

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understood that the HDP candidates would run on the party ticket rather than as independents, defying Erdo˘gan’s wishes, pro-Erdo˘gan analysts accused the peace process of enabling this kind of defiance. The HDP appeared as a great threat to his project of introducing a strong presidential system. Demirtas’ “rise came to threaten Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan’s political ambitions” (Hoffman 2019, 2) and his charismatic personality threatened Erdo˘gan. Despite coming out as the first party in the elections, Erdo˘gan did not let the AKP, under Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, to form a coalition government and pushed for a snap election in November of that same year. In the period between the two general elections in 2015, military operations were launched in Kurdish-dominated cities in Turkey’s southeast. The HDP was fully re-securitized. Voting booths were moved and many Kurds had to travel to polling stations far from their homes; in some cases, polling booths were inaccessible to Kurds. In a way, HDP voters were punished. Thus, a few months later, at the election on 1 November 2015, the AKP increased its votes by about 10 per cent, winning the absolute majority and being able to form a government on its own. Several existing studies have shown that the AKP approached the Kurdish issue from the perspective of its own survival and success (Geri 2017a; Weiss 2016; Martin 2018; Ozpek 2019). Therefore, the AKP changed its power calibration and, in line with this new calibration, resecuritized Kurdish demands and political activities “to regain the political power lost in the former elections, in order to guarantee not only its political survival, but also the possibility of carrying on the program of building a powerful government for the transformation of a Turkish future in a Presidential Republic” (Geri 2017a, 198). With the end of the ‘Kurdish Opening’, a war started between the state and the PKK, which caused major damage in many parts of southeast Turkey (Gürses 2018; Gourlay 2020). In 2015, hundreds of HDP members were arrested for pro-Kurdish leanings. On 11 September 2016, 28 mayors of Kurdish municipalities were “suspended and replaced with AKP appointees” (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016: 4). The Diyarbakır deputy for HDP was detained due to his opposition to the government, as was the leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirta¸s, who was accused by the government of being a member of a terrorist organization. He is still behind bars.

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On 17 July 2015, Erdo˘gan renounced the peace process that started with a declaration by the AKP and HDP leaders at the Dolmabahçe Palace (hence, the Dolmabahce Agreement): I, by no means, accept the expression of Dolmabahce Agreement… An agreement cannot be made with those who lean their backs on the terrorist organization [PKK]… The [PKK’s] extension in parliament should do its part as we still receive news of deaths from the south-eastern region in our country. Some terrorist groups can still open fire at minibuses and we face attempts of bombing an important dam in the region. (Quoted in HDN 2015c)

After this declaration, the PKK announced that the self-imposed ceasefire had ended and this was followed by PKK attacks, which killed civilians and soldiers in the southeast of Turkey in July 2015. By the second half of 2017, nearly one-third of Turkey was governed by Ankara-appointed mayors who had not been elected by the people. The main security targets were the elected HDP mayors of Kurdishmajority cities. In one instance, where he targeted these mayors, Erdo˘gan said: I visited 5 cities, mayors of which were members of HDP. None of those mayors came to welcome me because they had orders from the mountains [Qandil mountains, where PKK is based]. They are commanded by the mountains. They have no will of their own. (TCCB Erdogan 2015)

In another instance, Erdo˘gan declared that Demirtas would “run to the mountain if given a chance”, (AFP 2015a, b) again implying that Demirtas, who ran as a presidential candidate after all sorts of security checks and vetting, and received 13% of the votes from different sections of society, was linked to the PKK. On another occasion, in an attempt to label Demirtas as an American project, Erdo˘gan claimed that “Demirtas hired Obama’s campaign staff for the election” (AFP 2015a, b). He also criticized Demirtas’ visit to Brussels and stated that “The party that is controlled by a terrorist organization is looking for a solution in Brussels” (AFP 2015b). The re-ignition of attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in July 2015 and statements by HDP leaders threatening Erdo˘gan’s project to introduce a ‘super presidential system’, provided Erdo˘gan with convenient excuses and means to re-securitize the pro-Kurdish opposition.

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More importantly, it also provided an audience that was ready to accept this shift, in an emotional environment as they watched the scenes from the funerals of the soldiers killed by the PKK. As is underlined by Martin “the A.K.P. has utilized this “fact” of P.K.K. terrorism as a political tool against other Kurdish actors to its own advantage” (Martin 2018: 543). This set the scene for Erdo˘gan to win the November elections, which had been called after he was unhappy with the June results, increase military operations in southeast Turkey, and appoint government trustees instead of Kurdish elected mayors. All these extraordinary measures were justified within the ‘exceptional circumstances’. Erdo˘gan’s statements show how before any possible repression, a process of securitization has taken place. The HDP has been portrayed as an ‘extension of the terrorist PKK’, collaborators with ‘inorganic ties’ to the PKK, and pawns of America and Europe. Erdo˘gan has played into the fears of the Turkish people, utilizing the long conflict between the state and the outlawed PKK. He has also played into the collective trauma and conspiracy theory that the West supports terrorist factions, and their alleged political arms, to destabilize, even collapse, Turkey, as they did with the Ottoman Empire. Through these associations, the HDP has been constructed as an existential threat to the ‘unity’ of the state, and exceptional measures were made acceptable with the re-securitization efforts that started in early 2015.

The Re-securitization of the Dissident Kurds Towards the June 2015 general elections, Erdo˘gan started to campaign for a change of the entire political system of the country to create an executive presidential system. The opposition perceived this as an authoritarian project as the AKP draft proposals were putting judiciary under the president’s strict control and he would rule by decree. Erdo˘gan was eager to guarantee it by getting 400 seats (out of 550) of the parliament to make this change. After failing to secure that, Erdo˘gan needed a strong arm to be able to ensure the stability of his regime. His limited options included the use of securitization that would legitimize his crackdown of the Kurdish opposition and co-opt the MHP. As was the intention with de-securitization, Erdo˘gan wanted to use re-securitization and co-opt the MHP now to stabilize his grip of power.

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It was not difficult for the AKP to emulate the MHP’s populist rhetoric against the HDP (Yilmaz et al. 2021, 2022). AKP had already been employing an Islamist populist (Yilmaz 2018; Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018) rhetoric against the Kemalists and especially the CHP (Republican People’s Party) by framing them as an evil elite who worked against the moral values of the people by espousing secularist Westernism and victimizing Muslims in Turkey (see in detail, Yilmaz 2018; Yilmaz 2021). All AKP had to do was to construct the HDP as another pawn of the treacherous West that has always wanted to divide and rule Turkey. The re-ignition of attacks by the PKK in July 2015 provided Erdo˘gan with convenient excuses and means to re-securitize the pro-Kurdish opposition (Martin 2018). His statements at that time showed that before any possible repression, a process of securitization takes place. The HDP has been portrayed as an ‘extension of terrorists PKK’, collaborators with ‘inorganic ties’ to the PKK, and, on many other occasions, variants of these words have been used to describe the securitized parties. Through these words, the HDP has been constructed as an existential threat to the Turkish people and the ‘unity’ of the state and exceptional measures were made acceptable with the re-securitization efforts that started in early 2015. After the loss of the June elections, Erdo˘gan fully adopted the MHP’s securitizing narrative in relation to the HDP. To co-opt the MHP, Erdo˘gan had to convince the MHP that he had come to the same securitization understanding of the Kurdish issue. The co-optation of the MHP was, of course, a complex process. It included material concessions, favouring the MHP’s staunch supporters in state employment, co-operating with pro-MHP bureaucrats within the important state organs, and favouring pro-MHP businesses in public tenders. However, as we have shown in the previous section, the AKP’s desecuritization of the HDP and the Kurdish issue was the single most important issue, without which any rapprochement between the AKP and the MHP would be impossible. It should also be noted that the resecuritization of the HDP by the AKP was not only to co-opt the MHP, Erdo˘gan’s anger towards the HDP would probably have resulted in its re-securitization, regardless of the AKP’s intention to co-opt the MHP. The re-ignition of attacks by the PKK in July 2015 provided an audience that was ready to accept this shift in both the AKP and the MHP camps. This way, Erdo˘gan and the AKP managed to co-opt the ultranationalist MHP and form an informal alliance with the party, broadening its audience to include nationalists in its audience-building quest. Many

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Turks were willing to accept Erdo˘gan’s authoritarianism in exchange for a discontinuance of the bombings in major Turkish cities by the PKK, which had begun right after the June 2015 elections. As Ozpek (2017, 49) concludes, “the peace process failed and conflict recommenced because Erdo˘gan’s bid for a presidential system with full executive powers did not overlap with the PKK-led Kurdish movement’s demands for constitutional guarantees”. Since the peace process was not useful anymore for the establishment of the authoritarian presidential system, the AKP looked for an alternative and a new partner (Ozpek 2017, 46–51; Resch 2017, 11), which they found in the MHP (see in detail Yilmaz et al. 2021). In November 2015 Erdo˘gan got what he was hoping for and changed the constitution to make Turkey a presidential system. All other details are part of history and since then Turkey is run by an authoritarian power grip that uses securitization for even the slightest opposition or criticism that threatens Erdo˘gan’s power.

Conclusion Since its authoritarian turn, the AKP has changed its liberal, democratic discourse to appeal to the nationalist opposition constituencies. This co-optation was enabled by the re-securitization of the pro-Kurdish opposition. This re-securitization has also partially legitimized the authoritarian turn of the AKP and its repression of the opposition. To do so, the party has largely utilized the existential insecurities of the nation state to obtain unchecked control of state institutions (Yilmaz et al. 2020, 2–3; Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022). The new discourse created a perception that Turkey was going through an exceptional period and external and internal enemies together have been conspiring against a growing, strengthening Turkey. Re-securitization of both the Gülenists since December 2013 and the Kurds since June 2015 have softened the ground for a rapprochement between the AKP and the nationalists. It has been an incentive for the nationalists to ‘rally around the nationalist flag’ held by Erdo˘gan. Successful co-optation of the MHP coincided with the re-securitization of Kurdish politics and the HDP in 2015. Since then, the AKP and MHP have acted together as a single bloc under the leadership of Erdo˘gan and have effectively destroyed the pro-Kurdish opposition party, and any possible political opposition.

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CHAPTER 7

Securitization of the Alevis

Introduction The security angle is crucial to understanding the situation of Alevis in Turkey because the state has continually presented them as a security issue to the Turkish public. While it initially appeared that the Alevi Opening would de-securitize the Alevis in Turkey, both during and after Gezi, Erdo˘gan and the AKP moved to re-securitize the Alevis and, by directly vilifying them, used them in the new national security and social engineering rhetoric. In this chapter that mainly draws on and updates Yilmaz and Barry (2020a), we analyse this issue from a longitudinal perspective, determining while successive Turkish governments may have differed in ideology, they have nevertheless approached the Alevis in a similar fashion: namely as a security threat to the Republic. This is due to the fact that the Turkish state’s Sunni Turk ideology has triumphed regardless of party differences on secularism or Muslim nationalism. While Kemalists wished to engineer a secular Sunni Turkish society, the Erdo˘ganists have sought to create an Islamist Sunni Turkish society (Yilmaz 2018; Yilmaz 2021a, b). While in recent years, there had been some short-lived and arguably genuine attempts to de-securitize the Alevis in Turkey, the securitization framework for dealing with the Alevis remained intact and, as a result, the Turkish state has been unable to move past its tendencies towards

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prejudice of the Alevis. Fundamentally, Alevis have always been cast as an untrustworthy ‘other’. When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded Turkey, he chose Turkish nationalism as a social engineering project to consolidate power and unite the people. Turkish nationalism alienated Christians and Jews as well as Alevis, who were different from the Turkish nationalist religion: Secular Sunni Islam. The most important element in this nation-building stage was to be among the desired citizens, which meant that despite one’s background, as long as one accepted the state ideology of secularism, and was a self-declared Sunni Muslim Turk, then one was acceptable. Practising Muslim Turks were not desirable, nor were those of non-Turk ethnicity or from religions other than Sunni Islam. While Alevis were considered as real Turks, ethnically, religiously they had deviated, so they were constructed as an ‘enemy’ or potential ‘traitors’. With the rise of the Islamist movements in Turkey, Alevis were further marginalized. The AKP, as an Islamist party who claimed to be committed to modernization, human rights, and European Union integration (Yilmaz 2009), addressed the Alevis from a Westernization, democratization, and EU perspective at the beginning. The AKP government went as far as admitting to the marginalization of Alevis and proposing an ‘Alevi opening’, a project to include Alevis and de-securitize them. Nevertheless, with the Gezi protests, the AKP government felt threatened and believed that they needed to consolidate power. They first scapegoated the usual suspects: Western powers and their domestic partners such as the Kurds, the Alevis, and the Gülenists as well as proWestern activists, bureaucrats, and the general public (Yilmaz 2018). During this time the superficial goodwill towards the Alevis evaporated and they were, again securitized and marginalized as the ‘others’ not to be trusted and a threat to Turkey. The main securitizing actors during this time were the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) (Yilmaz and Albayrak 2021, 2022), the educational system, and the political elite through their speeches. The securitization of the Alevis has had tremendous consequences in the social fabric of Turkey, including murders, looting, and further discrimination against them.

The Securitization of Alevis As far as the Alevis are concerned, the securitizing actors in Turkey are the same: the political elite and Diyanet, which have always been a tool

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for social engineering in both the Kemalist and Islamist regimes (Yilmaz 2005). The audience is the same too: the Turkish public. The Turkish public is statist and tends to believe in the ‘messianic’ duty of the Turkish state to lead the free world for secularists, and the Muslim world for the Islamists. Thus, when Kemalists securitized Alevis they constructed them as a threat towards the Turkish state and homogeneity of the nation, whereas when Islamists did it, they constructed them as a threat towards the Turkish state and Islam. The Kemalists wanted to create a secularized Sunni Muslim Turkish nation as this was the majority of the population (Yilmaz 2013). The Diyanet has been used for this purpose too (Yilmaz and Barry 2020a, b). Thus, Alevi tekkes were closed and Alevis were expected to be secularized. Now in the Erdo˘ganist era, Alevis are also portrayed as a vast network inside state institutions that pose a security threat to the whole nation, as another dimension of the already portrayal of Alevis as ‘sold’ Muslims. Since 1908, secular Western-oriented nationalists were the hegemonic force in Turkey. Beginning with the Young Turk regime, led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), secular nationalists sought modernization for the Ottoman Empire through the adoption of Turkish nationalism at the direct expense of the religious and ethnic minorities. After the First World War, the CUP was replaced by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a military leader determined to modernize Turkey along secular, nationalist, and republican lines. Atatürk and his ideological successors, the Kemalists, upheld an agenda of secularization, homogenization, and Turkification of a society in which undesired citizens were stigmatized and marginalized. Turkish nationalism under the authoritarian one-party system established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk marginalized Christian and Jewish minorities. The Greek and Armenian Christian populations in Anatolia had declined substantially by the 1920s and also their status in the modern Turkish state had become second-class since language and culture had become the defining criteria for Turkishness (Cagaptay 2006, 160). But the Kemalists’ toughest challenge were the Kurds which constituted a large population concentrated in Eastern Turkey, and who had different ethnic and linguistic attributes to the majority Turks. The state tried to assimilate them by force and this paved the way for armed uprisings during the 1920s and 1930s. Cagaptay argues that along with military forces the state also sought to emphasize the common religious tie (Islam) between Turks and non-Turkish Muslim minorities, such as the Kurds, in

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its attempt to assimilate them. All in all, Cagaptay argues that Kemalists employed three concentric zones of Turkishness: “an outer territorial one reserved for the non-Muslims (with the Jews closer to the centre than the Christians); a middle religious one, reserved for non-Turkish Muslims; an inner one, reserved for the Turks” (Cagaptay 2006, 160). Nevertheless, being an ethnic Turk was not sufficient to be first-class citizen as ethnically Turkish practising Muslims, Islamists, socialists, leftists, and Alevis had been treated with suspicion by the Kemalists. For the state, the members of these groups were not desired citizens either. During the Young Turks and Kemalist eras, Alevi identity was reimagined in order to be used for the purposes of construction of Turkish national identity in order to posit an ethnic continuity with Central Asia and thus “Alevis were rearticulated as ‘real Turks’ (‘öz Türk’) that had carried and preserved Turkish customs and traditions, race, blood and language since the pre-Islamic and pre-Ottoman era” (Lord 2016, 54). Moreover, “Alevi identity, which was perceived as heretical by the (Sunni) Islamic Ottoman state, became reframed as constituting a “‘Turkish Islam’ in contrast to what was described as the ‘Arabized Islam’ of the Ottoman past” (Ate¸s 2012; Dressler 2013; Lord 2016; Shankland 2007). Re-articulation of Alevi identity was used to absorb Alevis through their reimagining as Muslim Turks and to create a majority Muslim Turkish bloc. However, this appropriation did not involve recognition of Alevism, and Alevis continued to be regarded as a “usual suspect” (Lord 2016, 54). All in all, for the Kemalists, the ‘desired’ Turkish citizen was a nonpractising Sunni Muslim who was ethnically Turk and lived by the Kemalist principles and secularism. Yilmaz calls this ideal desired citizen as “Homo LASTus”, the citizen who is worthy of benefiting from human rights and rule of law as opposed to the undesired citizens who were stigmatized as sub-humans (Yilmaz 2013, 107). Here the acronym LAST refers to Laicist, Atatürkist, Sunni, and Turk. Thus, the others of the LAST (practising Muslims, Islamists, leftists, non-Muslims, Kurds, and Alevis) were framed as undesired citizens that needed to be assimilated into Homo LASTus citizens (see in detail Yilmaz 2021a, b). The state’s top-down social engineering attempt faced resistance and the state’s harsh responses “led to many massacres of the Kurds, including Alevi Kurds (the 1938 Dersim Massacre), and the demolition within Alevi social space of many Alevi institutions” (Tekdemir 2018, 34).

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Mustafa Kemal Atatürk used “political despotism in order to break down the social despotism prevalent among the traditionally minded Turkish-Muslim population, for which he blamed the bigotry of the ulema” (Tunçay 2019). Thus, several steps were taken towards full secularization such as the abolition of the caliphate, removal of the article in the constitution making Islam the official religion of the state, abolition of private religious institutions and places of worship for Sunnis and Alevis (Köker 1990), and completely jettisoning the Islamic civil code including the most sensitive Islamic family laws (Yilmaz 2016, 89). Nevertheless, despite the official rhetoric of separating “the worldly from the divine and to oppose the exploitation of religion for political purposes, in reality Kemalist laicism became an instrument for control and supervision of Islam by the state” (Tunçay 2019). This has mainly been achieved through the state’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). Thus, in practice, a state-controlled Sunni-Hanafi Islam coupled with Turkish nationalism co-existed with Westernization and secularization for the Kemalists. On the other hand, popular prejudice and institutionalized discrimination against the Alevis did not cease in the Republican era and Alevis have generally been excluded from positions of high authority (Karakaya-Stump 2018, 55). As part of Kemalist secularization policies, religious orders, and their institutional backbones, the tekkes and zaviyes (dervish lodges), were closed. But “while the places of worship for Sunni Muslims—the mosques—were protected as the official shrines, Alevi cem houses were counted among the tekkes and were closed due to their ‘unofficial’ status” (Çarko˘glu and Bilgili 2011, 353). Alevis, particularly those living in major cities, were able to find a place within the Kemalist system provided they hid their identity. Nevertheless, they have suffered the consequences of having no official recognition and are not represented in the main religious organ of the state, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). Right-wing parties have usually remained distant from Alevis. The fear of losing the electoral support of the Sunni majority “might be one reason for the cold relations between right-wing parties and Alevis, the main reason is more likely to be an ideological incongruence arising from the progressive, egalitarian and left-wing orientation of the Alevis in the post-1960 era” (Çarko˘glu and Bilgili 2011, 354). After the 1980 coup, the Kemalist military embraced a policy called ‘Turkish–Islam synthesis’ in order to contain the left, which paved the way for a more privileged place for Sunni Islam (Çarko˘glu and Bilgili

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2011, 354). As Kemalism was associated with aggressive secularism and left, the military generals preferred to refer to themselves as ‘Atatürkists’ which was less hostile to public manifestations of Islam (Yilmaz 2005). The explicit Turkish-Islam synthesis “policy of the 1980 regime to build a mosque in all villages that did not have one effectively brought Sunni imams, earning a state salary, and the official Sunni worldview into all Alevi villages” (Çarko˘glu and Bilgili 2011, 354). But as the Islamist movement of Erbakan slowly gained momentum, the military’s attitude with regard to Islam changed considerably in the 1990s and “as threat perceptions changed, the elusive secularist state elite aimed to render the Alevi community an integral part of a safety policy against Islamic fundamentalism…This fostered proximity between the state elite and the Alevis, and prevented the complete marginalization of the Alevi community” (Çarko˘glu and Bilgili 2011, 354).

The De-securitization of Alevis The AKP came to power in 2002 as a ‘conservative democratic’ party claiming to liberalize Turkish politics and bring the country into the European Union (Özbudun 2006, 543). Among their platforms was an effort to bring to the mainstream those sections of Turkish society that had been marginalized by decades of secular Sunni Turk nationbuilding. These included practising Muslims, Kurds, Armenian Christians, and, of course, the Alevis (Ter-Matevosyan 2010, 99). During the early part of the AKP rule, the government required the support of disparate groups such as the Alevis, Armenians, and Kurds, as they faced a persistent threat from a Kemalist deep state with a history of launching coups against democratically elected governments which they perceived as deviating from fundamental Kemalist principles. The AKP elite promised to be different not only from their Kemalist predecessors but also from their Islamist predecessors (Yilmaz 2009). One of the biggest shifts from their Islamist predecessors was that they ‘took off the Islamist shirt’ in Erdo˘gan’s words, and tried to reach out to all the previously suppressed ethnic and religious minorities as well as the secular Turks. Alevis were among the people to whom they reached out. They promised that Islamism was not in their agenda, thus the Sunni Turkish-Islam synthesis was not to be followed. Minorities such as some of the Alevis supported this idea to get rid of the Kemalist tutelage as well as the Sunni Muslim pressure, while many remained sceptical.

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The AKP initially continued with the Western orientation of their predecessors. In pursuit of European Union membership (EU), the AKP launched a public relations campaign (the Democratic Opening) claimed to heal the divide between Turkey’s majority and its religious and ethnic minority communities. Among these initiatives were “Kurdish Opening” and “Alevi Opening”. Its “Alevi and Kurdish openings were considered equally groundbreaking for an Islamist party, especially in the case of the Alevis” (Lord 2018). During this time, the Alevi issue was de-securitized and the Alevis were promised a level of recognition as a distinct minority group (Soner and Tokta¸s 2011, 422; Yilmaz and Barry 2020a). The AKP stood by the EU reforms, and promised to engage religious and ethnic minorities and recognize their demands. Nevertheless, after the third consecutive election victory in 2011, and the increase of the votes from 34% in 2002 to almost 50% in 2011, AKP became more powerful. This was boosted by economic success, the ousting of the militarist and Kemalist judicial hegemony after the 2010 constitutional changes, and the 2008–2011 Ergenekon-Balyoz trials. AKP’s pro-EU stance and EU demands for the rule of law, transparency, and accountability were becoming a burden for them. Through crony capitalism and clientalism, the party developed its own economic, business, and especially media elite, through state bids and tenders, in exchange for loyalty towards the party. Support for the EU in Turkey had already decreased to historical low percentages. Jettisoning the EU process would not cost the AKP electorally and it needed to construct a new mechanism through which to fight any corruption and political scandals. During the second and third terms of the AKP rule, it seems that AKP started believing that it had neutralized the power of the old deep state and thus it no longer needed the support of allies like liberals, democrats, and Alevis, and even the Gulenists. This marked a change from the AKP promoting a kind of Islamic multiculturalism—where different religions could coexist in an environment of pluralism—to Muslim nationalism, which places a priority on Turkey being a singular, Muslim nation (Aktürk 2018, 5). By emphasizing the notion of a ‘Muslim nation’, the AKP was able to distance itself from the West, which served Erdo˘gan’s populist agenda post-2011 in response to Turkey’s foreign policy difficulties with some Western nations (Çinar 2018, 2). This change affected the Alevis as a neglect of their demands, but then turned into direct intervention in their affairs. The government expressed its desire to once again assimilate Alevis, or at the very least make them invisible, by building

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mosques in Alevi villages as replacements for cemevis, Alevi houses of worship (Tombu¸s and Aygenç 2017, 10). In this endeavour, the AKP was not much different from the Kemalist CHP, which derives much support from the secular-minded Alevi community, which has also utilized similar notions of Sunni Islam to ‘undermine meaningful differences’ and weave Alevis into their dominant unified narrative (Pinar 2013, 518). After 2011, the AKP decided to re-securitize the Alevis, once again referring to them in security terms and marginalize them. The AKP has re-interpreted state narratives of Turkish national identity, embedding it in the concept of universal Muslim community. In doing so, the nationalist form of political Islam advocated by the AKP re-imagines the Turkish nation as the central part of the Muslim ummah (Alaranta 2016). AKP formulated a new vision of an ideal citizen who is a pious and conservative Sunni Muslim in addition to being a nationalist and statist Turk, and is loyal to the president. Like their predecessors, AKP filled state institutions with their ideal citizens, especially since the corruption scandal of 2013, when they decided they could not trust anyone who has not been ‘hand-placed’ into the bureaucracy. Since 2011, instead of the rhetoric of inclusion, reconciliation, and tolerance, AKP has been focusing on appealing to nativist religious norms and the Islamization of institutions for the purpose of giving the impression of morality (Yilmaz 2018). This instrumentation of state institutions mirrors the efforts of the preceding Kemalist administrations, but in reverse: while Kemalists tried to raise secular generations, Erdo˘ganists have set about raising their own acceptable citizens in what they term ‘a pious generation’, implementing the same social engineering methods through the appropriation of state power (Kaya 2015; Yilmaz 2021b). At the beginning of the democratization process, the Alevi issue was on the AKP’s agenda (Borovali and Boyraz 2015). EU accession requirements motivated Erdo˘gan to deal with the complaints of Alevis during the period he was committed to EU membership. The AKP regime aimed to be more inclusive of Alevis by selecting Alevis as candidates to run for parliament under the AKP banner, and they nominated three Alevi Members of Parliament to create a parliamentary committee working on the Alevi issues. Alevis continued to demand the recognition of cemevis as places of worship, ending employment discrimination, removal of ‘religious affiliation from identity cards’, a revision of Sunni-based elements

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from school curriculum, an apology for past discriminations, an “acknowledgement of the Dersim massacre”, and the return of confiscated religious objects (Bardakçı et al. 2017). Some progress, although limited, was recorded as part of the ‘Democratic Opening’ process. Alevi programmes were broadcast on state television between 2002 and 2007, and seven workshops dealing with Alevi issues were organized in 2009 and 2010 as part of an ‘Alevi Opening’ (Borovali and Boyraz 2015, 145). However, some Alevis were cautious of the AKP’s intentions in running the workshops. For example, Erdo˘gan organized an interfaith iftar (fast-breaking) dinner during the Islamic month of Muharram, a holy month in Alevism. There was confusion over the term iftar, however, which is usually applied to the fast-breaking meal during Ramadan, which Alevis generally do not observe. Furthermore, while many Alevis do fast during Muharram, they argued that these are mourning rituals and should not be broken with a celebratory meal like an iftar (Özkul 2015). Borovalı and Boyraz argue that incidences like these “contributed the sense that the AKP was aiming to “Sunnify” the Alevis” (Borovali and Boyraz 2015, 356), making the de-securitization of Alevis project just another project of social engineering in Turkey. The Alevi Opening was not effective as Alevi demands for equal rights were ignored. Instead, the government ignited theological discussions contrasting Alevi and Sunni doctrines while favouring the latter, leading to the impression that the true purpose of the Opening was to transform Alevis into Sunni Muslims, and continue the century-old method for nation-building and social engineering. After 2011, AKP began to slowly abandon their outreach to the Alevis, a situation that substantially worsened after the Gezi protests in 2013. The Alevis remained sceptical of AKP’s self-presentation of liberalism and pluralism. While AKP claimed that the pro-EU democratization reforms to be necessary for a well-functioning democracy, the opposition viewed these attempts as first steps on the way to an Islamist takeover of the secularist Republican regime. Most Alevis initially “appeared indecisive upon the appropriate stance to take in this debate, despite their widespread conviction that the state establishment has long ignored the Alevis’ identity and demands” (Çarko˘glu and Bilgili 2011, 355). During the early years of the administration, under AKP direction “the Diyanet had recognized the position of Alevis as one of the Islamic understandings or intra-Islamic traditions” (Yilmaz and Barry 2020b, 8). Nevertheless, despite these promising gestures, the Diyanet continued to

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exclude Alevis from their institutional structures. Even in the administration’s early years, the director of the Diyanet’s strategy department, Dr. Necdet Suba¸si (2006, 49–50), wrote that the ‘emotionally sour’ Alevis were being politicized by internal and external enemies and could be ‘easily incited’ by those seeking to disrupt ‘social unity’ and ‘harmony’. This attitude went beyond individual statements, and was integrated into the Diyanet’s 2009–2013 strategic plan as well (Lord 2017, 59). The Diyanet led the push to stop the recognition of cemevis, issuing a statement outlining their position: ‘allowing cem houses to be considered places of worship may be tantamount to supporting the birth of a new religion’ (Özkul 2015, 85). This demonstrates that despite AKP’s stated intentions, they never fully released themselves from the fundamental prejudices held by the state against Alevism, even at the beginning of their political journey. When they stated that they were going to be more inclusive to the minorities they, in fact, were endorsing the securitization of the Alevis, and other minorities, as it suited them. Since 2011, much of the goodwill shown towards the Alevis, however superficial, slowly evaporated (Özkul 2015). It seems that AKP had concluded that it would not be able to get the electoral support of the Alevis. As several scholars have noted, while practising Sunni Muslim voters have generally voted for Centre-right or Islamist parties, Alevis are more likely to vote for leftist parties (Çarko˘glu and Toprak 2007). Çarko˘glu also found that “the tendency to vote for AKP drops substantially as the sign of Alevi orientation increases; that is, as the likelihood of being an Alevi increases, the tendency to vote for AKP drops to a large extent. Almost a reverse mirror image of this tendency is observed among the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) voters. As confidence in a respondent’s Alevi orientation increases, that respondent’s likelihood to vote for CHP increases” (Çarko˘glu, 2011, 286).

The Re-securitization of Alevis The first overt manifestations of the AKP’s sectarian discourse can be traced to the campaign speeches of the 2010 referendum, in which Erdo˘gan repeatedly complained of an alleged “domination of high judicial posts by a clique of Alevis” (Karakaya-Stump 2018, 56). It was also reported that “lower-ranking AKP members were traveling through the country to spread the word among their conservative Sunni constituency

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that their goal was to “rid the judiciary of the Alevis” (KarakayaStump 2018, 56). Moreover, Erdo˘gan and several other AKP members “made sarcastic remarks concerning the Alevi background of Kemal Kılıçdaro˘glu, who was elected shortly before the referendum as the head of the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP)” (Karakaya-Stump 2018, 56). Erdo˘gan’s sectarian politics was further unmasked when he stated that “fifty-three of our Sunni citizens were martyred” following terrorist attacks in 2013 in the town of Reyhanlı, near the Syrian border (Lord 2018, 158). The situation worsened during the Gezi protests of 2013. During the Gezi Park protests, some representatives in the AKP presented the events as an ‘Alevi revolt’ despite the plurality of voices involved in the demonstrations (Karakaya-Stump 2014). The AKP also unleashed police violence against Alevi and Kurdish working-class neighbourhoods as a strategy of ‘Alevizing the Gezi Park protests’ to counter and divide the Gezi protestors (Karakaya-Stump 2014). Gezi was “the first major occasion after the 2010 constitutional referendum where the AKP openly resorted to sectarianism to solidify and mobilize its conservative Sunni Muslim support base against its opponents and rivals” (Karakaya-Stump 2018, 56). Coupled with a growing agenda of Islamization of the society along Hanafi Sunni lines, the Alevis have found themselves increasingly marginalized in a protean system. All seven victims of fatal police violence during the Gezi protests were Alevi and this was exploited by the AKP which tried “to misrepresent Gezi as an Alevi uprising. The release of a police report, according to which 78% of those detained during the protests were Alevi, was no doubt part of the same deliberate strategy to vilify the protests in the eyes of conservative Sunnis” (Karakaya-Stump 2018, 62). Commenting on the killing of an Alevi child during the protestors, which sparked a lot of criticism about the extensive use of force by the Turkish police, Erdo˘gan said: There was a funeral in Istanbul recently. Unfortunately, there was a child from the terrorist organizations, with a baggy face, a slingshot in his hand, and iron balls in his pockets, and unfortunately, he was exposed to a tear gas. How will the police know how old that person is, with a puffy face and a slingshot in his hand, tossing iron balls? But Kılıçdaro˘glu is lying as usual, saying ’the boy went out to buy bread’. Be honest. What does it have to do with bread? (Oda TV.Erdo˘gan 2014)

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He also blamed the opposition CHP for using the death of Berkin Elvan as a marketing campaign, “They made an advertisement campaign out of the child who lost his life in Gezi. They said he went to buy bread. That’s a lie… he is caught in a photo with slings and masks…” (Onedio.Erdo˘gan 2014). adding that “They [CHP] made a statement for the boy that died in Istanbul, claiming that ‘He was going to buy bread’, although it has nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, he was the pawn of the terrorist organization. They devised such [false] stories” (CNN Türk.Erdo˘gan 2014). Clearly, Erdo˘gan will not let go even the death of a child as a fault of the state, and he will rather use that case to securitize more, including framing the victim as a terrorist, faithless, and accusing anyone that brings this case up. But his views on Alevis are known to be hostile. In some cases Alevis are securitized as enemies of the state and the nation, like the case of Berkin Elvan or in the case of the Soma mining collapse that left 301 mine workers dead, and when some people protested, Erdo˘gan claimed that they, the CHP and Turkey’s enemies, brought Alevis from all over Turkey to protest in Soma and use that incident for their interests (Evrensel.Erdo˘gan 2014). But mostly Alevis are securitized as a threat, and as enemies of Islam, basically Sunni Islam that Turkey practices. Being a non-Sunni denomination of Islam, for many Turks Alevis are ‘traitors’ as they are constructed like this by the state since the establishment of the republic or even before that. Erdo˘gan has capitulated on that, and on every occasion, he refers to them as perverted Muslims, traitors, and even as Alevis without Ali (Alevis’ belief is that they are the successors of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, who was killed by the first caliph after the death of the Prophet. But Erdo˘gan, and many Islamists, claim that Alevis don’t believe in Ali and his teachings, and that actually it is them, the Islamists, that love Ali more). Referring to Alevism without Ali, and securitizing everyone in the same bowl, in one of his speeches Erdo˘gan said: Parties, marginal groups and terrorist organizations that did not even greet each other until yesterday, all of a sudden, lined up on the same side. The marginals who made fun of the values of this nation, the boils of the idea of Alevism without Ali, the enthusiasts of February 28 [coup], all came together. The main opposition party is at the top of the line. Behind them is the party that claims to be a nationalist [IYI party], and next to them is the party under the control of the terrorist organization

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[HDP]. The parallel organization [Gulenists], the separatist organization [PKK], the terrorist organization that killed our prosecutor in Ça˘glayan Courthouse [DHKP-C], and the Armenian lobby are right behind them. (Oda TV.Erdo˘gan 2015)

Since the Gezi protests, AKP’s sectarianized securitization involved “not only a re-emphasis on the Sunni – Alevi boundary but also the portrayal of Alevis as a fifth column of neighbouring Iran and Syria through the conflation of Alevis with Alawites and their rearticulation as a Shi’a minority” (Lord 2018, 157). After the July 2016 coup attempt Alevis were targeted by the AKP’s media, and anti-coup crowds marched into Alevi neighbourhoods, raising the spectre of sectarian civil conflict and massacre that happened in 1970s (Lord 2018, 158). As part of the de-securitization of the Alevis, AKP “sources and media propagated the allegation that Alevis were going to be used to provoke a Sunni– Alevi civil war in the country, even going as far as to claim that 50,000 Iranian-backed Shi’a militias as well as Alawites from Syria, ultimately backed by the United States, would have occupied the country had the coup been successful” (Lord 2018, 158). In 2011, Erdo˘gan went as far as accusing the leader of CHP Kemal Kılıçdaro˘glu, who has an Alevi background, of supporting the Assad regime as a matter of ‘sectarian solidarity’ between Alevis and Alawites after Kilicdaroglu questioned AKP government’s Syrian policy (Bardakçi 2015, 365). Securitization means bringing an issue to the security realm, but it also means not dealing with it in the public realm as it is high politics that only “we, the high-level political elite” can deal with (Shipoli 2018). While desecuritizing the Alevis, Erdo˘gan had to deal with this issue every day. He had to be careful in his speeches, had to apologize, and had to explain to his base what he was doing. This ran against his dominant character and his ambitions of personalist rule. So, he took the issue off the political agenda and resorted to securitization again. By the end of 2013, Erdo˘gan then became suspicious of everyone that is not completely loyal to him, or that questioned him in any way. In recent years, Alevis have faced disparaging remarks from senior Turkish officials after Erdo˘gan himself encouraged such remarks. In 2015, Erdo˘gan directly denied the legitimacy of Alevism, claiming that “If being an Alevi means loving Ali, no one can be more Alevi than me. But if Alevism is a religion then Erdo˘gan is not there” (Karaca 2013). He also stated that cemevis are not places of worship and described one of them as

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“monstrous” (Milliyet.Erdogan 2012). Furthermore, after the failed coup attempt in 2016, cemevis were raided by the government and it has been claimed that the number of mosques in Alevi populated villages increased (Kingsley 2017). Erdo˘gan referred to Alevis as atheist in a meeting with the German president: In Germany, there is something like ‘Alevism without Ali’. In other words, there is an atheist understanding, a structure that they [Germans] also support under the guise of Alevism. They try to project that onto us. We said that there is no such Alevis in Turkey. There’s a handful of them in Germany and the Germans support them, then they come and speak in their name here. (Cumhuriyet.Erdo˘gan 2014a, b)

He continued to claim that firstly the non-supporting Alevis are actually atheists and ‘Alevis without Ali’ and also that they are supported by Germany (foreign powers): “In Germany, there is a brutal campaign against us with both a separatist terrorist organization and an ‘Alevism without Ali’. They are also trying to penetrate our country” (Son Dakika.Erdo˘gan 2014). His warnings against them, their intentions, and that they need to take any measures against the threat are part of many speeches of Erdo˘gan, but it is worth to quote one as an example … there is something we are seeing where there are people who say they are Muslims, but because they are from different sects, they defend even those who are atheists in the fight against terrorism in our country. We see such an approach. But when it comes to words, they say ’We are Muslims’. But on the other hand, we see those who defend terrorist and atheist organizations because of this sectarian difference. So, we must be vigilant against them. (Hürriyet.Erdo˘gan 2015)

Even in cases where a newspaper criticized the high prices of passports in Turkey, Interior Minister, Suleyman Soylu, immediately accused the paper of being an Alevi supporting newspaper and aiming at chaos: … there is a canda¸s [referring to BirGün newspaper as Candas, which mean Can lover, and Can is what Alevis commonly refer to each other] media. This media misinformed the public. They made a deliberate announcement to turn everything into chaos. […] They made such a broadcast

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and they were successful. So, treachery has no limits. (Facebook.Birgün Gazetesi.Soylu,Süleyman 2022)

In a similar fashion, the highest religious directorate in Turkey, Diyanet, issued official Fatwas depicting Alevis as ‘non-Muslim’. Answering a question regarding the permissibility of a Sunni marriage to an Alevi, a fatwa asserted that “according to Islam, a Muslim woman can only wed a Muslim man” (Cumhuriyet 2016). By 2017, Sebahattin Öztürk, the Deputy Interior Minister, felt comfortable enough to declare that Alevi youth are not hired in government positions because the AKP government does not concentrate on groups to which the party is unrelated, which implied that the AKP was only interested in hiring and promoting its Sunni Muslim Turkish supporters (Cumhuriyet 2017). A prominent scholar on the Alevi issue in Turkey noted that “Despite various overtures to the Alevis, the AKP has systematically eliminated all Alevis from the ranks of governors and police chiefs of 81 provinces, who are appointed by the government” (Erdemir 2018). Alevis are portrayed as traitors among Muslims, and as people who should not be trusted. But also, they are constructed as enemies who infiltrate every institution in Turkey. Especially the Sunni conservative people in Turkey believe this. And it is a common belief that Alevis have a clique in CHP. Occasionally there are Alevis in the party, as the largest and the longest standing party in Turkey, and Erdo˘gan never loses a chance to mention this. He has often referred to Kilicdaroglu as Alevi, which he accepts he is, but Erdo˘gan always calls him out in rallies, alleging that Kilicdaroglu hides his Alevi identity, enforcing the troops that Alevis are secretive “Kılıçdaro˘glu, you can be an Alevi. I respect you. Don’t be shy, don’t be afraid. Say it comfortably. I’m a Sunni, I’m comfortable saying this” (Cumhuriyet.Erdo˘gan 2014a, b). The narrative against Alevis is pushed in all fronts from different level politicians, journalists, civil society leaders, and pro-government mouthpieces. Again, this is not a new narrative, but because now it suits Erdo˘gan to securitize Alevis even further, he built upon the general narrative that Alevis are not to be trusted. As in other chapters, here we also chose only the securitization speeches by the highest politicians in the Turkish government, especially Erdo˘gan himself, but also some of the most effective ministers. After their securitization, the journalists and other government supporters amplify the same narrative, from previous AKP politicians who refer to Cemevis [houses of worship for Alevis] as terrorist

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hubs (T24.Metiner 2013), to journalists who claim that the Gezi protests were an Alevi project of the foreign powers (T24.Alci 2013), to those who claim that any Alevi protest is a communist insurrection of the terrorist DHKP-C (IHA 2013; Turkish Daily News 2020; Seriyye 2020) or FETO (Gerçek Hayat 2020). To no one’s surprise, this narrative has been used to discredit the Gezi protests and many government mouthpieces in the media have linked Gezi protests with a possible Alevi insurrection triggered by foreign powers in order to destabilize Turkey, spoil the Turkish 2015; Gündem 2015). Many of youth, and destroy Islam (Yeni Safak ¸ them have adopted Erdogan’s ‘Alevism without Ali’ narrative, that they use it in most of their headlines (TGRT Haber 2017; Yeni Akit 2016; Yeni Mesaj 2012) and in TV appearances. This has resulted in “a rise in incidents of Aleviphobia all over Turkey in recent years” (Karakaya-Stump 2018, 64), as Alevi leaders have been pointing out the increasing cases of targeting and conflict.

Conclusion This chapter has situated Alevi marginalization in modern Turkey in securitization theory. Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic, Alevis were constructed as a security threat, linked with Shi’ism and Iran, a historic enemy. Despite changes in the administration (particularly in the rhetorical outlook of the AKP and their Kemalist predecessors), the Turkish state’s Sunni Turk ideology has triumphed regardless of party differences on secularism of Muslim nationalism. As a result, the Turkish state has been unable to move past obstacles of prejudice which leave the Alevis as outcaste citizens in a modern nation. The democratization and urbanization in the twentieth century allowed Alevis the opportunity to find a place within the Turkish society, and Alevi activists began to voice their demands for state recognition of their houses of worship (cemevis ) and an acknowledgement of Alevis as a separate group from Sunni Muslims. With the election of the AKP in 2002, and their promises to Alevis and other marginalized groups, there was some hope that these issues could be addressed and Alevis, like other minority groups, would be ‘de-securitized’. Through their ‘Democratic Opening’, AKP expressed a desire to resolve minority issues for the purposes of gaining EU membership. This resulted in a number of initiatives including consultations with Alevis, an apology for (some) past

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wrongs committed by the state, and increased visibility of Alevis and Alevism on state television. The situation did not last, and a deterioration in Turkey’s democratic standing after 2011 affected the Alevis in several ways. The Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which had always been hostile towards the Alevis, began to increase its criticism of Alevism, and members of the government began resorting to insults when describing the community, reviving old sectarian accusations of Alevi sympathy for Iran, especially as the Syrian Civil War intensified. Faced with many political challenges, Erdo˘gan gave up on ‘soft-methods’ of negotiation and re-securitized the Alevi issue. In short, Alevis were framed as an ‘other’ that could not be trusted and must be controlled for national, state, and religious security reasons.

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Çinar, M. 2018. Turkey’s ‘Western’ or ‘Muslim’ Identity and the AKP’s Civilizational Discourse. Turkish Studies 19 (2): 176–197. CNN Türk.Erdo˘gan. 2014. Erdo˘gan’dan Berkin Elvan yorumu: “Terör örgütlerinin ma¸sasıydı”, October 21. https://www.cnnturk.com/haber/turkiye/ erdogandan-berkin-elvan-yorumu-teror-orgutlerinin-masasiydi. Cumhuriyet.Erdo˘gan. 2014a. Erdo˘gan, misafir Alman Cumhurba¸skanı’na verdi veri¸stirdi, April 29. https://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/erdogan-misafiralman-cumhurbaskanina-verdi-veristirdi-66093. Cumhuriyet.Erdo˘gan. 2014b. Erdo˘gan: Kılıçdaro˘glu, sen Alevi olabilirsin, August 3. https://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/video/erdogan-kilicdaroglu-sen-alevi-ola bilirsin-101273. Cumhuriyet. 2016. Diyanet’ten skandal soru, skandal cevap. Cumhuriyet, January 4. Available at http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/turkiye/458004/Diy anet_ten_skandal_soru__skandal_cevap.html. ˙ sleri Bakan Yardımcısı Öztürk’ten ‘Alevilere i¸s vermeme’ Cumhuriyet. 2017. Içi¸ itirafı. Cumhuriyet, March 17. Available at http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/ haber/turkiye/700758/icisleri_Bakan_Yardimcisi_Ozturk_ten__Alevilere_is_ vermeme__itirafi.html. Dressler, M. 2013. Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Erdemir, Aykan. 2018. AKP Eyes Alevi Voters—Again and to No Avail. Foundation for Defense of Democracies Policy Brief , 201. Available at https://www. fdd.org/analysis/2018/11/30/akp-eyes-alevi-voters-again-and-to-no-avail/. Evrensel.Erdo˘gan. 2014. Erdo˘gan: Soma’yı karı¸stırmak için sa˘gdan soldan Alevi toparlıyorlar! May 27. https://www.evrensel.net/haber/85097/erdogan-som ayi-karistirmak-icin-sagdan-soldan-alevi-toparliyorlar. Facebook.Birgün Gazetesi.Soylu,Süleyman. 2022. Soylu, ‘Öyle bir yayın yaptılar ki’ diyerek gazetecileri hedef aldı: “Fitnenin, hainli˘gin sınırı yok…”. https:// ne-np.facebook.com/birgungazetesi/videos/soylu-%C3%B6yle-bir-yay%C4% B1n-yapt%C4%B1lar-ki-diyerek-gazetecileri-hedef-ald%C4%B1-fitnenin-hai nli/582015730092742/. Gerçek Hayat. 2020. FETÖ’nün alevîlerini kim koruyor? July 15. https://www. gzt.com/gercek-hayat/fetonun-alevlerini-kim-koruyor-3547867. Gündem. 2015. DHKP-C VE PKK, July 1. http://www.gundem.be/yazarlar/ izzet-donmez/dhkp-c-ve-pkk/. Hürriyet.Erdo˘gan. 2015. Erdo˘gan Endonezya’da konu¸stu, July 31. https:// www.hurriyet.com.tr/dunya/erdogan-endonezyada-konustu-29691189. ˙ IHA. 2013. Tekirda˘g’da ‘Kendi i¸sini kurmak ve ya¸satmak e˘gitimi ‘verildi, September 23. https://www.iha.com.tr/haber-tekirdagda-kendi-isini-kurmakve-yasatmak-egitimi-verildi-301110/.

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CHAPTER 8

Fruits of Securitization

The Authoritarianization of the AKP The success of the AKP in consolidating its power was possible largely because of a series of events in recent Turkish political history. The 2010 constitutional referendum (Kalaycıo˘glu 2011) gave Erdo˘gan a golden opportunity to consolidate AKP’s legitimacy for further Islamist projects within the boundary of Muslim Nationalism. The referendum expanded the pro-AKP cadres, and their allies, within the judiciary and “augmented parliamentary and presidential control over the appointment process by increasing the number of appointed seats at the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors, which effectively allowed the AKP government to make its own appointees” (Lord 2018, 259). After a series of shocks, particularly, the Gezi Protests in mid-2013 and later that year the anti-corruption investigations of 17–25 December, Erdo˘gan and the AKP decided to strengthen their grip on power at the expense of democratic norms, by adopting a nationalist, divisive, and hostile discourse (Sawae 2020, 259; Yilmaz 2018; Yilmaz et al. 2020) and weakening checks and balances to target any opposing groups in the society and the politics (Karakaya-Stump 2014; Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 506; Onba¸sı 2016, 276; Günay 2016). Erdo˘gan and the AKP won multiple consequent elections at the municipality, parliamentarian, and presidential level. This brought them morale, confidence, and also showed

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them that the securitization of different groups at different times paid off and secured their survival. Soon after this swift authorization, Erdo˘gan was assigned God-given roles and powers to outplay the Western powers. With this narrative, the voter empowered the ‘right’ leader and his party to enable the survival of the nation, its national identity, the Turkish state and the Islamic ummah. Thus, voting for Erdo˘gan became an existential, holy, and honourable act. Everyone that opposed or questioned this narrative was labelled as a Zionist, international banker, interest lobby, Islamophobe (Cook 2017, 118–119), or a conspirator with the CIA, Mosad, MI6, and other foreign intelligence services. These labels have been used interchangeably in the context of historical trauma, conspiracy theories, and fear (Yilmaz and Shipoli 2022). Erdo˘gan’s power grab was cemented with the 15 July 2016 coup attempt. Erdo˘gan utilized the effect of the coup attempt to win the 2017 presidential referendum. During the referendum campaign, Erdo˘gan and his new ally, Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), portrayed all those opposed to the proposed political system change as traitors and collaborators of the coupists (Yilmaz et al. 2021; Yilmaz et al. 2022). According to this view, Turkey was divided into two: the patriotic natives and the traitors. This referendum in 2017, and the presidential election in 2018, allowed for the regime change from a parliamentarian system into a presidential system and made Erdo˘gan not only the de facto but also the de jure hegemon in Turkish politics, binding the executive, judiciary, and legislative branch to his presidential palace. One of the instruments he has used is securitization. The election of the president was a securitization act in itself. The powers that Erdo˘gan asked for at the referendum were extraordinary, allowing him to designate certain issues as ‘high politics’, which would be closed to public debate, and give him power to make decisions without asking anyone, as he and his team were the only ones that could understand the issues and make the ‘right decisions’ to ‘defend’ the country, nation, and religion from imminent and future ‘threats’. Erdo˘gan asked for and received the power to use extraordinary means to bypass everyone, anytime he needs. Ultimately, Erdo˘gan was also given the right to dissolve the parliament among his powers according to the constitution. As a securitizing actor, he became the audience to legitimize the use of those means to defend whatever he deems important as a referent object,

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without having to convince anyone or legitimize his acts. Although we speak of different actors in securitization, and how they change roles at different levels (Shipoli 2018), in this case the presidential election was a securitizing act in itself. For the MHP—functional actors who did not have the power to securitize by themselves—forming an alliance with the AKP gave them the authority to securitize (Philipsen 2018) and, together with the AKP, they began to securitize the Kurds. This was the precondition of the MHP to support the governing AKP. Moreover, the MHP gained control over the discourse of securitization (Yilmaz et al. 2021; Yilmaz et al. 2022). Filling it with ultranationalist conspiracy theories, nationalist fears and traumas, the MHP has advanced its securitization agenda through the hands of the governing elite. Today, even though they are a small part of the alliance, they have a bigger voice in terms of securitization (especially on the issue of Kurds) because their nationalist narrative is being used to consolidate power. In return, they have remained outside the securitized domain, becoming part of the governing elite through clientelism, business and political favours.

Regime Change The shift in Erdo˘gan’s Kurdish policy and his re-securitization of the HDP allowed the AKP to move closer to MHP policies on Kurds and facilitated a co-optation of the MHP. In return, in 2017, MHP supported constitutional changes and the presidential system, and Erdo˘gan’s crackdown on the Kurdish political movement, liberals, political rivals, and the Gülenists. Securitization of the Kurds first and others later became the glue that held together the co-optation of MHP by AKP and the stability of the regime they created. In March 2016, President Erdo˘gan urged the parliament to strip HDP MPs of their parliamentary immunity from prosecution, saying “My people don’t want to see criminal deputies in parliament” (Guardian 2016a). This statement was welcomed by the nationalist MHP and Erdo˘gan’s AKP. After this statement, MHP took the lead for this bill and took it to the Turkish Parliament to discuss and vote on (Cumhuriyet 2016). Both AKP and MHP suggested that HDP MPs had taken advantage of their parliamentary immunity to support the PKK. In May 2016, in a secret ballot, 376 out of 550 MPs voted in favour of the bill and lifted the immunity of HDP MPs (Aljazeera 2016).

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Then in July 2016, a military coup attempt against the Erdo˘gan regime was staged and thwarted. Erdo˘gan used this opportunity to further consolidate his grip on power, calling this attempt a ‘gift from God’ to eliminate his political rivals. A temporary national unity was established, the so-called ‘spirit of Yenikapı’. The only large political party that was excluded from this new spirit of unity was the HDP. A purge and witch hunt followed. Opposing views were labelled as ‘traitorous’ and those who dared to express them were jailed, forced into silence, or exiled. Erdo˘gan directed his wrath and repressive measures towards large numbers of military, police, Gülenists, judges, prosecutors, educators, journalists, and the media. In short, hundreds and thousands of citizens from all walks of life have been purged, dismissed, arrested, and even tortured (OHCHR 2018). This also presented the right time for Erdo˘gan to change the political system in Turkey. During the 2017 referendum campaign, Erdo˘gan and his new ally, Bahceli, the leader of the MHP, divided Turkey into two camps: the patriotic camp of the people represented by the AKP–MHP coalition and the treasonous camp, represented by the ‘evil’ CHP elite and their allies at home and abroad. In coalition with the MHP, Erdo˘gan won the referendum with a slight margin (51.41%). Erdo˘gan became not only the de facto but also the de jure authoritarian leader. As a result, he locked his authoritarianism into the constitution in an attempt to secure authoritarian stability. AKP’s ideological shift towards MHP has not resulted in a decrease in AKP votes. The widespread Turkish nationalism and fear of partition of the country exist among the voters of all major political parties. Thus, the anti-Kurdish Turkish nationalism of the AKP did not bother AKP voters, with few exceptions. Since 2015, AKP’s and Erdo˘gan’s rhetoric and approach to the Kurdish question have been guided by MHP’s sensitivities. This shows how co-optation and securitization work together. While the AKP as the governing elite had the power and the authority to securitize, or ‘speak security’ (Shipoli 2018), they wanted to use this right to bring the necessary support for constitutional change. However, as Floyd (2020) suggested, functional actors such as smaller political parties, activists, and experts, also have some power to influence securitization, although not decisive. MHP’s influence was to guide the AKP to securitize what ideologically fits them, although it was an anti-thesis of initial AKP policies. MHP vetoed AKP’s de-securitization of the Kurds and led

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their re-securitization. The same situation stands with Alevis, and it was MHP’s long-term goal to securitize and vilify Islamist groups such as the Gülenists and other smaller groups and individuals. They ‘claimed’ their securitization authority (Philipsen 2018) and took up the role of a securitizing actor, from that of an audience or a threat (vis-a-vis the Kurds, the Alevis, or the Gulenists). The failed mysterious coup attempt of 15 July 2016 provided Erdo˘gan with a special opportunity to stimulate nationalist and conservative perception to re-interpret the 2013 Gezi protest, the 17–25 December corruption scandal, crisis in the Turkish economy, and other similar events, in an Orwellian fashion. The terror attacks after the July 2015 elections and Erdo˘gan’s success in changing his liberal democratic discourse on Kurdish and minority issues, and re-securitizing the Kurdish issue and pro-Kurdish HDP, motivated nationalist constituencies to support the regime change in the referendum to create a presidential system without checks and balances. In coalition with the MHP, Erdo˘gan won the 2017 referendum, albeit with only a slight margin (51.41%). Because of this referendum, by replacing the parliamentary system with the presidential one, Erdo˘gan became not only the de facto but also the de jure authoritarian leader who now has the power to rule by decree, usurping the powers of the parliament. He also appoints all top judges, including the Supreme Election Board, who happen to be Erdo˘ganist loyalists. AKP’s and Erdogan’s legitimation of this regime change by securitization was silently approved by the weakened remaining opposition (Yilmaz et al. 2020). In the face of the alleged existential security threats to the nation, homeland, and the state, coming from the pro-Kurdish (and also Gülenist) opposition, ‘patriot’ parties gathered behind Erdo˘gan’s strong, authoritarian leadership and Erdo˘gan emerged as the leader of Turkey beyond party politics, leading Turkey and fighting internal and external enemies in this extraordinary time. By September 2016, 11,000 teachers and 14,000 government employees in Turkey were purged over alleged links to the PKK, and around 5000 members of the HDP had been arrested. The region has undergone its second largest migration wave since the 1990s. On 4 November 2016, the joint leaders of the HDP, Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas, and nine other MPs of the HDP were arrested, opening the gates to arrests of other Kurdish politicians and rights activists and advocates. They were arrested and imprisoned on charges of supporting

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terrorism on the basis of meetings with PKK leaders in Qandil and imprisoned PKK leader Ocalan. Gradually almost all elected mayors of the HDP have been replaced by government-appointed trustees, on the pretext that they were helping the PKK. The same events that were used to de-securitize the Kurdish issue a few years earlier were now used to re-securitize pro-Kurdish opposition. No one talked about the involvement of Erdo˘gan in the talks between the PKK and the government, or his use of these events to try to gain Kurdish votes. Erdo˘gan managed to side-line the HDP without any objection from opposition parties, thus we claim that the opposition has actually ‘accepted’ Erdogan’s securitization by silent consent. The fact that AKP and Erdo˘gan failed to deliver on their political and economic objectives has forced them to resort to ideational and nationalist narratives to stave off growing criticisms and justify their worsening political and economic record. Making their survival a ‘national security’ issue, and then using the securitization narrative to ‘otherize’ all existing opposition and possible new opposition parties, has prolonged the political life of AKP and Erdo˘gan. This strategy has helped their election success, despite economic failures. AKP and Erdo˘gan have successfully used Turkey’s ontological insecurities and past traumas to convince their supporters that anti-Western conspiracy theories are real, and that Western powers are using opposition political parties and social groups to destroy the Turkish national identity, Turkish nation, and its leadership of the Muslim world. AKP’s new ally, the ultranationalist MHP, has welcomed this narrative and pushed for it among its supporters as well. Being securitized as agents of external enemy powers, the opposition is thus delegitimized in the eyes of AKP supporters. In other words, even though the AKP regime has failed to fulfil its economic promises, its supporters do not have any legitimate, reliable, or trustworthy alternatives in the opposition that would defend the Turkish nation, its identity, honour, dignity, and integrity against the conspiring Western powers. The securitization of opposition politics and elections in Turkey is at the domestic level, but we can observe this pattern in other societies as well. This pattern shows that independent of the government, when people suffer from ontological insecurities, historical traumas, and are prone to conspiracy theories and fear, political decision-makers use these insecurities to build on the existential importance of their political elite in countries such as Venezuela and Russia (Kneuer 2017). Similar to Chavez, Erdo˘gan has resorted to the narrative of national independence against

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interest lobbies and foreign plotters who are antagonistic to the Turkish national identity, presenting the AKP as the hero of the people, delivering economic outputs during this hard time. His narrative that the people will overcome any attack on Turkey has also been successful. Nationalist, religious, and ethnic narratives have worked for Erdo˘gan as they have worked elsewhere. This is done through the construction of imagined existential enemies to the nation and its identity, threats, and ‘alternative truths.’ Today we see that even developed democracies are not immune to this. In the United States, President Trump made up stories of caravans of Latin Americans marching towards the United States by the thousands, wanting to enter the United States and commit crimes. As if that was not enough, President Trump added a couple of ‘unknown Middle Easterners’ to the crowd (Twitter.Trump 2018). Especially when the imagined enemy is a foreign power, people are more prone to believing it. However, the predominant effect is not the enmity of the foreign power, but the enmity of the communities that live within the country, who plot together with the foreigners against the nation and the state. Any opposition is easily labelled as a ‘collaborator’ with those foreign powers, is not trusted, and very commonly, becomes a victim of hate crimes and discrimination. Even worse, any group or individual that does not abide by the narrative of the government in power, is labelled as ‘one of them’, a foreigner, a non-Muslim, or secret agent of the ill-intentioned powers. In this study, we see that pattern with a religiously conservative government that has targeted nonSunni, non-Muslim, and non-abiding Islamic communities in Turkey at every election, framing them as collaborators who want to destroy their country and the Turkish nation by preventing the government in power to win elections. Any former ally that does not abide is labelled as an agent of those powers. These ‘alternative facts’ have constructed an ‘alternative reality’ based on fear and security discourse. These narratives pick up pace during elections. With the global COVID-19 pandemic, we can see that words matter. Although we still think of wars and conflicts when we speak of security, today matters such as pandemics, economy, climate change, and migration, are all matters of security. However, there are two risks here: the first is the securitization of non-security issues to serve incumbent governments and politicians; the second is the downplaying of security issues, again in the interest of incumbent governments and politicians.

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Transnational Securitization Authoritarian regimes do not only target and oppress their opponents at home, but they also try to repress them abroad. While not novel, the phenomenon is recently becoming more noticeable. They use transnational organs of the state such as the intelligence services to export conflicts to their diasporas and mobilize pro-regime diaspora members against the opposition diaspora members. Although this is a whole new study, for a longer manuscript, what we have seen in this book is that the Turkish regime has utilized their transnational functional actors to securitize domestic issue transnationally where they have their diaspora supporters. For transnational securitization to work there is a need of a story, which ends in a call for action. At a meeting with the Union of International Democrats (UID) representatives, Erdo˘gan accused European countries of conspiring against Turkey via “asymmetrical methods” through enforcing an “assimilation project” that disconnects Turks and Muslims living in Europe from their homelands and the Ummah (Sozcu 2021). Regenerating a relevant regime narrative to legitimize the repression of critics abroad, Erdo˘gan framed dissidents living in the diaspora as co-conspirators of the usual enemy, namely the West. The regime has been setting talented multilingual profiles from descendants of Turkish emigrants born and raised abroad as a primary audience to unfold its narrative in the transnational space (Arkılıç 2018; Adar 2019; Sterkenburg 2021). In the Turkish case, it goes beyond “institutional outposts” intimidating dissidents, various formations under the disguise of civil society organizations have established by pro-regime members of diaspora and deployed as an “extension and in the service of the authoritarian state at home” (Brand 2006, 111). To this end, Turkey founded several civil society organizations like the UID, which operates across Europe through numerous branches and has organic ties to state authorities (Akçapar and Aksel 2017, 138) and advances the story of the AKP regime in the West, carries its speech acts, and coordinates some of the actions such as profiling of dissidents and ‘otherizing’ them. Although Erdo˘gan focused on Gülenists, especially after the 2016 coup attempt, he deliberately kept his discourse as wide as possible to include all dissidents living abroad (Freedom House Report 2021). In the storyline, the pro-government Turkish immigrant communities are generally labelled as “defender”, “protector”, and “representative” (Adar 2019) of

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the Muslim masses (Adar and Yenigün 2019), Turkish culture and Sunni Islam, of which Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan is portrayed as the “leader of the Ummah” and the “protector of Turkish Nation” (Rikar 2019). Through this characterization, a strong identification between the audience and the hero (reis ) has appeared. Alp Kenan Dereci, who was one of the attackers against a coalition of Armenian–American and Kurdish–American protestors during Erdo˘gan’s visit to Washington DC, stated “we love our president very much. It is an honor for us to see and support him” (The New York Times 2017). To build likability in the eyes of its audience, Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlüt Çavu¸so˘glu, paid a visit to two arrested attackers, Sinan Narin and Eyüp Yıldırım, in Washington DC, and tweeted pictures with the caption “I delivered them our nation’s love and greetings” (milletimizin sevgisini, selamlarini ilettim) (Twitter. @MevlutCavusoglu 2017), making these acts as noble ones, the right thing to do. This is a great example of how the speech act is different transnationally. While domestically it would suffice for the audience to accept the right to use force against any protestors, the actual use of force would be carried out by the government, like the police, the military, or the intelligence (Shipoli 2018). On the other hand, transnationally, the speech act is focused on stories of glorification and the responsibility of the audience to carry those acts, such as attacking protestors in Washington DC, New York, Brussels, or anywhere else. Those acts are then glorified and awarded with visits by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, honourable mentions in the media or in the speeches by the head of state, and other rewards to family members or them personally. The effect of the transnational securitization starts with the call for action. A striking example of significant implications of the Erdo˘gan regime’s securitization discourse is a letter written by the AFIC (The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils) President, Dr. Rateb Jneid, addressing Turkey’s Erdo˘gan to request a meeting in their pre-planned trip to Turkey, to discuss “a strategy to work together to dismantle and weaken the local Gülenist scourge in Australia”, a strategy that could be applied anywhere in the world, because for him “a strong and advanced Turkey means a strong a vibrant Muslim world” (AFIC Letter 2017). Similar examples of smear campaigns against Erdo˘gan’s domestic rivals have happened in Germany (Wohl-Immel 2017), Denmark (Guardian, 2016c), and elsewhere.

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However, the effect of this securitization is not limited to smear campaigns, profiling, and spying. Linking various opposition groups like Alevis, Gülenists, Leftists, and Kurds with the PKK (a terrorist designated group in the West) has helped the regime to successfully distance its electorate base from opposition groups in the Western countries. Upon criticizing the North Rhine-Westphalia government agreement on religious education with DTIB, the Kurdish politician Berivan Aymaz was assaulted and threatened from pro-regime circles (DW 2021b). Hilal Nesin, a Turkish Artist who lives abroad, tweeted that “Devlet Bahçeli is a murderer” (@hilalnesin, July 5, 2021). Soon after, a Turkish nationalist fan of Devlet Bahçeli @_Murat_Bora offensively threatened Hilal Nesin that “she must not leave her house, no matter where she is in, he will find her” (@_Murat_Bora, July 9, 2021). During the evening of 15 July 2016, a group of people attacked a Gülen-affiliated Milad Intercultural Center in Italy. They set on fire the centre’s building (Gregori and Gasparini 2016). 150 pro-regime supporters attacked a youth centre in Germany upon its ties to the Gülen Movement, smashing the windows, and damaging the building (Guardian 2016b). In Beringen, Belgium, 500–600 Turkish pro-government diaspora members descended into Gülenists’ building used for meetings and tried to set them on fire (Guardian 2016a). In France, a bevy of people following the coup attempt gathered in Beziers. On a video, they were shouting and threatening Gülenists with “hanging” and voicing their support for President Erdo˘gan (Facebook 2016). In Netherlands, a cultural centre which belongs to the Gülen Movement affiliated Nida Foundation in Rotterdam was lashed with stones for two nights (Guardian 2016b). In Denmark, a notice of the Turkish General Directorate of Security (Emniyet Genel Müdürlü˘gü) was circulated among pro-regime diaspora networks. On that notice, Turkish security officials call the Turkish diaspora networks to act and tip-off all supporters and sympathizers of the Gülenists. The notice asks for any social media post account details, links, or screenshots. In the United Kingdom, a threatening text message was sent to private mobile numbers: “May God curse Fethullah and his bastard followers in the army that have done this to our country. May God open the eyes of [the movements] sincere followers. Amen. From, the Angel of Death for Fethullah [that will take his life], Special Forces and Operations, UK for Turkey’s National Intelligence Service”.

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While some might seem “(cyber)bullying” threats, others have caught the attention of European law enforcement, and some more violent incidents have happened. Turkey-origin European politicians, who have been labelled as ‘traitors’ with ‘spoiled blood’ by Erdo˘gan, have been feeling threatened by the AKP regime’s long-hand in Europe. In Austria, Green Party member Berivan Aslan upon a “Turkish state related assassination plan” stayed in her home during the election campaign in Austria (DW 2020). Similarly, in Belgium, minister Zuhal Demir had received threatening e-mails following her harsh criticism against Turkey’s Diyanet’s mosques by calling them “Erdogan’s long arms” and “the Erdogan regime’s antennas” (Knack 2020). Previously, two MIT agents, serving as Turkish diplomats, were caught in Switzerland as part of a plot to kidnap a Swiss-Turkish businessman and bring him to Turkey for being associated with the Gülen movement (Diken 2018). A few years ago, German and European authorities were alarmed after a hitlist of Turkish dissident journalists was uncovered, where names of the well-known Turkish journalists in exile were listed as part of a hitlist by the Turkish intelligence and people close to the regime. Around 50 outspoken critics of the Erdo˘gan regime were visited by police officers in the morning of 16 July 2021, to be informed that a much-rumoured list of journalists targeted for violence is uncovered. The first visits came from the German police who gave the journalists contact details in case of danger, as well as more information about the officers overseeing the investigation (VOA 2021). In Berlin, Birgün Daily journalist Erk Acarer was attacked with fists and knives in his apartment in July 2021 (DW 2021a). Exiled Turkish journalist Can Dündar considered this attack as a “direct message” to Germany from Erdo˘gan that “dissident journalists can even be targeted and attacked in Berlin” (Can Dündar on Twitter, July 7, 2021). A violent attack against a journalist abroad is a clear example of a ‘call for action’ in a transnationally securitized issue. According to Cem Özdemir, German Minister of Food and Agriculture, the main motivation behind this attack is probably due to Acarer’s investigation over mafia boss Sedat Peker’s revelation of Turkey’s Islamists’ involvement in drug and arms trafficking. Özdemir also stated that “this attack intended to spread fear and horror among the exiles and all opposition groups to the ultra-nationalist, Islamist and mafia regime in Ankara” (Orde 2021). German-Turkish European box champion, Unsal Arik, was twice attacked by AKP supporters in Germany, because of his outspoken criticism of Erdo˘gan and the AKP (Duvar 2021). In 2020,

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after he criticized Diyanet and Erdo˘gan, Arik found a bullet in his window shield. After that his car tires were cut with the knife, and in December 2020 he was physically attacked and stabbed with a knife by several Erdo˘gan supporters (Duvar 2021). Previously, exiled Turkish journalist Abdullah Bozkurt was another victim of the regime’s critics living abroad. Abdullah Bozkurt is the executive director of Nordic Monitor website which publishes articles on Turkish politics and intelligence activities (CPJ 2020; COE 2020). Journalist Basri Do˘gan received death threats on social media platforms from F. Topal, who is one of the AKP supporters in the Netherlands. Basri Do˘gan sued F. Topal due to his threats, who was found guilty by the court and fined (TR7/24 2020). These are few of the examples that have elevated to actual violence and were confirmed by relevant authorities in the respective countries. At least a dozen of the journalists and political critics in this list were physically assaulted by unknown attackers, such as the above mentioned, and most recently Ahmet Donmez in Stockholm (CPJ 2022). Firstly, the dissident journalists are threatened online, labelled and targeted, and when they don’t stop creating content against the government narrative, they are then followed by journalists of government-owned media and pictures and videos of their addresses, houses, families, and workplaces are spread online through media accounts with many followers, and government online trolls. If they were not intimidated and didn’t stop producing content, then the regime supporters with close ties to the government physically attacked them in front of their houses or workplaces, which were disclosed through social media before. Some content creators were intimidated and stopped producing at different levels of this targeting, including pressures from their families and fear that their families and friends can also be targeted. But some journalists, like Acarer and Donmez, did not stop and then they were physically attacked. Of particular interest is that their attacks are filmed by the attackers and in a matter of minutes they are spread in the government-backed social media accounts, tagging other critics, and threatening them with what happens if they don’t stop. Both Acarer’s and Donmez’s videos of lynching were leaked online before they were able to call the ambulance. The posts were promoted as a success of “national heroes” against “national traitors” and “FETO supporters” who were “discharged as trash” (Kronos 2022). Social media trolls then use these particular cases as evidence of what happens if critics don’t stop criticizing Turkey, which means of criticizing the regime. It is particularly interesting that the day

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that Ahmet Donmez was attacked, an army of trolls have complained about him and his content (Twitter.Donmez 2022) in big numbers and they were able to close his Twitter account of around 150,00 followers, his Instagram account, as well as his YouTube channel’s reach to the Turkish audience. After the attack, Donmez was in coma and unable to reply to any inquiries from the big tech companies. Using photoshopped documents, they were able to suspend his Twitter account by acting in his name and restrict other social media accounts. They are ready to do anything to silence any voices against the regime. The transnational securitization of Turkish domestic issues in the West is a well-known fact already. That has been confirmed by reports from international organizations, but it has also been confirmed by relevant authorities as they unveiled plots against dissidents, by violent attacks that actually took place, as well as court cases that were resolved and sentences given. What makes this type of securitization special is that the regime was involved transnationally through its secret service, diplomatic chore, government-funded organizations, as well as supporters in the diaspora. Moreover, transnational supporters of the regime were convinced to not only justify the use of extraordinary means by the Turkish authorities, but to actually act upon these securitization speeches. These securitization speeches were romanticized through storytelling where they could use past traumas and conspiracy theories to make the case, and then call them to action. These actions are usually illegal. They include profiling, intimidation, and violence. Transnational securitization as in case of the AKP regime can quickly escalate to a national security concern for many countries that host supporters and dissidents. Thus, it becomes a security concern as in the case of a hitlist of government critical journalists in Europe. And this is the biggest effect of transnational securitization. As we said before, this is an interesting study for another project, so we suffice in leaving it here to serve the purpose of laying down the extent of securitization in Turkish politics. Another good extension of this study would be to analyse other cases and see if and how they use transnational securitization. While we accept the case of the Turkish AKP is very unique, because of its diaspora groups, because of the domestic prosecution of a vast majority of ethnic, religious, and sectarian groups, and because of its strategical relations with the West that go back a century ago. This and other cases of transnational reach of security agenda would enrich this field and would be a good continuation of this study.

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Index

0–9 17–25 December, 50, 88, 89, 94, 155, 159 28 February 1997 Coup, 87 9/11, 25, 27, 50 A Abdulhamid II, 54 Academia, 18 Academics for Peace, 73 Acarer, Erk, 165, 166 Activists, 18 Adam, Prophet, 75 Afghanistan, 20, 24 AFIC (The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils), 163 Africa, 23 Agenda, 17, 21, 27 Agents, 22 A Haber, 101 Ahmet, Cubbeli, 102 Akar, Hulusi, 105 Aksener, Meral, 72 Aksu, Sezen, 75

Ala, Efkan, 96 Alaranta, Toni, 38, 41 Alawites, 145 Albanians, 97 Albayrak, Berat, 70 Alevi community, 138, 140 Alevi issue, 117 Alevi Kurds, 136 Alevi Opening, 89, 133, 134, 139, 141 Aleviphobia, 148 Alevi revolt, 143 Alevis, 2, 5, 8, 9, 48, 49, 57, 133–149, 159, 164 Alevism, 136, 141, 142, 145, 146, 149 Alevism without Ali, 144, 146, 148 Alevi villages, 138, 140 Ali, 144, 145 Allied powers, 43–45 Alpay, Sahin, ¸ 77 Alp Kenan Dereci, 163 Altan, Ahmet, 77 Altan, Mehmet, 77

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 I. Yilmaz et al., Securitization and Authoritarianism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0506-5

173

174

INDEX

Altun, Fahrettin, 76 Ambivalent Westernism, 41 America, 20, 23, 125 Anatolia, 41–43, 45 Animosities, 45 Ankara, 92 Antiblack, 25 Anti-Western, 46, 55, 63 Anxiety(ies), 2, 8, 38, 39, 42, 43, 54, 56 Arab-Israeli war, 23 Arik, Unsal, 165, 166 Armenia, 24 Armenian/Armenians, 138, 145 Asia, 23 Aslan, Berivan, 165 Assassins, 92, 93 Atalay, Besir, 70 Ataturk, 54 Atatürkists, 138 Audience(s), 6, 7, 15–22, 29, 135 Austin, Jonathan Luke, 20, 28 Australia, 23 Austria, 165 Authoritarian, 69 Authoritarianism, 1, 2, 24, 37, 40, 50, 51, 127, 158 Authoritarian survival, 1, 15 Authority, 19, 20, 28 Aydinlik, 101, 102, 106 Aygun, Huseyin, 74 Aymaz, Berivan, 164 Azerbaijan, 24

B Babacan, Ali, 104–106, 109 Bagis, Egemen, 95 Bahceli, 53, 70, 73 Bahçeli, Devlet, 156, 164 Balkans, 24, 38, 41, 45, 97, 98 Baltics, 27

Balyoz, 139 Balzacq, T., 15, 17–22 Baykal, Deniz, 88, 90 Belgium, 164, 165 Berkin Elvan, 144 Betrayal, 39, 56 Blasphemy, 9 Blood, 56 Bogazici, 68, 69 Bosnians, 97 Bozdag, Bekir, 74, 75, 95 Bozkurt, Abdullah, 166 Brexit, 27 British, 43, 44 Brussels, 124, 163 Brutal, 40, 51 Building blocks, 17, 18, 21 Bulgaria, 43 Bureaucrats, 18 Buzan, B., 15–17, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28

C Cagaptay, 135, 136 Caglayan, Zafer, 95 Caliph, 99 Caliphate, 99, 100 Canada, 27 Caucasus, 39, 41, 45 Cavusoglu, Mevlut, 95, 97, 163 Cem houses, 137, 142 Central Asia, 136 Chavez, 160 China, 24 Chosen glories, 44 Chosen trauma, 44, 45 CHP, 64–66, 68, 70–76, 88, 90, 92, 98, 105 Christian/Christians, 134–136 CIA, 156 Citizen enemies, 39 Civilization, 38, 43

INDEX

Civilizationist, 25 Civil war, 7 Clientelism, 157 Climate change, 29 Cold War, 49, 50 Collective victimhood, 39 Colombia, 117 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), 135 Communist, 49 Conspiracy theories, 2, 3, 9, 15, 18, 21, 22, 156, 157, 160, 167 Constitutional Court, 107, 108, 155 Co-optation, 1, 3–5, 7, 120, 121, 126, 127 Copenhagen School, 25 Counter-securitization, 18, 23 Coup, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55–57, 156, 159, 162, 164 COVID-19, 28, 102, 161 Crimea, 38, 41 Croats, 97 Crusader, 42, 54 Crusader-Christians, 76 Culture of securitization, 9 Cumhuriyet.Erdo˘gan, 68, 70, 76, 77 Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP), 140, 142–145, 147

D Dag, Hamza, 105 Darwinist, 47 Davutoglu, Ahmet, 87, 100, 103, 105 Deepfake, 22 Deep state, 138, 139 Demirta¸s, Selahattin, 119, 123, 159 Demir, Zuhal, 156, 157, 165 Democratic Opening, 139, 141, 148 Derrida, 28 Dersim Massacre, 136, 141 Desecuritization, 5, 7, 126, 134

175

Desired citizens, 134, 136 Deterrence, 15, 21 DHKP-C, 68 Diaspora, 162, 164, 167 Diaspora members, 162, 164 Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), 134, 135, 137, 141, 142, 147, 149 Discrimination, 17 Diyanet, 50, 53, 66, 67, 75, 77, 98, 99, 101, 102 Diyarbakir, 67 Do˘gan, Basri, 166 Dolmabahce Palace, 119 Donmez, Ahmet, 166, 167 Dündar, Can, 78

E Eastern Question, 42 Ebola, 29 Economics, 16, 29 Economy, 26, 28 Edirne, 43, 92 Egypt, 55 Eliacik, Ihsan, 108 Elites, 37, 41–43, 47, 50, 57 Emergency, 17 Enemy, 134, 148 Energy politics, 29 Erbakan, Necmettin, 49 Erdo˘ganism, 50, 54 Erdo˘ganist(s), 54–57, 78, 133, 135, 140 Erdogan’s long arms, 165 Ergenekon, 88, 89, 139 Erzurum, 92 Ethiopia, 24 Ethnic cleansing, 38, 41 Ethnic minorities, 117 Euro, 69 Eurocentric, 16, 22

176

INDEX

Europe, 23–25, 42, 47, 125, 162, 165, 167 European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), 67, 68 European Union (EU), 25, 27, 39, 46, 67, 117, 119, 120, 134, 138–140, 148 Existential threats, 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 39, 40, 48, 55, 56 Experts, 18, 27 Extra-legal measures, 6 Extraordinary means, 16, 18, 19, 28, 29 Extraordinary measures, 1, 47 F Fear, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 15, 18, 22, 25, 27, 37–39, 41–43, 45, 46, 54–56, 156–158, 160, 161, 165, 166 Fear of loss of territory, 38 Felicity Party (SP), 71 FETO, 88, 90, 96–98, 100–104, 106–109 First World War, 135 Floyd, R., 18–20, 158 Football, 37 Forced migration, 42 Foreign powers, 2, 9 French, 44 Functional actors, 2, 6, 15, 18 Fundamentalism, 138 Furkan Foundation, 87, 100–104, 109 Furkan Vakfı, 100 Furkan Vakfi, 9 G Games, 39 Gergerlioglu, Omer Faruk, 107, 108 German president, 146 Germany, 24, 27, 146

Gezi, 133, 143–145 Gezi Park, 90, 108 Gezi protests, 50–52, 55, 57, 63, 66–69, 73, 88, 89, 108, 109, 119, 134, 141, 143, 148, 155, 159 Giddens, Anthony, 40 Good Party (IYI), 71 Grand National Assembly of Turkey, 108 Great Powers, 2, 8, 39, 42, 45, 117 Greeks, 44, 49, 135 Green Party, 165 Grievances, 7 Gul, Abdullah, 54, 104–106, 109 Gulen, Fethullah, 88, 90, 92, 93, 100, 104 Gülenist(s), 8, 52, 55, 70, 78, 87, 89, 90, 92, 93, 96–100, 102, 107, 109, 134, 157–159, 162–164 Gülen Movement (GM), 9, 52, 54, 87, 94, 119 Gul, Hayrunnisa, 54 Gürsel, Kadri, 78

H Hanafi, 47 Hansen, L., 16, 25, 26, 28 Hashashi, 92, 93 Hatay, 46 HDP, 52, 92, 102, 107, 108, 157–160 HDP voters, 119, 120, 123 Healthcare, 16, 26 Heretic, 99, 108 High-politics, 1 Historical traumas, 44 Hittites, 43 Hizb-ut Tahrir, 24 Homeland Party, 55 Homogenization, 135

INDEX

Homo LASTus, 136 Howell, A., 22, 25, 26 Humiliations, 43, 45, 47 Hungary, 27

177

Judges, 89, 92–94, 96, 103 Judiciary, 91, 94, 107, 109, 155, 156

I Identity crisis, 44 Iftar, 141 Ilıcak, Nazlı, 77 Imams, 138 IMF, 105, 106 Immigrants, 7 Indonesia, 24 Insecurities, 2, 6, 8, 9, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 54–56 Internal betrayal, 39 Internal enemies, 8 Internal existential threats, 39 International level, 22 International relations, 16, 26 International system, 38, 41 Iraq, 25, 119, 121 Isik, Fikri, 70, 95 Islam, 27, 28 Islamism, 87, 138 Islamist movements, 134, 138 Islamist(s), 5, 8, 9, 39, 43, 48, 49, 51, 54, 55, 63–65, 71, 79, 117, 119, 126, 134–136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 144, 155, 159, 165 Islamophobia, 28 Israel, 23 Istanbul, 43, 49, 55, 92, 105 Italians, 44

K Kaftancioglu, 68 Kalin, Ibrahim, 105 Kavala, Osman, 67–69, 78 Kemalism, 54, 87 Kemalist, 133, 135–140, 148 Kemalist habitus, 39 Kemalist republic, 41 Kemalists, 8, 9, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 49, 50, 53–55, 57, 63–66, 69, 74, 75, 77, 78 Kilic, Akif Cagatay, 96 Kılıçdaro˘glu, Kemal, 68, 70, 72, 76, 90, 143, 145, 147 King, 105 Kisakurek, Necip Fazil, 63 Konya, 92 Kurdish, 117–127 Kurdish insurgencies, 117 Kurdish issue, 159, 160 Kurdish opening, 123 Kurdish Question, 88 Kurdistan, 107 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), 67, 68, 70–74, 77, 78, 88, 101–103, 106–108, 118–121, 123, 124, 157, 159, 160, 164 Kurds, 2, 5, 9, 117–123, 125, 127, 134–136, 138, 157–159, 164 Kurtulmus, Numan, 69 Kuytul, Alparslan, 101, 102

J Japan, 24 Jewish, 23 Jews, 134, 136 Jihad, 94 Jneid, Rateb, 163

L Lawrence of Arabia, 93 Lawrence of Turkey, 108 Lebanon, 23, 24 Leftists, 5, 9, 65, 66, 69, 74, 75, 77, 78, 136, 142, 164

178

INDEX

Legitimacy, 1, 3, 7 Leonard, S., 17, 21 Level of analysis, 22 LGBT, 68, 75, 76 Liberalism, 29 The Little Mermaid, 26

M Macrosecuritization, 22 Marginalization, 17 Marmara, Mavi, 88 Marmara University, 93, 104 Massacres, 42 Mecca, 103 Media, 18, 22, 23 Medina, 103 Messianic, 135 Methodological white, 25 MHP, 7, 53, 55, 70–72, 92, 103, 105–107, 120, 125–127 MI6, 156 Middle Easterners, 161 Migration, 16, 26, 27 Military, 17, 28, 42, 43, 49, 135, 137, 138 Military coup, 3 Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP), 156–160 Minorities, 7, 8, 39, 42, 43, 45, 47–49 Misinformation, 27 Mortification (Zillet) Coalition, 71 Mosad, 156 MOSSAD, 93 Muhammed, 28 Muharram, 141 Muslim Brotherhood, 55 Muslim Democrats, 87 Muslimhood, 54 Muslim nationalism, 133, 139, 148, 155

Muslims, 28 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 134 N Narin, Sinan, 163 National Intelligence Organization, 92 National Outlook Movement (NOM), 49 National security, 69–71, 73 Nation-building, 37, 42, 134, 138, 141 Nation state(s), 23, 27, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48 NATO, 27, 39 Neo-Crusaders, 76 Neo-Nazis, 76 Neo-Zionists, 76 Nesin, Hilal, 164 New York, 163 New Zealand, 76 Non-Muslim, 8, 39, 42, 45, 47–49, 161 Non-Sunni, 161 Norway, 24 Nostalgia, 37 O Obama, 124 Ocalan, 160 Ocalan, Abdullah, 119 Ontological insecurity, 15, 18, 40 Ontological security, 22, 24 Opposition, 1, 3–5, 9, 16, 18, 27, 37, 40, 51–53, 56, 118, 121, 123–125, 127, 159–162, 164, 165 Orwellian fashion, 159 Ottoman elite, 42, 44 Ottoman Empire, 2, 38, 39, 45, 46, 54, 117, 125, 135 Ottoman heartlands, 39

INDEX

Ottomans, 38, 40–45, 47, 54, 94, 100 Özdemir, Cem, 165 Ozpek, B.B., 117, 118, 120, 122, 123, 127 Öztürk, Sebahattin, 147

P Palestinians, 23 Peker, Sedat, 165 Pennsylvania, 90, 92, 93, 95, 97 Performative act, 19 Pious generation, 140 Plots, 39, 49 Police, 143, 147 Political culture, 37, 42, 46 Political elite, 1, 6, 8 Political science, 26 Popular art, 37 Populism, 63, 64, 78 Populist, 5, 27, 63–65 Presidency of Religious Affairs, 48, 98 Presidential system, 156, 157, 159 Prestige, 40 Pride March, 76 Pro-Greek, 108 Propaganda, 21 Prosecutors, 88, 89, 92–94, 96, 99, 103

Q Queen, 105, 106 Qur’an, 75 Qur’an schools, 100

R Racist, 22, 25, 26 Rally around the flag, 55 Realism, 29 Referendum, 155, 156, 158, 159

179

Referent object, 1, 6, 16–18, 23, 37 Reflexivity, 22 Regime change, 156, 157, 159 Regime of practices, 20 Religion, 16, 26–28, 65, 66, 74, 75, 78 Repression, 1, 3, 16 Republican Alliance, 71 Republic of Turkey, 40, 56 Resecuritization, 2 Resentment, 65 Resilience, 16 Respect, 40, 41 Revolts, 117 Reyhanlı, 143 Richter-Montpetit, M., 22, 25, 26 Right-wing, 63 Roma, 24 Russia, 20, 24, 27, 39, 160 Russian Empire, 41 Russo-Turkish War, 41 Ruzicka, J., 21 Rwanda, 24

S Sabah, 102, 106, 108 Sabah, Daily, 76 Sabbah, Hassan, 93 Safak, Yeni, 102, 108 Savage, 40 Schmitt, 28 Science, 26, 29 Secular elite, 65, 78 Secularism, 133, 134, 136, 138, 148 Secularist(s), 47, 48, 53, 56, 63 Secular nationalists, 135 Securitization, 1, 5, 24, 57, 63, 117, 118, 120, 121, 125, 126, 133–135, 137, 142, 145, 147, 148 Securitization culture, 37

180

INDEX

Securitization move, 21, 22 Securitizing actors, 6, 9, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 28 Security Dialogue, 25 Sehir University, 104 Self-esteem, 40 Sentop, Mustafa, 95 Serbs, 97 Sèvres Syndrome, 43, 46 Sèvres Treaty, 2, 43 Shi’a, 145 Shipoli, E., 15, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27 Siege mentality, 2, 8, 44, 46, 47 Significant other(s), 37, 40 Sık, ¸ Ahmet, 78 Sledgehammer, 88, 89 Slovakia, 27 Social construction of crisis, 21 Socialists, 136 Soros, George, 67, 69, 78 South Asia, 24 Soylu, Suleyman, 68, 75, 76, 146 Speech act, 1, 7, 15–18, 20, 22, 25, 27, 28 Sri Lanka, 117 State of Emergency, 24 Suba¸si, Necdet, 142 Sufi, 48 Sumerians, 43 Sunni, 24, 140 Sunni-Hanafi Islam, 137 Sunni Islam, 47, 134, 137, 140, 144 Sunni-Turk, 133, 148 Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors, 155 Supreme Court, 53 Surveillance, 21 Sweat , 56 Syria, 145 Syrian refugees, 23, 24 Systematic level, 22

T Taboo, 17 Taksim, 66 Terrorism, 7 Terrorist organizations, 117 Terrorists, 66–74, 76, 78 Traitors, 9, 134, 144, 147, 156, 165 Transnational, 162, 163, 167 Transnational securitization, 162, 163, 165, 167 Traps, 39, 56 Trauma(s), 2, 5, 15, 39, 42–44, 46, 47, 55, 156, 157, 160, 167 Treaty of Karlowitz, 41 Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, 38, 41 Treaty of Lausanne, 45 Treaty of Sevres, 46 Trump, Donald, 23, 161 Turkification, 8, 117, 135 Turkish educational system, 44 Turkish flag, 71 Turkish General Directorate of Security, 164 Turkish identity, 43 Turkish Islam, 50 Turkish–Islam synthesis, 137 Turkish lira, 69 Turkish nationalism, 134, 135, 137 Turkish national psyche, 38, 39 Turkishness, 47 Turkish Parliament, 67, 68 Turkish Republic, 2, 8 Türköne, Mümtazer, 77 Turks, 42, 43, 46, 47, 57 TUSIAD, 70, 75 TV series, 54

U Ulema, 137 Ummah, 54, 156, 162 Uncivilized, 40

INDEX

Union of International Democrats (UID), 162 United Kingdom (UK), 27, 106 United States (US), 20, 23–25, 27, 50, 67, 161 US dollar, 69 Uzbekistan, 24 V Venezuela, 160 Victimhood, 39, 45, 47, 49, 50 Vindictiveness, 65 Violent rebellion, 3 Volkan, Vamık, 43, 44 W Waever, O., 15–17, 21, 22, 25, 26 War of Independence, 43, 44, 54 War on terror, 50 Washington DC, 163 Welfare Party, 54 Weltanschauung, 64 Wendt, Alexander, 40 West, the, 27, 28, 38–41, 46, 54, 55, 65, 78, 162, 164, 167 Western civilization, 38, 41, 46 Westernism, 41

181

Westernization, 38, 40, 134, 137 Western powers, 41–47, 156, 160 Western world, 38 White supremacy, 20 White Turks, 9, 64–67, 69, 70, 74, 75, 77, 78 Witch-hunt, 52, 93, 98 World War I, 41, 45 World War II, 48 X Xinjiang, 24 Y Yıldırım, Eyüp, 163 Yazici, Hayati, 98 Yeni Akit, 102, 106, 108 Yenikapı, 158 Young Turk(s), 47, 135 Yugoslavia, 24 Yuksekdag, Figen, 159 Z Zarrab, Reza, 91 Zeybekci, Nihat, 96 Zionist(s), 54, 156