The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics 9780190064891, 0190064897

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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

T U R K I SH P OL I T IC S

The Oxford Handbook of

TURKISH POLITICS Edited by

GÜNEŞ MURAT TEZCÜR

1

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021039938 ISBN 978–​0–​19–​006489–​1 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190064891/001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Marquis, Canada

Dört Mevsim’e (To Four Seasons)

Contents

About the Editor Contributors Acknowledgments Foreword Daron Acemoğlu 1. The Study of Politics in Turkey: New Horizons and Perennial Pitfalls Güneş Murat Tezcür

xi xiii xv xvii 1

PA RT I :   P OL I T IC A L R E G I M E 2. Democratization Theories and Turkey Ekrem Karakoç

29

3. Ruling Ideologies in Modern Turkey Kerem Öktem

53

4. Constitutionalism in Turkey Aslı Ü. Bâlİ

75

5. Civil–​Military Relations and the Demise of Turkish Democracy Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek

97

6. Capturing Secularism in Turkey: The Ease of Comparison Murat Akan

117

PA RT I I :   P OL I T IC A L E C ON OM Y 7. The Political Economy of Turkey since the End of World War II Şevket Pamuk

141

8. Neoliberal Politics in Turkey Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra

159

viii   Contents

9. The Politics of Welfare in Turkey Erdem Yörük

187

10. The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey: A Vicious Cycle Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel

205

11. The Politics of Energy in Turkey: Running Engines on Geopolitical, Discursive, and Coercive Power Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın

225

12. The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey: Diverse Actors, Competing Frames, and Uneven Policies Volkan Yılmaz

249

PA RT I I I :   L E A DE R S , PA RT I E S , A N D VOT E R S 13. Populism in Turkey: Historical and Contemporary Patterns Yüksel Taşkın

275

14. Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in Turkey Murat Somer

295

15. Economic Voting during the AKP Era in Turkey S. Erdem Aytaç

319

16. Party Organizations in Turkey and Their Consequences for Democracy Melis G. Laebens 17. The Evolution of Conventional Political Participation in Turkey Ersin Kalaycıoğlu

341 363

PA RT I V:   P OL I T IC S OF I DE N T I T Y 18. Symbolic Politics and Contention in the Turkish Republic Senem Aslan

387

19. Islamist Activism in Turkey Menderes Çınar

407

20. The Kurdish Movement in Turkey: Understanding Everyday Perceptions and Experiences Dilan Okcuoglu

431

Contents   ix

21. The Transnational Mobilization of the Alevis of Turkey: From Invisibility to the Struggle for Equality Ceren Lord

455

22. Politics of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Turkey: Limits and Prospects of Populism Fatih Resul Kılınç and Şule Toktaş

481

PA RT V:   T U R K E Y A N D T H E WOR L D 23. A Theoretical Account of Turkish Foreign Policy under the AKP Tarık Oğuzlu

503

24. US–​Turkey Relations since World War II: From Alliance to Transactionalism Serhat Güvenç and Solİ Özel

523

25. Turkey and Europe: Historical Asynchronicities and Perceptual Asymmetries Hakan Yılmaz

545

26. Turkey’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East: An Identity Perspective Lisel Hintz 27. Turkey and Russia: Historical Patterns and Contemporary Trends in Bilateral Relations Evren Balta and Mİtat Çelİkpala

563

585

PA RT V I :   C I V I L S O C I E T Y A N D AC T I V I SM 28. Citizenship and Protest Behavior in Turkey Ayhan Kaya

607

29. Gender Politics and the Struggle for Equality in Turkey Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat

627

30. Human Rights Organizations in Turkey Başak Çalı

649

31. Truth, Justice, and Commemoration Initiatives in Turkey Onur Bakiner

669

32. The Politics of Media in Turkey: Chronicle of a Stillborn Media System 689 Sarphan Uzunoğlu

x   Contents

PA RT V I I :   P OL I T IC S OF   A RT 33. The AKP’s Rhetoric of Rule in Turkey: Political Melodramas of Conspiracy from “Ergenekon” to “Mastermind” Erdağ Göknar

711

34. The Transformation of Political Cinema in Turkey since the 1960s: A Change of Discourse Zeynep Çetİn-​Erus and M. Elİf Demoğlu

733

35. Political Music in Turkey: The Birth and Diversification of Dissident and Conformist Music (1920–​2000) Mustafa Avcı

751

Index

771

About the Editor

güneş murat tezcür (PhD, University of Michigan, 2005) is the Director the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs (SPSIA) at the University of Central Florida (UCF). He is also the Jalal Talabani Endowed Chair and Professor at SPSIA. He is a social scientist studying political violence, religious politics, democratization, and human security with a focus on Iranian, Kurdish, and Turkish human geography. He has authored more than two dozen scholarly articles that have appeared in journals such as American Political Science Review, Comparative Politics, Development and Change, Journal of Peace Research, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Perspectives on Politics, Politics and Gender, Politics of Religion. He is also the author of Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey (University of Texas Press, 2010) and the editor of several books and volumes including Kurds and Yezidis in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2021). His activities have been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Global Religion Research Initiative, and the International Research & Exchanges Board. More information about his scholarship is available at www.tezcur.org.

Contributors

Daron Acemoğlu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Fikret Adaman, Boğaziçi University Murat Akan, Boğaziçi University; Institut d’études avancées de Paris Bengi Akbulut, Concordia University Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, University of Connecticut Murat Arsel, Erasmus University Rotterdam Senem Aslan, Bates College Mustafa Avcı, Altınbaş University Cem İskender Aydın, Boğaziçi University S. Erdem Aytaç, Koç University Onur Bakiner, Seattle University Aslı Ü. Bâli, University of California, Los Angeles Evren Balta, Özyeğin University; Istanbul Policy Center Başak Çalı, Hertie School of Governance Mitat Çelikpala, Kadir Has University Zeynep Çetin-​Erus, Marmara University Menderes Çınar, Başkent University M. Elif Demoğlu, Marmara University Sinan Erensü, Boğaziçi University Erdağ Göknar, Duke University Serhat Güvenç, Kadir Has University Lisel Hintz, Johns Hopkins University Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Sabancı University

xiv   Contributors Ekrem Karakoç, Binghamton University Ayhan Kaya, Istanbul Bilgi University Fatih Resul Kılınç, Kadir Has University Melis G. Laebens, University of Oxford Ceren Lord, University of Oxford Yahya M. Madra, Drew University Tarık Oğuzlu, Antalya Bilim University Dilan Okcuoglu, American University Kerem Öktem, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice Soli Özel, Kadir Has University Begüm Özkaynak, Boğaziçi University Burak Bilgehan Özpek, TOBB University of Economics and Technology Şevket Pamuk, Boğaziçi University Nil S. Satana, University of Maryland Murat Somer, Koç University Yüksel Taşkın, Professor and independent scholar Güneş Murat Tezcür, University of Central Florida Şule Toktaş, Turkish National Police Academy Ethemcan Turhan, University of Groningen Sarphan Uzunoğlu, Kadir Has University Hakan Yılmaz, Boğaziçi University Volkan Yılmaz, Dublin City University Erdem Yörük, Koç University; University of Oxford

Acknowledgments

The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics reflects the collective wisdom of dozens of scholars who provide fresh and sophisticated perspectives about a country that will soon reach its republican centennial. As a truly collaborative enterprise, the Handbook includes thirty-​five chapters and a foreword written by forty-​six leading and rising scholars with diverse backgrounds, professional training, and life experiences covering many different aspects of Turkish politics. A majority of the authors are based in Turkey, a pattern reflecting the resiliency of Turkish academia and social sciences in the face of relentless attacks and threats, especially since 2016. At the same time, transnational networks between Turkish and Western higher education institutions have become much denser in the twenty-​first century, generating unprecedented scholarly synergy that is captured in the pages of this Handbook. My editorial style prioritizes a broader understanding of politics focusing on substantive questions concerning how societal affairs are governed in Turkey and beyond. I believe this style makes the Handbook unique and sets it apart from other general studies of Turkish politics. Accordingly, while many contributions to this Handbook are directly informed by the discipline of political science, others reflect a more interdisciplinary approach utilizing insights from anthropology, the arts, communication, cultural studies, economics, history, and sociology. I believe this deliberate hybrid orientation enriches the analyses and suggests new areas of research that will be pursued by a younger generation of scholars. It is also my hope that a wide range of readers, from scholarly experts to members of the public curious about the country, will find that the pages of this Handbook provide valuable insights, inspire creative thoughts, and generate original knowledge about Turkish politics. Readers interested in a variety of salient global topics including democratization, foreign policy activism, human rights, neoliberalism, polarization, politics of identity, populism, post-​truth politics, and violence will find that many chapters cover such topics in the Turkish context. While I have designed the Handbook to be as comprehensive as possible, there is only so much we could cover in a single volume. It is solely my responsibility if readers find certain themes underexplored. First and foremost, I would like to thank each and every one of our contributors whose scholarship set a very high bar in the study of Turkish politics. Their willingness to engage with my comments and go through several rounds of revisions is much very appreciated. It was my distinct pleasure to work with such a distinguished and resourceful group of scholars. I learned a lot from them and gained a deeper understanding of my country of origin.

xvi   Acknowledgments While the methodological orientation and epistemological approaches pursued by the authors exhibit great diversity, there is also a strong consensus about the dire straits Turkish democracy has found itself in recently. With its many troubles, disillusionments, and false promises, studying Turkish politics remains a lifelong passion for all of us. The contributors bring not only their unprecedented expertise but also their dedication to a country and its people. Molly Balikov, senior editor at Oxford University Press, has been an enthusiastic supporter of this project since I first approached her with a blueprint in the summer of 2018. Her support was indispensable for the successful completion of the Handbook. Engaging and thoughtful comments from three anonymous reviewers helped me both refine and expand the composition of the Handbook. Alyssa Callan, associate editor at Oxford University Press, ensured that the entire logistical process went smoothly. Sandhiya Purushothaman and her team at SPi-​Global were meticulous with their copy editing. Prakash Jayaraman and his team at Newgen Knowledge Works ensured that the final stages of the publication process went smoothly. Ekrem Karakoç, a good friend and a contributor to this Handbook, was always generous with my long and rather rambling voice messages since the start of the project. The UCF, my home institution since August 2015, provided an environment conducive to intellectual stimulation and growth. The Sakıp Sabancı Museum graciously gave us permission to use the great Turkish artist Abidin Dino’s painting, with its contrasting colors reflecting the spirit of the country, on the cover of the Handbook. I very much wish my sons, Babil and Metis, will encounter a Turkey that is more humane, just, free, and diverse as they grow up. And my dedication (finally, she may say) goes to Nazlı, my wife. Güneş Murat Tezcür Jackson, Wyoming March 2021

Foreword Daron Acemoğlu

A common theme running through many of the chapters of this Handbook is the inability of the Turkish Republic to build truly participatory democratic institutions throughout the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-​first (e.g., see the chapters by Karakoç and Somer in this volume). This isn’t just because of the four military interventions but also because even popularly elected governments have routinely suppressed civil society, trampled with judiciary independence, disallowed free media, and repressed minority rights. This is despite the fact that the Turkish economy has modernized rapidly, transforming itself from an almost predominantly agricultural, non-​urban, and inward-​looking economy to one that is much less dependent on agriculture, much more urban, and highly integrated into global markets (see the chapter by Pamuk in this volume). Although there are many fruitful ways of approaching this history of political underdevelopment in Turkey, I would like to frame it using a few of the themes from my own work and in the process highlight several challenges and directions of future research. In The Narrow Corridor, James Robinson and I conceptualize the dynamics of political development in terms of state–​society relations (Acemoğlu and Robinson 2019). The main thesis of the book can be summarized with a figure, which I borrow from there (see Figure 1). Figure 1 showcases the forces that shape the long-​run evolution of different political systems. It focuses on two characteristics of different political and social systems. On the horizontal axis, we have the power of society, meant to capture the ability of society to organize collective action, act according to its norms and values, participate in politics, and most importantly withstand efforts by the state and elites to impose schemes on it. On the vertical axis, we have the power of the state, representing the capacity of state institutions and the power of economic and political elites controlling the state and commanding the key places in the economy and politics. State power has both a repressive element (the more powerful the state is, the more it can silence opposition and society at large) and an organizational aspect (the more powerful the state is, the more it can provide public services, collect information, resolve disputes, and deal with societal problems).

xviii   Daron Acemoğlu

Power of the State

Shackled Leviathan: US, UK Despotie Leviathan: China Turkey

Absent Leviathan: The Tiv Paper Leviathan

Power of Society Figure 1.  The framework from The Narrow Corridor. Source: Acemoğlu and Robinson (2019).

In our framework, state–​society relations determine the nature of political power. This is summarized by the three regions depicted in the figure. In the region on the left, we have the “Despotic Leviathan,” where the state is despotic in the sense that it can implement policies or impose its wishes without input from society. The dynamics, represented by the illustrative trajectory, are inexorably toward lower levels of societal power—​and, indeed, the trajectory moves gradually toward the vertical axis, where society’s power against the state reaches a minimum. These dynamics are reminiscent of a simplified version of Chinese political history since the Qin dynasty of the 3rd century BCE (Acemoğlu and Robinson 2019, chap. 7), where state, bureaucratic, and elite powers have typically been much greater and have consistently undercut society’s organization and political participation. This is a situation of imbalance, but it isn’t the only one. Its polar opposite, the “Absent Leviathan,” is where the state and its institutions are weak and society’s traditions and norm-​based organization are relatively strong. This configuration impedes the development of political hierarchy, a precondition for the emergence and evolution of state institutions. Even when states appear, they are weak and, in fact, often absent from large parts of the territory they are supposed to control. A contemporary example is Lebanon where, in the face of resistance from distinct religious communities, the state has repeatedly proven to be incapable of fulfilling even basic public services, such as law enforcement, refuse collection, and economic management. In the Absent Leviathan

Foreword   xix region, the dynamics are toward further state weakness for reasons discussed in detail in Acemoğlu and Robinson (2019). More interesting is the region in the middle, the narrow corridor. This corridor is defined by a balance of power between state and society. The trajectories in this region look very different from those outside of it. While those outside involve one side ultimately becoming stronger at the expense of the other, inside the corridor state and society can simultaneously gain capacity and strength. This is, we argue, because of what we refer to as the “Red Queen dynamics,” with analogy to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-​Glass, and What Alice Found There: state and society have to run together and build additional capacity in order to keep up with each other. For example, as the state takes up more domestic or international responsibilities, society has to increase its ability to monitor and contend with the state and the elites. The Red Queen dynamics are the foundation of a different type of state and a different nature of political power; and we label it the “Shackled Leviathan” to capture the notion that the state is still strong, but it is monitored, tethered, and controlled by society and ultimately by democratic institutions. The heart of our theory, and the driving force behind the Red Queen effect, is that true democratic participation and liberty, as well as economic incentives encouraging innovation and experimentation, can only flourish within the corridor. The corridor itself, though precarious at the best of times, can be bolstered by societal mobilization and participation. Institutions matter, but a cleverly designed constitution or the right set of institutions is never sufficient to protect the corridor, nor is it a true bulwark against threats to democracy. Put simply, democracy is seldom given to the people; it is often taken and almost always in need of defense by the people via collective action. In The Narrow Corridor, we trace the history of many historical polities via these trajectories and explain what sorts of events can place a society inside or outside the corridor and, even more importantly, how the borders that define the narrow corridor are determined by economic, social, international, and historical factors. Conceptualized in this way, Turkey’s problem, as different from countries without strong statehood, is one of failure to reach and enter the corridor—​one of perennial societal weakness and overbearing strength of state and its elites. Yet this observation, rather than answering the fundamental questions about the roots of Turkish political underdevelopment, begs several more. 1. Turkey’s path of development looks nothing like those of archetypal examples of Despotic Leviathans such as China or Russia. Why is that? 2. Though imperfect and often prone to meddling by an overeager military, Turkey has been a republic since 1923 and has reverted back to electoral politics quickly even following military coups. Why hasn’t this history of democratic politics led to the emergence of civil society organizations and greater societal mobilization? 3. Is the problem of Turkish democracy one of political institutions or political culture?

xx   Daron Acemoğlu 4. Why have significant challenges to the system, especially over the last since 1980, come from political Islamic movements rather than any type of social democratic or non-​religious populist movement? 5. And finally, is any of this related to post-​Ottoman Turkey’s efforts to build a nation? Several insightful chapters in this volume shed light on aspects of some of these questions, and in the spirit of raising even more questions rather than providing definitive answers, I will now speculate on some potential ideas that go in a somewhat different direction from those typically emphasized in the literature on Turkish politics, including the chapters in this Handbook.

A Limited Despotic Leviathan The conceptual framework summarized in Figure 1 needs to be extended to do justice to the complexity of a case like Turkey because though society has remained perennially weak and the state dominant, Turkish political dynamics have neither been completely insulated from civil society activism nor taken the republic’s politics back to the same extent as hierarchical control by state elites that could be seen in parts of Anatolia and the Balkans in the heyday of the Ottoman Empire (though this is not to deny that in much of the periphery of the empire, the Ottoman state was mostly absent; see, for example, Owen 2013). Even President Erdoğan, who has centralized powers in his hands and undercut all sources of autonomous checks on his and his cronies’ machinations, does not see himself as capable of turning his back on electoral politics and had to admit defeat in the second election for Istanbul’s municipal government in 2019 (after he forced the annulment of the results of the first, arguing without compelling evidence that there were systematic irregularities). Extending the framework for these more nuanced cases is a task we take up in the second part of The Narrow Corridor. Focusing on cases from Latin America and Africa, we propose the notion of the “Paper Leviathan,” where the state is too disorganized to dominate society, even though society itself remains weak. Though there are echoes of this in Turkey as well, it would be incorrect to view the Turkish state as a Paper Leviathan. The Paper Leviathan is a (mostly) stable configuration of politics at the bottom right, as shown in Figure 1, while the Turkish case can be conceptualized as a configuration on the left middle—​a fairly strong state, a historical legacy since Ottoman times, that is not pulling away too far from the corridor. Why is that? Why haven’t elites ever completely disregarded electoral democracy in Turkey?

Top-​D own Democracy I believe that clues about these questions come from the answer to the second broad area I have highlighted. It has much to do with the fact that Turkish electoral democracy has

Foreword   xxi not unleashed the same participatory political dynamics as many other democracies in Europe, Latin America, and even Africa have done; and this is no accident. It was by design. It is mostly because it was an elite-​organized affair, imposed on society rather than originating from society’s demands. In these arguments, the reader may see traces of the framework introduced in my first book with James Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Acemoğlu and Robinson 2006). The central tenet of our theory in that book is that participatory democracy emerges out of the demands of non-​elites, typically excluded from power. Though as Stein Rokkan recognized long ago, elites can sometimes manipulate the form of democracy in a way to restrict non-​elites’ political power, this path to democratization typically involves a significant redistribution of political power away from elites (Flora, Kuhnle, and Urwin 1999; see also Acemoğlu, Ticchi, and Vindigni 2011; Acemoğlu and Robinson 2008). The strengthening and emboldening of society is often a direct consequence of this process. Yet this never happened in Turkey. In fact, the subsequent path of political development may have been significantly hampered by the way in which the republican form of government was introduced in Turkey in 1923 and the political blueprint used by the leading cadres (going back to the repressive, top-​down style of the Committee of Union and Progress, from whose ranks came almost all founders of the Turkish Republic; see the chapter by Öktem in this volume). It wasn’t only that declaring Turkey a republic made future political demands for democracy moot but also that republican state-​building efforts further strengthened the state and enabled it to broaden its reach throughout the territories now controlled by the new republic. In this way, Turkey could be given as an example of where the dynamics of the Despotic Leviathan do not completely debilitate society, and democratic electoral institutions have managed to survive and have had some restraining influence over the elites; but this has happened within a political equilibrium in which the state and the elites that control it are still dominant over society. The recent period of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) rule has been no exception, even if the identity of the elites benefiting most from this equilibrium has changed.

A Clientelistic Political Culture? What about culture? I want to argue that Turkey’s political problems cannot be understood without a serious look at the country’s political culture. By this, however, I do not mean that there is a clearly defined Turkish culture that is inimical to democratic participation. Nor do I appeal to some simplistic notion of everlasting Islamic culture as a barrier to democratic politics. Rather, as explored in detail in Acemoğlu and Robinson (2021), it would be most fruitful to view culture as co-​evolving with politics; but once this evolution starts, political culture itself becomes a powerful constraint on the nature of political engagement. The framework in Acemoğlu and Robinson (2021) starts from the observation that no human society possesses an unambiguous and unchanging cultural structure. Rather,

xxii   Daron Acemoğlu different human communities have a reservoir of “attributes,” which can be gelled in distinct ways to create different underpinnings of political and social behaviors. However, the set of attributes is not completely flexible; and especially in cases where these attributes are very specific and “embedded” into a particular way of life or a particular set of political, economic, and social exigencies, the resulting political culture may lack sufficient flexibility to adapt to changes, which may preclude certain political trajectories. I believe this perspective provides insights that could be useful for understanding the evolution of political culture in Turkey. The traditional models of social relations that have defined Ottoman and then Turkish politics have been based on a rather hierarchical structure, a premodern version of patron–​client relations, where those who are higher up in the hierarchy command respect as patron and maintain this position by exchanging favors and providing personalistic services to those who are subservient to them. It is easy to see how such a political culture can be supported on the basis of traditional family values, prevalent not just in Anatolian society but in many different parts of the world where collectivist traditions have powerfully persisted. This clientelistic political culture is not unbreakable since the set of attributes that sustain it are quite varied and can be combined to support myriad behaviors. All the same, it is remarkable how common it is, not just in national politics but also within Turkish parties and political movements (including parties and movements of the left), in academic organizations, and in businesses. This culture has arguably made it harder for society to take a unified position in politics, for example, for clamping down on corruption and excessive state power, in the same way that James Robinson and I have argued that the caste system has done for Indian democracy (Acemoğlu and Robinson 2019, chap. 8). In both cases, society’s internal divisions have made collective action and bottom-​up participation in politics more difficult and democracy much less stable and effective.

The Challenge of Political Islam The fourth topic is the role of Islam in Turkish politics. There are many intriguing issues here. A striking one, also noted in several chapters of this volume, is that some of the most reformist or even revolutionary political movements in post-​1980 Turkey have come from the Islamic side, and the early AKP can be counted within their ranks (see the chapter by Çınar in this volume). How could this be despite the fact that Islamist movements have not been outsiders to power as they have often had a voice within the system and they are, at least on the surface, unlikely to be standard bearers of civil society organizations or to have clear incentives for moving the country into the corridor? I don’t know the answers to these challenging questions, but I suspect they are related to the discussion of the role of Islam in Saudi Arabia and more broadly Middle Eastern politics in Acemoğlu and Robinson (2019, chap. 12), which itself partly draws from Plateau (2017).

Foreword   xxiii Briefly, the argument is that despotic governments in the Middle East were able to use religion and religious scholars instrumentally in order to solidify their reign. This capture had at least two facets. First, rulers utilized Islamic principles to justify their control of politics. Second, and more importantly, they also used Islam and the authority of regime-​friendly clerics and scholars to shut off avenues for non-​Islamic civil society action. This strategy was effective but couldn’t completely seal off the regime against any opposition. What it implied, however, was that the path of least resistance for opposition movements was to claim to be even more (and more truly) Islamic than the regime—​a dynamic which Plateau calls “obscurantist.” In Acemoğlu and Robinson (2019, 378–​384), we also discuss why certain features of Islam’s political teachings such as the role of women in society, may have facilitated this equilibrium, though of course the main contributing element is the non-​representative and despotic governments in the Middle East. Some of these Middle Eastern strategies were used in the Ottoman Empire, and even if the Turkish Republic was established on a secular platform, its elites also attempted to manipulate Islam, especially with the advent of the 1980 coup, and soon turned it into another weapon in their efforts to control society. This created yet another fertile environment for obscurantism: the early repression of the religious segments of Turkish society and the avowed secularist nature of the Turkish state became a source of grievance among many religious Turks, and the use of Islam to express such grievances created ample opportunities for political Islam to resurface in Turkish politics in different forms. It was these grievances that were voiced and later exploited by the AKP so successfully.

The Vestiges of Nation-​Building Turkey’s history is also complicated by the difficult process of turning a multi-​ethnic empire into a national republic. This is a process with parallels to those that transpired in Austria–​Hungary and Russia, albeit via very different trajectories and with varying degrees of success. The Ottoman Empire arguably went through a more violent and disruptive set of events during the critical period of nation-​building, the second half of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries, than Austria–​Hungary and even Russia. This was partly because of the many severe military defeats it suffered, but even more importantly, it was because Turkish nation-​building was led by a top-​down, nationalistic band of military officers who soon decided that ethnic cleansing (primarily of Armenians and Greeks), or at the very least severe repression of all non-​Turkish ethnicities (including the Kurds), was the only way of forging a modern nation-​state. This fraught process not only created a highly non-​participatory beginning to the Republic (perhaps as much as half of the population being viewed as the “other” to be assimilated into the dominant ethnic identity and, when they resisted assimilation, perceived as the enemy). It was also that the continued presence of multiple ethnicities

xxiv   Daron Acemoğlu in the Republic’s territories became another axis of division within society and almost redline in its domestic politics, similar to the role that Islam came to play. All of this created a double whammy for the emergence of broad-​based societal participation. First, the religious and ethnic fault lines endured, and the better-​organized Islamist and nationalist elements were at the forefront of making demands from the state. This implied that, paradoxically, many bottom-​up demands came from groups whose agenda was inimical to both broad-​based political participation and democratic politics. Second, any social democratic or non-​elite movement was immediately countered by the accusation that it was trying to, or at the very least it would inadvertently, undermine the national unity of the Republic or its religious bedrock.

Concluding Remarks Since the ideas I have proposed here are not tried and tested and come from somebody who is not an expert on Turkish history or politics, they have to be taken as mere hypotheses to be investigated or rebutted if they happen to contradict other relevant facts. Because they are not yet tried and tested, it would be premature to base any perspectives for the future on them. Nevertheless, to the extent that they have some validity, they would suggest that multi-​pronged changes are necessary for Turkey to establish true participatory democracy (which is important not just for its political development but also because Turkey’s democratic retardation is keeping its economy less developed and less productive (see Acemoğlu and Üçer 2020, on Turkey, and Acemoğlu et al. 2019, on cross-​country evidence of the effects of democracy on economic growth). Turkey would need to strengthen and rebuild its civil society, media, and democratic institutions; but as the framework I have borrowed from Acemoğlu and Robinson (2019) emphasizes, none of this is likely to be achieved without society’s emboldened participation in politics, which requires a change in political culture and norms. Put simply, Turkish society has to start showing less respect for authority and hierarchy in order to be able to plow through the sand barriers that have for so long stood in the way of democracy. It is also important that the litmus tests created in Turkish politics by religion, nationalism, and the questions of ethnicity are removed because they contribute to societal divisions, make collective action and democratic participation more difficult, and ultimately keep Turkey away from the corridor. Alas, none of this is easy to do. Yet, despite all of these problems, Figure 1 suggests that Turkey is not very far from the corridor and that Turkish society is not completely powerless, as ongoing forms of civil society activism in the country demonstrate. Whether the right coalitions can be built on these foundations will be defining for the near-​term future of Turkish democracy.

Foreword   xxv

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Güneş Murat Tezcür and Cihat Tokgöz for suggestions and comments.

References Acemoğlu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2006. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Acemoğlu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2008. “Persistence of Power, Elites, and Institutions.” American Economic Review 98, no. 1: 267–​293. Acemoğlu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2019. The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty. New York: Penguin. Acemoğlu, Daron, and Murat Üçer. 2020. “High-​Quality versus Low-​Quality Growth in Turkey: Causes and Consequences.” In Turkish Economy at the Crossroads: Facing the Challenges Ahead, edited by Asaf Savaş Akat and Seyfettin Gürsel, 37–​89. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Acemoğlu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2021. “Culture, Institutions and Social Equilibria: A Framework.” Working paper 28832. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Acemoğlu, Daron, Davide Ticchi, and Andrea Vindigni. 2011. “Emergence and Persistence of Inefficient States.” Journal of European Economic Association 9, no. 2: 177–​208. Acemoğlu, Daron, Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo, and James A. Robinson. 2019. “Democracy Does Cause Growth.” Journal of Political Economy 127, no. 1: 47–​100. Flora, Peter, Stein Kuhnle, and Derek Urwin. 1999. State Formation, Nation-​Building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan. New York: Oxford University Press. Owen, Roger. 2013. State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. London: Routledge. Plateau, Jean-​ Philippe. 2017. Islam Instrumentalized: Religion and Politics in Historical Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 1

The Study of P ol i t i c s in Tu rk ey New Horizons and Perennial Pitfalls Güneş Murat Tezcür

From a comparative perspective, Turkey presents both a fascinating and a troubling case to study themes such as democratization and authoritarian rule; politics of ethnicity, religion, and gender; political violence; human rights; development and neoliberalism; and emotional politics. Albeit interrupted by regular military interventions, Turkish electoral democracy, going back to 1950, has a lineage longer than that in many other countries in the world. Until the early 2010s, Turkey was often perceived as a model country that showed the feasibility of democratic governance in a Muslim-​ majority society that was also on the brink of EU membership. However, the rise of religious-​nationalist populism and sociopolitical polarization has resulted in authoritarian governance stifling a short-​lived period of political liberalization. At a fundamental level, Turkish national identity remains exclusionary as citizens not sharing the dominant ethnic and religious identity face various levels of discrimination. Political violence in the forms of state repression, insurgent attacks, and terrorism persists. While the Turkish economy exhibited periods of impressive growth, it remains vulnerable to downturns with destructive consequences. Turkish foreign policy had historically strong linkages with the “West” but now pursues a more assertive role in regional politics. Finally, vibrant and diverse forms of social activism often fail to bring lasting progressive changes. As the centennial of the Turkish Republic (established 1923) is looming on the horizon, The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics includes in-​depth, analytical, interdisciplinary, and comparative analyses of all these issues in conversation with the broader scholarly literature. The Handbook includes thirty-six original contributions and state-​of-​the-​art reviews by some of the most influential and rising scholars studying Turkey. The 2010s saw a renaissance in scholarship on Turkey. There has been an unprecedented increase in both the quality and quantity of analyses of Turkish politics involving diverse disciplinary

2   Güneş Murat Tezcür approaches and methodological orientations.1 Scholars based in both Turkish and Western universities actively contribute to this rich literature, an indicator of robust cross-​regional and cross-​institutional linkages. The composition of the authorship in the Handbook reflects this intellectual synergy and includes scholars from Turkish, North American, and European universities who engage with a vast and rich literature. However, this positive trajectory in scholarly works has not been accompanied by a similar trend in Turkish politics. Many democratic achievements Turkey accomplished over the decades, including academic independence, have come under severe threat in recent years.2 Consequently, a central inquiry in the study of Turkish politics becomes the reasons for the steady and generally unexpected deterioration of political pluralism and democratic processes, especially since 2013. This concern is also reflected in the pages of this Handbook, which presents animated discussions of the factors both facilitating and resisting the deepening of authoritarianism. The Handbook is organized around seven thematic sections: (1) political regime; (2) political economy; (3) leaders, parties, and voters; (4) politics of identity; (5) Turkey and the world; (6) civil society and activism; and (7) politics of art. Many chapters are in direct dialogue with each and address similar issues from different perspectives. In this chapter, I discuss how each and every contribution to the Handbook offers unique insights into some of the most salient issues in Turkish politics and enriches broader scholarly debates. Rather than summarizing each contribution separately, I structure my discussion along a series of questions: What ruptures and continuities affect the current trajectory of Turkish politics? How do Turkish politics align with global economic and political trends? How could we make sense of the authoritarian turn in Turkish politics since the 2010s? What factors facilitated the rise of a predominant party system since the early 2000s? In political economy, what have been the implications of developmentalism and neoliberalism? What factors have influenced the activist turn in Turkish foreign policy? What have been the achievements and shortcomings of civil society activism? What are the prospects for a democratic revival?

A New Turkey? Reversals and Disappointments A striking paradox in Turkish politics is that the very same political force that has the primary responsibility for the authoritarian turn in the 2010s had been widely perceived as an agent of democratization in the previous decade. In its initial years in power, from 2002 to 2011, the AKP (Adalet ve Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party) was a darling of Western liberalism. With its commitment to economic liberalization and membership in the European Union and the promise of sustainable democratic rule in a Muslim-​majority country, the AKP was portrayed as a positive role model, defying the clash of civilizations paradigm and pessimism regarding Islam’s

The Study of Politics in Turkey    3 compatibility with democracy (e.g., Nasr 2005; for a critical view, see Tansel 2018). In sharp contrast to these cheerful interpretations, current scholarship treats Turkey under the AKP as a paradigmatic case of democratic backsliding and a right-​wing populist regime (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Kaufman and Haggard 2019). The earlier perspective that portrayed the AKP as a pro-​democratic force was often inspired by Şerif Mardin’s (1973) influential conceptualization that identified a historical opposition between center and periphery, which has its origins in the late Ottoman period, as the main axis of political struggles in Turkey. In this conceptualization, the center represents a statist and elitist force pursuing top-​down modernization, while the periphery is composed of unprivileged and more religious social groups that are excluded from and marginalized by this modernist project. Mardin’s conceptualization had limited analytical value during the political instability and left–​right struggles of the 1970s and the post-​coup atmosphere of the 1980s. However, it gained a new life with the late 1990s, especially after the AKP’s coming to power in 2002. In many popular and scholarly accounts, the expectation was that the AKP, facing fierce opposition from bureaucratic elites representing the center, would overcome the perennial dualism of Turkish politics by facilitating the empowerment of the periphery and making the political system more inclusive. Such readings of Turkish politics assigning primacy to sociocultural factors not only have questionable normative implications but also result in highly deterministic narratives that minimize the role of agency and contingency in political struggles whose outcomes are often uncertain and unpredictable. Moreover, the sources of conflict among and diverging interests of social actors (e.g., provincial middle classes, urban poor, the Kurds, the Alevis) that form the periphery are overlooked in these accounts. The authoritarian tendencies of populist forces claiming to represent the periphery are also disregarded or downplayed (for critical insightful reviews, see Bakıner 2018; Sözen 2020). The limited analytical value of such a dichotomous view of Turkish politics became crystal clear in the 2010s when the demise of the center and the ascendancy of the periphery heralded a new era of authoritarianism. During this decade, the fierce power rivalry between two actors who claimed to represent the periphery, the AKP and the religious Gülen network, led by a reclusive cleric who had lived in the United States since 1999, over control of the state brought down Turkish democracy. The failure of the 2016 coup, in which the Gülen network played the leading role, provided the ultimate pretext for the AKP not only to completely suppress the Gülen network but also to pursue a wide range of coercive practices at great cost to political pluralism and civil liberties. Given this context, it is fair to say that scholarship on Turkish politics has missed a crucial dimension of democratization that is about the integration between interpersonal networks of trust such as religious groups and public politics (Tilly 2007, 23). For a long time, it was common to read the depictions of the Gülen network as a Muslim civil society organization whose activism is conducive to democratic change (Yavuz 2013). In these depictions, the clandestine, hierarchical, and gendered structure of the network and its pursuit of power via the capture of the state bureaucracy did

4   Güneş Murat Tezcür not receive much attention. Most decisively, its power struggle with the AKP via non-​ democratic means provided the ultimate justification for the AKP’s wave of repression after 2013. An excessive focus on the self-​presentation of the movement as a “moderate” ideological force and the challenge of empirically studying its non-​transparent and fluid nature diverted the attention from how the movement manufactured and exercised power in ways that are publicly unaccountable and pernicious for political pluralism. From a retrospective perspective, it is tempting to dismiss the AKP’s and the Gülen network’s flirtation with liberalism in the first decade of the twenty-​first century. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the prevailing political atmosphere during the first decade of AKP rule was qualitatively very different from what would follow. Not only was there a real and widespread optimism that a new constitutional order would replace the highly authoritarian legacy of the 1982 Constitution and revoke military tutelage over civilian politics but Turkey would also have a reckoning on its history of state violence. Attempts to reform the 1982 Constitution that already started in the late 1980s became accelerated after the European Council declared Turkey’s candidacy for EU membership in December 1999. The EU conditionality—​candidate countries required to enact liberal and democratic reforms—​opened up a period of political liberalism in Turkey (Müftüler Baç 2005). Constitutional reform was also central to the AKP’s platform that became an enthusiastic advocate of the EU membership process in order to overcome military and judicial tutelage. Ultimately, around two-​thirds of all articles in the Constitution would be revised. Aslı Ü. Bâli observes in her chapter that constitutional amendments from 1987 to 2010 had mostly a liberalizing and democratic direction. However, the goal of enacting a new constitution proved to be elusive, and the AKP was not the only party to blame. In an atmosphere of political polarization, opposition parties as well as the high judiciary and military that maintained their political clout until the early 2010s were suspicious of the ruling party’s intentions and vehemently opposed the drafting of a new and popular constitution. As Erdoğan expanded his power, he sought to transform Turkey into a presidential system where the executive would dominate both the legislative and judicial branches. He would eventually accomplish this goal by establishing an alliance with the ultranationalists. Constitutional amendments establishing a presidential system won a narrow majority in a highly controversial referendum conducted under a state of emergency in April 2017. Consequently, constitutional reform that was supposed to establish a new liberal order became an instrument for the foundation of an authoritarian order with no separation of powers and checks over the executive. Turkey is now the textbook case of a process through which constitutional tools were deployed to subvert a democratic system (see the chapter by Bâli in this volume). A fundamental reason why the AKP was able to portray itself as a pro-​democratic force to many audiences during its initial years in power was the fact that it presented a direct challenge to the military’s political hegemony. As conceptualized by Charles Tilly (2007, 23), the declining political autonomy of major power centers such as the military is a primary dimension of democratization. As Nil S. Satana and Burak Bilgehan

The Study of Politics in Turkey    5 Özpek explain, the Turkish military, the self-​declared guardian of secular nationalism, regularly intervened in parliamentary politics and set firm boundaries of acceptable political action by defining certain groups (i.e., leftist, Kurdish, or Islamist) as “internal enemies.” The AKP that formed a relatively broad coalition and received significant international support in its initial years brought an end to the military tutelage by 2011. A milestone in the struggle between the ruling party and the military was the September 2010 referendum where a majority of the voters approved constitutional amendments diluting the army’s institutional autonomy. The failed coup attempt in 2016 that dramatically revealed the internal rifts among the armed forces and led to waves of purges was the culmination of this struggle. Yet the demise of the military did not have the desired outcome. President and AKP leader Erdoğan claimed the prerogative to label certain groups as “internal enemies” and “disloyal opposition” (see the chapter by Satana and Özpek in this volume). A similar reversal also took place regarding how the ruling party approached the question of the past. For some years, the AKP was the champion of various initiatives that purportedly aimed to transform how the Turkish state and society would face the past injustices and atrocities. In fact, there was a proliferation of initiatives and debates that offer critical reflections about the state violence during the early Republican years and Kurdish uprisings. Many of the taboo issues, including the Armenian genocide, the Dersim massacre, and the extrajudicial killings of the 1990s, became subjects of intense public debate. However, the ruling party’s approach to truth, justice, and commemoration initiatives was highly instrumentalist; and it aimed to consolidate its power vis-​à-​vis bureaucratic forces and the main opposition party. It pursued a highly selective agenda and conveniently ignored or reframed historical events that do not fit into its simplistic narratives of victimhood. Once the party achieved this goal by 2011, its interest in pursuing and supporting such initiatives dissipated quickly (see the chapter by Bakiner in this volume). As the AKP established an alliance with ultranationalist forces by 2015, it completely reversed its position and became increasingly intolerant of social movements demanding greater accountability and an end to impunity. Overall, the AKP’s authoritarian drift has been a huge disappointment for scholars who had expected the party to be a democratizing force (Özbudun 2014). As Menderes Çınar argues in his chapter, it also presents a direct challenge to a large body of literature about the rise of an Islamist party with democratic commitments. The factors that are expected to enable such a phenomenon were all present in Turkey. They include the presence of pro-​market forces including a functioning capitalist economy with strong international linkages, a long history of electoral competition facilitating political learning, the formation of pious middle classes, and the absence of a robust rival and extremist Islamist movement. Çınar suggests that we need to pay more attention to the contingency of choices made by the AKP leadership to make sense of its authoritarian evolution. Like both Onur Bakiner and Yüksel Taşkın, he also points out that these choices are informed by anti-​democratic elements inherent to Islamist political tradition in Turkey (see the chapter by Çınar in this volume).

6   Güneş Murat Tezcür

The Long Turkish Winter: “The Emperor Has New Clothes” As noted, the rise of authoritarian practices and policies constitutes one of the main axes of scholarly research on contemporary Turkish politics. This analytical focus is well justified given the trajectory of Turkish politics at least since the mid-​2010s. At the same time, it is essential to have a historical perspective about this trajectory. Since the foundation of the Republic, political representation and public policies in Turkey have been characterized by major inequalities. Certain citizens by virtue of their ethnic, religious, or gender identities or lifestyles have received preferential treatment, while others have faced layers of discrimination and violence and engaged in a wide repertoire of resistance (Bargu 2014). While some of these inequalities (i.e., the exclusion of pious women from public services) became less salient, new forms of inequalities emerged under AKP rule. Kurdish and Alevi citizens as well as citizens who do not share the paternalistic moral-​religious vision of the ruling party were further pushed to the margins of the polity. Various contributions to this Handbook provide valuable insights about the pervasive nature of the lasting legacies and contemporary relevance of these inequalities. At the institutional level, the new presidential system, which was approved in a highly controversial referendum in April 2017, has been a major blow to Turkish democracy. As discussed by Bâli in her contribution, the president can issue decrees on a wide variety of areas of governance and bypass parliamentary channels. In fact, presidential decrees that were issued since the inauguration of the new system had more articles than the laws enacted by the Parliament (Denge ve Denetleme Ağı 2020, 15). The ability of the Parliament to control the budget (power of the purse), make the cabinet accountable, and call for new elections are also fundamentally weakened. A number of mechanisms essential to the ability of the Parliament, including the vote of confidence and verbal motions, are revoked. While members of the Parliament could submit written inquiries to the cabinet members, handpicked by the president without any parliamentary approval, there are no guarantees that they receive a response. In 2019, members of the Parliament submitted 16,312 inquiries to vice presidents and ministers. More than 50 percent of all these inquiries did not receive a response during that year. Besides, none of the 477 investigation proposals submitted by the opposition parties were accepted (Denge ve Denetleme Ağı 2020, 14–​15). Overall, the Turkish Parliament, which has its origins in the first Ottoman legislative body of 1876, has become more like a rubber-​ stamp body under the new system. Accompanying these institutional changes has been a steady deterioration of human rights in the country. As documented by various domestic and international organizations, mass arrests of opposition politicians, especially those affiliated with the Kurdish and leftist movements, activists, and journalists, and mistreatment and torture of detainees became common practices, particularly after 2015 (e.g., Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı 2020). Tens of thousands of civil servants were fired by decrees on flimsy charges

The Study of Politics in Turkey    7 during the extraordinary rule imposed after the coup attempt in 2016. Ruling elites regularly accuse dissident groups and individuals of disloyalty to the nation and often employ hate speech to attack their public reputations. Ironically, more than 128,000 people were investigated on grounds that they “insulted” the president from 2014 to 2019. More than 9,500 people were found guilty, and 2,676 of them received prison sentences. Such investigations, trials, and punishments had previously been rare but increased exponentially after 2014 when Erdoğan was elected president (Topuz 2020). In this repressive political context, human rights activism itself became perilous. As Başak Çalı narrates, human rights activism developed a strong institutional structure in the repressive environment of the 1980s and 1990s. It also experienced an unprecedented proliferation and diversification thanks to EU leverage as well as political liberalization after the turn of the century. However, human rights activists and organizations became targets of persecution and repression by the second half of the 2010s. State officials often equated human rights activism with “terrorist propaganda,” while the ruling party aimed to co-​opt human rights organizations and marginalize the ones it could not control. These practices were reflective of the broader trend that criminalized dissent and invoked terrorism as a discursive strategy to intimidate groups critical of governmental policies. They also made it difficult for human rights organizations to form cross-​ideological alliances and act as an effective antidote against the repressive and authoritarian tendencies of the ruling government (see the chapter by Çalı in this volume). The effects of these developments have also been felt in the artistic realm. The transformation of Turkish cinema provides a bellwether about how political consciousness and action evolved over time in Turkey. Zeynep Çetin-​Erus and M. Elif Demoğlu neatly capture this transformation by comparing the films of Yılmaz Güney, the iconic figure of Turkish cinema until his death in exile in 1984, with those of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the most prominent director in contemporary Turkey. Güney’s films after 1970 were overtly political, offering a bleak depiction of class inequalities and political repression in the country. In the spirit of the great Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo (Said 2000, 282–​292), they also introduced a sense of clarity to oppressive circumstances that could be overcome only via contentious political action. Ceylan’s films, with their minimalistic and poetic style and static and long takes, provide a sharp contrast and are often criticized for being apolitical. In fact, there is no room for collective political imaginations and solidarities in his films. Yet Çetin-​Erus and Demoğlu discover how a more subtle form of political consciousness is embedded in Ceylan’s cinematography. Ceylan’s Ahlat Ağacı offers a highly critical take on contemporary Turkey with its depictions of a dysfunctional system fostering both opportunism and ennui and a hypocritical society undermining a sense of belonging and fostering sarcasm (see the chapter by Çetin-​Erus and Demoğlu in this volume). While Ceylan does not call for revolutionary action, his cinema still offers a form of resistance via promises of individualistic expression and emancipation. A similar trend toward more subtle and individualistic forms of politics is also visible in the evolution of Turkish music. As Mustafa Avcı discusses, music has had a dualism

8   Güneş Murat Tezcür since the foundation of the Turkish republic. While the political elites instrumentalized music for nation-​building and propaganda purposes, there was also a very rich tradition of dissident music. Alevi and Kurdish singer-​poets who played formative roles in contentious political mobilization from the 1930s to the 1970s were the primary carriers of this tradition. Although the wave of repression following the 1980 coup temporarily silenced dissident voices, a new generation of groups and singers making political music achieved high levels of popularity despite facing state harassment and violence. Avcı observes that as individualization and consumerism gained new ground with neoliberal policies under the AKP, explicit political music lost its power in more recent years. Nonetheless, non-​political musicians and rap bands continued to develop new genres of protest in reaction to state repression and social injustices (see the chapter by Avcı in this volume).

Signposts: Populism, Polarization, and Retrenchment of Secularism Turkish politics became more populist, more polarized, and less secularized under the AKP. Several chapters aim to make sense of these developments in the light of similar trends in many different countries. The rise of right-​wing populist movements led by charismatic men with little regard for political pluralism and institutions, including fundamental constitutional principles and separation of powers, has been a major challenge to the sustainability of liberal-​democratic governance. In many accounts, the AKP and its leader Erdoğan emerge as a primary example of this global trend. Offering an analytical overview of various forms of populism in Turkey since 1950, Yüksel Taşkın identifies how its latest incarnation under Erdoğan exhibits some distinctive characteristics. Compared to previous Turkish leaders, Erdoğan has been a political outsider who claimed to represent the “pious majority” silenced by an entrenched elite. His politics has cultivated a discourse of victimhood that has gradually gained an aggressive and vindictive tone (Tokdoğan 2018). As Taşkın rightly observes, the natural consequence of this political vision has been an unchecked executive power that has been realized with the new presidential system. At the same time, he cautions against the assumption that populism would always result in de-​democratization and polarization. The 2019 local elections demonstrated the potential of progressive change when the opposition was able to form big-​tent coalitions and gained the control of municipalities in a number of metropolitan centers including Ankara and Istanbul (see the chapter by Taşkın in this volume). The viability of such strategies at a grander scale, which deserves greater scholarly attention, would be central to the future of democratic governance in Turkey in the foreseeable future. The characterization of the AKP as a populist party could easily obscure a key feature that sets the party apart from other right-​wing populist parties across the globe.

The Study of Politics in Turkey    9 Unlike those parties that espouse anti-​immigration and anti-​refugee platforms, the AKP embraced several million Syrians fleeing a vicious civil war. As a result, Turkey emerged as a leading host and transit country for migrants and refugees by the mid-​ 2010s. Fatih Resul Kılınç and Şule Toktaş identify two factors underlying the AKP’s pro-​refugee stance. The first factor was the deal with the European Union providing generous financial incentives for Turkey. The second was linked to the AKP’s activist foreign policy, seeking leadership in the Middle East. Hosting refugees from neighboring Muslim countries became a valuable soft-​power instrument supporting this activism. As a result, Turkey’s rise as a refugee country will have major and lasting sociopolitical and economic implications. While these two factors had enabled the AKP to pursue a liberal refugee regime for some years, increasing economic discontent led to popular scapegoating of Syrians in Turkey by 2019 (see the chapter by Kılınç and Toktaş in this volume). A phenomenon that is closely associated with populism is polarization. Murat Somer emphasizes that polarization is a consequence of elite strategies that exploit social tensions to pursue partisan agendas and greater power. He defines some forms of polarization as inclusionary because they aim to incorporate formally marginalized groups into the system and have democratic potential. Other forms have debilitating influences on and threaten political pluralism. The AKP led by a group of counterelites initially pursued inclusive strategies that can be described as inclusionary and faced bureaucratic and social elites resisting its transformative agenda. While the AKP leadership eventually managed to overcome this resistance, its “us versus them” discourse aggravating threat perceptions of its supporters and authoritarian policies became the main agents of exclusionary polarization after 2013 (Laebens and Öztürk 2021). As the party eroded the autonomy of state institutions and made partisanship a primary criterion for state jobs and distribution of public resources, politics became increasingly a zero-​sum game in the country (see the chapter by Somer in this volume). As AKP rule became more populist and polarizing, the very nature of secularism in Turkey also changed. Since the 1920s, the Turkish Republic has epitomized secular governance in a Muslim-​majority society. Accordingly, the necessity of Turkish secularism (laiklik) for democratic rule had long been an act of faith in scholarship (Lewis 1968; Berkes 2002). The greater public visibility of Islam and the rise of movements inspired by Islamic discourses and practices in the last decades of the twentieth century, however, presented a serious challenge to this view. More recently, Turkish secularism became the subject of intense scholarly criticism for its heavy state involvement in religious affairs, glorification of the military, restrictions on public expressions of piety, and discriminatory policies (Kuru 2012). This criticism of Turkish secularism as a top-​ down project ignores its more inclusive aspects that facilitate the formation of civil society by transcending cultural divisions and enabling intellectual cross-​fertilization (Büyükokutan 2018). Nonetheless, AKP rule, until recently, was often celebrated as a more religion-​friendly form of secularism (i.e., facilitating the political integration of pious classes by a moderate religious party). Equally important, this new form of secularism was perceived to be more conducive to democratic governance. That was because

10   Güneş Murat Tezcür “in Turkey . . . the greatest obstacle to democracy is posed not by Islam but by military and intelligence organizations unaccountable to democratic country” (Stepan 2000, 52). What was missing from these perspectives is that Turkish secularism has always had a majoritarian tendency that stands in opposition to minority rights. Murat Akan offers an important correction to the scholarship and identifies a pattern of continuity characterizing Turkish secularism since the early twentieth century. He suggests that a facile comparison between French and Turkish secularisms (e.g., Philpot 2019, 110) has been misleading as the defense of diversity against religious majoritarianism was historically central to the former but remained a peripheral concern for the latter. Turkish secularism has been built on the idea of Turkey as a “Muslim country” where citizenship rights and access to political power have been conditional on sharing the nominal religious identity of the majority. While it aimed to contain Islamist political mobilization, it has never had a serious concern for religious minorities. As the AKP managed to take over state institutions, it repurposed state regulation of religion to intensify its own vision of Turkey as a “Muslim country” where the state actively promoted the majoritarian religious teachings, practices, and discourses it favors (see the chapter by Akan in this volume). Ceren Lord offers a similarly critical reading of Turkish secularism in her study of the Alevis, the largest religious minority in contemporary Turkey. Secularism in Turkey has a majoritarian logic privileging the Sunni Muslim Turkish citizens as the main building block of the nation (see the chapter by Lord in this volume). The Alevis, a historically marginalized community whose distinctive identity emerged during the Ottoman–​ Safavid rivalry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, remained on the margins of the republican system. The Alevi identity became more public by the 1990s, a process encouraged by the EU membership process during the early 2000s. Meanwhile, the AKP initiated a series of well-​publicized meetings about the issues central to the Alevis. However, such initiatives produced no serious reforms and were out of steam by 2011. In more recent years, as AKP rule gained stronger Islamic tones, the Alevis’ exclusion from political power and involvement in contentious politics deepened. These assessments suggest that while AKP rule sees a multifaceted transformation of Turkish politics, it also represents a fundamental continuity. Kerem Öktem identifies how a Janus-​faced ideological blueprint has been central to the exercise of power by successive Turkish regimes.3 On the one hand, it is based on a strong coercive apparatus intolerant of dissent and suspicious of any social mobilization. While the scope of coercion waxed and waned and the groups identified as “internal enemies” have evolved over the decades, the state has consistently pursued policies that aimed to reduce societal ethnoreligious diversity. On the other hand, the state has had a paternalistic stance entailing responsibility for the material welfare of its citizens, at least the ones whose loyalties are less suspicious. Öktem argues that this dualism with its inherent authoritarian orientation has been a perpetual aspect of Turkish politics, even if several factors including Turkey’s linkages with the West, legacies of societal mobilization, and persistence of social diversity prevent the consolidation of a more despotic governance in the

The Study of Politics in Turkey    11 country (see the chapter by Öktem in this volume). I will briefly return to these countervailing dynamics at the end of this essay.

A Predominant Party System: Making Sense of the AKP’s Hegemony The AKP, which was founded in 2001, won pluralities in all elections it contested from the 2002 parliamentary to the 2019 local elections. The AKP’s electoral hegemony, which ultimately became a factor jeopardizing the very conduct of free and fair elections, became a major scholarly focus in recent years (Ayan Musil 2015). As several chapters in the Handbook discuss, factors facilitating this hegemony reflect several long-​lasting characteristics of Turkish politics that became exacerbated under the AKP. One of these factors is the rise of leader-​dominated political parties after the 1980 coup. As Melis G. Laebens discusses in some detail, candidate selection mechanisms in most Turkish parties have been very centralized. Anchored in this hierarchical political culture, the gradual transformation of the AKP into a personalist party reached its zenith under the new system. The ruling party was transformed into a vehicle for the personal ambitions of President Erdoğan and clientelist distribution. This rise of a ruling personalist party dominated by a single leader in turn contributed to democratic backsliding (see the chapter by Laebens in this volume). Another factor concerns the patterns of political participation. While Turkey exhibits relatively high levels of electoral turnout, more demanding forms of political participation including protesting, campaigning, and contacting elected officers have been infrequent and involved smaller segments of the population, primarily educated and urban middle and upper-​middle classes. This asymmetry has some pernicious effects for democratic governance in Turkey. As Ersin Kalaycıoğlu shows, there was a rather negative relationship between political efficacy and participation in the 2010s. On the one hand, clientelism, the delivery of tangible benefits by the ruling party, has contributed to robust levels of voting, especially among lower-​income citizens. On the other hand, the rising authoritarianism makes contentious forms of participation even riskier and may contribute to growing apathy among citizens discontent with the ruling regime (see the chapter by Kalaycıoğlu in this volume). Closely related to political clientelism is the AKP’s social policies. It may appear puzzling that social assistance expanded since the early 1980s with the ascendancy of policies favoring privatization, deregulation, and big business. Erdem Yörük shows that electoral competition and the attempts to contain unrest associated with the urban poor were the primary factors driving this expansion. Meanwhile, income-​based social assistance including in-​kind and cash transfers to the poor, free healthcare and housing, and disability aid replaced employment-​based social security programs. Social assistance helped the AKP not only form a sustainable winning electoral coalition but also

12   Güneş Murat Tezcür neutralize the threat from the poor and discontented Kurds (see the chapter by Yörük in this volume). Similarly, the AKP engaged in limited economic distribution in rural areas and pursued a variety of policies serving the interests of the rural poor (Gürel, Küçük, and Taş 2019). Consequently, the AKP’s electoral hegemony could be made sense of only with a close analysis of its policies appealing to various disadvantaged classes. While clientelist practices have been a core aspect of party politics in Turkey, elections continue to provide a mechanism of broader democratic accountability. As in many other countries, voters tend to reward or punish the incumbent party according to the state of the economy. Utilizing evidence from surveys, S. Erdem Aytaç documents that positive evaluations of the economy translate into greater support for the ruling AKP even when controlling for religiosity and education. At the same time, in more recent years, how voters perceive the economic situation is increasingly colored by their partisan affiliations. AKP supporters are more likely to evaluate the economy in more positive terms than citizens supporting the opposition (see the chapter by Aytaç in this volume). That finding indicates that the government’s attempt to shape public perceptions with its heavy control over media outlets has had some success. As the AKP’s ability to deliver economic growth has been hampered, the ruling party has a strong incentive to rally its base with identity politics and stoke polarization. In addition to these electoral factors, the rise of the AKP hegemony in Turkish politics has both facilitated and been made feasible by the structural transformation of the Turkish media. Sarphan Uzunoğlu argues that a lasting legacy of the Turkish media has been its oligopolistic and hypercommercialized nature, the insecurity of media workers, and the marginalization of ethnic and religious minorities. Given this legacy, the AKP has gradually tightened its control over mass media via acquisitions of major television channels and newspapers by businesses close to the party and coercion (i.e., arresting and imprisoning journalists and financially penalizing media outlets critical of the government). The result was a deep decline in freedom of the press. Turkey is ranked 154th among 180 countries in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index of Reporters without Borders.4 As the mainstream media becomes completely detached from reality (e.g., not even reporting about the resignation of the minister of finance who also happens to be President’s son-​in-​law in November 2020), alternative forms of media including news channels based on the internet and involving digital citizenship have emerged (see the chapter by Uzunoğlu in this volume). Nonetheless, the government derives a significant political advantage via its hegemonic influence over the mass media as the ability of the new media to reach broader segments of the population remains limited. The affective and discursive strategies pursued by the ruling party in Turkey have been another major factor enabling authoritarianism and stoking polarization. Such strategies make repeated appeals to emotion (particularly fear and anger) via simplistic and distorted narratives to mobilize public support for government agendas. From a comparative perspective, they have also been prevalent in many other contexts in an age of post-​truth politics (McDermott 2019). The Handbook includes two contributions that offer original insights into the centrality of emotions and narratives to political struggles in contemporary Turkey. Senem Aslan comparatively studies direct appeals to emotions

The Study of Politics in Turkey    13 via the strategic employment of symbols during the one-​party era before 1950 and the current AKP rule. Symbolic politics, including the construction of personality cults and promotion of certain types of public rituals over others, help ruling parties legitimize their rule. In particular, crying in public signals authenticity and aims to boost President Erdoğan’s claims that he continues to be the representative of the people in the face of external and internal enemies (Aslan 2020). Moreover, symbols as employed by ruling parties have coercive aspects and aim to intimidate dissent. Finally, they function to co-​ opt segments of the population via grandiose infrastructural projects appealing to national pride and hubris (see the chapter by Aslan in this volume). Erdağ Göknar’s chapter offers a perfect companion to Aslan’s discussion. Since 2008, the AKP government has instrumentalized melodramatic conspiratorial accounts to discredit the opposition and justify its increasingly authoritarian rule. In these parable accounts, echoing the Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s famous novel Snow, the distinction between fiction and fact blurs. Political imaginations have become central to the conduct of judicial processes and public policies. From 2008 to 2013, the main enemy was the “Ergenekon Terror Organization,” which was portrayed as a bureaucratic cabal that aimed to overthrow AKP rule via clandestine means. A series of highly controversial trials that were also supported by groups other than the AKP aimed to dismantle this conspiracy. The next target was the Gülen network, a close ally of the ruling party during the Ergenekon trials. By 2014, however, Fetullah Gülen, the leader of the network, became “Mastermind,” a puppet master in alliance with a variety of sinister forces, employing any means necessary including manufactured economic crises, mass demonstrations, and coups to destroy Turkey. Göknar incisively captures the ultimate irony of this conspiratorial governance. While coups, which have been the bane of Turkish politics for decades, are no longer feasible or legitimate, civilian rule has increasingly been authoritarian and coercive (see the chapter by Göknar in this volume). Both Aslan and Göknar argue that politics based on visceral symbols and conspiracies contribute to greater polarization by cultivating greater mistrust and animosity among the populace. In this regard, an important question concerns the factors both contributing to and limiting the appeal of such strategies. Under what conditions do emotional and conspiratorial politics work? Given the global rise of populist movements espousing conspiratorial understandings of political governance and aiming to capitalize on popular resentments via emotional appeals, studying this question in Turkey and comparatively presents a promising avenue for future research.5

Developmentalism in an Era of Neoliberalism Consistent with global trends, a defining aspect of Turkish economy and politics is the ascendancy of neoliberalism since the 1980s. The ways in which market-​oriented

14   Güneş Murat Tezcür policies have been implemented in Turkey exhibit a set of unique characteristics that profoundly influence patterns of state involvement in the economy as well as political choices of ruling governments, from the military junta to the AKP. These patterns and choices are analyzed in some depth by several contributions to the Handbook. Developmentalism has been a core discursive force shaping governmental priorities and policies since the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Development is typically equated with economic growth and has involved large-​scale extractive projects at the expense of environmental concerns and social justice. Şevket Pamuk provides an insightful overview of the historical evolution of Turkish political economy (see the chapter by Pamuk in this volume). Three of his observations are worth highlighting here. First, the per capita economic growth rate in Turkey has been close to world averages and slightly above the average growth in developing countries. In the post-​1980 period, per capita income in Turkey increased more than in many South American and African countries but remained lower than in Southeast and South Asian countries. A major factor hampering development in Turkey has been the persistence of gender, regional, and ethnic inequalities in terms of health and educational attainment levels. Next, state interventionism exhibited mixed results in terms of economic performance. In the absence of an autonomous private sector and professional and cohesive bureaucratic governance, such interventions remained hostage to clientelist relations and were not directed toward investments in education, skills, and technology that could boost competitiveness and productivity. Finally, the failure to establish a pluralistic, open, and stable political regime has hindered greater economic performance, an observation consistent with the argument that politically inclusive institutions are indispensable for sustainable development (Acemoğlu and Robinson 2012). As emphasized in other chapters, institutional decay (i.e., mediocrity, favoritism, and nepotism replacing meritocracy) accelerated in the later years of AKP rule. The 1980 coup not only aimed to reshape the Turkish political system but also signified the rise of a neoliberal ethos that would have profound effects on state–​society relations (Özden, Bekman, and Akça 2018). Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra define neoliberalism as a governmental logic that insulates “policymaking from democratic processes, either through an economization of the social domain conducted under the aegis of economists qua experts or through a depoliticization of the economic domain through restrictive constitutional frames or barriers” (see the chapter by Erensü and Madra in this volume). What is distinctive about the trajectory of neoliberalism in Turkey is that it reached its zenith under the rule of an Islamist party (Tuğal 2009). The AKP, which came to power in the aftermath of Turkey’s worst financial crisis in the post–​World War II period, enthusiastically inherited an International Monetary Fund stabilization plan involving privatization, deregulation, an export-​oriented growth strategy, and incentives to attract foreign direct investment and hot money. The initial years of AKP rule delivered high growth, an expansion of credit in the domestic market, and a boom in certain sectors, especially construction and energy. Meanwhile, the government employed coercive power and manufactured consent to sustain its transformative vision and neutralize dissent. However, by the late 2010s, this Islamist neoliberalism

The Study of Politics in Turkey    15 was in dire straits. Not only did the global environment become less conducive to a foreign debt–​financed growth strategy but also economic growth slowed significantly (Orhangazi and Yeldan 2021). In the face of mounting challenges, the regime took a personalist and nativist turn that eroded the market-​friendly regulatory framework it had previously espoused. Consequently, Turkey entered the third decade of the twenty-​first century with triple crises—​political, economic, and health. The rise of neoliberalism under the AKP changed how citizens receive and negotiate healthcare and wider domains of activities affecting public health outcomes. Volkan Yılmaz offers an analytical framework to make sense of these changes ranging from the involvement of physicians, patients, businesses, and international experts in the formulation of health policies to government positions on sexual and reproductive health, tobacco control, drug abuse, and the COVID-​19 pandemic. Healthcare politics is now characterized by a proliferation of actors who make demands from the state by using competing discourses and framings (e.g., citizen rights, economic performance, sanctity of family, humanitarianism). Yılmaz characterizes this dynamic as the “democratization of health politics” that makes the role of the state in health provision a subject of constant negotiation. In this sense, he depicts a relatively positive picture regarding how social actors could continue to engage the state and obtain tangible concessions even during an era of authoritarianism. Nonetheless, the government’s response to COVID-​ 19 exhibited major inconsistencies and shortcomings and exhausted public trust by late 2020 (see the chapter by V. Yılmaz in this volume). The marriage of neoliberalism and developmentalism in the Turkish context has been also pronounced in the realms of energy and environment. Turkey’s developmentalist model has been obsessed with energy projects given the country’s lack of significant hydrocarbon reserves. In the post-​1980 period, both geopolitical power projections and sustaining economic growth underlined the ambition of being a regional energy hub. As Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın compellingly argue, this ambition entailed a particular style of political governance privileging certain social interests and groups over others. The energy-​related discourses juxtaposed grandiose nationalistic development narratives with a market and technocratic logic, insulated decisions from public participation and scrutiny, aimed to marginalize dissident voices, and aggravated sociospatial and economic inequalities. Hence, energy policies pursued by the AKP have been integral aspects of authoritarian governance. Such policies bypass legislative and judicial channels and are justified with references to nationalism, developmentalism, and energy independence. Consequently, the transition to more sustainable forms of energy and reconfiguring the discourse about energy in terms of a broader understanding of public good remain major challenges in Turkey during an era of climate crisis (see the chapter by Özkaynak, Turhan, and Aydın in this volume). A similar dynamic was also present in the AKP’s environmental policies. As noted, growth almost always took precedence over environmental concerns in Turkey. Fikret Adaman, Bengi Akbulut, and Murat Arsel convincingly observe that what is novel in the AKP era is the conflation of environmental demands with identity politics. As major Turkish organizations and a broader public showed little engagement with

16   Güneş Murat Tezcür environmental issues, civil society associations and movements emerged as the only actors making environmental demands on the government. However, as polarization intensified and permeated social life, the government took uncompromising and aggressive positions against environmental activism perceived as part of broader oppositional strategies. This happened especially after the Gezi protests of 2013 that started as an attempt to save a park in Istanbul before metamorphosing into major anti-​government demonstrations. Effective environmental activism, despite several instances of successful resistance to disruptive projects, became another casualty of neoliberal governance and growing authoritarianism in Turkey. The future of environmental issues in Turkey depends on the formation of a more inclusive political atmosphere as well as alternative discourses to both neoliberal and growth-​oriented paradigms (see the chapter by Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel in this volume).

Ideas and Interests in the Making of Turkish Foreign Policy Similar to these economic developments, the transformation of Turkish foreign policy since the early 2000s has been the subject of extensive scholarly attention. Turkey’s NATO membership, which began in 1952, was the defining aspect of its security and defense policies during the Cold War. Turkish elites occasionally exhibited autonomy when the country’s interest stood in opposition to that of the Western alliance, most notably when Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974. At the same time, the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union was a major restraining factor over Turkish foreign policy. The end of the Cold War provided new avenues of foreign policy activism for Turkey, and EU membership emerged as the core goal of Turkish foreign policy during the 1990s. However, the economic and political instability of the decade undermined activism in Turkish foreign policy. As in domestic spheres, the coming of the AKP to power would gradually herald significant changes in Turkey’s external affairs. Several chapters in this Handbook provide insightful analyses of these changes, as well as patterns of continuities. Tarık Oğuzlu offers a tripartite periodization of Turkish foreign policy under the AKP. The first period covers the AKP’s first two terms in power and was characterized by a relatively pro-​Western and pro–​United States orientation. In comparison, from 2011 to 2015, the government adopted a much more autonomous and assertive stance involving ambitious initiatives in a Middle East that experienced major political changes and conflicts. However, these ambitions remained frustrated, and the government switched to a defensive and security-​oriented foreign policy after 2015. Oğuzlu suggests a neoclassical realist framework combining both external and internal factors to make sense of these shifts. As a middle-​ranking power, Turkey has always been vulnerable to the shifts in regional and global geopolitical balance of power. At the same

The Study of Politics in Turkey    17 time, foreign policy making increasingly reflected the changing domestic priorities of the AKP. In the initial period, the AKP sought the support of Western actors in its power struggle with the bureaucratic elites. The pursuit of EU membership aligned with the AKP’s attempt to neutralize the influence of these elites. In sharp contrast, Russia, an autocratic and nationalist regime under President Putin, emerged as a main ally for Erdoğan’s AKP after 2015, facing a deteriorating regional security environment and a series of political and economic crises of its own making (see the chapter by Oğuzlu in this volume). Evren Balta and Mitat Çelikpala offer a similar theoretical understanding in their analysis of Russian–​Turkish relations. Russian expansion toward the south was a major security challenge for both the Ottoman Empire and Turkey until the late twentieth century. In fact, a major motive for Turkey’s NATO membership was to resist Russian territorial demands. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Turkey and Russia remained rivals in many different areas ranging from the south Caucasus to central Asia through the 1990s. The recent Turkish–​Russian rapprochement involving intense economic and energy linkages, major arms deals, and coordination of military activities in Syria appears as a surprising development given this historical background. Balta and Çelikpala explain this puzzle with the notion of omnibalancing and suggest that political elites are likely to pursue an alliance with a foreign state that would help them stay in power in the face of both external and internal threats. As both Turkey under Erdoğan and Russia under Putin drifted away from the West, the latter emerged as a reliable and trusted partner for the former. In this regard, personification of power in both countries facilitated a historically unprecedented thaw in bilateral relations that continued to lack a strong institutional basis (see the chapter by Balta and Çelikpala in this volume). The improvement in Russian–​Turkish relations was accompanied by increasing tensions and problems in US–​Turkish relations. The partnership between the United States and Turkey had had a core security axis since the early Cold War years. While this partnership had its ebbs, including the US arms embargo following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and the Turkish Parliament’s refusal to let the United States invade Iraq using Turkish territory in 2003, it remained resilient throughout the AKP’s initial years in power. Serhat Güvenç and Soli Özel identify three crucial factors, ideational, interest-​based, and institutional, to explain this resiliency: (1) pro-​Western orientation of Turkish elites, (2) shared strategic interests between the two countries, and (3) institutional bonds between the defense establishments in both countries. As all three factors became less salient by the second term of the Obama presidency, bilateral relations deteriorated and were characterized by transactionalism. Regarding the ideational factor, the AKP elite were less committed to Turkey’s relations with the West than any other previous Turkish government. Equally, if not more important, Turkish and American interests diverged in multiple ways, especially regarding the Syrian conflict. Finally, institutionalized linkages between the Turkish and US militaries became weaker as the Turkish armed forces found themselves in turmoil after 2008. Consequently, the

18   Güneş Murat Tezcür expectations of a strategic bilateral partnership dissipated completely (see the chapter by Güvenç and Özel in this volume). A similar downgrading also took place in Turkey’s relations with the European Union. Since the late Ottoman period, “catching-​up with the West” has been a guiding motto of Turkish elites despite their misgivings about Western imperialism. The zenith of engagement with the West was Turkey’s membership application to the European Union, which gained momentum with the turn of the century. Successive Turkish governments enacted a series of important political reforms, and the accession negotiations started in October 2005. However, the moment of euphemism proved to be short-​lived. Especially after the great recession that hit many European countries in 2008, Turkey’s relations with Europe experienced a downslide. Hakan Yılmaz uses the term “ultra-​instrumentalism” to describe the current nature of the relations lacking mutual trust, institutionalized legal rules, and a shared vision. The only notable area of cooperation was the refugee deal in 2016, according to which Turkey limits the flow of asylum seekers and migrants to Europe in exchange for a generous financial package. Yılmaz argues that a major reason for the reversal of Turkish–​European relations is the formation of right-​wing governments in major European countries, including France and Germany, shortly after the start of the accession negotiations. Meanwhile, Euroskepticism increased significantly across the ideological spectrum and further diminished prospects of sustainable democratization in Turkey. Yılmaz concludes on a positive note and proposes a more decentralized and hybrid understanding of Turkey’s integration to Europe at the civil society level (see the chapter by H. Yılmaz in this volume). As Turkey had increasingly divergent interests with the Western states, its involvement in Middle Eastern affairs became more pronounced. Echoing several other chapters that suggest that foreign policy making reflects domestic agendas, Lisel Hintz explains the Middle Eastern turn in Turkish foreign policy by features unique to the AKP. More than any other author, Hintz identifies the ideological transformation of Turkish political elites as the main driver of this change. With the rise of the AKP, Turkish foreign policy switched from a “Republican nationalist” ideological outlook to an “Ottoman-​Islamist” one that reclaims Turkey’s historical leadership role in its neighborhood and is based on its self-​image as the leading Sunni Muslim power (see the chapter by Hintz in this volume). The Arab uprisings initially provided the perfect context for the pursuit of policies in line with this ideological vision. However, as Hintz details in her case studies, it soon became clear that there was a significant gap between Turkey’s capabilities and ambitions. Turkey could neither prevent the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt nor replace the Assad regime with the opposition it supported. Moreover, pragmatic and commercial concerns remained central to its rivalry with other middle-​ranking powers in the region, including Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the Kurdish question, a lasting issue since the foundation of the Turkish Republic, again became central to the Turkish agenda in both Iraq and Syria.

The Study of Politics in Turkey    19

Beyond Defeatism From a comparative historical perspective, building a sustainable democratic regime conducive to human flourishing and liberty has always been a highly arduous process involving major setbacks and periods of stagnation and regression (Tilly 2007; Berman 2019; Acemoğlu and Robinson 2019). Achieving a balance between the powers of the state and the society so that the polity enters and remains in what Acemoğlu and Robinson (2019) call the “narrow corridor of liberty” has been a perennial challenge. As Daron Acemoğlu argues in his “Foreword,” in the Turkish context, the balance of power has been tilted in favor of the state since late Ottoman times. As civil society remained weak and fragmented, a primary goal of political movements was “the capture of the state” so that they could control and redesign society according to their own ideological preferences. Yet such strategies also hindered the formation of professional bureaucratic cadres with pernicious consequences for the state capacity. In Turkey, sustainable democratization ultimately depends on the strengthening of society vis-​à-​vis the state and its ability to hold political elites accountable and restrain their arbitrary actions (see the foreword by Acemoğlu in this volume). Adopting this historical perspective helps us identify the long-​lasting weakness of political liberalism with a commitment to citizenship rights, freedom of expression and assembly, and separation of powers in Turkey. There were only two brief periods when political liberalism, as different from neoliberalism, was an influential force in the country: (1) the 1960s when political pluralism flourished under a relatively permissive constitutional order and (2) the initial years of AKP rule characterized by unprecedented engagement with the European Union and an economic boom. Both of these periods were ultimately followed by major reversals. The 1971 military intervention brought a wave of repression and a decade of unprecedented political polarization and violence. As discussed, the initial euphoria of liberalism under the AKP gave way to the rise of populist authoritarianism. Ekrem Karakoç provides a crucial insight about this weakness of political liberalism in Turkey with his focus on state–​business relations. The Turkish private sector, which could act as a force constraining the state, has been state-​dependent. This dependency stems from a historical process going back to the late Ottoman period and through which the state was instrumental in the formation of a “national bourgeoisie” (Pamuk 2018, 164). While business elites gained some autonomy during years of economic liberalization and export-​oriented growth, their support for political liberalization has been half-​hearted and inconclusive. When faced with a powerful political actor, whether the military in the 1980s and 1990s or the AKP in the 2010s, the business elite took a passive position lest they lose access to lucrative governmental bids or even risk losing control over their assets (see the chapter by Karakoç in this volume). Relatedly, the Turkish middle classes never became a dynamic force that could be the dynamo of democratic change, an observation that challenges a celebrated argument in political science (Lipset

20   Güneş Murat Tezcür 1959). As in some post-​Soviet countries (Rosenfeld 2020), the Turkish middle class has also been too dependent on the state to initiate and lead coalitions that would result in a more inclusive and pluralistic political system. There is a second factor that highly complicates the ability of civil society actors to establish broad-​based coalitions that could overcome wedge issue politics, transcend polarization, and espouse inclusive platforms in the Turkish context. This factor emanates from the very violent, exclusive, and incomplete nation-​building process in Turkey (Bozarslan 2005; Ünlü 2014). Most notably, the Kurdish question, which has its origins in the settlements following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, remains a highly intractable issue and complicates the formation of cross-​ethnic social movements and political organizations that could facilitate democratic change. As noted by many scholars, establishing a sustainable democratic regime presents unique difficulties in contexts where citizens lack a common national identity and unwavering loyalty to the state (Rustow 1970; Linz and Stepan 1996, 25–​27; Berman 2019). None of the three historical factors facilitating national integration in Andreas Wimmer’s (2018) theoretical framework had a strong presence in the Turkish context. Civil society organizations bringing Turkish and Kurdish activists together were mostly absent; the state provision of public services in Kurdish lands remained underdeveloped; Kurdish and Turkish had major linguistic differences, making cross-​ethnic communication very difficult. Besides, the ethnic Kurds were historically excluded from the upper echelons of power in the Republic, a factor that directly contributed to their grievances and unrest (Tezcür and Gurses 2017). In more recent decades, Kurdish migration to the big cities has made class inequalities overlap with ethnic differences and generated new forms of resentment and exclusion (Saraçoğlu 2011; Günay 2019). These ethnic differences that translate into low levels of interethnic tolerance have persisted across the decades and became more salient with the rise of the Kurdish insurgency in the 1980s (Sarigil and Karakoc 2017). While the Turkish state eventually managed to contain the violent campaign of the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan), the organization remained viable with transborder linkages and a strong presence in all parts of historical Kurdistan, including northern Syria, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran. These linkages and the legacy of the armed conflict; widespread human rights violations by the Turkish state including extrajudicial executions, systematic torture, and forced displacements; terrorist tactics by the insurgents including suicide attacks and assassinations; and mass destruction in Kurdish lands make the process of establishing common ground and forming durable coalitions among ethnic Turks and Kurds highly complicated and challenging. While violent mobilization has often been the focus of scholarly inquiry (Tezcür 2016), the Kurdish movement had a multifaceted nature, complicating its image as a purely nationalist entity. Kurdish political parties have had a sizable parliamentary presence and formed distinctive forms of local governance (at least until the wave of repression that replaced pro-​Kurdish mayors with government-​appointed trustees by 2016). Besides, a Kurdish movement affiliated with the PKK managed to establish de facto autonomous rule and emerged as the main ally of Western forces in northern Syria after

The Study of Politics in Turkey    21 2014. Dilan Okcuoglu offers a bottom-​up perspective to study these local and transnational aspects of Kurdish politics. Utilizing a series of in-​depth interviews with ordinary people, she shows how Kurdish local governance and transnational linkages have transformed their emotional, ideational, and institutional understanding of politics at the popular level. This micro-​level perspective is valuable for understanding the resiliency and popularity of the Kurdish movement in a repressive political environment (see the chapter by Okcuoglu in this volume). Given these dynamics that reduce the ability of society to counter the Turkish state, it could be difficult to avoid a defeatist mindset. However, this gloomy assessment needs to be qualified. If there is a silver lining to Turkey’s political impasse, it is civil society activism that carries a huge potential for progressive change. Accordingly, Ayhan Kaya’s notion of “active citizenship” that gained a new meaning in Turkey with the massive Gezi protests in 2013 offers a more sanguine view. The Gezi demonstrations heralded forms of political participation that are detached from partisanship, based on an inclusive-​egalitarian ethos, cultivated by new networks of solidarities, and sustained via highly creative acts of protest and digital activism. They shattered the image of youth as being apolitical and showed that citizens could engage in transformative action emancipated from state tutelage and effectively challenge discourses of polarization and populism. While these forms of participation could not prevent the steady deterioration of Turkey’s democracy, they have also left a lasting legacy (see the chapter by Kaya in this volume). The outbreak of Boğaziçi protests in early 2021 in reaction to the top-​ down appointment of an unqualified political figure as president of one of the leading universities in the country suggests that the Gezi spirit continues to be vibrant.6 The resiliency of Turkish civil society is also reflected in the growing vibrancy of the women’s movement despite the pro-​natalist and conservative AKP that aim to heavily regulate family affairs and women’s involvement in the public sphere (Eksi and Wood 2019). In its first decade in power, the AKP pursued a number of policies and initiatives that were conducive to gender equality, as described by Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat. One of the last progressive initiatives of the AKP era is the ratification of an international convention (known as the Istanbul Convention) against violence against women in 2012. In its second decade in power, however, the AKP increasingly adopted a patriarchal platform, upholding motherhood as the primary virtue for women and treating LGBT+ individuals as “deviants” who have no place according to its worldview informed by “Islamic” morality (Savcı 2021). Meanwhile, the Istanbul Convention came under intense fire from the government and conservative circles for undermining the traditional family structure, and President Erdoğan withdrew Turkey from the Convention in March 2021. Under these hostile conditions, the women’s movement took defensive action to protect the existing gains. The bottom-​up mobilization of women and their international and domestic alliances will continue to have a decisive influence over gender politics in Turkey (see the chapter by Arat this volume). In conclusion, dark clouds hover above a Turkey that finds itself in a dire predicament by the third decade of the twenty-​first century. There has been a retreat from the rule of law, a lack of accountability, an institutional decay, an abandonment of meritocracy,

22   Güneş Murat Tezcür an economic mismanagement, and a deep polarization instigated by ruling elites. The initial enthusiasm about democratic progress under the AKP now appears as a Fata Morgana, a superior mirage appearing narrowly above the horizon at the sea. If we think of the horizon as an analogy for the democratic threshold, it is now clear that Turkey never rose above it. Yet the reverse mirage, the tendency to perceive Turkish democracy as completely sunk below the surface and to dismiss its potential for progressive change, could be equally illusionary. Factors associated with durable authoritarianism including an economic system based on natural resource extraction, a cohesive ruling ideology, an institutionalized and lasting one-​party rule, and a highly stratified class system are absent. Turkey, as usual, continues to hover below the horizon of democracy. The prospects for Turkish democracy remain contingent, ultimately depending on the interaction between popular activism and elites willing and able to form compromises and rise above old divisions. As elsewhere, the formation of cross-​sectional coalitions appealing to broader segments of the population and transcending polarization is essential for the prospects for Turkish democratization. Consequently, studies of the conditions and strategies facilitating and hindering such coalitions will greatly enrich our understanding of democratic struggles in Turkey and beyond.

Notes 1. In particular, consistent with disciplinary trends, political science studies on Turkey involve an increasing number of experimental designs embedded in surveys. To give several examples, Bloom, Arıkan, and Courtemanche (2015) analyze the role of religious identity and religiosity in shaping attitudes toward immigrants; Aytaç, Schiumerini, and Stokes (2018) explore emotional and ideational mechanisms leading people to participate in contentious collective action; Getmansky, Sınmazdemir, and Zeitzoff (2018) focus on popular attitudes toward Syrian refugees. 2. In particular, politically motivated purges that started in 2016 had a devastating impact on Turkish academia. By the end of 2018, more than six thousand academics were expelled from their positions (Kaya 2018). 3. There have been only three brief periods when leftist parties formed governments: in 1974, from 1978 to 1979, and from 1999 to 2002 (the leftist credentials of the latest government are highly debatable). The historical weakness of the left in Turkish politics and its inability to present a viable, pluralistic, and democratic vision invite a systematic scholarly inquiry. 4. Available at https://rsf.org/en/2020-world-press-freedom-index-entering-decisivedecade-journalism-exacerbated-coronavirus. While the tactics they employ have changed over decades, state authorities always put intense pressure on dissident media outlets. In 1945, a mob incited by authorities destroyed the printing house of the Tan, a prominent leftist newspaper (Sertel 2019, 191–​203). In 1994, clandestine forces embedded in the state bombed the offices of Özgür Gündem, a pro-​Kurdish newspaper. 5. This and similar questions are also addressed with the employment of quantitative (i.e., experimental) methods in the Turkish context (e.g., Erişen 2013). 6. A presidential decree issued in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt gave the president the exclusive power to appoint all university presidents without electoral mechanisms. Until

The Study of Politics in Turkey    23 then, unique among public universities, Boğaziçi University had had a system of choosing its own president via elections among the faculty according to democratic norms.

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24   Güneş Murat Tezcür Kaufman, Robert R., and Stephan Haggard. 2019. “Democratic Decline in the United States: What Can We Learn from Middle-​Income Backsliding?” Perspectives on Politics 17, no. 2: 417–​432. Kaya, Muzaffer. 2018. “Turkey’s Purge of Critical Academia.” Middle East Report 288. Kuru, Ahmet. 2012. Secularism and State Policies toward Religion. New York: Cambridge University Press. Laebens, Melis G., and Aykut Öztürk. 2021. “Partisanship and Autocratization: Polarization, Power Asymmetry, and Partisan Social Identities in Turkey.” Comparative Political Studies 54, no. 2: 245–​279. Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown Publishing. Lewis, Bernard. 1968. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. New York: Oxford University Press. Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-​Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Expanded ed. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Mardin, Şerif. 1973. “Center-​Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” Daedalus 102, no. 1: 169–​190. McDermott, Rose. 2019. “Psychological Underpinnings of Post-​Truth in Political Beliefs.” PS: Political Science & Politics 52, no. 2: 218–​222. Müftüler Baç, Meltem. 2005. “Turkey’s Political Reforms and the Impact of the European Union.” South European Society and Politics 10, no. 1: 17–​31. Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. 2005. “The Rise of ‘Muslim Democracy.’ ” Journal of Democracy 16, no. 2:  13–​27. Orhangazi, Özgür, and A. Erinç Yeldan. 2021. “The Re-​making of the Turkish Crisis.” Development and Change 52, no. 3: 460–​503. Özbudun, Ergun. 2014. “AKP at the Crossroads: Erdoğan’s Majoritarian Drift.” South European Society and Politics 19, no. 2: 155–​167. Özden, Barış Alp, Ahmet Bekman, and İsmet Akça. 2018. “Passive Revolution: Beyond a Politicist Approach.” Development and Change 49, no. 1: 238–​253. Pamuk, Şevket. 2018. Uneven Centuries: Economic Development of Turkey since 1820. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Philpot, Daniel. 2019. Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World Today. New York: Oxford University Press. Rosenfeld, Bryn. 2020. The Autocratic Middle Class: How State Dependency Reduces the Demand for Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rustow, Dankwart A. 1970. “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model.” Comparative Politics 2, no. 3: 337–​363. Said, Edward. 2000. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Saraçoğlu, Cenk. 2011. Kurds of Modern Turkey: Migration, Neoliberalism and Exclusion in Turkish Society. New York: I. B. Tauris. Sarigil, Zeki, and Ekrem Karakoc. 2017. “Inter-​ethnic (In)Tolerance between Turks and Kurds: Implications for Turkish Democratisation.” South European Society and Politics 22, no. 2: 197–​216. Savcı, Evren. 2021. “Turkey’s Queer Times: Epistemic Challenges.” New Perspectives on Turkey 64: 131–​150.

The Study of Politics in Turkey    25 Sertel, Sabiha. 2019. The Struggle for Modern Turkey: Justice, Activism and a Revolutionary Female Journalist. Translated by David Selim Sayers and Evrim Emir-​Sayers. Edited by Tia O’Brien and Nur Deriş. London: I. B. Tauris. Sözen, Yunus. 2020. “Studying Autocratization in Turkey: Political Institutions, Populism, and Neoliberalism.” New Perspectives on Turkey 63, 209–​235. Stepan, Alfred C. 2000. “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations.’ ” Journal of Democracy 11, no. 4, 37–​57. Tansel, Cemal Burak. 2018. “Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Democratic Backsliding in Turkey: Beyond the Narratives of Progress.” South European Society and Politics 23, no. 2: 197–​217. Tezcür, Güneş Murat. 2016. “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Risks: Participation in an Ethnic Rebellion.” American Political Science Review 110, no. 2: 247–​264. Tezcür, Güneş Murat, and Mehmet Gurses. 2017. “Ethnic Exclusion and Mobilization: The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey.” Comparative Politics 49, no. 2: 213–​234. Tilly, Charles. 2007. Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tokdoğan, Nagehan. 2018. Yeni Osmanlıcılık: Hınç, Nostalji, Narsisizm. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları. Topuz, Eren. 2020. “Cumhurbaşkanı’na Hakaret: Altı Yılda 128 Bin 872 Soruşturma, 9 Bin 556 Mahkumiyet.” Gazete Duvar, December 16. https://​www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/​ cumhurbaskanina-​hakaret-​alti-​yilda-​128-​bin-​872-​sorusturma-​9-​bin-​556-​mahkumiyet-​ haber-​1507370. Tuğal, Cihan. 2009. Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı. 2020. Türkiye İnsan Hakları Raporu—​2019. Ankara: Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı Yayınları. https://​tihv.org.tr/​yillik-​insan-​haklari-​raporlari/​ 2019-​yillik-​insan-​haklari-​raporu. Ünlü, Barış. 2014. “Türklük Sözleşmesi’nin İmzalanışı (1915–​1925).” Mülkiye Dergisi 38, no. 3:  47–​81. Wimmer, Andreas. 2018. Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together while Others Fall Apart. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yavuz, M. Hakan. 2013. Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement. New York: Oxford University Press.

PA RT I

P OL I T IC A L R E G I M E

Chapter 2

Demo crati z at i on Theories an d   T u rk ey Ekrem Karakoç

There is almost a consensus that Turkey has an authoritarian regime, going through first “delegative democracy” until the early 2010s (Özbudun 2014 and then “electoral/​ competitive authoritarianism” since 2014 (Polity IV).1 The questions regarding what caused such a trajectory of regime change remain unanswered. In particular, how does regime democratization literature explain Turkey’s “two steps forward and one step back” or more democracy journey (Arat and Pamuk 2019; Turan 2015)? And what do major theories tell us about the stalled democratization problem in Turkey? And how did Turkish studies contribute to the literature on democratization? Which fields in the literature of Turkish studies show the most promise for further contributions? In the light of these questions, this chapter investigates how the democratization literature explains Turkey’s transition to authoritarianism during the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party) era. It examines the positive and negative roles of major actors, such as the military, unions, the business class, and hegemonic international powers, for democracy. While doing so, it will also contextualize how regional and international events and actors exert an influence on the regime changes in Turkey. The chapter reaches several conclusions. Modernization theory offers a limited explanation for the rise of authoritarianism in recent years in Turkey. First, economic development is associated with democratization, but the causality seems to run from democratization to development since the early 2000s. Next, the business class and major unions, identified as crucial factors for democratization by scholars such as Moore (1966) and Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992), have been state-​dependent or state-​led organizations, respectively, or, for the latter, too ideologically divided to act as the promoter of democracy. Third, the Turkish case clearly shows that, contrary to Levitsky and Way’s anticipation (2010), Turkey’s high linkage to the West and (medium) leverage did not save it from becoming an authoritarian country. Finally, studies on Turkish political culture offer an even more pessimistic view; there is evidence that

30   Ekrem Karakoç the vast majority of both Turkish elites and masses are not “democrats,” whether they are supporters of secular or religious parties. Furthermore, support for democracy among elite and public opinion is contingent on whether their political ideology is in power and whether they feel discriminated against by the political status quo. Among subfields of democratization literature, Turkish studies have made notable contributions to the debate on secularism, with a focus on the Islamic parties and their relationship to the secularist elites in Turkey. Future studies should focus on varieties of political Islam enmeshed in Turkish nationalism. These actors’ strategies and the shifting alliances have monumental consequences on public policies and the nature of the political regime. In addition, the unstable mixture of nationalism, national identity, and democracy has received limited attention. Studies on the ethnocratic nature of the current political system and “Turkish national identity” may explain how Rustow (1970) ’s background factor against democratization has operated in the regime trajectory. The unwillingness and inability of past and current ruling elites to address the Kurdish issues via political reforms remain major obstacles to democratization. The securitization of Kurdish identity and adverse reactions by the state and public opinion to demands for political equality among Kurds weaken already debilitated pro-​democracy agents and empower right-​wing and authoritarian political and bureaucratic elites. This also tilts Turkish foreign policy toward a more aggressive position toward the Syrian conflict, and it curbs enthusiasm toward the European Union and NATO. At the same time, rapprochement with Russia does not bode well for the return of democracy to Turkey.

The Twilight of Democracy in Post-​2013  Turkey Many scholars lament the erosion of civil and political liberties under the AKP’s rule. However, neither democracy as “the only game in town” nor the “attitudinal, behavioral, and constitutional dimensions” of the consolidation of democracy were fulfilled in Turkey, as required by Linz and Stepan (1996) since the first free multi-​party elections of 1950. Turkish democracy has long been susceptible to the (in)formal intervention of the military and its allies in both the judiciary and bureaucracy (Turan 2015). Once politicians transgressed this political playground bounded by the guardianship and challenged the secular nation-​state model, its guardians, the military and its allies, reshaped this playground and reset its boundaries. Hence, the direct and indirect interventions by the guardians of the regime lead scholars to label Turkish democracy with various adjectives such as “praetorian,” “delegative,” “electoral,” “tutelary,” and “illiberal.”2 The AKP, which came to power in 2002, provided assurances that it would not pursue policies that stray from the secular nature of the state. It launched a series of reforms to dissipate skepticism among critics both at home and in Western countries about

Democratization Theories and Turkey    31 the Islamist identity of the party. In the first period of the AKP governments, Turkey witnessed substantial improvement in the rule of law and in civil and political liberties, as reflected by positive increases in Freedom House or Polity IV scores. Examples of reforms attempted or that achieved partial success include the EU harmonizing policies that require the removal of the influence of the military in politics, the Alevi opening (2007–​ 2009) and then Kurdish ones (2009, 2012–​ 2015), improved relations with Armenia, as well as supporting the Annan Plan to reunite Cyprus in 2004. Democratic reforms of the AKP, however, first signaled a slowdown in 2005 and then came almost to a halt in 2008 for domestic and external reasons, except for some initiatives on the Kurdish issue between 2009 and 2015. Regarding the domestic factors, there was resistance to some of the reforms by the bureaucracy and the military. The former were foot-​dragging, especially in regard to reforms related to civilian control over the military, schools that can teach the Kurdish language, arrests of Kurdish politicians, and court cases against prominent persons such as Orhan Pamuk, the novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, and Hrant Dink, the Turkish–​Armenian journalist assassinated in 2007, who were critical of the Ottoman/​ Turkish state regarding the Armenian genocide (Kubicek 2013). Feeling besieged by antagonistic secularist elites, the AKP moved to consolidate its political power rather than prioritize political and economic reforms. The growing alliance between the Gülenist movement and the AKP led to Gülenist-​led/​AKP-​sanctioned judicial operations that gradually broke secularist resistance to the AKP and empowered the Gülenist movement in the bureaucracy and the AKP in the political sphere, early signs that Turkey was straying from its already imperfect path to democracy. Regarding the international factors in this era, the prospects for Turkey’s EU membership had considerably diminished. The election of Angela Merkel in Germany in 2005 and Nicolas Sarkozy in France in 2007, two leaders who opposed Turkey’s membership, showed a lack of support for Turkey at the elite level (see the chapter by H. Yılmaz in this volume). This lack of support and interest was deepened by the eurozone crisis in 2008–​ 2009. Among European societies, low support for Turkey’s membership increased the re-​election risk for friendly politicians and empowered right-​wing nationalist parties opposed to Turkey’s membership. Turkey was celebrated as a political model for the Middle East in the early 2010s, but two significant events in the region would change this: the military coup against Mohammad Morsi, the first freely elected president in Egypt, on July 3, 2013, and intensifying protests against the Islamist Ennahda government in Tunisia. These developments instilled fear in the AKP leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his close circle that they would be the target of a conspiracy. It appears that Erdoğan interpreted both the Gezi Park protests that erupted against the AKP’s authoritarianism in the summer of 2013 and the corruption probe later that year that was initiated by members of the Gülenist movement in police and judiciary as parts of an attempt to overthrow his government. This probe, along with earlier tensions between two groups (e.g., the refusal of almost all Gülenist movement–​linked names from the AKP lists during the parliamentary elections in 2011 by Erdoğan, the attempt by the Gülenist groups to get

32   Ekrem Karakoç the intelligence chief arrested for holding secret talks with the PKK leaders), further convinced Erdoğan’s close circle that an international conspiracy sought to depose him through non-​electoral means (Özbudun 2014, 158). In this regard, Gezi Park is the milestone that leveled up authoritarianism in Turkey, which is still in the process of institutionalization after the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016. The July 15, 2016 coup attempt that some if not all Gülenist military officials participated in was the last deadly blow to Turkish democracy. Seizing on the coup attempt as an opportunity, Erdoğan initiated a massive purge in the public sector during the imposed two-​year emergency rule. This purge resulted in over 150,000 people dismissed from public service, including 150,000 civil servants and 4,500 members of the judiciary, as well as tens of thousands of arrests, including 170 generals and more than 7,000 senior military officers.3 The impact of the purge on the private sector was also immense: hundreds of media channels, civil organizations, and private universities were closed down. Besides, thousands of academics lost their jobs or faced prosecution because they signed a peace declaration that demanded the state end the urban warfare in the southeastern (Kurdish) part of the country. Turkish academia suffered major blows to its integrity and freedom as a result of repressive policies. During this process, especially since the June 5, 2015, election, Erdoğan has furthered his alliance with ultranationalist conservative and secularist (ulusalcılar) groups in the bureaucracy. Such groups view this alliance as an opportunity to assert their shared mission of putting an end to the attempts to resolve the Kurdish conflict peacefully. Erdoğan was able to withstand the challenges he faced by opting for repressive measures to deal with the Kurdish conflict, empowering the security bureaucracy, and allying with nationalistic groups that are overrepresented in the bureaucracy and the military. However, this came with a cost of significant declines in civil and political liberties and increasing political and economic uncertainty. That is why authoritarianism in Turkey is not about one man but rather reflects the hegemony of a political and economic coalition that came together as a result of shared interests and that conveniently embraced an ambiguous ideology revolving around dava, or “making Turkey great again.” This amorphous ideology securitized all demands for social and political rights with repressive measures, declaring political opposition and Western actors to be threats to the very survival of the state and nation (devletin ve millet bekası). Mainstream media outlets (TV channels and newspapers), now closely controlled by the AKP, broadcast politically orchestrated TV series (e.g., Diriliş: Ertuğrul, Kuruluş: Osman, and Payitaht: Abdülhamid) that portray the early and late periods of the Ottoman Empire with a focus on how a strong leader, fighting against surrounding great powers, creates a “national” unity based on the core group of Sunni Turks. In particular, those who are ideologically close to leftist opposition and those who work in the human rights field are targeted.4 Even on the rare occasions when the Constitutional Court orders the release of political prisoners, its decision is ignored by lower courts. The same applies to the European Court of Human Rights decisions. The presidential system that was inaugurated after a highly controversial referendum in

Democratization Theories and Turkey    33 April 2017 has further intensified repressive policies intended to perpetuate the existing authoritarian regime. Once celebrated as the political model for the Middle East as a Muslim democracy, how has a middle-​income Turkey turned into a repressive political regime within a short period (e.g., Altunışık 2005; Köse, Özcan, and Karakoç 2016)? What were the roles of structural factors and political agents in this transformation? I now address these questions in the light of extant theories of democratization.

Modernization Theory and Inequality Modernization scholars such as Lerner (1958) and Lipset (1959) argue that the future of non-​Western countries would resemble the present of developed countries. As they develop economically and shed their traditional structure, they will also adopt new political institutions on the path to catching up with their role models, Western democracies. They view economic development as a necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) condition for democratic development, while others offer various findings that point to a positive correlation between the two factors (Arat 1988, 34). One of the most debated findings was Przeworski et al. (2000)’s refined version of modernization theory, which posits that high economic development may not help a country make a transition to democracy but can ensure its survival as a democracy. The Turkish social, bureaucratic, and military elites have historically been modernists. The founding mission of the Turkish republic was to catch up with contemporary Western civilization. Turkish state elites were skeptical of the prospect of democracy in a country with a low level of industrialization/​development and education and a middle class in the post-​1945 era when waves of democratization, all but the first one, reached countries across the world (Özbudun 1993). This dominant perception was also apparent among Turkish elites in the 1980s when the military regime took over power. This perception persisted in the 1990s as well, reinforced by recurrent political and economic crises. Rapid economic development during the initial years of AKP rule, along with its earlier record on political reforms, increased its support among liberals and westerners who thought that Turkey was moving toward liberal democracy under a moderate Islamic party (e.g., Dagi 2008). The AKP’s economic policies not only brought significant foreign direct investment but also benefited from abundant cheap international credit stocks in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis that especially boosted the construction sector and its subsidiaries, contributing to growth in the national economy (for neoliberalism under the AKP, see the chapter by Erensü and Madra this volume). The AKP also provided incentives for small and medium-​sized economic enterprises (SMEs), encouraging them toward export. According to World Bank indicators, Turkey enjoyed a significant economic growth in the initial decade of AKP rule. Turkey’s gross

34   Ekrem Karakoç domestic product (GDP) more than doubled in four years, increasing from $311 billion in 2003 to $676 billion in 2007 and reaching $951 billion in 2013.5 A close look at economic indicators can show us a more dynamic pattern in the Turkish economy. Pamuk (2018, 247) shows that the mean growth in GDP per capita for 2003–​2007 was 5.4 percent, much higher than that in the period 1980–​1987 (3.1 percent) and the period 1988–​2002 (1.5 percent). In contrast to the earlier period of the AKP, the Turkish economy performed poorly between 2008 and 2015.6 While the positive growth in GDP per capita persisted until 2013, except for the economic crisis year of 2009, the year 2014 is a turning point. Since 2014, the GDP per capita has shown persistent signs of decline: $12,096 in 2014, $10,948 in 2015, and further in later years, falling to $10, 540 in 2017 and around $9,000 in 2019 (for an overview of the Turkish economy, see the chapter by Pamuk in this volume).7 Given this picture, what can Turkey tell us about the relationship between development and democratization? Democratic reforms were substantial, especially between 2003 and 2005 and to a lesser extent until 2013, during a period of high economic growth. However, the steep decline in the rule of law, and the increasing fear about property rights/​expropriation has alarmed domestic and international investors who once saw Turkey as a potential hub in both the Middle East and Europe. These deteriorating political conditions came amid changing world financial markets where credit was no longer cheap, which did not help the Turkish economy refinance or pay back its substantial foreign debt. Overall, the Turkish story tells us that its GDP per capita did not save democracy in Turkey: its GDP per capita was above the threshold of $6,055, identified by Przeworski et al. (2000) as a level that makes democracies immune to authoritarianism. In this respect, Turkey’s experience challenges the widespread argument that democracies are likely to fail only in poor countries (see also Boix 2011). Boix (2003) argues that high inequality is associated with a regime transition to democracy. In comparison, Acemoglu and Robinson (2005) suggest that democratization is likely when inequality is not low or high but at a moderate level when elites do not feel threatened from a regime transition (at high levels of inequality, for elites, tolerating the mobilized poor is costlier than repression). Besides, Ansell and Samuels (2014) focus on land inequality (hindrance of democratization) versus income inequality (conducive to democratization) and their differential impact on democratization. According to World Bank indicators, about 75 percent of the Turkish population lives in urban areas as of 2015, and landownership is no longer associated with being rich. Unlike many countries, landownership in Turkey did not become a big business, nor did it contribute to capital ownership as the state created its business elites among mostly former civil servants or the merchant class. Overall, these different theories about the relationship between inequality and democratization, based on longue-​durée analyses of the political economy of many countries, fall short of explaining the recent rise of authoritarianism in Turkey. Turkey is a moderate-​to high-​inequality country. Changes in inequality were not dramatic enough for a regime change. Inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, declined from 0.44 in 2002 to 0.406 in 2007 and then to 0.39 in 2014. Yet it increased to 0.404 in 2016 (Karakoç 2018). This trend suggests that the middle class that expanded

Democratization Theories and Turkey    35 during the earlier AKP years has been shrinking in recent years. The data also reveals that lower quintiles have gained more from the distribution of economic development, and this trend has continued until recently. The absolute poverty level, those who lived on $4.30 or less a day, decreased from 30 percent in 2002 to almost 2 percent in 2014 (Şeker and Jenkins 2015). However, poverty remains a major problem; 14.3 percent of the population’s income is 50 percent lower than the median income, a ratio that further increased after 2018 (Turkish Statistical Institute 2017). As clientelism literature suggests, conditional social assistance programs have created or bolstered new constituencies loyal to the party, which increases the popularity of the AKP among lower-​income groups (Karakoç 2018) (for economic voting under the AKP, see Aytaç in this volume; for welfare policies of the AKP, see Yörük in this volume; for clientelism, see Laebens in this volume).

Business and Unions Two classical works identify the “bourgeoisie” and the working class as the primary forces behind the emergence and sustainment of democracy. Barrington Moore (1966) argues that the rise of town merchants, and thus the accumulation of wealth through commerce and the desire to protect their wealth from the seizure of the Crown, motivated them to seek “guarantees” and “immunity” from it. Forming economic and political alliances with the commercialized landowning class, the bourgeoisie challenged political authority, demanded checks and balances over it, and gained political representation that paved the way for democratization in England. Building on Moore’s famous maxim of “no bourgeoisie, no democracy,” many others emphasized the role of the private sector and its alliances with various social classes in resisting democracy in many late developers. Scholars from Karl Marx to Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992) argue that capitalists supported representative government and the protection of civil and economic liberties but opposed granting political rights to the lower classes, especially the working classes. It was the disenfranchised working class that pushed for universal suffrage and democratization in Western Europe and, most recently, in South American countries, where it challenged the political hegemony of industrial elites and the military The next section analyzes these two most important actors, business and the working class, and how they have played a role in the struggle for or against democracy in Turkey.

Business Those who challenge Moore assert that the private sector did not evolve as a reaction to the state in continental Europe and beyond like it did in England. The symbiotic relationship between the private sector and the state/​politics emerged as a necessity first

36   Ekrem Karakoç in late industrializers such as Germany and Japan and then in developing countries that wanted to “catch up with” the West. As Gerschenkron (1962) pointed out, the (weak) private capital needed state support for launching industrial projects. The dependency of the capitalists on the state was much higher in many developing countries where the state capacity and resources were limited. The private sector, relying on state resources and protection, has actively or passively been the defender of authoritarian regimes in many developing countries. Despite its centrality in democratization studies, Turkish studies have paid less attention to the role of business elites on the political sphere. There are two main reasons for this. First, Turkey inherited a weak private sector from the Ottoman Empire and the state itself has created a private sector that depends on the state (Pamuk 2018). Second, building on Gerschenkron (1962) or similar frameworks, Buğra (1994), Demiralp (2009), Keyder (1987), Öniş (1997), and Özel (2013) argue that big business has played a passive role in Turkish democratization for much of its history. This is because as Bellin (2000), in line with the implications of Gerschenkron’s work, argues, businesses in developing countries are “contingent democrats” or adaptive actors that refrain from challenging the state. In the Turkish context, the state, as both the enricher and the punisher, has shaped the political behavior of business elites. As the enricher, the Turkish state, going back to the late decades of the Ottoman Empire under the Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti), pursued policies that favored Turkish Muslim businesses over non-​Muslim businesses for the sake of creating a “nationalist bourgeoisie” (Toprak 1995). As the punisher, the state confiscated properties and even whole businesses, banned parties and revoked citizenships, and changed tariffs and customs for political reasons, as well as the rules regulating imports and exports. The punishment was much more severe for non-​Muslim businesses that were able to stay after pogroms and population exchanges. The insecurity of “property rights,” and thus the threat of expropriation, is periodically applied to the rival groups among state and economic elites. Although the best-​known examples of expropriation are of non-​Muslim properties, it has also been utilized and always remained a possibility for political opposition deemed threats to “national unity” or “the ruling elites.” The state occasionally confiscated the properties of political figures whose citizenship was revoked; the military junta of 1980 confiscated the properties of all parties. In the 2000s, hundreds of companies belonging to major corporations such as Uzan Holding, Bilgin Medya holdings, and others were confiscated by the state as part of debt collection from these businesses (Esen and Gumuscu 2018, 360). Most recently, in the aftermath of the military coup attempt, businesses and organizations (allegedly) associated with the Gülenist movement and the Kurdish political movement were closed, and their properties were confiscated (to the benefit of the state treasury and thereby the ruling party). The state dependence on business has gradually changed over time as the private sector engaged in international trade (especially with the European Union) and became globalized. In particular, big business has always interacted with European or American

Democratization Theories and Turkey    37 capital, seeking foreign partners so that it could be, at least initially, a local distributor of global brands. Over time, these interactions made big business, relatively speaking, less reliant on state resources but still subject to the state policies designed by the military and political elites. The cautious position of business is evidenced by its strategic behavior. Big business, in its representative TÜSİAD (Türk Sanayicileri ve İş İnsanları Derneği, established 1971), took contrasting positions regarding democratization, from supporting the military regime in 1980 to the advocacy of a reduced role of the military in politics and greater minority rights in the 2000s. Business, as an adaptive actor/​contingent democrat, pursues its material interests and promotes democratization when the regional and international political and economic contexts incentivize it and it seeks a more predictable political environment along with the rule of law (Bayer and Öniş 2010; Öniş and Türem 2002). However, whenever rebuked by the hegemonic power for supporting civil and political liberties—​the military in the past and now the AKP—​it pivoted to their passive position. While big business has been a contingent democrat, what about SMEs, some of which have become the major supporters of conservative parties, most recently the AKP? The so-​called Anatolian tigers were founded by three main groups, pious business people, companies owned by religious groups such as religious communities, and nonreligious companies with some stakeholders (Demir, Acar, and Toprak 2004, 169). Remittances, especially the savings of Turkish workers in Germany, became a significant portion of their capital in the 1980s and 1990s. Most SMEs emerged in several Anatolian cities without special state protection and assistance and viewed big business associated with TÜSİAD as a major rival favored by the state. Nonetheless, they have partially adopted an export-​oriented strategy and gradually increased their share in Turkey’s economy since the 1980s. These conservative SMEs initially seem to fit into Moore’s argument in Turkey as their representative institution, Müsiad (Müstakil Sanayici ve İşadamları Derneği, established 1990), took a pro-​democracy position regarding some issues (Başkan 2010, 413). It is not surprising that export-​oriented Anatolian cities heavily voted for first the RP (Refah Partisi, Welfare Party) in the mid-​1990s and then the AKP in the post-​2002 elections (Bermek 2019, 110). Müsiad members were initially important political actors in the party to the extent that many were founders of AKP branches, and around two dozen of them became members of Parliament in the 2002 elections. Demiralp (2009) argues that the Anatolian Tigers and Müsiad were instrumental in moderating the AKP and contributing to democratization. However, during AKP rule, their dependency on the state has also increased, benefiting from incentives, government contracts, cheap credits, and governmental support for getting contracts in foreign countries. As the Turkish economy has gone into crisis in recent years, this dependency has deepened. At the same time as the AKP consolidated its power, its dependence on the business community for financing electoral campaigns and recruitment to the party has declined. Consequently, the party has become less accountable to business interests. During the AKP years, Müsiad remained silent on human right abuses, the imprisonment of journalists and members of the political opposition, restrictions on civil

38   Ekrem Karakoç and political liberties, the Kurdish conflict, and the party’s abandonment of the EU reform process. Other business organizations have exhibited similar stances. Founded by the Gülenist movement in 2005, TUSKON (Türkiye İş Adamları ve Sanayicileri Konfederasyonu, e. 2005) replaced Müsiad as the most influential and favored business association until the Gülen–​AKP rift (Özel 2010). It served as an organization that helped SMEs benefit from proximity to the AKP government. Rather than advocating for civil and political liberties, TUSKON acted as the ideological instrument of the Gülen movement, supporting the pro-​Gülenist police and judiciary’s operations against political opposition, most famously the Balyoz and Ergenekon trials targeting secular elites and generals. Overall, these business organizations did not act as consistent supporters of democratization in Turkey.

Unions Unlike South American, Spanish, and Polish unions, Turkish unions did not play a major role in democratization in Turkey. Similar to business, major unions have been state-​led or state-​controlled since they were officially recognized. The Turkish state gave permission to form unions only in 1947, and the first union confederation, Türk-​İş (Türkiye İşçi Sendikaları Konfederasyonu), was created in 1952. Unions gained the right to strike in 1963. Still, the actualization of such rights was heavily subject to permission from the government. The presidents of unions, especially Türk-​İş, were sanctioned by the state and lacked leverage against political elites (Cizre‐Sakallioğlu 1992). Other than the short episodes of the socialist Türkiye İşçi Partisi’s pro-​civil and political rights discourse and mobilization in the 1960s that garnered support among the working class and labor militancy in the 1970s, unions have mostly followed a nonpolitical ethos and pursued parochial interests except for several major mobilizations (Mello 2007). Disappointed by Türk-​İş’s passive policies and pro–​status quo stance, the socialist Türkiye Devrimci İşçi Sendikaları Konfederasyonu (e. 1967), the defunct nationalist Milliyetçi İşçi Sendikaları Konfederasyonu (e. 1970–​1988/​89), and the Islamic Hak-​İş (Hak İşçi Sendikaları Konfederasyonu, e. 1976) were founded. The depoliticization of the working class before and during the Cold War remained the ultimate goal of the state. As it never objected to the military’s involvement in politics, Türk-​İş was the only union not closed down by the military regime in 1980. It supported the overthrow of a coalition government led by the RP and allied with the military and judicial actors in confronting the government in 1997. In addition to the active involvement of state elites to weaken unions, the ideological rivalry among various confederations with particular ideological leanings before the military coup of 1980 and after as well as their linkage to particular parties that reduce their autonomy further incapacitated the working class. The AKP policies treated the working class as an entity without social and economic group rights and opposed unionization. Turkey already had a low unionization rate among Organisation for Economic Co-​operation and Development countries.

Democratization Theories and Turkey    39 Anti-​union legislation by the AKP governments was so deliberately pursued that trade union density dropped from 9.5 percent in 2002 to 5.9 percent in 2010–​2011 (Çelik 2013, 45). The depoliticization of the working class continued by “encouraging” employees to become members of pro-​AKP unions. For example, the AKP governments have deliberately designed policies toward unions that civil servants have been “encouraged” to join in pro-​AKP unions (Memur-​Sen), while leftist Kamu Emekcileri Sendikalari Konfederasyonu, and pro-​MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi) Türkiye Kamu Çalışanları Sendikaları Konfederasyonu have lost their memberships. Meanwhile, the Islamic Hak-​İş that had prepared pro-​democracy reports in the 1990s has remained reluctant to demonstrate for even economic rights under AKP rule. This attitude can be partly explained by the fact that Hak-​İş, in addition to the ideological linkage, benefited from an increasing number of members as a result of the AKP’s regulations and incentives, and several of its leaders entered Parliament on the AKP ticket. In sum, neither Müsiad nor Hak-​İş offers any policy solutions or advocates for rights issues about women, the working class, or minorities. The strong informal linkage between Müsiad and Hak-​İş and conservative/​Islamic parties dictates their discourses and actions. Their unwillingness to challenge any dimension of growing authoritarianism shows how once “pro-​democratic” Müsiad and Hak-​İş have become adaptive actors with no democratic credentials.

Political Culture The studies on the (mis)match between culture and a political regime go back to the post–​World War II era as scholars sought to dissect the relationship between authoritarian personality, society, and fascism (Adorno et al. 1950; Eckstein 1966). Building upon this literature, Welzel and Inglehart (2009, 298) argue that democratic order will remain fragile if an authoritarian orientation is dominant in a society. One expects that incongruence between the political system and political culture of society results in an unstable political system leading to authoritarianism, especially if a country faces major economic and political problems. As Pérez-​Liñán and Mainwaring (2013) found, in countries with relatively low economic development, normative support for democracy prevented a regime breakdown, such as in Costa Rica, while the lack of it resulted in democratic breakdown in countries with relatively higher development, such as Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. The impacts of Eckstein and Adorno and political psychologists on culture studies in political science remained limited for a long time. This is, for the most part, because Almond and Verba (1963) ’s classic work diverted political scientists to focus on the relationship between civic culture and regimes in democratic countries, with little interest in whether political culture shapes democratization or vice versa. The early 1990s revitalized political culture again, thanks to the role of dissident/​civil society movements in the collapse of communist regimes, such as the Solidarity movement

40   Ekrem Karakoç in Poland, and subsequently Robert Putnam’s works on social capital in Italy and the United States. Nevertheless, the difficulties of operationalizing political culture and the limited availability of longitudinal and large-​N cross-​national data still hinder a more thorough, and well-​deserved, study of the nexus between culture and democratization (Welzel and Inglehart 2009). In one of the first empirical studies on the linkage between political culture of Turkish public and support for democratic polity, Tessler and Altinoglu (2004) uncovered an interesting finding that committed democrats were a little less than one-​third of their sample, which they claim is inflated due to the classification they employed. They conclude that popular attitudes are not conducive to democratic consolidation. Turning to social, ethnic, and political groups, Erişen (2018) finds that support for excluding these groups from political participation is worrisome. Participation in civil society in Turkey is also low (see the chapter by Kalaycıoğlu in this volume); in part, it has not been fully autonomous, subject to intervention by the state, including closure of civil society associations and imprisonment of their members. Şahin and Akboğa (2019) provide empirical evidence that most people have concerns that participation in civil society organizations can bring more harm than good; hence, they refrain from participating. Turkish citizens have similar attitudes toward the military in the surveys conducted in the 1990s and 2000s; they also exhibit low support for minority rights and high prejudices toward Kurds and Alevis (Sarıgil 2015, 292). Kaya and Sunar (2015), challenging political polarization in the Turkish public opinion, find that attitudes toward democracy and military rule do not show any statistically significant differences across citizens with secular and religious identities, except the roles of gender in social issues. Gürses (2014) finds that supporters of the Islamist parties are also selective democrats, endorsing electoral democracy for themselves and dismissing civil and political rights for others, primarily ethnic and religious minorities. The abovementioned studies suggest that it is hard to find a high level of any component of the democratic political culture in Turkey. Furthermore, growing polarization in the country (see the chapter by Somer in this volume) and the destabilizing implications of the Syrian civil war and Middle Eastern geopolitics on Turkish politics do not promise to promote pro-​ democratic values in the foreseeable future.

Are Political Elites Democrats? Influential democratization scholars do not consider the political culture of the strategic actors (or even public) as being important for democratization. For example, Przeworski (1991) argues that strategic interests of elites determine the trajectory of democracy. He does not attribute much importance to the questions of whether the elites should have pro-​democratic values such as political tolerance, equality, or social trust. Similarly, Kalyvas (2000) focuses on the strategic interests of the elites in his work on religious actors and democratization, regardless of whether those elites may hold non-​democratic values. Waterbury (1994) dismisses political culture/​religion as

Democratization Theories and Turkey    41 an impediment to democracy in the Middle East but argues that highly contingent socioeconomic and political structures/​factors determine the transition process even in the absence of elites with democratic values. In contrast, O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986), Dahl (1973), and Lijphart (1968) argue that values associated with competitive politics first develop among elites, while Linz and Stepan (1996) emphasize that one of the vital dimensions of the consolidation of democracy is committed democrats, the absence of any political actors to overthrow elected government.8 Rustow (1970, 361) challenges any prerequisite of democracy but emphasizes the formation of democratic rules to solve problems born out of polarization among elites. Habituating the electorate to these rules comes later. Have the decades of multi-​party experiences in a country like Turkey generated “democrat elites” who believe not only in procedural democracy but also in civil and political liberties essential to democracy? The moderation literature, motivated by the debate over the political inclusion of communist parties during democratization phases in Europe (e.g., Grzymala-​Busse 2002) and South America, offers an optimistic expectation about the political culture of elites in Turkey. In particular, Demiralp (2009) also argued that Islamic political and economic elites, willing to change the system from within, have moderated their position over time. However, not all agreed with this expectation. Tezcür (2010b) was skeptical about the AKP’s moderation because it showed all the characteristics of a typical example of the Turkish party system, associated with the lack of intraparty democracy, its poor record on civil and political liberties, as well as its weakness in reforming institutions. Somer (2011) showed that conservative elites are “selective democrats,” supporting democracy when they are not in power or excluded or discriminated from social, political, and economic spheres. Taşkin (2013) emphasized how the AKP has co-​opted and bureaucratized previously autonomous intellectuals, creating a political system in line with their conservative ideology without democracy. Çinar and Sayin (2014) observe that, like in predecessor parties, the AKP elites have a majoritarian view of democracy that dismisses civil and political liberties and use the institutions they criticize to create a society and polity in their image (see also the chapter by Çınar in this volume). Tezcür (2010a) and Somer (2014) raise a critical question about the direction and goal of moderation. The common assumption is that anti-​systemic Islamist parties will moderate their ideological position through inclusion and adopt the political practices of the democratic center. However, as Somer (2014) highlighted, such a democratic center never existed in Turkey. For decades, the socialist, Islamist, and Kurdish parties were banned by the Constitutional Court; and their members were put into prison, while the state committed grave human rights violations, especially against Kurds and Alevis. The mainstream parties have condoned or participated in the violation of democratic norms and values or have done little to defend the political rights of the persecuted parties and their members. If the Turkish state or major actors, ranging from the military to media to social elites, have not been “committed democrats,” any expectation other than that the AKP would transform into this authoritarian center remains naive.

42   Ekrem Karakoç Since coming to power, the AKP’s ruling elite has not given any consistent signal of its commitment to democratic norms and values. Most of them come from the MTTB (Milli Türk Talebe Birliği, National Turkish Union of Students), which was the leading student movement in the 1960s and 1970s and was clearly pursuing policies in line with authoritarian Turkish-​Islam ideology, which dismisses civil and political liberties and cultivates the leadership cult and nation around it (Bora 2016). The successor organizations of the MTTB, such as the Birlik Vakfı, (Unity Foundation), Aydınlar Ocağı (Hearth of Intellectuals), and new similar-​minded organizations formed during the AKP era, have persistently recruited their members and followers into bureaucracy and political parties. The military guardianship is gone, but now Erdoğan’s AKP, in alliance with nationalist/​conservative elites subscribing to Turkish-​Islam ideology and ultranationalists, has replaced the military in corrupting democratic ideals and practices. The political culture of the opposition such as the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi is also not a benchmark for democracy. The founding ideology of the Turkish state, like many new nation-​states in the twentieth century, wanted to create an ideal social, political, and economic elite as well as an ideal society. It perceived social and political pluralism as a threat to “national unity” and did not refrain from punishing those perpetrators who violate it (see the chapter by Öktem in this volume). They have objected to several initiatives of the AKP governments regarding solving the Kurdish conflict, still insisting national policies that would not grant anything other than an folkloric identity. The Kemalist elites (and mostly urban supporters) have not given up their secular but authoritarian view. In summary, political culture neither at the elite nor at the popular level has been conducive to sustainable democratization in Turkey.

International Dimension: Linkage, Leverage, and Black Knights Membership in international/​ regional organizations, especially Western-​ led ones, is associated with democratization through the leverage of these organizations on member countries, reducing political cost for the elites that support reforms (Pevehouse 2002). Looking at eastern Europe, Vachudova (2005) argues that EU conditionality has increased the cost of authoritarian policies while reducing repression on pro-​democracy civil society and domestic opposition, as well as empowering both. In a more comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis, Levitsky and Way (2010) argue that density of linkage (ties to the West), level of leverage (dependence on the West), and, to a lesser extent, black knights (foreign countries that support authoritarian regimes, e.g., Russia and China) are three major external factors that affect whether one country makes a transition to democracy, turns into a stable authoritarianism or an unstable authoritarianism, or remains a competitive authoritarian regime. However, among all

Democratization Theories and Turkey    43 these factors, high linkage with the West remains a necessary and sufficient condition for a country to make a transition to democracy. Turkey, challenging the prediction as Levitsky and Way (2020) admit in their later work, has moved from democracy to authoritarianism despite the fact that it has had strong economic, social, and political linkages with the West. Turkey’s authoritarianism has gradually come into existence and then persisted when Turkey had such a high linkage. Only after the Turkish regime had transformed into authoritarianism did the AKP government form a coalition with the Eurasianists that promotes alliance with a black knight, Russia (see the chapter by Balta and Çelikpala in this volume). While the linkage/​leverage did not hinder Turkey’s path toward authoritarianism, it does not mean that they did not facilitate electoral democracy in Turkey since the 1950s. Turkey’s relationship with the West was crucial for it to keep its tutelary democracy until recently. Even though the positions of the European Union and the United States have not always been uniform and consistent, such as implicit and explicit support for past military coups, they have exerted significant influence in keeping some sort of procedural democracy in Turkey. Especially between the 1990s and the end of the first decade of the 2000s, the European Union, in particular, has had a direct and indirect effect on expanding civil and political liberties and curbing human rights violations. The EU leverage has mostly remained moderate in this middle-​income country with strategic importance for the West, but it was amplified when the will of major domestic political actors and the European Union converged. Turkish political actors launched political and economic reforms in line with the European Union’s expectations when Turkey needed the political and economic support of the West or when a political actor instrumentalized the EU candidacy and requirements to empower themselves against the state/​Kemalist elites. For example, the AKP took a pro–​European Union stance in the early 2000s and has instrumentalized the EU leverage for pursuing its electoral and political goals. However, the EU leverage has lost its transformatory impact on Turkish politics with the advent of the 2010s.9 As of 2020, the EU leverage further reduced due to the implications of the refugee blackmail that Turkey has been using against the European Union (for refugees, see the chapter by Kılınç and Toktaş in this volume) and the devastating political and economic consequences of the COVID-​19 pandemic on European countries. The AKP under Erdoğan has not faced any pressure to pursue political reforms as the AKP has less of a need for this international leverage for democracy to diminish the powerhouse of the Kemalist elites in key institutions. Its domestic alliance with liberals and Kurds prevented the complete reversal of the democratization course of the AKP until 2015. However, since then, it has been able to hold power through its domestic alliances with various groups with little to no democratic reputation, ranging from the former Gülenist supporters, the MHP, and the Eurasianists in recent years.

44   Ekrem Karakoç

The Regime in Turkey and Possible Trajectories Turkey is no longer a democracy qualified with an adjective but an authoritarian one, coined/​fashioned by Levitsky and Way (2010) as a “competitive or electoral authoritarian regime” (Özbudun 2015; Esen and Gumuscu 2016). Defining competitive authoritarian regimes as relatively stable civilian regimes where formal democratic institutions operate but are politicized by the incumbents for their advantage, Levitsky and Way’s concept of an “uneven playing field” resonates among democratization scholars as well as scholars of Turkey. The unfair competition involves patronage politics that provide incumbents “skewed access to media and finance” and the politicized institutions that “seriously undermine the opposition’s capacity to compete” (p. 6). The AKP has created the uneven playing field through its political and economic policies. It has punished nonloyal economic actors via overwhelming tax bills and expropriated their companies before selling them to pro-​AKP business. It gave tenders to party loyalist business persons and provided selective incentives, tax amnesties, and pardons. Moreover, it punished media groups and forced their owners to sell TV channels and newspapers to loyal business elites. Business people who have gained tenders, cheap credits, and other favorable deals had to contribute to the “common pool” (havuz) for the party or to “civil” society organizations formed by family members or others close to Erdoğan. Through these assertive policies, all “mainstream media” channels have been pro-​party, and their news programs have been mouthpieces of the party (see the chapter by Uzunoğlu in this volume). Overall, these carrot-​and-​stick policies have created significant inequality of access to financial resources, media, and law and generated an uneven playing field associated with competitive authoritarianism. Where is Turkey headed? Building on the theory of Levitsky and Way (2010, 72), one expects that Turkey will remain a stable authoritarian regime due to its high organizational power (state and party capacity) and medium Western leverage. At the same time, the divisions within the pragmatic and ideologically non-​uniform ruling coalition led by the persona of Erdoğan and the strength and strategies of the opposition will determine where Turkey will head; it may be back to democracy, or it may turn into an unstable authoritarianism or a stable authoritarianism. Turkey is still in the consolidation phase of an authoritarian regime, and the realization of each trajectory is subject to the durability of fragile coalitions within the ruling elite, the formation of an effective oppositional coalition as well as the international factors.

Concluding Remarks The e-​memorandum of April 27, 2007, and the July 30, 2008 AKP closure case by the Constitutional Court signaled to the AKP elites the threats they faced from the

Democratization Theories and Turkey    45 then-​rival military, bureaucratic, and political elites. These threats cemented the AKP–​ Gülenist alliance that allowed the former to weaken the military and its allies and the latter to further infiltrate the state bureaucracy. The 2010 Constitutional Referendum empowered the Gülenists, paving the way for growing authoritarianism in the country. The Gezi protests of 2013 against this growing authoritarianism and the repression toward demonstrators showed that civil liberties in Turkey were in growing danger and that political liberties, including election processes, were at risk. The open war between the Gülenists and Erdoğan that erupted later that year led the AKP to seek alliances with mostly security-​oriented bureaucratic elites and completely lose its reformist identity, except for the Kurdish opening policies until March 2015. Since then, the judiciary was put under political control; electoral processes since 2014 were tainted through the Election Commission’s political decision that favored the AKP and punished opposition parties, particularly the Kurdish parties. Since the June 2015 election, all previous reforms on rule of law, political corruption, institutions, or civil and political liberties have been rolled back. Turkey’s regime trajectory cannot be examined apart from the nationalist/​populist zeitgeist that penetrated party politics in competitive authoritarian regimes and democracies (for populism in Turkey, see the chapter by Taşkın in this volume). Its authoritarian turn is not peculiar among countries that have been on the pathway to or had consolidated democracy once. Countries ranging from Hungary to the Philippines to Venezuela, once unlikely candidates for competitive authoritarian regimes, have faced similar authoritarian turns, along with the same sequential trajectory. Even though competitive authoritarian regimes are mostly associated with low development, weak institutionalization, a weak or nonexistent democratic tradition, the weak rule of law, and a feeble civil society and private sector (Levitsky and Way 2020, 59), Turkey, along with other improbable cases such as Hungary, Venezuela, and the Philippines, has succumbed to authoritarianism after decades of democratic experience, middle-​income status, and more. The hegemonic and nationalistic parties led by strong leaders in these authoritarian regimes have been successful in merging salient social cleavages (economic, ethnic, and religious identity) into one (“us”) and positioning themselves against “them,” “the corrupt elites,” namely mostly secular and pro–​European Union or West groups. Kaufman and Haggard (2019, 417–​418) summarize their method: once they gain an electoral majority and control the legislative and executive branches, they dismiss/​restructure or circumvent the existing institutions, including the judiciary, and claim that these institutions were created to suppress the popular will. While criticizing and fighting against a “deep state” that hinders the mandate of the popular will, as seen in Turkey, these parties also justify the formation of a new ‘deep state’ in the name of national security and prosperity. In addition to these comparative observations, I would like to specify two major fields in which Turkish studies have something valuable to say and can be a reference case in democratization literature. First, Turkish studies have contributed to the debate on the relationship between secularism and democratization (e.g., Gülalp 2005; Somer 2007; Toprak 1981). Moreover, the moderation literature on Turkey informed

46   Ekrem Karakoç scholarship about the relationship between religious parties and the secularist elites and regime when Turkey was still a democracy under the AKP (e.g., Gürses 2014; Somer 2014; Tezcür 2010a). Authoritarian Turkey now may be a testing ground for many new questions such as how AKP rule affected people’s attitudes toward state–​religion relations and support for “Islamic” democracy and religious communities. Turkish studies also show that Islamic actors are not uniform; there are varieties of Islamism enmeshed within nationalism. An important point generally missing in the broader literature is that nationalism plays a decisive role in the discourse and approach toward critical domestic and international issues of the Islamist movements and parties. The Turkish Islamists have embraced the Turkish-​Islam ideology and felt more comfortable siding with ultranationalists, rather than religious Kurdish communities (e.g., Iskenderpasa, Mahmutefendi, and Menzil10). They tamed their religious beliefs/​ ideology to the extent that, as we see in the AKP case, they did not have any difficulty embracing the repressive policies of the single-​party regime, including the Kurdish and Alevi policies. In addition, a narrow focus on the major religious actors in a particular country has, in the past, enabled scholars to miss other Islamic actors with distinct methods and missions with major consequences. The case of Al-​Nour in Egypt in the 2011–​2012 election as the second most powerful political party shows how scholars of the Middle East were blindsided by exclusive focus on the Muslim Brotherhood and missed the strength of once nonpolitical Salafi groups (Karakoç, Köse, and Özcan 2017). The Gülenist movement is another case where the scholarship, with rare examples such as Hendrick (2013) and Tittensor (2014), has a misplaced focus. In particular, the scholarship on Islam and democracy has largely missed the nature of the once-​powerful Gülen movement that had antagonistic relations with other Islamic communities in Turkey, some of which gained power after the Gülen–​AKP rift. Second, Turkish studies can offer new theoretical insights to overcome the challenge of consolidating democracy in a multiethnic country where national identity is not fully embraced by all citizens. That is to say, a substantial percentage of citizens (Kurds and Alevis, especially in the AKP era) do not feel a sense of belonging to the same political community (Karakoç and Özen, 2020). Turkish studies should take Rustow’s (1970) long-​standing suggestion of “national identity as a background factor” and Linz and Stepan’s (1996) insistence on “stateness” for democracy seriously. Then, the crucial questions become, what kind of policies should be adopted to increase the legitimacy of the state and national identity, especially in the eyes of minorities? And what should be done to minimize the anguish and backlash the majorities are likely to hold against these policies and related changes in political discourse and institutions? Democratization scholars can gather insights from Turkish studies regarding how the national identity, challenged by an assertive Kurdish nationalism, has affected Turkey’s democracy trajectory. The Kurdish conflict provides empirical evidence that democratization cannot be successful without resolving an ethnic conflict. As discussed, such conflict empowers the security-​oriented elites and their policies at the expense of pro-​ democratic alliances. In addition, studies examine how the distrust between a rebel

Democratization Theories and Turkey    47 group and government during democratization may result in not moderation but rather eventually the radicalization of both sides (e.g., Tezcür 2010b). As Rustow (1970 350) noted, democracies perform better through redistributive public policies if there is a socioeconomic problem but not ethnic/​religious ones. Many multiethnic countries, like Turkey, have failed in shaping public policies to mediate the conflicts among various ethnic groups. The difficulty in forming a democratic polity also comes from the fact that nationalism implicitly assumes hierarchy within and across nations (Yazici 2019). Those who belong to the dominant ethnic/​national group may support parties that implicitly elevate the dominance of the titular group while suppressing minorities’ cultural rights. The re-​securitization of Kurdish minority rights has not only empowered the security bureaucracy but also led to a more aggressive Turkish foreign policy, particularly toward its southern neighbors but also toward the European Union. In this respect, Turkish studies can contribute to the bourgeoning literature on the securitization of minority rights, ethnocracy, and democratic backsliding, such as Yiftachel and Ghanem’s (2004) comparative work on Sri Lanka, Estonia, and Israel; Stepan, Linz, and Yadav’s (2011) work on India, Estonia, and Israel; and Cianetti’s (2019) work on Estonia and Latvia.

Notes 1. The Polity score dropped from 7 in 2013 to 3 in 2014, while the Freedom House score shows the transition to authoritarianism in 2016, when Turkey moved from the partly free category (3.5) to the not-​free category (4); https://​www.systemicpeace.org/​polityproject.html (accessed on December 13, 2019). Authoritarianism is a gradual process in the political realm. That’s why this chapter will not give a particular date that hallmarks the beginning of authoritarianism, but it is fair to say that the threat of authoritarianism was always in the air, displaying itself with mild symptoms, especially starting from 2008. 2. Nevertheless, the boundaries that this praetorian elite drew were much larger than those the AKP imposed on the political sphere, especially since the Gezi Park protests (see the chapter by Kaya in this volume) and more severely the military coup attempt on July 15, 2016. 3. https://​apnews.com/​dbb5fa7d8f8c4d0d99f297601c83a164 (accessed January 26, 2020). 4. A longtime supporter of civil society in Turkey, businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala and the head of Amnesty International-​Turkey, Taner Kılıç, are two well-​known victims of this policy but by no means the only ones. 5. https://​data.worldbank.org/​indicator/​NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=TR (accessed March 1, 2020). 6. GDP per capita (current US$) increased from $4,718 in 2003 to $9,711 in 2007. GDP per capita declined to $9,039 in 2009, but then showed a steady increase with a lower slope and reached $11,336 in 2011 and $12,519 in 2013. 7. https://​data.worldbank.org/​indicator/​NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=TR&view=chart (accessed on April 17, 2020). 8. Dahl, O’Donnell, and others offer important theories to explain democratic transitions (e.g., cost of toleration/​repression, soft-​liners versus hard-​liners). However, instead, this work focused on the structural factors and agencies, while acknowledging their utility

48   Ekrem Karakoç in explaining the strategic decisions of the military, other Kemalist elites, and the anti-​ establishment opposition. 9. Former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu also used the EU leverage to empower himself against Erdoğan in 2014–​2016 when he was close to completing major EU chapters, including a no-​visa agreement with the European Union. 10. Menzil Cemaati is led by a Kurdish sheikh, endorsed by and having supporters among Turkish nationalists. They have significant support in the bureaucracy.

Acknowledgments I thank Güneş Murat Tezcür for his insightful comments and suggestions.

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Chapter 3

Ruling Ideol o g i e s i n Modern T u rk ey Kerem Öktem

The ruling ideologies of modern Turkey, understood here as more or less clearly defined frameworks of thought-​practices with a certain intentionality (Freeden 2000; Gerring 1997), which were held by political elites in power in modern Turkey for sustained periods of time are, first and foremost, the nationalist and “westernist” founding ideology of the Turkish republic: Kemalism (Atatürkçülük, Ataturkism) and its immediate predecessor Ittihadism (from İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti, Committee of Union and Progress, that ruled the Ottoman Empire in its final years). Turkism, initially emerging in the early twentieth century among Turkic-​Muslim intellectuals in the Russian Empire (Akçura 1981; Yavuz 1993), is a pan-​ideology predating the Turkish republic, seeking to unite all Turkic people under a single state. It is at the origins of extreme right-​wing nationalism represented by political movements in the tradition of the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) (Bora and Can 2016). This party has never been in government alone, but its policy preferences have informed coalition governments in the 1970s and 1990s, and the alliance politics with the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) since 2015. Political Islam in the tradition of Milli Görüş (National View) is distinguished from the preceding traditions in that it regards the Turkish republic as an aberration from Islamic history and seeks Turkey’s return to and leadership of the Muslim world. This framework has been held by political parties close to the Milli Görüş tradition since the 1970s, and it has been the dominant ideological reference for the AKP since 2002 (Yavuz 2003). The so-​called Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (Türk İslam Sentezi) is the ruling ideology of the years following the military coup of 1980 and bridges Islamism with the nationalism of the extreme right. Political parties of the center-​right, which have ruled Turkey through most of the multiparty period since the first free and relatively fair elections of 1950 and, until the rise to power of the AKP in 2002, have drawn on all of these larger ideological traditions (Bora 2017). This brief overview of the political ideologies that have held power in modern Turkey reveals the core argument of this chapter:1 All of these ideological traditions are Turkish nationalist, give different degrees of primacy to Islam in the definition of identity and

54   Kerem Öktem nationality, and believe in the supremacy of the Turkish state over society. They may differ over the teleology of the state: The “attainment of contemporary civilization” is the end-​goal of statehood for most Kemalists, while political Islamists long for some form of a reconfigured Ottoman Empire and Caliphate under Turkish leadership. Yet, both major traditions concur on the supremacy of the state, whether in secular or religious variations. They also hold divergent views on what the nation entails: Kemalist definitions span from an inclusive notion of Turkishness based on the Turkish language and culture to a narrower, race-​based notion of citizenship. Islamist ideologues locate the Turkish nation in an Islamic space and time, where Muslimness is the key component of membership. But both agree on the supremacy of the Turkish nation as the sole people in Turkey with legitimate grounds for representation and privileged access to power. A case in point is the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which most of these ideological traditions interpret, above all, as unavoidable if not always as desirable, and which all of them deny. Despite significant variation in other matters, in these two central categories of state and nation, there is a high degree of overlap. Rather than speaking of several ideological traditions, it appears appropriate to speak of a political blueprint that has guided key political decisions and political processes since the establishment of the Turkish republic in 1923, but that has been in place at least since the rise to power of the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti, CUP) in 1908 (Gingeras 2010; Zürcher 2010), and whose roots go back the authoritarian reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1869–​ 1909). This hegemonic blueprint has been contested at times—​by the liberals of Prince Sabahaddin during the CUP governments (Kadıoğlu 2007), by socialist and communist parties and movements in the 1960s and 1970s (Pekesen 2020), and more forcefully by the Kurdish movement since the 1980s (Tezcür 2010, 2009; Watts 2006)—​but its main tenets pertaining to the role of the state and the control of the boundaries of the nation have remained surprisingly consistent, particularly during the recurrent crises of Turkey’s political and economic transformation since the introduction of multiparty politics in 1950. Following from these considerations, it appears more appropriate to speak of one broad mainstream ideology of the state as the ruling ideology, which has been in place despite contestations, re-​articulations and change of cadres and politicians, since at least the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908. This state ideology approach2 is very much a heuristic category geared toward discussing the ideological precepts as they are revealed in the practice of its actors, rather than in the works of their ideologues. With a focus on the practice of statecraft, particularly in times of crisis and war, the shared patterns of the different ideological traditions become particularly salient.

Internal and External Enemies of the Turkish State The two core tropes in this Turkish state ideology pertain to the role, or rather the supremacy, of the state over society and the boundary making pertaining to the

Ruling Ideologies in Modern Turkey    55 membership in the national body, that is, citizenship.3 It is in these two fields that Turkish state ideology materializes and sets out a relatively clearly defined ideational framework: The state is superior to society, and individual rights and freedoms can only be permitted as long as they do not conflict with state interests, or the political projects of governing elites. Under this hierarchical-​collectivist arrangement, where individual rights are subordinate to state interests, citizenship is always precarious and rights are provisional. But there is still a major difference between those who are considered legitimate members of the nation and those who are seen to be at or beyond the margins of Turkishness. Since the foundation of the Turkish republic in 1922, the group considered legitimate is defined by reference to religion and ethnicity, as Sunni-​Muslim-​Turkish.4 This definition then potentially excludes all religious and ethnic minority groups, that is, non-​Muslims, Alevis (see the chapter by Lord in this volume), Kurds, and hence a large part of Turkey’s population from the universe of mutual obligations, thereby confining them to ontologically insecure existence and creating a potential for ethnic and religious conflict that has been aggravated in times of crisis. In simpler terms, Turkish state ideology can be reduced to the simile of exclusive nationalism and state domination over the individual. Variants of such illiberal arrangements exist in hybrid and competitive authoritarian regimes, as well as in fully consolidated dictatorships.5 Turkey has often been characterized as a hybrid regime, with both competitive and authoritarian qualities. Yet, when compared with robust authoritarian regimes like Russia or China today or some of Turkey’s Middle Eastern neighbors such as Egypt or Syria, the country’s political system has mostly been more inclusive. Turkey has never experienced the consolidation of full authoritarianism, maybe with a brief exception during the early years of the early Turkish republic and Mustafa Kemal’s dictatorship in the 1920s and 1930s. Instead, the political landscape has been dominated by contestation that often came with crisis, insecurity, and state-​induced mass violence. Even under the conditions of hyper-​presidentialism under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since 2018, insecurity, instability, and political violence have been all pervasive. This regime of crises and antagonisms could be seen as the result of a governance model based on the creation of a constant “state of exception” (Agamben 1998; Schmitt 2014; for the Turkish case see Kadıoğlu 2013) and a principal “internal enemy” against whom the majority is mobilized when the need arises. Indeed, Turkey’s political history is replete with such internal enemies, beginning with “the Armenians” before, during, and after the Armenian genocide of 1915, the Communists during the Cold War, the Kurdish movement, the Islamists in the 1990s, the Jews, and the followers of the charismatic preacher and cult leader Fethullah Gülen from the 2010s (Table 3.1). Particularly salient were such enemy perceptions, when domestic actors could be related to external enemies (Table 3.2), leading to cases of aggravated threat perceptions and especially targeted campaigns of control, purges, and sometimes, elimination (Table 3.3). It can be argued that the campaigns against these actors have, to a certain extent, a regime-​stabilizing function, allowing respective governments to purge state institutions to minimize opposition, rallying the people around the flag, and suppress dissent.

56   Kerem Öktem Table 3.1: Principal Internal Enemies in Turkey’s State Ideology Principal Internal Enemies

Historical Context

Time Period

Non-​Muslim minorities

•  Dissolution of empire, World War I •  Foundation of the republic

Late nineteenth century–​today

Armenians

•  Dissolution of empire, World War I •  Russian advances into Ottoman territory

1908–​1920s present

Communists

•  Turkey’s membership in the Euro-​Atlantic sphere •  Cold War

1950s–​1990s

Kurds

•  Regime consolidation during the early republic Early republic–​today •  Post–​Cold War and crisis of the Kemalist regime • Rise of the Kurdish national movement in Turkey in the 1980s •  Kurdish autonomy in Iraq in the 1990s • Kurdish movement reaching beyond the confines of nationalist politics • De-​facto Kurdish autonomy in Northern Syria (Rojava)

Alevis

• Polarization along confessional lines and state policies against communism

1970s–​1980s

Jews

•  Islamist anti-​Zionism and anti-​Semitism

2000s–​today

Gülenists

• Intra-​elite power struggle among Islamists • Collapse of the AKP-​Gülen alliance

2010s–​today

As Tables 3.1–​3.3 show, the choice of internal and external enemies reflects the geopolitical considerations of the governments of the time. In cases of overlap between external and internal enemies, such as the cases of so-​called fifth-​columns (Armenians as clients of Russia, non-​Muslim minorities as fifth-​columns of European powers, Greeks in Turkey as collaborators of the Greek state, Kurds in Turkey as fifth columns of the United States and Israel, and so on) policies of repression can be exceptionally brutal, justify state of emergency rules, and take on genocidal proportions. These acts of state violence are explored in more detail in Table 3.4.

Factors Attenuating Authoritarian Rule in Turkey It would be incomplete to reduce Turkey’s political history to a succession of “states of exception,” cultivated by political elites with the intent to maintain power. While authors have often, and laudably so, examined why Turkey is authoritarian (Karaveli 2018), it is as important to ask why Turkey has not become a consolidated authoritarian regime.

Ruling Ideologies in Modern Turkey    57 Table 3.2: External Enemies in Turkey’s State Ideology Principal External Enemies Historical Context

Time Period

Russian Empire

•  Demise of the Ottoman Empire • Russian imperial interests in the Balkans and Caucasus

Late empire

European powers, particularly Great Britain

•  Demise of the Ottoman Empire • European imperial expansion to the Middle East and the Balkans

Late nineteenth century–​end of empire

Greece

•  •  •  • 

Late empire 1920s–​1990s

Soviet Union

•  Turkey’s membership in the Euro-​Atlantic sphere •  Cold War

1950s–​1990s

Foreign conspiratorial forces (finance capital, Jews)

•  Attempt at autonomous foreign policy • Deteriorating relations with the United States and Western institutions

2010s–​today

Kurds in Syria

• De facto autonomy and prospect of Kurdish statehood in Northern Syria (Rojava) • Support of the Kurdish movement by the United Stattes and Israel

2010s–​today

Global Gülenist networks

• Intra-​elite power struggle among Islamists and failure of AKP-​Gülen alliance

2010s–​today

Demise of the Ottoman Empire Greek independence Independence and ethnic conflict in Cyprus Disagreement over territorial waters

While states of emergency pervade much of republican Turkish history, and periodic military interventions (1960, 1971, 1980, 1997) and tutelage repeatedly truncated democratic development, periods of relative openness and democratic consolidation have to be taken into account too. More importantly, other factors, such as the absence of oil wealth and overlapping and unaccountable security agencies, have to be considered to account for the absence, in the Turkish case, of the regime type of robust authoritarianism so entrenched in much of the Middle East (Bellin 2012, 2004). Factors that may account for this absence of robustness and for the relative continuity of a regime of political contention and crisis—​under the conditions of authoritarian reflexes and even during the period of tutelary control by the military between the 1960s and early 2000s (Akkoyunlu 2014)—​range on a wide scale from the interaction between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish republic with Europe and the West, a relative democratic path dependence and record of resilient grassroots mobilization, and finally, a contested project of nation-​building that has nevertheless allowed for enduring societal diversity. These factors can be understood as relative safeguards against the establishment of robust authoritarianism and dictatorship, yet they have not effectuated

58   Kerem Öktem Table 3.3: Overlapping Internal and External Enemies in Turkey’s State Ideology Principal External Enemies

Principal Internal Enemies as “Fifth Columns” State Policies

Time Period

Russian Empire

Armenians

•  Massacres and deportations •  Armenian Genocide

Late empire

Greece

Greeks

•  Massacres and deportations •  Anti-​minority policies

Late empire–​1990s

European powers, particularly Great Britain

Non-​Muslim minorities

•  Exchange of populations with Greece • Pogroms •  Anti-​minority policies

Late nineteenth century–​end of empire 1950s–​1990

Soviet Union

Communists

• Anti-​Communist campaigns and persecution of communists • Support for nationalist and Islamist movements against socialist groups

1950s–​1990s

Foreign conspiratorial forces (finance capital, Jews)

Jews in Turkey

•  Anti-​Jewish discourse

2010s–​today

Global Gülenist networks

Gülenists in Turkey

•  Purge of Gülenists from the state •  Seizure of assets of sympathizers • Campaign of intimidation against Gülenist interests abroad

2010s–​today

Kurds in Syria

Kurds in Turkey

•  Suppression of Kurdish Movement • Occupation of Kurdish-​controlled Northern Syria (Rojava)

2010s–​today

the consolidation of any regime other than that of contention and crisis, fueled by the precepts of what we have defined as state ideology.

Interaction between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic with Europe Much has been written about the Ottoman Empire’s position vis-​à-​vis European imperialism and its status as a state in multifaceted dependency relations with European powers, with frayed sovereignty over economy to politics, and incomplete territorial control. It was, however, able to take advantage of interimperial competition (Pamuk 1988), and hence enjoyed relative autonomy when compared to colonized states, or countries seen as parts of informal empires. Relations were certainly asymmetric, and a partition of former Ottoman territories in Asia Minor was a real possibility after World

Table 3.4: Incidents of State Violence as Crystallization Points of Turkey’s State Ideology Event

Time

Justification

Underlying Objective

Role of the State

Armenian Genocide

1915

Defense of territory against Armenian nationalists/​ terrorists. Armenian nationalists/​ terrorists are a fifth column of Russia and Western powers.

• Ethnic cleansing of non-​Muslim communities from Anatolia with the aim of creating a defendable core territory for the future Turkish state • Transfer of capital from non-​Muslims to Muslims

• Organization and execution of the genocide • Distribution of Armenian property • Excision of Armenian referents from space and time • Denial

Greek-​ Turkish Population Exchange

1922–​1923 Defense of the • Ethnic cleansing • Organization and territory against of non-​Muslim execution of the the invading Greek communities exchange armies. •  “Unmixing of peoples” • Distribution of Greek property • Excision of Greek referents from space and time

Kurdish 1920s–​ rebellions 1930s and counter-​ campaigns

Defense of the • Punishment of homeland against unruly Kurdish and internal enemies Alevi tribes intent on defending their autonomy

• Organization and execution of the genocidal killings • Dispersal of Kurdish and Alevi tribes to Western Turkey • Enforced assimilation campaigns particularly in Dersim

Pogroms in Thrace

1934

Securing the • Ethnic cleansing • Organization of local borders of Turkey of non-​Muslim vigilante groups by removing communities • Withholding of police “foreign elements” • Transfer of capital intervention such as Jews from non-​Muslims to Muslims

Wealth Tax

1942

Controlling war profiteering

• Hostile environment • Organization and for non-​Muslim execution of taxation, communities punishment and • Transfer of capital work camps from non-​Muslims to • Redistribution of Muslims property (continued)

60   Kerem Öktem Table 3.4:  Continued Event

Time

Justification

Underlying Objective

6–​7 September Pogroms

1955

Protest event that went out of control

• Hostile environment • Organization of a for non-​Muslim false-​flag attack on communities Mustafa Kemal’s • Transfer of capital house of birth in from non-​Muslims to Thessaloniki Muslims • Organization of local vigilante groups • Withholding of police intervention

Security and defense of the constitutional order

• Containment of the • Special forces attack Socialist Left demonstration •  Polarization of society

“Bloody May 1977 Day”

Role of the State

Maraş and Çorum Massacres

1978–​1980 No ownership claimed by the state

• Hostile environment • Organization of local for Alevis vigilante groups •  Polarization of society and members of the extreme right (MHP) • Withholding of police intervention

Kurdish War

1980s–​ 2000s

Security and anti-​terrorism

• Hostile environment • State of for Kurds emergency regime •  Polarization of society • Special forces attack the Kurdish population • Large-​scale human rights abuses

Gezi park

2013

Security and anti-​terrorism

• Hostile environment • Police for opposition groups •  Attacks on protestors •  Polarization of society

Cizre, Şırnak, 2015–2016 Security and Sur anti-​terrorism

• Hostile environment • Military and for Kurds special forces •  Crushing of resistance • Attack on Kurdish •  Polarization of society activists and members of the PKK • Large-​scale human rights abuses

War I, embodied in the stipulations of the Sykes-​Picot Agreement of 1916, as well as in the partition plans of the aborted Treaty of Sèvres of 1920.6 Yet the very fact that the military and the nationalist government under Mustafa Kemal succeeded in mobilizing large parts of the Muslim communities in the remaining core territories of the empire in a “War of Liberation,” thereby vanquishing the invading Western powers, and later

Ruling Ideologies in Modern Turkey    61 Greece, brought a measure of balance to the power relations between Europe and the Kemalist government. The military success was turned into political success thanks to the diplomatic corps of the nationalists, which could easily draw upon the vast administrative resources of the defeated empire. Despite the prevalence of anti-​imperialist narratives in Turkish political thought throughout the political spectrum (Belge 2009; Uslu 2008; Yilmaz 2011), Turkish anti-​ imperialism is in fact motivated not by a principled rejection of imperialism or a postcolonial critique, but by a frustration about the loss of its own empire.7 Relations with Europe, and after the 1950s with the United States, have rarely been conducted from the next-​to-​complete loss of sovereignty as was, for instance the case in pre-​Nasser Egypt. Rather, relations with the West, whether in the early republic, or under the conditions of membership in Western institutions, were characterized by both genuine strategic cooperation on the one side and insistence on what was understood to be national interest politics on the other.8 While relations with the West have never been on a fully equal footing, they have also not been shaped by a postcolonial condition and loss of sovereignty, and have allowed for successive governments—​including the much less Western oriented Erdoğan regime—​to maintain variegated relations with the West. A case in point is Turkey’s membership, particularly after World War II, in Western institutions.9 Particularly Turkey’s association with the Council of Europe and the European Economic Communities (and later the European Union) can be seen as beneficial from the point of view of the country’s human rights and its economic development (see the chapter by H. Yılmaz in this volume). Membership in the Western bloc under the conditions of the Cold War required some form of a functioning multiparty system,10 and the human rights regime of the Council of Europe and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights have been somewhat effective in curbing the worst human rights violations by making public such violations and by providing mechanisms for remedies (Arat 2007; Keyman and Aydin-​Düzgit 2007; Smith 2007). Particularly during the early 2000s, the prospect of membership in the European Union and the conditionality of the pre-​accession process facilitated major legal reforms (Kubicek 2011; Müftüler-​Baç 2016). The reverse was the case when the accession process came to a halt in the early 2010s, and the relationship between Turkey and the European Union took on a more transactional character. The European refugee crisis of 2015 constitutes a critical juncture, in that the relations between Turkey and the European Union ceased to be guided by political conditionality and eventual convergence, and have since been shaped by the concern to keep Syrian refugees out of Europe (see the chapter by Kılınç and Toktaş in this volume). Inadvertently or willingly, this concern has contributed to authoritarian consolidation in Turkey (Öktem 2016).

Democratic Path Dependence and Grassroots Politics The claim for a democratic or electoral path dependence (Alexander 2001; Öktem and Akkoyunlu 2016) may appear daring. Turkey never enjoyed a sustained period

62   Kerem Öktem of consolidated democracy and rule of law. However, and even if earlier democratic experiments in the late Ottoman Empire are disregarded, at least since the introduction of multiparty elections in the 1950s, the case can be made for a widespread popular expectation that legitimacy in government comes from free and fair elections.11 While this expectation accounts for the exaltation of the “popular will” (milli irade)12 particularly by parties in the right-​wing and Islamist tradition, and even more so in the language of right-​wing populists like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (see the chapter by Taşkın in this volume), it also explains the relatively limited occurrence of vote rigging, at least in most of the country since 1950, and the Justice and Development Party’s inability to manipulate election results in their favor during the 2019 local elections.13 The very fact that under conditions of almost complete centralization of power in the hands of the president, a local election in the country’s most important metropolitan center could not be rigged effectively in favor of the incumbent is remarkable, and shows the relative robustness not so much of institutions like the Supreme Electoral Board, which failed their mandate to uphold free and fair elections (BIA News Desk 2019), but of informal institutions like the belief in the ballot box as an almost sacred representation of the popular will,14 as well as the massive mobilization of civil society activists intent on preventing voter fraud (cf. Bee and Kaya 2017; Çelebi 2015; Saka 2017). Grassroots politics and civil society activism, despite a suspicious and unwelcoming state, have indeed been significant factors in Turkey’s political landscape since the trade movement and the socialist activism of the 1960s and 1970s. Interrupted by the military interventions of 1960, 1971, and most notably the coup of 1980, civil society mobilization has been an important, and sometimes powerful countermovement to authoritarian consolidation. From the women’s movement in the early 1980s (see the chapter by Arat in this volume) and the protests against Turkey’s collusion between the state and criminal structures (i.e., the “deep state”) in 1996 (Öktem 2011) to the rise of civil society activism during the liberal reform period and the prospect of accession to the European Union (Kubicek 2005), and finally the brief but momentous episode of the Gezi Park protests (Eken 2014; Sarfati 2015) grassroots politics have created counter-​ hegemonic spaces and a long-​standing tradition of progressive struggles (Öktem 2013). Grassroots politics has also been considered a core domain for Islamic movements including the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) and its successor the AKP, whose intensive face-​to-​face contacts with voters in urban peripheries is considered a major factor of their initial political success (Tuğal 2009; White 2002). With the subsummation of the Islamist movement and the AKP into the structures of the state, however, mainstream Islamic grassroots activism has largely dissipated and turned into a “tamed civil society” (Maritato 2018; Yabanci 2019).

Contested Nation-​Building and Enduring Societal Diversity The Kemalist nation-​building project set out to create a homogenous nation-​state out of an empire marked by diversity and difference, a “negotiated empire” that gave much

Ruling Ideologies in Modern Turkey    63 room for different local power arrangements (Barkey 2008). While this project did succeed in eventually consolidating the content and limits of Turkishness, at least until its more recent challenge by political Islam, its attempts to assimilate two larger groups largely failed, by design or by incapacity: Non-​Muslim communities were kept from the full enjoyment of citizenship rights, as well as minority rights, from the moment they were supposedly granted (Bayar 2014; Oran 2007). As their numbers were, however, decimated by a hostile environment and repeated episodes of often violent state suppression, they ceased to be a force in the country’s politics that the state needed to take into consideration. In comparison, Kurds, with their significant demographic share in the total population of 15–​20 percent (Icduygu, Romano, and Sirkeci 1999) and their geographically relatively compact concentration in the country’s southeastern provinces constituted a significant obstacle to the Kemalist nation-​building project. Large parts of Kurdish territory remained beyond the full control of the central state well into the 1960s and became recruiting grounds for the militant Kurdish movement with the advent of the 1980s. Given its secular-​national commitments, the Kurdish movement also rejected haphazard and inconsistent attempts by the AKP to allow for incorporation of Kurds into the nationhood through emphasizing the shared religious heritage of Islam, a policy which lost much of its traction with a return to Turkish nationalist policies in 2015. A third group, which had mostly acquiesced in the Kemalist project due to the latter’s skepticism of Sunni Islam, the Alevis, emerged as an obstacle to full control by AKP governments, joined by several sections of society—​secular middle classes, city dwellers, members of LGBT communities—​that continue to identify with Kemalist notions of identity and teleology or at least refuse to be incorporated into the Islamist identity project of the Justice and Development Party (see the chapter by Kaya in this volume). The aforementioned factors—​Turkey’s relationship with European powers, relative democratic path dependence and persistent grassroots politics, and a record of contested nation-​building and resilient societal diversity—​have hindered the establishment of a fully consolidated authoritarian regime and have allowed for the persistence of societal niches, within which forms of opposition or subversion were able to prevail. Yet, while such factors might have created an informal set of checks and balances on the execution of state power, they have not altered the general structure of a state ideology concerned with the supremacy of the state and the homogeneity of its people.

Turkish State Ideology Turkish state ideology, unlike many of the ideological currents in its purview—​ Unionism, Kemalism, Turkism/​extreme Nationalism, Socialism, the Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis, Political Islam—​has been at the foundations of statecraft and governance well before the inception of the Turkish republic, and is in place today. This section will examine this ideology by engaging with key events through which its larger tenets

64   Kerem Öktem crystallized. As an examination of ideology not through written works but through actions, this synopsis has to be non-​exhaustive and exploratory. It also does not claim to explain the entire operations of the Turkish state through space and time: Every state is paradoxical in that it is defined by the powerful image of a unified organization and at the same time, in the words of Joel Migdal (2001, 22), is “a heap of loosely connected parts or fragments.” Turkey’s state is certainly Janus-​faced, as in addition to its security-​concerned political core it has a highly sophisticated role as service provider in all spheres of life, from education to healthcare and from infrastructure to social welfare. Particularly in the last two decades, this service aspect of the state and its transformation has increased and received critical attention (Aybars and Tsarouhas 2010; Buğra and Adar 2008; Baris et. al 2011; see the chapter by Yörük in this volume). This section will limit itself to long-​term notions of statehood exemplified in the notion of supremacy of the state over others and to the delineation of citizenship and nationhood.

The Core of Statehood: Supremacy and Delineation of Citizenship and Nationhood Turkey’s modern statehood, its notions of citizenship, and the content and boundaries of its national identity have emerged during the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the series of wars and episodes of ethnic cleansing that accompanied this demise. The Kemalist nation-​building project pursued its ideological goals through coercion and penetration into the lives of ordinary men and women. Reforms and policies changed the relations between state and religion, mandated a new form of ethno-​national identification—​Turkishness, rather than Muslimness, or Ottomanness—​and dictated a strict move from “old” to “new” ways: The language and script—​i.e., the means whereby people communicated with each other—​were changed from Ottoman and Ottoman-​ Arabic to Turkish and Latin, the computation of time and calendars—​i.e., the means whereby people position themselves in time and remember or forget—​moved from the Islamic calendar and time to the Gregorian calendar and Western time. Finally, sartorial arrangements, at least for most Muslims, were mandated, replacing the Fez with European hats, and head and body coverings with the European dress conventions of the time (Kavas 2015). All these reforms, or “revolutions of Atatürk” (Atatürk inkılapları or Atatürk devrimleri), as they continue to be called by Kemalists today, have been critically assessed from both liberal and Islamist vantage points. Sometimes, they have been depicted as violent assaults on ordinary Muslims’ culture and way of life. Yet, the Kemalist reforms have to be seen in the context of their time. Modernization projects, and mission civilisatrice, in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as in the post-​World War II era, in Europe and beyond were often “Jacobin” in their methods, coercive and oftentimes violent. Compared with Soviet Russia under Stalin, China under Chairman Mao, or Albania under Enver Hoxha, the coerciveness of the Kemalist civilizational project

Ruling Ideologies in Modern Turkey    65 appears, however, relatively modest: There is nothing in scope or scale akin to the Soviet famine after the elimination of the kulaks, or the “Great leap forward” and the “Cultural Revolution” in China (Dikötter 2016, 2011; Naimark 2010). The Kemalist Republic (and the Erdoğan regime of the 2010s for that matter) are authoritarian regimes with high degrees of repressive practices, but they cannot be understood in terms of Karl Wittfogel’s widely criticized definition of Oriental Despotism and its constituents of “total power” and “total terror” (Wittfogel 1957). Yet, it is also clear that these reforms were major infringements into people’s everyday lives that took away agency and initiative from individuals and left them in the position of following the commands of the state, or at least they appeared to so. This notion of supremacy of the state, as well as its relatively unquestioning acceptance by the large majority of the population,15 is a core aspect of Turkey’s state ideology. While this “strong state tradition” has been compared to some other postcolonial states in the Middle East and Asia, Metin Heper argues convincingly that the overbearing strength of the “Ottoman Turkish polity” is rooted in the Ottoman state tradition and its next-​ to-​complete autonomy from civil society (Heper 1985, 1992). This “gravitas” of the state (Mango 1977) and its relative autonomy—​if eroded particularly after the introduction of multiparty elections in 1950—​carried over into the early republican era, and its reverberations have been felt well into the succession of AKP governments. This image of the state (Migdal 2001) materializes in widely used proverbs on the importance of the homeland (“If the homeland is at risk, details do not matter,” Mevzubahis vatansa, gerisi teferruattir), but it also goes much further. In the context of the Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis, the dominant ideology of the decade following the military coup of 1980, the state is seen as a precondition for Islam and Turkishness, and not as its consequence (Çetinsaya 1999; Kurt 2010).

Delineation of Citizenship and Nationhood The workings of Turkey’s state ideology can be best understood at times when according to the aforementioned proverb, “details do not matter,” that is, in moments of crisis, when the homeland has to be defended against internal and external enemies (Tables 3.1–​3.3), or when crises are manufactured in order to sustain power. It is under these exceptional circumstances that the limits of belonging to the nation are most clearly defined, and thereby the definitions of Turkish citizenship according to state ideology are most blatantly revealed. Table 3.4 shows how official justifications, objectives, and policies are surprisingly consistent over the years when it comes to such state violence, or its complicity in communal violence in times of major crisis. Official justifications for state interventions are usually the defense of the homeland and the defense of territory against external and internal enemies, while from the 1960s concerns of security and combatting terrorism become more pronounced. In terms of objectives, the ethnic cleansing of non-​Muslims remained paramount until the 1960s, with particularly violent episodes during the September pogroms in

66   Kerem Öktem 1955 (Güven 2006, Vryonis 2005). Such instances of state-​incited violence only ceased when these communities had been reduced to politically and economically insignificant minorities mostly residing in Istanbul. With the demographic and political decimation of the non-​Muslim minorities in the 1960s, state objectives appear to focus in on polarizing society by singling out certain groups, considered less reliable from the outset of the republic, as internal enemies and mobilizing state-​related groups and public opinion against them. While the groups range from the socialist left to Alevis, Kurds, and oppositional groups, the mechanics of state intervention, involvement in the organization of mass violence, and selective use of police force is remarkably coherent. The corollary of this dynamic is that other groups—​Sunni Muslim Turks from certain regions—​have been overrepresented in the state apparatus.16 Turkish state ideology, reconstructed from the particular angle of this essay, emerges as a set of policies that seeks to maintain power by exploiting existing conflicts between ethno-​religious communities and the state, or by creating such conflicts through open or concealed interventions, in order to then homogenize society by means ranging from suppression and assimilation to genocide and ethnic cleansing. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the Armenian Genocide, increasingly seen as the “original sin or the founding moment of modern Turkey” provides the most comprehensive form of the “reason of state” (Göçek 2015; Turan 2018) and its modes of power preservation in what would become the modern Turkish republic. From the early republican period onward, and in addition to continued hostility toward non-​Muslim minorities, Kurdish communities in the Southeastern provinces bore the brunt of the republic’s enforcement of Turkish identity as marker of inclusion. Socialists and Alevis came to be singled out by state actors particularly in the late 1970s, when the latter were increasingly associated with left-​wing movements. From the 1980s onward, and with the brief exception of the Gezi protests of 2013 when a broader opposition emerged against the AKP government of the time, Kurdish activists and the Kurdish civilian population in both eastern Turkey and the rest of the country were again the main targets of the workings of Turkey’s state ideology. In its most foundational form, Turkish state ideology is predicated upon the perpetuation of the hegemony of the dominant ethnic and religious group over others and the mobilization of the dominant group against these others in the pursuit of self-​ preservation of the political elites of any given moment and independently of their political persuasion. Under military tutelage and the hybrid politics from the 1950s to the 2000s, these operations and their actors tend to be more covert, hence often being identified as the work of clandestine structures of a “deep state” (Söyler 2015, 2013; see also Gingeras 2010). During periods of relative authoritarian consolidation, however, (i.e., the early republic, the military junta of 1980–​1983, and the Erdoğan regime after 2011), these policies are mostly carried out openly by legitimate state actors like the military, the police, and special forces. The patterns of continuity in acts of political violence that were either directly sponsored by the state or took place with its complicity demonstrate how, despite their internal differences, coercion has been central to the workings of ruling ideologies.

Ruling Ideologies in Modern Turkey    67

Conclusion This chapter has reconstructed, on the basis of historical events and actions, a Turkish state ideology that has shaped the boundaries of membership in the nation, and has ensured regime continuity, particularly in times of crises of political legitimacy and economic hardship. This ideology is informed by the image of Turkey’s strong state tradition and sits at the intersection of all ruling ideologies, whose proponents have held power since the demise of the Ottoman Empire, ranging from Kemalism and its immediate predecessor Ittihadism, to the Turkism and extreme right-​wing nationalism of the MHP, the Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis and to political Islam in the tradition of Milli Görüş. Nationalism and a restrictive policy vis-​à-​vis ethnic and religious communities are certainly not limited to Turkey, and are inherent to most modern nation-​states (Mann 2005). But the Turkish case of state ideology, and the way it has been implemented over the last century, shows some significant peculiarities. First and foremost is the inability of the state to achieve its key goal to create a homogenized nation defined by Turkishness and (albeit different understandings of) Islam. Despite the concurrence on this issue of homogeneity of all political currents that have exercised power in the late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish republic and despite recurrent waves of ethnic cleansing and political violence, the state of a religiously and ethnically homogenous nation-​state has not materialized. In this seemingly immutable condition of diversity and contention, Turkey differs from homogenizing nation-​states such as Greece until the 2000s, France before the post–​World War II migrations from its former colonies, and Germany before the labor migrations of the 1960s. Turkey’s society continues to be marked by diversity and contention. This state of affairs would suggest that while state ideology has been prevalent throughout the period under study, with the state enjoying some degree of autonomy from society, it was not pervasive and powerful enough to achieve its goals in their entirety.17 The chapter has suggested several factors that have reigned in the workings of the state and that have prevented the emergence of fully consolidated authoritarian regimes that could have followed through with the homogenization of society more forcefully. Particularly Turkey’s orientation to the West in the 1950s, the path dependence of relative democracy, membership in European institutions, and also the sheer numbers of the two largest non-​majority groups, Kurds and Alevis, are among them. In the absence of a fully authoritarian regime, particularly during the hybrid regime of elected governments and military tutelage in the 1960s–​2000s, but even thereafter, power remained fractured and dispersed, and the societal homogenization that was envisaged by the state’s ideology never fully materialized. Instead, a political space of constant contestation consolidated, in which political actors connected with the state regularly singled out religious and ethnic minorities as well as undesired political groups as internal enemies and mobilized both the state’s coercive apparatus and sections of society against them. The resulting political landscape has been marked by political

68   Kerem Öktem conflict, violence, insecurity, and human rights violations on a wide scale throughout the period of scrutiny. While Turkey’s state has significantly improved its capacity as service provider in all walks of life, its political life has been shaped by an ideology that has failed to find compromises with groups considered undesirable. This ideology is at the foundations of a state and a political system that has been pushing for homogenization, but produced, above all, polarization and a toxic political field unable to accommodate the societal diversity that nevertheless continues to exist. Alternative ideologies, from socialism and social democracy to Islamism and, if in a more limited fashion, liberalism, have at times reached positions of relative societal power, where they may have posed a challenge to this state ideology. The rise of the socialist left in the 1960s and 1970s, despite infighting, was such a moment, as was the window of liberal reform and Europeanization in the early 2000s, and the concurrent, if hesitant, Islamist critique of what was then understood as an unjust and oppressive use of state power in the secular republic. It appears, however, that an, albeit volatile, constellation of actors from the army, the security services, the extreme right, and organized crime circles, referred to as the deep state with its origin in the emergence of the modern Turkish nation-​state (Gingeras 2010), has so far been able to re-​assemble and assert itself repeatedly to form coalitions with incumbents, ensuring the continuity of the ideological foundations of the Turkish state, and thereby thwarting any evolution toward a more inclusive and democratic polity. The axiom that the “Ottoman-​Turkish polity developed not alongside civil society but by virtually smothering the latter” (Heper 1992, 177) still holds, but so does the recognition that Turkey’s civil society continues to exist beyond, and often in opposition to, the state’s hegemonic state.

Notes 1. This chapter does not consider non-​ruling ideologies, i.e., ideological currents that were too feeble to attain power or were prevented from flourishing by the coercive apparatus of the state. Ranging from the notions of civic citizenship and early liberalism in the late Ottoman Empire to the Socialist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, to the Europe-​oriented liberalism of the 2000s, these are influential currents of both thought and action, which, however, never came into positions of power. The exclusion of the Kurdish movement and Kurdish nationalism from the cannon of ruling ideologies is less straightforward, as this movement has held real power in the Kurdish territories throughout much of the AKP era since 2002, and it might do so again in the future. It is nevertheless not discussed in this chapter, as its relations with the state have been antagonistic, and hence it cannot be considered a “ruling ideology” of the Turkish state. 2. In much of the literature until the mid-​2000s, state ideology tends to be equated with Kemalism and its civilizing mission in different spheres of life, i.e. women’s rights (Kandiyoti 1989). The term state ideology is more often used with reference to the suppression of Kurdish rights, where it is also taken to be an extension of the Kemalist framework (cf. Lozides 2010; Sagnic 2010). More recent studies explore the articulation of the Kemalist tradition with more religiously oriented forms of nationalisms (White 2014).

Ruling Ideologies in Modern Turkey    69 3. Citizenship policies of the Turkish state have been critically discussed particularly with regard to ethnicity and gender (Arat 2000; Ekmekçioğlu 2015; Kadıoğlu, 2008; Suciyan 2016; Yeğen 2004). 4. Religion was as crucial a marker for Turkishness in the early Turkish republic defined by its state-​enforced secularism. Baskın Oran once described the ideal citizen of the Turkish republic as LAHASÜMÜT, i.e., Secular (Laique), Hanafi, Sunni, Muslim, and Turk (cited from Mitchell 2012). The key difference to the AKP regime of the 2000s is that the Kemalists were expecting their Hanafi-​Sunni-​Muslim-​Turkish citizens to be secular. 5. Cf. Levitsky and Way 2010 and Linz 2000. For the Turkish case see Esen and Gumuscu (2016) and Akkoyunlu and Öktem (2016). 6. The trauma of the Treaty of Sèvres has been kept alive in the Republic and under the AKP, resulting in what has been referred to as the ‘Sèvres Syndrome’, or the often irrational fear of territorial division (Guida 2008, also Nefes 2015). 7. Çapan and Zarakol (2017) examine how the Erdoğan government has recently begun to employ postcolonial narratives in order to further its own neo-​imperial agenda. 8. Despite NATO membership of both Greece and Turkey, the relations between the two countries remained tense through the Cold War. The Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus in 1974 was a strong assertion of national interests against the United States and the international community. Finally, the rejection by the Turkish Parliament in 2003 of US requests to use Turkey as launch pad for the invasion of Iraq was another strong reminder of Turkey’s sovereignty and autonomy vis-​à-​vis its most important ally. 9. This thesis certainly needs to be qualified, as NATO membership in particular has been a mixed blessing. The connivance and endorsement of the leaders of the military coup of 1980 by the United States and NATO is a case in point (Aslan 2016). 10. It could be argued that Turkey’s hybrid regime of the 1960s–​2000s with multiparty elections and governments under military tutelage was a result of this necessity to maintain a democratic façade. Yet even if this was the case, it led to a political arrangement where power was relatively diffused. 11. This sentiment is slightly less pronounced in the country’s Kurdish provinces, where elections have often been less representative and are characterized by various levels of fraud and voter intimidation, and pro-​Kurdish parties have often been obstructed in their campaigning efforts. 12. The term “national will” has been prevalent in center-​right political discourses for some time. Yet, the more recent usage especially after the Gezi events also posited the “national will” against the critics of Erdoğan more generally (Atay 2013). 13. The 2019 local elections resulted in victories for opposition candidates in most of Turkey’s larger cities. When the AKP candidate in Istanbul, Binali Yıldırım, lost against the CHP candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu by only a few thousand votes, the elections were annulled. In the rerun in June, Imamoğlu this time secured almost 800,000 more votes than his contender (cf. Council of Europe 2019). 14. A number of proverbs in wide circulation particularly since the 2019 local elections suggest that the institution of elections is indeed sacralized and incorporated into discourses on honor and shame: “The vote is sacred” (Oy kutsaldır); “The vote is our honor” (Oy namusumuzdur). 15. Aymes, Gourisse, and Massicard (2015) suggest that there was scant evidence for widespread opposition against the early Kemalist Republic outside the Kurdish territories, but

70   Kerem Öktem clear indications that subversion and adaptation vis-​à-​vis the new regime were widespread among the masses. 16. Hence I am not making the case for an exceptional case of a “strong state” that is completely autonomous from civil society. It is important to note here that in Turkey, as elsewhere, the state has a paradoxical quality and “must be thought of at once (1) as the powerful image of a clearly bounded, unified organization . . . and (2) as the practices of a heap of loosely connected parts of fragments” (Migdal 2001, 22). Tezcür and Gurses (2017) in a recent study on the exclusion of Kurds from state power and overrepresentation of other groups perceived to be most loyal illustrate this paradox. 17. As has been shown, non-​Muslim minorities were indeed decimated to the point of political and demographic irrelevance.

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Chapter 4

C onstitu ti ona l i sm in Tu rk ey Aslı Ü. Bâlİ

This chapter considers the current authoritarian turn in Turkey in the context of the country’s constitutional history. Turkey has a long history of constitutionalism, dating to the first Ottoman Constitution of 1876. Yet constitution-​drafting and constitutional reform have been vexed projects in the Turkish case, with efforts at democratic consolidation repeatedly undermined as a consequence of the country’s inability to grapple with the challenge of pluralism, whether in terms of the complex relationship between the state and religion or an ethnic conception of citizenship that denies minority communities full political inclusion. From the beginning of the republic’s history, the ideological commitments of the founding generation—​and especially those of the founding statesman, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk—​were entrenched in its constitutional order as principles of secularism and ethnonationalism (Ciddi 2009; see the chapter by Öktem in this volume). These commitments have served to exacerbate rather than ameliorate political and social cleavages over the role of religion and the significance of ethnicity as a marker of membership in the polity (see the Foreword by Acemoğlu in this volume). Negotiations over these core conflicts have taken different forms over the history of the Republic, with the ascendance of Kemalist secularists gradually overtaken by a new generation of political Islamists who now wield state control over religion to their advantage (see the chapter by Akan in this volume). By contrast, whereas the first decade of the twenty-​first century witnessed periods in which a more pluralist conception of citizenship seemed within reach, political Islamists have now made common cause with ultranationalists in Turkey by embracing an exclusionary conception of citizenship that seeks to marginalize and even disenfranchise the country’s large Kurdish community (Koontz 2020). Each new chapter in the country’s political struggles over its foundational cleavages—​ over the role of religion and ethnic identity—​has been accompanied by attempts at constitutional reform, on the one hand, and shifting approaches to constitutional jurisprudence by the Turkish Constitutional Court, on the other. Frequently, these moves were in tension with one another as constitutional reformers’ attempts to revise

76   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ founding ideological commitments met resistance and even judicial backlash. Most recently, this tension was resolved definitively in favor of constitutional reform, albeit in an authoritarian direction. The history of judicial resistance to democratic consolidation in the name of Turkey’s founding ideological commitments has given way to a new constitutional order in which both judicial independence and parliamentary democracy have been eliminated to make way for a presidential system of one-​man rule. With further constitutional reform projects still on the horizon as of spring 2021, this survey of Turkey’s constitutional trajectory sheds light on how within two decades a country pursuing democratic consolidation took a sharp authoritarian turn.

History of Constitution-​M aking in the Turkish Republic since 1924 Turkey has a long history of constitutionalism, dating back to the first Ottoman Constitution of 1876 through to the current Constitution, written as part of a transition out of military rule in 1982 (Özbudun 2011a). All of these constitutions have been written in top-​down, elite-​led processes—​the last two by drafters selected by the military. These texts have in common a repressive model of state–​religion relations that lacks popular support and a homogenizing ethnic conception of citizenship. Nevertheless, the de jure configuration of state regulation of religion and ethnic identity has proven fairly durable, even under pressure from elected governments that have, over time, commanded majorities in favor of constitutional revision. For decades, modifications to this constitutional formula occurred only gradually through piecemeal amendments, interpretive changes and alterations to underlying legislation and regulation rather than wholesale constitutional reform. Since 2017, however, this pattern has been broken through resort to anti-​democratic means. The process of constitutional change was accelerated by a ruling party that exploited emergency rule to impose wide-​ranging constitutional changes undermining the separation of powers. Today, the country’s constitution is an amalgam of the military’s preferred order from the early 1980s and the imposition of a presidential order by the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi [AKP]), Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan. This section will survey the history of constitution-​drafting from 1924 through 2007, and the next section will examine how the Turkish judiciary blocked incremental constitutional reform, paving the way for a new strategy of imposed constitutionalism, this time through a repressive model of majoritarianism under cover of emergency rule. While the first Republican Constitution in Turkey in 1924 was adopted by an elected legislature, the 1923 elections were so dominated by the party of the founding statesman, Mustafa Kemal, that opposition voices had almost no role in the drafting of the text or the vote for its adoption (Özbudun 2011a). In the ensuing two decades, this Constitution enabled the perpetuation of single-​party rule. Following the end of World War II,

Constitutionalism in Turkey    77 Turkey was brought under external pressure to liberalize its political order. As a result, the country transitioned to a multiparty system in 1946 and had a peaceful transition of power in 1950, but escalating tensions between the two principal parties resulted in a military intervention in 1960 (Zürcher 2004; Ahmed 1993). Following the 1960 military coup, the 1924 Constitution was repealed and replaced by a new constitution, drafted by an appointed committee of legal scholars and submitted to a partly indirectly elected Constituent Assembly operating under military supervision (Esen 2021). However, the resulting draft was more liberal than the 1924 text, with stronger protections for civil liberties and a new Constitutional Court, serving as a check on the state organs (Giritli 1962). These positive features were partially offset by the fact that the 1961 Constitution also ensured greater institutional autonomy for the military to serve as a self-​appointed guardian of the Turkish constitutional principles of nationalism and secularism. Following a military coup in 1980, the 1961 Constitution (which had already been amended to limit some of its more liberal features in 1971 and 1973) was repealed and replaced by a far more repressive new text in 1982. The 1982 Constitution was written under military supervision in a tightly controlled, top-​down drafting process. The military drafting council comprised the five highest-​ ranking generals who carried out the September 12, 1980, military coup and then constituted themselves as the country’s National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik Konseyi [MGK]) (Özbudun and Gençkaya 2009). Following the coup, all political parties were banned, and anyone who had previously held elected office was disqualified from serving in the Consultative Assembly. As a result, the civilians involved in the drafting of the new constitution were restricted to state elites selected by the MGK—​ which blamed the relative liberalism of the 1961 Constitution for the political instability of the 1970s—​who were highly unrepresentative of the preferences of the electorate. Once the draft was completed, it was put to a public referendum conducted under draconian restrictions (Özbudun and Gençkaya 2009). Moreover, a vote in favor of the constitution was presented as the only means to transition back to civilian rule, leaving the electorate with the choice of accepting a repressive constitution or maintaining military rule. As a result, despite the fact that a constitutional referendum to seek public legitimacy for the new order was undertaken, the processes for drafting and adopting the constitution were deeply unrepresentative. The 1982 Constitution has undergone nineteen rounds of amendment in the nearly forty years it has been in force—​four times by popular vote and fifteen times by legislative action (Ekim and Kirişci 2017)—​with 117 of the 177 articles in the original text revised to some extent. While many of its most repressive features were eliminated after the first eighteen rounds of amendment, the constitutional order continued to retain a number of authoritarian and tutelary features (Gönenç 2004; Özbudun 2011a).1 First, this was a highly statist constitution, privileging the prerogatives of the state and “Turkish national interests” ahead of the protection of individual rights, as is evident in the Constitution’s preamble.2 Second, the constitution established a set of tutelary institutions designed to check the powers of the elected branches of government. These institutions included the National Security Council (with a strong military presence

78   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ and broad policymaking powers), the Higher Education Board (including representatives of the military in decisions concerning academic appointments and the regulation of higher education), and the judiciary with an appointments procedure that, for the higher-​echelon courts, was largely controlled by the executive rather than the legislature (albeit slightly less so following the 2010 amendments). Even after the constitution was extensively civilianized, the imbalance between the political branches in favor of the executive was never corrected and, after 2017, became far more pronounced. The Turkish Republic has been a formally secular state since 1928.3 But Turkey’s repressive definition of secularism set it apart from many other constitutional systems where secularism is an essential component of political liberalism (Roznai and Yolcu 2012). Secularism in Turkey is not the constitutional principle of separation of state and religion (or even state neutrality on questions of religion) but rather state control and regulation of religion. Under this definition, secularism has been the basis for intrusive state policies governing many aspects of private religious expression and practice throughout much of the republic’s history. This conception of secularism has also enabled the state to monopolize the domain of religious education, producing a state-​sanctioned orthodoxy on Sunni Islam, excluding the beliefs and practices of heterodox Muslim and non-​Muslim communities (for Alevis, see the chapter by Lord in this volume). This Kemalist definition of secularism was retained and entrenched by the 1982 Constitution, which listed secularism as one of the unamendable characteristics of the Republic in Article 2. The Turkish constitutional order is also marked by its commitments to an ethnic conception of nationalism, explicitly referenced as a core characteristic of the state in the text of the 1982 Constitution.4 The definition of citizenship found in Article 66 of the Constitution states that “[e]‌veryone bound to the Turkish State through the bond of citizenship is a Turk” (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Anayasası, 1982), a framing widely regarded by Kurdish citizens of Turkey as an imposition of ethnic identity (Varol 2018). The operation of the constitutional order in practice has repressed the rights of Kurdish citizens in the areas of freedom of expression, association, and education (Kurban 2003). Indeed, the 1982 Constitution permitted a legal regime that banned the public use of the Kurdish language until 1991, while Article 42 of the Constitution decreed that only Turkish could be taught as the mother tongue of Turkish citizens in public education. Further, constitutional commitments to territorial integrity were widely interpreted by the judicial and military tutelary institutions of the state as a license to impose restrictions on Kurdish citizens’ rights and enabled the repeated constitutional closure of pro-​Kurdish political parties (Esen 2012; HDP Europe 2021; for Kurdish activism in Turkey, see the chapter by Okçuoğlu in this volume). While the commitment to ethnonationalism has seen little change, the 1990s witnessed greater political contestation over the question of secularism with the emergence of Islamist political parties in Turkey that performed well in national elections. By 1996, the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi [RP]) had won a plurality in the elections, and the party’s leader, Necmettin Erbakan, became prime minister. Yet, within a year Erbakan’s coalition government was forced out of power by the Turkish military in 1997 and the party banned by the courts on the grounds of its allegedly anti-​secular political

Constitutionalism in Turkey    79 platform. The successor party to RP was similarly subjected to constitutional closure on the same grounds in 2001, generating a split within the Turkish Islamist movement (Yavuz 2009). The AKP, founded in 2001, would win a plurality in the 2002 elections and establish an electoral hegemony for the next two decades. During the AKP’s initial years in power, the key stumbling blocks to constitutional reform were deep divisions over three facets of Turkey’s constitutional order: state–​ religion relations, a civic versus ethnic conception of citizenship, and the statism that prioritizes a strong and centralized executive over the protection of individual rights. These obstacles resulted in a decade-​long stalemate over constitutional secularism, decoupling of citizenship rights from ethnic origin, and Erdoğan’s pursuit of a presidential system. Ultimately, the AKP successfully modified secularism using its political majority to alter regulatory and legislative frameworks in favor of its constituents’ preferences—​permitting for the first time the wearing of headscarves on university campuses, in secondary schools, and in government offices, as a primary example (Toksabay and Villelabeitia 2010; Arsu and Bilefsky 2013; Daloglu 2014). But the party was unable to secure the necessary measure of popular support to achieve its proposed transformation of Turkey’s parliamentary system to a presidential one by democratic means. The AKP’s commitment to constitutional reform during its first decade in office hardly distinguished it from other political actors in Turkey. There was widespread opposition to the deeply illiberal and anti-​democratic provisions of the 1982 Constitution (Işıksel 2013). Indeed, most of the amendments that passed in the 1990s and early 2000s were adopted in packages that changed multiple provisions at once with the support of broad coalitions of parties across the political spectrum (Gönenç 2004; Özbudun 2007). These amendments and others passed under the AKP prior to 2017 also earned praise from the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission for Democracy through Law, responsible for ensuring that EU candidate countries harmonize their legal systems with EU standards (Venice Commission of the Council of Europe 2004, 2011). This is because until 2017 all of the amendment packages were designed to liberalize, democratize, and civilianize the Constitution. More specifically, amendments served three ends: enlarging fundamental rights and freedoms for Turkish citizens, strengthening rule-​of-​ law guarantees constraining state action, and removing or reducing special privileges set aside for the military. Toward these ends, amendments made it more difficult to ban political parties, eliminated security courts, abolished the death penalty, introduced affirmative action, and reduced the military’s role in civilian governance. But a new constitutional order remained elusive under the AKP. The two cleavages marking Turkish constitutional identity—​over the status of religion and the ethnic definition of citizenship—​produced an impasse whenever a constituent assembly or constitutional commission was convened to consider wholesale change. The polarization in Turkish society between secular and religiously conservative communities and between ultranationalists and those who prefer a more inclusive definition of citizenship stood in the way of more thoroughgoing constitutional reform (for polarization in Turkey, see the chapter by Somer in this volume). The AKP deftly maneuvered around these cleavages, sometimes exploiting them and sometimes sidestepping them, to press

80   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ through incremental reforms that fundamentally redefined the constitutional identity of the Republic without entirely replacing its constitution. Six sets of amendment packages were passed under AKP governments prior to 2017. The first four packages adopted through 2006 were largely consistent with EU accession requirements, including abolishing the death penalty. Beginning in 2007, the AKP embarked on more ambitious structural transformations. The party justified these transformations on grounds that they would dismantle anti-​democratic and tutelary institutions put in place by the military junta in 1982 to cabin the authority of the elected branches of government. The first attempt by the AKP to replace the 1982 Constitution occurred immediately after the 2007 elections, from which the party emerged victorious (Bâli 2012). The party sought to translate its parliamentary majority into an initiative to repeal and replace the constitution (Özbudun and Gençkaya 2009). The eventual constitutional text produced by a constitution-​drafting committee convened by the AKP was the most liberal draft for a constitution that had ever been proposed in Turkey (Özbudun 2011a). That draft jettisoned the ideological baggage of the previous three constitutions, drawing instead on European human rights standards and guidelines for the rule of law. Yet, because the drafting committee had been selected by the AKP rather than through an all-​party consensus and precisely because the draft represented a radical departure from its Kemalist forebears, it was met with suspicion. In the end, opposition parties in parliament took positions against the draft out of anxiety that it might diminish the secularist and nationalist core of Turkey’s constitutional identity. The main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi [CHP]), brought a case before the Turkish Constitutional Court (Anayasa Mahkemesi [AYM]) seeking to have the AKP closed on grounds that it engaged in antisecular activities. That effort failed by the narrowest of margins but demonstrated the real possibility that the judicial power to ban political parties might threaten the ruling party (Anayasa Mahkemesi 2008b). Earlier in 2007 when the AKP used its parliamentary majority to appoint a new president, in keeping with constitutional rules, its preferred candidate was blocked by the CHP in court together with a communiqué issued by the military leadership opposing the proposed appointment. The combined effect of these challenges in 2007 was to illustrate how judicial and military tutelage might block the AKP’s governing agenda. In response to the impasse over the presidential appointment, the AKP introduced a single-​article amendment to the Constitution to provide for direct elections for president rather than parliamentary appointment. As a result, after 2007 the Turkish president would be directly elected, shifting incrementally the Turkish political order away from strict parliamentarism.

Judicial Tutelage and the Turkish Constitutional Court The anti-​democratic role played by the Turkish military is evident in the country’s republican history (Cizre Sakallıoǧlu 1997; see the chapter by Satana and Özpek in this

Constitutionalism in Turkey    81 volume). But the second pillar of the tutelary institutions of the Turkish Republic has long been the judiciary, particularly the Turkish Constitutional Court, established by the 1961 Constitution to serve as a check against popularly elected parliamentary majorities that might threaten the founding commitments of the republic and state elites (Çakmak and Dinç 2010). While various state actors and government offices were empowered to bring constitutional challenges to legislation before the AYM under the 1982 Constitution, individual citizens did not have standing to bring a constitutional complaint until an amendment in 2010. Thus, the AYM had a weak record of protecting the fundamental rights of citizens (Belge 2006; Çalı 2017; for human rights activism in Turkey, see the chapter by Çalı in this volume) but a far-​reaching record of protecting state prerogatives from proposed legislative restriction. The court’s record of resisting reform—​which extended to overturning properly enacted constitutional amendments—​ eventually resulted in the AKP making judicial reform itself a central platform of its political agenda after 2007. This section will offer a brief discussion of a set of cases that shed light on this dynamic.

Headscarves and Secularism Beginning in the 1980s, the repressive character of Turkey’s model of constitutional secularism was most evident in restrictions on the ability of women to attend public universities if they wore headscarves out of religious observance (Elver 2012). Despite Turkey being a Muslim-​majority country, the wearing of headscarves was controversial because it was identified as an open defiance of the Kemalist state-​led modernization project of the Republic. In a 1984 ruling, the Council of State (Danıştay), the country’s highest administrative court, stated that the wearing of headscarves on university campuses was a “symbol of a world ideology that is antithetical to women’s liberation and our republic’s main principles” (Council of State 1984). Even as parliamentary majorities pressed to loosen restrictions on the wearing of headscarves, the judiciary systematically pushed back, culminating in a decision by the AYM in 1989 (Kavakçı 2010). In that case, the AYM found unconstitutional a law passed in 1988 allowing female university students to enter the university dressed in accordance with their religious convictions. The AYM opinion held that the law violated the constitutional precept of secularism, and subsequent legislation stipulating freedom of attire at universities was similarly overturned, making clear that the staunch definition of secularism could not be modified or liberalized by legislative means despite overwhelming public support for lifting the headscarf ban (Anayasa Mahkemesi 1989). When the AKP gained a huge plurality in the 2007 election, lifting the headscarf ban became one of its central electoral commitments. Specifically, in 2007 the party introduced amendments to two constitutional provisions—​Article 10 (equality in access to public services) and Article 42 (right to education)—​recasting the question of freedom of attire on university campuses into an issue of legal equality and educational freedom to sidestep the question of secularism (Bâli 2018). The Turkish Constitution provides for amendment by parliamentary majority or, failing that, popular referendum.

82   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ The AKP succeeded in passing these constitutional amendments with the necessary parliamentary majority, obviating the need for a referendum. The opposition CHP, unable to block the amendments procedurally, brought a challenge in the AYM, arguing that the effect of the amendments would be to alter the unamendable constitutional principle of secularism. Despite the fact that the AYM is explicitly barred from reviewing the constitutionality of properly enacted amendments, in a controversial decision the court annulled the amendments as incompatible with secularism in 2008 (Anayasa Mahkemesi 2008a). That was also the year that the AYM heard the constitutional closure case against the AKP brought by the CHP, threatening the ruling party with being banned in the immediate aftermath of an election victory. The impasse between the AKP and the judiciary reached its apex. The AYM effectively foreclosed both legislative and constitutional means for revising the state’s interpretation of secularism. Within two years, the AKP would introduce a package of constitutional amendments that would fundamentally alter the composition of the judiciary itself to resolve the decades-​long impasse between the elected and tutelary branches of government in favor of the former.

Political Party Closures and Ideological Guardianship While the headscarf debates demonstrate the capacity of the Turkish judiciary to enforce state elites’ illiberal interpretation of constitutional secularism against democratic reversal, the court’s willing to hear a constitutional closure case against the AKP in 2007 offers an even starker example of its guardianship role. The CHP’s allegation that the AKP had engaged in antisecular activities largely hinged on the party’s introduction of the constitutional amendments on the headscarf question, which the court had already reversed. The 1982 Constitution empowered the AYM to dissolve political parties for engaging in proscribed activities. Such activities encompassed not only alleged antisecularism but also anything else that might undermine Kemalist precepts, including the court’s understanding of the unity and territorial integrity of the Turkish nation. The AYM distinguished itself among peer institutions worldwide with its record of activism in the area of party closures. The court’s extensive docket of party dissolution cases has resulted in twenty-​five party closures in the court’s history, nineteen of which have occurred under the 1982 Constitution (Kogacioglu 2004; Güney and Başkan 2008). Many closure cases were brought on the grounds of either antisecular (i.e., Islamist) activities or alleged threats to the country’s territorial integrity (i.e., Kurdish) (Bâli 2012). While the case initiated against the AKP in 2008 was the first time a prosecutor sought to dissolve a governing party, it wasn’t the only party closure case under way at the time. Indeed, the chief public prosecutor also initiated a case in November 2007 against the Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi, DTP), a Kurdish political party. While the AKP survived the closure case, the AYM ruled unanimously against the DTP (Anayasa Mahkemesi 2009). The DTP closure marked the sixth time a pro-​Kurdish party was dissolved, while the AKP itself was a successor to two prior parties of the 1990s that were closed on the grounds of antisecular activities.

Constitutionalism in Turkey    83 Overall, the AYM’s imposition of Kemalist guardrails on the permissible bounds of political organizing in the country as well as its constraints on legislative and constitutional reforms by elected parliamentary majorities produced a standoff by the end of the first decade of the 2000s. Armed with a strong parliamentary majority and its control of the presidency after 2007, the AKP would embark on a far more ambitious agenda for constitutional reforms that would restructure the judiciary and weaken the AYM’s capacity to wield its ideological litmus test going forward.

Redesigning the Constitution and Reining in the Judiciary: 2010–​2017 The AKP introduced a far-​reaching constitutional amendment package in 2010, with little input from other political parties (Arato 2010). Where its 2007 draft constitution had been blocked in Parliament, amendments could be put to a public referendum along the same procedural lines as the single amendment for a directly elected presidency three years earlier. The content of the 2010 amendments package had much to recommend it: the amendments served to civilianize the constitution (Örücü 2011)—​reducing the autonomy and jurisdiction of the military over civilian affairs—​and introduced a small set of new individual rights protections (Özbudun 2011b). But the most ambitious element of the package was a change to the arrangements for the appointment and promotion of judges. The Kemalist-​secularist camp viewed the amendments as a Trojan horse to facilitate stealth Islamization by limiting the ability of the judiciary to check the AKP’s majoritarian policies. Despite these widely publicized misgivings, a substantial majority of the Turkish electorate—​58 percent—​was in favor of the 2010 amendments (CNN 2010). This vote may have reflected a combination of support for the civilianizing and liberalizing features of the amendments and an expression of public frustration with judicial tutelage. Certainly, the result reflected public support considerably larger than the AKP’s ordinary constituency, with the amendments gaining a greater share of the vote than the AKP itself ever received in national elections. The effects of the 2010 amendments were significant because they expanded the AYM and altered the composition of the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (Hâkimler ve Savcılar Yüksek Kurulu [HSYK]) to broaden control over judicial appointments and promotions. The AYM’s size went from eleven permanent and four alternate justices to seventeen permanent justices. Initially, the existing alternate justices were made permanent members of the court with only two new justices drawn from the lower appellate courts. But going forward the pool of candidates from which AYM justices may be appointed was also enlarged, encompassing not only the five next highest courts but also senior administrative officers and lawyers, judges, and prosecutors from lower courts and a candidate nominated by the Turkish bar association presidents. While this expansion was in line with judicial appointment procedures in Europe, it also served

84   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ the purpose of breaking the ideological lock of Kemalists on promotions to the court. Moreover, to the extent that the AKP maintained sufficient electoral support to have its preferred candidate in the presidency and a majority in Parliament, the party would be able to control a significant proportion of appointments of individual candidates from this broader pool. The changes to the composition of the HSYK were more dramatic, expanding that body from seven regular and five substitute members to twenty-​two regular and twelve substitute members, nearly tripling its size. Moreover, those eligible to be selected to the council were drawn from a far wider pool of judges and prosecutors from across the country, including those at lower-​level administrative and judicial institutions, making it more representative of the profession at all levels. Finally, the HSYK became more independent as a self-​governing body, with the authorities of ministry of justice officials sitting on the council reduced. While these reforms were consistent with the principles of separation of powers and judicial independence, enhancing rather than limiting overall judicial involvement in appointments and promotions, by broadening the pool of eligible candidates and reducing the ability of the senior judiciary to block promotions, the AKP ensured that a far larger proportion of individuals aligned with its own worldview would rise through the ranks. These reforms were welcomed by European officials because the HSYK had been far narrower and more insulated than would be expected under a democratic standard of accountability in judicial affairs. As a result, the Venice Commission approved the amendments for being consistent with democratic practices concerning high judicial councils (Venice Commission of the Council of Europe 2011). Yet the AKP would also be directly benefited by the reforms. As the composition of the judiciary came to reflect the underlying electorate and membership of the legal profession more closely, it inevitably shifted in a direction favorable to the AKP, whose constituents had previously been excluded by an ideological litmus test for judicial promotions. Thus, despite their democratic pedigree, the amendments may well have reflected a form of tactical liberalism, with the AKP primarily interested in tilting the courts in its favor. Indeed, many who voted for the amendments in 2010 under the banner “Yes But Not Enough” (Yetmez Ama Evet)—​connoting that the amendments deserved support despite falling far short of needed democratizing reforms—​came to bitterly regret their decision. In retrospect, support for the AKP’s efforts to dismantle tutelary institutions came to be seen among liberals who once supported these reforms as a Trojan horse that led to democratic erosion rather than hoped-​for liberalization (Ersoy and Üstüner 2016). In the immediate wake of the amendments, however, it was the AKP that came to regret these initial efforts at judicial restructuring. The government found itself blindsided in December 2013 by a criminal probe into cabinet ministers and their relatives on corruption charges being investigated by the very judges and prosecutors who had been appointed or promoted following the amendments. This was because the available cadres of qualified lawyers, prosecutors, and judges in a position to benefit from the reforms were individuals who belonged to a religious movement (known as the Gülen movement), once allied with the AKP in its fight against military and judicial tutelage.

Constitutionalism in Turkey    85 This movement offered scholarships and educational support for socioeconomically marginalized communities and graduates that benefited from this support had a strong presence in the state bureaucracy. A public break between Erdoǧan and the movement’s leader, Fethullah Gülen, residing in the United States since 1999, resulted in a reversal of fortunes (Balcı 2013). Treating the corruption investigation as an attempted judicial coup and declaring that the judiciary had been infiltrated by the Gülen movement, the government immediately introduced legislative changes to limit the powers of the HSYK while simultaneously removing or transferring hundreds of judges and prosecutors, replacing them with more reliable pro-​government appointees (BBC News 2014). This legislation was eventually invalidated by the Constitutional Court. Since court rulings do not have retroactive effect, however, the individuals reassigned or removed were not restored to their positions (Çalı and Durmuş 2019). Further legislative changes not only reversed earlier gains in judicial autonomy but politicized judicial elections to the point of abrogating the independence of the judiciary altogether. From 2014 onward, a cowed judiciary became far less active in constitutional review of the government’s actions as well as in the protection of the fundamental rights of citizens (Aslan 2018). In many ways, the 2010 constitutional amendments and the power struggle in their aftermath were the harbinger of the constitutional decay to come. The AKP of 2002, positioned on the center-​right of the Turkish political spectrum, pursued a reformist political platform focused on economic and political liberalization. But over its first decade in office, many of its members, once identified with political reform, were sidelined while Erdoğan increasingly monopolized power in the party. By 2013 it was clear that the cumulative effect of the AKP’s incremental constitutional and legislative reforms would be wielded to chip away at democratic procedures and clear the way for Erdoğan’s pursuit of even greater power (Varol 2015). Whereas Turkish constitutional amendments from 1987 to 2010 had a democratic trajectory, more recent amendments have contributed to deepening authoritarianism in the country. Hence, the Turkish case demonstrates how easily stalled democratic consolidation can devolve into sharp democratic reversal. The tools of constitutionalism can be particularly double-​edged when reforms are undertaken by referendum, providing cover for a form of populist authoritarianism that uses the ballot box to sustain a veneer of democratic legitimacy while introducing complex changes that serve to entrench autocratic control (Varol 2015; for populism in Turkey, see the chapter by Taşkın in this volume).

The Presidential System The 2011 general elections witnessed a third consecutive victory for the AKP. In the months after the election, the AKP helped to form the Constitutional Reconciliation Committee (Anayasa Uzlaşma Komisyonu [AUK]) including all four of the parties

86   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ seated in Parliament. The secular CHP, the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi [MHP]), and the pro-​Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi [BDP]) together with the AKP were each afforded equal representation on the committee, which was to deliberate by consensus on revisions to each of the 175 articles of the Constitution (Karadut 2012). However, with the CHP opposing the AKP and the BDP facing the deep hostility of the MHP, the consensus rule all but guaranteed stalemate over the most contentious articles at issue in constitution-​drafting (Petersen and Yanaşmayan 2020). The AUK began meeting in October 2011, started working on a draft in May 2012, and continued its deliberations for over seventeen months (Barın 2014). The outbreak of large-​scale protests across the country in late spring 2013—​known as the “Gezi protests,” named after the Istanbul park where they began—​highlighted the urgent need for a new constitution but also deepening political polarization (Genç 2016; see the chapter by Kaya in this volume). The likelihood of compromise and consensus among parties that joined the AUK declined following the Gezi protests. By the fall of 2013, the committee had been able to forge consensus on only 60 out of 175 articles under discussion (Milliyet 2013a). The inability to come to any consensus over state–​religion relations, ethnicity, and citizenship rights or the AKP’s proposal for a presidential system meant that after over two years of work the constitutional reconciliation process ended with a whimper as the AKP pulled out; and the committee was dissolved in late November 2013 (Petersen and Yanaşmayan 2020; Milliyet 2013b). After the failure of this attempt, the AKP abandoned the idea of a new constitution. Yet the party’s earlier strategy of incrementalism was also insufficient for Erdoǧan’s far-​reaching agenda to forge a “new” Turkey. As a result, the AKP resorted to a politics of bare majoritarianism using the ballot box to achieve constitutional transformation without forging consensus or addressing underlying social cleavages. This strategy, in turn, produced greater political polarization and a precipitous decline in individual freedoms and rights protections (or what one Turkish scholar described as a process of de-​constitutionalism (Gözler 2016)), eventually culminating in emergency rule and overtly anti-​democratic constitutional amendments. The circumstances and aftermath of the attempted coup of July 2016 have been well described elsewhere (George 2018; Çalışkan 2017). While the coup failed, the government capitalized on it to establish emergency rule, subdue all forms of opposition, and further consolidate power (Yılmaz 2020). As mentioned, the AKP tried to institutionalize a presidential system in the past, but its proposals did not find much support even among its own base. With a state of emergency in place, however, the AKP seized on the opportunity to reshape the electoral landscape, generating a highly uneven playing field to realize its constitutional ambitions. With the MHP now serving as a reliable partner to the AKP—​which achieved this alliance by adopting a security-​oriented approach to the Kurdish question beginning in 2015—​a large-​scale constitutional change became feasible by suspending the basic prerequisites for a free and fair democratic vote and stripping the judiciary of its remaining autonomy.

Constitutionalism in Turkey    87 The state of emergency involved wide-​ranging purges of civil servants—​including everyone from public university professors to appellate court judges—​and the near total prohibition on freedom of assembly other than rallies by the ruling party. The purges all but paralyzed the country’s legal system, with even ordinary court cases unable to proceed due to the mass firing of judges, while basic procedural protections were denied those languishing in pretrial detention or convicted in summary proceedings (Gall 2019). The expropriation and closure of nearly two hundred broadcast and print media outlets and the jailing of journalists as well as opposition members of Parliament (MPs) and activists, mostly pro-​Kurdish, too, were made easier (though MPs had lost their parliamentary immunity in May 2016 thanks to a constitutional amendment supported by the CHP (Acar 2016)). But the convening of a referendum to pass sweeping changes to the Constitution was by far the most consequential of the measures taken under emergency rule (Kaboǧlu 2018). The constitutional transformation achieved by the amendments approved in a highly controversial referendum held on April 16, 2017, had a dramatic scale and scope (Yazıcı 2017). The eighteen articles of the amendment package resulted in modifications to nearly fifty constitutional provisions and the repeal of an additional twenty-​one articles. These changes ended the system of parliamentary government that characterized the Turkish republic from its founding, replacing it with an executive presidency system that undermines the separation of powers and imposes almost no checks on the executive other than periodic, and increasingly orchestrated, elections. This idiosyncratic “Turkish-​style executive presidency,” as AKP officials describe it, is composed of a hodgepodge of provisions borrowed from earlier precedents and other constitutional systems, cherry-​picking features to maximize the power of the presidency while eliminating the checks against executive overreach that threatened basic liberties. Kim Scheppele (2013) has referred to this method as the “Frankenstate problem”—​a system of government “composed from various perfectly reasonable pieces” but rendered monstrous from “the horrible way that those pieces interact when stitched together.” The new Turkish constitutional order provides a stark example of such constitutional gerrymandering. First, the amendments dismantled the parliamentary system of government, substantially and dramatically weakening the legislative branch in favor of the executive. The council of ministers (the cabinet) and the prime minister’s office were abolished and their powers transferred to the presidency (Arat 2018). Powers that the cabinet never possessed—​notably authority over the armed forces—​are also now invested in the president. Parliament no longer has a role in appointing or even approving the cabinet. Other traditional parliamentary powers such as setting the annual budget and regulating the state audit authority are likewise transferred to the president. In addition, the president is empowered to veto legislation; and while parliament retains the ability to override a veto, such action now requires a supermajority vote. The powers of inquiry and interpellation by the Parliament are also starkly limited. One accountability lever available to the Parliament is to call for new elections—​effectively dissolving itself but also requiring a

88   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ new presidential election—​but this power, too, is now subject to an extraordinarily high vote threshold of a three-​fifths majority (360/​600). The separation of powers is undermined in numerous ways by the constitutional amendments. First, newly designated domains of authority are governed directly by executive decree. This lawmaking authority is not delegated by Parliament to the executive but rather reserved for the president as a constitutional matter. As a result, there is no need for an empowering legislative framework for presidential decrees, which might have set some limits. The result is effectively the creation of a parallel system of administrative laws that are subject neither to legislative checks nor to meaningful judicial review (Yokuş 2019). While the amendments enshrine the principle that legislation would prevail over presidential decrees in case of conflict, there are reasons to doubt the effectiveness of this principle in practice. This is because the presidency is no longer nonpartisan, allowing heads of political parties to serve as president, as in the case of Erdoğan. With legislative and presidential elections combined on a five-​year cycle, the likelihood that the president will head the party or coalition among several parties that commands a majority in Parliament is heightened because a candidate for the presidency will effectively be running as the top of the ticket in a combined election. If the president’s party commands a majority in Parliament, the likelihood of legislators overriding an executive decree with countervailing legislation is low. Since the AKP–​MHP alliance won a slim majority in the 2018 elections, the Parliament’s willingness and ability to hold President Erdoğan accountable have been incapacitated. A partisan president is also free to appoint and dismiss cabinet members at will—​they need not be elected officials and are accountable solely to the executive. Thus, unlike the council of ministers under the parliamentary system made up of elected MPs accountable to the public, the government now answers exclusively to the president. Vice presidents and ministers are not of a fixed number and have no set terms of office, and their portfolios and division of responsibilities are entirely at the discretion of the president. Parliament has no power to approve or veto selections for these posts. The president is also free to select some ministers from Parliament, creating a significant patronage opportunity with the legislature. Besides, the powers of the presidency enumerated within the amended provisions of the Constitution are vast and include a number of prerogatives previously assigned to the Parliament. They even include the sole power to declare a state of emergency, the power to dissolve Parliament and call early elections, and the power to prepare the state budget. In addition, the Constitution now provides that the competences of the president may be extended by ordinary legislation, which could easily become a formula for nearly unlimited powers (Venice Commission of the Council of Europe 2017). The only remaining checks on presidential powers are impeachment, regular elections, and term limits. But here, too, the devil is in the details. The vote thresholds for Parliament to initiate impeachment investigations are so high as to render the process all but inoperable except in the unlikely scenario that opposition parties command a supermajority of seats in Parliament. The amendments also provide that if the Parliament dissolves itself prior to completion of the second term, the president may run again for

Constitutionalism in Turkey    89 office. If the president’s party or an alliance supporting him commands a legislative majority, as happened in the 2018 elections, the president could engage in stratagems to remain in office well beyond the ten years stated by formal term limits. The provisions affecting the judiciary are less extensive than those reallocating powers between the legislative and executive branches but more devastating. On the bright side, the constitutional amendments completed the project of civilianizing the judicial branch by abolishing military courts—​including the appellate military system—​ other than for purposes of internal discipline. Because the AYM received two of its members from the appellate military courts, the elimination of these courts reduced the size of the AYM from seventeen to fifteen. The far more consequential reform, however, is the complete overhaul of what had been the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (Ulusoy 2018). None of the members of the reconfigured council are judges appointed by their peers in the judiciary, as is typical democratic practice. The new Council of Judges and Prosecutors (Hâkimler ve Savcılar Kurulu [HSK]) is reduced in size, with four of its members appointed directly by the president. In addition, the minister of justice and the deputy minister are presidential cabinet members that make up two more seats on the HSK, ensuring that nearly half of the council is comprised of presidential appointees (six out of thirteen). The remaining seven members are appointed by the Parliament, meaning that as long the president’s supporters have a parliamentary majority, they will easily control the composition of the HSK to the detriment of judicial independence. Because the HSK shapes membership in the high appellate courts, which send nominees for appointment to the AYM, the influence of the executive on the constitutional court is also indirectly enhanced by these reforms. Consequently, the “Turkish-​style” presidentialism that came into existence in 2017 is a system of executive rule virtually free from legislative and judicial accountability. The president possesses substantial legislative powers, can dissolve the Parliament at will, exercises authority over a wide array of domestic and foreign policy matters, and wields near total control of judicial appointments and promotions. In the absence of basic institutional checks and balances, the president is accountable only to the ballot box. But even such electoral accountability has been jeopardized, as is made clear by the convening of elections under emergency rule and, more recently, the forced re-​running of an election when Erdoǧan was confronted with an unfavorable result in the 2019 local elections (Kirişci 2019).

Constitutionalized Electoral Authoritarianism Erdoğan’s frequent use of referenda as a proxy for the popular will has deftly inverted the very idea of electoral processes as a meaningful check on power. Presenting complex policy decisions or elaborate changes to the structure of the constitution as a single

90   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ “yes/​no” choice to be put to “the people” has enabled Erdoğan to short-​circuit deliberation and reduce debate about the country’s political trajectory to a referendum on his own popularity. In the 2017 referendum all of the amendments were put to voters as a single package requiring a yes/​no vote. During the lead-​up to the vote, the choice was presented in personalistic terms as a vote for or against Erdoğan (Kaboǧlu 2018). This winner-​takes-​all character of constitutional amendment by referendum under a state of emergency means that procedural protections to ensure a fair vote are crucial for the legitimacy of the outcome. Yet, among many other domestic and foreign entities, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (2017) suggested that diminished individual freedoms and restrictions on civil society and the media under emergency rule compromised the democratic legitimacy of the referendum, which was characterized by major irregularities. The deeply uneven electoral playing field under emergency rule yielded an exceedingly narrow victory for Erdoğan with 51 percent of the vote, which the opposition argued that the government rigged at the margins by introducing a last-​minute rule change allowing unstamped ballots to be counted (Topping 2017). With political opponents excluded from contestation, rights of speech and assembly curtailed, and the independence of the courts, media, and civil society abrogated, the vote is best characterized as both unfree and unfair. Moreover, the first general election following the establishment of the presidential system was also held with emergency rule still in effect in June 2018. Not only did Erdoǧan once again secure a narrow victory by distorting the electoral playing field, but he also reset the clock on the term limits he might otherwise have faced. Even though he was first elected president in 2014, Erdoǧan argued that his “first” term under the new system started in 2018, making clear his intention to run again in 2023. Once Erdoğan assumed office following the vote, Turkey’s system of parliamentary government was formally abolished.

Conclusion: Constitutionalizing Democratic Erosion The political science literature has a catalog of terms to capture amalgamations of majoritarian politics with right-​wing and populist authoritarian rule like Turkey’s new presidentialism: “competitive authoritarianism,” “illiberal democracy,” “electoral authoritarianism,” “hybrid regimes,” and the like. The comparative constitutional law literature has more recently developed additional categories like “abusive constitutionalism” (Landau 2013) and “autocratic legalism” (Scheppele 2018) that capture the means by which constitutional tools are deployed to subvert democracies from within. What they describe are methods of democratic backsliding that place constitutions at the heart of the project to consolidate control and erect an autocratic apparatus of state. For a new breed of electoral authoritarians, then, overtly democratic processes themselves are the means to gradually erode democratic norms. Understanding constitutions

Constitutionalism in Turkey    91 not as a means of limiting government but as a way of amassing power and disabling checks is fundamental to these ambitions. Erdoğan is arguably at the vanguard of this cross-​national phenomenon. It is an open question whether this was always the AKP’s ambition more broadly. Separate from Erdoğan’s own intentions in 2002, the party at its formation was the most pro–​European Union actor in Turkey and represented a broad platform of center-​right actors giving voice to long-​standing demands for greater political inclusion and economic liberalization. Yet, a combination of suspicions about the party among the secularist opposition well entrenched in the higher echelons of the state and their resistance to the party’s agenda slowed or blocked such reforms in the early years of the AKP. We may never be able to reconstruct whether 2007 represented a missed liberal constitutional moment, though certainly the draft constitution under consideration at that time came closest to realizing a liberal and democratic vision for the Turkish Republic. Had a convergence of interests between liberals and the AKP successfully pushed that draft through, perhaps the country would be on a different trajectory today. What is clear, however, is that stalled democratization instead facilitated the consolidation of Erdoğan’s control over the reins of power in the country. The opponents of the 2007 constitutional draft made clear that they would not allow the AKP to become a vehicle for the liberalization of the country’s political order. With liberalization stymied at that juncture, a sharp pivot followed, and the AKP came to preside over democratic reversal once it established its political hegemony. Since at least 2013 constitutional reinvention under the AKP has meant seizing on the public demand for a new constitution but not for the purposes earlier reformists had in mind. The most recent constitutional amendments have certainly erected a new order, but it is one with even more repressive features. When the AKP first rose to power, Turkey was an electoral democracy that had undergone a decade of constitutional amendments that had shifted the country’s political order in a liberalizing direction. A decade of stalemate over elements of the country’s earlier authoritarian constitutional tradition and an impasse with its tutelary institutions ultimately provided a window of opportunity for the ruling party to pursue an alternative transformative project. Now with both military and judicial tutelage undone and former allies of the AKP either criminalized or marginalized, constitutionalism in Turkey finds itself on the cusp of a new and troubling era. With the introduction of “Turkish-​style” presidentialism, Erdoğan has perfected the art of the new constitutional authoritarianism, clearing the way to rule unchecked and potentially remain in office nearly indefinitely. Yet, he has still not achieved his singular ambition to replace the 1982 Constitution with an entirely new text that would stamp Turkey’s political institutions in his own image. Perhaps this lingering frustration is driving the impetus to revive the project of constitution-​drafting yet again in early 2021. In the midst of a pandemic-​fueled economic collapse, the AKP is once more seeking to forge opportunity out of crisis, cracking down on political opponents—​including by seeking constitutional closure of the pro-​Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi) (Butler 2021)—​possibly to ensure a parliamentary supermajority that will allow Erdoǧan to achieve his goals without resort to another referendum. In

92   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ early March 2021, the president unveiled what he described as a “human rights action plan,” noting that the ultimate aim of the plan is to introduce a “new civilian constitution” in time for the Republic’s centenary in 2023 (Daily Sabah 2021). With nearly two decades of experience tactically mobilizing the language of democracy and human rights in support of the consolidation of his own hold on power, few within or outside of Turkey take seriously the reformist tenor of these announcements (Tahiroǧlu 2021). Equally, however, few can fail to take seriously the risk that further democratic erosion under cover of constitutionalism is now on the horizon.

Notes 1. Turkey was regularly ranked as “partly free” by Freedom House since the early 1970s, largely due to the limited protections afforded to individual rights and political freedoms. Since the changes to its constitutional order in 2017, it is now ranked as “not free.” For Turkey’s 2020 Freedom House scores, see “Turkey,” Freedom House, https://​freed​omho​use.org/​coun​try/​ tur​key/​free​dom-​world/​2020. 2. The preamble provides, inter alia, that “no protection shall be afforded to an activity contrary to Turkish national interests, Turkish existence and the principle of its indivisibility with its State and territory” and “that all Turkish citizens are united in national honor and pride . . . in their rights and duties regarding national existence.” An English-​language translation of the Turkish Constitution (as amended through 2017) is available at https://​www. consti​tute​proj​ect.org/​const​itut​ion/​Turk​ey_​2​017.pdf. All subsequent citations in English to provisions of the Constitution are based on this translation. 3. The 1924 Constitution made reference to Islam as the religion of the state. That provision was removed by constitutional amendment in 1928, and in 1937 a further constitutional amendment enshrined the principle of secularism (laiklik). 4. The phrases Türk Milliyetçiliǧi and Atatürk Milliyetçiliǧi have been included as defining characteristics of the state in the preamble and operative text of every constitution of the republic, including the amended text of the 1982 Constitution (Çınar 2018).

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Constitutionalism in Turkey    95 Kurban, Dilek. 2003. “Confronting Equality: The Need for Constitutional Protection of Minorities on Turkey’s Path to the European Union.” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 35, no. 1: 151–​214. Landau, David. 2013. “Abusive Constitutionalism.” University of California, Davis Law Review 47, no. 1: 189–​260. Milliyet Newspaper. 2013a. “AK Parti’nin ’60 Maddeyi Geçirelim’ Teklifine CHP’den Ret.” November 7. Milliyet Newspaper. 2013b. “Anayasa Uzlaşma Komisyonu feshedildi: TBMM Anayasa Uzlaşma Komisyonu Resmen dağıldı.” November 19. Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe. 2017. Final Report on Turkey’s Constitutional Referendum Recommends Reviewing Legal Framework to Secure Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Vienna: Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe. https://​ www.osce.org/​odihr/​electi​ons/​tur​key/​324​806. Örücü, Esin. 2011. “Turkish Constitution Revamped Yet Again.” European Public Law 17, no. 1: 11–​23. Özbudun, Ergun. 2007. “Democratization Reforms in Turkey, 1993–​2004.” Turkish Studies 8, no. 2: 179–​196. Özbudun, Ergun. 2011a. The Constitutional System of Turkey: 1876 to the Present. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Özbudun, Ergun. 2011b. “Turkey’s Constitutional Reform and the 2010 Constitutional Referendum.” Mediterranean Politics 16: 191–​194. Özbudun, Ergun, and Ömer Gençkaya. 2009. Democratization and the Politics of Constitution-​ Making in Turkey. New York: Central European University Press. Petersen, Felix, and Zeynep Yanaşmayan. 2020. “Explaining the Failure of Popular Constitution Making in Turkey (2011–​2013).” In The Failure of Popular Constitution Making in Turkey, edited by Felix Petersen and Zeynep Yanaşmayan, 21–​56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roznai, Yaniv, and Serkan Yolcu. 2012. “An Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment.” International Journal of Constitutional Law 10, no. 1: 175–​207. Scheppele, Kim. 2013. “The Rule of Law and the Frankenstate: Why Governance Checklists Don’t Work.” Governance 26, no. 4: 559–​562. Scheppele, Kim. 2018. “Autocratic Legalism.” University of Chicago Law Review 85, no. 2: 545–​583. Tahiroǧlu, Merve. 2021. “Turkey’s Erdoǧan Wants a New Constitution—​Again.” Project on Middle East Democracy, February 11. https://​pomed.org/​turk​eys-​erdo​gan-​wants-​a-​new-​ const​itut​ion-​again/​. Toksabay, Ece, and Ibon Villelabeitia. 2010. “In Quiet Revolution, Turkey Eases Headscarf Ban.” Reuters, October 17. Topping, Alexandra. 2017. “Turkey Referendum: Erdoǧan Wins Vote Amid Dispute over Ballots.” The Guardian, April 17. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Anayasası 1982 (Turkish Constitution of 1982) (as amended in 2017). https://​www.consti​tute​proj​ect.org/​const​itut​ion/​Turk​ey_​2​017.pdf?lang=​en. Ulusoy, Ali Dursun. 2018. “Understanding Turkey’s Restructured System for Judicial Appointments and Promotions.” ICONnect, April 19. http://​www.iconn​ectb​log.com/​2018/​ 04/​ unders​ t and​ing-​turk​e ys-​restr ​uctu ​red-​sys​tem-​ for-​ judic​ i al-​appoi​ ntme​nts-​ and-​ pro​ moti​ons/​. Varol, Ozan O. 2015. “Stealth Authoritarianism.” Iowa Law Review 100: 1673–​1742.

96   Aslı Ü. Bâlİ Varol, Ozan O. 2018. “Alien Citizens: Kurds and Citizenship in the Turkish Constitution.” Virginia Journal of International Law 57, no. 3: 770–​798. Venice Commission (Council of Europe Commission for Democracy Through Law). 2004. “Opinion on the Draft Constitutional Amendments with regard to the Constitutional Court of Turkey,” adopted by the Venice Commission at its 59th Plenary Session. June 18–​19. https://​ www.ven​ice.coe.int/​webfo​rms/​docume​nts/​defa​ult.aspx?pdff​i le=​CDL-​AD(2004)024-​e. Venice Commission (Council of Europe Commission for Democracy Through Law). 2011. “Opinion on the Draft Law on Judges and Prosecutors of Turkey,” adopted by the Venice Commission at its 86th Plenary Session. March 25–​26. https://​www.ven​ice.coe.int/​webfo​ rms/​docume​nts/​?pdf=​CDL-​AD(2011)004-​e. Venice Commission (Council of Europe Commission for Democracy Through Law). 2017. “Opinion on the Amendments to the Constitution Adopted by the Grand National Assembly on 21 January 2017 and to be Submitted to a National Referendum on 16 April 2017,” adopted by the Venice Commission at its 110th Plenary Session. March 10–​11. https://​ www.ven​ice.coe.int/​webfo​rms/​docume​nts/​?pdf=​CDL-​AD(2017)005-​e. Yavuz, Hakan. 2009. Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yazıcı, Serap. 2017. “Constitutional Amendments of 2017: Transition to Presidentialism in Turkey.” GlobaLex NYU Law, https://​www.nyula​wglo​bal.org/​globa​lex/​2017_​Tur​key_​Cons​ titu​tion​_​Ame​ndme​nts.html. Yılmaz, Zafer. 2020. “Erdoǧan’s Presidential Regime and Strategic Legalism: Turkish Democracy in the Twilight Zone.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 20, no. 2: 265–​287. Yokuş, Sevtap. 2019.“Constitutional-​ Legal Deadlocks and Opportunities for a Prospective Resolution Process in Turkey. London: Democratic Progress Institute. https://​www.dem​ocra​ ticp​rogr​ess.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2019/​10/​Sev​tap-​Yokus-​Ass​essm​ent.pdf. Zürcher, Erik J. 2004. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris.

Chapter 5

Civil-​M ilitary Re l at i ons and the Demi se of Tu rkish Demo c rac y Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek

Western civil-​military relations (CMR) models would predict (Huntington 1957; Janowitz 1960; Nordlinger 1977) that Turkish democracy would thrive once the Turkish Armed Forces (Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri, TSK) retreated from politics. Despite the declining political power of the TSK in the 2010s, a growing body of scholarship argues that Turkey is now part of a broader trend of competitive authoritarianism (Diamond, Plattner, and Walker 2016; Levitsky and Way 2002)1 where we see “weakening of political institutions and the erosion of rule of law by leaders who had initially come to power through the ballot box” (Esen and Gumuscu 2016). In 2020, Turkey scored 32 out of 100 in the Freedom House index and was considered “not free.”2 Most of the literature on Turkish democratization focuses on institutional factors to explain Turkey’s authoritarian turn and studies the consequences of deterioration of democracy at the hands of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) (for democratization theories and Turkey, see the chapter by Karakoc in this volume). Still, although CMR in the AKP era has been widely studied (Akça and Balta-​ Paker 2013; Aydınlı 2012; Caliskan 2017; Satana 2008), there is limited work that explains how civilian control, finally established after over a decade of the AKP’s rule, culminated in the decline of Turkish democracy (Haugom 2019; Satana and -​Pegg 2018). This chapter aims at starting to fill that gap in the literature by probing the following questions. What factors explain the rise and eventual demise of the TSK as a major political power in Turkey? How has civilian control of the military gradually taken place? Why has Turkish democracy failed to consolidate despite securing civilian control over the military? In searching for answers, we build on Stepan (1988, 15) who argues that, as in Latin American countries like Brazil, the military becomes increasingly politicized as developing countries tackle internal threats, such as domestic conflicts, rather than external

98    Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek threats, such as interstate wars. Thus, internal threats are easily manipulated by military leadership for personal gain (Desch 1999) and/​or to increase and maintain the political power of the armed forces (Desch 1998). These insights are useful to understand the motives of not only the TSK but also civilian politicians in Turkey. We argue that perceived internal threats that had been used by the Turkish military to retain its tutelage throughout most of the Republican era were later selectively and strategically used by the AKP to create a personalistic regime for its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which is now defined by many as populist/​competitive authoritarian (see the chapter by Taşkın in this volume). Two internal threats, Kurdish nationalism and political Islam, were singled out by the military as fundamentally against the founding principles of the Republic. CMR were shaped depending on which actors showed more competence and willingness in addressing the threat; the military or domestic political elite. Despite achieving objective civilian control of the military after over a decade of AKP rule, Turkish democratization failed due to the traditional struggle between civilians and the military, plagued by the strategic use of internal threats to consolidate power, only this time by a hegemonic civilian government. Although this was unexpected for those who viewed the AKP as the champion of demilitarization and democratization, the AKP’s commitment to democracy has depended on how much democracy helps to advance the interests of the party elite and their allies (Kaya and Whiting 2019). Consequently, we argue the AKP’s enthusiasm for bolstering democratic values between 2002 and 2010 is a result of the same pragmatism that the party elite held in exploiting internal threats to consolidate power at the expense of democracy post-​2010. Unlike scholars such as Kösebalaban (2020) and Kuru (2017) who argue that the AKP has experienced an ideological transformation from democracy to authoritarianism, we suggest that the AKP has had no such firm democratic commitments since taking office. Rather, it has circumstantially objected to or advocated an internal threat framing to prevail over the military and its other opponents. Overall, the case of the Turkish military challenges broader Western CMR theories that argue civilian control is a necessary but not sufficient condition to consolidate a transitionary democracy. This is because civilian control itself has impeded the emergence of other conditions for democratic consolidation. In a regime that has repressed ethnicity and religion as two factors that mobilize people in a populist and praetorian culture, the military’s self-​defined role as the guardian of the Republic may have been the only safeguard for an institutionally weak democracy. Thus, soon after the military’s credibility as the most trusted institution in Turkey was eroded, under populist AKP rule, other democratic institutions followed course.3

The Demise of Turkish Democracy After a long struggle to bring the TSK under civilian control and achieve democratic consolidation, the consensus of both Turkish democratization and Turkish CMR

Civil-Military Relations and the Demise of Turkish Democracy    99 scholarship is that Turkey is no longer a democracy. A growing body of literature examines why and/​or how Turkey has shifted from a defective democracy to an authoritarian regime, examining institutional, environmental, and international factors as well as CMR (Başer and Öztürk 2017; Caliskan 2017; Esen and Gumuscu 2016; 2017; Öktem and Akkoyunlu 2016; Özpek and Yaşar 2018; Satana and Demirel-​Pegg 2018; Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018). Caliskan (2017) argues that military tutelage in Turkey effectively ended in 2010.4 Yet, democratic consolidation in Turkey required not only demilitarization but also “the proper civilianization of the regime in theory and practice” (Satana 2011, 279). This is what Turkey failed to achieve despite the political downsizing of the military. After initially passing some liberalizing reforms, the AKP government gradually “abused its control over the state-​owned media and regulatory agencies; used legal actions to harass critics and reward supporters in the media and civil society; employed large-​scale repression of opposition groups through the securitisation of dissent; and relied on widespread use of public resources and abuse of public-​policy instruments to gain access to greater private finance for the party” (Esen and Gumuscu 2016). Thus, starting with the June and November 2015 elections, Berk Esen and Sebnem Gumuscu define the emerging regime under AKP’s reign as competitive authoritarianism. Similarly, Özbudun (2015, 42) suggests the AKP’s “sustained and systematic effort to establish its control over the judiciary by means of a series of laws of dubious constitutionality” is a red flag for competitive authoritarianism. Öktem and Akkoyunlu (2016) also posit that Turkey, under AKP rule, has experienced a transition from weak and constrained democracy under military tutelage to weak and pervasive authoritarianism. Personification of executive power, weakened checks and balances, growing restrictions on freedom of expression and civil liberties, suspicions over the free and fair nature of elections, and the state’s willingness to suppress nonviolent dissent with coercion are tell-​tale signs of authoritarianism since the AKP’s third general election victory in June 2011. This trajectory was labeled “illiberal democracy” or “delegative democracy” (Taş 2015) but developments after the June 2015 elections have led scholars to to categorize Turkey as an authoritarian regime. Another way to define the personalistic regime that emerged under Tayyip Erdoğan’s reign is Erdoğanism. While Kemalism characterized the Turkish Republic between 1923 and 2002, the emerging regime after a couple decades under Erdoğan’s rule, Yilmaz and Bashirov (2018) argue, is a combination of neopatrimonialism, electoral authoritarianism, populism, and Islamism, embodied in Erdoğanism. Transition from the dominant ideology of Kemalism to Erdoğanism was incremental, and Erdoğanism emerged after the 2007 national elections. Following that election victory, Erdoğan opted for “strategic use of political reform to weaken rival political institutions and capture them from within.” In this context emerging under Erdoğanism, civilian control of the military would only strengthen Turkey’s course toward authoritarianism. The critical threshold for when Turkey became authoritarian, according to Başer and Öztürk (2017), is the failed coup in July 2016. They contend that the coup attempt and its failure to mobilize public opinion worked to the benefit of Erdoğan. The AKP

100    Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek government immediately declared a state of emergency and suspended legislative and judiciary processes after the coup was foiled. Furthermore, tens of thousands of military officers and civil servants allegedly linked to Gülen movement (Fethullah Gülen Terör Örgütü, FETÖ after the coup attempt) accused of masterminding the coup were purged.5 Additionally, Kurds, Alevis, leftists, and liberals were also persecuted and imprisoned on trumped-​up charges (i.e., for conspiring with the Gülenists to overthrow the government). Ironically, the AKP, whose leaders were used to being labeled as a reactionary threat by the military brass, instrumentalized as a threat the Gülen, an Islamic, movement to further erode Turkish democracy. There is some disagreement in the literature regarding the AKP’s democratic credentials in its earlier periods. Some scholars argue that the party pursued a democratic agenda at first, before changing course midstream and making an illiberal turn (e.g., Bechev 2014). Özpek and Yaşar (2018), however, assert that Erdoğan had authoritarian inclinations and pursued populist strategies since the AKP’s coming to power in 2002. Pursuing a pragmatic strategy, rather than an ideologically determined one, Erdoğan used anti-​institutionalist populism, identity politics, and advocacy of the vague notion of “genuine nation” against “hegemonic corrupt elite” at different times. Thus, Özpek and Yaşar argue that Erdoğan has consistently used pragmatism to consolidate his power and restrict the political influence of opposition groups. This gradually created a polarized society through advocacy of a moral value. In his initial years in power, Erdoğan was the champion of a discourse of anti-​elitist democratization and developed a dichotomy between privileged “white Turks” and the ordinary, pious people of Anatolia, whose voice was the AKP. During the Arab uprisings, Erdoğan emphasized the Islamic nature of his party and followers to exert more influence over Middle Eastern politics. In order to silence a critical opposition, he declared a war between the crescent represented by the AKP and the cross represented by the AKP’s opponents. A similar dichotomy was portrayed between the peace-​loving AKP and the blood-​thirsty opposition during the 2013–​2015 peace process between the government and the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, Kurdistan Workers’ Party). Following the June 7, 2015 elections, however, when the AKP lost its majority in the parliament and needed the votes of nationalists in the snap elections, Erdoğan’s discourse highlighted national security and accused opponents of being traitors and terrorists. Consequently, Erdoğan has employed a pragmatic strategy on different occasions for different policy ends while solidifying power throughout his rule. Overall, the literature attests to the demise of democracy under the AKP, by way of, among other things, judiciary control and persecution, an uneven electoral field favoring the incumbent government heavily over the opposition, and manipulation of public opinion through a monopoly of media outlets. In this chapter, we aim to understand how the authoritarian turn in Turkish politics is also linked to the legacy of CMR, particularly the deeply ingrained use of internal threats to portray oneself as the guardian of the nation (for the notion of internal threats in Turkish politics, see the chapter by Öktem in this volume). We argue that the AKP was able to establish a

Civil-Military Relations and the Demise of Turkish Democracy    101 competitive authoritarian regime through neutralizing the military by capitalizing on the very two internal threats that the TSK used to maintain its political power.

The Rise of the Turkish Military and Internal Threats Aydınlı, Özcan, and Akyaz (2006) once declared that the Turkish Armed Forces was a military like no other due to the widespread societal support it enjoyed for decades. Similarly, Sarigil (2009) shows how social trust, in contributing to the Turkish military’s popularity, has created a favorable environment for the military to intervene in civilian politics. Although Heper and Güney (1996) argue the TSK is uniquely unwilling to intervene in politics and only do so reluctantly to guard the secular regime, military tutelage prevented Turkey from normalizing CMR, ultimately jeopardizing democratic consolidation (Aydınlı 2012; Cizre-​Sakallioglu 1997; Demirel 2004; Hale 1994; Sarigil 2014; Satana 2008, 2011; Satana and Demirel-​Pegg 2018). Sarigil (2014) identifies two distinct stages of military tutelage, symbolic (1924–​1960) and overt/​assertive (1960–​2001), and calls what followed under the AKP’s reign “the post-​guardianship era.” In the symbolic stage, during a “civilocracy,” the military was under the civilian control of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP)—​the main opposition party under AKP rule—​where the military officers had to resign from the army before running for public office and the chief of staff was accountable to the president (Sarigil 2014, 7). Following the foundation of the Republic, two competing factions in Turkish politics were organized, both led by former soldiers. On the one hand, the founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his closest companion İsmet İnönü, who were both the commanders in chief during the Liberation War, founded the CHP. On the other hand, leading generals, such as Kazım Karabekir and Rauf Orbay tried to counterbalance the CHP and established the Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası, TpCF). However, TpCF was suspended in 1925 in the wake of a rebellion in the Kurdish southeast, as Atatürk and the CHP elite believed that a single party regime would be more effective in implementing a radical reform program to build a modern and secular nation state. They were also wary of the traditionalist officers and Sultan loyalists, among others, organizing within the TpCF and plotting against the new Republic and its elite (Zürcher 2019). This was the beginning of an authoritarian period that lasted until the transition to a multiparty system in 1946 (Zürcher 1998). At the time, Atatürk did not aim at keeping the military completely out of the political space (Harris 1965, 56). Instead, he wanted the TSK to be fully subordinate to the new regime embodied in the CHP. Accordingly, the army was officially assigned a guardianship role, to protect the Republic in accordance with the Internal Service Act (Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri İç Hizmet Kanunu) of 1935.

102    Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek The harmony between civilians and soldiers under single party rule between 1925–​ 1945 was the product of the congruence between the CHP and the state. Atatürk was the absolute ruler of the country until his death in 1938, but he refused to legitimize his reign through traditional institutions (Caliphate) or discourses (Islam). Instead, he built secular institutions to achieve the collective good despite resistance at both the elite and popular levels (for secularism in Turkey, see the chapter by Akan in this volume). Despite his cult-​like following, he did not use populism to create cultural, ethnic, or class-​based polarization in society in order to build a personalistic regime. Atatürk rather adopted elitism and prioritized a modernization project that made limited inroads to the mostly rural population (Özbudun 1981), with the expectation that the reforms would permanently transform society. In doing so, he regarded the nation as a unitary and homogeneous entity and constructed a Weberian rational bureaucratic state, supposedly immune from the ideological, ethnic, religious, and personalistic tendencies of the military, civil servants, and politicians. In that vein, the Turkish military was able to maintain its professionalism (Huntington 1957). As Sarigil (2014) puts it, building on Feaver’s (1998, 2003) seminal works on army-​society relations, the military was a loyal agent of civilian principals in this period of civilocracy, and its guardianship role was institutionalized, albeit symbolic. After the installation of the multiparty system in 1946, however, the Turkish military increasingly fell into what Nordlinger (1977, 2) calls praetorianism,6 taking their guardianship role to an extreme, particularly in regard to secularism (Heper and Güney 1996), at the expense of multiparty democracy.7 For example, when the Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti, DP), led by Adnan Menderes, won free and fair elections in 1950, the military wanted to intervene and cancel the election results, however, İnönü, serving as president at the time, rejected the suggestion and respected the popular will (Pelt 2014; Sarigil 2014). In the following period, which Sarigil (2014) calls a militocracy, the TSK acted as the watchdog of the political system and continuously intervened in politics, either through direct coups, as in 1960 and 1980, or via memoranda forcing the resignation of elected governments in 1971 and 1997. After each intervention, the TSK retreated and seemingly acted as professional technocrats on security issues. Behind closed doors, however, the Turkish military assessed an expansive definition of internal and external threats to limit elected governments’ policy choices, particularly when it came to two internal threats: political Islam and Kurdish nationalism (Satana and Demirel-​Pegg 2018).8

Strategic Use of Internal Threats to Maintain TSK Hegemony As both internal and external threats were increasingly defined by the Turkish military, rather than the political elite, after the 1960 coup, a pattern of “new professionalism” emerged (Stepan 1973).9 Stepan’s concept of new professionalism refers to the

Civil-Military Relations and the Demise of Turkish Democracy    103 politicization of the militaries of developing democracies due to the prevalence of internal threats such as ethnic, ideological, or religious internal conflicts, as opposed to the professionalism that is expected of militaries in advanced democracies to mostly deal with external threats such as conventional interstate wars. Moreover, when civilian governments get into the habit of relying on the military to counter internal threats instead of using civilian forces (i.e., the police), the military internalizes its politicization (Desch 1998). Accordingly, perceiving the military as the most capable institution that comprises the hierarchical capability to defend the nation against any threat, the masses normalize, if not celebrate, the political role of the armed forces. The Turkish case is consistent with these observations. Kuru (2012), for example, argues that the Turkish military retreats immediately after interventions as this is a less risky way to stay in power, while, as Cook (2007) puts it, “ruling but not governing.” The threat perceived from Kurdish nationalism stems from how the Republic was defined as a unitary entity and the nation was deemed “Turkish,” deemphasizing ethnic, regional, and religious/​sectarian identities to indicate that all who identify with the nation are “Turkish” (Çagaptay 2004). With the awakening of a leftist Turkish/​Kurdish coalition of youth organizations by 1960, the notion of Turkishness no longer appealed to the educated Kurds living in big cities, who believed the only way Kurds could access their political and cultural rights was to fight for revolution, alongside Turks (McDowall 2007, 411). The TSK’s interventions in 1971 and 1980 crushed the left in Turkey. Particularly after the 1980 coup, the junta used very repressive measures to curb all political movements. Consequently, Kurdish political activism took a more radical turn both within and beyond the borders of Turkey. When the PKK, which was established in 1978, started an armed insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, with secessionist goals (Bozarslan 1992), civilian governments showed little interest in or capacity for dealing with the problem (Jenkins 2001). Prime Minister Turgut Özal underestimated the threat and called the PKK “a group of bandits.”10 As the military took complete control over the Kurdish issue and framed it as a terrorism problem (Satana 2011), most Kurdish majority provinces remained under emergency rule throughout the 1980s and 1990s (Tezcür 2015). Pro-​Kurdish political parties were banned repeatedly in the 1990s and 2000s, and Kurdish political and cultural claims were criminalized.11 It is important to note that despite the fear instilled in the region, “Kurdish nationalists achieved significant electoral mobilization in the region during the 1990s,” however, they were not able to gain any seats in the parliament due to the 10 percent threshold in parliamentary elections between the 1995 and 2007 elections (Tezcür 2015). In 1999, the PKK’s founder and leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was captured, and the PKK not only declared a ceasefire but also formally revised its goal from secessionism to autonomy (Tezcür 2010, 775). The military defeat of the PKK was portrayed as a major victory against Kurdish nationalism, which reinforced the Turkish military’s overconfidence. Consequently, a comprehensive political solution to the Kurdish issue was not included in the government’s agenda until the European Union (EU) accession process in the 2000s (for Turkey-​EU relations, see the chapter by H. Yılmaz in this volume).

104    Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek The TSK’s seeking of a military solution for PKK terrorism not only increased its prestige but also made it, for the public, a competent institution. Various segments of society had long feared Kurdish separatism and did not trust civilian politicians to neutralize this threat (Kuru 2012, 46). Therefore, the TSK’s temporary triumph not only helped its guardianship position but also convinced the Turkish nation of its capacity to define and tackle another internal threat, political Islam. Defining political Islam as a threat to the Turkish nation was a raison d’être for the Turkish military, as the republic was built on a radical understanding of secularism; it was also instrumental in justifying the TSK’s political role. The most acute example of how political Islam as an internal threat was instrumentalized by the military is the “February 28 process.” On February 28, 1997, the National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik Konseyi, MGK) dominated by the Turkish military issued a list of measures against the Islamization of the country and “to fortify the secular regime” (Cizre and Çınar 2003, 309). This pressure, known as the post-​ modern coup, forced the coalition government of the center right True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi, DYP) and the Islamist Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP) to resign in the face of an imminent coup. RP leader Necmettin Erbakan was banned from politics, and the party was shut down by the Constitutional Court in January 1998. This military-​ led, hegemonic process characterized the nature of Turkish CMR for the next decade—​ slowing down, if not preventing, normalization of CMR and aggrieving civilian actors, primarily but not exclusively Islamists. Consequently, the Turkish military took it upon itself to increase state control over religious expressions in the public space, especially in universities, courts, and government offices. For example, wearing the headscarf was banned for students in universities and civil servants in public institutions. Still, the TSK continued to leverage political Islam and as it did after the 1980 coup, continued to champion the Turkish–​Islamic Synthesis (Türk Islam Sentezi), “a particular blend of Islamo-​nationalist ideological work” (Öztürk 2016).12 The Turkish military was arguably the kingmaker of Turkish politics thereafter. In the April 1999 national and local elections, Islamists suffered a significant setback. The Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi, FP), which was the RP’s successor, received 15.5 percent of total votes; the RP had received 21.5 percent in the previous elections. The triumph of the Turkish military’s guardianship of secularism and territorial integrity was now apparent to all. Or so the generals thought.

The Rise of the AKP and Civilian Control of the Turkish Military The military’s stated efforts, post-​1980, to protect Turkey from ideologies defined as extremist, namely ethnic secessionism and political Islam, generated resentment

Civil-Military Relations and the Demise of Turkish Democracy    105 among diverse segments of society, among which were conservatives and Islamists. The February 28 process had once again taken religious orders underground, and the bitterness of a very short-​lived access to power plagued the Islamist intelligentsia. Concurrently, liberal circles began to question Kemalism’s ideological legitimacy and the post–​Cold War role of the military. They argued that Kemalist ideology backed by the military conflicts with universal democratic principles and hinders Turkey from accession to the EU, which ultimately was the goal of the Kemalist modernization project (Aytürk 2015). Moreover, Kurds in the southeastern provinces, now stuck between a rock and hard place with both the PKK and the TSK demanding their cooperation, had suffered economically, culturally, and politically for decades. The Kurdish intelligentsia and political actors, as well as Öcalan in prison and his PKK in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, were ready to mobilize the Kurdish masses for the next chapter in their struggle against the Turkish military and the Kemalist state elite (Cooney 2012). Consequently, the collective dissatisfaction of religious conservatives, liberals, and Kurds, coupled with the devastating economic crisis of 2001, created a new opportunity for CMR and Turkish democracy. The 1999 parliamentary elections had culminated in a fragile coalition government between the secular leftist Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti, DSP), the extreme Turkish nationalist Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), and the liberal rightist Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP). But ideological differences between the coalition partners prevented them from achieving a consensus on issues: “MHP especially has opposed many regulations about EU membership; and it has opposed proposals aimed at improving the Kurdish people’s social rights” (Bacik 2004, 821). The coalition government, which had been established under the military’s shadow, failed to prevent the currency crisis and the Turkish economy suddenly collapsed in 2001 (for the Turkish economy, see Pamuk in this volume). This crisis completely undermined public confidence in the parties in the parliament. The AKP, an offshoot of the banned RP (1983–​1998) and FP (1997–​2001), was founded by the reformist and younger generation of these parties. Unlike Erbakan’s orthodox vision, reformists refused to identify themselves as Islamists (for the trajectory of political Islam, see the chapter by Çınar in this volume). Instead, they preferred to use the term “conservative democracy” to frame the new party’s ideology. They withdrew their criticism of Europeanization, the free market economy, and democracy, and became advocates of individual liberties in the face of the restrictions undergone by conservatives and Islamists since February 28, 1997 (Özbudun 2006). The apparent paradigm shift of conservative politicians started an unprecedented dialogue between the religious, conservative, and liberal intelligentsia. All believed that the military’s influence over politics and society could be averted through EU accession, which is why the AKP ambitiously implemented reform packages stipulated by the EU after it came to power in 2002. These reforms started before the AKP’s electoral triumph in February 2002 and aimed to gradually liberalize the political system (Guney and Karatekelioglu 2005). They facilitated Kurdish broadcasting and

106    Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek education, abolished the death penalty, and recognized the European Court of Human Rights as a supreme body over Turkish courts. The seventh reform package of 2003 made structural changes to normalize CMR. Accordingly, the MGK’s authority was limited, confined to an advisory board submitting recommendations to the cabinet, and the prerogatives and number of civilian members were increased. Finally, the Court of Accounts was authorized to audit military expenditures (Cagaptay 2003). In 2004, the AKP government implemented the eighth reform package, under which the TSK and MGK were no longer allowed to nominate soldiers to serve in the governing boards of the Higher Education Council (YÖK) and Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK). The AKP strictly implemented the economic reforms initiated by the previous government. This brought economic stability and helped the AKP to gain the support of broader segments of society, including parts of the secular middle class and liberal intelligentsia, as well as the EU. Both political liberties and economic welfare flourished in the initial years of the AKP government. It seemed that, finally, Turkey was achieving a civilocracy after these democratization reforms were implemented for EU membership.13 With the increase of trust in the civilian government, the AKP started gaining confidence that it could roll back the military’s political interventions. Mounting tensions resulted in a showdown in 2007. On April 27, 2007, on the eve of the presidential elections in parliament, the TSK released a memorandum on its website, the “e-​memorandum,” and highlighted the army’s commitment to secularism. The e-​memorandum implied that the military did not accept Abdullah Gül as the next president because he was an (former) Islamist and his wife wore a headscarf. Then, on May 1, the Constitutional Court issued a decision in response to an appeal by the CHP, the main opposition party, and changed the “simple majority” principle in the parliament. Accordingly, two-​thirds of the members of parliament, a total of 367 deputies, had to be in session for the president to be elected by a simple majority. This decision would allow the opposition parties to block the AKP’s nominee, Gül, because the AKP had only 352 seats in the parliament, insufficient to form a quorum.14 The AKP viewed both the military’s memorandum and the Constitutional Court’s decision as an affront to the “popular will” and called for an early election. The discourse of the AKP’s victimization by statist forces in Turkey (i.e., the Kemalist elite and TSK) coupled with the robust performance of the Turkish economy helped the AKP to win a landslide victory in the July 2007 elections. Gül became the president and the AKP gained significant ground against the military. With this newly gained confidence, the AKP further changed the course of Turkish CMR. Public prosecutors, authorized by Erdoğan, initiated the Ergenekon (in 2008) and Sledgehammer (in 2010) trials to reveal clandestine juntas in the TSK and their networks in the media, academia, and civil society. Although pro-​government actors supported these efforts to curb the military’s decades-​long tutelage, others criticized the inconsistent, fallacious, and partisan nature of the indictments (Rodrik 2011). The AKP government was accused of intimidating the opposition. A number of high-​ranking active and retired generals (including former Chief of Staff General İlker Başbuğ),

Civil-Military Relations and the Demise of Turkish Democracy    107 academics, and journalists were arrested and jailed. Although many of the accused eventually cleared their names, the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer trials transformed the public perception of the TSK and perhaps marked the end of public legitimacy of the military’s guardianship. A Pew poll taken in 2015 showed that only 52 percent of the population gave the military a positive rating, whereas in 1997 the World Values Survey reported that 95 percent of Turkish participants trusted the military.15 On September 12, 2010, on the thirtieth anniversary of the 1980 coup, a constitutional referendum was held in order to amend articles that shielded the military from democratic control and continued to justify its intervention in politics. Around 58 percent of voters approved the amendment package proposed by the AKP and supported by various civil society organizations. Accordingly, the interim article of the 1982 Constitution (Article 15), which protected members of the MGK, cabinet, and advisory board of the 1980 coup and following three-​year interim period from persecution, was abolished. Additionally, the civilian courts were authorized to appeal the Higher Military Council’s (Yüksek Askeri Şura, YAŞ) decisions to dismiss military personnel (Article 125). Also, the referendum restricted the military courts’ scope of jurisdiction (Article 145) and prohibited civilians from being put on trial by military courts, except during times of war. Despite the military’s continuing agenda-​setting role in the fight against the PKK in this period (Satana and Demirel-​Pegg 2018), “reductions in the military’s formal institutional and legal prerogatives emerge as important, novel developments promoting civilian supremacy in the country” Sarigil (2014, 2).

The Use of Internal Threats as a Strategy to Bolster the AKP’s Hegemony As normalization of CMR commenced in Turkey, the AKP was following the same strategy of framing internal enemies used by the TSK to accumulate more power. Consequently, despite the expectations of many scholars that civilian control would lead to democratic consolidation, the country took an authoritarian turn. The AKP elite experienced firsthand the TSK’s instrumentalization of a discourse of internal threats to justify its political role and sustain its image of being the only institution that could face such threats. At first, the AKP elite swiftly challenged the army’s understanding of national security in the context of the Kurdish issue. It was soon clear that the government was reluctant to securitize the Kurdish question. For example, the AKP resisted TSK’s recommendations to let the United States invade Iraq from Turkey in 2003 (Uzgel 2004). In order to protect the party from the pressure of the military, the AKP wholeheartedly supported EU membership and went so far as to substantiate its enthusiasm by Atatürk’s modernist vision. This strategy coupled with economic stability and growth restricted the army’s room for maneuver. After consolidating its power and popular support, the AKP would attempt to solve the Kurdish question through negotiations with the PKK in 2009 and between 2013 and 2015.

108    Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek Through the second negotiation process, the AKP expected to get Kurdish votes sufficient to transition the regime from a parliamentary system to an à la turca presidential system (Özpek and Mutluer 2016, 127). Furthermore, the AKP exploited this process in such a way as to label its critics enemies of peace. For example, during the Gezi Protests in June 2013, Minister of Interior Beşir Atalay declared the Gezi protesters were nationalists who were trying to hinder the peace process (Ete et al. 2014, 10; for Gezi protests, see the chapter by Kaya in this volume). For his part, Öcalan discouraged Kurdish participation in the protests and hoped the government in return would sign a legal document guaranteeing Kurdish autonomy and amnesty for PKK insurgents. Kurdish votes were instrumental for the AKP’s continuing electoral success; hence the peace negotiations were tied to the votes. The AKP, however, misread Kurdish public opinion and lost its majority in parliament upon the electoral success of the pro-​Kurdish HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi) in the June 2015 national elections (Özpek and Mutluer 2016). The HDP managed to exceed the 10 percent electoral threshold and won 80 out of 550 seats in the parliament. If it had participated with independent candidates, as its predecessors had in 2007 and 2011, it would have gotten less than 50 seats and the AKP would have preserved its majority.16 Yet, the HDP’s victory and the formation of a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria ended the peace process as the armed conflict between Turkey and PKK resumed. After the June 2015 elections, the AKP failed to form a coalition government and Erdoğan did not mandate leaders of opposition parties to form a government. He instead called for snap elections to be held on November 1, 2015, opting to champion nationalism and criminalizing the HDP between June 7 and November 1. As the fighting between the PKK and TSK re-​intensified after late June, cities in the southeast were destroyed due to “the state’s reaction to the declaration of ‘autonomy’ by Kurdish mayors and the digging of trenches by young men and women apparently following orders from the PKK” (Öktem and Akkoyunlu 2016, 471). It should also be noted that non-​Kurdish opposition parties and the military jumped on the security bandwagon following the sudden change in policy and bought into the AKP’s discourse on national security. The PKK’s rising visibility and influence in Kurdish populated towns during the peace process and the PKK-​affiliated Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) state building efforts in Northern Syria had already incited Turkey’s traditional security concerns. This enabled Erdoğan to switch back and forth between the discourse of peace building and national security. Consequently, the AKP won the renewed elections with a landslide. Thus, initiating peace processes when it works for the party and halting negotiations when it does not, proved to be a fruitful strategy. When it came to the second internal threat, political Islam, despite distancing itself from the ideology, the AKP used religion instrumentally to build coalitions and obtain votes, particularly by advocating freedom of religious (Sunni Muslim) symbols in public spaces as an attempt to further democratization. In its initial years in office, the AKP rejected being identified as a political Islamist Party and claimed to be a conservative democrat (muhafazakar demokrat) party. Therefore, its advocacy of Islamic

Civil-Military Relations and the Demise of Turkish Democracy    109 symbols was justified under the principle of universal civil liberties. In doing so, the AKP enthusiastically implemented the EU reform packages. Nevertheless, such efforts were coupled with the AKP’s agenda of controlling the state bureaucracy with the help of Islamic networks. This attempt was regarded as Islamization of the state and society by secular and Kemalist circles (Criss 2010). For example, the AKP openly joined with religious orders in its quest for civilian control of the military and its struggle against the Kemalist/​secular opposition parties (Gumuscu 2016, 6). Members of the Gülen movement, particularly, were strong allies of the AKP between 2002 and 2013. Gülen stood by the AKP’s demilitarization campaign and supported the party’s administrative structure through his well-​organized and educated disciples in the military, judiciary, bureaucracy, media, universities, and civil society organizations. According to Yavuz and Koç (2016), the Ergenekon, Sledgehammer, and Izmir cases were brought to trial by pro-​Gülenist judiciary and police, which weakened the military.” Erdoğan and Gülen’s alliance ended when the two parties disagreed on “the control of key government positions and the allocation of resources” (Yavuz and Koç 2016). The first rift emerged in 2011, when Erdoğan’s office was wiretapped by the Gülenist police. In 2012, the government retaliated by closing Gülen’s college exam preparatory courses, a significant source of funds and recruits for Gülenists. Consequently, in December 2013, Gülenist public prosecutors initiated a graft probe against Erdoğan’s cabinet ministers and family members. Through it all, the AKP claimed it was “conned and deceived” by this group they now demonized as a cult and used this internal threat to further monopolize power (for the role of conspiratorial discourses in this struggle, see the chapter by Göknar in this volume). The epitome of instrumentalizing political Islam through targeting the Gülen movement was the failed coup attempt in July 2016. The coup was allegedly organized by Gülenist soldiers who had long infiltrated the army and remained undetected by the Kemalist establishment. Erdoğan’s reaction went beyond dismissing the Gülenist soldiers from the army. Military hospitals and military high schools were closed. The military academy was converted to the National Defense University and a civilian academic was appointed as the rector. The military, which was much weakened as a result of internal rifts, had to effectively negotiate its delicate position with Erdoğan, especially after a presidential system was adopted following the 2017 referendum (Bilgin and Erdoğan 2018), and Erdoğan was re-​elected as president in 2018 and appointed Hulusi Akar, chief of general staff, as the minister of national defense. These developments pointed out Erdoğan’s direct control over the military. Overall throughout its reign, the AKP strategically defined and redefined both Kurdish nationalism and political Islam as internal threats to consolidate power and transform institutional structures to aid its authoritarian turn. These developments, after 2010, fully transformed CMR and established civilian control. A decade after Aydinli (2009) predicted a paradigmatic shift in Turkey’s CMR and an end to the coup era, the Turkish military is effectively under civilian control, albeit the country is far from democracy.

110    Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek

Conclusion The Turkish military empowered itself legally, institutionally, and socially since the inception of the Republic largely by exploiting two internal threats: Kurdish nationalism and political Islam. Since 2002, the AKP slowly demilitarized the regime with the help of the EU accession process. A transient coalition of liberals, religious conservatives, and Kurdish intelligentsia coalesced in their opposition to the Kemalist elite’s decades-​old hegemony over state power and resources. The AKP redefined the same two internal threats as threats or opportunities depending on which would serve the party elite’s interests. The unstable peace process between the AKP and PKK and the alliance/​falling out between the Gülen movement and the AKP symptomize the changing patterns of AKP’s threat perceptions. Our analysis shows that Erdoğan’s approach to the relationship between power and legitimacy has dramatically changed following civilian control of the army. At first, he might have believed that legitimacy stems from power, which is attained only through the popular vote by a political party, convincing international audiences and his coalition of supporters that he was a “genuine democrat.” However, his strategy of securitizing the same issues as the military has in the past shows that his longing for popular legitimation has been replaced by security-​based legitimation. This explains why Erdoğan has framed his fight against FETÖ as a defensive positioning against a radical Islamist cult that infiltrated into the bureaucracy, even if this entailed persecution of groups with no connection to the coup and dismantling of state and civil society institutions. Similarly, his campaign against the PKK has gone beyond fighting against terrorism, as leading advocates of political and cultural rights for the Kurds have been imprisoned since 2015. The AKP has criminalized opposition parties and silenced alternative voices in society. Opposition parties have failed to stop Erdoğan’s march due to their unconditional support for the internal threat discourse. During the heyday of the struggle between the military and the AKP, they (CHP and MHP) sided with the army and criticized the AKP from the point of view of nationalism and secularism. This policy helped the AKP to attract the support of those who opposed the military’s influence and exclusionary forms of Turkish nationalism and enabled the AKP to gain the backing of the EU. Following the withdrawal of the army, Erdoğan’s power was threatened by rival political parties, among which the pro-​Kurdish HDP had a vital role. In order to sustain his power, Erdoğan criminalized the HDP to sow discord among opposition parties and jail its influential leader, Selahattin Demirtaş. Both CHP and MHP voted in favor of the government’s decision to lift parliamentary immunities, for allegedly having ties with the PKK. That is to say, the unconditional support of opposition parties for the national security discourse and their timidity in developing alternative emancipatory discourses has allowed Erdoğan to consolidate his power. This explains how the AKP government has simply replaced the hegemonic space the Turkish military previously held.

Civil-Military Relations and the Demise of Turkish Democracy    111 The case of Turkey shows that democratic consolidation requires strong institutions to protect the rule of law, in addition to normalization of CMR. In the absence of strong institutions that protect the regime from not only the military but also populist authoritarian leaders, civilian control of the army gave way to a civilian authoritarian rule. Future scholarship will need to further examine how Turkey has failed to build the institutions and democratic culture needed to prevent a populist leader from building his personalistic regime.

Notes 1. Levitsky and Way (2002) identify competitive authoritarian regimes as hybrid political entities that formally have democratic institutions but leave little room for civil liberties and opportunities for competition. Most of these hybrid regimes exhibit a decline in the rule of law as charismatic and populist leaders establish personalistic rules. In other words, populist leaders are major catalysts for the emergence of competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Loxton 2013). 2. “Turkey,” Freedom in the World 2020, https://​freedomhouse.org/​country/​turkey/​freedom-​ world/​2020, last accessed on April 9, 2020. The report assessed Turkey’s political rights (electoral process, political pluralism and participation, and functioning of government) and civil liberties (freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, personal autonomy, and individual rights). While Turkey did slightly better in the domain of political rights, it scored either 1 or 2 out of 4 on all dimensions of civil liberties, with rule of law one of its lowest scoring areas. 3. For example, the Higher Electoral Council (YSK) has lost credibility considerably upon the cancellation of the Istanbul local elections won by the opposition candidate on May 6, 2019. Similarly, the autonomy of bureaucratic institutions, judiciary, universities, and the media has been systematically eroded. 4. Various push and pull factors include the military’s incorporation into the neoliberal market regime, the lack of continuing support from Turkey’s Western allies for the political role of the army, ideological rifts within the officer corps, the gradual demilitarization scheme supported by a growing civil society and public bureaucracy, and more importantly, the ideological transformation of the state bureaucracy under AKP rule. Caliskan (2017, 108), however, contends that the Turkish military still maintains a degree of autonomy, particularly in budgetary matters and defense policies. 5. This is a socio-​political Islamic movement led by Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Islamic preacher who currently resides in the United States. 6. Nordlinger (1977, 2) posits that, in praetorianism regimes, the military stays in politics as a major actor “by virtue of their actual or threatened use of force.” 7. The historical legacy of the Ottoman Empire is important in understanding the military’s self-​perception of guardianship. Demirel (2004, 128) argues, “Not only did the Ottoman Empire retain its initial warrior state characteristics but also the military had been both an object of, and especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, the leading proponent of the reform movement.” The military’s leading role in Kemalist reforms are rooted in this historical legacy.

112    Nİl S. Satana and Burak Bİlgehan Özpek 8. Satana (2008, 365) finds that the Turkish military is not ontologically resilient toward democratic transformation. Comparing the Turkish military to its Latin American counterparts, she argues that the Turkish military’s declared ultimate goal has always been “to bring order and Kemalist democracy to the country that ‘incompetent’ civilian governments could not achieve.” For the military, the presence of external and internal threats became an excuse to justify its heavy involvement in politics, which was particularly necessary to protect its vested economic interests. For more on TSK’s business interests, see Abul-​Magd, Akca, and Marshall (2020). 9. While Stepan draws on Latin America, CMR literature shows new professionalism is also prevalent in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East (Satana 2011). 10. Pulur, Hasan, “Özal, 26 yıl önce “Üç, beş çapulcu” demişti,” Milliyet, August 5, 2010, https://​w ww.milliyet.com.tr/​yazarlar/​hasan-​pulur/​ozal-​26-​yil-​once-​uc-​bes-​capulcu-​ demisti-​1272484, last accessed on May 8, 2020. 11. The first pro-​Kurdish party, the People’s Labor Party (Halkın Emek Partisi, HEP) was formed in 1990 by a group of politicians expelled from the major social democratic party of the time. Pro-​Kurdish parties took part in elections, except for the 1994 local elections, which they boycotted. 12. For example, as Öztürk (2016, 621) shows, Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (the Diyanet) was used to institutionalize and implement this strategy to “establish state hegemony over all religious activity and education.” 13. Öniş (2003, 10) argues that the Turkish military was opposed to democratic reforms associated with EU accession on the grounds of national security and territorial integrity. Satana (2008, 367), on the other hand, finds evidence for the military’s support for EU accession as the final steps of Ataturk’s modernization project. 14. Another clash between the AKP and the secular establishment took place in March 2008 when the chief public prosecutor filed a lawsuit charging the AKP with violating the secularist nature of the regime and requesting it be banned. The Constitutional Court decided not to shut down the AKP but suspended 50 percent of its financial aid provided by the treasury (Jenkins 2008, 8–​9). The court argued that the AKP’s enthusiasm for implementing the EU reforms proved that the party did not have an Islamist agenda. 15. Ackerman, Elliott, “Ataturk versus Erdogan: Turkey’s Long Struggle,” The New Yorker, July 16, 2016, https://​www.newyorker.com/​news/​news-​desk/​ataturk-​versus-​erdogan-​turkeys-​ long-​struggle, last accessed on May 24, 2020. 16. “Demirtaş: Meclis’e girerek, AKP’nin tek başına anayasa yapma tehlikesini bertaraf edeceğiz,” https://​www.diyarbakirsoz.com/​Gundem/​demirtas-​meclise-​girerek-​akpnin-​ tek-​basina-​anayasa-​yapma-​tehlikesini-​bertaraf-​edecegiz-​-​120416, last accessed on May 2, 2020.

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Chapter 6

Cap turing Se c u l a ri sm in Tu rk ey The Ease of Comparison Murat Akan

In this chapter, I present secularism in Turkey, laiklik, at an analytical and comparative depth for researchers who wish to continue studying it in ways that will advance the scholarship on not only Turkey but also other parts of the world, and a future secularism at large. Such a project requires tackling the literatures on both secularism and political Islam. This necessity emerges from the fact that the paradigm that has shaped and confined the study of Turkish secularism, modernity, and democracy, or perhaps Turkish Studies at large is “Kemalism versus Islam.” The irony of writing this chapter in 2020 is that the paradigm of Kemalism versus Islam shattered in the hands of academics during the post 9/​11 research wave on multiple modernities, before its political demise in the hands of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) government. An analytical sketch of the literature on laiklik and religion includes the following cornerstones: Şerif Mardin’s (2006) macro-​historical sociology of religion and secularism, focusing in his own words, on how “secularism and Islam interpenetrate;” Nilüfer Göle’s (1996) micro-​sociology on diversity among veiled university students and how the secular and Islam “interpenetrate” in women’s subjectivity; Niyazi Berkes’ (1964) situating of laiklik vis-​à-​vis French separation; Taha Parla (1978, 1992, 1993) and Parla and Davison’s (2005) tracing of corporatism from Émile Durkheim to Ziya Gökalp and to Kemalist laicism; Binnaz Toprak’s (1981) fleshing out of the different roles and meanings of Islam in the different phases of Turkey’s path to modernity; Ruşen Çakır’s (1990) study of the political engagements of religious communities; Andrew Davison’s (1998) hermeneutical approach to laiklik; İştar Tarhanlı’s (1993) account of the trajectory of growth of the Presidency of Religious Affairs’ (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, referred to as Diyanet), the state institution regulating religious affairs and appointing imams; Yael Navaro-​Yashin’s (2002) “rumor and humor” in the “secularist projections about ‘Islamic Public Life,’ ” and the political economy of secular and religious symbols; Yeşim

118   Murat Akan Arat’s (2005) fieldwork on the politicization of women in the Refah Partisi movement; Esra Özyürek’s (2006) double movement of religion becoming public and secularism becoming private; Berna Turam’s (2007) “politics of engagement;” Sultan Tepe’s (2008) similarities of politics of religion in Israel and Turkey; Cihan Tuğal’s (2009) passive revolution of the political Islamist movement; Ahmet Kuru’s (2009) assertive and passive secularists in Turkey, France, and the United States; Hakan Yavuz’s (2009) argument that the AKP’s politics of religion concurs with Alfred Stepan’s (2001) “Twin Tolerations;” Umut Azak (2010) on Kemalist laicism’s continuous construction of good versus bad Islam; and Güneş Murat Tezcür’s (2010) paradox of moderation comparing Turkey and Iran. The literature embodies two clear tendencies: while mapping Turkey’s trajectory of laiklik, authors either focus more on what happens to the republic or on what happens to Islam. I address the nature of Kemalist laicism and the nature of the Islamist challenge to it by focusing on the making and unmaking of republican institutions at certain historical moments and through a comparison with France. Comparative binary oppositions situating Europe or France vis-​à-​vis Turkey coalesce around notions of separation: separation versus control (Toprak 1988; Zürcher 1997, 195); separation versus union (Berkes 1964); full laiklik versus half laiklik (Daver 1955; Velidedeoğlu 1952); separation versus policing of religion (Özek 1962); separation versus religion under the control of the state (Başgil 1954); or secularism versus laicism versus Kemalist laicism (Parla and Davison 2008). These are comparative statements rather than systematically pursued comparisons. They work with an idea of a static Europe; a contemporary, but in fact an arbitrary snapshot, rather than a historicized, contextualized, and dynamized Europe, a Europe in motion. Andrew Davison (2003) calls this whirlpool of binaries, “the challenge of description;” yet, in my view, there is only a challenge because of the lack of comparison. Comparison eases the capturing of laiklik. Comparison illuminates the contradictions and anomalies of Turkey, not by naming them through new binaries, but first, by unraveling similar contradictions and anomalies in other places, and second by testing whether their origins reflect common or particular political dynamics. Without comparison, the battle among country specialists often boils down to seeking new meanings of the old; and yet, battling for meaning, they typically descend down the same path to the thesis of Turkish exceptionalism (Akan 2017a). Even Mardin, who has on the one hand opposed cultural essentialism and on the other hand striven to expand beyond republican historiography by underscoring the heritage of reforms from the late Ottoman Empire (Mardin 1981), ends up claiming a “Turkish-​Islamic exceptionalism” (Mardin 2006, 6).

Transcending Turkish Exceptionalism The efforts to make sense of one early republican institution, Diyanet, is responsible for most of the theses of new meaning and exceptionalism. The Kemalist republic

Capturing Secularism in Turkey     119 institutionalized the nation against religion as a source of sovereignty. For Bernard Lewis (1961) or Niyazi Berkes (1964), this opposition between nation and religion at the regime level is the fundamental vantage point from which to view laiklik. The Declaration of National Sovereignty and the Opening of the Parliament (1920), abolishment of the Sultanate (1922), Declaration of the Republic (1923), abolition of the Caliphate (1924), Law of Union of Education (1924), Law of the Maintenance of Order (1925), the banning of religious orders (1925), uniform civil code (1926), elimination of a reference to Islam from the constitution (1928), placing the term laik in the constitution and removing religious associations from the protection of article on religious freedom (1937), and the Law of Associations (1938) are constitutive moments in the making of the secular regime. However, Diyanet (e. 1924)—​the institution of state salaried imams—​stands in contrast to these other regime level institutions and policies, plus its raison d’être is conflicted. On March 1, 1924, two days before parliament passed laws abolishing the caliphate, creating a public education system, and establishing Diyanet, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) remarked that the aim was to “liberate” Islam from becoming a “means of politics” (Kemal 1999, 348–​349; TBMM 1924, 27–​69). The contradiction of establishing the Diyanet in the name of laicism and liberating Islam remains key in public and academic debates in Turkey. Let’s hear it from Niyazi Berkes (1964, 480): “the existence of a Department of Religious Affairs within the government and the expenditure of public funds on religious affairs, seemed inconsistent with a secular state.” He explains this contradiction away when he writes, “the struggle was not over the question of separating the spiritual and the temporal, but over the difference between democracy and theocracy,” (481), and via the institutional differences between Catholicism and Islam. The existence of the Christian church as a political power in its own right [in Europe] has tended to focus attention mainly on the political aspects of secularism. In a non-​ Christian state [Turkey] such political considerations are not necessarily of primary importance . . . the conflict is often between the forces of tradition . . . and the forces of change. (6, my italics)

Berkes captures the Turkish experience with the binary opposition of secularism as “separation” in France and secularism as “union” in Turkey. He reasserts back that it is Christianity which “constituted an exception rather than the rule in relations between the state and religion,” (6) not Turkey. The main task for the secularist in Turkey was uniting disparate spheres; therefore, “religion—​which was not separately . . . institutionalized, but was diffused in . . . law, custom, and education” was naturally interfered with (481). Berkes’ developmentalist epistemology leads him to dismiss facts in challenge of his comparative claim as ironic: “The Islamist critics of this [Kemalist] view of secularism became, ironically, the advocates of separationist secularism within the context of the Republic” (499). He concludes that, “to understand the Kemalist secularism as a matter of separating church and state is so erroneous.” But then is this all there is to Kemalist laicism, its self-​claimed modernism facing Islam?

120   Murat Akan Three comparative observations challenge Berkes and others’ theses on Turkish distinctness. First, other countries interfere in the sphere of religion in the name of secularism, as seen in India’s Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, Indonesia’s and Senegal’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, and Japan’s State Shinto under its Ministry of Home Affairs. Second, the Third French Republic had a Ministère des Cultes, and a budget de cultes (1801–​1905) for the salaries of religious personnel. This similarity with Turkey’s Diyanet attests that from the perspective of republican institutions the differences between Catholicism and Islam do not matter. Third, recent changes in Europe and the United States dissolve the comparative binaries in yet another way. Since 2001, the United States’ White House Office of Faith-​Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has funded religious activity nationally and internationally (Ekşioğlu 2011). And, the White House National Security Council program, Muslim World Outreach, involved “training Islamic preachers” and “establishing Islamic schools” in certain countries (Mahmood 2006, 331). European states have actively engaged in the religious sphere in the past decade with the formation of Muslim Councils (Akan 2009). The anomalies or contradictions of the Turkish state remain neither “Turkish” specific nor non-​“European.” Apart from such comparative perspectives, one can also develop an internal critique of the Turkish distinctness thesis with a focus on the political field of struggles over institutions. The political and intellectual opposition to Diyanet did not consist only of Islamists, as Berkes claims. Halide Edib Adıvar (1929, 37–​38), a republican novelist and women’s rights activist, argued that institutional separation in Turkey was incomplete as long as Diyanet was a state institution. In the 1950s and 1960s, it is even easier to find Kemalist or minority critiques of Diyanet (Akan 2011; Gülalp 2017). Since its inception, critiques of Diyanet have been part of Turkish politics. Viewed from this dynamic field of the politics of secularism, any distinctness thesis relying on snapshot descriptions of any country becomes myopic. Hence, Berkes’ reliance on the differences between Catholicism and Islam in the passage quoted earlier for dismissing the political dimensions of the Turkish trajectory in order to normalize the existence of Diyanet also becomes unconvincing. Along the same line of developing an internal critique, probing the differences between Gökalpism and Kemalism on the relation between nation and religion also suggests ways for surpassing Kemalism’s self-​claimed modernism by underscoring the opportunities lost to its authoritarianism. Ziya Gökalp rearranged the affiliation of modernity, nation, and religion in order to carve space for the national regime; Mustafa Kemal acknowledged him as one of his inspirations. According to Gökalp’s ([1918] 2004a; [1923] 2004b) synthesis, one could simultaneously “belong to the Turkish nation, to the Islamic religious community and to Western civilization” (Gökalp [1923] 2004b, 105). “Modernism,” wrote Gökalp, “emerges from tools” and in this material regard we should aim to be “like the Europeans;” however, “modernisation does not mean resembling the Europeans in culture” (Gökalp [1918] 2004a, 31). Gökalp approached Islam as a source of public morality (Parla 1978, 39). Taha Parla explains this approach as a part of the solidarist corporatist line Gökalp developed under the influence of Émile

Capturing Secularism in Turkey     121 Durkheim, which later left its mark on Kemalist republicanism. Uriel Heyd explains that for Gökalp a “strong and independent State” is impossible if it “does not make its laws itself, but regards them as sent from heaven and as unchangeable” (quoted in Heyd 1950, 89). At the same time, Heyd maintains that if it was not for Mustafa Kemal’s anti-​ Islamic stance, Gökalp could have opened the way for “the scientific investigation of Islam . . . and . . . religious reform” (Heyd 1950, 82), and perhaps for a less authoritarian and more negotiated outcome in the Turkish trajectory of laiklik. Zana Çitak-​Aytürk (2005) places the emphasis on negotiation in her contrast of the relation between nation and religion in France and Turkey, showing how the former negotiated the relation more than the latter. However, whether we take the comparative or the internal critique angle to Diyanet and the Kemalist regime’s approach to Islam, our approach still remains rather confined as it takes for granted the Muslimness of Turkey and does not problematize its past and contemporary Muslimization, which entailed mass violence and displacements (Akgönül 2005; Bozarslan 2004; see the chapter by Öktem in this volume). When the Turkish republic was established in 1923, it had a substantial non-​Muslim minority primarily composed of Armenians, Greeks, and Jews. Population exchange, wealth taxation, and various violent and non-​violent assimilationist policies caused their death, departure, or silence. But non-​Muslim communities, much fewer in numbers, continue to exist in Turkey (Akgönül 2005, 2010), their presence underwritten by the 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty. However, their historical or contemporary study, along with Alevis, Syriac Christians, and others, is considered minority studies, peripheral to the core field of laiklik studies. Unbelievers of various kinds are also factored out of the discussion on laiklik, subsumed with the other groups under the thick assumption that “Turkey is a Muslim majority country.” These omissions are no small matter. There is world historical evidence that in many countries both secularism and democracy are regimes primarily for minorities and not majorities. As I discuss Turkey and France comparatively, it will become clear that: (1) defense of diversity against Catholic majoritarianism is central to the genealogy of French laïcité, while a similar defense of diversity against Muslim majoritarianism remained at the margins in Turkey; (2) minorities in Turkey engage with laiklik, even if the literature on laiklik does not engage with them.

Lai̇kli̇k and Laïcité: Comparing our Way Through Tracing Kemalist laicism’s trajectory among the spectrum of political positions in the Third French Republic parliament with a focus on institutional preferences as well as arguments in their defense is propitious for pinning down laiklik. This comparison clearly shows that the distinctive mark of the majority of the Kemalist laicists involved in institution building was that they started from the premise that Turkey is a Muslim majority

122   Murat Akan country. “The law of majorities” as it was called in the Third Republic French Chambre des députés—​the idea that France is a Catholic majority country—​was the precise presupposition defeated by the laic coalitions defending the premise of a diverse France. As the majority of Kemalist laicists could not part from the law of majorities, they became more susceptible to state-​civil religionism and the institutions they built more permeable to strategies of Islamization. The defense of a diverse Turkey has remained a marginal position until today. My additional point of comparison, arguments in defense of institutions, makes visible similarities and contrast that are beyond the matters of “interpretation” which mark the battles for meaning among laiklik specialists. For instance, the phrase “secularism is not irreligion” is stated both in French and Turkish politics in signification of similar courses of action. And, when it does signify different courses of action, the difference is a matter of the ends the political group in question is pursuing, rather than any kind of Turkish or French specificity. The comparative narrative I lay down is a critical vantage point from which to reflect on global conceptions of secularism. Jean Baubérot (2000) finds Kemalism closest to Combisme among the republican currents of the Third French Republic. Both Mustafa Kemal and Émile Combes (prime minister, June 7, 1902–​January 24, 1905) preferred state control of religion via state-​ salaried clerics, both combatted religious orders (Mardin 1989; Partin 1969), and both inspired movements that placed the republic at the level of faith. The Turkish Language Association’s 1945 dictionary had under the entry “religion” as an example for “religion as principle,” the sentence, “the Turk’s religion is Kemalism” (Turkish Dictionary 1945, 153; see also Çerman 1957–​1962). However, Combistes moved to a position of institutional separation the moment they saw the republican regime consolidated (Baubérot 2019), while the Republican People's Party (CHP, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) moved to invest more in state salaried imams and reinstituted religion courses in the public school system when they saw the regime consolidated in the late 1940s. At the founding of the republic, the CHP’s goal was to prevent Islam from becoming a force of counter-​mobilization against the republican regime while embracing a “proper Islam” subservient to the idea of the nation in order to consolidate the regime. Mustafa Kemal praised Islam as compatible with modernity, reason, and science on various occasions (Parla and Davison 2005, 110). In his famous speech delivered to the Turkish nation over three days in October 1927, he explained that while the 1924 constitution included an article (Article 2) declaring Islam as the state religion, this was only “with the purpose of not providing an opportunity for those who are inclined to interpret the phrase ‘laic government’ as antireligious,” and he asked that state religion be removed from the constitution at the first opportunity (Kemal 1999, 955–​956). The removal of the state religion from the constitution on April 9, 1928, was followed by the cautious statement, “Laiklik dinsizlik değildir”—​Laiklik is not irreligion—​and by a statement on privatization of religion in general, not only of Islam (TBMM 1928, 2). The statement “laiklik dinsizlik değildir” has come all the way to contemporary times, and its genealogy would require a systematic work on its own. It was also pronounced by military officers in the constituent assembly writing the 1982 constitution to defend

Capturing Secularism in Turkey     123 the constitutional inclusion of a mandatory public education course on the culture of religion and ethics, in the name of laiklik (Danışma Meclisi 1982, 280); in the Democrat Party’s program (cited later), the first successful opposition to CHP in 1950 (Cumhuriyet 1946, 2); in the election pamphlets and party programs of Necmettin Erbakan’s political Islamist Welfare Party (RP, Refah Partisi) in the 1990s, demanding the elimination of a reference to the “laik state” from the constitution (Refah Partisi 1995, 19); by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan while promoting a laik regime for Egypt during the Arab Spring; in the Turkish Constitutional Court’s 2012 decision in defense of the new optional religion courses on the Koran and on the life of the prophet in the public education system (Official Gazette 2013a). This statement is key to understanding the core and the limit of Kemalist laicism. By 1931, no course on religion remained in Turkey’s primary or secondary school programs or in teachers’ colleges, although the course continued in village primary schools until 1939 (Bayar 2012; Çakır, Bozan, and Talu 2004; Okutan 1983). All twenty-​ nine religious public schools (called İmam Hatip) established in 1924 to train imams and preachers loyal to the republic were shuttered by 1930 from a lack of students. Istanbul University’s Faculty of Theology closed in 1933 after a European scholar documented the small number of registered students (Malche 1939). And, the percentage of the budget of the Diyanet in the state budget hit an all-​time low in the early 1940s (Akan 2017b). Core characteristics of Kemalist laicism in its early years included a secular education system, state-​salaried imams, and an attack on religious orders. This set of positions resembled that of Jules Ferry, Républicain Opportuniste, known as the architect of laic education laws in the Third French Republic (Akan 2017b, 2017c).1 His repeated position in the chambre des députés recalls to mind “laiklik dinsizlik değildir”: “our politics, in the relations of the Republic with the Church, have been very resolutely anticlerical, it has never been an antireligious politics” (Journal 1881, 1047), and the republican attack was on “the unauthorized congregations” (quoted in Gaillard 1989, 434); state-​ salaried clerics were preferable: “when our fathers of 1789 substituted a salaried Church for a property-​owner Church, they have made an act of wisdom and foresight” (Journal 1881, 1047). The similarity between France and Turkey ends with the transition to the multiparty system in Turkey (Yılmaz 1997). The Democrat Party (DP, Demokrat Parti) won the May 14, 1950 elections with a landslide victory against the CHP. The DP party program read: Our party understands laiklik as the complete detachment of the state in politics from religion, and that no religious creed is influential in the ordering and application of law and refuses the misinterpretation of laiklik as anti-​religiousness. (Cumhuriyet 1946, 2, my italics)

The CHP and DP approaches to laiklik shared the vantage point that Turkey is a Muslim majority country. When the question of restructuring or abolishing Diyanet came up during budget discussions in the parliament, the DP Prime Minister Adnan Menderes defended Diyanet: “If we consider that the fundamental part of the country is

124   Murat Akan Turk and Muslim . . . it is not against laiklik to have a state budget [for religious affairs]” (TBMM 1951, 441). The period from 1946 until 1950 saw a return to religion by the CHP, both to counter communism and to preempt the rising DP electoral campaign against what the DP formulated as CHP’s strict laicism. The disagreements within the CHP were visible through the parliamentary sessions and CHP’s Seventh Party Congress in 1947 (CHP 1948). Here is one CHP parliamentarian defending more state investment in Islam: We are not afraid of these new religions [communism], but we are afraid of our own religion . . . Religion has an otherworldly side, and also a utility side . . . Friends, wisdom [hikmet] starts with the fear of God . . . I am not saying that [religion] is the only way of improving public morality . . . We do not want to destroy what Atatürk started, we want to support it. If Atatürk were alive, he would also do the same. (TBMM 1946, 428)

Another one opposing state investment in Islam: To insist that a . . . devout Muslim will not turn communist, or that religion in general provides a resistance to communism is in contradiction with the realities of the day . . . I am a Muslim, my nation is Turkish, my political doctrine is Kemalist, in other words I am laik. (446)

Despite such internal conflicts, the CHP channeled more state support to religious infrastructure: funding for the haj to Mecca in 1947, nearly doubling the Diyanet’s budget the same year, reopening Imam Hatip Schools, and creating optional religion courses for the fourth and fifth graders on Saturdays in 1949 (Lewis 1952, 41). The Kemalist motto of the 1920s, “Laiklik dinsizlik değildir” had become less of a pragmatic political statement with the primary purpose of containing Islam and turned more to an advocacy of a civil religion, Islam supplementing Turkish nationalism as a cement of society. What I mean by a civil religion differs from the meanings of the term associated with Niccolò Machiavelli (1994), Jean Jacques Rousseau (1968), Alexis de Tocqueville (1966), or Robert Bellah (1967). The purpose of civil religion in this case is to mobilize an abstraction of religion, e.g., religion as culture, as morality, as only the belief in a God, to serve as a cement of society for the purpose of creating obedient citizens. An experience of the abstracted nature of civil religion in society is conveyed by Mahmut Makal (1954, 106). After the institutionalization of religion courses in public schools in 1948, Turkey’s state book on religion arrives at the village where Makal is a primary school teacher. The villagers demand he reads it to them but are disappointed upon hearing it because they find the book unrelated to their own understanding of religion. Civil religionists populated the French parliament during the passing of the Ferry laws in the 1880s and the 1905 law of separation, at both times they lost (Akan 2017b). In fact, Kemalist laicism at the end of the 1940s resembled the Third French republicans who lost the battle for religious morality in the French public school system.

Capturing Secularism in Turkey     125 In November 1950, the DP government simply followed the state-​civil religionist institutional paths opened by the CHP, continuing investment in Diyanet (Akan 2017b). The CHP’s optional Saturday courses on religion became part of the curriculum and were changed from opt-​in to opt-​out. This was the central matter for discussion in the 1953 National Education Congress. A government lawyer in the congress defended the new institutional changes by the law of majorities, “Muslim citizens, . . . represent the great majority of the country, 98 percent” (Beşinci Milli Eğitim 1954, 396–​397). This premise was shared by the majority of the CHP; in France, the defeat of this premise marked the rise of French laïcité in the Third Republic. The 1882 Ferry group and the 1905 pro-​separation group—​radical socialist, radical left, socialist parliamentarians, Union Démocratique—​all defended the premise of a diverse French society against the sociological assertion that France is a Catholic majority country (Akan 2017b, 2017c). The law of majorities was most strongly defended by the monarchists in 1882—​Union des droites—​and the political Catholics in 1905—​Action libérale populaire. A concrete bill to separate Diyanet from the state was drafted by Ali Fuad Başgil, a former CHP intellectual who had switched to support the DP (1954). The AKP’s conservative political line during its early years was often traced to him. However, this attribution of lineage ignored that Başgil was no principled separationist and defended separation only to help raise a more religious youth (Başgil 2007, 25–​26). This distorted lineage was serving to render both Başgil and the AKP as more mainstream than they really were in discussions on democracy and secularism. Başgil’s position was similar to certain political Catholics in Third Republic France. He particularly admired the Catholic church (Başgil 1954, 95–​96). When it came to the practical question of the religion course in primary schools in 1948, Başgil welcomed state interference. His deep-​ seated perception of Turkey as Muslim majority country grounded his inability to follow through basic institutionalist argumentation (Başgil 1950a, 1950b). The 1961 constitution, written under the supervision of the junta, constitutionalized Diyanet. The constitutional assembly debates clearly showed the anti-​minority and pragmatic line of the majority of the participants, despite their differences otherwise (Akan 2011, 2017b). Still, the writing of the 1961 constitution is probably the earliest discussion of a constitutional article encompassing the vantage point of minorities, although this vantage point did not materialize in the constitution. A draft of the article on religious freedom included a paragraph on the religious education of minorities: The State, with the condition of compliance with the essentials of the constitution, establishes public services and the necessary organization which will provide for the religious needs or religious education and instruction of the majority of the people or if necessary for those belonging to a minority religion or sect. (Öztürk 1966, vol. 1, 28, my italics)

Arslan Bora, the CHP representative from Tunceli, Hermine Kalüstyan, an Armenian-​ Turkish schoolteacher and headmaster, and Kaludi Laskaris, a Greek-​Turkish attorney, articulated positions in defense of Alevi, Armenian, and Greek minorities, respectively.

126   Murat Akan The Kemalist intellectual Hıfzı Veldet Velidedeoğlu (1972) recounts in his memoirs that a CHP member requested that his speech, quoted here, be removed from the records because he believed that it might be interpreted by the people as anti-​religious: The day when it is known that somebody is Sunni, Alevi, Christian or Jewish or even atheist, but still nobody bothers that somebody; the day when those who go to mosque regularly are not belittled and in Ramadan, especially in small towns, restaurants are open and those who enter them are not frowned upon, there will not be the remains of an issue of being religious or not religious in this country. In other words, laiklik is not only the freedom of one religion, it is the freedom to belong to any religion or sect or freedom not to belong to any religion. (Öztürk 1966, 28, 1377)

This reasoning from the premise of diversity to neutrality was not simply an elite argument, and it did have some support in society. Articles in the newspapers in July 1960 reported that a group of Alevis filed a petition to the constitution commission in critique of the Turkish state’s institutional violation of the principles of neutrality, equality and freedom in state and religions relations (Cumhuriyet 1960; Dünya 1960). The anti-​minority, anti-​socialist, and state-​civil-​religionist lines in Kemalist Laicism further solidified with the 1982 constitution enacted under military rule. Battered by the coup, political Islam’s main competitor, the left, could no longer constrain it and mobilization increased rapidly (see the chapter by Çınar in this volume). Two terms arose in public discussion to mark post-​1980 Turkey: Islam and civil society (Navaro-​Yashin 1998). The term, sivil toplum, the Turkish equivalent of “civil society” first appears in the Milliyet newspaper digital archives in 1975, in an article evaluating the results of the October 12, 1975, mid-​term elections, pronounced by Şerif Mardin (Milliyet 1975). A similar search for “Islam” shows how the public visibility of religious communities and discussions of Islam and civil society picked up after the coup. This crucial point challenges culturalist accounts of the rise of political Islam as the true reflection of a “Muslim majority” society as well as the theses of “modernization from below” (Keyder 1997) or “autonomization of civil society” (Göle 1994) and underlines the importance of the post-​coup political context in making sense of the “Islamic revival.” Religious communities were partially spared by the coup partly because they shared the anti-​communism of the Kemalist military officers. One Nur community leader, an Islamic brotherhood, publicly supported the military regime and even wrote a letter to the head of the National Security Council asking for more space in society for religion (Çakır 1990, 92). A journal of the Gülen movement published two endorsements of the military, one before and one after the coup (Sızıntı 1979, 1980). The deeply rooted pragmatism and pro-​statism characterizing many religious mobilizations, present not only in their genealogies (Asad 1993) but also in their present forms, has been overshadowed by the post-​9/​11 insistence on carving out of each religion’s theology a principled moderate side. “Our problem,” Clifford Geertz (1971, 1) once remarked, “is not to define religion but to find it.” However, the post-​9/​11 academic search for the right religious actors, which for a while labeled the AKP and Gülen movement as epitomes of moderate Islam and harbingers of democracy, did more to glorify than find religion by definitional

Capturing Secularism in Turkey     127 gatekeeping, closing our eyes to certain facts. Take for instance, the following definition of a “religious actor” as “any individual or collectivity, local or transnational, who acts coherently and consistently to influence politics in the name of a religion;” this frees a religious actor from any incoherencies and inconsistencies (Philpott 2007, 506). A very difficult puzzle for the “coherent” and “moderate” religious actor paradigm, but in fact business as usual, was the reaction of Fethullah Gülen to the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010. In 2010, Israeli commandoes attacked a fleet of six ships in international waters bringing aid to Gaza, killing nine and injuring thirty on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara (T24 2010). Gülen took a pro-​statist position in the Wall Street Journal underscoring that permission should have been requested from the Israeli state (Lauria 2010). The 1980 coup not only enabled political Islam by eliminating potential rivals, it also constitutionalized religious morality. This opened institutional paths for political Islamists and eased their search for public arguments for a more religious society. Mobilizing religion as the “cement of society” was expressed in the 1982 constitution in the article on Diyanet (Article 136) and the article on freedom of religion and conscience (Article 24). Article 24 made religion and ethics courses in primary and secondary education compulsory. The Consultative Assembly working on the draft constitution included statements like: “Moral crisis is worse than economic crisis,” “Instead of . . . Lenin, Mao, and Castro let’s teach the Turkish child his/​her religion in a real sense and under the license of the state within the principles of Atatürk,” “There is no minority in the Turkey of Atatürk, there is only [the] citizen” (Danışma Meclisi 1982, 273, 275, 292). The president of the National Security Council explained that “We are giving a course in the culture of religion, not a course on religion” in order to defend its compatibility with laiklik (Milli Güvenlik Konseyi 1982, 340), presenting one more incident of the process of abstraction I touched upon in my discussion of civil religion. Such abstractions opened paths for the AKP’s Muslimization of society to advance by gradual institutional change, for civil religionism is an unstable position—​a crossroads where actors moving in different directions gather temporarily and attain the appearance of a unity. Both in France and Turkey, the crossroads of civil religionism hosts republicans who have an idea of a smooth exit from a religious society as well as anti-​democrats and future or ex-​monarchists who rest at this crossroads before they launch their de-​abstracting path away from a republic or democracy. Moreover, as some Kemalists continued blatantly to penetrate the boundary between the republic and religion institutionally, it became difficult for other Kemalists to purify Kemalism by pushing through a distinction between the good and bad versions, between Atatürkism and Kemalism. Even the left-​laik Atatürkist Bülent Ecevit had praised Fethullah Gülen schools (Ecevit 2005).

The Post-​9/​11 Turn of Multiple Modernities In all the three waves of discussions on modernity, Daniel Lerner’s (1958) The Passing of Traditional Society, Samuel Huntington’s (1997) Clash of Civilizations, and Shmuel Noah

128   Murat Akan Eisenstadt’s (2000) “Multiple Modernities,” the critical case is Turkey. After 9/​11, nearly every other research project or book title had “multiple secularisms” in it. The rampant way to address this multiplicity was to start with the majority religion of each country; in order to account for the particular trajectory of laiklik, the key was understanding Islam. From the perspective of the struggle between the premise of diversity and law of majorities I have presented so far from France and Turkey, the analytical framework used in post 9/​11 literature suffers from a limited understanding of secularism, precisely because it assumes law of majorities, and has to be analytically secularized itself before it can recount empirically any trajectory of secularism. A new kind of culturalism sneaked in through the multiple modernities wave in the secularism literature (Akan 2017a). The snapshot idea of the European modernity behind the binary comparative statements on Turkey vis-​à-​vis Europe, instead of being historicized and contextualized as I aimed at with The Politics of Secularism, turned into a modernity among others. Just before one could reach out and catch it, European modernity melted into air, into one of many modernities. Post 9/​11, with the AKP emerging and the process of Turkey’s accession to the European Union, in many reports and academic works Turkey had become “Muslim Turkey” (Netherlands Scientific Council 2004, 53, 151) or “democratic Muslim Turkey” (Casanova 2006, 71); Muslimized by the pens of academics before the beginning of its real Muslimization and transformation under the AKP. During an academic conference on state and religion in Turkey and European Union countries at ISAM (Center for Islamic Studies) in Istanbul in 2006, AKP state minister, Mehmet Aydın exceptionally criticized the references to Turkey as “Muslim Turkey,” while the guest speaker, the president of religious affairs, started his speech with a “basmala.” While all other country panels solely consisted of academics, the Müftü of Istanbul chaired the session on Turkey and a Diyanet representative presented the Turkish case.2 This clear disregard of a differentiation of spheres between the state, religion, and academics was normalized in academia by the multiple modernities paradigm. In the post 9/​11 wave, Kemalist laicism was exclusively equated with authoritarian secularism. Whereas in the 1980s it took articulation and courage to criticize Kemalism, now it became a banality. Academics produced frequent AKP apologist pieces with out-​of-​this-​world arguments like placing AKP’s secularism in the same category as the secularism defended by the socialist parliamentarians of the Third French Republic (Kuru 2009) or misrepresenting the AKP in line with Alfred Stepan’s (2001) “twin tolerations” (Yavuz 2009). It all started with the false perception that the AKP defended neutrality in the relation of state and religions, a liberal secularism against Kemalist laicism’s rigid secularism. From the start, such a binary approach could not account for institutional and policy convergences between the AKP and various Kemalist laicists, and for state-​civil religionism. These convergences called into question the claim of the AKP’s “liberalness” as well as Kemalist laicism’s “rigidness.” The only evidence for the AKP’s defense of neutrality was the public statements of AKP leaders themselves, but even there, pragmatism, political rhetoric, and internal contradictions in these speeches were hardly noticed (AK Parti 2004; Sabah 2007). Parliamentary records since the AKP came to power document anything but concern with state neutrality toward religion (Akan

Capturing Secularism in Turkey     129 2017b). As early as 2005, AKP parliamentarians claimed publicly “religion is the cement of society” (Radikal 2005) through a stronger Diyanet invested in Sunni-​Islam against Alevis and Christian missionaries. One AKP statement summed it all up: “Dialogue between religions and the elimination of conflict among them is applaudable, yet the competition among religions will last as long as the world exists” (TBMM 2005). This time, it was the CHP in opposition, highlighting Diyanet’s assimilationist role and demanding it be more inclusive: “The [Alevis] have to be represented within the Diyanet, and cemevis [Alevi places of worship] have to be given a legal status . . . These people are paying taxes to the state, but with these taxes we are supporting a single sect [Sunni]” (TBMM 2005). The roles had changed, and the AKP who in opposition had voiced the possibility of Diyanet’s “autonomy” before and just after their electoral victory in 2002, and had been mistaken for pursuing the separationist Başgil path, now defended the expansion of Diyanet fervently (Milliyet 2006; TBMM 2001). And what argument did they invent for this defense? None other than that it was a constitutional Kemalist institution. The exact change in politics after a change in position vis-​à-​vis institutions was a dynamic visible in the Third French Republic as well. Jules Ferry who defended separation when approaching the May 1869 elections, moved to a defense of state-​salaried clerics when in government later (Ferry 1893, 191). In Turkey, this change in role repeated itself in the failed attempt to write a constitution (2011–​2013) and after, when the AKP defended Diyanet, the CHP asked for its reform, and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP, Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi), later Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP, Halkların Demokratik Partisi), asked for its abolishment. By 2008, AKP spending on Diyanet surpassed anything spent by the RP, the prior political Islamist party (Akan 2017b). AKP also changed the nature of its expansion. The Law for the Organization of Diyanet, passed on June 30, 2010, increased wage inequalities between urban and rural imams and between religious affairs and administrative personnel, giving the institution a more hierarchical structure. Not only is the Diyanet budget now more than that of certain ministries, with the AKP government, Diyanet is penetrating state ministries with bilateral protocols, and this raises serious concerns for differentiation of spheres. Diyanet has protocols with the ministries of justice, health, youth and sports, education, and family and social policy. These protocols serve to introduce some angle of religion to the usual activities of these ministries. The rushed constitutional referendum of September 12, 2010, ballyhooed with new visual and verbal populist tools, promoted the AKP’s dismantling of the 1982 military constitution. The referendum included restructuring the judiciary but excluded other possibilities such as changing the articles on required religion and ethics courses in public schools and Diyanet. While some AKP parliamentarians shed tears in parliament for the victims of the 1980 coup (for politics of emotions, see the chapter by Aslan in this volume), saturating what should have been a space of reason and deliberation with emotional theater, a month before the referendum, in the city of Izmir, a local AKP group opposed building a statue of the famous socialist head of the municipality of Fatsa, who was tortured by the 1980 military government (for politics of memory, see the chapter by Bakıner in this volume).

130   Murat Akan The 2012 law of education undermined the union of education, perhaps the key institution of laiklik, by introducing “choice” and “guidance” at the end of the fourth and eight years, opening a path for İmam Hatip and professional secondary schooling. As a parliamentarian from the BDP underscored: “This proposal exalts [early] professional education and aims to raise a young, cheap, qualified, supplementary labor force for capital” (TBMM 2012). The law also introduced two new optional courses, one on the life of the Prophet and the other on the Koran. While the Kemalist military justified the required courses on the culture of religion and ethics in the 1982 constitution by arguing they covered the culture of religion; the AKP defended the new optional courses by pointing out that the existing required course was not religion but on the culture of religion; therefore, the new courses were not redundant. When the law passed parliament on March 30, Ankara’s streets filled with demonstrators against it and the police took many into custody. The parliamentary debates on the optional religion courses showed “that AKP parliamentarians argue more and more from the point of view of religion as an end in itself or as a means to some particular political goal; laicism is losing its place as the framer of the political field of discussion” (Akan 2017b, 211). AKP was not offering a new meaning of laiklik, it was just openly and directly asking for more state infrastructure for religion. On October 8, 2013, in the name of further democratization, the AKP allowed the wearing of Islamic headscarves in public institutions and eliminated the nationalist pledge recited daily in Turkey’s primary schools. The pledge was reinstituted in 2018 by the courts, but it still has not been put into practice. The Council of Ministers’ directive permitted state employees to wear the scarf, except the police, judges, and prosecutors, and the military (Official Gazette 2013b). Judges were granted permission in early 2015, after some disobeyed the directive and the High Council of the Judges and Prosecutors responded de jure that the directive leaves the matter to the specific regulations of each institution and that the regulations for judges do not prohibit the scarf. The veiling of police followed, after the failed July 2016 coup attempt, when the ministry of interior changed police regulations (Official Gazette 2016). The parliament and constitution were being bypassed by lower level and piecemeal legislation. And, Özyürek’s (2006) double movement of privatized republican symbols and publicized religious symbols was intensifying. The Alevi Workshops, the pilot project of the AKP’s Democratic Opening, preceded the 2010 referendum, the 2010 Diyanet law, and the 2012 education law, with big promises of parting with the law of majorities (for the Alevi minority in Turkey, see the chapter by Lord in this volume). The government for once was sitting for a dialogue with thirty-​six Alevi associations. However, none of the subsequent legislation parted from the law of majorities. While a wide range of Alevi organizations argued for neutrality in the institutional relation between state and religions from the premise of diversity, the records show strong paternalistic remarks from government representatives. The minister’s response to the collective refusal of almost all Alevi representatives to discuss the definition of Alevilik instead of institutions and individual rights summed up the AKP position:

Capturing Secularism in Turkey     131 But if you come up and say, “Let’s not talk about this. Then, as the person in charge here, I will also pose the question: “Why shouldn’t we talk? What is it that you do not want to talk about? What is being hidden? . . . an approach of the sort that only those things we like could be spoken is not correct . . . A self-​centered approach is not correct. If that is the case, then I represent the state. (Turkey State Ministry 2011, vol. 7, 43, 44, my italics)

This episode, underlined as the AKP’s will to democracy, was nothing more than the government’s attempt to translate demands against itself to policy for itself and therefore seek to enhance the boundaries of the state vis-​à-​vis civil society in the manner described by Antonio Gramsci (1971) in his Prison Notebooks, and it adds a new dimension to Cihan Tuğal’s (2009) discussion of Gramsci and the rise of the AKP. The CHP appealed the AKP’s 2012 education law but was refused. The Constitutional Court’s reason sealed a turn in the court’s history (Official Gazette 2013a). All prior decisions, at their core, guarded the normative superiority of separation and Europe as a reference point, but argued that Turkey had a different application of laiklik for historical and contextual reasons.3 This decision omitted this style of reasoning and instead parachuted the ideas of “two types of laiklik,” “social need” and “proportional equality”: According to rigid laiklik, religion only has a place in the individual conscience, and should not step out into societal and public space. On the other hand, the more flexible and freedom-​defending interpretation of laiklik stems from ascertaining that religion has a societal dimension besides its individual dimension . . . Although the constitution does not include an official religion, it does preconceive official mechanisms toward meeting the needs, such as belief, practice, and education, of the majority religion via constitutional article 136 [Diyanet]. . . . In conclusion, the constitution sees religious services as a social need and obliges the state to meet these needs . . . In the [CHP] petition for the case, it is claimed that constitutional article 10 on equality before the law has been violated, because the rule in question gives place to an optional course from which only members of one religion can benefit . . . The principle of equality protected in the constitution requires that similar rules are applied to those in a similar situation; different rules are applied to those in different situations. A law on the teaching of optional courses comprising knowledge on the religion of Islam’s—​of which the majority of society is a member of—​holy book Koran and the life of the Prophet does not mean that other holy books and the life of other prophets cannot be taught as optional courses. (Official Gazette 2013a, 65–​67)

In the name of a “flexible and freedom-​defending interpretation of laiklik,” the decision rested the scope of the state’s responsibility in providing infrastructure for its citizens on an idea of equality before the law, in proportion to numbers; that is, Turkey is a “Muslim majority” country and therefore the state can serve “Muslims” more than others. This penetration of the idea of the law of majorities into the logic of law marks a regression, because all the previous constitutional court decisions concerning laiklik

132   Murat Akan relied on arguments of exigencies rather than tinkering with the principle of equality before the law. Turkey’s regression is expressed most vividly with this idea of proportional equality, but also through the difference captured in speeches given by the president of the constitutional court in 1999 and then twelve years later. Whereas the 1999 president voiced a critique of Turkey’s major institutions, the 2011 president opened the year with the statement, “the Constitutional Court is not a place to trip and make fall those who represent the will of the people” (BirGün 2012). In 2018, the AKP’s inroads to the civil law were becoming evident, after giving Müftüs the authority to marry couples.

Aftermath of the 2016 Coup Attempt The authoritarian wave following the July 2016 coup in Turkey marks the end of the moderation and the multiple modernities-​secularisms paradigms. The passage to presidentialism, the crumbling of Turkey’s state tradition (Heper 1985) and its major republican institutions—​a demobilized parliament, subdued civil society, and co-​opted media; battered institutions of higher education; economic crisis; amalgamation of the party and the state—​mark the contemporary moment. Public debates on secularism from the previous two decades have receded; a major task of research to come is to explain this recession. I propose this hypothesis: a threshold has been passed vis-​à-​vis the regime. Whatever that threshold is, the past decade’s academic eagerness for simplistic typologies, which toe the line of rigid versus liberal secularism that never fit empirical reality, their lack of fit easily justified by Weberian “Ideal-​types,” will crumble under it. I hope that my assessment of Kemalist laicism and my focus on tendencies present in the early AKP and their later intensification has a chance to be part of the explanation for Turkey’s current moment. Kemalist laik institutions could not part with the premise of a “Muslim majority” country; whereas institutions of laïcité established in the Third French Republic relied on the victory of the premise of “diversity” over the premise of a “Catholic Majority” country. Kemalist laik institutions were radical in the style of their making but not necessarily in their content. They resembled the defeated institutional options of the Third French Republic, which I have labeled state-​civil religionist. This limitation also made them vulnerable to AKP politics of religion. Turkey’s state civil-​ religionist institutions nested by republicans could be easily embraced, bent, layered, redirected, widened or deepened to create a more religious society, or perhaps hatch something else.

Notes 1. I focus on their institutional design rather than their success. Mahmut Makal’s A Village in Anatolia [Bizim Köy] (1954) contains vivid accounts from the 1940s of the failures of the Kemalist-​Republican project of education. According to the 1935 Turkish census 81.3

Capturing Secularism in Turkey     133 percent of the population was illiterate (92 percent of women) and in the 1965 census so was still more than half of the population (53.7 percent, and 72.4 percent of women) (TUIK 2009: 19). 2. Author’s notes from the conference. 3. 1) Decision 53/​76 on October 21, 1971; 2) Decision 19/​48 on July 3, 1980; 3) Decision 2/​2 on October 25, 1983; 4) Decision 11/​26 on November 4, 1986; 5) Decision 1/​12 on March 7, 1989; 6) Decision 1998/​1 on January 16, 1998.

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Capturing Secularism in Turkey     137 Tezcür, Güneş Murat. 2010. Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey: The Paradox of Moderation. Austin: University of Texas Press. Tocqueville, Alexis. 1966. Democracy in America. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Toprak, Binnaz. 1981. Islam and Political Development in Turkey. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill. Toprak, Binnaz. 1988. “The State, Politics and Religion in Turkey.” In State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s, edited by Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin, 119–​136. New York: De Gruyter. Tuğal, Cihan. 2009. Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. TUIK. 2009. Statistical Indicators 1923–​2008. Ankara: Turkish Statistical Institute, Printing Division. Turam, Berna. 2007. Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Turkey State Ministry. 1945. Alevi Workshops. 7 vols. Ankara: Devlet Bakanlığı, 2011. Turkish Dictionary. Istanbul: Cumhuriyet Basımevi. Velidedeoğlu, Hıfzı Veldet. 1952. “Din, Halk ve Devlet” [Religion, People and the State]. Cumhuriyet, April 16. Velidedeoğlu, Hıfzı Veldet. 1972. Türkiye’ De Üç Devir Var. (There Are Three Epochs in Turkey). Istanbul: Sinan Yayınları. Yavuz, M. Hakan. 2009. Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yılmaz, Hakan. 1997. “Democratization from Above in Response to the International Context: Turkey, 1945–​1950,” New Perspectives on Turkey 17, no. 2 (Fall): 1–​37. Zürcher, Erik J. 1997. Turkey a Modern History. New York: I.B. Tauris.

Further Reading Akgönül, Samim, ed. 2008. Laïcité en débat: principes et representations en France et en Turquie. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg. Arat, Yeşim, and Şevket Pamuk. 2019. Turkey between Democracy and Authoritarianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Çarkoğlu, Ali, and Binnaz Toprak. 2006. Değişen Türkiye de Din, Toplum ve Siyaset. Istanbul: Tesev. Gülalp, Haldun. 1999. “The Poverty of Democracy in Turkey: The Refah Party Episode.” New Perspectives on Turkey 21, no. 2 (Fall): 35–​59. İlyasoğlu, Aynur. 1994. Örtülü Kimlik: İslamcı Kadın Kimliğinin Oluşum Öğeleri. İstanbul: Metis. Kandiyoti, Deniz. 2012. “The Travails of the Secular: Puzzle and Paradox in Turkey.” Economy and Society 41, no.4 (December): 513–​531. Mardin, Şerif. 1962. The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mardin, Şerif. 1964. Jön Türklerin Siyasi Fikirleri 1895–​1908. Istanbul: Iletişim. Mardin, Şerif. 1973. “Center-​Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” Daedalus 102, no. 1 (Winter): 169–​190. Mardin, Şerif. 2011. Türkiye, Islam ve Sekülarizm. Istanbul: Iletişim.

138   Murat Akan Mert, Nuray. 1994. Laiklik Tartışmasına Kavramsal Bir Bakış: Cumhuriyet Kurulurken Laik Düşünce. Istanbul: Bağlam Yayıncılık. Somer, Murat. 2011. “Does It Take Democrats to Democratize? Lessons From Islamic and Secular Elite Values in Turkey.” Comparative Political Studies 44, no. 5: 511–​545. Somer, Murat. 2019. “Turkish Secularism: Looking Forward and Beyond the West.” In Routledge Handbook on Turkish Politics, edited by Matthew Whiting and Alpaslan Özerdem, 37–​54. London: Routledge. White Jenny B. 2002. Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Yılmaz, Hakan, and Çağla E. Aykaç. 2012. Perceptions of Islam in Europe: Culture, Identity and the Muslim “Other.” New York: I.B. Tauris.

PA RT I I

P OL I T IC A L E C ON OM Y

Chapter 7

T HE P olitical E c onomy of T u rkey sinc e t h e E nd of World   Wa r  I I Şevket Pamuk

Ever since the term “political economy” began to be used in the eighteenth century, it has meant different things to different people (Caporaso and Levine 1992). It would be useful, therefore, to elaborate on the meaning of the term as it will be used here. In this chapter, “political economy” refers to the interaction between economic growth, the social actors, the state, and the global economic system in the context of developing countries. “Economic growth” refers to the increase in total output over time. Such growth is almost always uneven. In most developing countries, along with urbanization, the shares in total output and employment of the agricultural sector typically have declined, while those of the urban economy made up of the manufacturing and services sectors have increased since the end of the Second World War. The term “social actors” refers to interest groups and classes such as agricultural producers, workers, merchants, industrialists, and small businesses that are shaped by economic growth and structural transformation. These social actors try to protect and promote their own interests by influencing the direction of state policies and the nature of economic growth. The ability and capacity of these actors to unite, organize, and shape economic outcomes is always uneven and varies over time. In addition, international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and hegemonic states are important and can be at times critical actors that can impose powerful constraints on the strategies and policies of the states in developing countries. Periods of political and economic crises in developing countries often provide greater leverage to these international actors. Nonetheless, strategies and policies open to developing countries are not entirely determined by the external forces and institutions. There is some choice for developing states to develop their preferred policies (Richards and Waterbury 2008, 7–​43). Turkey is a large developing country which is not particularly rich in mineral resources or oil. Turkey has had many features in common with other developing

142   Şevket Pamuk countries. Like other developing countries, Turkey’s institutions and economy had their share of external influences. Free trade, Bretton Woods rules and institutions, and Washington Consensus principles have all played major roles in shaping Turkey’s economic institutions and policies since the nineteenth century. However, aside from a brief occupation of parts of the country after the First World War, Turkey has not experienced colonial rule. The area within the present borders of Turkey was part of a large, multiethnic empire until the end of the First World War, and modern Turkey emerged as one of the successor states after the end of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, Turkey’s institutions have not been subjected to wholesale change by an outside power. Formal institutional changes were introduced from within, mostly by its own governments and elites. Turkey’s political and economic institutions during the last two centuries were shaped by the interaction between these new institutions and those that already existed, including the Islamic-​Ottoman institutions of the earlier era (Pamuk 2018). This chapter shows that Turkey’s long-​term record in economic growth and human development has been close to world averages and a little above developing country averages. It also examines the interaction between economic growth, the leading social actors, the state, and the global economic system. A main argument of the chapter is that the difficulties Turkey experienced in establishing a pluralistic, open, and stable political system have prevented a stronger record of economic development since the end of the Second World War. Class cleavages have always mattered in Turkey, although their intensity has varied over time in both urban and rural areas. Equally important have been identity cleavages at both the societal and elite levels. Some of these cleavages date back to the beginnings of the secular modernization project in the nineteenth century. The rise of Kurdish nationalism in the second half of the twentieth century has added another dimension to them. Overall, the political role and influence of religion-​and ethnicity-​based movements and identity politics have been on the rise in many parts of the world including Turkey in recent decades. While the identity cleavages appear to be based on culture, they often overlap with competing economic interests between the different groups and their elites. Rulers, politicians, and other elites often use Islam and nationalism to aggravate the existing cleavages to gain support among the population. These strategies have made it more difficult for sustainable alliances and coalitions to emerge between the different elites. Groups that appear to have similar material or economic interests are often divided between secularists and Islamists or Turkish and Kurdish nationalists. Increasing political salience of cleavages also had negative consequences for state capacity and its ability to enforce the formal institutions and implement rules-​based economic policies. The recurring tensions between the competing elites have also made it difficult to maintain political stability. The frequent military coups during the decades after World War II and the recent slide to authoritarianism indicate that Turkey’s political system has not been able to manage these tensions well. Political order, which depends on the degree of understanding and consensus between different groups in society regarding basic rights and the behavior and limits of the state about the rules and their enforcement, is a necessary condition for not only political but also economic development.

THE Political Economy of Turkey since the End of World War II     143 The periods of political instability have had adverse consequences for economic development in both the short and the longer term. In the multi-​party era since the end of the Second World War, periods of political instability have often resulted in growing macroeconomic problems and lower rates of economic growth. Even more importantly, the cleavages between elites and the mixed outcomes associated with state interventionism made it more difficult to bring together the resources and skills of people from different backgrounds. Many individuals and firms thus found it more expedient to use their resources to stay close to, establish clientelistic relations, and seek favors from the government rather than invest in education, skills, and technology and pursue long-​ term gains in value added and productivity. The rest of the chapter consists of three sections. The next section will point to some of the key features of Turkey’s long-​term economic development from a global comparative perspective. The section following that will briefly identify the main actors including the international agencies, agricultural producers, workers, the private sector, the political parties, and the state in their historical context. The final section will examine the interaction between these actors and the unfolding of political economy in Turkey since the end of the Second World War.

Long-​Term Economic Growth and Human Development in Turkey Turkey has had many features in common with other developing countries during the last two centuries. Like other developing countries, Turkey’s institutions and economy had their share of external influences. Free trade during the nineteenth century, the Bretton Woods rules, institutions after the Second World War, and the Washington Consensus principles since 1980 have all played major roles in shaping Turkey’s economic institutions and policies. In fact, in each of the four historical eras during the last two centuries, Ottoman and Turkish governments have pursued economic policies that were consistent with strategies most commonly adopted by other developing states at the time. From the early nineteenth century until the First World War, free trade treaties kept the Ottoman economy open, and agriculture was the source of slow economic growth. From 1913 to 1950, interventionist policies—​most significantly protectionism—​generated some economic growth based on industrialization, but these gains were mostly reversed by the adverse impact of the two world wars. During the decades after the Second World War, protectionism continued, and domestic market-​oriented industrialization remained the basic economic strategy. After 1980, market-​oriented or neoliberal policies were embraced once again, and exports of manufactures emerged as an important source of economic growth. A brief review of Turkey’s long-​term record of economic growth and human development provides additional insights into its political economy. As summarized in Table 7.1,

144   Şevket Pamuk Table 7.1: Basic Economic and Social Indicators for Turkey, 1914–​2015 1914

1950

1980

2015

16.0

20.8

44.7

79.0

(Centers above 10,000/ Total population)

23

18

44

75

Share of agriculture in labor force (percent)

~75–​80

~75–​80

50

22

Share of agriculture in GDP (percent)

50

42

25

9

Share of industry in GDP (percent)

12

15

18

20

GDP per capita in 1990 US dollars

1,150

1,600

4,750

11,200

Life expectancy at birth (years)

33

44

59

75

Life expectancy at birth (years) (world)

33

51

65

72

Literacy rate (percent)

~12–​15

33

68

94

(M:46, W:19)

(M:80, W:55) (M:98, W:90)

Population (millions) Urbanization rate (percent)

Average years of schooling of adult population over age 15

~0.6

1.2

4.2

7.2

Average years of schooling of adult population (world)

1.8

3.2

5.3

8.0

Source: Pamuk (2018) .

gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the area within Turkey’s current borders, in 1990 US dollars and purchasing power parity–​adjusted, has increased approximately fifteen-​fold during the last two centuries, from $720 in 1820 to $1,150 in 1913 to $1,600 in 1950 and $11,200 in 2015. Long-​term rates of increase of GDP per capita in Turkey remained below 1 percent per year until 1950 and have risen to around 3 percent per year since 1950. Both the level and the growth rate of GDP per capita in Turkey have been close to but slightly above the averages for developing countries and close to but above the averages for the world during the last two centuries (Bolt and Van Zanden 2014; Pamuk 2018, 32–​36). Although economic growth in Turkey began in the early nineteenth century, the gap with developed countries widened significantly until World War I. The basic reason was the relatively rapid industrialization in western Europe and North America, while Turkey as well as other developing countries continued to specialize in agriculture. After the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of a new nation-​state, Turkey gained the right to establish its own tariffs. In response to the Great Depression and the collapse of agricultural prices in the 1930s, industrialization was embraced as

THE Political Economy of Turkey since the End of World War II     145 the new engine of economic growth, and protectionism was adopted as the key economic policy for this purpose. As urbanization and industrialization picked up after the end of the Second World War, the annual rate of increase of GDP per capita rose above 3 percent, and GDP per capita increased more than six-​fold between 1950 and 2015 (Table 7.1). Along with rural-​ to-​urban migration and the shift of the labor force to industry and services, average labor productivity began to grow more rapidly. While the share of agriculture in total employment declined from 75 to 80 percent in 1950 to 50 percent in 1980 to less than 20 percent in 2015, the share of the urban economy in employment increased from 20 to 25 percent in 1950 to more than 80 percent in 2015. The share of the urban economy in GDP also increased from about 55 percent in 1950 to 75 percent in 1980 and to 92 percent in 2015. Rates of growth of the manufacturing industry averaged more than 8 percent per year, and the share of manufacturing in total labor force edged upward between 1950 and 1980. However, the rate of growth of the manufacturing industry slowed down to about 5 percent per year, and its share in total employment stagnated, while the share of services in both employment and GDP has continued to rise since 1980 (Altuğ, Filiztekin, and Pamuk 2008). Along with urbanization, industrialization, and higher rates of economic growth after the Second World War, per capita income in Turkey rose from 26 percent of per capita income in western Europe and the United States in 1950 to 31 percent in 1980 and 43 percent in 2015. In other words, after falling significantly behind the developed countries during the nineteenth century and until 1950, Turkey has achieved some catch-​up since. Between 1950 and 1980, per capita income in Turkey increased at rates slightly higher than the population-​weighted averages for the developing countries of Asia, South America, and Africa. Turkey’s growth rates have continued to be higher than the averages for South America and Africa since 1980. However, the two large developing countries, China and India, and more generally East, Southeast, and most recently South Asian countries have experienced significantly higher rates of growth than Turkey since 1980. A small number of countries in southern Europe such as Italy and Spain and a few others in East Asia such as South Korea and Taiwan have produced “economic miracles” and been able to close the gap with developed countries since the end of the Second World War. During each of these catch-​up or convergence episodes, annual rates of increase in per capita incomes in these countries remained above 5 percent for a period of at least 20–​30 years. Turkey’s economic growth performance did not come close to the catch-​up performances exhibited by these more successful countries. The long-​term pattern of improvements in health and education in Turkey are correlated with, but not identical to, that in GDP per capita. Improvements in health and education in Turkey were also slow in the nineteenth century but picked up pace after the First World War and especially after the Second World War (Table 7.1). Life expectancy at birth in Turkey stood at 44 years in 1950. Together with higher rates of economic growth, it increased rapidly, by almost one year in every two years or by more than 30 years between 1950 and 2015. As a result, the gap with the developed countries in

146   Şevket Pamuk life expectancy at birth has closed significantly since the end of the Second World War for Turkey, as is the case for developing countries as a whole. Turkey’s experience with education shows a similar pattern of slow improvement during the nineteenth century and more rapid improvement during the twentieth century, especially since the end of the Second World War. The overall literacy rate stood at 33 percent in 1950 but rose to 68 percent in 1980 and 95 percent in 2015 (Table 7.1). Until the last decades of the twentieth century, women lagged well behind men in literacy and levels of education. In average years of schooling for the adult population over the age of 15, the basic education indicator for which data is available for other developing countries, Turkey has lagged behind not only the world averages but also the averages for developing countries with similar levels of GDP per capita. In 2015, average years of schooling for adults in Turkey was 7.2, lower than the world average of 8. One important cause of this poor performance has been the large and persistent gender inequalities (for gender politics, see the chapter by Arat in this volume). Another important reason for Turkey’s low rankings in education has been the large regional inequalities and the low levels of education, as well as health and per capita income, in the southeast region, where the majority of the Kurdish population live.

Actors This section offers an overview of the main international and domestic actors shaping Turkey’s political economy.

The Global Economic System and International Organizations The global economic system and the international organizations have played critical roles in shaping Turkey’s economic institutions and policies during the last two centuries. Ever since the beginnings of industrialization in Great Britain, access to new technology through international trade and investment has offered major opportunities to late industrializers such as Turkey (Allen 2011). At the same time, however, Turkey as well as the other developing countries have had to participate in a global economy whose institutions and rules were primarily shaped and enforced by the early industrialized states and more recently by international organizations. In addition, while these rules allowed some room for local initiative, Turkey’s politics and governments did not always handle relations with the global economy well, due to the weaknesses of its domestic institutions and persistent political instability. During the nineteenth century, the most important global institution for most developing economies was free trade. In order to secure European support for the empire,

THE Political Economy of Turkey since the End of World War II     147 the Ottoman state signed free trade treaties with the European powers in 1838, and these treaties remained in effect until 1929, which delayed industrialization by making it more difficult for domestic manufacturing activities to compete with imports. After the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of a new nation-​state after the First World War, Turkey gained the right to establish its own tariffs. Industrialization was embraced as the new engine of economic growth, and protectionism was adopted as the key economic policy during the 1930s. The Bretton Woods era after World War II allowed developing countries greater room to implement their own policies. As industrialization gained momentum in the 1970s, however, Turkey continued to remain inwardly oriented and could not take advantage of export markets for its manufactures because of its internal political divisions and economic policy mistakes. Similarly, while trade liberalization of the 1980s and the customs union with Europe in 1995 helped Turkey expand its exports, the decision to open the economy completely rather than selectively to capital flows in 1989 made it much more vulnerable to stop–​go cycles, periods of fast growth followed by stagnation and abrupt reversals in capital flows (for example, Öniş and Şenses 2007; Gemici 2012; Pamuk 2018). Turkey has frequently experienced periods of political and economic instability and crises since the transition to multi-​party electoral democracy following the end of the Second World War. While the states of developed countries and the international organizations, most notably the IMF, provided financial support to Turkey, they also had leverage to influence and shape Turkey’s economic institutions and economic policies during these crises. Governments in Turkey have signed large numbers of programs with the IMF since the end of the Second World War. Most importantly, the programs at the end of the 1950s, early 1980s, and early in the twenty-​first century led to major revisions and restructuring of Turkey’s economic institutions and policies. In each episode, the new policies and the performance of the economy had important consequences for domestic politics and were in turn influenced by political decisions. The cycles of domestic stability and instability not only determined the timing and extent of the new economic policies but also influenced the performance of the economy. In addition to the IMF, after Turkey signed a customs union agreement with the European Union in 1995 and Turkey’s candidacy for EU membership was official recognized in 1999, the European Union began to play some role in the shaping of Turkey’s economic institutions and policies in areas ranging from trade and agriculture to industrial standards. Along with the decline of the possibility of membership, however, the influence of the European Union in these areas also declined, especially after 2007 (Öniş and Bakır 2007).

Agricultural Producers The agricultural producers made up the largest group of voters in Turkey until the 1980s. While there are some large agricultural holdings, most of the people earning their livelihood in agriculture in Turkey are self-​employed men and women in the millions of small and medium-​sized family farms. With the shift to a multi-​party electoral system

148   Şevket Pamuk after the Second World War, the agricultural producers obtained significant political influence. As millions of the more commercialized agricultural producers began to vote for their pocketbook, they received a good deal of attention from the political parties. Governments developed large scale, multi-​crop programs to keep agricultural prices high and input prices low. These programs may not have contributed much to improving long-​term productivity, but they accelerated the incorporation of the rural population into the national market. As their numbers declined with the migration of the young to the urban areas, however, agricultural producers have lost a good deal of their political power in recent decades. In the new era since 1980, the decline in the share of the agricultural population combined with the adoption of neoliberal policies and pressure from international agencies such as the IMF led to the elimination of many of the government support programs for agriculture. Support programs for many commodities were largely discontinued, subsidies for agricultural inputs and credits were generally removed, most of the state agricultural enterprises were privatized, and the trade regime in agriculture was liberalized to a significant degree. This restructuring gained momentum after the economic crisis of 2001 with the enactment of an economic reform package with strong terms for further liberalization of the farming sector. In addition to the incentives offered by the IMF, Turkey’s candidacy for EU membership and its commitments for World Trade Organization membership played key roles in this shift. These changes also increased the power and profile of the large international companies in domestic markets (Aydin 2010; Keyder and Yenal 2011).

Workers During the early stages of industrialization in the first half of the twentieth century, the numbers of workers, especially those in large enterprises, remained low. Many of the urban workers maintained their ties to their villages. In addition, there were major legal restrictions on the ability of the labor unions to organize. With the transition to a multi-​party parliamentary system and regular competitive elections, urban workers began to gain some influence, but the power of the unions remained limited. It was the new legal framework provided by the 1961 Constitution and the new labor law in 1963 that facilitated the rise of labor unions. Until the 1980 military coup, at a time of rapid urbanization and industrialization, the labor movement gained strength and unions were able to organize large numbers of workers, especially in the leading urban centers, and wielded considerable power in the determination of working conditions, wages, and social security benefits. Wages, especially of unionized workers in large enterprises, increased significantly during this period (Berik and Bilginsoy 1996). However, the closure of the unions by the military government after the coup and the introduction of new laws that made it more difficult for workers to organize eroded the power of the unions. Nonetheless, months of demonstrations

THE Political Economy of Turkey since the End of World War II     149 and public marches across the country by large numbers of workers in the late 1980s and early 1990s played a key role in raising wages and improving working conditions after years of decline. The ideological divisions among labor unions and workers and government attempts to co-​opt some unions and exclude others have added to their difficulties and significantly limited their political role and influence since.

Private Sector During the Ottoman nineteenth century, the private sector in the urban areas remained weak, and the growing foreign trade sector was dominated by European companies and non-​Muslim Ottoman merchants. The urban elites that established the new nation-​ state after World War I pursued state interventionism to create a national economy that would be led by the Muslim private sector. As a result, large segments of the private sector in Turkey, especially the large businesses, have been historically dependent on governmental policies and favors. In addition, the private sector in Turkey has been hampered by divisions along the lines of large versus small, secular versus conservative, and the pursuit of more narrow interests by these divided groups. These divisions have often made it difficult for different groups to come together and negotiate and cooperate (Buğra 1994; Biddle and Milor 1997). The first voluntary organization of the private sector, consisting mostly of the owners and managers of the largest conglomerates, was established in 1971. TÜSİAD (Türk Sanayicileri ve İş İnsanları Derneği) was not able to shed its image as the club of the rich, however. It also lacked the capacity to design and enforce well-​defined rules of interaction with the public sector for its members. Members and their companies continued to engage in bilateral lobbying. Politicians and state elites often found it expedient to encourage and take advantage of these cleavages by playing one group against the other. In fact, rather than transparent channels and well-​defined rules, both the private sector and the politicians often preferred bilateral and opaque ties and particularistic relations. Along with rising political and social polarization, tensions inside the private sector have intensified in recent decades. Beginning in the 1990s, new employers’ associations like MÜSİAD (Müstakil Sanayici ve İşadamları Derneği) and later Türkiye İş Adamları ve Sanayiciler Konfederasyonu (closed in 2016) sought to play among conservative and smaller business groups the same role TÜSİAD had played as an umbrella organization for large-​scale business groups since the 1970s. MÜSİAD became increasingly powerful as its members gained the inside track on many government contracts, both national and local, after the Islamist AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) came to power in 2002. After the EU accession process ran into trouble and Turkey’s fragile political system became increasingly authoritarian during the later AKP years, few of the new or the old industrialists or other businessmen raised their voices in response (Buğra 1998; Pamuk 2008).

150   Şevket Pamuk

Political Parties In the multi-​party era that began after the Second World War, two center-​right parties, the Demokrat Parti and then the AP (Adalet Partisi), led ruling coalitions of market-​ oriented agricultural producers, urban middle classes, and urban businesses including the merchants and industrialists. Most of the Sunni religious networks also encouraged their followers to vote for the center-​right until the Islamist parties emerged in the 1970s. The secular, center-​left CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) was popular among some of the urban residents, state employees, and the Alevis, who were denigrated by the conservative Sunni majority and hence embraced CHP’s secularism (see the chapter by Lord in this volume). In addition, a growing numbers of workers, especially the unionized workers, began to vote for the CHP in the 1960s. Thanks to the charismatic leadership of Bülent Ecevit, the vote share of the CHP exceeded 40 percent in the 1977 national elections, a success not achieved by any center-​left party since then. Far-​right nationalist parties have been popular among the conservative voters in central Anatolia, especially among those not well integrated into the economic networks of the urban centers and among the youth (Keyder 1987, 141–​196; Zürcher 2004, 241–​277). The ANAP (Anavatan Partisi), founded and led by Turgut Özal after the military coup of 1980, emerged as the defender of the Washington Consensus economic policies in Turkey’s politics. The political restrictions imposed by the military regime and the IMF and the economic recovery during the 1980s paved the way for the rise of Özal’s ANAP. However, ANAP’s insistence on keeping the incomes of the agricultural producers and the workers low made the party increasingly unpopular in later years. The Islamist parties led by Necmettin Erbakan after 1970 began to compete for the conservative voters, especially for those going to the center-​right AP. These parties paid attention to their small and medium-​sized economic base, emphasized protectionism, and supported industrialization. They were explicitly against greater integration with the European Union and favored greater economic integration with the Islamic countries. Their economic platforms were often dismissed by the large industrialists and businessmen organized around TÜSİAD. The growth strategy based on exports of manufactures and the spread of industrialization after 1980 led to the rise of new and conservative business groups across Anatolia. After the economic crisis of 2001, the rise of the AKP, a new Islamist party that supported greater integration with the European Union, was enthusiastically supported by these emerging business groups as well as some of the members of TÜSİAD (Öniş 2004; Pamuk 2008).

State and State Interventionism Historical examples show that interventionism by a strong state can play an important role in supporting industrialization in developing countries. Most notably, states in East Asia which enjoyed considerable autonomy from social groups have played key roles

THE Political Economy of Turkey since the End of World War II     151 in industrialization since the end the Second World War (Wade 1990; Evans 1995). The existence of such examples does not mean, however, that state interventionism always produces results that favor economic development and industrialization. Until the AKP consolidated its rule around 2010, the state and the state elites in Turkey maintained some degree of autonomy from the social actors. The state elites, both military and civilian, tried to pursue policies independently of the various social groups and their elites. State interventionism has certainly contributed to economic growth in Turkey since the 1930s. The long-​term rates of economic growth close to the average for developing countries as a whole suggest, however, that state interventionism has had a mixed record in Turkey. State interventionism supported industrialization especially in the early stages, but it also served the interests of narrow groups reproducing existing inequalities and creating new inequalities. One important reason why government interventionism in Turkey, unlike the East Asian cases, produced mixed results was the weakness of the two main actors, the bureaucracy and the private sector, and their inability to cooperate. The absence of a cohesive and stable bureaucratic structure alongside a poorly organized private sector that was historically dependent on the public sector and political patronage have made it very difficult to develop regularized ties and institutions of consultation and cooperation between the private sector and the state. Instead of rules-​based interventionism, public–​private ties were pushed into ad hoc and personalized channels (Buğra 1994, 95–​ 168; Biddle and Milor 1997; Öniş and Şenses 2007). The persistence of elite cleavages, recurring periods of political instability, the persistence of informal networks favoring small groups, as well as the mixed outcomes associated with state interventionism have hobbled efforts to develop more complex organizations using advanced technologies (Taymaz and Voyvoda 2012). In addition, Turkey continues to lag behind world averages and the averages of countries with similar levels of GDP per capita in terms of years of schooling as well as skills acquired at different levels of schooling (see Table 7.1). The shortcomings of the education system have also made it more difficult to move up the ladder toward the production of goods with higher technology content and higher value added. Under these circumstances, individuals and firms often found it more expedient and easier to use their resources to stay close to and seek clientelistic favors from the government rather than invest in education, skills, and technology to improve competitiveness in domestic and international markets.

Turkey’s Political Economy since the End of the Second World War Formal economic institutions and economic policies in Turkey have experienced a great deal of change during the last two centuries. The formal economic institutions as

152   Şevket Pamuk well as economic policies adopted by the governments have been shaped by the prevailing global rules such as free trade, the Bretton Woods system, and the Washington Consensus principles. In addition, economic outcomes depended closely on the nature of the political order and the degree of cooperation and contestation between different societal groups and the elites. One of the more important characteristics of Turkey’s social structure has been the recurrence of economic and identity cleavages among its elites. In each period, the interests of the various elites as well as their alliances and cleavages were also influenced by the global institutions and the economic models and policies, whose parameters were set by the prevailing global system. Rulers, politicians, and other elites often used Islam as an instrument and exploited the existing societal tensions to seek their political agendas (for polarization in Turkey, see the chapter by Somer in this volume). These tensions also undermined the state capacity and its ability to enforce formal institutions. The result has often been political instability with significant implications for economic development (Pamuk 2018). During the nineteenth century, in exchange for the support of the European states for the Tanzimat reforms, the Ottoman government agreed to pursue laissez-​faire policies and kept the economy open to foreign trade and foreign investment. The economic institutions of this period were shaped to a large extent by the bargaining between the central government and the European states. In contrast, the urban notables and provincial elites who had gained power by keeping a large share of the tax revenues in the earlier centuries experienced a decline in their wealth as well as political power. As a result, the reforms were met with resentment by the Muslims who dominated the agricultural towns in the interior. Tensions between the secular center and the conservative periphery as well as between Muslims and non-​Muslims increased (Berkes 1964; Karpat 2001; Zürcher 2004). The end of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of a nation-​state under new leadership after the First World War led to important changes in political and economic institutions, but the tensions between the elites persisted. The War of Independence from 1920 to 1922 was supported by a broad coalition of the provincial notables, merchants, landowners, and religious leaders. After abolition of the sultanate and the caliphate and the proclamation of the republic, however, the new secular leadership established its hegemony over the opposition (for secularism in Turkey, see the chapter by Akan in this volume). The sporadic Kurdish uprisings in southeastern Turkey were also defeated. The new state elites responded to the Great Depression and the fall in agricultural prices by adopting protectionism and the state-​led industrialization strategy. Rising inequalities between the countryside and the urban areas strengthened the opposition and the popular embrace of Islam in response to the centralizing secular reforms.

Industrialization after the Second World War, 1950–​1980 Turkey’s formal political and economic institutions underwent major changes after the Second World War. With the transition to a multiparty parliamentary system and competitive elections, it became possible not only for large-​scale landowners, merchants,

THE Political Economy of Turkey since the End of World War II     153 and industrialists but also for the large numbers of small and medium-​sized agricultural producers and workers to make their political preferences heard. Along with rapid rural-​to-​urban migration, patronage and provincial and religious networks were transmitted to and flourished in the urban areas (see the chapter by Kalaycıoğlu in this volume). Informal networks based on Sunni religious communities played key roles in the rise of new political parties with Islamist roots in the 1970s. At the same time, however, Turkey’s political institutions failed to contain the continuing tensions between the left and right and between the secular and rising Islamist elites. Periods of political and economic instability were followed by a series of military coups, which ensured that the military closely controlled the political system until the 2010s, guarding secularism and restricting political freedoms including the rights of the Kurdish minority (Bozarslan 2008; Ahmad 2010). Turkey’s formal economic institutions during these decades were shaped by the interaction between the institutions of the Bretton Woods system at the global level and the shift toward a private sector–​led economy, which accompanied the transition to a multi-​ party political system, at the national level. As was the case in most developing countries at the time, its large domestic market remained strongly protected from international competition. While the public sector continued to play an important role in industrialization, the large conglomerates in the Istanbul region, represented by TÜSİAD after 1971, began to take control of the urban economy. The State Planning Organization (Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, DPT), which was established after a military coup in 1960, was a key economic organization in this period; and its evolution provides important insights into the trajectory of import substitution industrialization in Turkey until 1980. In its early years, the DPT was promoted by the military leadership and parts of the civilian bureaucracy as a strong, cohesive, and autonomous institution which would direct the industrialization process. This model contained elements drawn from the state-​led developmentalist practices that were being adopted in East Asia and elsewhere at the time. However, rather than focusing on heavy industry and advanced technology, the large-​scale private sector in Istanbul wanted to focus on durable consumer goods and car production for the domestic market, forming partnerships with multinational companies wherever convenient. As political power shifted back to the parliament and the civilian government toward the mid-​1960s, the conglomerates in Istanbul worked with politicians to weaken the DPT and reduce its autonomy. The DPT then evolved into a body that prioritized the short-​term goals of the private sector, distributing various subsidies, foreign exchange allocations, and other privileges to well-​connected firms and individuals (Milor 1990; Buğra 1994, 131–​56).

The Era of Neoliberal Policies and Globalization since 1980 Governments in Turkey have adopted neoliberal or market-​oriented economic policies and institutions in two cycles; the first began in 1980 and the second in 2001,

154   Şevket Pamuk both during periods of economic and political crises and with the input of IMF and other international agencies. In 1980, in the midst of a severe economic and political crisis and with the support of the IMF, the economic policies and institutions of the inward-​looking industrialization era began to be dismantled in favor of those associated with the Washington Consensus principles, most importantly trade and financial liberalization and privatization (see the chapter by Erensü and Madra in this volume). In 1989, the government lifted all restrictions on international capital flows. The customs union agreement signed with the European Union in 1995 supported the growth of exports of manufactures (Aricanli and Rodrik 1990; Rodrik 2011; Yılmaz 2011; Gemici 2012). The new economic policies and institutions that concerned relations with the global economy have remained mostly intact since 1980 and opened Turkey’s economy to greater integration with the world economy. In contrast, many of the new policies and institutions that concerned the workings of the domestic economy were later changed. In many of these latter areas, longer-​ term results turned out to be quite different from what the new economic policies and institutions were supposed to achieve. Perhaps the most important area where major differences emerged between what the new economic policies intended in theory and what actually happened in practice concerned the role of the state in the economy. In the interventionist model of the earlier era, the state had played a central role in the economy, allocating scarce resources such as foreign exchange and often deciding on the main beneficiaries. With the adoption of the Washington Consensus policies in 1980, the general expectation was that the role of the state in the economy would shrink and its old interventionist role would disappear. Under the new model, most of the measures of support for industrial activity including sector-​based policies were in fact scaled down and dismantled. Obstacles to foreign trade and controls over international movements of capital were lifted to a large extent. After four decades, however, the role of the state in the economy has remained strong. While some important changes occurred in the relationship between the state and the private sector, the government continued to have a great deal of power and discretion to decide the winners in the economy (Sönmez 2011; Buğra and Savaşkan 2014). After the military intervened in 1980, the new constitution it imposed brought fresh restrictions on basic freedoms and further boosted the power of the military. The rise of Kurdish insurgency and violent conflict in the mostly Kurdish southeast region also contributed to the political difficulties. By prohibiting prominent politicians of the earlier era from returning to politics until 1987, the military regime brought about the fragmentation of the party system and added to political instability. While the secular parties competed against each other, the Islamist party (Refah Partisi) organized more effectively and was more successful at providing services and economic benefits to lower-​income groups in the urban areas. The rise of the Islamist party to national power reached a new stage when it captured local governments in many of the large urban centers in the local elections in 1994 (Öniş 1997; Eligür 2010, 154–​81; see the chapter by Çınar in this volume).

THE Political Economy of Turkey since the End of World War II     155 Following a severe economic crisis, the AKP, a new party with Islamist origins, came to power in 2002. After a first term in which economic growth boosted its popularity, the AKP and its leader began to undermine the rule of law, making use of sham trials to move against the military and then eliminating the independence of the judiciary. They also exaggerated and exploited the tensions between the secular elites and the conservative Sunni population to create a top-​down presidential regime. Decades of economic growth and increases in per capita incomes were not sufficient to prevent the shift to an authoritarian regime (Arat and Pamuk 2019). To consolidate its power and create a new political order, the AKP systematically used the economy and the fiscal resources of the government. One of its key goals was to create a new stratum of conservative businessmen while reducing the influence of the secular business elites that had been favored in the previous era. Many laws were changed to make it easier for national and local governments to award contracts and transfer privatized state enterprises to conservative businessmen close to the party and its leader. Infrastructure investment, energy projects, and urban construction emerged as the most popular means for enriching the big business groups close to the government. Extensive networks of patronage relations characterized the relations between the government and the construction companies (Atiyas 2012; also see the chapter by Özkaynak, Turhan, and Aydın in this volume). The market-​oriented economic policies and institutions that were launched in 1980 had been intended to reduce the role of the state in the economy. More than three decades later, government interventionism and discretion, more than ever before, continued to decide the winners (Buğra and Savaşkan 2014, 109–​149). These political changes took place against a background of growing polarization between the secular elites and rising Islamist elites. Tensions inside the private sector intensified not only between politically connected big businesses and smaller companies but also between secular and conservative business elites. The use of religious community networks for economic purposes also gained strength after 1980 as local and national governments began to direct contracts to them. While the minority Alevi and Kurdish organizations and networks were often excluded, the Sunni networks were able to secure access to national as well as local governments. Their informal networks played crucial roles in the rise of the AKP. Once in power, the AKP supported the formalization of some of the religious networks with the establishment of their own holding companies involving large numbers of firms, banks, media companies, foundations, and even labor unions. Most powerful among these was the Gülen network, which remained the key ally of the AKP until a bitter fight for power broke out between them in 2013 and resulted in the dismantling of the Gülenists, especially after the failed coup attempt in July 2016 (Buğra and Savaşkan 2014, 109–​149; Çeviker Gürakar 2016). Preferential treatment from political parties in power toward selected individuals and firms and reciprocal support from the latter toward the political parties have always been common in Turkey and played key roles in the rise of many individuals, families, and business groups. In the AKP era, these mechanisms were used to create a new layer of conservative businessmen who would support the Islamist political

156   Şevket Pamuk project of the party and its leader. Moreover, because the party remained in power longer than any other party since the end of the Second World War and because it made efforts to change the legal framework for government–​private sector relations, the role of government in the rise of business groups and, in turn, favors from the business groups toward the party in power were much more extensive in the AKP era. With rising authoritarianism, the disappearance of the rule of law, the decline in the confidence of large segments of the private sector as well as international investors, and acceleration of capital flight and brain drain, economic difficulties deepened in the later AKP years.

Conclusion This chapter examined the interaction between economic growth, the leading social actors, the state, and the global economic system in the context of a developing country. Turkey’s long-​term record in economic growth and human development has been close to world averages and a little above developing country averages. I have argued that, as in many other developing countries, the main reason why Turkey has not been able to do better economically is the shortcomings of its political system. The difficulties Turkey experienced in establishing a pluralistic, open, and stable political system have often undermined its economic development since the end of the Second World War. While class cleavages have always mattered in Turkey, equally important have been identity cleavages at both the societal and elite levels. The role and influence of religion-​and ethnicity-​based movements and identity politics have been on the rise in Turkey in recent decades. Groups that appear to have similar economic interests are often divided between secularists and Islamists or Turkish and Kurdish nationalists. The cleavages also reduced state capacity and the state’s ability to enforce formal institutions and implement rules-​based economic policies. The tensions and cleavages between the various competing elites and recurring periods of political instability had adverse consequences for Turkey’s economic development, in both the short and the longer term. Political instability has often led to growing macroeconomic problems and lower rates of economic growth. Even more importantly, the cleavages between elites and the mixed outcomes associated with state interventionism have made it more difficult to bring together the resources and skills of people from different backgrounds. Many individuals and firms find it more expedient to use their resources to stay close to and seek favors from the government rather than invest in education, skills, and technology. The political and economic institutions in Turkey were not particularly strong in the earlier periods, but they have declined further during the later years of the AKP era. Rising authoritarianism and the disappearance of the rule of law have eroded the confidence of large segments of the private sector as well as the international investors.

THE Political Economy of Turkey since the End of World War II     157 Long-​term economic recovery will not be easy and will require far-​reaching institutional changes and democratization.

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Chapter 8

N eoliberal P ol i t i c s in Tu rk ey Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra

This chapter aims to trace the multiple trajectories of neoliberal politics in Turkey from 1980 onward. By neoliberal politics, we refer to two distinct yet interrelated phenomena. On the one hand, following the broadly accepted convention, we treat neoliberalism as a historically specific reaction formation against the economic and social dislocations generated by the crisis conjuncture of the 1970s (Boltanski and Chiapello 2007; Duménil and Lévy 2004; Harvey 2007; Huber 2013; Jessop 2002; Mitchell 2011; Tickell and Peck 1995). In response to the global crisis of the Fordist regime of capital accumulation, transnational capitalist classes and their political representatives undertook a number of decisive political interventions that dismantled the redistributionary and egalitarian features of the social compact across the globe. The Pinochet coup in September 1973 that cleared the path for Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” to re-​shape the Chilean economy through privatization, trade, and financial liberalization and labor market flexibilization, was an initial episode that ushered in historical neoliberalism in the semi-​periphery (Klein 2007; Valdés 1995). It was followed by disruptive episodes in the center: the Volcker Shock of 1980 when the US Federal Reserve hiked the federal funds rate in order to end the protracted stagflation of the 1970s, the firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in August 1981 by the then US president Ronald Reagan, and the violent breaking of the UK miners’ strike in 1984 by the then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher (Harvey 2007; Klein 2007; Peck and Tickell 2007). Sharing a common intellectual/​ideological background and compatible political motivations, a minimalist definition of neoliberalism is that it is a process entailing an increased dependence on market-​based or market-​like solutions on all fronts (Madra and Adaman 2014; Peck and Tickell 2002). Likewise, the processes of neoliberalization unfold unevenly across the globe along path-​dependent trajectories and hence are often qualified with phrases such as actually existing neoliberalism (Brenner and Theodore 2002), neoliberalism as exception (Ong 2006), and variegated neoliberalization (Brenner, Peck, and Theodore 2010).

160    Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra On the other hand, neoliberal politics involves processes of subjective transformation that operate through coercion (which may come in many forms, ranging from military-​led coups to union-​busting activities all the way to pushing indebtedness as a growth strategy) and consent (winning the hearts and minds, providing models of behavior, grafting itself to politics of identity). In contrast to historical neoliberalism, we would like to designate this latter set of social processes, to the extent that they pertain to a savoir faire, as neoliberalism as a governmental logic that enframes social conduct through dispositifs that expects and, if successful, elicits calculative (responding to economic incentives) and calculable (predictable) behavior from its citizen-​subjects (Foucault 2008; Larner 2003; Read 2009; Rose 1999).1 This alternative conceptualization, neoliberalism as a governmental logic, aims to insulate policymaking from democratic processes, either through an economization of the social domain conducted under the aegis of economists qua experts or through a depoliticization of the economic domain through restrictive constitutional frames or barriers. Both of these processes repeatedly unfolded in Turkey since the September 12, 1980, military coup that crushed the working-​class-​led popular opposition to push forward with the neoliberal economic restructuring program of January 24, 1980.2 Reading neoliberalism as a governmental logic also involves an analysis of neoliberal politics that accounts for its subjective hold among citizens that goes deeper than the behaviorist restructuring of the interface between the state and citizen subjects through the construct of homo economicus. Here, we need to turn our attention to the role ideology and social imaginaries play in organizing the affective economies of its subjects (Hall 1986; Hall and O’Shea 2013). An important aspect of neoliberal politics in Turkey has been how its adherents recast the terms of identity politics by mobilizing its various manifestations in ethnicity, in religion, in gender politics, and in youth cultures against the homogenizing policies of the hegemonic republicanism.3 Accordingly, instead of interpellating working class communities through their class position at the point of capitalist exploitation, the adherents of neoliberal politics in Turkey systematically interpellated its subjects as “middle class” consumers, or as families at the point of receiving social services. At a more fundamental level, neoliberal politics entails a desire to resolve problems that are social and political in nature through the (purportedly) universal logic of economics (and its promise of welfare), and at its best neoliberal politics promised such a resolution to Turkey’s deeply entrenched identitarian injuries and intractable social conflicts (ranging from the secular/​Islamist divide to the Kurdish question) through economic growth and development (Adaman and Akbulut 2021; Madra and Yılmaz 2019). Given these conceptual moves, the aim of this chapter is to put economic and sociological analyses of neoliberalism in dialogue with ethnographic and anthropological analyses of its political configurations, bringing them together in a systematic manner that reflects the cross-​disciplinary texture of a diverse literature, an attempt lacking in many accounts. The first two sections trace the two formative moments of neoliberal politics in Turkey as responses to the crisis conjunctures of the 1970s and 1990s. Our aim in these sections is to provide an account of neoliberal politics informed by class politics

Neoliberal Politics in Turkey    161 at the macro-​historical level. The subsequent two sections focus on the same historical periods at the level of micropolitics. They account for both the violence with which neoliberalization processes are enacted and the subjective processes through which neoliberalism mobilizes and harnesses economies of desire, while emphasizing the intertwined relation between the two. The final section returns to the macro-​historical level and offers critical reflections regarding the direction of the economic politics that is emerging as the institutional architecture of neoliberal governmentality is being dismantled under Erdoğan’s “new Turkey.”

Neoliberal Junta: Responding to the Crisis of the 1970s In Turkey, neoliberal politics took stage contemporaneously with the rest of the world, in the 1980s. Turkey’s economy had already been extensively integrated with world capitalism and in particular with the European economy in a “client” state status. Prior to the global crisis of the Fordist regime of accumulation as precipitated by the oil shock of 1974, Turkey was following the model of Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) coordinated by a developmental state with extensive involvement in the economy through state-​owned enterprises (SOEs) with the goal of cultivating a national bourgeois.4 In the 1950s and 1960s, ISI policies entailed supporting a domestic-​market oriented private sector by providing a stable and undervalued currency to facilitate the import of energy and industrial intermediary products, a protectionist trade policy to boost domestic consumption, and an extensive public sector to provide cheap inputs for capitalist enterprises. Especially after the 1960 coup, favorable labor laws nurtured the emerging national industrial proletariat employed in both SOEs and the private sector. Similarly, the developmental state protected its extensive rural population through a comprehensive policy regime composed of price subsidies and regulatory public institutions. In addition to its dependency on the international economy with respect to energy and intermediary products, Turkey’s economy was extensively integrated with the European economy as a net exporter of “guest-​workers” (for Turkish workers in Europe, see the chapter by Kılınç and Toktaş in this volume). This ISI regime of accumulation with “populist” characteristics gradually exhausted its capacity in the wake of skyrocketing energy costs in the mid-​1970s as the growing import bill exacerbated public sector indebtedness. There were also deeper and structural limitations to domestic-​market oriented regimes of accumulation. On one hand, the growing militancy of working class communities in both public and private sectors, became an important factor of concern for both small and medium-​sized provincial enterprises and the internationally linked, Istanbul-​based conglomerates (Ozan 2012). On the other hand, the economic restructuring program of January 24, 1980, revealed the emergence of intra-​class conflicts within the

162    Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra capitalist classes.5 In particular, TÜSİAD (Türk Sanayiciler ve İş Adamları Derneği, e. 1971), representing big businesses, had already begun to articulate a vision that demanded a major rehaul of the energy, communications, and transportation infrastructures, a reorganization of the financial system, and an overall reorientation of economic policy toward an export-​oriented regime of accumulation by the late 1970s (Yaman-​Öztürk and Ercan 2009, 75). While sharing a common stance against labor militancy, TÜSİAD, on one hand, and the incipient domestic market oriented so called “Anatolian” bourgeoisie, represented in part by the officially sanctioned TOBB (Türkiye Odalar ve Borsalar Birliği, e. 1950), on the other, were developing divergent priorities (Ozan 2012). The latter, with narrower profit margins and a significant dependency on imported energy and intermediate products, was much more vulnerable to the intensifying class struggle and currency devaluations. In contrast, the former was ready for a major currency devaluation and had already moved significantly toward combining industrial and financial functions under a holding company structure (see also, Buğra 1994). To summarize, the crisis of the 1970s had three distinctive characteristics. First, it was conditioned by the international crisis conjuncture. The exhaustion of global Fordism based on cheap oil imposed an external limit on the populist developmentalist state in Turkey. Second, it was a crisis of the particular regime of accumulation of the developmentalist state that became unable to contain the contradictions between opposing social classes. Finally, it was a crisis of the developmentalist state to contain and manage the competitive dynamics and divergent needs among the different segments of capitalist classes. Neoliberal politics was a reaction formation response to this threefold crisis and restructured the field by reorganizing Turkey’s relation to international capital (through trade and financial liberalization, through eliminating a range of protectionist price subsidies), by suppressing the insurgent labor movement (through criminalization of unions, deregulation of labor markets, and privatization of the SOEs) and by tilting the balance of power toward the financially powerful Istanbul bourgeoisie at the expense of small-​and middle-​scale provincial enterprises. After the 1980 coup, the neoliberal program was implemented with some considerable vigor. Turgut Özal, who prepared the January 24, 1980, program as the then prime ministry undersecretary, became the deputy prime minister responsible for economic affairs in the junta cabinet and the prime minister after the 1983 general elections. Özal, operating in an environment forcefully depoliticized by the junta regime, centralized the decision-​making process and aimed to bypass all oversight by the other branches of the government (i.e., legislative and judicial). The Özal government began the process of governing through governmental decrees, extra-​budgetary funds, and a number of new “undersecretariats” that “aimed at reconstituting public institutions, reorganizing administrative procedures and changing laws regarding civil servants” (Bekmen 2014, 52). Consequently, the foundational moment of neoliberal politics in Turkey was characterized by an accentuated centralism regarding economic issues in a highly authoritarian post-​coup context.

Neoliberal Politics in Turkey    163

Neoliberal Triumphalism: Responding to the Crisis of the 1990s If the 1980s were marked by neoliberal centralism enacted under the premiership of Özal, the 1990s began with a populist pushback against the neoliberal agenda. Populism, defined as a distributional compromise between the working and capitalist classes leveraged through parliamentary democracy, determined the shape of the regime of accumulation in the post-​Second World War period until the 1970s (Boratav 1983). But it was indeed a compromised form of populism that entailed redistribution programs mainly financed through foreign debt and without any significant corporate taxation. The 1980s, in part due to suppression of the popular opposition and in part due to the ideological appeal of Özal’s “liberalization” discourse among the middle and aspiring lower-​middle classes, saw the suspension of populist pressure on the economy. From 1977 to 1988 real wages reduced by a third; agricultural prices in comparison to industrial prices lost value; the share of public expenditure on services in GDP declined by a third; and the burden of taxation was shifted to consumers with the implementation of regressive indirect value added taxes (Boratav 2008). While Özal became president in 1989, his party ANAP (Anavatan Partisi) lost power in the 1991 elections due to a populist pushback. Under a coalition government between the center-​right DYP (Doğru Yol Partisi) and the center-​left SHP (Sosyaldemokrat Halkçı Parti), real wages were restored, the condition of the agricultural sector improved, and public expenditures restored. The coalition government turned to international capital markets to finance its expansionary policies (Köymen 2007). Yet international market conditions in the 1990s were significantly different. In contrast to the long-​term, low interest rate, “patient” loans of the 1950s and 1960s, the international loans of the 1990s were short term and involved high interests. Consequently, Turkey’s adventure with debt-​financed populism was characterized by a deteriorating spiral. Private banks in Turkey, using the foreign capital that they borrowed in international financial markets, were purchasing high interest bearing government bonds and were gaining windfall arbitrage profits by exploiting the return differentials. This hot money trap turned the banking sector into a speculative enterprise that propelled massive public sector indebtedness. Not surprisingly, the return of populism quickly generated a series of major economic crises, first in 1994, then in 2000, and finally in 2001; each time around with a different coalition government at the helm, heading to the IMF for yet another stabilization program. The crisis of the 1990s, like the crisis of the 1970s, was conditioned by the international context characterized by the Washington Consensus forged and promulgated by the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, US Treasury, and US Federal Reserve, with its emphasis on monetary restraint, fiscal austerity, privatization, and trade and financial liberalization.6 The attempts to expand redistributionary policies not only increased the public debt but also led to further curtailing of the fiscal capacities of subsequent

164    Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra governments. Meanwhile, the decade was also characterized by the protracted development of the export-​oriented sector that was offset by the growth of energy and intermediary product imports, leading to a structural trade deficit (Yaman-​Öztürk and Ercan 2009). Contradictions and competitive dynamics among the different fractions of capitalist classes were intensifying as export-​oriented but cash-​strapped emergent bourgeoisie, celebrated as the Anatolian Tigers and represented by the culturally conservative MÜSİAD (Müstakil Sanayici ve İşadamları Derneği, e. 1990), were increasingly challenging big bourgeoisie represented by TÜSİAD. Meanwhile, the rise of Islamist and Kurdish movements began to threaten the very core of the republican secular and nationalist regime. On one hand, political Islam, led mainly by RP (Refah Partisi), achieved significant appeal among the working classes around an Islamist program (Tuğal, 2009; see the chapter by Çınar in this volume). On the other hand, the Kurdish freedom movement, led by Abdullah Öcalan’s PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan), was not only waging a guerrilla movement against the Turkish state but also, through legal political parties, beginning to interpellate ever increasing sectors of Kurdish population toward a political, cultural, and economic de-​colonization program—​even if the latter does not necessarily entail national independence (Yörük 2014). By the end of the decade, Islamists were suppressed by the republican secular establishment led by the military in February 1997 and the PKK leader Öcalan was captured with the help of US intelligence in February 1999. Yet the Turkish state was already at the limits of its capacity to hold its ground in the face of the contradictions already unleashed by these centrifugal forces. The massive earthquake in the Marmara region in August 1999 shook the republic in more ways than one, paving the way to the 2001 crisis. The 2001 crisis, the worst in post–​Second World War Turkish history, led to a complete collapse of the banking sector. Kemal Derviş, a high-​ranking Turkish bureaucrat from the World Bank, was invited by then Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit to oversee the implementation of a comprehensive IMF-​sanctioned standard neoliberal stabilization, reform, and structural adjustment program. In terms of stabilization, the Derviş program entailed a combination of contractionary monetary policy with high interest rates and prudent fiscal policy aimed at public debt reduction. In terms of institutional reform, it entailed a thoroughgoing rehauling of the banking sector and the establishment of independent regulatory boards (e.g., Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency—​ BDDK; Information and Communication Technologies Authority—​ BTK; Energy Market Regulatory Authority—​ EPDK; Public Procurement Authority—​ KİK) that aimed not only to eliminate corruption but also to insulate the economy from the discretionary interventions of populist governments (Sönmez 2011). The entire program was based on reconfiguring the regime of accumulation around an export-​led growth strategy in favor of the “dynamic” segments of the corporate sector that would be internationally competitive and engage in global collaborations. Finally, in terms of structural adjustment, the program required the privatization of public assets and commons, the elimination of agricultural subsidies, the promotion of subcontracting in the public sector, and the reduction of informality in the economy.7

Neoliberal Politics in Turkey    165 The Derviş program marks the second coming of neoliberal politics in Turkey. In contrast to the neoliberalism of the 1980s, it sought legitimacy not only through a technocratic discourse but more importantly through the popular support it garnered after it was adopted by the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi), which came to power in the 2002 elections. The AKP was formed by a group of former RP members and led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. After establishing AKP in 2001, Erdoğan and his friends embraced a pro-​market, pro-​West stance that did not only promise to deliver conservative working class communities to the fold of neoliberal globalism but also aimed to repair intraclass conflicts between the economically liberal but culturally conservative emergent bourgeoisie and the republican and secular big bourgeoisie (Boratav 2016; Mutman 2015). AKP became the main undertaker of a much sought after hegemonic project that would properly install neoliberal politics in Turkey. One remarkable difference between the 1990s and the 2000s is the gradual transfer of foreign debt from the public sector to the private sector (comprising both the corporate sector and households). By keeping intact the regulatory architecture of the financial sector established in the aftermath of the 2001 crisis and by achieving primary surplus (net of debt servicing) in a sustained manner until the 2008 global financial crisis, AKP was able to improve the country’s credit ratings and to attract historically unprecedented levels of long-​term foreign direct investment (reaching a record 19 billion US$ in 2007).8 Taking the form of a number of high-​profile mergers and acquisitions in the newly restructured banking sector, this inflow created the conditions for a dramatic expansion of credit, in particular in the areas of credit cards, consumer credits, and mortgages (Güngen 2017; Karahanoğulları 2012). The latter stream of injection boosted the construction sector that undergirded a steady growth performance through the triumphant 2000s (Gürkaynak and Sayek-​Böke 2013). Even though Turkey’s highly regulated financial sector was able to quickly bounce back from the 2008 global crisis, the global economic context was significantly more volatile during the 2010s and capital inflows increasingly took the form of short-​term portfolio investment. AKP, under the banner of “financial inclusion,” preferred to rely on a credit-​financed form of Keynesian demand management (a novel combination of neoliberalism and populism) to maintain the country’s high GDP growth rates (Akçay 2018; Güngen 2017). This strategy only increased the country’s dependency on energy and intermediate products and continued to fuel its trade deficit. In the second half of the decade, as the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank began to taper off their policies of quantitative easing and the global liquidity with high risk-​preferences began to ebb away, the AKP’s honeymoon with global finance capital began to sour (Madra and Yılmaz 2019). On one hand, the need to roll the foreign debt meant that interest rates had to remain high enough to attract foreign capital that was becoming increasingly more fickle. On the other hand, the need to maintain the electoral support keeping Erdoğan in power meant that the credit-​financed, domestic, demand-​led growth had to be kept running on steam. The late 2010s can be characterized as the gradual dissolution of the hegemonic project of neoliberal populism from one spasm to another. Starting

166    Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra with calling the shots on the policies of the Central Bank (TCMB), Erdoğan gradually dismantled the neoliberal regulatory architecture, paving the way for an inchoate and personalistic but ultimately dirigiste presidential system that would eventually be established after a highly controversial constitutional referendum in 2017 (Bargu 2018; Ertekin 2019). We now turn our attention to the sources of the recent authoritarian thrust of the Turkish state throughout the nearly four decades long adventure of neoliberal politics in Turkey and the subjective conditions of neoliberal politics during those decades.

Forcing Neoliberalism: Coercion, Violence, and Authoritarianism Neoliberal reforms can hardly be introduced without use of force; and their survival depends on the normalization of structural as well as physical violence that they inflict upon certain populations. Elaborating on neoliberal violence Naomi Klein (2007) likens the unleashing of neoliberal reforms to the progression of military campaigns. She argues that to push through policies that cannot be pushed otherwise, what is needed is a powerful initial shock of cataclysmic proportions that shakes the very foundations of a society, disorients the functioning of communities, and ruptures collective narratives and ways of knowing. The disorientation of the original shock makes room for the economic shock treatment of neoliberal reforms, often accompanied by a third shock, the detention, arrest, and torturing of the bodies of those who dare to oppose. To better understand the longevity and resilience of neoliberal restructuring in Turkey, this section highlights different shades and modalities of coercion and violence as they materialize in the restructuring of the urban landscape, the implementation of energy policy, the government of the poor, and the reproduction of patriarchy. The highly coercive imposition of neoliberalism in Turkey conforms conspicuously to the model. The implementation of the radically anti-​labor, neoliberal program of January 1980 that entailed the rolling back of the welfare state was an arduous task given the power of labor unions and leftist popular mobilization (for welfare politics in Turkey, see the chapter by Yörük in this volume). In fact, it was only achieved thanks to a brutal military coup that effectively suppressed the opposition by shutting down political parties, labor unions, and associations, suspending rights and liberties including workplace strikes and public demonstrations, and locking up thousands of dissidents and left-​wing activists. While the military regime gradually lost its grasp on society, neoliberalism proved to be more resilient. Similarly, the actual seismic shock of the devastating 1999 earthquake and the social anxiety that followed it were harnessed as energy to usher a second coming of neoliberal policies. It was the AKP that most effectively capitalized on the earthquake anxiety by focusing on the urban land market. Starting from the mid-​2000s, one of the main pillars

Neoliberal Politics in Turkey    167 of AKP’s fınance-​led, construction-​based growth regime (Adaman et al. 2014) has been the so-​called urban transformation projects through which informally developed inner-​city gecekondu neighborhoods are incorporated into a formal housing market via public-​private partnerships (Karaman 2013; Kuyucu and Ünsal 2010). Gecekondu settlements make up a significant chunk of the country’s urban fabric and their “illegality” was, for decades, pragmatically ignored thanks to populist urban policies and party competition (Kayasü and Yeşilkul 2014). Throughout the 2000s, however, a new legal framework9 empowered local governments to team up with private contractors and the powerful Mass Housing Administration (TOKİ) and rebuild major cities, including formerly protected historic and cultural conversation areas, a process Lovering and Türkmen (2011) label “bulldozer neoliberalism” (see also Eder 2015). The urban transformation model reached its full potential in 2012 when the government passed a massively controversial law called the Transformation of Areas under Disaster Risk (Law no. 6306). Enacted to ease and speed up the progression of urban transformation, the law granted the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization the authority to declare entire neighborhoods as risk zones and thus forcefully initiate their reconstruction. It soon became clear that the risk zones declared by the ministry and subjected to renewal, for the most part, do not overlap with seismic microzonation maps and scientific risk assessment studies conducted for Istanbul (Adanalı 2013; Angell 2014). The lack of transparency in risk zone decisions and the government’s insistence on wholesale renewal of neighborhoods suggested that concerns with a future earthquake were simply a pretext for the urban transformation drive. In fact, renewals also brought about a demographic upscaling in formerly middle class urban quarters. Long-​ time residents were no longer allowed, or could not afford, to live in their gentrified neighborhoods, making the drive a large-​scale land and wealth transfer (Kuyucu and Ünsal 2010). If earthquake anxiety was the pretext for large-​scale land transfers in the urban setting, its equivalent in the countryside was the goal of energy independence (Atasoy 2017; for environmental politics, see the chapter by Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel in this volume). As the energy sector grew at an unprecedented race under AKP by almost tripling the install capacity in electricity production from 2002 to 2017, rural landscapes were rapidly and widely expropriated and converted into new energy geographies (Erensü 2018a). Behind this rapid expansion was a series of deregulations pertaining to the governance of energy infrastructures and natural resources, as well as land appropriation procedures.10 While the opening up of the energy sector was one of the first neoliberal reforms of the early 1980s, privatization of energy production was successfully stalled by labor unions and the judiciary, a resistance contributing to the stagnation of neoliberalization throughout the 1990s. The AKP government made energy a critical pillar of the neoliberal comeback in the 2000s, by privatizing public energy facilities and distributing hundreds of new production licenses (Erensü 2018b; see the chapter by Özkaynak, Turhan, and Aydın in this volume). To overcome popular resistance against land grabs by private energy companies, the government utilized a draconian war-​time eminent domain measure called Urgent Expropriation (Acele Kamulaştırma).

168    Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra Legitimized through the country’s chronic energy deficit, this extraordinary measure enabled the government to expropriate land to be leased out to private entities building power plants. The government issued hundreds of urgent expropriation decisions, that accelerated the already unfolding exodus from agriculture due to disappearing subsidies and services (Aysu 2015; Çalışkan and Adaman 2010; İslamoğlu, 2017; Kayaalp, 2014; Öztürk et al, 2014; also see Karataşlı and Kumral, 2019).11 The 2014 Soma Disaster, which took 301 lives in a coal mine accident in Eastern Turkey, tragically illustrated a different face of violent dispossession. Self-​sustaining farmers were turned into underpaid and disposable manual workers as prosperous olive groves were turned into mining fields and coal-​power plants (Adaman, Arsel, and Akbulut 2019) Approving the link between violence and neoliberal deregulation, the force of urgent expropriation was later used to rebuild and tame the insurgent Kurdish cities as the intense clashes between Turkish security forces and the PKK damaged and destroyed large swaths of neighborhoods in 2016. Marketization of urban and rural livelihoods and expropriation of smallholder land and property exemplify the unfolding of neoliberalism through force and coercion, but they are by no means the only forms in which neoliberalism and violence are enmeshed. Neoliberalism also stirs various forms of violence, such as domestic, intra-​ communal, class-​based, or ethnic. Writing on Cambodia, Simon Springer (2016) argues that neoliberal violence is rooted in a process of othering in which neoliberalization is promoted as a “civilizing enterprise” whereas opposition or a choice to remain outside of it are discarded as “savagery” (155). Springer’s interpretation resonates most in the poor neighborhoods of Turkish metropoles where working class Kurds and Alevis are being systematically criminalized and targeted in their everyday encounter with the police (Gönen 2016; Gönen and Yonucu 2011; Yonucu, 2008). This marginalization of the urban poor and minorities is rooted, on the one hand, in their incongruence with—​ and sometimes outright defiance of—​neoliberal norms and on the other, their mere occupancy in the yet-​to-​be-​transformed prime locations of major metropoles (Borsuk and Eroğlu 2020). In this sense, neoliberal governmentality, while claiming to celebrate identity politics, agitates and makes use of nationalistic and sectarian repressive practices that have a long history in Turkey. Violence can also be read as a precautionary response to social insecurities triggered by neoliberalization; particularly when a punitive penal system or market solutions or increasingly both replace the benevolent face of the welfare state (Wacquant 2009). In places where the withdrawal of public services is so drastic and the state fails to compensate for the failures and injustices in neoliberalism, citizens may resort to flexible approaches to crime and punishment including lynchings (Goldstein 2005). In such occurrences of neoliberal violence, poor Kurdish migrants, seasonal, and rural workers were routinely lynched by mobs across western provinces in the 2000s. Gambetti (2013) suggests that neoliberalism is prone to vigilante violence not only because it stirs up social and economic insecurities but also because it turns ordinary people into willing executors of the state, as the disappearance of the welfare regime blurs the boundary between political and civil society.

Neoliberal Politics in Turkey    169 The void left behind by the disappearance of social programs explains the link between neoliberalization and the revival of patriarchal violence, evident in the staggering fourteen-​fold increase in the murder rate of women between 2002 and 2009 (Kandiyoti 2016). Despite the public outcry, the number of women killed by men has continued to increase steadily in recent years from 328 women in 2016 to 474 in 2019.12 Many scholars draw attention to how the welfare system void is filled by a renewed emphasis on family and faith-​based organizations that flourished under the AKP (Acar and Altunok 2013; Atalay 2019; Coşar and Yeğenoğlu 2012; Kandiyoti 2016; Korkman 2015; Yazıcı 2012). Coupled with the crisis of masculinity and a precarious and underpaying work climate, “the marriage of neoliberalism and neoconservative familism,” as Kandiyoti (2016) argues, called for a new patriarchal revival in which violence against women is normalized (also see Acar and Altunok 2013). This new form of familism recognizes women primarily in their motherhood role as they procreate, care for, and consume for the family. Particularly evident in Erdoğan’s pronatalism reflected in public speeches scolding families to bear at least three children, gender politics is a realm where the boundary between the coercive and desiring aspects of AKP neoliberalism becomes most porous. (For gender politics in Turkey, see the chapter by Arat in this volume.)

Becoming Neoliberal: Subjects, Consent, and Desires While neoliberalization operates through and fosters violence in myriad ways, it does not solely impose itself by force. Leaders who often enjoy popular support present neoliberal policies as practical and reasonable. Despite being bearers of a class-​based project and benefitting, first and foremost, the capitalist classes, neoliberal solutions actually resonate with different segments of society, including the working class (Hall 1986; Hall and O’Shea 2013). While often studied as an economic and political model, neoliberalization casts a large shadow over the social, cultural, and personal realms, and as David Harvey (2007) admits, it gets “incorporated into the common-​sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world” (3). Despite this observation, the dynamics through which neoliberalism struck a common chord within Turkish society grabs less critical attention. In dialogue with both Gramscian and Foucauldian approaches to neoliberalism, we believe that neoliberal hegemony is not only simply enforced from outside or above; it is also performed from below in everyday encounters and mundane practices (Ekers and Loftus 2008; Foucault 2008; Larner 2000; Peet 2002). How ordinary citizens learn and adopt the logic of market rationality and normalize its seepage not only into social services but also into personal beliefs, attitudes, and preferences is crucial to understanding the hegemonic maintenance of neoliberalization, if not its origin. We are, therefore, simultaneously interested in two different yet related processes of expansion of the neoliberal realm of

170    Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra influence. The first one pertains to the conditions under which people give their consent to neoliberalization and render it a central part of their common sense (Hall 1986). Far from being a deceptive process generating false consciousness, neoliberalism often has the ability to actively connect to, or even blend into and work with, the elements of the host culture in establishing its hegemony (Brown 2006; Ekers and Loftus 2008). The second process speaks to neoliberalism as a form of rationality to govern not only the field of economy but all aspects of life (Dardot and Laval 2018; Lemke, 2002; Read, 2009). The neoliberalism-​as-​governmental-​rationality perspective argues that citizens actively refashion themselves in the image of neoliberalism and thus work on new subjectivities. Human capital becomes the fundamental stage of neoliberal rule, targeting the creation of what Foucault (2008) calls the homo economicus whose ultimate mission is to become the entrepreneur of the self. The first destination of inquiry into this emerging governmentality in Turkey ought to be Turgut Özal who self-​consciously promoted his administration as the catalyst of a fundamental change in public mentality (zihniyet değişikliği) that goes beyond the scope of specific reforms and policies (Akdoğan 2014). This change in mentality, which he himself personally exemplified in his flamboyant attitude, in contrast to the cautiously uptight republican bureaucratic tradition, included discursive elements such as openness, flexibility, individuality, entrepreneurial spirit, and spontaneity. When Özal was asked how state employees are supposed to fare with the limited income that they earn, he simply responded “my employees know their way about” (benim memurum işini bilir). While the phrase was understood as a carte blanche for petty corruption, it can also be read as a call for an emerging neoliberal citizen who is self-​reliant and resourceful and also able to take initiative (Gambetti 2007).13 In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this new subject was personified best in two sets of figures: the so-​called princes of Özal, the US-​trained high-​level appointee bureaucrats overseeing public banks and enterprises, and the virtual-​exporter, a new breed of businessmen who reap the benefits of neoliberalization thanks to the “dazzling array of [export] subsidies” and often exploit them by over-​invoicing (Rodrik 1990). The self-​reliant entrepreneurial subject captured the public imaginary even more emphatically in the mid-​2000s, during the second, and more resounding, coming of neoliberalism paralleling AKP’s rise to power. In sharp contrast to previous Islamist parties, AKP enthusiastically embraced globalization, liberal democracy, and the market economy as well Turkey’s EU membership (Atasoy 2009; Tuğal 2009). AKP rebranded itself as liberal-​conservative and even became an observing member of the Christian Democratic alliance of the European Parliament (Akdoğan 2006). Researchers and journalists celebrated the rapprochement between political Islam and global capitalism (European Stability Institute 2005; Yankaya 2014) and probed whether “the Turkish model,” that is the “marriage of formal democracy, free market capitalism and (a toned down) conservative Islam,” could be emulated by other nations throughout the region (Tuğal 2016). The new success stories of neoliberalization, according to these narratives, were hard-​working, export-​oriented entrepreneurs who pursue integration with global markets as pious Muslims, or as Atia (2012) calls it, pious neoliberals. In these depictions,

Neoliberal Politics in Turkey    171 these Calvinist Muslims were not only models to be emulated but also a testament to the reach of neoliberalism and its transformative power in trickling down wealth to distant geographies (see Bilefsky 2006). The so-​called Turkish model epithet was wholeheartedly embraced by the Turkish political Islamists. If this “entrepreneurial Islam” (Adaş 2006) grabbed the attention of international think-​tanks and the media, the increasingly conspicuous consumption habits of a burgeoning conservative middle class fascinated the cultural anthropologists and geographers. In their mostly ethnographic examinations of pious fashion, researchers discussed the inadvertent role of capitalism in the cultural politics of Islam under the conditions of neoliberalization. These include a wide array of conservative products and performances mostly pertaining to the veiling market and femininity (Gökarıksel 2009; Gökarıksel and Mitchell 2005; Kılıçbay and Binark 2002; Kömeçoğlu 2009; Navaro-​Yashin 2002; Şehlikoğlu 2015), but also cafes and hotels exclusively catering for devout Muslims (Şehlikoğlu and Karataş 2016) and religious middle-​class masculinity (Akçaoğlu 2018), as well as neo-​Ottomanism (Ergin and Karakaya 2017; Karakaya, 2020, family-​friendly broadcasting (Kocamaner 2017), urbanism, and architecture (Batuman 2013; 2017). Accordingly, pious fashion helps its followers seek public roles and visibility while embracing differentiated Muslimhood positionalities and accumulating much sought after cultural and social capital through consumption. Simultaneously, mainstreaming of religious symbols, tastes, and practices in urban design, commerce, and entertainment encourages the arrival of neoliberal conservative consumer subjects as well as conservative capitalist ventures. This new market of religious habits and images also provides a new field for status and distinction among conservative Muslims based on class and consumption patterns. While neoliberal refashioning of the devout Muslim comes at the expense of the oppositional character of Islamism, which Tuğal (2009) defines as absorption of the challenge of Islamism into capitalism, it also relinquishes the long-​suppressed desires of difference, prosperity, grandeur, choice, and status. While the burgeoning conservative middle class has been critical to the encroachment of neoliberalism further into the social fabric under AKP, it was certainly not the sole front. Opening up of previously publicly owned social services to private entities not only led to wealth transfer and problems of uneven access, but also facilitated the linking of citizens from different socio-​economic backgrounds more tightly to neoliberalization. As citizens got accustomed to making critical life choices by personally navigating the variety of options offered by burgeoning private hospitals, schools, and universities, a number of key public policy fields have come to be understood as private and personal matters. This radical shift has transformed some key trenches of welfare state and citizenship, most remarkably refashioning health (Terzioğlu 2016) and education (Günel 2009) as personal realms through which individuals enhance their human capital. Allocation of public resources to benefit the spread of private hospitals and schools, however, went hand in hand with populist public investments such as new universities and the introduction of the highly popular Universal Health Insurance (Balta 2013). Privatization of welfare services, therefore, simultaneously shut down opportunities while generating new ones in radically different ways.

172    Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra Therefore, it should be noted that neoliberalism’s violence and allure are not necessarily mutually exclusive (Erensü and Alemdaroğlu 2018). While, for example, urban transformation projects tend to push the urban poor into chronic indebtedness, displacement, unemployment, and lack of home ownership (Borsuk and Eroğlu 2020; Güney 2019), some gecekondu residents still perceive urban transformation as a gamble worth taking toward self-​improvement (Erman and Hatipoğlu 2017; Hatipoğlu 2017).14 In fact, encouraging entrepreneurial attitudes among the disadvantaged, particularly poor women, runs deep in AKP’s neoliberal social policy, as women are deemed better suited to upholding conservative family values (Altan-​Olcay 2014). As the new actors of welfare provisions, AKP municipalities and Islamic charities played a crucial role in directing aid to disadvantaged households through women and defining the contours of poverty alleviation and citizenship (Buğra 2007). While AKP’s aid machinery and emphasis on voluntary giving and charity (sadaka) were positively labeled as attempts at “social neoliberalism” (Dorlach 2015; Öniş 2012) and “neoliberalism with a human face” (Bozkurt 2013), these mostly haphazard and non-​transparent cash transfers expect political loyalty in return and marginalize rights-​based demands (Bozkurt 2013; Doğan 2016; Eder 2010).

W(h)ither Neoliberalism? The Neomercantilist Turn and Rise of Corporate Nationalism Erdoğan’s trajectory, from being the foremost representative of pro-​globalization, neoliberal-​friendly political Islam to being one of the prominent examples of the new and growing crop of corporatist nativist authoritarian leaders, provides a good case study for tracking the prospects of neoliberal politics across the globe after the 2007–​2008 global financial crash and the subsequent Great Recession (Bruff 2014).15 In the decade following the crash, even though neoliberal politics continued as the hegemonic discourse framing policymaking through a pervasive language of “austerity,” a number of geopolitical developments began to shore up post-​neoliberal forces and dynamics. The revitalization of nation-​states, such as Brazil, India, China, and Russia (BRIC), as key geopolitical actors, already gaining traction prior to the crash, became a much more accentuated phenomenon for two reasons. First, to end the Great Recession, the advanced capitalist nation-​states had to rely on unprecedented government interventions in their national economies (taking the form of corporate bailouts, fiscal stimulus packets, and liquidity injections). More recently, the electoral gains of right-​wing populist leaders changed the dynamics of politics in many countries. A key moment was Donald Trump winning the US presidential election as an anti-​globalization and xenophobic populist candidate. In a world with growing middle classes, whose growing consumption needs and desires are being increasingly constrained by limited energy and

Neoliberal Politics in Turkey    173 mineral resources while contributing to global warming, securing and organizing for strategic resources emerges as a key logistical and geopolitical problem that can only be tackled by nation-​states, even though their operations and functionality remain enmeshed within a space complexly overdetermined by multinational capital, global finance, and other institutional actors and social forces (Madra and Özselçuk 2019; Mezzadra and Neilson 2013). Ironically, Turkey was able to quickly bounce back from the 2008 crash because the liquidity injected by the US Federal Reserve swiftly flooded global financial markets in search of high returns. Turkey, with its then well-​regulated financial markets, became an attractive destination for this predominantly short-​term capital inflow channeled into consumption credits and into the housing market through mortgages as well as financing a whole range of energy-​related projects. This configuration, by sustaining high growth rates throughout the first half of the 2010s, not only served to embolden the AKP government against its internal foes but also provided it a platform to project regional power to the Middle East shaken by the Arab uprisings (Birdal 2014). By this point, the capitalist classes were divided along three representative associations: TÜSİAD, representing the secular and dynamic big bourgeoisie; MÜSİAD, representing the devout and pro-​AKP bourgeoisie; and TUSKON (Türkiye İş Adamları ve Sanayiciler Konfederasyonu, e. 2005), representing a wide network of small and middle-​scale business persons and industrialists associated with the cleric Fettulah Gülen, an erstwhile ally of AKP transformed into a fatal enemy after 2013. The first group, sometimes designated as the Istanbul bourgeoisie, to the extent that it had the capacity to compete in international markets and was in control of large sections of finance capital in the country, entered the 2010s with relative autonomy in relation to the AKP government (Gültekin-​Karataş 2009). The second group, capable of competing in export markets, has gained increasing access to financial capital under AKP rule (Tanyılmaz 2015). And the third group had the inestimable advantage of being a part of a broader, closely knit national and international network (facilitated through the Gülen School system) that permeated the entire state bureaucracy, including the judicial system as well as the security apparatus (Ertekin 2011; Tuğal 2016). In this context, Erdoğan’s drive toward a personalistic presidential system is an overdetermined outcome of international, regional, inter-​class, and intra-​class forces. If the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank’s post-​2008 liquidity injection into emerging markets emboldened Erdoğan as a regional power, the rise of the BRIC countries and the weakening of US global hegemony provided AKP greater flexibility in dealing with Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, the criminalization of the Kurdish movement’s democratic demands for autonomy became a foil for the increased securitization of political life in Turkey by 2015. And again as the victories he won in his intra-​state battles, with first the republican elites (through the Ergenekon Trials) and then with the Gülenist network (which reached its apex at the aborted coup of July 15, 2016), provided Erdoğan immense control of the state apparatus, the constitutional system of checks and balances broke down and the institutional quality of the

174    Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra bureaucracy and regulatory bodies declined (Acemoğlu and Üçer 2019), and political debate was often reduced to conspiracy discourses (see the chapter by Göknar in this volume). Increasingly intolerant toward all sorts of political opposition, the personalistic Erdoğan regime began to hit certain structural constraints. As the institutional architecture of capitalism in Turkey began to crumble, Turkey’s access to international capital flows became increasingly limited, fickle, and expensive. Its recalcitrant energy dependence and the highly debt-​leveraged structure of its private sector made Erdoğan’s grandiose claims for political and economic independence increasingly costly for the country’s highly dependent and internationally integrated economy. Addressing the hearts and minds of the public, Erdoğan’s neo-​mercantilist response to this crisis was captured by the nativist slogan yerli ve milli (authentic and national) and involved three components (Madra and Yılmaz 2019). The first was to gain complete control of the financial resources of the country not only by tightening his control over the TCMB but also by creating a sovereign wealth fund (Turkey Wealth Fund, e. 2016) that gathered all the valuable public assets (including prominent public banks, SOEs, and treasury shares of publicly traded companies such as Turkish Airlines). This was a direct intervention into the intra-​class battles among the different factions of capitalist classes. By 2017, under conditions of a state of emergency following the aborted coup, the Gülen-​affiliated capitalist sector (represented by TUSKON) had largely been liquidated and its assets confiscated. By becoming a major player and de facto rule-​ maker in the financial sector, the Erdoğan regime sought to limit the power of the dynamic and independent sectors of the capitalist classes, in particular, the secular Istanbul bourgeoisie, while claiming that big businesses were the main beneficiary of the state of emergency under which all labor actions were banned.16 The second component of Erdoğan’s response was to shift the focus of the economy from the housing sector (now over-​leveraged and incapable of being an engine of economic growth) to the armaments industry, in line with the increased and direct involvement of the Turkish Armed Forces in conflicts on foreign soil (Iraq, Syria, Qatar, and Libya). Erdoğan’s interventions in the armaments industry entailed its reorganization by choosing the winners and creating a portfolio of capitalists loyal to his regime (Yılmaz and Madra 2019).17 And finally, the third component, again in line with its nativist and expansionist policies, is to continue pursuing energy independence. In addition to already pervasive ecologically costly energy and mining investments, this new era is marked by an increased militarization of energy politics, not only in Syria and Libya but also in the Eastern Mediterranean over off-​shore gas and oil reserves. While this neomercantilist corporate nationalism is still in the making, it already reverberates in everyday life, calling forth new subject positions and enticing social and political fantasies. One of the defining features of this era has been the rise of anti-​globalist as well as anti-​West sentiments fueled in reaction to the government’s downgrading of ties with its former partners across the North Atlantic Alliance. The rapid devaluation of the Turkish currency in summer 2018 and the accompanying US sanctions imposed on the country solidified an image of the messianic leadership of

Neoliberal Politics in Turkey    175 Erdoğan fighting against a foreign-​led financial onslaught. To counter the economic downturn, the government has resorted to a series of populist mass mobilization campaigns in which individuals, associations, and companies are urged to willy-​nilly exchange foreign currency for Turkish lira, commit to buy/​ sell made-​ in-​ Turkey products, and contribute to donation campaigns, a government-​led SARS-​Cov-​2 relief fundraising. Even the Ponzi scheme peddlers have adjusted to the rise of yerli ve milli (authentic and national) capitalist mobilization evident in the patriotic rhetoric of the Çiftlik Bank (Farm Bank) venture, which swiftly bilked hundreds of millions of US dollars from around 80,000 Turkish citizens with promises of national development as well as personal wealth (Tremblay, 2018). Post-​truth politics of economic warfare and military campaigns in northern Syria, dovetailing with the pivot towards the armaments industry, have been boosted through cultural production, particularly through government sponsored historical dramas for television often glorifying death for the nation (Carney 2018). The never-​ending mass-​mobilization campaigns accompanied by a ferocious crack down on civil liberties as well as the lockdown of political dissidents amounts to an ongoing state of emergency and diminishing social trust (Küçük and Türkmen 2020). In an interesting twist of fate, the adventure of neoliberal politics in Turkey began with a military coup and a state of emergency and today, if it is coming to an end, it is happening in a de facto state of emergency where President Erdoğan exerts unprecedented levels of executive power. Yet his refashioning of the Turkish state as a corporation where his presidency functions as the seat of a chief executive officer (CEO) could also be construed as the apotheosis of the ultimate neoliberal dream: the complete submission of the state to the rule of markets—​with the proviso that we recognize that the structure of this market is one of oligopoly.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Güneş Murat Tezcür for his patient and meticulous editorial work as well as Fikret Adaman, Önsel Bayralı, Orkun Doğan, Aslı İkizoğlu Erensü and Can Evren for their careful reading, comments, and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes 1. Michel Foucault’s (2008) discussion of neoliberalism as a governmentality focuses on the governance of citizen subjects through the interface of homo economicus, through economic incentives. See also, Gordon (1991), Lemke (2002), Brown (2006, 2015), Madra and Adaman (2010, 2014, 2018). 2. Scholarly work on the trajectory of neoliberalism in Turkey includes, but is not limited to Ercan 2002; Öniş 2004; Keyman and Koyuncu 2005; Aydın 2005; Boratav and Yeldan 2006; Yalman 2008; Akça 2014; Bekmen 2014; Yalman 2016; Balkan, Balkan, and Öncü 2015; Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel 2017.

176    Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra 3. For studies that investigate how neoliberal politics reconfigures meanings and practices in the domains of popular culture and intimacy, see Özbay, Terzioğlu, and Yasin (2011) and Özbay et al (2016). 4. For alternative accounts, see, Boratav (2008); Gülalp (1987, 1993); Keyder (1987). 5. The program included several dire measures—​even to the surprise of the IMF and the World Bank pressuring for an economic reform—​such as devaluation of the Turkish Lira against the US Dollar, lifting barriers against imports, termination of government subsidies, and wage suppression (Boratav 1990). 6. For a defense of the Washington Consensus, see Williamson (1993). For a critical account, see Chang and Grable (2014). 7. While significant inroads have been achieved in the first three areas since 2001, the efforts to reduce the level of informality had limited success. As of 2017, the share of informal activities remained slightly above a quarter of the total value added, above any of Turkey’s peers in the periphery of Europe (OECD 2018). Informality in labor markets, along with an increased reliance on subcontracting in the public sector, contributes to the precarization of the conditions of employment—​a hallmark of neoliberal politics. In particular, when combined with the impact of economic migration induced by neoliberal agricultural reforms, the informality in urban labor markets functions as a regulator to keep the wage-​ bill down, in particular for small-​and medium-​sized firms even when they themselves do not participate in the shadow economy. For the neoliberal transformation of agriculture, see Çalışkan and Adaman (2010). 8. Data is retrieved from TCMB, Electronic Data Delivery System, https://​evds2.tcmb.gov.tr/​ index.php. 9. The relevant laws include the 2004 Municipalities Law, 2004 Metropolitan Municipalities Law, 2003 Tourism Encouragement Law (no. 4957), and 2005 Preservation by Renovation and Utilization by Revitalization of Deteriorated Immovable Historical and Cultural Properties (Law no. 5366). 10. These reforms include, but are not limited to, the 1999 constitutional amendment (Article 47) that allowed privatization of public facilities and resources, enactment of the 2001 Energy Markets Regulatory Law (Law no. 4638), and the 2003 Water Usage Rights Bylaw (no. 25150) (Erensü 2017). 11. The urgent expropriation decisions, which required the approval of all members of the cabinet, have been made by the president himself since the constitutional referendum of April 2017. 12. We Will Stop Femicide Platform, http://​kadincinayetlerinidurduracagiz.net/​veriler/​2890/​ 2019-​report-​of-​we-​will-​end-​femicide-​platform. 13. In this regard, more than being a subversion of the rule of law, this invitation to “corruption” functions as a mode of subjectivity that sustains the neoliberal order and its injunction to become an entrepreneur. The theme of the natural entrepreneurial spirit of the poor and how it is stifled by the bureaucratic regulations of the developmental state is a very prominent one among neoliberal economists (Mitchell 2005). 14. On the other hand, urban transformation has benefitted most the privileged, particularly the upper-​middle-​class Istanbulites living in high-​land-​value districts of the city that are in fact more resistant to earthquakes (Bayurgil 2019). 15. For the most recent examinations of Turkey, see Adaman and Akbulut (2021), Küçük and Özselçuk (2019), Madra and Yılmaz (2019), and Tansel (2018, 2019).

Neoliberal Politics in Turkey    177 16. “Turkey’s Erdogan Says Emergency Rule Good for Economy as Stops Terrorism, Strikes.” Reuters, April 21, 2018. https://​www.reuters.com/​article/​us-​turkey-​security-​erdogan/​ turkeys-​erdogan-​says-​emergency-​rule-​good-​for-​economy-​as-​stops-​terrorism-​strikes-​ idUSKBN1HS0G4. 17. Once again, these apparently corruptive activities indicate a breakdown of the regulatory architecture that was supposed to secure the competitive framework of the market structure. Yet, if viewed from a different perspective, the same activities can be seen not only as processes of politicization of economics (corruption) but also as economization of politics, where political power (centralization) and economic power (oligopolistic behavior) tangentially merge and mutually reinforce each other.

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Chapter 9

The P olitics of W e l fa re in Tu rk ey Erdem Yörük

The welfare state in Turkey, with its long history tracing back to the nineteenth century poor relief structures in the Ottoman Empire, has been shaped by both intra-​elite political struggles and conflict between these elites and popular groups. In this chapter, I focus on the politics of the transformation of Turkish welfare state since the 1960s. This transformation can be characterized by two general trends: (1) an overall expansion of welfare provision in terms of coverage and expenditures; (2) a shift in the main criterion of welfare provision from employment status to income level. My analysis shows that political competition among elites and government strategies to contain social unrest have contributed to this transformation, as the locus of grassroots political mobilization has shifted from formal to informal working classes and from Turks to Kurds. This chapter offers a reinterpretation of recent transformations characterizing the Turkish welfare regime. A common perception among welfare scholars is that the welfare systems in many countries as well as in Turkey have largely retrenched in the post-​ 1980 neoliberal era (Dorlach 2019; Elveren 2008; Korpi and Palme 2003). However, as opposed to this common perception, Turkish welfare system expenditures as percentage of gross domestic product have increased from 2.2 percent in 1980 to 12.5 percent in 2016 (OECD 2019). Hence, it is more accurate to state that, rather than retrenchment, the Turkish welfare system has undergone a transformation from employment-​based social security policies to income-​based social assistance policies during the last four decades. The welfare state has also expanded in total budget and coverage (Buğra and Keyder 2006; Göçmen 2014; Yörük 2012b). This development has essentially involved a change in the eligibility criterion for welfare provision. Under employment-​based social security policies, the welfare system provides benefits and social protection to formally employed people and their dependents. The level of protection and benefits depends on beneficiaries’ type of employment—​private sector, public sector, or self-​employed. Under income-​based social assistance policies, the income level of citizens becomes the main criterion, regardless of their employment status. If a citizen’s household income is

188   Erdem Yörük determined through a means test to be lower than a certain poverty threshold, then the citizen is identified as poor and eligible for certain welfare benefits, such as social assistance and free healthcare. Until the 1990s, the logic of welfare provision in Turkey was primarily based on providing formally employed workers and their families with social insurance for pensions and healthcare (Grütjen 2008). This system excluded from any benefits the majority of the population employed in the informal rural and urban economies. In contrast, since the 1990s, income level has increasingly emerged as a criterion as important as employment status in welfare provision. Means-​tested social assistance programs, designed to provide the informal poor with in-​kind or cash transfers as well as free healthcare, have rapidly expanded (Buğra and Keyder 2006; Elveren 2008; Günal 2008). These programs have come with declines in welfare generosity for the formal sectors, as the necessary labor tenure entitling a worker to a pension has been significantly increased and eligibility conditions have been tightened (Cosar and Yegenoglu 2009). Thus, the Turkish welfare system, once based only on employment status, has expanded into a system with close-​to-​ universal coverage, based partially on employment status and partially on income level. A satisfactory explanation of why and how the Turkish welfare state expanded during a period of neoliberalism requires an analytical focus on the rivalries between mainstream parties and the impact of grassroots politics. In addition, I analyze the political mechanisms that mediate and transform economic and demographic pressures into social policies. These mechanisms involve conflicts among competing mainstream and non-​mainstream political actors. My analysis reveals that political efforts to contain the political radicalization of the informal proletariat and to mobilize its electoral support have driven the expansion of social assistance policies as well as determined how benefits are distributed.1 The rapid welfare state expansion during the rule of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—​AKP) is very much related to the party’s attempts to contain the radicalism of the Kurdish poor and garner the popular support of poor masses in general. While the Kurdish poor emerged as the main grassroots threat for governments in the neoliberal period, this double logic of political containment and mobilization has generally characterized the patterns of welfare system changes in all periods since the rise of modern welfare provision in Turkey: different classes or ethnic groups being contained and mobilized by successive governments.

An Overview of the General Political Dynamics of Welfare Policy Changes since the 1960s The shift in Turkish welfare policies has occurred in parallel with a macro-​level shift in economic policies in the post-​1980 era, similar to many other developing countries. After the 1980s, the national developmentalist economy of the post-​war period, which

The Politics of Welfare in Turkey    189 was based on import-​substitutionist industrialization (ISI), was replaced by an economic system focused on exports and guided by a neoliberal economic policy (Keyder 2004; Yeldan 2006). ISI policies started with the military coup in 1960, supported by the United States, which aimed at generating a national bourgeoisie and a working class, whose relations would be regulated under the Keynesian logic of the 1962 constitution. This developmentalist system created an extensive employment-​based welfare system that gave many rights to formal sector workers. However, the military coup in 1980, also strongly supported by the United States, was followed by a rapid succession of neoliberal policies that opened Turkish markets to global economic flows and re-​structured capital-​labor relations in favor of the bourgeoisie. During the 1960s and 1970s, employment-​based social security policies were politically linked to the ISI development model, which was part of the US hegemonic project for middle-​income countries in the Cold War. This hegemonic project entailed a corporatist system based on the provision of extensive welfare benefits for formal sector workers, which would help contain the socialist threat. At the same time, this strategy provided a structural bargaining power to the formal proletariat. The rise of a radical socialist movement in Turkey later mobilized this structural bargaining power into associational bargaining power and labor militancy.2 The governments of the 1970s attempted to contain this threat by further increasing the levels of welfare benefits (old age, sickness, etc.), union rights, and real wages (Koç 2003; Yeldan 2006). Meanwhile, the intense left-​right party competition necessitated the mobilization of working class support through further welfare provision. The Justice Party (Adalet Partisi—​AP) and Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi—​CHP) of the 1970s engaged in a fierce political competition and provided welfare concessions when they took part in government. Therefore, this double exigency, political competition and social unrest, made governments expand social welfare significantly to include large sectors of formal working classes. An ultimate solution to the “problem of working classes” was the employment of fierce state repression. The 1980 military coup eliminated the political competition and socialist mobilization that, during the 1970s, gave the formal proletariat a bargaining power, which was intolerable for the elites. In this political context of state repression, neoliberal policies, including employment-​based welfare cuts, wage reductions, and anti-​union legislation were accomplished with minimal resistance from the workers, a situation that lasted until the late 1980s. Yet, workers still kept their structural bargaining power because the workplace and labor market conditions did not change dramatically. Political competition among center-​left and center-​right parties re-​emerged by the end of the 1980s, providing workers with renewed populist political support and facilitating the rise of militant labor unrest in the early 1990s. At the same time, Kurdish unrest escalated rapidly, especially with the rise of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) insurgency, and subsequent governments had to give simultaneous welfare concessions to industrial workers and poor Kurds. The fact that the nationwide Green Card program was launched in the Kurdish region is a powerful example of this pattern. By the 2010s, Kurds in general still continued to be disproportionally targeted in social assistance programs,

190   Erdem Yörük which cannot be explained by higher poverty among the Kurds. Disproportional targeting occurs both on a geographical basis, whereby the Kurdish populated regions received higher levels of social assistance compared to their poverty level; and on an individual basis, whereby individual Kurds are much more likely to benefit from social assistance programs controlling for poverty and other socio-​economic factors that would determine eligibility (Yörük 2012b). The coincidence of unrest emanating from Kurdish informal and formal proletarians fueled the parallel expansion of employment-​based and income-​based benefits in the first half of the 1990s—​a pattern that went against the neoliberal trend. As seen in Figure 9.1, Turkish welfare state expenditures have significantly increased in the neoliberal era, starting with the late 1980s. During periods of political contention, such as the early and mid-​1990s and the early 2000s, welfare expenditures have expanded even more rapidly. In the years following 1980 and 1997, political threats associated with social mobilizations were relatively contained. The 1980 coup curtailed the socialist mobilization of the 1970s, and the 1997 coup temporarily halted the Islamist mobilization. However, there was a difference between these two periods following the military interventions. On the one hand, the 1980 coup completely stifled both social unrest and political competition. Hence, social expenditures remained minimal until the wave of labor unrest and intense party competition that characterized the early 1990s. On the other hand, the 1997 military intervention weakened the radical Islamist mobilization, however, the removal of the Welfare Party from the government paved the way for escalated political competition among center-​right and center-​left parties and a period of fragile coalition governments. Hence, while the threat of social unrest diminished (hence the need for political containment), the intensity of political competition increased (hence the need for popular support). As a result, between 1997 and 2001, social expenditures as percentage of GDP rapidly increased from 4.8 percent to 8.1 percent 14. 10.5 7. 3.5 0.

1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016

Figure 9.1:  Turkish total public social expenditures as percent of GDP (1980–​2016). Social expenditures in the OECD database include “old age, survivors, incapacity-​related benefits, health, family, active labor market programs, unemployment, housing, and other social policy areas.” Source: Data from OECD Social Expenditure Database (2019).

The Politics of Welfare in Turkey    191 during the DSP-​MHP-​ANAP coalition government. Only after the 2001 financial crisis did the government implement very radical neoliberal policies, which eventually led to the huge defeat of all three coalition parties in the 2002 elections. During the early and mid-​1990s, welfare provision and material benefits for workers remained higher than a neoliberal transformation would entail, because political competition in an environment of weak and fragmented parties and rising social mobilization fostered populist policies. At the same time, an increase in social assistance policies was a response to the emerging political power of the informal proletariat. In addition, Islamic radicalization of the informal proletariat was largely based on the provision of social assistance through municipalities run by the Islamist party of the time. Following a severe economic crisis in 2001, the neoliberal welfare transformation was finally accomplished. This transformation entailed a significant reduction in employment-​based social security policies and a rapid expansion of income-​based social assistance policies. While the formal proletariat was shrunken in size and power, the informal proletariat has grown in number as a result of a rapid exodus of rural immigrants to the cities. The main sources of this migration were the exhaustion of agricultural income opportunities and the internal displacement of the Kurds (Ayata and Yükseker 2005; Buğra and Keyder 2003). Thus, the rural-​to-​urban migration in the neoliberal era was a push migration, driving the migrants into a highly informal economy. This growing informal proletariat has been partly mobilized into radicalism by the Islamist movement in the 1990s and primarily by the Kurdish movement in the 2000s, leading to the expansion of social assistance benefits that target these groups, especially under the AKP rule. In the following sections, I focus on the details of the political dynamics that shape welfare system changes. I begin with (i) the electoral dynamics that shaped the welfare system during the neoliberal period, then move into (ii) welfare outcomes of grassroots challenges by the working class and the Kurds, followed by analyses of the Islamist politics of welfare provision during (iii) the 1990s and (iv) the 2000s.

Party Competition and Welfare Reform: 1980–​2002 In this section, I describe the thrust and scope of political competition among mainstream political parties since the 1980s. In turn, I explain how this competition has contributed to mobilization of the informal and formal proletariat and shaped the expansion and distributions of welfare benefits. The 1983 elections brought into power an ambitious liberal economist Turgut Özal, whose political agenda would entirely restructure the economic and social order in Turkey in ways that would establish the neoliberal hegemony. Lacking any serious competitors, Özal’s the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi—​ANAP) gained 45 percent of votes in 1983 elections and formed a single party government following the unstable and fragile coalition governments of the 1970s.

192   Erdem Yörük The decade following the 1980 coup was marked by a series of neoliberal policies targeting the vested rights that the formal proletariat gained in the developmentalist post-​war era. Between 1980 and 1989, the parliament passed a total of thirty-​one laws curtailing the employment-​based social welfare provision and rights of formal sector workers (Yörük 2012a). In 1986, the ANAP government successfully initiated a law proposal, No. 3246, to increase the minimum retirement age to 55 for females and 60 for males. ANAP presented this law as a “bitter prescription” for curing the deficits in the social security system. The coup destroyed the possibility of an effective working class resistance to neoliberal social security austerity measures and enabled the ANAP government to roll back the welfare gains of the previous era. With prominent political leaders banned until the late 1980s, the ANAP government did not face stiff political challenges that could have hindered structural adjustment policies. Meanwhile, the ANAP government started to systematically expand income-​based welfare programs. It established the Social Assistance and Solidarity Fund, which would set the logical, ideological, and organizational framework for social assistance provision in Turkey during the decades to come. The stated objective of the law was to help needy people in “abject poverty” and to make sure that income distribution is established in a just manner by “taking measures to improve social justice, and to encourage social assistance and solidarity” (Turkish Parliament Proceedings Journal (TPPJ) Law No. 3294). As Buğra and Adar (2008) pointed out, the law, which suited the “postmodern neoliberal” conditions very well, established a poor relief system without any emphasis on citizenship rights, resembling Islamic/​Ottoman style philanthropy. The 1987 referendum that enabled banned political leaders of the pre-​1980 period return to politics had a strong impact on ANAP’s welfare policies. The defeat of ANAP in the 1991 general elections slowed down or even halted the neoliberal transformation in Turkey for most of the 1990s, which became the decade of political competition and populism (Dogan 2010). What followed was a decade-​long period of mainstream political instability, marked by intense political competition among too many and too weak parties that led to a series of unstable coalition governments (see Figure 9.2). In addition to ANAP, the main actors in this scene were the Social Democratic Populist Party (Sosyaldemokrat Halkçı Parti—​SHP) of Erdal İnönü, the True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi—​DYP) of Süleyman Demirel, the Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti-​ DSP) of Bülent Ecevit, the Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi-​ MHP) of Alparslan Türkeş, and the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi—​RP) of Necmettin Erbakan. Over the decade, none of these parties could gain more than twenty-​two per cent of the votes, as seen in Figure 9.2. During the period between the single party governments of ANAP and AKP, between 1991 and 2002, a total number of nine coalition governments were established. This intense multiparty competition, alongside the escalation of social unrest emanating from poor Kurds and formal sector workers, should be cited as the main factors that inhibited a comprehensive neoliberal reform of the Turkish welfare state.

The Politics of Welfare in Turkey    193 60

50

40

30

20

10

0

1983 1984 1987 1989 1991 1994 1995 1999 2002 2004 2007 2009 2011 2014 2015 2016 2018 2019

–10 DYP

ANAP

SHP/CHP

RP

MHP

DSP

Kurdish Party

AKP

Figure 9.2:  Percent of votes for parties in Turkish elections (1983–​2019). Source: Data from the Supreme Council of Elections (2019) (http://​ysk.gov.tr/​tr/​secim-​arsivi/​2612).

The Spring Actions, the Kurdish Unrest, and the Expansion of Welfare Programs in the early 1990s The neoliberal policies of the 1980s retrenched many employment-​based welfare rights without significant resistance. Yet, the formal proletariat still sustained its structural bargaining power, including both marketplace and workplace components (Silver 2003). This sustained bargaining power led to the biggest wave of labor unrest in Turkish history that started with the 1989 Spring Actions and lasted until 1991. The Spring Actions forced the ANAP government to give concessions to public sector workers in the form of dramatic wage increases in order to quell the unrest and undermine rising popular support for the opposition (Buğra and Adar 2008, 200). Following the 1991 elections, DYP and SHP formed a coalition government, which would lead to an increasingly populist period in the middle of Turkish neoliberal transformation. The coalition implemented welfare policies that expanded both employment-​based and income-​based welfare benefits. In 1992, it initiated the most extensive social assistance program in Turkish history, the free healthcare program for the poor, the Green Card. During the ANAP government, public hospitals had already begun to be administered according to a capitalist logic with doctors receiving profit-​ sharing from hospital revenues. This led to massive grievances among the poor as many

194   Erdem Yörük people were denied treatment (Buğra and Adar 2008). DYP, as the main center-​right alternative to ANAP, put forward a free healthcare program for the poor as one of its main electoral campaign pledges in 1991. Before the elections, this free healthcare program, called Green Card (Yeşil Kart), was presented as free access to healthcare for all citizens. However, after the elections, the actual Green Card program limited access only to the poor, whose eligibility would be determined through means tests. The program was designed to cover the costs of in-​patient treatment and excluded medication costs of out-​patient treatments. The program set the early stage for an extensive social assistance system in Turkey, contributing to the eventual transformation of the previously narrow structure of the Social Assistance and Solidarity Fund established by ANAP in 1986 into the Ministry of Family and Social Policy during the AKP government (Buğra and Adar 2008). A critical power struggle that shaped the political background surrounding the Green Card law was the Kurdish conflict. The Kurdish insurgency against the Turkish state reached a peak in the early 1990s. During this period, the PKK mobilized Kurds in poor villages and urban slums into mass riots as part of the Serhildan campaign, the Kurdish Intifada, that created an immense security threat for the Turkish state. As a result of heavy state repression, the mid-​1990s has been remembered as a dark period by the Kurds who experienced extrajudicial executions, mass arrests, and the internal displacement of millions (Günay 2013). The timing and content of the Green Card law suggest that the Turkish government considered this means-​tested benefit system as a measure against potential and actual social dissent risks stemming from the poor in general and from the ongoing violent and non-​violent forms of Kurdish mobilization in particular. The Green Card law decreed that the program would start in the Eastern and Southeastern Regions, where the Kurds constitute the majority. Also, the Anti-​terror Law enacted in 1991 against the Kurdish uprising included a clause which stated that “those citizens, if they are not state officers, who were hurt by terrorist events in the form of loss of lives or property, will have the priority to receive social assistance from the Social Assistance and Solidarity Fund” (TPPJ Law No. 3713). This clause also suggests that the Turkish state has incorporated social welfare provision, and particularly social assistance programs, as part of their counter-​insurgency strategy to contain Kurdish radicalism. In summary, Kurdish unrest has always been a major factor shaping the development and content of free healthcare provision in Turkey, as Turkish governments instrumentalized the program for the containment of Kurdish unrest by trying to buy off the Kurdish poor (Yoltar and Yörük 2021).

The Rise and Fall of Radical Islamism in the 1990s and Welfare Provision The 1994 economic crisis during the DYP-​SHP government almost halved real wages and precipitated a catastrophe for the financial situation as well as the working classes.

The Politics of Welfare in Turkey    195 The Islamist Welfare Party (RP), as the main opposition force, became the main beneficiary of this crisis. RP won pluralities in the 1994 municipal elections and 1995 parliamentary elections. Moreover, while the earlier DYP-​SHP coalition was a brief break from neoliberalism, the later DYP-​SHP/​CHP coalition, facing a major economic crisis, resumed the ANAP-​period neoliberalism that had characterized the 1980s. This continuation of neoliberal policies helped bring the Islamic populist RP into power in 1996 (Buğra and Adar 2008; Tugal 2009). By then, the RP had already governed a number major municipal governments and its success in the provision of public services and social assistance had already contributed to the popularity of the Islamists (Shively 2008). RP, which would form the roots of the AKP government, was inclined to expand welfare provision. During its short term in government, RP expanded employment-​based benefits, partly in order to contain the second wave of labor unrest in the 1990s and partly to establish a base of popular support among industrial workers in its struggle against the secularist army. The party was also concerned about the political radicalization that would emanate from poverty. The securitization tendency in RP’s social policy attitudes was already evident when the party was in opposition. Law No. 3783 is a good example of this political threat concern. This law increased the levels of social assistance that old, poor people received with regards to Law No. 2022, which regulates means-​ tested social pensions for elderly. The DYP-​SHP government declared that the proposed law was necessary because of the decreasing real value of the assistance. RP, on the other hand, perceived this law as a measure against social unrest. The RP representative Ali Oğuz told the parliament that Our religion describes poverty as the closest point to impiety. Why? Imagine a person, unable to escape poverty no matter what he does. He falls into poverty so much that he nearly comes to the point of rebellion . . . You know the old saying “the doomsdays come because someone eats and the other just looks” (Biri yer biri bakar kıyamet ondan kopar), meaning that the greatest conflicts arise from social inequalities . . . What do hungry people do? They overthrow their state. (emphasis added, TPPJ, Law No. 3783, 5.3. 1992, 677)

The RP supported the amendments in working conditions of public sector employees proposed by the DYP-​CHP government in 1995 because “it is necessary to follow a wage policy that would sustain social balances in order to ensure social order and peace” (TPPJ, Law No. 4066, 25.1.1995, 328). The years 1995 and 1996 saw the second big strike wave of the decade. The total number of workers on strike in 1995 was the highest in Turkish history (Akkaya 2000). In the face of contentious politics, the government made some concessions to formal sector workers on certain issues, including 50 percent real increases in wages and an increase in total social expenditures from 3.4 percent to 4.6 percent between 1995 and 1996. The short-​lived RP-​DYP coalition government passed five laws that expanded employment-​based benefits, while no single law was passed to retrench welfare benefits of any sort (TPPJ, Law No. 4183, 30.8.1996). Yet, after the strike wave came to an end, the same RP-​DYP government passed three subsequent laws, Nos.

196   Erdem Yörük 4227, 4228, and 4229 that swiftly enabled the privatization of properties owned by social security institutions as well as other public sector enterprises. In 1997, the military issued a memorandum, on February 28, calling for a series of strict actions against anti-​ secularist policies. This memorandum forced Erbakan to withdraw as prime minister in June and his party was closed by the Constitutional Court in January 1998. This was a critical turning point in the development of political Islam, which would culminate in the establishment of the AKP by former RP cadres. Similar to the period before the RP-​DYP coalition, the period after the 1997 coup is characterized by unstable and short-​lived coalition governments. Following the 1999 elections, a coalition government led by Bülent Ecevit was formed by the center-​left DSP, center-​right ANAP, and nationalist-​right MHP. This government would stay in power until 2002. In August 1999, the coalition government brought the new Social Security Reform Law (No. 4447) to the parliament, which restored the minimum retirement age.3 Among many other new retrenchment policies, this law set the minimum retirement age at 58 for females and 60 for males. Workers and labor unions strongly opposed this law. The Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi FP), the successor to RP and then the main opposition party, set the stage for an opposition, which made grassroots mobilization the main reference in parliamentary debates of this law. Indeed, the government was initially not able to bring the law to the parliament because of nationwide protests. But, a major earthquake in 1999 brought the opportunity that the government needed. Facing a tough stand-​by agreement with the IMF, the government brought the law to the parliament in the week following this gravest natural disaster in the history of Turkey. Ultimately, the government managed to pass this law and increased the minimum retirement age. Nevertheless, as a result mainly of the intense political competition among many center-​right and center-​left parties, the coalition government continued to expand social welfare provision during the years leading to the 2001 financial crisis. As seen in Figure 9.1, total public social expenditures increased sharply from 4.8 percent to 8.1 percent between 1998 and 2001. Yet, following the 2001 crisis, the government implemented policies in line with liberal orthodoxy, under the control of the new economy minister, Kemal Derviş and with the expectation of re-​establishing business confidence. These reforms became feasible since the Islamist opposition was crushed by the military-​ bureaucratic establishment (e.g., FP was shut down in June 2001). Yet, after three years in office, the tripartite coalition government would pay the cost of its neoliberal enthusiasm with a massive electoral defeat that would pave the way for the rise of the AKP.

AKP Rule in the 2000s—​The Welfare Shift Accomplished The 2002 elections brought the AKP to power. The party originated in the Islamist political movement of the 1990s, yet reinvented itself as a moderate and reformist force (Tezcür 2010; Tugal 2009; Yavuz 2009). Turkey experienced the worst economic crisis of its history in 2001. The currency was devalued by 40 percent, the stock market collapsed,

The Politics of Welfare in Turkey    197 overnight interest rates climbed to 7,500 percent in a matter of days. Foreign liquid capital swiftly escaped the country, leaving behind a chain of debt, bankruptcy, and unemployment. The devastating effects of the crisis as well as the painful recovery program, the rising poverty, mass unemployment, and the resulting political grievances from the existing political parties of the 1990s created a unique opportunity for the neoliberal Islamist AKP government to set up the basis for a long lasting hegemony. As Tugal (2009) pointed out, although Islamist political organizations were initially crashed by the 1997 military intervention, Islamism continued to expand its influence in Turkey. Immediately after coming to power, AKP, with the broad support of the conservative masses who suffered under repetitive economic crises and lost trust in mainstream political parties of the 1990s, initiated swift neoliberal policies that undermined employment-​ based welfare benefits. Law No. 4828 undermined job security and facilitated labor flexibility. Law No. 4827, enacted in 2003, mandated that public sector employees retire by the age of 61—​instead of 65 as it used to be. While the government presented this as an improvement for employees and as a way to make the work force younger, CHP, the main opposition party after the 2002 elections, accused the government of trying to bring its partisans to the highest public offices via forced retirements. Interestingly, one clause of the law stated that there might be exceptions for this new upper age limit, which would be at the discretion of the government. This clause increased the suspicion that government would keep its partisans employed well past the retirement age. Law No. 5620 of 2007 allowed for the hiring of temporary public sector workers into permanent job positions. In 2008, Law No. 5754 significantly tightened retirement eligibility conditions, increasing the minimum number of days of premium payments from 7,200 to 9,000. But, in response to nationwide protests against the proposed law organized by labor unions, the government decreased this limit to 7,200 days for private sector workers, while keeping it at 9,000 days for public sector employees and the self-​ employed (Gerek 2008).4 A CHP parliamentarian, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who would become the leader of the party in 2010, claimed that the government changed the original proposal for private sector workers only because labor unions brought workers onto the streets. (TPPJ, Law No. 5754). It seems therefore that while AKP was eager to implement pro-​market policies, the extent to which these policies were realized always depended on the bargaining power and resistance of the formal working class. After coming to power, AKP engaged in a decade-​long, intense political battle with the secularist nationalist economic and bureaucratic elite—​the Kemalists. The Kemalist bloc consisted of the CHP, military, and high-​level civil bureaucracy, including high courts, media institutions, and secularist intellectuals, backed by the Istanbul-​centered industrial and financial bourgeoisie. Both the AKP and Kemalists did their best to minimize each other’s political leverage with the mobilization of various judicial, social, and bureaucratic forces. The Kemalist bloc attempted to wage a coup against the government in the initial years of AKP rule. The failure of these attempts gave the AKP substantial leverage to pursue police and juridical operations against the civil and military leaders of the Kemalist bloc. The AKP initiated a series of trials targeting a large number of

198   Erdem Yörük high-​ranking generals, politicians, university presidents, journalists and leaders of various influential Kemalist non-​governmental organizations. Many of these individuals were put into prison on charges of being members of illegal organizations seeking the overthrown of the government (Dinçşahin 2012; Sarkissian and Ozler 2009). Erdoğan claimed that it is precisely the institutions of “the political establishment,” such as the Constitutional Court and the High Judiciary, that “formed an alliance to prevent people from achieving power.” (Dinçşahin 2012, p. 632, quoted in Aytaç and Öniş 2014). The famous motto of the AKP, Milli İrade (the Will of the Nation) referred primarily to the Muslim lower classes as opposed to the secularist economic and political elite (for AKP’s right-​wing populism, see the chapter by Taşkın in this volume). The ruling party’s success against the Kemalist elites left behind a radicalized secularist popular base. Their disappointment with the failure of the Kemalist leader to challenge the AKP led to militant street activism as the sole remaining form of political opposition, culminating in the outbreak of Gezi protests in June 2013 (Yörük and Yüksel 2014; see also the chapter by Kaya in this volume). Shortly after the Gezi protests, Erdoğan’s rule was challenged once more in December 2013 through the largest corruption scandal in Turkish history, which involved some ministers as well as Erdoğan and his family. This episode was part of a larger political battle between the governing AKP and the Gülen Community, with which the AKP had itself allied against the Kemalist bloc until recently (Gürel 2015). This struggle between Fetullah Gülen and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan eventually culminated in a failed military coup on July 15, 2016. After the coup attempt, Erdoğan deepened his one-​man rule through repressive policies targeting all forms of political opposition, and increasing his direct control over the media, universities, the judiciary, as well as the economy. As such, Turkey’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index fell from 98 in 2006 to 151 in 2016. Erdoğan also launched a full-​scale offensive against the Kurdish opposition that had recently gained unprecedented power. While he consolidated his personalistic rule, the country was being hit by terrorist attacks, renewed ethnic conflict, a deepening economic crisis, and ever-​widening authoritarianism. While social security benefits were retrenched during AKP rule, Turkey also witnessed a boom of social assistance programs for the poor. Before the 2000s, the Turkish welfare system was based on a corporatist fragmented social provision, in which employees in the state sector, workers, and the self-​employed were members of different institutions with different qualities of service and benefits. The new welfare system enlarged by the AKP has largely eliminated this fragmented structure. It created a general social security institution and a general health insurance system so that services for the informal poor and formal sector employees have been merged. More importantly, the quality of healthcare has significantly improved, which has often been seen as one of the main pillars of AKP social policies (Yörük 2012a; Yılmaz 2019). In 2011, the Ministry of Family and Social Policy was established to administer central government programs and to introduce new social assistance benefits. Social assistance expenditure, moreover, increased from US$860 million in 2002 to US$9.34 billion in 2016.5

The Politics of Welfare in Turkey    199 Between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of social assistance spending in total government spending increased by 266 percent (Üçkardeşler 2015). AKP has drastically expanded means-​tested social assistance, including in-​kind or cash transfers, free healthcare programs for the poor, conditional cash transfers, programs for orphans, food stamps, housing, education, and disability aid for the poor. The number of beneficiaries and the share of government budgets allocated to these programs dramatically increased (Buğra and Keyder 2006; Elveren 2008; Günal 2008; Yoltar 2009; Yörük 2012b). The coverage of the free healthcare card program for the poor (Green Card Program) increased from 4.2 to 12.7 percent of the population from 2003 to 2009. In 2012, a universal healthcare system was established, and Green Card holders were included in the new system (Yörük 2012b). In addition to these benefits from the central government, poor families were still eligible to benefit from many types of in-​kind and cash assistance programs from municipal governments, which expanded exponentially during the AKP era. As such, by 2014, the regular in-​kind and cash benefits from the central government for a poor family added up to US$260, while the official minimum wage in Turkey was US$370 (Özgür 2014). In 2018, disability aid and old age pensions covered 1.4 million individuals, social assistance by the Social Assistance and Solidarity Funds covered 3.4 million individuals, and the Green Card program covered 6.9 million individuals.6 In 2004, the AKP proposed a change in the Metropolitan Municipalities Law that would expand the social assistance capacities of municipalities. In the same year, the AKP government established the General Directorate of Family and Social Research, which eventually evolved into the Ministry of Family and Social Policy in 2011. In its struggles with rivals from different ideological positions, the AKP garnered popular legitimacy and power mainly from the dynamic activism and massive support of the urban and rural poor (Öniş 2013; Yörük 2012b). Erdoğan managed to survive the Gezi Protests, the December 17–​25 corruption operations, and the coup attempt. Although the party’s national power seems to have been eroding since 2016, the AKP has still managed to win all elections with wide support from the poor, except for its defeat in the June 2015 elections and the 2019 municipal elections (Yörük and Comin, 2020). In this political setting, the party increased the level of pro-​poor social assistance programs and used an anti-​elite populist discourse (Yörük and Yüksel 2014). The AKP expanded social assistance programs as the most important platform for providing social inclusion for vast informal and rural sectors who never had access to the welfare benefits enjoyed by workers in the formal sector and the middle-​class. The mobilization of popular support of the poor in a national power struggle against the Kemalists and the containment of poor Kurds have been double strategies that drove the expansion of the welfare state. This has been achieved partly by means of reforming the existing welfare system and partly through the creation of new policies specifically targeting poor families, informal workers, small farmers, and the Kurds.

200   Erdem Yörük

Conclusion Recent Turkish political history has shown that political factors have been significantly shaping the evolution of the Turkish welfare system. Political parties pursue partisan interests, wage struggles against each other, and respond to grassroots mobilizations. Structural factors lead to welfare policy outcomes insofar as they are translated into political threats and opportunities for the major political actors. This survey of the transformation of the Turkish welfare system over six decades warrants several general observations. First, the direction and extent of the welfare system changes depending on the level and form of political party competition. All major waves of declines in employment-​based benefits occurred in single-​party government periods of the 1980s and 1990s—​including the military junta rule in the early 1980s. During the 1990s, the political arena was characterized by the intense competition of a number of weak parties. This multiparty competition was accompanied by an overall expansion of employment-​based benefits. The neoliberal reforms that entailed cutbacks in employment-​based benefits were implemented mostly during the powerful single party governments (e.g., ANAP rule from 1983 to 1987). Therefore, one can conclude that coalition governments do not perform well for neoliberal purposes—​this most certainly explains the heavy anti-​coalition and pro-​single party rhetoric of neoliberal circles. These single party governments, once they garnered extensive political popular support through various ideological domains, managed to implement neoliberal policies with minimum risk of losing the government to another competing party. More recently, the AKP was involved in a dual-​party competition with CHP, which has indeed turned into a struggle over the political regime, and welfare provision has been a key element in garnering political support among the poorer sections in urban slums and rural areas. During the 1990s, center-​right, center-​left, and Islamist political parties were engaged in an intense political competition that led to a series of unstable coalition governments. These governments hesitated to implement policies targeting the rights of formal sector workers because they needed the political support of wide sectors of the population. As opposed to the exigencies of a neoliberal economy, these governments expanded employment-​based welfare benefits during the 1990s as overt concessions to the formal working class. Moreover, the expanding informal proletariat benefited from the political competition as well. A good example here is the Green Card Program, the free healthcare provision for the poor, which was established by the DYP-​SHP government in 1992. Second, political instability and social unrest have also led governments to reorganize welfare provision in ways that would maximize efforts to contain threats to the system. For instance, the rapid expansion of employment-​based benefits during the early 1990s was a direct response to waves of labor strikes between 1989 and 1993, the so-​called Spring Actions. Moreover, the Green Card program was initiated in this period when the PKK also mobilized the Kurdish poor in the east in a widespread

The Politics of Welfare in Turkey    201 insurrection against the Turkish state. As such, Turkish social welfare policy legislations have been shaped to a significant extent by grassroots mobilization, which presented direct challenges to the ruling governments or offered support for opposition political parties. The considerable expansion of employment-​based benefit during the neoliberal period has occurred as unexpected responses to grassroots mobilization of a declining formal proletariat. No matter how weak the formal proletariat is, government policies have always been responsive, in the shape of employment-​based policies, to its power. In contrast, income-​based social assistance policies have been responses to the political activism of the informal proletariat. Governments have chosen to which segment of the informal proletariat social assistance are directed. Their choice depends on which part of the informal proletariat is more threatening at the time. In the 1990s, social assistance offered by municipalities won by the Islamist party was used to mobilize the poor toward radical Islamism. In the 2000s, the Islamists became the governing power and pursued containment of the Kurdish informal proletariat. Thus, welfare provision was used by the Islamists in both periods. In summary, Turkish governments have used welfare provision as a political means of containing popular grievances and mobilizing popular support in competition for national power. In particular, political mobilizations of the poor, or various poor people’s movements, have been responsible for the expansion of social assistance programs. Similar movements have recently also generated political instability in many developing countries of the global South. These movements were primarily connected to politics of identity (i.e., Islamist, Kurdish) in Turkey. Similar contentious threats are led by criminal drug trafficking and landless peasants in Brazil and Mexico; by Maoists and Hindu or Muslim fundamentalists in India; by ethnic/​religious movements and extra-​legal labor organizations in China; and by left-​wing neighborhood organizations, landless movements, and criminal groups in South Africa (Nepal, Bohara, and Gawande 2011; Souza 2006; Taydas and Peksen 2012; Yörük 2012b). Governments responded to this threat by extending huge social assistance programs to the previously excluded poor: Bolsa Familia in Brazil, Oportunidades in Mexico, Nrega in India, Dibao in China, and Child Support Grant in South Africa. These similar responses to similar grassroots mobilizations have sowed the seeds of a common welfare state regime typology that is peculiar to emerging markets. Future research should explore this typology with comparative empirical research.

Notes 1. This distinction between the formal and informal proletariat comes from Alejandro Portes and Kelly Hoffman (2003). On the one hand, Portes and Hoffman describe the formal proletariat consisting of the workers in industry, services, and agriculture, protected by existing labor laws. On the other, the informal proletariat is comprised of those workers who are not incorporated into fully commodified, legally regulated working relations, but survive at the margins through a wide variety of subsistence and semi-​clandestine economic activities.

202   Erdem Yörük The informal proletariat is “the sum of own account workers minus professionals and technicians, domestic servants, and paid and unpaid workers in microenterprises” (54). 2. Erik Olin Wright (2000) makes a distinction between workers’ associational and structural bargaining power. Associational bargaining power derives from the collective organization of workers in unions and political parties. Structural bargaining power comes from the location of workers in the economic system. Beverly Silver (2003) further divides structural bargaining power into marketplace and workplace bargaining power. Marketplace bargaining power results from “the possession of scarce skills that are in demand by employers,” “low levels of general unemployment,” and “the ability of workers to pull out of the labor market entirely and survive on non-​wage sources of income” (13). Workplace bargaining power stems from “the strategic location of a particular group of workers within a key industrial sector” and it depends on the extent of damage that stoppage in production might generate in the sector and other sectors as well. This workplace structural bargaining power is determined by the skill levels of workers, system of production, type of product, scale of workplace, and interconnectedness of the sectors. 3. In 1991, Demirel’s government had canceled the minimum retirement age altogether and rendered retirement conditional on the minimum number of days of premium payment. In contrast to this populist maneuver of Demirel, law No. 4447 enacted by the Ecevit government restored a minimum retirement age, which was now set to a significantly higher age than the one that was effective before 1991. 4. See http://​bianet.org/​biamag/​toplum/​105621-​ssgss-​karsitlari-​tum-​turkiyede-​alanlardaydi https://​www.cumhuriyetarsivi.com/​oku/​?newsId=3353008&pageNo=1&home=%2Fmonit or%2Findex.xhtml. 5. See http://​www.aile.gov.tr/​haberler/​2002de-​sosyal-​yardimlara-​ayrilan-​butce-​13-​milyar-​ lirayken-​bugun-​bu-​rakam-​33-​milyar-​lirayi-​asti-​sosyal-​yardimlarda-​buyuk-​bir-​cigir-​actik. 6. Directorate of Strategy and Budget, Turkish Presidency, 2019; http://​www.sbb.gov.tr/​ 2020-​yili-​cumhurbaskanligi-​yillik-​programi-​resmi-​gazetede-​yayimlandi.

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204   Erdem Yörük Sarkissian, Ani, and S. Ilgu Ozler. 2009. Negotiating Islam, Civil Society, and Secularism: The Justice and Development Party in Turkey. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 1451116. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. http://​papers.ssrn.com/​abstract=1451116. Shively, Kim. 2008. “Taming Islam: Studying Religion in Secular Turkey.” Anthropological Quarterly 81, no. 3: 683–​7 11. Silver, Beverly J. 2003. Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870. Cambridge University Press. Souza, André Portela. 2006. “Fighting Long-​ Run Poverty in Brazil: Are Conditional Cash Transfer Programs Making a Difference?” LAMES/​LACEA, March. http://​www. researchgate.net/​publication/​264840054. Taydas, Zeynep, and Dursun Peksen. 2012. “Can States Buy Peace? Social Welfare Spending and Civil Conflicts.” Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 2: 273–​287. Tezcür, Günes Murat. 2010. Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey: The Paradox of Moderation. Austin: University of Texas Press. Tugal, Cihan. 2009. Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Üçkardeşler, Emre. 2015. “Turkey’s Changing Social Policy Landscape.” Turkish Policy Quarterly 13, no. 4: 149–​161. Wright, Erik Olin. 2000. “Working-​ Class Power, Capitalist-​ Class Interests, and Class Compromise.” American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 4: 957–​1002. Yavuz, M. Hakan. 2009. Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey. New York: Cambridge University Press. Yeldan, Erinc. 2006. “Neoliberal Global Remedies: From Speculative-​Led Growth to IMF-​Led Crisis in Turkey.” Review of Radical Political Economics 38, no. 2: 193–​213. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1177/​0486613405285423. Yılmaz, Volkan. 2019. The Politics of Healthcare Reform in Turkey. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Yoltar, Çağri. 2009. “When the Poor Need Healthcare: Ethnography of State and Citizenship in Turkey.” Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 5: 769–​782. Yoltar, Çağrı, and Erdem Yörük. 2021. “Contentious Welfare: The Kurdish Conflict and Social Policy as Counterinsurgency in Turkey.” Governance 34, no. 2: 353–371. Yörük, Erdem. 2012a. “The Politics of the Turkish Welfare System Transformation in the Neoliberal Era: Welfare as Mobilization and Containment.” Ph.D. Diss., Johns Hopkins University. http://​gradworks.umi.com/​35/​36/​3536083.html. Yörük, Erdem. 2012b. “Welfare Provision as Political Containment: The Politics of Social Assistance and the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey.” Politics & Society 40, no. 4: 517–​47. Yörük, Erdem, and Alvaro Comin. 2020. “Electoral Polarization, Class Politics and a New Welfare State in Brazil and Turkey.” European Review 28, no. 3: 513–535. Yörük, Erdem, and Murat Yüksel. 2014. “Class and Politics in Turkey’s Gezi Protests.” New Left Review 1, no. 89: 103–​123.

Chapter 10

T he P olitical E c onomy of Environme nta l P ol icymaking i n T u rk ey A Vicious Cycle Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel

The question as to why some states are greener than others has come to occupy a prominent place in the transdisciplinary field of environmental studies, where research focusing on both developed and developing societies has been exploring myriad variables that may account for the cross-​national disparities observed in environmental policy effectiveness (see e.g., Watanabe et al. 2004; Wurzel 2012). It is in this general field that this chapter analyzes the political economy of the environment in Turkey. What makes the case of Turkey particularly important is the fact that despite the country’s well-​developed environmental legislation and capable public institutions—​although subject to erosion under the authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, still strong—​it has been experiencing increased deterioration of national environmental integrity. This deterioration has been intensifying since the neoliberal turn of the 1980s, taking a particularly aggressive quality under Erdoğan’s watch especially due to his regime’s relentless focus on the construction, energy, and extractive sectors (Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel 2017). The chapter examines this paradoxical outcome by developing an analytical framework to shed light on the nature and workings of the environmental policy design and implementation process. It makes three main arguments: (a) the state continues to favor growth over the environment—​with a recent focus on the construction, energy and extractive sectors—​so as to get the consent of the population and establish legitimacy for political rule; (b) under the current political climate—​deepening polarization in ideological and cultural domains as well as increasing authoritarianism—​the conflation

206    Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel of environmental politics with other types of politics (such as ethnicity) induces the incumbent government to perceive environmental organizations and movements as representatives of an ideological opposition and therefore to take a hostile and uncompromising position against environmental demands; and (c) the combination of these two factors is pernicious to the development of a democratic relationship between state and society, resulting in the titular vicious cycle that undermines the effective implementation of environmental policy in Turkey. Breaking this cycle and making environmental policymaking and implementation more effective would require radical structural changes. The official discourse on the transition to sustainable development through improved legislation notwithstanding, environmental problems in Turkey are worsening in scope, intensity, and impact. A detailed assessment of ecosystem health in Turkey is beyond the scope of this chapter; instead, brief references to two internationally recognized research studies should suffice. Despite their limitations, such metrics do provide a national-​scale gauge of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals. First is The Environmental Performance Index of 2018 prepared by Yale and Columbia universities, which addresses environmental health through twenty-​four performance indicators (e.g., lead exposure, CO2 per capita). Turkey is ranked 108th in reaching sustainability goals out of 180 countries—​down from seventy-​second a mere decade ago. Turkey’s neighbors perform better: Iran and Georgia are ranked eightieth and ninety-​fourth, respectively; not to mention Greece and Bulgaria, which are ranked twenty-​second and thirtieth, respectively.1 Second is the United Nations’ recently developed Sustainable Development Goals 2019 (UN-​SDGs), where Turkey is ranked seventy-​ninth out of 162 countries, with a global index score of 68.5 (with 0 corresponding to the worst and 100 to the best outcomes) that is 11.8 percent lower than the average score of OECD countries, and in nine out of seventeen target areas Turkey is found to be facing “major challenges.”2 The main environmental issues in Turkey emerge as surface, coastal, and underground water pollution; air pollution; greenhouse gas emissions; land degradation; as well as associated public health problems and loss of livelihoods. Given the Turkish state’s legislative concern about environmental issues and administrative capacity, worsening environmental quality and the state’s failure to reverse it may at first seem paradoxical.3 Unlike many other developing countries, there exists well-​developed environmental legislation that aims to minimize the environmental impacts of economic processes and to manage the nation’s natural endowments, such as biodiversity, coastal waters, and forest resources.4 In addition, the Turkish state is based on a long administrative tradition, capable in legislation-​making and strong in institutionalization, which applies mutatis mutandis to the case of the environment. Moreover, it has actively engaged in international efforts to deal with environmental problems as well, including long-​standing discussions with the European Union (Adaman and Arsel 2008).5 However, the overall effectiveness of political, judicial, and policy-​oriented efforts to develop a meaningful national strategy for sustainable development has been limited at best.

The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey    207 That the idea of development has been central in the making of the Republic of Turkey (circa the 1920s) goes a long way in explaining why environmental policies of the Turkish state have largely remained ineffective, despite its bureaucratic strength and legislative reach. Interpreted by successive governments mainly as an appeal to achieve high economic growth rates through the realization of massive projects especially in the energy, mining, and construction sectors, developmentalism has been the sine qua non of successive governments despite their ideological differences (corresponding to point [a]‌stated earlier). The making of Turkey into a “modern country” through such policies profoundly transformed its geographical and human landscape, especially in the neoliberal post-​1980 era—​an intensified transformation during the administration of the incumbent government (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) from 2002 onwards. Unpacking the developmentalism fetish itself shows that it is fundamental to the way in which the Turkish state has presented and legitimized its claim to rule by generating broad societal consensus for its policies. It is within this context that the environmental critique of civil society in Turkey takes on an added significance. In deciphering civil society’s engagement in environmental issues, the fact that environmental conflicts are not merely about the environment, but intersect with identity politics, such as religion and ethnicity, as well as gender and class politics, should be acknowledged. This is of course true not only in the case of Turkey but a fundamental fact in the field of political ecology (see e.g., Kenis and Lievens 2014). Consider the famous Bergama resistance, for example, which took action against the cyanide-​leaching process of gold mining in the town of Bergama, located on Turkey’s Aegean coast, during much of the 1990s (Arsel 2005). Although the movement was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the mine from becoming operational, it nevertheless managed to force the company to improve the technology to be used. The movement received very wide press coverage, drawing attention from the nation at large and inspiring numerous similar struggles in subsequent years. Of interest to us is the fact that behind the opposition were local villagers who happened to be Alevis—​constituting a minority group in Turkey where the officially privileged sect is Sunni Islam (see the chapter by Lord in this volume). While the peasant activists were wholly justified in their concerns regarding cyanide, it is also worth recalling the statement of Mr. Selahattin Özel, the general director of the Alevi Federation of Turkey, who claimed that the gold mining project at Bergama was nothing but “a manifestation of the assimilation politics of the Turkish state against the Alevi community.”6 This conflation has come to weigh against the effectiveness of environmental protection in Turkey. On the one hand, due to the deep ideological and cultural divide that exists today in the country, the AKP regime has a tendency to view environmental organizations and movements in Turkey as mere proxies for opposition forces without genuine commitment to environmental protection. This tension is further exacerbated by the fact that there exists no AKP-​leaning movements engaged in environmental issues other than the single association called Çevre Kuruluşları Dayanışma Derneği (Foundation for the Solidarity of Environmental Organizations) that focuses mostly on putatively apolitical activities such as tree planting drives and “moral” education. On

208    Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel the other hand, civil society has, at times, used environmentalism as a strategic political vehicle. That is, issues that are not primarily in the domain of the environment have nevertheless been “environmentalized” with a view to articulating other political concerns. This politicized positioning by civil society organizations can be explained by two factors: (1) the space to conduct activism in “difficult” areas is severely constrained as the AKP government, which has become more authoritarian, has been allowing only a narrow space for civil society activism and perceives such activism as a potential threat; and (2) educated and urban young people who are dissatisfied with and resentful of the incumbent regime and lack appropriate channels to pursue their demands take environmentalism as a safe harbor to express their malcontent—​on the grounds that environmental demands can be articulated easily, given that they are likely to be perceived as “above politics” by society at large. The positions of the two sides (viz. the incumbent government and the current civil society) reinforce each other toward a self-​fulfilling outcome of intense polarization, where the government emerges as hostile to environmental activism.7 What is crucial here, and relevant for the purposes of this chapter, is that the use of political language in environmental issues may indeed undermine the efficacy of environmental civil initiatives—​corresponding to point (b) above. The combination of these two dynamics—​(a) the appetite of the state to prioritize growth despite the resulting environmental burden and (b) the presence of constraints over environmental civil engagement under conditions of polarization (see the chapter by Somer in this volume)—​turn out to be pivotal in understanding the challenges of democratization of environmental politics (corresponding to point [c]‌above). First, given the historically hegemonic position of developmentalism in Turkey (Arsel 2005), any critical inquiry into the impacts of such a trajectory is likely to be treated as antagonistic to the logic of the regime and thus categorically rejected. Second, the bulk of requests to preserve the environment are largely ignored by Ankara, as the current polarization makes the AKP government prejudiced toward any environmental demands. Consequently, environmental demands are hardly heard—​ let alone discussed, elaborated, and negotiated—​thus creating a vicious circle. The chapter dwells on this vicious circle and provides a detailed analysis on the political economy as to why environmental policies in Turkey are destined to lack efficacy. Building on this picture, the chapter also suggests ways out of this deadlock.

The State Favors Growth over the Environment As suggested earlier, although Turkey possesses a strongly institutionalised state machinery inherited from the Ottoman Empire and a well-​developed body of legislation, environmental problems have in general been worsening in scope, intensity, and impact. This paradox suggests that Turkish governments have been either unwilling or

The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey    209 incapable (or both) of addressing environmental issues. The state in Turkey can indeed mobilize sufficient bureaucratic and institutional “firepower” to tackle certain issues deemed to be of critical importance (Adaman and Arsel 2010). Yet it lacks the political will to genuinely implement environmental legislation. This argument involves two state-​level forces. While one of these forces has a negative impact on the environment and the other aims to protect it, their net effect will determine outcomes at the implementation level. First of all, it is necessary to inquire into the origins of the comprehensive institutional structure aiming at protecting the environment. The Turkish republic inherited an entrenched paternalistic legacy from the Ottoman Empire, finding itself responsible for taking care of the environment—​like other issues such as disability, health, education, and social security that affect the well-​being of the population. Although the Turkish state’s paternalistic nature has eroded due to a variety of reasons in the post-​1980s neoliberal era, it continues to project, at least at a discursive level, the image of a “father state” and hence finds itself duty-​bound to at least create the impression of protecting the environment (Adaman and Arsel 2010, 2012). The institutionalization of this reflex dates back to 1973—​spanning almost half a century—​when a governmental committee was set up to provide guidance on environmental issues (more or less in the same period as European countries; see Hoerber 2012), to be followed by the establishment of an under-​secretariat of the environment, which was attached to the prime ministry in 1978. This body was later transformed into a ministerial structure in 1991 (with alternating names since then), which remains intact. It is also important to note that Article 56 of the 1982 Constitution, still in effect, openly acknowledged citizens’ right to a healthy environment. Environmental legislation has also been bolstered through negotiations with the European Union on the Environmental Acquis since December 2009 (a process that slowed down, though, due to the current state of affairs with the European Union, especially after the attempted coup in July 2016). Turkey was present at important environmental summits, from the 1972 Stockholm Summit to Rio+20 in 2012 and is party to numerous international conventions on the environment (Adaman and Arsel 2012). This overview may suggest that the Turkish state has done perhaps more than its “fatherly” duties for the environment. Alas, the appetite of the Turkish state for development through rapid economic growth has been the predominant drive, without much care for the environmental impacts of such a trajectory, which is evidenced by Turkey’s poor environmental performance.8 The state—​under different governments—​has simply been unwilling to properly deal with environmental pressures posed by the energy, construction, industry, agriculture, transportation, extractive, and tourism sectors, among others, as well as urbanization, which result in a broad range of environmental challenges, with water and industrial pollution as well as the (over)use of natural resources being the most salient concerns. The exponential growth of consumption (as evidenced by the construction of hundreds of shopping malls in the country in the 2010s) and accompanying pollution have further added to the degradation of the ecosystem’s ability to cope with the

210    Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel side effects of economic activities. In this context, Turkey has not ratified the Paris Agreement (see e.g., Chapter 27 of the European Commission Report on Turkey 2019) due to several political dynamics: (a) Turkey’s appetite for energy (given that an important share is produced via fossil fuels) would make any low-​carbon trajectory a difficult one (Adaman and Arsel 2017); (b) Turkey keeps negotiating—​alas with not much success—​access to the “Green Climate Fund” in exchange for ratifying the Agreement (Cerit-​Mazlum 2017); and (c) refusal, it can be speculated, is part of the country’s hardening of its posture vis-​à-​vis international norms, rules, and regulations. Currently, the Erdoğan regime’s reliance on the construction, energy, and transportation sectors as well as extractivism has radically transformed cities and the countryside, with new forms of dispossession, privatization of public commons and de-​agrarianization, putting the environment under tremendous pressure (Adaman and Akbulut 2021; Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel 2017; Arsel, Akbulut, and Adaman 2015; Erensü 2017; OECD 2018; Varol 2017). At this juncture, the most notable outcomes have been the “mega projects” involving massive budget requirements with their multidimensional impacts on the environment (Paker 2017). Of these projects, the most pronounced are the new Istanbul Airport, which was opened in April 2019; the Third Bridge over the Bosporus, operational as of August 2016; the Çamlıca Mosque, which was opened in May 2019 and can hold more than 60,000 people; and the Bosporus underwater tunnel, which was opened in December 2016—​a series of Istanbul projects acclaimed as among the largest of their kind in the world. The planned Canal Istanbul to connect the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, which is feared would bring about an environmental catastrophe (WWF 2018), is the most ambitious of such projects. The lack of political will to genuinely implement environmental legislation has thus emerged in cases where the state favors growth over the environment. When a trade-​ off between economic growth and the environment arises, the Turkish state’s tendency has historically been to opt for growth rather than search for green and sustainable options, let alone a low-​growth path. Irrespective of their ideological differences, Turkish governments have consistently backed economic projects that would boost the economy in terms of added value and job creation despite environmental costs, which is the way the term “development” has almost exclusively been interpreted. As we have underlined previously (Adaman and Arsel 2017; Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel 2017; Akbulut and Adaman 2013; Arsel 2005), achieving economic development has indeed been a long-​standing objective of policymakers in Turkey rather than a recent trend, which is being observed most visibly under AKP rule. Beginning with the twilight of the Ottoman Empire and officially instituted as a core policy of the Turkish republic in its foundation, the idea of development (also pronounced as, inter alia, modernization, economic prosperity, catching up with the developed world) has dominated political life in Turkey like no other. The term development (kalkınma) has certainly included components other than economic growth, on which political disagreements have occurred (e.g., the role of Islam in Turkish society and politics), but the centrality of economic growth to development has remained unassailable. Consequently, the obsession with growth has been so powerful that environmental regulations have at times

The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey    211 been loosened to clear the path for economic activities. At the same time, the AKP years have witnessed(also pronounced as, inter alia, modernization not just the continuation of past trends but their substantial intensification. The AKP not only put into practice policies that favored growth much more effectively than its predecessors, it also systematically removed existing brakes on the decimation of nature. For instance, during the AKP regime, governmental decrees were eradicated so as to alter the designated protected status of lands to allow mining, energy, or construction activities (especially in the case of mega projects—​see, Adaman and Akbulut 2021; Çoban 2018a). As we elaborated elsewhere (Adaman and Akbulut 2021; Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel 2017; Akbulut 2015, 2019; Akbulut and Adaman 2013; Akbulut, Adaman, and Arsel 2018), the dominant choice of economic growth over the environment9 can be explained by reference to the Gramscian concept of hegemony (Gramsci 1971). For Antonio Gramsci, the concept of hegemony explains power dynamics as a combination of coercion and consent; the state machinery establishes its hegemony not only by coercion but also by establishing consent among subordinate people. It is in this framework that we claim the Turkish state has been relying on the idea of economic development to secure the consent of its citizens; in other words, the material and ideological practices through which the Turkish state seeks societal consent has been formulated through a path to economic development (largely interpreted as growth). Here, popular consent has been generated in relation to the idea of economic growth (as a channel to achieve a modern and prosperous society), which was framed as in the best interest of the Turkish society. The Turkish state has been representing itself, not as caring for some groups more than others, but as a “neutral” institution that is “above politics” and can symbolize and realize the collective interest by achieving development. The quest for development through an economic growth path, which has been epitomized during AKP rule and presented as the collective goal of the entire population, forms the consent mechanism in the following manner: First, arguments related to justice, equity, and redistribution are marginalized on the grounds that the objective of growth is an idea that encompasses the entire citizenry, irrespective of class, gender, ethnicity, etc. The ultimate national goal is “constructed” by the state such that all citizens should do their best to elevate the country’s economic prosperity. The discourse of the Second War of Independence—​which implies that Turkey should also gain sufficient economic power since political independence alone, obtained after the 1919–​1922 War of Independence, would be incomplete without a similar victory in development—​ continues to inform the imaginary of citizens of Turkey, rendering the idea of modernization via prosperity as the ultimate road to follow. Second, through large economic projects providing employment to thousands, the state (directly or indirectly) is able to cultivate its image as the “father” state caring for its citizens. Third, material benefits are distributed, in the form of either subsidies to farmers or small producers or poverty aid to economically impoverished families, brandishing the “generous and fatherly” aspects of the state machinery.10 Finally, economic projects categorized as “mega” also bring about grandeur and magnificence, which recall images of the glory days of the Ottoman Empire (Adaman and Akbulut 2021; Küçük and Özselçuk 2019; Paker 2017).

212    Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel Taken all together, popular consent has been sought regarding the utmost necessity of economic growth, a vision that does not prioritize environmental consequences—​so much so that accusing environmentalists of treason has become a routine practice.11

The Politicization of Environmental Civil Society Without treating the state and civil society as completely separate entities at an ontological level, this section considers the position of civil society vis-​à-​vis the environment. We first look at the public in general and business as well as labor communities as to whether there exist elements of environmentalism. After this brief tour d’horizon providing a general background, the section considers environmental organizations and movements. Let us start with the general public. Overall, Turkish citizens have not raised many demands on environmental issues unless they overlapped with health-​related problems with immediate impacts, such as urban air pollution, sewage treatment, or waste collection. More precisely, environmental problems that are less visible, will emerge in the future, or do not affect citizens directly—​from underground water pollution to deforestation to biodiversity loss—​have received scant attention. Furthermore, public opinion surveys suggest that only a tiny minority rate environmental matters as one of the most vital problems of the country. A recent nationally representative survey study conducted by Işık (2019) shows that when respondents were asked to select three important problems of Turkey from a list that included environmental degradation, only one out of a sample size of 1,200 put the environment among their top three concerns. In a related manner, unsurprisingly, mass popular parties seem not to have prioritized environment concerns. While the Kurdish opposition scores better than the rest of the parties, Çarkoğlu (2017) nevertheless revealed that when party programs were analyzed, the weight of environment-​related statements was found to be relatively low compared to countries at a similar developmental level. Given the entrenched ideological hegemony of the idea of economic growth that puts environmental concerns mainly out of the policy sphere, the picture provided here for an average citizen in Turkey should not come as a surprise. The business community also appears to be content with the status quo (Kalaycıoğlu and Gönel 2005). Apart from a very few companies that either take a long-​term view and are thus concerned about environmental issues or operate in niche markets that serve environmentally sensitive customers (e.g., those who prefer nature tours, organic food, garments made in sustainable ways, etc.), the overwhelming majority of the business community appears not to have any incentives to internalize the environmental costs they have been creating. Although a Western-​style green consumption movement is on the rise, the aggregate demand on such commodities and services remains

The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey    213 insignificant—​and thus business in general does not have much incentive to even attempt to be seen as “green” (Adaman and Arsel 2010).12 We should also remember that around one-​third of economic activities are currently being run informally in the country (see e.g., Başlevent and Acar 2016). Hence, unregistered firms are not subject to any kind of legislation, including environmental, even if the state aimed to address environmental issues more seriously. In a similar vein, labor unions have so far shown little interest in environmental issues, unless degradation comes with health-​related problems threatening workers’ well-​being directly. Although labor unions make sporadic calls in favor of a better environment,13 it is hard to talk about “labor environmentalism” as witnessed in countries such as the United Kingdom and Spain (see e.g., Stevis, Uzzell, and Räthzel 2018). As the current neoliberal regime prioritizes business interests, one of the main concerns of labor unions in Turkey has been to secure employment (Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel 2017). Consequently, they have not shown much interest in questioning the degradation of nature and readily accept that there could be a trade-​off between employment and the environment. That leaves us with environmental civil society organizations and movements in Turkey. In the developed as well as the developing world, civil society plays important roles in environmental governance while performing the following related tasks: collecting, disseminating, and analyzing information; providing input to agenda-​setting and policy-​development processes; performing operational functions; assessing environmental conditions and monitoring compliance with environmental agreements; and advocating environmental justice (Gemmill-​Herren and Bamidele-​Izu 2002). Environmental civil society in Turkey, in the form of either non-​governmental organizations (NGOs) or social movements, have been active in the political arena. Yet their impact has become limited (see e.g., Çoban 2018b) following the AKP’s turn to authoritarianism and increased polarization of the social sphere mainly after the Gezi uprising in 2013, for reasons discussed later. Many civil and environmental organizations were founded or expanded their activities in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Adem 2005). In addition to issue-​specific NGOs working on different aspects of the environment (preserving nature, forestation, coastal management) and supported by professional teams, local social movements mushroomed in resisting projects that would affect livelihoods; some achieved success while others met with defeat or co-​optation. In rare instances, NGOs and social movements have formed alliances on specific environmental issues. For instance, the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive, established in 2006, brought together activists, NGOs, professional associations, trade unions, and affected municipalities with the—​ultimately unsuccessful—​aim of halting the Ilısu Dam project on the Tigris River. In addition, various other civil groups and initiatives can at times get actively involved in environmental issues even if this is not their main area of work, as illustrated by the involvement of some trade unions14 with the anti-​gold mining struggle at Mount Ida. Finally, concerning our main argument, some political demands that are not related to environmental degradation increasingly manifest themselves under the

214    Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel pretext of environmentalism. Although—​as briefly mentioned in the introduction—​ environmental politics is by nature conflated with other types of politics in Turkey (Knudsen 2016), there are a number of cases in which the piggybacking of various non-​ environmental demands onto environmental campaigns can be observed. Overall, the effectiveness of environmental civil society can be understood along multiple dimensions. Kadirbeyoğlu et al. (2017), for example, categorize environmental NGOs along two crucial dimensions that shape their effectiveness: their interactions with the state and their relations with financial donors (see also Paker et al. 2013). The first dimension determines the extent to which NGOs confront the state machinery (e.g., whether or not they take direct action on the streets), and the second reflects how selective they are on the identity of donors (e.g., whether or not they accept financial support from businesses, and if so, from which ones). Greenpeace-​Turkey, for example, is capable of taking a radical position against coal-​fuelled thermal plants, as it receives support from its international office and does not rely on financial support from businesses that may demand a low-​key profile and eschew confrontation with the state. WWF-​Turkey, on the other hand, receives a large amount of support from businesses but maintains its boundaries on nature protection without adopting a confrontational manner. Finally, TEMA, which works on fighting soil erosion, is heavily engaged in the forestation of the country through broad-​based membership support—​though lately it has also engaged in other environmental issues, such as the Canal Istanbul project. Its rapport with Ankara, especially recently, has been fluctuating; at times collaborative and at times confrontational. The overall political context also matters. For example, when EU-​Turkey relations were in an active state (the first two terms of the AKP regime, 2002–​2011), Ankara was itself more accommodating toward the demands of environmental NGOs. However, with increased authoritarianism, worsening EU-​Turkey relations, and increased interest in the development of mega economic projects, environmental NGOs started to lose their sway over Ankara. With the notable exception of the Gezi uprising in 2013 (more on which later), the vast majority of social movements have emerged as resistance struggles against projects that are claimed to adversely affect local life in multiple ways. The earliest and most monumental of such movements is the Bergama case, already discussed, which remained primarily local with some national and international support (see e.g., Taşdemir-​Yaşın 2019). Later, the campaign against the Ilısu Dam on the Tigris River became perhaps internationally the most visible and coordinated long-​term environmental campaign in Turkey (see e.g., Hommes, Boelens, and Maat 2016). Although ultimately unsuccessful, the campaign managed to bring together a large variety of actors: first and foremost, it had a strong local voice, fanned by the Kurdish problem (as the region has prominently been inhabited by Kurdish people who faced displacement and felt threatened by the massive dam project); as water retention in the dam cause the ancient city of Hasankeyf to be inundated, national as well as international environmental organizations were also a part of the campaign. While the failure of the movement cannot be reduced to a single factor, the long-​standing belief of Turkish politicians and policymakers in the utility of

The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey    215 dams combined with the availability of domestic funding after international financial guarantees had been withdrawn in response to protests were instrumental in building the Ilısu Dam. Turkey has so far witnessed many similar movements targeting, inter alia, mining (see e.g., Avcı, Adaman, and Özkaynak 2010), construction sites in urban green areas (see e.g., Keyder 2005), water management (see e.g., Erensü 2013), and energy infrastructure (see e.g., Varol 2017). A complex set of preconditions have determined the formation, long-​term viability, and durability as well as efficacy of these movements: whether clearly articulated environmental grievances exist or not; the extent to which the movements managed to form strong and stable coalitions within the local society; whether alliances were formed with environmental and other NGOs; the extent of reliance on human capital; the impact of their political entrepreneurship; their capacity to form networks; and whether or not other socioeconomic and political concerns were delivered through the political vehicle of environmentalism (see e.g., Adaman and Arsel 2010; Akbulut 2015; Arsel, Akbulut, and Adaman 2015; Erensü and Karaman 2017). While the post-​1980s era came with a wide array of powerful environmental social movements, a backslide in their presence and impact has become increasingly apparent in the aftermath of the Gezi uprising of 2013 (Çoban 2018b; Sarkissian and Özler 2013; see also the chapter by Kaya in this volume). After Gezi, the AKP government began to respond harshly to most expressions of environmental concern, arguably because the confrontational encounter with an environmentally themed civil society resistance had imbued the overall theme unpalatable and potentially highly destabilizing for the government. In addition, toward the end of 2014, the AKP regime abandoned its initial strategy of successfully articulating the grievances of different oppressed groups (mainly Kurdish people) as part of an attempt to broaden the process of democratization. The polarizing authoritarian approach became much more acute following the attempted military coup in July 2016, which provided Erdoğan an excuse to quash any and every opposition to his regime, both real and perceived (see e.g., Adaman and Akbulut 2021; Özyürek, Özpınar, and Altındiş 2019; Tansel 2018). Such a political milieu, needless to say, has not been a welcoming one for almost any kind of civil engagement. That said, however, there are two additional dimensions that need to be explicitly considered in understanding the demise of environmental activism. The first is that, as mentioned earlier, environmental NGOs in Turkey have been drawn into the polarizing political drive prevalent in contemporary Turkey. Özler and Obach (2018) found that NGOs in Turkey are viewed by the Islamist-​leaning government as proxies for opposition forces and not as independent voices truly committed to environmental protection. They suggested that intense political polarization keeps shaping the character of virtually all civil society organizations, including environmental ones, in the sense of “casting each with an identity that reflects and reinforces political divides” (312). The authors compellingly demonstrated how effective civil society functioning in the environmental sphere has been undermined by “the deep partisan division.” In other words, as the Islamist contribution to the ecological debate has been limited to rather abstract criticisms of modernity and its effects on nature, the

216    Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel AKP government has perceived environmental NGOs as inherently opposition forces expressing—​through the words of the president15—​“their hate, animosity and ugliness at every opportunity.” Once environmental NGOs were judged as such, Ankara ignored the content of their demands and had no reason to collaborate with these organizations.16 The second and related dimension concerns a similar polarization between civil society and the incumbent government regarding environmental movements, where Ankara takes a harsh position vis-​à-​vis environmental demands on the grounds that environmentalism is being used as a pretext to mask anti-​AKP politics. The movements described by Erdoğan as “not genuine environmentalists” are the ones that do indeed piggyback on otherwise “authentic” environmental concerns. While the president’s complete dismissal of them does not conform to healthy state-​society relations, the tactical use of environmentalism as a disguise for anti-​AKP political action can indeed form a barrier to the effectiveness of environmental social movements. Consider the Gezi Uprising, that started at the end of May 2013 and continued for about two months. The initial reaction was articulated by a handful of activists protesting the plans to replace Gezi Park in Taksim Square with a hotel/​shopping mall complex to be constructed in a neo-​Ottoman architectural style. The initial motivation focused relatively narrowly on protecting—​as the president himself put it—​“a few trees” in the square. Faced with the heavy-​handed reaction of security forces, however, the demonstration grew immensely by attracting hundreds of thousands of demonstrators (at first in Istanbul, then in the rest of the country) who were united in their criticism of Erdoğan and his economic and socio-​cultural policies. The Gezi Uprising quickly turned into a political platform, where many positions found ways to express themselves, including LGBT activists (whose movement is perceived as “perverse” by the AKP regime) and the Anti-​Capitalist Muslims. As discussed in detail by Arsel, Akbulut, and Adaman (2017), although the characterization of “genuine” environmentalism is ontologically very difficult to discern, this does not necessarily refute Erdoğan’s claim that many of the demonstrators in Gezi were not there to advance an environmentalist goal but merely to use the occasion as an opportunity to topple him from government (even though the protests were mostly peaceful). Another example comes from the resistance movement against the proposed construction of a coal power plant in Gerze (a town on the Black Sea coastal region) during the early 2010s, where the popular mobilization was motivated not only or primarily by environmental concerns but animated by disaffection with, among other things, neoliberal developmentalism, disregard of democratic policymaking, and violent suppression of societal dissent by the state (Arsel, Akbulut, and Adaman 2015). Baptized as “environmentalism of the malcontent,” the Gerze movement is about how and why long-​lasting dissatisfaction with the broader neoliberal development trajectory of the country combined with personal experience in radical political action enabled a group of urban and mostly retired Gerze residents to successfully collaborate with villager activists from the nearby small town of Yaykıl (the site of construction) against the construction of a power plant (later to be joined by Greenpeace-​Turkey—​yet another

The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey    217 example of an alliance between social movements and NGOs). Whereas the peasant activists were primarily concerned with the consequences of coal power on both land and marine ecosystems, it was the synergy between their needs and the more explicit anti-​AKP stance of urban activists that propelled the movement to national significance and successfully forced the private company behind the proposed plant to back down. The success of the Gerze movement cannot be easily replicated, because it was linked to a set of idiosyncratic reasons—​including the high level of social and human capital of urban residents of Gerze, the synergy created between Yaykıl villagers and Gerze activists mainly because of the overlap in their material interests, the existence of a number of policy entrepreneurs who successfully forged the links between the two groups, and the unwillingness of the private company to pursue the project following the resistance (as the company’s image was suffering increased damage). The AKP’s response, though certainly not gentle, did not necessarily reach the level of suppression observed in other conflicts elsewhere in the country; for instance, regarding the Ilısu Dam in the predominantly Kurdish areas. Since then, other similar struggles have not fared as well as Gerze given the increasing authoritarianism of Erdoğan’s regime. In a telling example, when criticizing environmentalists struggling against the gold and copper mining project at Cerattepe, Artvin (in the Eastern Black Sea region), in February 2016, an agitated Erdoğan referred to them as “baby Gezi activists” (yavru Geziciler) and accused them of being agents of foreign forces.17 In another recent episode, even the perceived threat of AKP’s authoritarian measures was sufficient to disarm the struggle against the gold mining project at Mount Ida. After the struggle mobilized, the presence of a few radical elements of anti-​capitalist and anti-​establishment persuasion was sufficient for the movement to step back lest the AKP appointed a trustee mayor to replace the elected one (from the main opposition party) in the city of Çanakkale where the project was located. While this mayor supported the protestors alongside environmental NGOs, trade unions, and professional associations, the appointed mayor would certainly have sided with the state and the project. It is worth noting that this was not an unfounded fear as the AKP has replaced the elected mayors of dozens of municipalities, mostly in Kurdish areas, by diktat since the attempted coup in 2016.18 The strategic intent behind such politicization of environmental demands is not difficult to see given the increasing narrowing of available space for dissent and articulation of alternative visions, especially since the attempted coup in 2016. As such, rather than dismissing such use of environmentalist rhetoric and strategies as insincere or manipulative, it is important to recognize the fecund nature of environmental demands in the sense that sustainability is a boundary concept that can provide safe harbor for and cross-​fertilization of various progressive ideals. However, the prevailing interpretation in Ankara has been far more simplistic, painting all such mobilizations with the broad brush of anti-​Erdoğan activism. Faced with this inflexible posture that others all dissent as counterproductive radicalism, it is not surprising that the political subjectivity of environmental activists increasingly takes on an oppositional character, making compromises and negotiations less feasible.

218    Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel Consequently, the chasm between the state and environmental activists continues to widen.

Democracy and Environmentalism This overview of environmental activism makes it clear that the current situation is not conducive to a democratic milieu of debate, negotiations, and compromises. The hegemony of the idea and practice of economic growth in Turkey is so powerful that any argument challenging this position (in the sense of problematizing the ecological—​and indeed social—​costs of that trajectory) is likely to meet with severe criticism not only from the government but from a broad swath of ideological positions. The hegemony of developmentalism seems so complete that even accusations of treason against those questioning economic growth have become commonplace. Debates on de-​growth/​post-​ growth as well as radical egalitarian strategies that could decouple development from its ecological impacts continue to be confined to very small circles. As such, challenging economic growth and its negative impacts remains a formidable task in Turkey.19 Moreover, the increased authoritarian characteristic of the current regime puts serious constraints on any democratic initiatives, while the cultural and ideological polarization in Turkish society further undermines the possibility of articulating cross-​ideological coalitions of pro-​environmental action. The absence of a democratic relationship between state and society hinders the effectiveness of environmental organizations and movements, and the failure to achieve even relatively straightforward environmental goals further deepens the tension between the state and civil society. This ultimately results in a vicious cycle characterized by strong institutional and legal foundations but weak outcomes in terms of environmental policymaking and implementation. It is therefore a crude reality that a deepened fault line at the cultural and ideological levels as well as increased authoritarianism make challenging the hegemonic growth paradigm even more difficult. To the extent that the country keeps following this authoritarian and polarized trajectory, the chance of effectively highlighting the adverse impacts of a growth regime will be slim. Problematizing the growth paradigm necessitates as a prerequisite the establishment of the rule of law, democratization, and enhanced public participation. This accordingly requires a broader focus on the reasons behind the rise of authoritarianism and polarization in Turkey (and other places as well). Let us just say in passing that neoliberalism by definition embraces an element of imposition which may—​if necessary—​turn into an autocratic governance structure (Adaman and Akbulut 2021). Thus, addressing the reasons behind the rise of authoritarianism and polarization would require us to better understand the governance structure of the neoliberal regime Turkey has been experiencing since the early 1980s. This engagement should equally question, all other points aside, what neoliberalism meant (and continues to mean) for the environment in Turkey.

The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey    219 To break this cycle and make environmental policymaking and implementation more effective will require radical structural changes in the following three areas. First is democratization and enhancing participatory decision-​making procedures at different levels, together with nourishing a culture of co-​existence and overcoming the polarization between the state and environmental activists. Second is to develop alternatives to neoliberalism, as to the extent it remains hegemonic it will bring about an element of imposition and authority, not to mention the negative environmental impact neoliberalism has so far had through the financialization of nature. Third is to problematize the growth paradigm so as to challenge the generally accepted tenet that only a growing economy is able to answer today’s economic problems ranging from unemployment to poverty. In the long run, greater public commitment to a sustainable environment via increased education and awareness levels would be a value added in and of itself to make environmental policymaking and implementation more effective; so would the anchor of the European Union (Chapter 27 of the Acquis) in making the country prepared to tackle various environmental problems.

Acknowledgments In addition to the editor, Duygu Avcı, Hande Paker, and İskender Cem Aydın offered helpful comments, for which we are thankful. The ideas expressed here were presented at the talk series organized by the Atatürk Institute of Modern Turkish History, at Boğaziçi University, which facilitated very fruitful discussions. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes 1. https://​epi.envirocenter.yale.edu (accessed 15 November 2019). 2. https://​dashboards.sdgindex.org/​#/​TUR (accessed 15 November 2019); see Sachs et al. (2019). 3. As mentioned briefly earlier, although environmental legislation has been subject to some degree of erosion (think of the overreliance on “eminent domain”—​originally designed for use in cases of war—​that has been frequently used in governmental decrees to appropriate and develop public and private land for energy and mining projects) and institutions have been losing autonomy (Adaman and Akbulut 2021) in the recent years of Erdoğan’s rule, the environment continues to be presented as being under the protection of the state machinery. 4. Turkey’s environmental legislation is mainly comprised of national laws, regulations, statutes, and decisions, and regulates the following areas: waste management, water and air quality, treatment of natural resources, chemicals and genetically-​modified organisms, and pollution. See: https://​uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/​7-​522-​2040?transit ionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)&firstPage=true&bhcp=1 (accessed 12 November 2019). 5. The Ministry of Environment and Urbanization is the main organization responsible for setting policies and taking measures regarding environmental protection, with additional

220    Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel duties given to municipalities (mainly to regulate waste management) and some other ministries (such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs). See: https://​csb.gov.tr (accessed 11 November 2019). 6. https://​w ww.haberler.com/​a levi-​federasyonu-​kaz-​d aglarinda-​a ltin-​aramak-​haberi/​ (accessed 15 November 2019). 7. Some of the claims expressed under (b) have already been raised by Özler and Obach (2018)—​focusing on the effect of polarization over the AKP—​and by Arsel, Akbulut, and Adaman (2015)—​bringing about the concept of “environmentalism of the malcontent.” The idea of a self-​fulfilling outcome is however pronounced for the first time here. 8. One may equally add societal costs here. As an example, we can cite the 2014 Soma mining disaster, where over three hundred lives were lost. The AKP’s renowned appetite for domestic coal production (mainly to be used in thermal power plants and distributed freely to poor families) laid the groundwork for relaxing safety regulations, leading to this disaster that could have easily been prevented (Adaman, Arsel, and Akbulut 2019). 9. In passing, let us note that the domination of environmental services by economic activities has not been absolute, especially when deterioration brought serious health-​related problems—​improved air quality in cities is a case in point; see Adaman and Arsel (2010). 10. This corresponds to the populist aspect of the Turkish state. Financial support, especially to the poor—​not on the basis of a rights-​based position but rather a patron-​clientele network—​has been a key aspect of populism in Turkey. (See Akçay (2018) and the chapter by Yörük in this volume.) 11. For example, in a 2016 speech at the opening of ninety-​nine small dams and micro-​hydro power plants (at a symbolic gathering in Ankara), an agitated President Erdoğan attacked environmentalists critical of hydro investments (due to their biodiversity-​related ecological costs), saying “there is a group of people in our country, small in number but much too vocal, whose bodies live on these lands but whose souls are hostile to all the wealth and values of this landscape. They express their hate, animosity and ugliness at every opportunity” and made a wordplay by referring to Greenpeace as “Dirty Greens” (calling the said nongovernmental organization Greenpis—​in Turkish “peace” and “pis” meaning dirty are pronounced alike). https://​www.suhakki.org/​2016/​01/​99-​hesin-​acilisinda-​konusan-​ tayyip-​erdogan-​hes-​karsitlarini-​dusman-​ilan-​etti/​ (accessed 14 November 2019). 12. At the same time, some companies have started to publish sustainability reports and reveal their action plans accordingly; similarly, some foreign companies operating in Turkey (usually with local partners) opt to follow environmental standards due to their obligations back home; finally, we should also mention the establishment of a few organizations within the business community aiming at addressing environmental issues. Yet their impacts have so far remained negligible. 13. You may find, for example, statements made by unions on World Environment Day: https://​w ww.genel-​is.org.tr/​doganin-​s ahibi-​degil-​parcasiyiz,2,17353#.XfEW662B1TI (accessed 11 November 2019). 14. https://​www.artigercek.com/​haberler/​disk-​ten-​kaz-​daglari-​aciklamasi (accessed 12 December 2019). 15. Whether Islam accommodates environmentalism or not is of course pivotal at this junction (Özler and Obach 2018; Pusch 2005; Wickstrom 2014), but this demands a separate investigation, which should also include the environmental politics of Muslim-​majority states. Islam-​oriented environmental groups in the Muslim world are indeed very rare. In Turkey, the Islamist contribution to the ecological debate has

The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey    221 mainly leaned toward criticisms of modernity. In terms of actions, we have already mentioned the low visibility and Islamist-​leaning ÇEKÜD (Association for Solidarity of Environmental Organizations); the other Islamist organization that touches upon environmental issues is the so-​called Anti-​Kapitalist Müslümanlar (Anti-​Capitalist Muslims), who happen to be a small group of fervent Islamists claiming that Islam is perfectly compatible with a just and equal society and respect for the environment (Uestebay 2019). To the extent they are against the Erdoğan regime, they are directly targeted by state’s coercive forces. 16. A few exceptions include the collaboration between TEMA and Ankara over forestation provided that TEMA keeps silent on the general attitude of the regime, and between WWF-​Turkey and Ankara where the nature preservation efforts of the NGO do not intersect with Ankara’s economic projects. 17. https://​www.mynet.com/​cumhurbaskani-​erdogandan-​cerattepe-​yorumu-​110102333094 (accessed 1 January 2020). 18. The observation provided here is based on field trips conducted by the authors to the resistance camp. As of January 2020, the camp was still active, even under harsh weather conditions, alas only with a dozen or so activists (as opposed to the hundreds at the height of the movement in August 2019). The current situation is that the mining company—​a Canada-​based firm, Alamos Gold—​is waiting for its license to be renewed. 19. It is worth noting that this formidable task is certainly not peculiar to Turkey. Populist authoritarian regimes around the world that rely on developmentalism are by and large following a similar trajectory of not paying due attention to the environmental (and social) costs of their economic activities. Societal positions may vary, though, as in the case of the Andes Region where a guiding principle for a new regimen of development—​ buen vivir—​has been promoted for some time and incorporated into the constitution as well as public policy, even if implementation has lagged behind (see e.g., Escobar 2010; Walsh 2010).

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The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey    223 Participation, edited by Leila M. Harris, Jacqueline A. Goldin, and Christopher Sneddon, 61–​78. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Erensü, Sinan. 2017. “Turkey’s Hydropower Renaissance: Nature, Neoliberalism and Development in the Cracks of Infrastructure.” In Neoliberal Turkey and its Discontents: Economic Policy and the Environment under Erdoğan, edited by Fikret Adaman, Bengi Akbulut, and Murat Arsel, 120–​146. London: I.B. Tauris. Erensü, Sinan, and Ozan Karaman. 2017. “The Work of a Few Trees: Gezi, Politics and Space.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 41, no. 1: 19–​36. Escobar, Arturo. 2010. “Latin America at a Crossroads.” Cultural Studies 24, no. 1: 1–​65. Gemmill-​Herren, Barbara, and Abimbola Bamidele-​Izu. 2002. “The Role of NGOs and Civil Society in Global Environmental Governance.” In Global Environmental Governance: Options and Opportunities, edited by Daniel C. Esty and Maria H. Ivanova, 77–​100. New Haven, CT: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Eds. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-​Smith. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Hoerber, Thomas C. 2012. The Origins of Energy and Environmental Policy in Europe: The Beginnings of a European Environmental Conscience. London: Routledge. Hommes, Lena, Rutgerd Boelens, and Harro Maat. 2016. “Contested Hydrosocial Territories and Disputed Water Governance: Struggles and Competing Claims over the Ilisu Dam Development in Southeastern Turkey.” Geoforum 71: 9–​20. Işık, Çağlayan. 2019. “Values of the Turkish Society.” Mimeo. Kadirbeyoğlu, Zeynep, Fikret Adaman, Begüm Özkaynak, and Hande Paker. 2017. “The Effectiveness of Environmental Civil Society Organizations: An Integrated Analysis of Organizational Characteristics and Contextual Factors. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 28, no. 4: 1717–​1741. Kalaycıoğlu, Sibel, and Feride Gönel. 2005. “The Role of Business in Environmental Policy-​ Making.” In Environmentalism in Turkey: Between Democracy and Development? edited by Fikret Adaman and Murat Arsel, 117–​129. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Kenis, Anneleen, and Matthias Lievens. 2014. “Searching for ‘the Political’ in Environmental Politics.” Environmental Politics 23, no. 4: 531–​548. Keyder, Çağlar. 2005. “Transformations in Urban Structure and the Environment in Istanbul.” In Environmentalism in Turkey: Between Democracy and Development? edited by Fikret Adaman and Murat Arsel, 201–​217. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Knudsen, Ståle. 2016. “Protests Against Energy Projects in Turkey: Environmental Activism Above Politics?” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43, no. 3: 302–​323. Küçük, Bülent, and Ceren Özselçuk. 2019. “Fragments of the Emerging Regime in Turkey: Limits of Knowledge, Transgression of Law, and Failed Imaginaries.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 118, no. 1: 1–​21. OECD. 2018. Report on Turkey’s Environment. http://​www.oecd.org/​turkey/​turkeydoeswellinf orestationbutfacesbigenvironmentalchallenges.hm. Özler, Ş. İlgü, and Brian Obach. 2018. “Polarization and the Environmental Movement in Turkey.” Journal of Civil Society 14, no. 4: 311–​327. Özyürek, Esra, Gaye Özpınar, and Emrah Altındiş, eds. 2019. Authoritarianism and Resistance in Turkey: Conversations on Democratic and Social Challenges. Berlin: Springer. Paker, Hande. 2017. “ ‘The Politics of Serving’ and Neoliberal Developmentalism: The Megaprojects of the AKP as Tools of Hegemony Building.” In Neoliberal Turkey and its

224    Fİkret Adaman, Bengİ Akbulut, and Murat Arsel Discontents: Economic Policy and the Environment under Erdoğan, edited by Fikret Adaman, Bengi Akbulut, and Murat Arsel, 103–​119. London: I.B. Tauris. Paker, Hande, Fikret Adaman, Zeynep Kadirbeyoğlu, and Begüm Özkaynak. 2013. “Environmental Organizations in Turkey: Engaging the State and Capital.” Environmental Politics 22, no. 5: 760–​778. Pusch, Barbara. 2005. “The Greening of Islamic Politics: A Godsend for the Environment?” In Environmentalism in Turkey: Between Democracy and Development? edited by Fikret Adaman and Murat Arsel, 135–​145. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Sachs, Jeffrey, Guido Schmidt-​Traub, Christian Kroll, Guillaume Lafortune, and Grayson Fuller. 2019. Sustainable Development Report 2019. New York: Bertelsmann Stiftung and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). Sarkissian, Ani, and Ş. İlgü Özler. 2013. “Democratization and the Politicization of Religious Civil Society in Turkey.” Democratization 20, no. 6: 1014–​1035. Stevis, Dimitris, David Uzzell, and Nora Räthzel. 2018. “The Labour–​Nature Relationship: Varieties of Labour Environmentalism.” Globalizations 15, no. 4: 439–​453. Tansel, Cemal Burak. 2018. “Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Democratic Backsliding in Turkey: Beyond the Narratives of Progress.” South European Society and Politics 23, no. 2: 197–​217. Taşdemir-​Yaşın, Zehra. 2019. “Contextualizing the Rise of Environmental Movements in Turkey: Two Instances of Anti-​Gold Mining Resistance.” In Transforming Socio-​Natures in Turkey: Landscapes, State and Environmental Movements, edited by Onur İnal and Ethemcan Turhan, 137–​165. London: Routledge. Uestebay, Leor. 2019. “Between ‘Tradition’ and Movement: The Emergence of Turkey’s Anti-​ Capitalist Muslims in the Age of Protest.” Globalizations 16, no. 4: 472–​488. Varol, Tuğçe. 2017. Energy Policies of Turkey During the Erdogan Era: Facts and Lies. New York: Nova. Walsh, Catherine. 2010. “Development as Buen Vivir: Institutional Arrangements and (De)colonial Entanglements.” Development 53: 15–​21. Watanabe, Kohei, Murat Arsel, Heather Lovell, and Tim Rayner. 2004. “Some States are Greener than Others: Can We Explain Why?” Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 6, nos. 3–​4: 305–​311. Wickstrom, Laura. 2014. “Secular and Religious Environmentalism in Contemporary Turkey.” Approaching Religion 4, no. 2. https://​journal.fi/​ar/​article/​view/​67556. Wurzel, Rüdiger. 2012. “The Environmental Challenge to Nation States: From Limits to Growth to Ecological Modernisation.” In The Withering of the Welfare State, edited by James Connelly and Jack Hayward, 137–​154. London: Palgrave Macmillan. WWF. 2018. Ya Kanal Ya İstanbul: Kanal İstanbul Projesinin Ekolojik, Sosyal ve Ekonomik Değerlendirmesi (Either the Canal or Istanbul: Ecological, Social and Economic Evaluation of the Canal Istanbul Project). https://​www.wwf.org.tr/​basin_​bultenleri/​raporlar/​?7600/​ Kanal-​istanbul.

Chapter 11

T he P olitics of E ne rg y in Tu rk ey Running Engines on Geopolitical, Discursive, and Coercive Power Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın

This chapter discusses the politics of energy in post-​1980 Turkey using a social science perspective. Since the 1980s, two significant trends have characterized Turkey in the energy domain. On the one hand, as a developing country, Turkey, has been and is still experiencing rising energy demand due to population increase, economic growth, and inefficient utilization of domestic resources (Acar and Gültekin-​Karakaş 2016; Aydın 2020). Its energy needs and consumption intensified with the 2000s, when the energy-​ intensive extraction and construction sectors became the country’s engine for growth, a strategic choice leading to higher greenhouse emissions and lacking a meaningful climate mitigation policy for twenty-​first century Turkey (Şahin et al. 2016; Turhan et al. 2016). On the other hand, Turkey imports more than 75 percent of its energy needs—​ gas, oil, and coal—​as it lacks significant oil or gas reserves, leading to a significant current account deficit (Aydın 2019; Ediger, Selen, and Bowlus 2020). Moreover, the politics of energy transformation—​in terms of energy flows and markets, technologies, and policies—​occurs in Turkey in a setting where greater energy consumption has long been seen as a prerequisite for the country’s economic and social development in line with its modernization and progress ethos, where growth is mainly equated with development and issues related to the “why” and “how” of development are largely silenced. Our analysis shows that three points have come to the fore in the politics of energy in Turkey since the 1980s. First, Turkey’s approach to energy in the international arena is marked by geopolitical power projections. It has high modernist ambitions to be a regional energy hub aiming to ensure uninterrupted supply to sustain strong economic growth goals. Second, energy has been given a leading role in efforts to introduce either

226    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın developmental state or market/​commercial logic into the national economy, while ruling governments have instrumentalized a technocratic discourse to establish political hegemony and marginalize public criticism. As such, governments in coalitions with domestic and foreign private capital have primarily promoted the particular private interests. Third, energy-​related decisions were insulated from public participation as much as possible—​contrary to the scale and importance of the issues at hand—​ resulting in intense sociospatial and socioeconomic inequalities and conflicts. To clarify how energy politics functioned in the country and offer an explanation as to why and how decisions on Turkey’s current high-​carbon energy pathway were made over the years, we build on the conceptual lenses elaborated by Bridge, Özkaynak, and Turhan (2018), namely, geopolitical interstate relations, sociopolitical and sociotechnical imaginaries, production of socioeconomic inequalities, and formation of new political collective identities and action. A thorough reading of the energy politics literature in Turkey suggests that pondering all these interrelated analytical dimensions is a fruitful endeavor, to understand not only the country’s past energy choices but also contemporary energy debates and conflicts under what the Erdoğan regime calls the “new Turkey.” Note that our aim here is neither to provide a full chronologic order of events nor to discuss each and every energy domain in detail. Both have been extremely well done elsewhere in the literature. Erensü (2018), for instance, examines Turkey’s thirty-​year history of energy liberalization, dividing it roughly into three periods—​early liberalization (1980–​2001), deep neoliberalization under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) rule (2002–​2013), and the course of authoritarian post-​neoliberalism1 (2013–​today)—​to explain how energy infrastructures have functioned as a powerful bridge between neoliberal restructuring and the developmental state in Turkey and enabled the contemporary authoritarian regime. Various studies have also looked at specific energy sources in Turkey and the evolution of strategies, for instance, coal (Acar and Yeldan 2016; Şahin et al. 2016), hydropower (Eren 2018; Erensü 2018; Harris and Işlar 2014; Işlar 2012; Sayan 2019), and nuclear (Aydın 2020; Jewell and Ateş 2015; Ülgen and Stein 2012). What we hope to do instead is to evaluate the politics of energy in Turkey from a historical and interdisciplinary perspective, to help elucidate how energy systems have been used to enable and sustain particular forms of political economy, transform socio-​natures, and make rhetorical references to public interest while prioritizing private interests and scales over others. Unsurprisingly, most energy projects and policies in Turkey are justified through grandiose nationalistic narratives that are closely linked to the nation’s destiny, such as promoting sustained economic growth, securing the energy supply and independence, or modernizing energy service delivery. Meanwhile, protestors and civil society organizations that speak out against these ambitious yet myopic energy systems on behalf of their communities and the environment often face state violence and intimidation, their claims marginalized as a result of being branded as traitors set on undermining Turkey’s national sovereignty. The chapter thus deconstructs how energy systems and the ways of organizing energy flows and concentrations have generated both symbolic and material power over the

The Politics of Energy in Turkey    227 years in Turkey and helped capitalist hegemony reproduce itself through relationships of domination and vulnerability, in line with Mitchell (2011) and Huber (2015). However, before proceeding further, a brief look at Turkey’s relationship to energy might be useful. As mentioned, Turkey possesses no significant oil and gas reserves (Acar and Yeldan 2016; Ediger, Selen, and Bowlus 2020), yet fossil fuels have dominated Turkey’s energy system for decades. By 2018, the country’s primary energy consumption breakdown was dominated by industry (25.3 percent), electricity generation (23.9 percent), and transportation (19.9 percent), followed by residential heating (14.9 percent), trade and services (8.4 percent), and agriculture and other non-​energy consumption (7.8 percent) (Makina Mühendisleri Odası 2020). Coal and natural gas–​fired power plants have constituted the major part of total installed capacity since the early 2000s (see Figure 11.1), replacing hydropower as the major source of electricity generation (which is our central focus in this chapter). Indeed, since 2000, the absolute amount of electricity produced from coal (hard coal and lignite) has almost tripled in Turkey (TURKSTAT 2020) thanks to using domestic coal as a strategy to reduce import dependence. In addition, while the share of hydropower has decreased, electricity generation in absolute terms still doubled, from around 30,000 gigawatt hours in 2000 to 60,000 gigawatt hours in 2018. The share of renewable resources has also been increasing steadily since 2010—​not at the expense of coal but as part of efforts to replace natural gas, a resource that is primarily imported. The next section provides a comprehensive account of the politics of energy in Turkey in three subsections based on the conceptual lenses, each offering a new perspective and complementary interpretation. The chapter concludes with a critical assessment of the challenges Turkey—​one of the worst performers in mitigating carbon emissions globally—​faces for a transition to fair and environmentally sustainable energy systems. We hope that this overview will prompt further inquiry on energy politics in Turkey and challenge mainstream approaches that analyze technologies and geopolitics of

300000. 250000.

GWh

200000. 150000. 100000. 50000. 0. 1970 1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015 2018 Coal

Liquid Fuels

Natural Gas

Hydro

Renewable Energy and Wastes

Figure 11.1:  Electricity generation in Turkey by different primary energy sources. Source: TURKSTAT (2020).

228    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın energy production and consumption without a concern for their underlying political dynamics and transformative impacts on socioeconomic relations and environmental inequalities.

The Politics of Energy Choices: A Rereading of Turkey’s Energy Profile and Strategy We now focus on conceptual lenses that will help in rereading Turkey’s energy profile and strategy from three distinct perspectives. We begin with geopolitical interstate relations, continue with sociopolitical and sociotechnical imaginaries, and then discuss the production of socioeconomic inequalities and the formation of new political collective identities.

From Transboundary Waters to Pipeline Politics: Energy Geopolitics in Turkey Energy and geopolitics are interwoven into multilayered, multitemporal, and multispatial relations, what Högselius (2019) refers to as “messy complexity.” Turkey’s energy policy, which emphasizes the country’s “unique” position bridging East and West, North and South, and—​needless to say—​supply and demand is a prime example of such messy entanglement. Turkey’s approach to energy geopolitics has long been marked by regional power projections, commitment to uninterrupted supply, strong economic growth ambitions, and an all-​of-​the-​above strategy of rapid and market-​ oriented energy investments. Although coalition governments in the 1990s voiced the country’s aspirations to become a global player as an “energy hub,” it was not until the 2000s that such aspirations became more assertive (Ersen and Çelikpala 2019, 586). In Wigen’s (2012, 608) account, Turkey’s energy policy was “mostly confined to the Kirkuk–​Ceyhan pipeline and Russian gas coming from the Western line via Bulgaria” during the late Cold War period. The rise of the Western sphere of influence in the Caucasus after the Cold War was most notably crowned by the Baku–​Tbilisi–​Ceyhan oil pipeline2 (Marriott and Minio-​Paluello 2012; Saivetz 2009). Accordingly, most of the relevant literature focuses on classical questions of energy security (e.g., İpek 2019; İşeri 2015); the country’s ambiguous but ambitious positioning as an energy corridor, energy transit country, or energy hub; and ways to instrumentalize energy for greater (geo) political power projections. Yet, generally absent from this literature are the unmistakably diverse materialities and multiple sociotechnical imaginaries that these analyses take for granted. An exception to this body of literature surfaces in Fırat (2016), an

The Politics of Energy in Turkey    229 anthropology of regional energy-​transport infrastructures, which succinctly suggests that “Turkish elites together with their counterparts from around the world dig through the earth, carve out steel routes, and institute laws and regulations for market formation and corporatization with the long-​range hope to turn Turkey into a regional power hub for the accumulation, exchange, and distribution of unspent energy resources” (p. 82). The underlying parameter behind this earth-​moving characteristic of energy relations is securitization, understood here as a speech act which decides on “who can ‘do’ or ‘speak’ security successfully, on what issues, under what conditions, and with what effects” (Buzan, Wæver, and De Wilde 1998, 27). According to this logic, once rendered as a matter of security, energy can only be handled with the tools and methods of security apparatuses. As a key factor in Turkey’s geopolitics, “energy security” is defined by the International Energy Agency (2020) as “the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price.” First pronounced in the 9th Development Plan (2007–​2013) as “energy supply security,” a securitized framing of energy matters became omnipresent. Turkey’s 10th Development Plan (2014–​2018) underlines that “as an import-​dependent country, ensuring Turkey’s energy security is closely connected with the quality of relations it has with the countries providing energy. In this context, policies aiming at increasing self-​ sufficiency, without ignoring the mutual dependencies, should be implemented with determination.” The 11th Development Plan (2019–​2023), prepared after the inception of the presidential system that resulted in executive aggrandizement, dedicated a separate special expertise commission report on the topic, emphasizing the increasing role of energy diplomacy in ensuring the country’s energy supply security. An underlying assumption in Turkey’s energy policy is the conviction that states and nonstate actors that control the energy supplies to foreign markets wield a large degree of geopolitical influence. In this framing, Turkey’s advantageous geographical location serves as a natural bridge in delivering oil and gas from resource-​rich eastern countries to hotspots of demand in the West. This energy security–​oriented formulation of energy geopolitics, according to Bridge (2015), reconfigures political–​ ecological relations through calculative techniques, thereby rendering energy a matter of security and giving it a “world-​making” status. Consequently, the calculative, quantitative, and visual characteristics of energy security serve as both a political technology and a governance tool dominating the societal imaginary. In so far as this ambition goes, Turkey would like to transform its role in global energy relations, with its Mediterranean ports “looking like that of Rotterdam provided that oil, gas, LNG [liquefied natural gas], and marine transportation systems can be supported by oil price-​setting mechanism” (Yılmaz-​Bozkuş 2019, 1361). This, however, is not a straightforward equation that can be solved by multiplying the country’s geographical location with its foreign policy ambitions. Van de Graaf and Sovacool (2020) capture this complexity between scramble for what is left and interdependence with the notion of “energy statecraft,” the practice of using energy resources and technologies as tools of foreign policy by manipulating flows, prices, and infrastructure for geopolitical gain. Consequently, tracing Turkey’s energy geopolitics by paying attention to how the manipulation of flows, prices, and infrastructures played over materialities of energy

230    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın resources that seamlessly link the material and social worlds is useful. In the Turkish case, some of the materialities that are constantly being negotiated include dams, oil and natural gas pipelines, LNG terminals, interstate connectors, exploration infrastructure and ports with special energy trade status, among others. Although mainly legitimized as irrigation infrastructures that cater to regional development, the energy implications of damming transboundary waters have always been important for Turkey. Turkey meets a significant portion of its electricity needs from domestic hydropower (29.2 percent production and 31.2 percent installed capacity as of 2019), with an important share of this supply coming from mega-​dams on transboundary rivers such as the Euphrates and Tigris (Makina Mühendisleri Odası 2020). While damming transboundary waters brings with it the potential for conflict with Turkey’s neighbors, it has also partially served the goal of independence from energy imports (Kibaroğlu, Kramer, and Scheumann 2011; Şen 2011) and occasionally catered to—​failed—​geopolitical goals (such as the Turkish–​Syrian Friendship Dam Project [Scheumann and Shmaly 2016]). Despite the rhetoric of environmentally friendly regional socioeconomic development, Turkey’s hydropower boom via small-​ and large-​scale infrastructures has also been strongly criticized for ignoring the needs of local ecosystems, rural livelihoods, and riparian countries in the case of transboundary waters. In essence, all these serve as tools for hydro-​territorial control (Hommes, Boelens, and Maat 2016; Özkahraman 2017). The second and probably most important material dimension of Turkey’s energy geopolitics is the pipelines. As Balmaceda et al. (2019, 3) observe, “pipelines are seen as international projects with at least three major functions: provision of income for exporting and transit countries, provision of energy security for importing countries, and creation of strategic partnerships between the countries involved.” Transporting over 75 percent of the country’s primary energy needs, oil and natural gas pipelines constitute and dominate a large portion of Turkey’s energy landscape and geopolitical imaginaries. Although the Kirkuk–​ Ceyhan pipeline, carrying oil from Iraqi Kurdistan to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, has been operational since 1977, the ascent of pipeline politics in Turkey was marked with the inauguration of the Baku–​Tbilisi–​Ceyhan oil pipeline just before the start of AKP rule. Turkey’s energy imports rose by 102.45 percent during the first 16 years of AKP rule, between 2002 and 2018 (Makina Mühendisleri Odası 2020). Securing energy for the domestic market by diversifying imports and developing domestic sources (including fossil fuels and renewables) and becoming a physical and virtual international energy hub with influence over setting energy prices remain top priorities for Turkey.3 This is particularly the case with regard to natural gas transported through the country, thanks to its strategic positioning between “47% of world energy sources in Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East and 17% of global natural gas consumption in Europe” (Austvik and Rzayeva 2017, 544). This strategic positioning, however, comes with a trade-​off. The very high share of natural gas in the country’s primary energy consumption makes its imports highly vulnerable to actions of external factors (Berk and Ediger 2018).

The Politics of Energy in Turkey    231 Turkey’s aspirations to become an energy hub that would contribute to its geopolitical importance are omnipresent in the ruling AKP’s energy discourse (Bilgin 2011; Erşen and Çelikpala 2019; Schröder and Wessels 2017). Central to this discourse is the idea that Turkey is a “critical asset to European energy supply security” (Demiryol 2019). The Southern Gas Corridor is a case in point. Launched by the European Union and supported by the United States, the Southern Gas Corridor4 is the generic name of a multistep, multistakeholder initiative to lay mega-​pipelines to connect at least 16 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Shah Deniz fields on Azerbaijan’s Caspian shores to Italy’s Apulia region in the southeast and from there to European markets. As Erşen and Çelikpala (2019) argue, this mega-​pipeline project, stretching 3,500 km and requiring around US$45 billion in investments, is pivotal to both the European Union’s strategy to reduce dependence on Russian imports and Turkey’s strategy to become a regional energy hub (see Figure 11.2). However, Turkey’s “asymmetric interdependence” (Öniş & Yılmaz 2016) with Russia involves not only energy but also regional security, tourism, and even agriculture, which complicates the picture (see the chapter by Balta and Çelikpala in this volume). Russia accounted for 36.7 percent of Turkey’s fossil fuel imports (oil, natural gas, and coal combined) in 2017 and is currently constructing the first nuclear power plant in Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast in Turkey. The problem here is that unlike some EU countries that opt for high-​risk nuclear energy to reduce their dependency on Russia, Turkey’s bilateral agreement with Russia constitutes a forty-​nine-​year build–​operate–​transfer model, which contradicts the very essence of reducing dependency (Aydın 2020; Sever 2019). This complexity is further embroiled by recent developments in global LNG markets (Biresselioğlu, Demir, and Kandemir 2012; Bridge and Bradshaw 2017) that increasingly call for ad hoc strategies such as floating storage regasification units and power ships (Günel 2017; Wagner 2019). In addition, offshore gas exploration and exploitation in the

BULGARIA GEORGIA ITALY

ALB.

AZERBAIJAN GREECE

TURKEY IRAN

SYRIA IRAQ

South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP)

East Line

Iraqi Gas Corridor (Planned)

Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP)

West Line

Domestic Lines

Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP)

Blue Stream

LNG Terminals

(Expected Completion in 2021)

Figure 11.2:  The approximate paths of Turkey’s natural gas pipelines. Source: Authors’ own elaboration using information in Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (2020).

232    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın eastern Mediterranean, mediated through intermingled historically grounded enmities, market conditions, technical limits, and international legal issues, are shaping the new apertures of Turkish energy geopolitics (Demiryol 2019). Along these lines, recent offshore gas findings in the edges of Turkey’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea also raise some politically and economically challenging questions about the feasibility of extraction, the extent of national know-​how and technical capabilities as well as the much contested issues around maritime sovereignty (Türkyılmaz, 2020). These new apertures also include creating novel interdependencies as well as new energy geographies in unlikely places, as in the case of the emerging hard coal (anthracite) connection between Turkey and Colombia, which has now replaced Russia as Turkey’s main hard coal provider (Cardoso and Turhan 2018). Austvik and Rzayeva (2017) argue that the outcome of Turkey’s geoeconomic energy strategy will eventually be determined by the interaction of a complex set of parameters, including, but not limited to, the country’s foreign relations; robustness of global climate policy; technological innovations; and shifts in regulatory, financial, political, and logistical arrangements. With these points in mind, we argue that all these intricate relations can nonetheless be better understood by framing energy as a social relationship. From this perspective, all energy investments—​from dams to hydrocarbon pipelines, from long-​haul coal vessels to power ships—​are not so much inevitable economic necessities but deliberate political choices, with alternatives amalgamated in what Hoffmann (2018) refers to as “social energy.” In this formulation, social energy relations go beyond classical geopolitics and energy economics in explaining how society and the materiality of energy co-​evolve by producing historically specific spaces and natures situated in a larger political economic context. This calls for a “socially dynamic non-​deterministic notion of geopolitics [that accounts] for the competitive interaction of the prime appropriators of energy” (Hoffmann 2018, 46). After all, as Fırat (2016, 89) underlines, “relying mainly on borrowed finance (domestic or foreign), imported pipes and other critical materials, and cheap domestic labor, the construction of certain large-​scale energy and transport infrastructures, such as pipelines, does not look sustainable from the perspective of sound energy policy or from an economic perspective”—​a point elaborated in the next section.

Mega-​Dams, Coal, and Nuclear Politics: Sociopolitical and Sociotechnical Imaginaries Energy landscapes and projects such as dams, pipelines, and power stations not only produce material power but also establish national symbols and political influence by feeding collective imaginaries of what a nation stands for, typically modernization and progress (Jasanoff and Kim 2015; Larkin 2013). As is well known, ever since the foundation of the modern republic, the imaginary consent for Turkey has revolved around “catching up” with advanced nations and (re)making Turkey a civilized state via rapid

The Politics of Energy in Turkey    233 economic development, largely equated with growth (Arsel 2005; Pamuk 2018; see the chapter by Pamuk in this volume). Similar to other nation-​states striving to catch up in the development race, this “will to improve” took its toll, radically transforming the socio-​natures of the country (İnal and Turhan 2019). Large dams have often served as icons of Turkey’s development and state-​ building efforts toward creating a modern and prosperous society. This was the leading trend in the developing world during the 1970s and 1980s, when grand hydropower and irrigation infrastructures were promoted as symbols of modernization that would alleviate regional disparities (Huber and Joshi 2015; Kaika 2006). The giant Southeastern Anatolian Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, GAP), designed as a multitude of dams, power plants, and irrigation systems initially in the 1970s, has been a feat of socioeconomic engineering and reveals much about Turkey’s modernist and top-​down developmentalist ideals (Çarkoğlu and Eder 2005; Özkahraman 2017). As Özkahraman (2017, 412) noted, Turkish governments presented the project “as a modernizing scheme that would create economic, social and spatial changes, ending the chronic poverty of the south-​east region by raising local income levels and living standards, provide social stability and economic growth by enhancing the employment capacity of the regional sector, and create socio-​economic integration between the region and the industrialized west of Turkey.” As such, some politicians also hoped, rather wishfully, that the GAP would also be a panacea to the Kurdish question and the long-​standing ethnicity-​based conflict between Turkish security forces and the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Without a doubt, the GAP not only embodies national dreams of development but also has depicted the Turkish state’s typical quest “to tame, control, and discipline nature” and its surroundings for the nation (Kaika 2006, 276; see also Stahl 2019; Tozoğlu 2020). This vision was crystallized in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s October 2010 speech at the ceremony for families resettled due to the controversial Ilısu Dam on the Tigris River, a key component of the project: “With this dam, we will no longer say ‘water flows while the Turks watch’. Instead, we will say ‘water flows while the Turks build’. The residences here were not only built to live in; they also show that a new life style, an exemplary resettlement style could co-​exist with the local architecture.” The irony is that the Ilısu and other GAP projects were conducted with almost no local participation as State Hydraulic Works embraced a technocratic approach over decades. Moreover, thanks to the practice of hydropower building being highly credited in Turkey as a symbol of the nation’s development, GAP projects before Ilısu faced almost no societal resistance for many years (Akbulut, Adaman, and Arsel 2018; Harris and Alatout 2010). Çarkoğlu and Eder (2005, 173) relate the absence of resistance to “a long-​standing presumption that giant development projects are planned and administrated by an apolitical, welfare maximizing state apparatus. Thanks to this convenient characterization, the project came to be seen outside of any strategic or political concerns, disregarding the nationalistic tones of argumentation for the necessity and urgency of the project in government as well as media and intellectual circles.” By and large, as successive mainstream political elites remained united on the hydropower project and portrayed a desired image, the possibility of creating any credible energy alternatives for the region and

234    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın Turkey were stymied. Notable exceptions of resistance in the 2000s include the internationally renowned protests against the Ilısu Dam that would flood the ancient settlement at Hasankeyf (Eberlein et al. 2010) and against the damming of the Munzur Valley in Dersim, a sacred place for the Alevi population (Dissard 2018). Even so, these were highly specific examples of contestation as they represented particular ethnic/​religious identities and their politics and, despite their relative success in creating awareness, making local voices heard, and forming broader coalitions, remained limited in terms of their impact on national decisions (Akbulut, Adaman, and Arsel 2018).5 Ultimately, the withdrawal of international credit agencies did not stop the Turkish state from self-​ financing and completing these projects; in fact, while energy was eventually produced, all other imaginaries linked to the GAP, such as economic and political stability and peace in the region, ended up failing in many ways, due in part also to corrupt, partisan, and short-​term politics (Harris 2008; Kadirbeyoğlu 2017). Indeed, Erensü (2018) traces the roots of fetishizing the energy sector in the nation’s imaginary back to the oil crises of the 1970s, an era of perpetual energy shortages, which led to severe balance-​of-​payment problems for Turkey and eroded the promises of the planned economy at the time. The public experienced these crises as widespread power cuts and daylong queues for transportation fuel and liquefied gas used in cooking. Memories of energy scarcity were then effectively recycled in the political arena at critical times as rhetorical tools with slogans such as “Turkey will be better enlightened,” to legitimize economic and political logics of various energy programs as forms of universal benefit and urgent necessity. As such, the energy sector was at the forefront and instrumental both during the initial stage of the neoliberal transformation in the 1980s and 1990s and during the deepening of neoliberalism and marketization in the 2000s (see the chapter by Erensü and Madra in this volume). After 2010, the authoritarian and nationalist turn of the Erdoğan regime was also facilitated by the mobilization and deployment of all domestic natural resources in the name of securing energy for the nation, without due attention to its social and environmental costs. Energy politics, in both of these periods, and the “political work” that energy does in public imaginaries, are discussed in the next section. Law no. 3096 enacted in 1984 was a first step in Turkey’s neoliberal restructuring as it enabled the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources to give permission to entities (other than the Turkish Electricity Administration) to construct and operate electricity production facilities under different models (e.g., build–​operate–​transfer, transfer of operational rights, or autoproduction). It is in this context that in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, localities such as Aliağa on the Aegean coast and Akkuyu became sites of political contestation in the energy sector, in connection to a coal power plant and a nuclear power plant, respectively. Both projects were undertaken with foreign investors and presented by the Turkish political elite as a solution to what they considered the primary factors hindering growth: the “energy bottleneck” and “dependency on foreign energy resources.” In the initial phases of Turkey’s neoliberalism, however, robust social mobilization and strong judicial resistance blocked liberalization ideals for the industry. Öniş (2000, 2004) highlights the bureaucratic reluctance to the

The Politics of Energy in Turkey    235 full “retreat of the state” in the 1990s, favoring alternative solutions that involved reform under public ownership instead. In particular, high court decisions that annulled several key clauses of the new energy laws were effective at halting the early neoliberal turn of the energy sector (for details of the conflict in Aliağa, see Turhan, Özkaynak, and Aydın 2019; in Akkuyu, see Aydın 2020). Öniş (2011, 714) also underlines that “some of the [dubious] deals that the Court blocked lacked transparency and accountability. . . . Yet, at the same time, the Court also played a negative role in terms of discouraging privatisation, especially on the part of foreign investors.” Actors espousing neoliberalism eventually broke the domestic resistance and marginalized the statist opposition to large-​scale privatization and deregulation reforms thanks to three major economic crises Turkey experienced in less than a decade—​in 1994, 1999, and 2001 (Öniş 2004, 2011). As Erensü (2018) rightly notes, energy, which was central to the premature adoption of neoliberalism in the early 1980s, was once again key in the transition to a new economic order, the so-​called neoliberal deepening that began in the early 2000s. Unlike its predecessor (law no. 3096), the Electricity Market Law (no. 4628, later changed to no. 6446) passed in 2001 envisioned a completely private market, and the Energy Market Regulatory Authority—​initially proposed as an independent regulatory agency—​was established to protect the market from political influence and ensure the impartial distribution of valuable energy production permits, in line with the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment program adopted following the crisis. Meanwhile, many publicly owned enterprises were also privatized to meet economic efficiency concerns; most notably, state-​owned assets such as the national oil company Petrol Ofisi in 2002 and the national oil refinery conglomerate Türkiye Petrol Rafinerileri Anonim Şirketi (TÜPRAŞ) in 2005. Aiming to boost energy production and decrease dependence on imported energy sources, the government also embarked on a multifaceted privatization initiative in the early 2000s: signing forty-​nine-​year leases with private firms, granting them usage rights over small rivers and coal mines, and enabling them to build and operate small hydro and coal power plants to take advantage of the country’s vast and still untapped energy potential (Aksu, Erensü, and Evren 2016; Eren 2018; Harris and Işlar 2014; Işlar 2012; Ocaklı 2018). One of the most concrete outcomes of this process has been a dramatic shift in energy investments and operations from the public to the private sector, where the share of the latter surpassed the former by 2010 and reached almost 80 percent of the total installed capacity by 2018 (see Figure 11.3). Turkey’s energy industry became one of the fastest growing in the world, with installed capacity almost tripling from 2002 to 2019 (Türkiye Elektrik İletim Anonim Şirketi 2020a). Eren (2018) describes well how the state promoted private initiatives around small-​scale hydroelectricity plants as a means to produce “renewable energy” in the name of “sustainable development” since run-​of-​the-​river technology has low installed capacity on the water–​energy nexus and is expected to have lower environmental impact than large dams. Nevertheless, what happened under the AKP regime was that in-​stream flows were diverted in unsustainable ways that were detrimental for both nature and a range of river users.

236    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

59%

42%

2006

59%

41%

2007

58%

42%

2008

55% 45%

2009

49% 51%

2010

54%

57%

46%

43%

2011 Public

2012

63%

37%

2013

69%

31%

2014

72%

74%

77%

79%

28%

26%

23%

21%

2015

2016

2017

2018

Private

Figure 11.3:  Distribution of Turkey’s installed capacity by the public and private sectors: 2006–​2018. Source: Türkiye Elektrik İletim Anonim Şirketi (2020b).

Energy has also been instrumental for the Erdoğan government in seizing political power and establishing an authoritarian hegemony in the aftermath of the 2010 constitutional referendum. This time, the rush to build energy infrastructures and the ability to take extreme legislative measures that bypassed legislative and judicial channels were both framed in reference to national development and energy security. A critical constitutional amendment was specifically linked to energy infrastructures (Article 125) and aimed to remove the judiciary’s capacity to strike down investments on the basis of public interest (Erensü 2018). Urgent land expropriations and the deregulation of environmental directives such as the Environmental Impact Assessment process are just two examples of the AKP’s legal inventions in this period, which eased the way to costly and unsustainable energy investments, once again under the pretext of nation-​building and energy independence (Acar and Gültekin-​Karakaş 2016; Acar and Yeldan 2016). Populist nationalism (for populism in Turkey, see the chapter by Taşkın this volume) ultimately culminated in a new energy program launched in 2017, “National Energy,”6 as part of the “Vision 2023” national development program. It aimed to boost domestic energy production by investing in domestic coal for electricity production, as well as developing geothermal energy resources and other renewables (Erensü 2018; Melikoğlu 2017; Şahin et al. 2016). Defined as “priority areas,” new coal mining and power generation projects were subsidized via very generous regional investment incentive schemes, accelerating the accumulation of capital in the hands of small-​to medium-​ scale enterprises having clientelist relations with the government. As Acar and Yeldan (2016) note, these schemes included value added tax and customs duty exemptions, income or corporate tax reductions, social security premium supports to employers, interest support, and land allocation—​making Turkey one of the countries with major coal expansion, coming behind only China and India (Shearer et al. 2020). Ironically, given the discourse of energy independence, a big portion of the coal-​power plants

The Politics of Energy in Turkey    237 built in this period were designed to process more efficient, higher-​calorific value coal that came from abroad (e.g., Colombia, Russia, and South Africa). As of 2019, Turkey had also taken the lead in geothermal energy generation in Europe and was striving to be the world leader in this category (Sanner 2019). All in all, while Turkey has historically never been energy-​independent and cannot be in the foreseeable future, as Erensü (2018) posits, rebranding the business-​as-​usual energy policy as a domestic and national one has its own political economic logic and brings with it new coercive powers under the prominent synergy between neoliberalism and authoritarianism. It should also be noted that the energy strategies of the Erdoğan government go hand in hand with plans to install nuclear power plants in different regions of the country following six decades of nuclear debate, marking another frontier in the country’s sociotechnical imaginary. As Aydın (2020) states, Turkish governments—​regardless of their political stance—​have repeatedly aspired to build a nuclear power plant yet always failed due to the high levels of initial financing and technical capacity necessary for construction.7 The AKP government has finally overcome financial and technical challenges by signing a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia, which entails a build–​own–​operate strategy until decommissioning. Unsurprisingly, the main justification put forth in backing the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, commissioned to Rosatom—​a Russian state-​owned corporation—​was not “nuclear is clean energy”; rather, it was that the technology marked a milestone in Turkey’s modernization process as a source of high prestige (Aydın 2020; Türkiye Atom Enerjisi Kurumu 2008, 3).8 In a similar vein, President Erdoğan argued that nuclear energy has a bright future and that “they [Westerners] are trying to fool us, as if these [nuclear power plants] are all things of the past. There is no such thing. . . . We, too, god willing, are going to implement it very successfully” (Presidency of The Republic of Turkey 2018). Another argument put forth by proponents of nuclear energy focuses on the affordability of electricity produced by nuclear power that would become the country’s locomotive for industrial development (Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources 2012, 12). Obviously, any argument regarding the costs of nuclear energy as a potentially risky technology would be weighed against the social and political costs of failing to develop as a nation and, as such, counterbalanced with the standard argument of having to accept this inevitable price for the benefits of continued national progress (Ertör-​Akyazı et al. 2012; Jasanoff and Kim 2009).

Production of Socioeconomic Inequalities and Formation of New Political Collective Identities Turkey’s energy strategy since the 1980s has generated an increasing number of major socioeconomic and environmental problems. Aggressive neoliberal strategies such as privatization of state economic enterprises, urgent expropriation decisions, and enclosures of resource commons, accompanied by problems related to the non-​transparent and

238    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın top-​down decision mechanism, created immediate societal unrest both locally and nationally. As a result, socioenvironmental conflicts proliferated all over the country, with many related to the production, consumption, and transmission of electricity (Aydın 2019; Özkaynak et al. 2015). Furthermore, the politics of energy transformation in the country have reproduced and even exacerbated existing economic, gender, and energy access inequalities—​with long-​term legacies in a country on an uneven development path.9 Turkey has witnessed many renowned protest movements, with local communities mobilizing against the disproportionate social, environmental, and health impacts of electricity generation projects, be they coal-​fired, hydropower, or nuclear plants, even wind turbines (for environmental politics, see the chapter by Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel in this volume). One of the oldest (and still ongoing) movements, dating back to the mid-​1970s, is the Anti-​Nuclear Platform, against the nuclear power projects first at Akkuyu and later at Sinop and İğneada on the Black Sea coast (Aydın 2020; Yavuz 2015). Moreover, prominent local protests against coal-​fired power plants in places such as Yatağan, Gökova, and Aliağa date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s (Adem 2005; Turhan, Özkaynak, and Aydın 2019). In the aggressive neoliberalization period under the AKP, the number and intensity of such actions increased significantly. For instance, attempts to exploit the full potential of hydropower were accompanied by a greater number of local resistance movements across Turkey, with claims for water rights and the protection of local livelihoods coming to the fore, as in Munzur, Kastamonu Loç Valley, and İkizdere (Aksu, Erensü, and Evren 2016). Moreover, following strategies to reduce Turkey’s dependence on natural gas by using domestic lignite, several local protests emerged in different localities after 2010, especially over health concerns, with emblematic cases in Gerze (Arsel, Akbulut, and Adaman 2015), Yırca (Orhan 2019), and Zonguldak (Cardoso and Turhan 2018). These cases exhibit a consistent geographical pattern as plans for new coal power plants are concentrated either in industrialized cities such as İzmir and Hatay or in proximity to industrialized cities, such Zonguldak, Çanakkale, and Muğla—​regions designated ecological sacrifice zones at the altar of economic growth (Aydın 2019). More recently, mobilizations against renewable power plants also formed, mainly in the form of objections to their top-​down characteristics and severe local effects, particularly concerning land use. The people of Karaburun in İzmir, for instance, took action against a wind farm project that caused the removal of around 2,000 olive trees, an important source of local livelihood (Aydın 2019; Özçam 2019). Similarly, geothermal projects recently booming in the western Aegean region, rich with fertile land, threaten agricultural production and generate strong local opposition (Altındal 2019). In addition to the unequal distribution of the impacts of energy projects in terms of geography and landscape in Turkey, energy policies have played a central role in aggravating socioeconomic inequalities. According to an analysis by Emeç et al. (2015), there is first and foremost an energy access problem in Turkey. Poor households still consume more wood and coal for domestic heating since they have limited access to

The Politics of Energy in Turkey    239 more modern and expensive heating methods, such as natural gas and electricity (Eke and Ayrancı 2018). The AKP government’s ad hoc solution to the growing energy poverty was to provide sacks of coal (mainly low-​quality domestic lignite, exacerbating air pollution and hence respiratory diseases [Temiz Hava Hakkı 2019]) as in-​kind benefits to poor households—​a policy that failed to address the root cause of the problem and superficially treated its symptoms at best. As Adaman, Arsel, and Akbulut (2019) note, such mechanisms are often used to mobilize political consent via clientelism and structurally geared to further impoverish beneficiaries. According to Buğra (2020), in-​kind charitable supports have unfortunately been a natural extension of the authoritarian populist social policies touted by successive Erdoğan governments: while they are not much of a strain on the budget, they also help the government expand its voter base without forgoing its neoliberal accumulation project (for welfare policies, see the chapter by Yörük in this volume). A tragic consequence is the case of the Soma coal miners, who were forced out of agrarian production to work in a privatized coal mine with a specific royalty agreement that aimed to maximize production over health and safety in Soma coal basin in Western Anatolia. An explosion in 2014 resulted in the death of 301 miners—​a disastrous but predictable outcome of the neoliberal energy policies that have dominated since 2001 (Adaman, Arsel, and Akbulut 2019). Although social disturbances and conflicts in the energy domain may seem fragmented, they nonetheless gave rise to the formation of new political relations in Turkey in ways that are yet to be acknowledged. Overall, while energy produces distinct materialities, it also serves as a gathering force by establishing and consolidating new political spaces and meanings (Mitchell 2011). Similarly, it nurtures particular identities and collectivities. In the Turkish experience, those who had stakes in the energy industry formed a key collective identity positioned around the state under different governments since 1990, which, Öniş (2011), for instance, calls the pro-​privatization coalition in the post-​2001 era. Collective identities were also formed around local environmental struggles when solidarity practices were intensified against the commodification of water and land, the Sisterhood of the Streams (Derelerin Kardeşliği), Black Sea Insurrection (Karadeniz İsyandadır), and Ecology Union (Ekoloji Birliği) being some of the best-​known examples (Aksu, Erensü, and Evren 2016). These resistance movements against particular energy investments, although usually reactive rather than proactive, seem to gather around the common identity of grassroots environmentalism and combine daily resistance practices (such as local protests, occupation, and blockades) with tools of legal action (such as lawsuits and formal petitions) (see also Turhan, Özkaynak, and Aydın 2019). A significant number of local resistance movements have been successful at slowing down or delaying unwanted energy infrastructures, if not victorious in terminating these projects. Finally, new identities related to democratic ownership of energy production have been flourishing nationwide around local renewable energy cooperatives, with solar energy in the front line, despite the barriers set by the new bylaw published in mid-​2019 rendering the establishment of energy cooperatives more difficult.10

240    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın

Conclusion In this chapter, we present the politics of energy in contemporary Turkey by focusing on three dimensions—​geopolitical ramifications, sociopolitical and sociotechnical imaginaries, and conflicts related to energy infrastructures and policies—​with an aim to demonstrate how energy choices have been made, implemented, and challenged across various landscapes since the 1980s. In doing so, we shed light on how seemingly well-​designed strategies for energy projects of national significance, backed by energy security and independence claims, have repeatedly been connected to the fabrication of political power and used to prioritize certain interests and secure particular gains. Turkey offers a compelling case, demonstrating how politics of energy are shaped, and simultaneously constrained, by political imaginaries and meaning-​making processes at the national level, with concrete material outcomes such as conflicts and/​or regional disparities. We hope that this discussion will encourage new ways of thinking about the goals and assumptions of energy policy–​making in Turkey. This discussion certainly has major implications for the politics of energy futures in the country as well—​in particular, to shift the debate from a narrow focus on technology or infrastructure to a focus on forms of energy governance and social control that critically analyzes the distribution of social power that affects access to energy services, participation in energy decision-​making, and environmental and social costs of energy allocation. Certainly, this also implies “considering energy as a social common to be shared, rather than secured and commodified” in the long run (Bridge et al. 2018, 172). Indeed, one of the key obstacles that Turkey’s high-​carbon energy politics increasingly faces is the decarbonization imperative in a climate-​challenged world. As a laggard in global climate politics, Turkey’s total greenhouse gas emissions increased by 137.5 percent between 1990 and 2018 (making it the country with the highest rate of increase among Organisation for Economic Co-​operation and Development members), and per capita emissions climbed to 6.6 tons (above the global average of 4.8 tons in 2017). As of 2018, 85.8 percent of all greenhouse emissions in Turkey were produced by the energy sector (İklim Haber 2020). This hard fact will most likely haunt Turkey’s energy horizons in the foreseeable future given the recent emphasis on the European Green Deal among EU member states that will shape its energy landscape over 2021–​2027. Turkey’s attempts to establish a domestic carbon market to facilitate its participation in the EU emissions trading scheme (Turhan and Gündoğan 2019) or to rapidly deploy utility-​scale renewable energy technologies to meet its intended nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement11 (Arı and Yıkmaz 2019) will most likely hinge upon the availability of external financial resources, policy supports, and price guarantees and efforts to eliminate the subsidies for fossil fuel investments in good time (Acar et al. 2018). Moreover, the rapid and high-​density urbanization surge in Turkey puts the country’s climate goals further at risk (Kocabaş 2013). In this sense, the transition to low-​carbon development and the decarbonization of its key sectors will remain the Achilles heel of the politics of energy in Turkey insofar as the country fails to achieve this transition sustainably,

The Politics of Energy in Turkey    241 timely, and equitably. Above all, such a transition requires a major transformation in the prevailing sociopolitical paradigm and dynamics and moving beyond an extractivist and construction-​based economy and a growth-​fixated system.

Acknowledgments A previous version of this chapter was presented at the Istanbul Policy Center Climate Cafe Talks, February 2020 Meeting. The authors would like to thank the meeting participants and the editor for their comments.

Notes 1. With all the caveats regarding the inherent authoritarianism in different neoliberal configurations of state–​society relations, not least in the Turkish experience. See also Tansel (2018). 2. Although Turkey expressed interest in constructing a pipeline to reach and transport Azeri oil as early as 1993, it was not until 1995 that the United States endorsed the Turkish plan and actively supported it. Owned by a consortium led by BP (British Petroleum), the pipeline was agreed in 1994 and became operational in 2001 (LeVine 2007). 3. Without the power to determine prices, a country will only be considered a transit country or gas corridor, where the former implies rent-​seeking through ownership of pipelines passing through its territory and the latter, simply opening its geography for investment to connect supply and demand (Dieke and Schröder 2017). 4. Curiously also called the Southern Energy Corridor, somewhat equating energy with natural gas, see Yorucu and Özay (2018). 5. See Aksoy (2018), for an ethnomusicological reading of environmental and political activism around Ilısu Dam, analyzing Tarkan’s and Aynur’s (two significant figures of Turkish and Kurdish popular music) engagements in the campaign against the project. 6. Here, it is worth noting that the strategy is named Millî Enerji and not Ulusal Enerji. Although they both mean “national,” the latter is the more modern utilization coined after the republican era and is mostly used by secular groups, while the former is the traditional, Ottoman-​Turkish utilization, derived from Arabic. As Erensü (2018, 154) puts forward, the choice of the word milli “sends the message that the fate of the Turkish energy industry is tied up to the fate of the government through the figure of the national will [millî irade].” 7. It should be noted that public opinion affected by the Chernobyl disaster and persistent antinuclear campaigns and the battles fought on the legal front also played a role in delaying these projects from coming to fruition, particularly as seen in the decision to abandon the Akkuyu project in 2000, which was particularly affected by civil society opposition (Şahin 2011). 8. The modernization and prestige aspects are clearly observed during the two publicity campaigns in 2015 and 2018 (both preceding important elections at the time). The campaign in 2018 went as far as to cast Aziz Sancar, the 2015 Nobel Prize laureate for his research in chemistry, in the TV spots. 9. See, for instance, Eke and Ayrancı (2018) and Selçuk, Gölçek, and Köktaş (2019) for analyses of energy poverty in Turkey, and Yaka (2017, 2019) for analyses of mobilizations against small-​scale hydropower plants from a gender perspective.

242    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın 10. The “Bylaw on Unlicensed Electricity Generation Regulation in the Electricity Market,” (Enerji Piyasası Düzenleme Kurumu 2019) published in the Official Gazette (no. 30772) on May 12, 2019, stipulates that energy cooperatives can only be established by consumers who are in the proximity of each other, effectively preventing consumers from different cities or even neighborhoods from being part of the same initiative. 11. Turkey finally ratified the Paris Agreement in October 2021.

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248    Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın Temiz Hava Hakkı. 2019. “Hava Kirliliği ve Sağlık Etkileri: Kara Rapor.” https://​www. temizhavahakki.com/​kara-​rapor/​. Tozoğlu, Ahmet Erdem. 2020. “A Chapter in the Modernization of Turkey: Damming the Rivers, Claiming the Natural Landscape, and Building of the Seyhan Dam in Cilicia.” Turkish Studies. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​14683849.2020.1746651. Turhan, Ethemcan, and Arif Cem Gündoğan. 2019. “Price and Prejudice: The Politics of Carbon Market Establishment in Turkey.” Turkish Studies 20, no. 4: 512–​540. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1080/​14683849.2018.1533821. Turhan, Ethemcan, Semra Cerit Mazlum, Ümit Şahin, Alevgül H. Şorman, and Arif Cem Gündoğan. 2016. “Beyond Special Circumstances: Climate Change Policy in Turkey 1992–​ 2015.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 7, no. 3: 448–​460. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1002/​wcc.390. Turhan, Ethemcan, Begüm Özkaynak, and Cem İskender Aydın. 2019. “Coal, Ash, and Other Tales: The Making and Remaking of the Anti-​Coal Movement in Aliağa, Turkey.” In Transforming Socio-​Natures in Turkey: Landscapes, State and Environmental Movements, edited by Ethemcan Turhan and Onur İnal, 166–​186. London and New York: Routledge. Türkiye Atom Enerjisi Kurumu. 2008. “Nükleer Teknolojinin Ülkemize Kazandıracakları.” http://​www.taek.gov.tr/​tr/​belgeler-​formlar/​yayinlar/​brosurler/​ Nükleer-​Teknolojinin-​Ülkemize-​Kazandıracakları. Türkiye Elektrik İletim Anonim Şirketi. 2020a. “Mart 2020 Kurulu Güç Raporu.” https://​www. teias.gov.tr/​tr-​TR/​kurulu-​guc-​raporlari. Türkiye Elektrik İletim Anonim Şirketi. 2020b. “Türkiye Elektrik Üretim-​İletim 2018 Yılı İstatistikleri, Türkiye Kurulu Gücünün Kamu ve Özel Sektöre Göre Dağılımı.” https://​ webapi.teias.gov.tr/​file/​b6c7afb9-​3561-​40d1-​8e5d-​38608920c4fa?download. TURKSTAT. 2020. “Electricity Generation and Shares by Energy Resources.” http://​www. turkstat.gov.tr/​PreTablo.do?alt_​id=1029. Türkyılmaz, Oğuz. 2020. “İktidarın enerji uygulamalarından kareler.” BirGün. https://​www. birgun.net/​haber/​iktidarin-​enerji-​uygulamalarindan-​kareler-​313781 Ülgen, Sinan, and Aaron Stein. 2012. “Efforts to Control the Atom and the Transfer of Nuclear Technology: An Evaluation from Turkey’s Perspective.” In The Turkish Model for Transition to Nuclear Energy—​II, edited by Sinan Ülgen, 53–​91. Istanbul, Turkey: Ekonomik ve Dış Politika Araştırma Merkezi. Van de Graaf, Thijs, and Benjamin K. Sovacool. 2020. Global Energy Politics. Cambridge: Polity. Wagner, Julien. 2019. “Turkey’s Karpowership: Floating Power Plants Seek Anchor Clients.” The Africa Report. https://​www.theafricareport.com/​14573/​turkeys-​karpowership-​floating-​ power-​plants-​find-​anchor-​clients/​. Wigen, Einar. 2012. “Pipe Dreams or Dream Pipe? Turkey’s Hopes of Becoming an Energy Hub.” Middle East Journal 66, no. 4: 598–​612. https://​doi.org/​10.3751/​66.4.12. Yaka, Özge. 2017. “A Feminist-​Phenomenology of Women’s Activism against Hydropower Plants in Turkey’s Eastern Black Sea Region.” Gender, Place and Culture 24, no. 6: 869–​889. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​0966369X.2017.1340873. Yaka, Özge. 2019. “Gender and Framing: Gender as a Main Determinant of Frame Variation in Turkey’s Anti-​Hydropower Movement.” Women’s Studies International Forum 74: 154–​161. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.wsif.2019.03.002. Yavuz, Filiz. 2015. Beni “Akkuyu”Larda Merdivensiz Bıraktın. İstanbul, Turkey: Can Yayınları. Yılmaz-​ Bozkus, Remziye. 2019. “Analysis of Turkey’s Role as a Possible Energy Hub.” GeoJournal 84, no. 5: 1353–​1364. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s10708-​018-​9928-​6. Yorucu, Vedat, and Mehmet Özay. 2018. The Southern Energy Corridor: Turkey’s Role in European Energy Securit. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Chapter 12

The C ontem p ora ry P olitics of H e a lt h in Tu rk ey Diverse Actors, Competing Frames, and Uneven Policies Volkan Yılmaz

Health is political for at least two reasons: (a) political factors play a key role in the social distribution of health risks and outcomes, and (b) public and influential actors acknowledge the political character of health and engage in political action regarding it. The first reason concerns the political etiology of ill health. According to the clinical medicine approach, the causes of ill health stem from individual characteristics, risk factors, and behaviors (e.g., unhealthy eating habits leading to an increased risk for diabetes). Yet the public health approach suggests that the factors behind the incidence of ill health at the population level may not be the same as those at the individual level (Rose 2001; e.g., unavailability of fresh vegetables in local markets leading to an increased incidence of diabetes). The shift of focus from the individual to the social determinants of health (Bambra, Fox, and Scott-​Samuel 2005) makes broader political factors central to the analysis of health (e.g., social determinants of health explain discrepancies in various health outcomes, including mortality rates within and between countries [e.g., Kondo et al. 2009]). Such an approach also suggests that health politics and healthcare politics are not synonyms, and policies affecting health outcomes do not always come with a health title. Health politics alludes to a wider activity domain of political action that affects people’s health; healthcare politics refers to the realm of politics where access to healthcare and products that cater to the diagnosis and treatment of certain health problems are negotiated. The broader linkages between politics and public health often take the form of durable, naturalized inequalities; they rarely attract sufficient public

250   Volkan Yılmaz attention and become central to political struggles. In contrast, the distributional politics of healthcare are part of mainstream politics in many countries. The second factor underpinning the political nature of health derives from the handling of health as a political matter by public actors. Many, including governments, political parties, social movements, patient organizations, environmental organizations, international organizations, and businesses, have a stake in health issues and pursue a variety of goals including legitimacy, entitlements, social change, and profits. Although such interlinkages between public health and politics offer a unique opportunity for the development of a research agenda and theory building, the study of public health politics has remained at the margins of political science (Bambra, Fox, and Scott-​Samuel 2005; Carpenter 2012). The literature in healthcare politics is an exception, and has an illustrious lineage especially in the examination of the politics of healthcare reforms (e.g. Alford 1975; Giaimo 2005; Immergut 1992; Skocpol 1997). Given these two factors, health is always present in politics, albeit sometimes implicitly. The extent to which a diverse set of issues, such as access to medicine and occupational health and safety, is explicitly framed as a matter of health politics varies across contexts and over time. Once a health-​related issue is framed as a political matter, it often gains a distinctive logic of politics. Carpenter (2012) suggests that health politics differ from other domains in three aspects: (a) egalitarianism in relation to health has come to express one of the rare values most societies hold dear unanimously; (b) the perceived centrality of health for human well-​being offers a unique opportunity for the organization of individuals and groups around common goals or disease experiences that might not otherwise be obtainable; and (c) health politics present a unique constellation among scientific expertise, policy, and the everyday lives of people. The characteristics of the Turkish case that make Carpenter’s conceptualization of health politics highly relevant are the societal preference for egalitarian healthcare provision, the increasing salience of health topics in Turkish politics, and the ongoing contestations about the role of medicine in policy and politics. Nevertheless, mainstream literature on Turkish politics disregards health as a political matter. The only exception, similar to the trend in the health politics literature in general, has been several studies exploring the political dynamics behind the 2003 reform of the Turkish healthcare system and identifying its social and political implications (e.g. Ağartan 2012; Dorlach 2015; Harris 2019; G. Yılmaz 2017; V. Yılmaz 2013). Apart from these studies, the literature generally makes only a passing reference to health and fails to appreciate the autonomy and complexity of health politics in its own right. With a few exceptions (Kıbrıs and Metternich 2016; Ünal 2015), a common practice in the literature is to treat health issues as mere instruments for examining other and allegedly more important political phenomena as if such issues are empty signifiers. Consequently, medical scholars in general, and public health scholars in particular, rather than social scientists, remain at the forefront of intellectual efforts to develop a comprehensive research agenda for health politics in Turkey. Given this status of the field, this chapter offers a comprehensive analysis of health politics and recent developments in Turkey. It provides a panorama of health politics

The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey    251 covering both (a) healthcare politics and (b) the politics of public health. The former covers issues related to the financing, delivery, and organization of healthcare services; the latter deals with problems that require preventive measures. Regarding healthcare politics, this chapter concentrates on five dimensions: (a) physician politics during the 2003 reform, (b) the politics of international policy expertise during the 2003 reform, (c) business politics of healthcare, (d) the politics of medical humanitarianism, and (e) patient politics. Regarding the politics of public health, it focuses on four select dimensions: (a) sexual and reproductive health politics, (b) tobacco control politics, (c) the politics of drug abuse, and (d) the politics of the COVID-​19 pandemic. Focusing on these diverse dimensions of health politics paves the way for a comprehensive and more nuanced examination of health politics in Turkey and facilitates cross-​sectoral comparisons. The chapter reaches three main conclusions: First, health politics in Turkey are no longer confined to the contours of parliamentary and professional politics. A new scene of health politics began to emerge in Turkey, with both corporate actors and patient organizations visible and active alongside the government, political parties, and the Turkish Medical Association (Türk Tabipleri Birliği, TTB). Next, the political framing of health has considerably changed. Although health was mainly considered a matter of social policy before the 2003 reform, the growing intermingling of health with economic growth, market regulation, population, family, and humanitarian policies in recent years multiplied the available political discourses of health and generated contested meanings and policy implications. However, the multiplication of political discourses on healthcare has not rendered the social policy framing of healthcare obsolete. Such competing political discourses coexist, interact, and sometimes compete with one another, making health politics a core subject for social inquiry. Finally, an increasing volume of democratic actors such as organizations of physicians and patients, opposition political parties, and social movements are politicizing health issues and deploying public health and social policy frameworks to a diverse set of health issues in making rights claims. Despite the authoritarian turn in Turkish politics (see the chapter by Karakoç in this volume), such efforts entail democratization of health politics by turning health into a platform through which rights, entitlements, and the role of the state are negotiated.

Healthcare Politics Turkey gradually achieved a relatively well-​established public capacity in healthcare financing and delivery before the end of the twentieth century. Two factors explain this achievement. First, the country has historically been successful in investing in medical education—​a strong tradition, the origin of which dates back to the late nineteenth century (Aksel 1944)—​and channeling graduates into public service, especially in the republic. Second, the country owes its mature healthcare system to its bumpy yet persevering history of electoral competition, leading to welfare state expansion since

252   Volkan Yılmaz the late 1940s (Keyder 2007; V. Yılmaz 2017). Such a combination of electoral incentives and the available scientific expertise has increased public expectations of receiving healthcare from the state. As a result, the overwhelming majority in Turkey holds the state responsible for providing comprehensive healthcare for its citizens (Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu 2012). These factors explain the dominance of the government in healthcare spending in Turkey, which is higher than the OECD average (OECD 2020). The 2003 reform initiated by the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) government resulted in four major changes in the Turkish healthcare system. First, it unified the occupational status based social insurance schemes into a single compulsory social insurance scheme. Next, it established an internal market for healthcare services that diminished the role of the public sector. Third, it incorporated New Public Management practices into public providers. Finally, it introduced different forms of copayments and co-​insurances in accessing healthcare and medications. While some scholars depict the 2003 reform as an egalitarian expansion (Dorlach 2015; Harris 2019), others espouse a more critical position and point to a dynamic and unstable combination of universalism with marketization as the main dynamic of the reform (Ağartan 2012; V. Yılmaz 2013). The examination of the select dimensions of healthcare politics that follows illustrates that the historical legacy of treating healthcare as a state responsibility remains largely intact among the public and continues to influence healthcare politics. At the same time, the post-​2000s period has seen the emergence of competing frames for healthcare, including the economic framing of healthcare, first promoted by the World Bank and the AKP government and then adopted by business actors, and the humanitarian framing of healthcare manifested in both domestic politics and the politics of foreign policy.

Physician Politics during the 2003 Reform Physicians as a professional group hold a peculiar place in the politics of Turkish modernization as not only the pioneers of the nation-​building project (Terzioğlu 1998) but also servants of the public on the ground. Physicians have long been the sole intellectual authority over health policy decisions through the presence of a large number of physician-​legislators in the Turkish parliament. Although their favorable public image had been gradually eroding since the 1980s (Terzioğlu 1998), the negative portrayal of physicians and TTB in governmental discourse during the 2003 reform debates was an unprecedented assault on their reputation. This populist political discourse presented the ruling party as the sole representative of the public interest against self-​ serving and calculating physicians who opposed the reform (Ağartan 2019; Ağartan and Kuhlmann 2019; V. Yılmaz 2017; for populism in Turkey see the chapter by Taşkın in this volume). TTB, the professional body of Turkish physicians, has been at the forefront of organized opposition to the 2003 reform, arguing that the reform would lead to the

The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey    253 marketization of healthcare and the loss of professional autonomy. TTB’s activism against the reform included producing and disseminating a critical account of it, organizing physician protests to raise awareness, and using legal and judicial activism to curb its negative implications (V. Yılmaz 2017). TTB’s stance on the 2003 reform was an extension of its unique organizational history and political vision, which distinguishes it from its counterparts in most other countries, which function as professional interest groups (V. Yılmaz 2017). With a leadership change in the 1970s, TTB adopted a new vision for physician politics by situating itself within broader socialist labor politics, which has remained a core part of its institutional identity (V. Yılmaz 2017). Reflecting this vision, TTB has been advocating for a comprehensive understanding of the right to health (rather than of the right to healthcare) with strong references to preventative measures and a fully socialized universal healthcare system. This transformative vision of health politics has made TTB a party to high-​level political conflicts, as discussed later in this chapter. TTB’s outright and principled opposition to the reform failed to attract either public or parliamentary support, especially in the early phase. This lack of interest in TTB’s opposition was due to the popularity of the reform, as it equalized benefits packages for all citizens and granted them free access to public and private providers alike. Moreover, TTB delayed but could not block the two major components of the reform, which had a direct effect on the practice of the medical profession: the introduction of a full-​time work requirement that abolished physicians’ dual practice as civil servants and private practitioners (V. Yılmaz 2017) and the launch of performance-​based remuneration for physicians in the public sector. Recent research validates the accuracy of TTB’s earlier criticisms of the key aspects of reform related to the practice of the medical profession. In a qualitative study with physicians working in public hospitals, Ağartan (2019) finds that individual physicians’ discontent with the reform originated from the perceived loss of professional prestige, professional autonomy in clinical settings, and the respect of patients and their relatives. Similarly, Aktaş (2020) demonstrates that physicians in public hospitals not only have their professional autonomy diminished but also have to negotiate and contest new regulations in clinical settings to provide better services for their patients. Despite the failure of its opposition to the reform, TTB quickly adjusted to the new conditions and once again emerged as a key player in healthcare politics. One manifestation of this was the public and media visibility it has achieved with its well-​grounded criticisms of the government’s new public–​private partnership (PPP) hospitals (city hospitals) since the 2010s. TTB’s arguments about city hospitals have been adopted and further articulated by opposition politicians in their criticisms of the AKP government. Second, TTB has functioned as a check and balance on the government during the COVID-​19 pandemic, to the extent that it has compelled the Minister of Health to acknowledge under-​reporting of COVID-​19 cases. In response, the leader of the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), the junior partner in the ruling electoral coalition led by the AKP, called for the immediate dismantling of the organization (Dyer 2020).

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The Politics of International Policy Expertise During the 2003 Reform Another important dimension of healthcare politics is the direct involvement of international policy experts in policymaking during the 2003 reform. Although international policy experts and their organizations often position themselves as technocrats, their involvement in the reform process had a salient political dimension; their leverage was based on the AKP government’s vulnerable position in its first two terms (2002–​2011). Given the potentially volatile electorate and powerful military establishment (for civilian-​military relations in Turkey, see the chapter by Satana and Özpek in this volume), the government sought broader legitimacy for its major policy actions, including healthcare reform. Although the government has often relied primarily on the European Union (EU) for reforms, Europeanization was not a relevant factor in healthcare reform debates (Ağartan 2016; G. Yılmaz 2017). Instead, the World Bank was a partner of the government. The critical literature on social policy reforms in the Global South often portrays the relationship between international organizations and governments as an asymmetrical one, in which governments comply with the conditionalities that international organizations attach to loans directed to them and implement reforms conforming to these organizations’ neoliberal blueprint (e.g., Armada, Muntaner, and Navarro 2001; Homedes and Ugalde 2005). Nevertheless, studies examining the influence of the World Bank on the 2003 reform consistently argue that the relationship between the World Bank and the AKP government was more balanced than described in the literature on the Global South, and the policy transfer in the Turkish case had a voluntary character (G. Yılmaz 2017; V. Yılmaz 2017). A balanced relationship between the World Bank and the AKP government during the 2003 reform denies neither the influence of the World Bank nor the neoliberal dimensions of the reform (for neoliberalism in Turkey, see the chapter by Erensü and Madra in this volume). In fact, the World Bank’s influence was substantial, from its engagement in problem definition to design of the reform and its implementation. Ağartan (2016) suggests that the collaboration between the AKP government and the World Bank in identifying the failures of the pre-​reform healthcare system through data collection and analysis was pivotal in the government’s framing of the necessity for reform. Along similar lines, V. Yılmaz (2017) finds that the previous partnerships between the World Bank and Turkey, dating back to the late 1980s, had laid the groundwork for a consensus over problem definition and the main tenets of the reform proposal between the World Bank and high-​level Turkish healthcare bureaucrats. V. Yılmaz (2017) also argues that the World Bank functioned as an anti-​politics machine during the 2003 reform through its emphasis on strong leadership at the expense of the democratic process, presenting the reform content as evidence-​based (based on a particular reading of the insights of health economics), and dismissing alternatives to the reform as lacking credibility.

The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey    255

Business Politics of Healthcare The emerging literature on Turkish healthcare politics presents healthcare as a relationship between the state and its citizens, mostly mediated through formal political institutions (e.g., Sparkes, Bump, and Reich 2015). Although this depiction has some value, it disregards the influence of business actors such as the pharmaceutical, medical technology, hospital, medical tourism, and insurance sectors, which have strong vested interests in healthcare. In fact, business actors have been crucial players in Turkish healthcare politics, starting with the pharmaceutical sector long before the 2003 reform and extending to hospitals, medical tourism, medical technology, and construction sectors since then. Bringing business actors, their interests, and influence into the analysis of healthcare politics contributes to an understanding of the new status of healthcare at the intersection of social and economic policy. The small number of studies incorporating these into the analysis in the Turkish case underlines the contextual nature of these power dynamics and state-​business relations. For example, in his study on pharmaceutical reimbursement and pricing policy, Dorlach (2016) argues that the AKP government has been more responsive to its low-​income constituency than to the business sector by offering two observations: First, the government has an aversion to requiring patients to make higher copayments for medications. Second, it occasionally takes a stance against business interests, reflected in its decision to decrease the reimbursement rates for pharmaceuticals in order to keep government spending on healthcare low. In comparison, V. Yılmaz (2017) suggests that business interests became more assertive following the 2003 reform, which, according to his analysis, has created a publicly funded internal market in healthcare provision that has considerably increased the role of private hospitals and laid the foundation for the emergence of new, organized business actors. Such actors have subsequently influenced policies through lobbying and succeeded in increasing the rate of co-​insurance for patients using private hospitals. Moreover, the strength of private hospitals has reached a point of regulatory failure, especially after they resorted to informal strategies for collecting unlawful payments from patients, which have largely remained unpunished (V. Yılmaz 2020a). New developments in the global healthcare market and the Turkish healthcare sector make it harder to treat healthcare politics as insulated sectoral politics. For example, Vural (2017) sheds light on the integration of the Turkish hospital sector into the financial markets through the influx of an increasing volume of investment by global private equity funds. She concludes that this financialization has pressured private hospitals to achieve faster and higher returns and reinforced existing trends toward concentration in the form of hospital chains. Another example is Gün’s (2019) study on the emergent mode of PPPs in hospital construction and operation in the form of the city hospitals, which demonstrates the complex relations among construction firms, medical technology companies, international legal consultants, and domestic policy entrepreneurs. The introduction of city hospitals has led to two major changes in the Turkish healthcare

256   Volkan Yılmaz system. First, dollar-​ denominated costs of these hospitals substantially increased the pressure on the public budget especially after the depreciation of the Turkish lira since 2018. Second, these hospitals resulted in the closure of some public hospitals and monopolized the public sector capacity for healthcare in some cities such as Bursa and Elazığ.

The Politics of Medical Humanitarianism Another dimension of healthcare politics has been played out in medical humanitarianism—​a set of practices including medical care provision in emergency settings. Although the Turkish state and civil society organizations (except for a few human rights organizations) did not have any presence in this domain until the 2000s, three factors underpin their increasing engagement with medical humanitarianism: the AKP’s increasing foreign policy activism, the impact of the crisis in Syria on Turkey, and governmental efforts to sustain an image of a strong and capable state in domestic politics through a humanitarian presence. First, the AKP’s rise to power has greatly affected Turkish foreign policy orientation, which manifested itself in a new aspiration to present the country as a generous humanitarian state, a friend of oppressed countries, and providing an alternative to Western humanitarianism (Çetinoğlu 2019). This emerging form of state-​led medical humanitarianism has also been complemented by mostly faith-​based Turkish humanitarian civil society organizations, which established a presence in African and Asian countries (Aras 2017). Previous studies indicate that the emerging Turkish medical humanitarianism differs from its counterparts in its neglect of gender programming components (Çetinoğlu 2019), its short-​termism and risk-​averse approach to health challenges, and its lack of capacity and willingness to improve the healthcare systems of the aid recipient countries (Aras 2017). Next, the mass arrival of Syrians fleeing the civil war has turned Turkey into a humanitarian field, both attracting external humanitarian actors and incentivizing a considerable number of Turkish organizations to establish themselves as humanitarian agents (Çetinoğlu 2019; for refugee politics in Turkey, see the chapter by Kılınç and Toktaş in this volume). In such a context, the AKP government has allowed Syrians under temporary protection in Turkey to receive similar health benefits as Turkish citizens (V. Yılmaz 2019), which has substantially contributed to Turkey becoming the largest donor state in the world when domestic humanitarian spending is included (Development Initiatives 2020). The government’s new rhetoric of medical humanitarianism has also been tailored for domestic consumption. As such, the strength and success of the government in its medical humanitarianism have both been presented so as to sustain an image of a strong and capable state in domestic politics. For example, Turkey was announced as the third-​ largest supplier of medical aid during the COVID-​19 pandemic (Yüzbaşıoğlu 2020), sending medical and protective equipment to Western countries such as Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom (Altıok 2020). Despite such public bravado, the government

The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey    257 largely failed to distribute free face masks to its citizens after introducing a ban on their sale on the market (Yeniçağ 2020). Political contentions over the ethos of medical humanitarianism and the principle of medical neutrality also took place between Turkish governments and physicians even before the AKP came to power, especially at times of civil strife and violent conflict. While a majority of physicians in Turkey works as civil servants, some have been willing to use their scientific knowledge to challenge government policies and practices they consider contrary to medical ethics. For example, a considerable number of physicians have utilized their expertise for evidence-​based human rights activism to fight against torture since the late 1980s (Can 2016a). Another historical moment, when the principle of medical neutrality became a contentious topic in Turkish politics, occurred during hunger strikes by political prisoners in the early 2000s. Oğuz and Miles (2005) discuss the dilemma physicians faced between government pressures to force-​feed and treat prisoners on hunger strike against their will and their medical ethics. Another example was the AKP government’s hostility toward and criminalization of voluntary physicians offering medical aid during the Gezi protests (Açıksöz 2016; Can 2016b; for Gezi protests, see the chapter by Kaya in this volume). Finally, in the context of the authoritarian turn in Turkey, TTB’s public statements and activities—​based on a political vision that transcends a narrow understanding of healthcare—​have often put the organization under political pressure. One such example was the detention of members of TTB’s central council in 2018 on grounds that they “make propaganda of a terrorist organization” after the organization issued a statement calling for an end to Turkey’s military operations in northern Syria (Kizil 2018).

Patient Politics The emergence of patients as political agents in Turkish health politics is a recent yet significant development, which signifies democratization of health politics by bringing the patients’ perspective to public debates and policymaking, politicizing new issues of concern, and symbolizing the birth of grassroots health politics. Recent studies (e.g., M. K. Bilir 2018; Gencelli 2019) offer analyses of accounts from psychiatric and orthopedically disabled patients on the Turkish healthcare system and demonstrate how patient and disability rights organizations bring diverse issues of concern into health politics discussions. While the history of physician-​led disease-​specific organizations is longer, Turkey has witnessed a growth in the number of patient-​led organizations, especially since the early 2000s. The contemporary landscape of patient organizations reflects the diversity of disease experiences, ranging from organizations of psychiatric patients demanding implementation of the community-​based approach to mental health to rare disease and cancer organizations advocating for integrated care and inclusion of new medications into the public reimbursement list. Some of these patient-​or patient-​relative-​led organizations deploy a rights-​based discourse that entails holding politicians accountable

258   Volkan Yılmaz and making direct demands of elected officials rather than calling for philanthropic responses from the public. Patient organizations have engaged in considerable political activity in the form of public awareness campaigns and advocacy activities (e.g., demanding expansion of the social health insurance benefits package). One manifestation of their political impact is the success of rare disease organizations in attracting legislative attention to their problems, which led to the establishment of a special parliamentary committee (Domaniç Yelçe 2019), their invitation to a parliamentary hearing, and the publication of a parliamentary report (Turkish Grand National Assembly 2020). Another successful advocacy campaign was organized by patients living with spinal muscular atrophy, and their relatives, for the inclusion of high-​cost medications into the public reimbursement list, which gained significant media visibility, especially when they organized a protest in front of the Social Security Institution’s headquarters (Milliyet 2018). This campaign successfully compelled the government to reimburse some of their medication costs (Çalık 2019). Last but not the least, increasing anecdotal evidence suggests that individual patients also engage in health activism, often in the form of litigation. One example was the victory of a cancer patient in a court case against the Social Security Institution, overturning its decision to deny access to a high-​cost drug that proved to improve the patient’s medical situation (Saymaz 2020).

The Politics of Public Health The fight against communicable diseases that lead to high rates of avoidable mortality, such as malaria (Tuğluoğlu 2008) and tuberculosis (Çavuşoğlu 2014), was at the center of the Turkish state’s efforts to safeguard public health in the early decades after its establishment in 1923, which was later complemented by other programs such as leprosy control (Aytekin and Saylan 1988) and family planning (Benezra 2014) in the 1960s. Owing to a series of national vaccination campaigns and other public health measures, the country had almost completed its epidemiological transition by the 2000s, which has made non-​communicable diseases (e.g., ischemic heart disease, cancers, and diabetes) the leading causes of death (Akgün et al. 2007; for developmentalist policies in Turkey, see the chapter by Pamuk in this volume). Nevertheless, improvement in health outcomes has been uneven, as persistent regional and ethnic inequalities in infant mortality demonstrate (Hamzaoğlu 2020; Koç, Hancıoğlu, and Çavlin 2008). Some recent positive trends were also noted. For instance, in terms of service utilization, a study finds that the family medicine centers established with the 2003 reform have reduced regional disparities in the use of maternal healthcare services (Aygün 2020). Overall, following a policy reorientation that was not peculiar to Turkey, the country started to channel its human and financial resources mostly to curative healthcare services (except for maternal, newborn, and child health), a trend that reached its peak with the 2003

The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey    259 reform. Negative implications of this policy reorientation have become evident during the COVID-​19 pandemic. Even before the pandemic, a global revival of interest in preventive health measures started to underline the potential contribution that a public health approach could make to the improvement of health outcomes including those related to non-​communicable diseases (Mikkelsen et al. 2019). Turkey has taken some modest steps in that direction through market regulation attempts, public health campaigns, and the establishment of Healthy Life Centers offering nutrition and mental health counseling services and cancer screening (Ministry of Health 2018). However, progress has been uneven across sectors. Overall, the slow pace of progress in preventive health is a result of the lack of strong political will, the overshadowing of public health by the emphasis on curative services, and the strength of vested interests underlying some public health problems (e.g., industry-​related air pollution resulting in respiratory diseases). Comparing Turkey to other OECD countries illustrates that the country faces significant public health challenges (OECD 2020). For example, tobacco consumption in Turkey is the highest in the OECD; thus, the incidence of lung cancer is far above the OECD average. Moreover, the incidence of obesity in Turkey is one of the highest in the OECD, which also explains its high ranking in deaths due to diabetes. Trends in preventive health service coverage present a mixed picture. On the one hand, immunization coverage has substantially increased in the last two decades (WHO 2020); on the other, the rate of unmet popular need for family planning services has been trending upward in the last five years (Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies 2019). The scope of public health politics is wider than can be described here. Some of the dimensions that fall out of the scope of this chapter include environmental politics (see the chapter by Adaman, Akbulut, and Arsel in this volume), the politics of occupational health,1 the politics of food and health,2 and the politics of vaccination.3 The analysis of the select dimensions of public health politics in the following sections suggests that both the input and the pioneering role of the medical community have been crucial for the increasing saliency of public health issues. The medical community aims to make the causal links between social conditions and health problems more clear and palpable to the public. Moreover, it illustrates that the public health framing of issues such as sexual and reproductive health, tobacco use, drug abuse, and the COVID-​19 pandemic often compete with other politically powerful frames such as economic growth, population, and family policies in shaping state policies and priorities.

Sexual and Reproductive Health Politics Turkey’s adoption of a human-​rights approach to sexual and reproductive health, starting from the mid-​1990s, was largely a silent revolution. Especially after the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo (1994) and with the strengthening of women’s organizations in Turkey in the 1990s, the direction of policy change in sexual and reproductive health veered toward strengthening public capacity

260   Volkan Yılmaz to include family planning services, adopting the women’s reproductive rights perspective, and age-​sensitive sexual and reproductive health counseling services for the young (Çelik and Esin 2012). The main political controversy in this field emerged, starting from the 2010s, as a result of the AKP government-​led demographic policy shift in Turkey from antinatalism to pronatalism, coupled with the promotion of a neoconservative family values agenda (Dayı 2019; see the chapter by Arat in this volume). On the one hand, such a shift led to an expansion in healthcare benefits, with the inclusion of assisted reproduction services (for involuntarily childless married couples with a wife aged between 23 and 39; Gürtin 2016). On the other hand, it has led to a gradual reduction of human and financial resources and capacity in family planning services and counseling (V. Yılmaz 2020b). One key area where this controversy over sexual and reproductive health has played out was abortion. Turkey legalized abortion up until 10 weeks’ gestation in 1983. In the context of a drastic decline in Turkish public approval of abortion from 61 percent in 1990 to below 30 percent in 2008 (Esmer 2012), then-​Prime Minister Erdoğan equated abortion to murder, hinting at its criminalization (Ahmadi 2012), sparking women’s protests in metropolitan cities. Although the government did not ultimately change the law, it has restricted women’s practical access to abortion (MacFarlane et al. 2016). The restriction of abortion service provision without any legal basis signified a dramatic change in bureaucratic culture in the Turkish healthcare system, reflected in the fact that many physicians have started to follow the governmental discourse and to refuse to perform abortions, overriding their legal obligations to provide such service. In addition, the politicization of the issue of abortion has concealed a silent counterrevolution, leading to the loss of institutional capacity in family planning and youth-​friendly sexual and reproductive health. Another controversy began over the prevention of the spread of sexually transmitted infections and the dissemination of scientific and rights-​based sexual and reproductive health knowledge among the population (V. Yılmaz and Willis 2020). The shift in the official discourse toward a neoconservative family values agenda resulted in the dissolution of long-​established partnerships among the public sector, international organizations, and domestic civil society organizations that collaborated in preventative measures, sexual and reproductive health counseling, and comprehensive sexuality education. Despite these setbacks, a handful of civil society organizations remain active in sexual and reproductive health advocacy and service provision. Advocacy efforts by these organizations motivated a number of municipalities run by the opposition Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) to assume responsibility in this field by opening centers offering confidential testing and counseling services for sexually transmitted infections (V. Yılmaz and Willis 2020). The authorization granted by the Ministry of Health for these centers did not suffice to protect them from public defamation campaigns by far-​right groups (e.g. Habertürk 2019) and the cessation of some of their activities as a result. Such cases demonstrate the increased leverage that far-​right groups enjoy in framing sexual and reproductive health—​and the susceptibility of both the government and mainstream media to such influences—​which

The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey    261 together undermine public sector efforts to implement a preventative approach in this field (V. Yılmaz and Willis 2020).

Tobacco Control Politics Despite smoking’s well-​known negative health consequences and its high prevalence, tobacco control did not make it to the political agenda in Turkey until the late 1990s. Trade liberalization and the privatization of public monopolies since the 1990s have enabled transnational tobacco companies to gain market dominance in Turkey (five such entities currently control the entire market). Political priority was placed on tobacco control due to the sustained efforts of anti-​tobacco physicians and academics gathered under the umbrella of the National Committee on Tobacco and Health, who were then joined by anti-​tobacco advocates affiliated with the AKP (Hoe et al. 2016). As a result of such advocacy efforts and the enabling global policy agenda, Turkish parliamentary discourse on tobacco between 1975 and 2011 has shifted from framing the issue as one of development underlining the economic benefits of tobacco production for the country to a public health framing stressing its devastating impact on health outcomes (Ozcebe et al. 2018). Although the AKP-​backed tobacco control efforts decreased tobacco use prevalence by six percentage points between 2000 and 2020, the WHO estimated that nearly one-​ third of Turkish society (aged fifteen or above) still had a tobacco addiction in 2018 (WHO 2019a). On the one hand, Turkey has received international praise for having a strong demand-​side tobacco control policy (WHO 2019b), including measures such as smoke-​free legislation for indoor public spaces, comprehensive bans on advertising tobacco products, and the adoption of plain packaging (Republic of Turkey 2019). On the other hand, N. Bilir (2017) suggests that the high prevalence of smoking, especially among the youth, the comparatively low prices of tobacco products, and the significant rate of noncompliance with regulations demonstrate the limits of anti-​tobacco policies in Turkey. In addition to noncompliance, persistent usage of tobacco can be explained by successful market strategies implemented by transnational tobacco companies, such as product innovation, pricing, and indirect advertising, to counteract the strengthening of demand-​side measures (Keklik and Gultekin-​Karakas 2018). Accordingly, anti-​ tobacco non-​governmental organizations (NGOs) in Turkey question the effectiveness of demand-​side measures in decreasing tobacco use and call for supply-​side measures (e.g., removing or restricting profit making from the supply of tobacco products) instead (Zülfikar 2019).

The Politics of Drug Abuse The issue of illegal drugs first appeared in Turkish politics as part of tensions with the United States in the 1970s over opium production in Turkey and alleged linkages with the

262   Volkan Yılmaz illicit drug trade. In response to US concerns, Turkey halted opium production in 1972 and reinstated it under a state-​licensed system in 1974 (Transform 2018). Turkey’s efforts at the time to ensure that opium production was brought under state control and would not be used for illicit purposes increased the capacity of Turkish law enforcement agencies (Robins 2009). Political priority was later, in 1996, given to the issue of illegal drugs as part of the National Security Council’s (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu) decision concerning cutting the financial links between illicit drug trafficking and terrorist organizations. Despite the securitization of the issue, the Family Research Institution, rather than law enforcement agencies, was given the mandate to develop and lead Turkish drug policy, including the prevention and treatment of drug use disorders (Robins 2009). However, this institution failed to develop a comprehensive policy strategy until the early 2000s. With United Nations and EU support, the Turkish International Academy against Drugs and Organized Crime and the Turkish Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (TUBIM), affiliated with the police, were established in the early 2000s and replaced the inactive Family Research Institution (Robins 2009). These two institutions redefined anti-​drug policy within the mandate of the police, which was criticized by medical professionals, who expected the Ministry of Health to lead anti-​drug policy development and practice (Robins 2009). TUBIM has published annual reports on substance abuse since 2006 and carries out cross-​sectoral projects with the Ministry of Family, Labor, and Social Services, the Ministry of Education, the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and the Green Crescent Society to decrease drug use (e.g., Turkish National Police 2020). However, reflecting on the limitations of a security approach to the problem of drug use, the data that TUBIM reports come from detainees, prisoners, and those receiving treatment rather than public surveys. Moreover, both healthcare policy and demand-​side responses to illicit drug use have been deficient (Robins 2009). These factors led Evered and Evered (2016) to question the effectiveness of the Turkish anti-​drug policy. Although the reported prevalence of drug use and drug-​induced mortality rates among the Turkish population is low compared to other OECD countries, official figures show an increasing trend (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction 2019), and the issue has received media coverage (e.g., BirGün 2017; Sözcü 2017). The increasing public visibility of drug abuse and its negative health impacts, combined with the insufficient capacity of drug treatment centers, has drawn the attention of opposition politicians. In particular, Ekrem İmamoğlu, a CHP politician who became mayor of Istanbul in 2019, included the fight against drugs in his election campaign agenda (Tele1 2019). After his victory, he established a special directorate general in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality responsible to provide drug rehabilitation services (Yeniçağ 2019).

The Politics of the COVID-​19 Pandemic Turkey has occupied a middle position in country rankings for COVID-​19 mortality, as of the end of November 2020 (Johns Hopkins University 2020). Although the number

The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey    263 of officially announced deaths due to COVID-​19 per 100,000 population in Turkey was around 19 by mid-​December 2020—​far worse than high performers such as South Korea (1) and Finland (8)—​it fared better than low performers such as Belgium (154), Spain (100), United Kingdom (94), and United States (88) (Johns Hopkins University 2020). Many factors, including but not limited to the policy response, can explain Turkey’s middling position in terms of COVID-​19 related mortality. Non-​policy factors include Turkey’s youthful population structure and low level of elderly living in care homes, which became hotspots for COVID-​19 transmission to seniors in countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Sweden (Akkan and Canbazer 2020). With the outbreak of the COVID-​19 pandemic, and as in most other countries, government response to the pandemic has dominated political debates in Turkey. In the early phase of the pandemic, especially between March and May, the AKP government decided to delegate the responsibility of leading Turkey’s pandemic response to the Ministry of Health, supported by the newly established Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board, composed of specialist physicians. Bakir (2020) argues that such a delegation in a political system dominated by a strong president was temporarily possible only because the exceptional nature of the pandemic required scientific expertise as an input for policy formation. This rare decision to delegate responsibility to the Ministry of Health in the early stage seemed to increase public trust in the response (Duvar 2020) and compliance with governmental directives. For example, in mid-​May, human mobility decreased around 80 percent in public transport transit stations and retail and recreation places compared to the previous year (Google 2020). Another key factor that contributed to limiting both the transmission of COVID-​19 and mortality rates in the early stage of the pandemic was the fast establishment of well-​ functioning contact tracing teams. Similar to most other countries, Turkey also faced the pandemic with underfunded and understaffed population-​based health services. In that context, the Ministry of Health reassigned personnel from different branches of the healthcare system to contact tracing teams, who often had to work very long and exhausting hours (TTB 2020) to compensate for Turkey’s limited healthcare personnel per population (OECD 2020). Developments in healthcare services have long been at the center of the AKP’s rhetoric of public service and development to bolster its public appeal and legitimacy. Turkey’s relative success in controlling the pandemic until May was no exception. President Erdoğan promoted this early success as an outcome of the 2003 reform and attributed it to increased capacity in healthcare provision, particularly intensive care units, especially with the opening of city hospitals (TRT Haber 2020). Although the exceptionally high number of intensive care hospital beds per 100,000 population in Turkey (Ministry of Health 2019b)—​compared to Western European (Rhodes et al. 2012) and Asian countries (Phua et al. 2020)—​has certainly become an advantage for the country during the pandemic, this capacity was neither an outcome of deliberate efforts to ensure pandemic preparedness nor the main driver of the country’s relative success in controlling transmission and mortality until May. However, such presidential framing was a response to long-​standing criticisms of both opposition parties and TTB regarding city hospital

264   Volkan Yılmaz projects and their high cost to the public budget, the opacity of their contracts and functioning, and the closure of public hospitals to secure demand for their services (e.g. BİANET 2017; Yeniçağ 2018). The AKP government’s pandemic response exhibited significant shortcomings, which became more pronounced especially after the end of May. The first major issue was banning the sale of disposable face masks on the market and launching a free face mask distribution campaign in the early stage of the pandemic; however, this initiative ended in failure. A month later, the government lifted the ban and set a price limit instead (Hürriyet Daily News 2020). Bakir (2020) explains this failure as resulting from an exclusionary policy design that did not incorporate the insights of relevant stakeholders. Nevertheless, the subsequent inability of the government to implement periodical and comprehensive testing for COVID-​19 and to make the flu vaccine available signifies that these failures are part of a broader problem of weakened state capacity. The second issue was the government’s failure to keep a high level of social trust in its pandemic response through regular and reliable public information sharing, especially after the relaxation of the lockdown in June. Since then, the political debate around the pandemic response focused on the reliability of official figures and took place mostly between the AKP government and TTB and CHP. The questioning of the official figures was echoed by the public, which could be observed in the drastic declining public trust (from over 60 percent in April to roughly 35 percent in September) in the Ministry of Health’s figures (Sputnik Turkiye 2020). In response to allegations of underreporting of COVID-​19 cases, the Minister of Health stated, “We have to be aware that our state, during the fight against the pandemic, protects national interests as well as people’s health” (Koca 2020). This statement signified an official acknowledgment of underreporting, with the expectation that under-​representing the scope of the pandemic would serve the recovery of the Turkish economy. Moreover, the fact that such a statement came from the Minister of Health, who would be expected to prioritize medical expertise and the safeguarding of public health, shows that the window of opportunity granted to the ministry in leading the response in the early stage of the pandemic had expired by fall 2020. Turkey finally announced the total number of COVID-​19 cases on December 10 (Ministry of Health 2020), which placed the country among ten countries with the highest number of cases (Johns Hopkins University 2020).

Conclusion The landscape of health politics in Turkey resembles that of countries with a legacy of electoral competition and strong state involvement in public health and healthcare. These factors have created a political culture characterized by high salience of health issues and the central role attributed to the state in securing health and healthcare. Although broader political polarization has manifested itself in health politics concerning a few health issues such as abortion in recent years (for polarization in Turkey,

The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey    265 see the chapter by Somer in this volume), it has rarely escalated to a point where partisan dynamics shape public responsiveness to public health measures or main political parties offer radically different directions in health policy, such as in the United States. The recent authoritarian turn in Turkey has led to either the exclusion of health issues from mainstream political debates or their subordination to other issues. However, the COVID-​19 pandemic has changed this scene by bringing health issues to the forefront of politics in an unprecedented manner. Given this context, this comprehensive analysis of health politics in Turkey supports three main conclusions. First, it shows that health politics has been expanding in Turkey with the participation of new public actors, including but not limited to business and patient organizations. Correspondingly, the scope of health politics has been increasing to cover a diverse set of issues ranging from tobacco control to the public reimbursement of disease-​specific medication costs. Second, social policy is no longer the only available frame for health issues. The growing intermingling of health with economic growth, market regulation, population, family, and humanitarian policies in recent years has diversified the available political discourses on health. Consequently, a greater number of actors utilize competing discourses to shape health policies. Finally, the social policy and public health framings of various issues related to health have gained new popularity among democratic actors, such as patient organizations, opposition political parties, and individual citizens, which might counterbalance the competing frames and turn health into a platform through which rights, entitlements, and the role of the state are negotiated. The contemporary authoritarian turn in Turkish politics has had a restrictive effect on the potentially positive influence of such democratic efforts and provided an enabling environment for the applicability of competing frames for health issues, such as economic growth and pronatalist population policy. From a more optimistic perspective, however, these democratic efforts have contributed to the revitalization of electoral competition by bringing mainstream politics closer to the lives of ordinary citizens. The input and demands of patients, physicians, and the overall society regarding health issues could become one of the drivers of democratic revival in Turkey if they continue to shape the agendas of mainstream political actors.

Notes 1. For example, an epidemic of silicosis among workers caused by sandblasting in denim production (Akgun et al. 2006) sparked a social movement to end sandblasting practices, to push for the recognition of silicosis as an occupational disease, and to ensure social protection and compensation for the affected workers (Yasin 2011). The movement succeeded in achieving its goals. 2. For instance, the new government program (Ministry of Health 2019a) aimed at regulating food items sold to children in school canteens; however, its implementation has been delayed due to pressure from school canteen owners (Gıda Dedektifi 2019).

266   Volkan Yılmaz 3. For example, a sizable group of parents with high education and income started refusing to vaccinate their children (Özceylan, Toprak, and Esen 2020)—​which the Constitutional Court interpreted as a parental right (BİANET 2015).

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The Contemporary Politics of Health in Turkey    267 Aygün, Aysun. 2020. “Are Family Medicine Centres Achieving Their Target in Turkey: Impact on Health Care Utilization of Mothers and Infants.” International Journal of Health Planning and Management 36, no. 3: 189–​208. Aytekin, Ahmet Hamdi, and Türkan Saylan. 1988. “Leprosy in Turkey.” Leprosy Review 59, no. 3: 231–​234. Bakir, Caner. 2020. “The Turkish State’s Responses to Existential COVID-​19 Crisis.” Policy and Society 39, no. 3: 424–​441. Bambra, Clare, Debbie Fox, and Alex Scott-​Samuel. 2005. “Towards a Politics of Health.” Health Promotion International 20, no. 2: 187–​193. Benezra, Belin. 2014. “The Institutional History of Family Planning in Turkey.” In Contemporary Turkey at a Glance, edited by Kristina Kamp, Ayhan Kaya, E. Fuat Keyman, and Ozge Onursal Besgul, 41–​56. Wiesbaden: Springer. BİANET. 2015. “Constitutional Court: No Vaccination for Children against Parents’ Will.” https://​m.bianet.org/​bianet/​law/​170487-​constitutional-​court-​no-​vaccination-​for-​children-​ against-​parents-​will. BİANET. 2017. “HDP’li Yiğitalp: Şehir Hastaneleri Sağlık Bakanlığı Bütçesinde Yok” (Yiğitalp from the People’s Democratic Party: No Trace of City Hospitals in the Ministry of Health Budget). http://​bianet.org/​biamag/​siyaset/​192447-​hdp-​li-​yigitalp​sehir-​hastaneleri-​saglik-​bakanligi-​butcesinde-​yok. Bilir, Merve Kardelen. 2018. “Mental Health Care Policy Reform in Turkey: User Group Perspectives.” Master’s thesis, Boğaziçi University Social Policy Programme. Bilir, Nazmi. 2017. “Successes and Challenges in Tobacco Control–​Turkish Experience of 20 Years.” Eurasian Journal of Pulmonology 19, no. 3: 119–​123. BirGün. 2017. “Bonzai: Ölümle Yaşam Arasında” (Phenazepam: Between Life and Death). https://​www.birgun.net/​haber/​bonzai-​olumle-​yasam-​arasinda-​161810. Can, Başak. 2016a. “Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and State Violence: Medical Documentation of Torture in Turkey.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 30, no. 3: 342–​358. Can, Başak. 2016b. “The Criminalization of Physicians and the Delegitimization of Violence in Turkey.” Medical Anthropology 35, no. 6: 477–​488. Carpenter, Daniel. 2012. “Is Health Politics Different?” Annual Review of Political Science 15: 287–​311. Çalık, Burcu. 2019. “SMA Hastaları İlaçlarını Bugünden İtibaren Alabilecek” (SMA Patients to Receive Their Medications from Today). Anadolu Agency. https://​www.aa.com.tr/​tr/​gunun-​ basliklari/​sma-​hastalari-​ilaclarini-​bugunden-​itibaren-​alabilecek/​1380563. Çarkoğlu, Ali, and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu. 2012. Türkiye’de Sağlık: Toplumbilimsel Bir Değerlendirme (Health in Turkey: A Sociological Analysis). Istanbul: Koç University and Sabancı University. Çavuşoğlu, Cengiz. 2014. “History of Tuberculosis and Tuberculosis Control Program in Turkey.” Microbiology Australia 35, no. 3: 169–​173. Çelik, Kezban, and Ayşegül Esin. 2012. “The Non‐Use of Services: Adolescents and Sexual Health Provision in Ankara, Turkey.” Journal of Children’s Services 7, no. 3: 201–​212. Çetinoğlu, Talita. 2019. “ ‘New’ Humanitarianisms and Programming: The Encounter of Turkey and Europe with Syrian Refugees.” Conflict, Security and Development 19, no. 3: 289–​294. Dayı, Ayşe. 2019. “Neoliberal Health Restructuring, Neoconservatism and the Limits of Law: Erosion of Reproductive Rights in Turkey.” Health and Human Rights 21, no. 2: 57–​68. Development Initiatives. 2020. Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2020. https://​devinit. org/​1d56ce.

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PA RT I I I

L E A DE R S , PA RT I E S , A N D VOT E R S

Chapter 13

P opu lism in T u rk ey Historical and Contemporary Patterns Yüksel Taşkın

The global rise of right-​wing populist movements and leaders and their unprecedented challenge to democratic societies, values, and institutions has sparked a growing interest in studies on populism (Akkerman, Mudde, and Zaslove 2014; Moffitt and Tormey 2014; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2012; Werner-​Müller 2016). The fact that the optimism of the early 2000s had also contributed to the resurgence of a democratic transition literature points to the myopia and contextual nature of academic production. One way of avoiding the trap of presentism visible in the recent plethora of studies on populism is to locate populist movements, parties, and leaders in a historical setting before conceptualization and classification. In line with this approach, this chapter develops a historical and comparative analysis of populism(s) in Turkey during and after the Cold War era. Populism in Turkey has an illustrious history ranging from Menderes’ Democrat Party (DP, Demokrat Parti) in the 1950s to the Ecevit’s center-​leftist Republican People’s Party (CHP, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) in the 1970s. President Erdoğan’s personalistic rule represents the most recent incarnation of populism as the country has experienced a severe democratic breakdown especially since the late 2000s. Inevitably, the main focus here is on Erdoğan’s populist movement in Turkey. By employing a historical outlook, however, I will also try to display its continuities and discontinuities with the past experiences of right-​wing parties and movements. Without the legacy of Kemalism, one cannot understand the Menderes-​led DP populist challenge, which brought a peaceful takeover of power in 1950 and ended with a military coup in 1960. Similarly, without understanding the challenge posed by flourishing right-​wing movements, Bülent Ecevit’s leftist efforts in the late 1960s and 1970s to give life to the otherwise obsolete Kemalist principle of Halkçılık (populism) cannot be properly located. Yet I contend that Erdoğan’s populism also represents a significant

276   Yüksel Taşkın rupture from center-​right politics. After Turkey’s transition to ultra-​presidentialism with the April 16, 2017, Referendum, Erdoğan’s AKP seems to have realized the center-​ right’s dream of exercising “national will” without the intermediation of autonomous institutions. This move was made possible by Erdoğan’s final victory against the last vestiges of tutelary democracy characterized by strong military and judicial supervision in the 2010 Referendum. This last point brings us to the important task of tackling the complicated relationship between populism and democratization in Turkey. Under what conditions do populist movements/​leaders facilitate or undermine democratic struggles? Until the late 2000s most studies on democratization in Turkey problematized the persistence of military and judicial tutelage as the most solid hindrance to democratic consolidation (Hale and Özbudun 2011; Keyman 2014; Yavuz 2006). Yet, ironically, the dismantling of tutelary democracy has paved the way for a very rapid de-​democratization. What is the role of populism in this democratic breakdown? What are the limits of Erdoğan’s populism that could directly or indirectly empower the proponents of re-​democratization in Turkey? Erdoğan has finally realized the right-​wing populism dream of unmediated linkage with the people through ultra-​presidentialism. Yet the realization of this dream also brought the end of strong motifs of populist self-​victimization, a core characteristic of right-​ wing politics in Turkey.

Conceptualizing Populism When we review the rich and still expanding literature on populism, we can trace consensus on two issues, at least: First, populist movements are always anti-​establishment or claim to be so. Populism is “grounded on the construction of an underdog/​establishment frontier” (Howarth 2005, 204). Second, there is always an element of vagueness since populist movements, apart from having some core features, do not share similar values, economic programs, or ideologies (Laclau 2005, 3). As McDonnell (2017, 27) argues, “populist movements are never just populist.” There could be left-​wing or right-​ wing populisms. They may include, for instance, elements of socialism, nationalism, or neoliberalism as they can be very flexible in adapting themselves to changing cultural, ideological, and economic contexts. Similarly, drawing on Robert Barr’s (2009) work, Steven Levitsky and James Loxton identify three characteristics of populism. First, populists use anti-​establishment appeal to garner popular support and position themselves in opposition to the entire elite. Second, populists are political outsiders, emerging from outside the national party system. Third, populists overcome mediating institutions, like political parties, and create a personalistic linkage with the people. The authors argue that all three characteristics need to be in place before we can talk about full populism. Similar to Howarth, they consider the anti-​establishment appeal as a sine qua nun characteristic of populism,

Populism in Turkey    277 while specific sub-​types are possible which may not include one of the three characteristics (Levitsky and Loxton 2013, 110). Levitsky and Loxton (2013) also propose two, more-​limited types of populists, “maverick and movement populists,” to enrich their categorization. A maverick populist (e.g., Rafael Caldera of Venezuela) is an insider who relies on an anti-​establishment appeal and a personalistic linkage with the people. In contrast, an outsider who combines anti-​ establishment appeal with a linkage based on the intermediation of a strong grassroots movement (i.e., Evo Morales of Bolivia) is classified as a movement populist. In addition to these core features, we can introduce several other features that can contribute to our understanding of populist movements: First, populist movements tend to promote the idea of popular sovereignty while denigrating an allegedly sinister elite. Populists claim that they speak for the people and they represent the democratic sovereign, not a sectional interest such as an economic class. Next, populist movements generally tend to attribute such qualities as “purity, simplicity, authenticity, and sincerity” to the people. This sort of glorification also opens the space for claims of self-​ victimization. Such claims then foster a majoritarian approach which makes populism, in Bernard Crick’s (2005, 631) words, “a specter haunting democracy.” This anti-​elite standing is generally accompanied with an anti-​institutional attitude which provides a pretext for seeking direct and personalistic linkage with the people. Here lies the potential of populism to destroy democratic institutions limiting arbitrary state power and ensuring the rights of vulnerable groups such as religious/​ethnic minorities. One of the most visible features of populist movements in less developed countries is clientalism. Broadly speaking, this is a “practice of using state resources to provide jobs and services for mass political clienteles, and usually involves party organizations and electoral politics” (Van de Walle 2007, 3). Clientalism fosters systematic corruption among the leading cadres of populist movements or parties who engage in unruly accumulation. Hence, these cadres have strong incentives to control a judiciary that could limit this practice by further dismantling the remains of democratic check-​and-​balance mechanisms. Additionally, populist discourse “has greatest purchase as an active political force in moments of crisis, when popular sovereignty, and national identity itself, are open to new interpretations” (Lowndes 2005, 146). Populist movements do not just arise from crisis conditions, they also deliberately trigger crises to increase their power as the crisis conditions provide them opportunities to introduce exceptional measures to overcome institutional barriers. The political, social, or economic crises provide an opportunity for populist leaders to reformulate their arguments through a highly emotional rhetoric. Kenneth Minogue (1969, 197) argued that “to understand the [populist] movement is to discover the feelings which moved people.” Furthermore, another very visible feature of populist leaders is their inclination to engage in blame attribution. Populist leaders mobilize anger and frustration by attributing blame for failures and crises to others, as well as to the political system that is unresponsive to frustrated popular demands (Çelik and Balta 2018, 7). Finally, scholars

278   Yüksel Taşkın of populism argue that emotional identification with the leader is key for populist movements (Panizza 2017). Masterful use of blame attribution and the masses’ tendency for identification with the leader creates an environment in which supporters of populist leaders tolerate and forgive political wrongdoings and failures. The externalization of guilt to others is also reflected in the conspiratorial mentality widespread among populist leaders and their followers who identify foreign enemies and their domestic “fifth columns” as being responsible for current crises and problems.

Historical Roots and Patterns of Populism in Turkey: From Menderes to Ecevi̇t Given conventional conceptualizations of Kemalism, the founding ideology of the Turkish Republic, as a top-​down, authoritarian modernization project, it may seem surprising to note that populism was one of the six pillars adopted by the founding party, CHP, in 1935. İlkay Sunar (1991, 122) argues that the Kemalist Republic was dominated by a “military-​ bureaucratic elite, manned by bureaucratic cadres and supported by a bureaucratic constituency of urban intelligentsia. This bureaucratic alliance was . . . Westernist and secularist in its outlook, authoritarian in its style of governance and statist-​nationalist in its strategy of economic development.” Similarly, Asım Karaömerlioğlu (2001, 283) argues that Kemalist populism was “largely elitist, self-​righteous, bureaucratic, anti-​liberal and anti-​democratic. The best phrase capturing its spirit was the slogan, ‘For the People, Despite the People.’ ” Not surprisingly, nearly all studies on populism in Turkey tend to take the Democrat Party (DP) era that lasted from 1950 to 1960 as a watershed in the emergence of populist politics, which significantly shaped subsequent rightist political strategies and discourses. “Adnan Menderes’s tragedy”—​DP’s prime minister before being ousted from power by a military junta in 1960 and executed in 1961—​turned out to be an essential leitmotif in the right-​wing populist discourse of self-​victimization. The DP’s motto before the 1950 elections—​“Enough! It is the nation’s turn to speak”—​was a direct attack on elitist governance associated with Kemalism. One may try to explain that the extreme polarization of the DP era came from Menderes’ alleged anti-​systemic populism. Yet it was largely a personalistic challenge that was assertively anti-​elite but not truly anti-​system. Both the CHP and the DP agreed to join “the Western-​Capitalist Camp” just after WWII. They also agreed to start multiparty politics and worked out the main rules with significant bi-​partisan consensus. In fact, the founders of the DP were former members of the CHP who had recently split from the party due to a disagreement over a moderate proposal of land reform (Sarıbay 1991, 119). Keyder (1987, 117) summarizes the DP’s core differences from the CHP as

Populism in Turkey    279 “economic and religious freedom, which upheld the market against statist intervention and local traditions over the political oppression and ideological onslaught of the centre.” Applying three criteria proposed by Levitsky and Loxton (2013), the DP founders meet the first criterion as they “used anti-​establishment appeal to garner popular support and position themselves in opposition to the entire elite” (110). The second criterion that asserts “populists are outsiders, emerging from outside the national party system” is not applicable to the DP. If we employ another term proposed by Levitsky and Loxton, we can conclude that the DP founders and the charismatic Menderes himself were “maverick populists-​insiders who rely on an anti-​establishment appeal and a personalistic linkage with the people” (110). To further account for the lack of an anti-​system character to the DP’s populism, one can remember Keyder’s (1987, 123) comparison of the DP with Latin American populist movements in the same era: “What is historically curious is that the organizing principle of Latin American populisms, and of populism of a later vintage in Turkey, was anti-​ liberalism seeking to replace the rule of the market with political mediation of political outcomes. In contrast the 1950 movement in Turkey took on the character of a latter-​day liberal resistance to absolutist rule, except that a much larger proportion of the population . . . was mobilized to form a common front with the bourgeoisie.” The DP founders were inspired by US Democrats. When Menderes was asked to define the party’s position on the left-​right spectrum, he said “we are probably two fingers left of the CHP” (Bora 2012, 9). Yet this slight difference was to be rapidly abandoned as a fervent and exaggerated anti-​communism became a core feature of the DP. In fact, anti-​ communism became one of the defining leitmotifs of right-​wing populisms in Turkey. Ironically, however, this inflated anti-​communism was a statist platform aiming to claim shared systemic values with the establishment against common enemies, imagined or real. On many occasions, the DP leaders promised to transform Turkey into a “little America” (Kinzer 2010, 101). What features of the United States attracted them? The very easy combination of political-​cultural conservatism and ultra-​developmentalism attracted the ascending right-​wing counter-​elites. CHP’s European-​inspired package of modernization claimed an integral approach: Modernism meant openness to the trilogy of cultural, political, and economic modernization. In contrast, the US model provided an opportunity for conservative modernization (“modernization without modernism”) championed by all the center-​right parties from the DP onward. Here lie the initial clues for the center-​right’s curious internalization of developmentalism as a claim of cultural superiority (or culturalization of developmentalism) vis a vis the Kemalist or progressive currents. When the DP founders felt that they could not achieve significant changes in the area of cultural policies due to the red lines imposed by the guardians of the secular regime, they resorted to the field of everyday needs of the ordinary people guided by a seemingly apolitical developmentalist appeal. Accordingly, “the strategy of the DP was to underplay cultural modernization, emphasize economic development . . .

280   Yüksel Taşkın to emphasize private initiative in a populist discourse that was designed to appeal to the everyday demands and values of the halk. In the DP scheme of things, cultural change . . . would become a function of economic change and development (neglected by the bureaucratic elites but widely expected by the people” (Sunar 1991, 123, 125). This is the reason why center-​right populism reduces politics to a techno-​cultural field of activity which is also a distinctive feature of Erdoğan’s populism. “For Erdoğan, politics is a techno-​cultural field of activity. The construction of gigantic bridges together with the building of roads or dams and the provision of social services are presented to the people as concrete examples of public service. Using populist rhetoric, Erdoğan also attaches a cultural and sacred meaning to these services” (Türk 2018, 159). When developmentalism is sacralized and attributed a cultural value as something that “ordinary people deserved and awaited yet denied by the bureaucratic elites,” naturalizing capitalism or making it authentic and acceptable by the masses becomes easier. As is frequently observed in populist movements, Menderes’s personalistic and confrontational style deepened in the second half of 1950s, as economic crisis made it increasingly difficult for the DP leadership to sustain its clientalist mechanisms. When crisis conditions are intensified, almost all ruling right-​wing parties in Turkey are inclined to use cultural polarization as a strategy of blame attribution, self-​victimization, emotional identification with the leader. and externalization of guilt and responsibility to the historical enemies of the people/​nation. The DP was no exception to this authoritarian tendency. The more the DP leadership felt threatened by their political rivals, the more they exerted pressure on dissident voices. This process dampened belief in the possibility of a peaceful change of power and paved the way for a coup.

Pragmatism of Demirel The 1960 military intervention and the resulting purge of DP cadres became one of the formative elements of right-​wing populist discourses against the tutelary democracy institutionalized by the 1961 Constitution. Przeworski (1988, 61) defines the tutelary democracy as “a regime which has competitive, formally democratic institutions, but in which the power apparatus, typically reduced by this time to the armed forces, retains the capacity to intervene to correct undesirable states of affairs.” If the opposition led by CHP had been able to defeat DP through elections rather than through a purge by a military coup, the party could have established more autonomy from the self-​appointed regime guardians. But on the contrary, the 1960 military intervention further deepened the sense of victimization felt by conservative elites, which granted them a disproportional advantage to claim to be the authentic representative of the “silenced nation.” This sense of victimhood was one of the reasons why Süleyman Demirel’s Justice Party (AP, Adalet Partisi) won a landslide victory in the 1965 elections. At the same time, Demirel had to share power with the autonomous institutions created by the 1961 Constitution. Those included the National Security Council, the Senate, the newly created Constitutional Court, and a president de facto selected by the military.

Populism in Turkey    281 The remnants of this tutelary democracy in force would be eventually destroyed by Erdoğan between 2007 and 2010. Murat Arslan (2019, 75) who wrote a biography on Süleyman Demirel defines his leadership between 1964 and 1971 as “moderate pragmatism.” Due to the institutional legacy of the 1960 coup, Demirel could not effectively play the card of populism but instead opted for the seemingly apolitical discourse of developmentalism. Despite his rural and conservative origins, Demirel largely internalized the modernization zeal of the republican elite via his educational experience. Just like Menderes, he was respectful to Islam yet very suspicious about the emerging political Islamists who challenged the center-​right claim of being authentic representatives of the nation. Demirel had increasingly turned to the employment of nationalist and conservative messages in the face of the rising appeal of radical leftist groups, political Islamists, and nationalists after the 1971 military memorandum. He started employing a populist rhetoric reminiscent of Menderes yet his populism was never perceived to be equally threatening by the establishment. This was largely because of his inflated anti-​communism aiming to establish common ground with the guardians of the regime. The more he associated progressive Kemalists led by Bülent Ecevit with communism or socialism, the more he was able to deepen a rift between the status quo and progressive Kemalists. Consequently, Demirel was able to form stronger ties with the military and Istanbul-​ based bourgeoisie, two significant pillars of the republican establishment. Overall, Demirel cannot be considered a populist according to Levitsky and Loxton’s (2013) criteria. However, just like Menderes, he became a main carrier of a right-​wing dream of unmediated representation of the national will that would be unrestricted by institutional checks and balances. Unfortunately, it was Erdoğan who finally realized this dream of an ultra-​powerful executive who allegedly became the representative of the national will.

Left Populism of Ecevit With the electoral victories of the center-​right in the second half of the 1960s, there emerged an urgent need in the CHP to formulate new political strategies. CHP’s veteran leader İsmet İnonü was the first to come up with the idea of seeking a more leftist strategy. Ironically, his reasoning reflected a top-​down reform effort: “The country has been leaning towards the left. The reason for [adopting] the center-​left is to prevent the country moving entirely to the left . . . the center-​left is a wall against the far left and right alike.” (Bila 1999, 219). Accordingly, Bülent Ecevit’s left populism can be considered a long-​term strategy to counter the increasing hegemony of the center-​right and the rising appeal of the far left. He lucidly understood the importance of “going to the people” as the only viable strategy in the long term. By left populism, I am referring here to the “Democratic Left” program that Ecevit developed during the 1960s and distinguished from Marxist-​inspired social democracy (Ecevit 1966, 1970, 1974). He believed that the Democratic Left contained some unique characteristics stemming from the Ottoman

282   Yüksel Taşkın legacy, Turkey’s War of Independence in the 1920s, and the CHP’s subsequent modernization process. Ecevit criticized the Kemalist elite as “the revolutionaries of superstructure” who did not undertake a full-​fledged socioeconomic transformation in favor of the oppressed. Accordingly, “Revolutions made in the Republican Era were revolutions in the superstructure, in other words, in political and administrative institutions, in attitudes and rituals. No one could expect that the great mass of the people could easily adopt them and find them sufficient for themselves” (Koloğlu 2001, 364). In this regard, Ecevit also aimed at developing an alternative to the center-​right populism of Menderes and Demirel. The center-​right leaders were successfully popularizing a discourse of perceived antagonism between “the silent Muslim/​conservative majority” and “the disproportionately influential westernized minority.” Ecevit tried to counter this populism by introducing new binary oppositions between “the elite/​intellectuals/​unproductive usurpers versus the people/​the producers.” For him, the people were not as reactionary or traditionalist as the established political elite had long considered them to be. Ecevit also criticized the center-​right for seeking to integrate Turkey into the hierarchical capitalist system. He argued that Ottoman-​Turkish society possessed a harmonious and organic social structure devoid of class-​based inequalities. This structure was destroyed, first by the westernized elite, and then by the local collaborators of an unproductive form of capitalism (Ecevit 1970, 1972). Besides, Ecevit’s left populism contained an anti-​intellectualist potential captured by the phrase of “alienated bureaucratic elite.” The following quote is illuminating in this respect: “The decisive precondition for the success and sustainability of the leftist movement in Turkey is its transformation into a popular movement. And the leadership must arise not from the bureaucratic intellectuals but from within the people. Among the people, the only group that could assume this leadership is the workers” (Alper 2004, 97). Ecevit’s left populism contained come inherent tensions which made it difficult to sustain the diverse support it initially attracted in the 1970s. Its romantic peasantism and belief in an organic and harmonious society was in serious contradiction with his embrace of working-​class activism. In the presence of very powerful political rivals and military opposition to his leftist progressive Kemalist alternative, however, his failure could not be solely linked to such tensions. The 1980 military intervention brought a decisive end to Ecevit’s populist optimism. His increasing alienation from the Democratic Left agenda on behalf of a Conservative Republican position in the 1990s represented a clear political regression. Ernest Laclau’s (1998) definition of populism could provide an explanation of this transformation. “Populism is a strategy of hegemony which prescribes an antagonistic relationship between ‘the people’ and ‘the power bloc’ and calls for the mobilization of the people by stressing its cultural values and symbols and its economic demands. This call is usually made by a faction of the power bloc who feels excluded from it” (188–​190). The last sentence of this definition is crucial in understanding Ecevit’s motivations to promote his populism as well as his reactions to its failure. In the face of the increasing power of the center-​right, Ecevit as a leading representative of an excluded faction of a power bloc developed his populist strategy. In line

Populism in Turkey    283 with Levistky and Loxton’s (2013) terminology, Ecevit could also be considered a “maverick populist,” an insider who relies on an anti-​establishment appeal and a personalistic linkage with the people. There lies an insolvable dilemma: While Ecevit was advocating a populist agenda privileging the agency of the masses, he eventually became frustrated by the masses’ political, economic, and cultural choices. Hence, there were two interrelated causes for Ecevit’s increasing frustration from the late 1970s onwards. First, he became more pessimistic regarding the possibility of realizing his economic model. Next, he had difficulty coming to terms with the masses’ considerable sympathy with right-​wing interpretations and practices of modernization. People’s choices in the post-​1980 era were strong evidence for the obvious failure of his populist agenda.

Özal as a Mythical Figure of Right Populism Turgut Özal (prime minister 1983–​1989, president 1989–​1993) significantly transformed center-​right discourse to attract now largely urbanized sectors of Turkey. Özal’s political agenda simultaneously reflected the global rise of the new right political discourse as well as a neoliberal understanding of economy. To truly asses Özal’s relationship with populism, we may remember Erdoğan’s glorification of Özal as one of the victimized “Men of the Nation” (Millet’in Adamları). A critical assessment of this populist construct does help us understand striking discontinuities between Erdoğan’s populism and the center-​right tradition. Erdoğan’s populism deliberately popularizes a claim of continuity with the past to bring historical legitimacy to the new economic, political, and cultural elites. Accordingly in AKP discourse, Menderes, Özal, and Erdoğan were constructed as the conscious defenders of “the authentic nation” marginalized by an “un-​authentic and hegemonic westernized minority” (Çelikkol 2010). Interestingly, Süleyman Demirel is excluded from the list of the “undaunted defenders of the nation.” Similarly, when Özal was asked the question “Are you the heir of Menderes or Demirel,” he pointed to Menderes as his forerunner (Çavdar 2011, 60). To understand the context-​specific nature of such constructs claiming authenticity, Özal and Demirel’s changing representations within this populist tradition can be compared. Demirel was considered within “the authentic nation” in the 1970s but he was pushed into the rival “westernist and elitist camp” especially after he became president in 1993. As for Özal, the Erbakan-​led Welfare Party (RP, Refah Partisi) rulers strongly criticized him in the 1980s as the “man of the business establishment” with frequent references to his pro–​United States stance. After Özal’s death in 1993, however, a positive perception started to appear among the RP elite, a move that cannot be considered separately from the newly ascending counter elites’ search of legitimacy and votes from the broader center-​right pool. A quotation from Mustafa Akyol, a liberal Muslim, can be taken as a typical restatement of the nation’s prolonged struggle with tutelage from Menderes to Özal: “The next ten years (after the 1983 elections) would be the ‘Özal decade,’ a revolutionary age of

284   Yüksel Taşkın liberalization during which the Islamo-​liberal synthesis, almost forgotten after decades of forced amnesia, was reborn” (Akyol 2011, 218). What Akyol considers “Islamo-​liberal synthesis” was allegedly started by the DP, then resumed by Özal and Erdoğan. In fact, the AKP’s initial efforts to de-​link itself from political Islamism and claim a conservative democratic identity within the center-​right tradition seemed to inspire Akyol’s interpretation. Yet these references to the center-​right legacy were deliberately reduced after the 2010 referendum. Instead, Erdoğan promoted a blend of Islamo-​nationalist discourse with a more aggressive and exclusionary populist tone. Before dealing with Erdoğan’s populism, we need to reassess the validity of the populist claim that Özal deliberately contributed to the return of the long-​marginalized nation to the political center. This perceived return is often interpreted as an act of democratization, the liberation of the nation from the tutelage of the military-​civilian bureaucracy. This argument implies that Özal, just like Demirel, was an outsider to the power bloc. Yet Özal was a well-​known figure in the intra-​elite struggles within the state during the 1970s. His relationship with the state bureaucracy afforded him ample opportunities to form solid links with business groups and to create his political machine. After the 1971 coup by memorandum, Özal went to the United States to work in the World Bank (1972–​1973). Upon his return, he assumed the post of general coordinator in the Sabancı Group. He tried to form good relations with the powerful business interests of Turkey rather than siding with the Muslim business circles that Erbakan tried to support. When Özal was appointed as undersecretary in the Süleyman Demirel government in 1979, he became the architect of the neoliberal January 24 Decisions that were strongly praised by the powerful business groups as well as the US administration. Right after the 1980 military intervention, Vehbi Koç, an influential businessman, asked Kenan Evren, the junta leader, to keep Özal in command of the economy (Boratav 2007). Thus, Özal emerged as a reliable and indispensable figure for both the military junta and the business elite by 1980. Consequently, the portrayal of Özal as an anti-​ establishment figure is ahistorical. Given his lack of anti-​establishment credentials, he cannot be described as a populist at all. Overall, Erdoğan’s novel right-​wing populism represents strong discontinuities from the center-​right tradition Özal represented. The rise of Erdoğan brought an end to center-​right politics in Turkey.

The Rise of a New Brand of Populism: Erdoğan and his AKP Since the 1950s, center-​right leaders had tended to form “a loose confederation of interests,” including a secular-​westernist group along with a nationalist conservative wing which generally constituted the majority in the parties’ grass-​root organizations (Taşkın 2007, 84) Menderes, Demirel, and Özal generally favored the secular-​westernist wing during times of intra-​party crises and rivalries. This trend clearly contrasts with

Populism in Turkey    285 the portrayals of Menderes, Demirel, and Özal as the champions of the national will vis a vis the secular-​westernist minority. In contrast, the AKP’s secular-​westernist wing was much weaker from the beginning. “The liberal intellectuals” formed a temporary and fragile partnership with the AKP and represented the party as a democratic, pro-​ European actor, at least until 2010. When Erdoğan no longer need this moderate image, the party abruptly cut its ties with the liberals. When the AKP came to power in 2002 in the middle of a severe political and economic crisis, the party elite claimed to de-​link themselves from political Islamism on behalf of a new outlook they defined as conservative democracy (Akdoğan 2004). The party initiated a series of reforms aiming at full EU membership. Between 2002 and 2010, the party was mostly praised in western capitals as a successful model of moderate Islam. By presenting itself as “the unique agent of democratization,” the AKP turned out to be successful in demolishing tutelary democracy. In this regard, AKP’s winning of the 2010 Referendum can be taken as a definite victory against the republican regime guardians. After the 2010 Referendum, the AKP became increasingly authoritarian despite liberal expectations of further consolidation of democracy in Turkey. Especially after the 2007 crisis when the military explicitly opposed AKP control of the presidency, the AKP’s populist features became more crystallized. Çelik and Balta (2018, 3) argue that the “AKP demonstrates the core features of populist parties: a charismatic leader that emphasizes simplicity and directness; an appeal to the people against the established structures of power; a political mood that has a revivalist and alarmist style, and finally a disdain for checks and balances.” A novel aspect of the post-​2010 AKP populism was the end of a prolonged balance between the sides represented by the right-​wing political parties, on the one hand, and the secular-​republican elite dominant in the military, judiciary, media, and big business, on the other. Demirel and Özal never attempted to overcome the implicit boundaries of this balance. Their hybrid identities as insider-​outsiders helped soften their populist stances. In sharp contrast, Erdoğan and the AKP were not only outsiders to the political establishment but also represented the historical “other” of the republic (Somer 2019). This is the reason why Erdoğan’s claim of being the representative of the silenced Muslim majority had more authenticity. The political crisis of both the center-​left and center-​right in both the late 1990s and the 2001 economic crisis significantly increased the appeal of Erdoğan’s anti-​establishment rhetoric. The fact that the military overthrew a coalition government led by his party (RP) that was later banned by the Constitutional Court and that he was dismissed from his post of İstanbul mayor before being imprisoned for four months provided extra credibility to this anti-​establishment rhetoric and greatly popularized Erdoğan and his allies’ claims of victimization and pursuit of justice. When Erdoğan referred to himself as a “black Turk,” this was a claim to be a genuine representative of the marginalized and disadvantaged groups who saw in Erdoğan one of themselves who implicitly promised to occupy the places of power that they rightfully deserved. In this regard, the name of his party resonates very well with Erdoğan’s populist messages: “Justice and Development.” His capture of existing centers of political, economic, and cultural powers would be justified as a march for fulfilling the

286   Yüksel Taşkın justice call for the silenced majority by giving them what they deserved and what were so far denied. This self-​identification between the leader and the people is one of the distinctive features of populism and well-​articulated by Erdoğan’s himself. “My story is the story of this people. Either the people will win and come to power, or the pretentious and oppressive minority—​estranged from the reality of Anatolia and looking over it with disdain—​will remain in power. The authority to decide on this belongs to the people. Enough is enough, sovereignty belongs to the people!” (Yabancı 2016, 559). When we remember three characteristics of populism identified by Levitsky and Loxton (2013) (anti-​establishment appeal, being a political outsider, and attempting to create an unmediated personalistic linkage with the people), Erdoğan can be considered a full populist. In summary, the AKP and Erdoğan acted within the center-​right tradition of conservative modernization until 2010–​2011. They successfully reproduced a loose confederation of interests in line with the center-​right tradition. For the first time, a right-​wing party seemed to adopt a full-​fledged democratization program anchored in the EU membership process. However, right after the 2010 Referendum and 2011 general elections, Turkey entered into a gradual de-​democratization process.

Populism and De-​Democratization in Turkey I share Esen and Gümüşçü’s (2016, 1582) observation that Turkey’s transition from a tutelary democracy into a competitive authoritarian regime “is part of a broader trend of global authoritarian upsurge.” Does this rising authoritarianism substantiate the secularist claim that the AKP’s bid for democracy aimed to disguise its hidden agendas of capturing state power and imposing a top-​down Islamization of society? Alternatively, is it possible to raise a more nuanced and historical analysis of the post-​2010 regime transformation in Turkey? In an attempt to explain AKP’s increasing shift to authoritarianism, one approach promotes the notion of “existential insecurity” (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 509). Existential insecurity refers to the “imminent and tangible fears and threats perceived by political actors” including “foreign invasion, violent overthrow by coup or revolution, repression or the possibility of going to prison.” Akkoyunlu and Öktem argue that at the domestic level, the AKP’s existential insecurity originated from its power struggle first with the Kemalists and later with the Gülenists. Along similar lines, Somer (2019, 49) argues that, “pernicious polarization and authoritarianism could have been prevented in the decade ahead if Turkey’s “old” political elites could have united and reformed the discourses, programs, and campaign strategies of the opposition parties, thus democratically checking and balancing the AKP’s growing power.” At the regional level, the AKP’s existential insecurity was prompted by the Arab Spring’s

Populism in Turkey    287 mutation into armed conflict, civil war, and extremism in which Turkey’s foreign policy directives also played a role (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 517). A second approach is to emphasize the prevailing political culture in accounting for the AKP’s trajectory of de-​democratization. Like its Kemalist predecessors, the AKP has prioritized the state over society, become intolerant of non-​violent dissent, and marginalized non-​pious ways of life. The legacies of right-​wing politics in Turkey, specifically center-​right and political Islam, that the AKP embed in itself also hindered a genuine commitment to democratization (Taşkın 2018, 66). The AKP gradually adopted the right-​wing parties’ homogenous view of the nation, their majoritarian understanding of democracy that reduces democracy to elections, and their excessive reliance on the party leader. A third approach focuses on “the political economy” of authoritarianism. Mass clientelism associated with populist movements in less-​developed countries fosters rapid accumulation of capital while disguising such practices with polarizing and anti-​elitist rhetoric. In the AKP case, a populist and popularizing binary opposition between “a disproportionally influential secular-​westernist minority” and “silenced Muslim majority” was taken to its limits to justify unruly and immoral ways of capital accumulation. Initial motives for dismantling the tutelary democracy notwithstanding, the excessive power concentration under Erdoğan has facilitated practices of crony capitalism and the desire to create AKP’s own business establishment (Buğra and Savaşkan 2014). A fourth approach emphasizes EU conditionality as a positive factor encouraging democratization. In fact, the democratic reforms in the early 2000s were largely driven by the impetus of the EU accession process. When the EU’s influence on Turkish politics steadily declined in the post-​2005 period, the AKP encountered little external pressure to keep up with the reform agenda (Öniş 2013, 109). I contend that all these approaches have some explanatory power when they pay special attention to the context-​dependent nature of populism. Populism does not inevitably produce polarization or moderation. At certain moments populist movements can be conducive to democratization by inducing masses to further participation. Those who tend to attribute unchanging authoritarian features to right populism, either to the past center-​right parties or to the AKP, need to also explain the existence of relatively stable moments of moderation and the functioning of democratic mechanisms. Yet despite these moments of relative calm, almost all right-​wing experience in power in Turkey ended up with a shift to changing degrees of authoritarianism. There must be a nurturing political culture, too. When certain conditions tend to coalesce, such as the non-​democratic strategies of their rivals and/​or the existence of a severe economic crisis, right-​wing populisms’ latent potential for extreme polarization tends to manifest itself in an uncompromising rhetoric of war. Under these conditions, populisms’ calls for unmediated representation of the nation aim to mobilize masses with discourses of political resentment. This is the reason why we need to emphasize the contextual nature of populist movements against those interpretations which associate the rise of these movements with an inevitable authoritarian turn. If populist leaders promote

288   Yüksel Taşkın polarization due to a sense of threat or to seize a political opportunity, polarization itself can create its own reality by further escalating into a zero-​sum conflict of survival. Despite their legitimate critiques of tutelary democracy, the right-​wing leaders tended to defend an elected supreme executive unrestricted by checks and balance mechanisms. This dream for unchecked executive power was materialized neither for Demirel nor Özal because they had to work within the limits imposed by the guardians of the republican order. Additionally, their conservative hybrid (insider-​outsider) identities made their challenge to the secular nature of the regime less uncompromising and threatening for the regime guardians. Erdoğan came to power amid a severe economic crisis as well as a political crisis of an increasingly obsolete center-​right and declining powers of the regime guardians. This meant a de facto end to the prolonged balance sustaining tutelary democracy since the 1960 coup. Besides, unlike previous powerful rightist leaders, he had a much stronger outsider identity as an Islamist. As an outsider, he initially avoided direct confrontation and tried to fill the void left by the center-​right with a moderate positioning anchored with the EU membership process. Yet he was confronted with a serious presidential crisis in 2007 characterized by a blatant undemocratic move by the regime guardians. Shortly after, the attorney general requested the closure of the AKP on the grounds that it had become the focal point of anti-​secular activities. Even though a majority of the Constitutional Court voted for its closure, the vote was short of the required super majority. With intensified tactics of pressure imposed by the regime guardians, Erdoğan’s sense of “existential insecurity” pushed him toward an uncompromising populist rhetoric largely motivated by an urgent need to activate his support base. Meanwhile, the Gülen network successfully exploited Erdoğan’s insecurity by positioning themselves as the only bulwark against possible coups by military and judicial regime guardians. Gülenists were the followers of Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen who has been living in a self-​imposed exile in the United States since 1999. Gülenists have been known for their decades-​long quest to infiltrate the Turkish state institutions—​particularly the police, army and judiciary (Erşen and Köstem 2019, 39). The Erdoğan-​Gülen alliance made it possible to control the upper echelons of the judiciary with the 2010 constitutional reform. However, this move allowed the Gülen network to have a disproportional weight within the judiciary who now seemed to become like the sword of Damocles hanging over the AKP. When the AKP and Gülen network started waging a war of survival, the latter did not hesitate to use their strongholds within the judiciary to inflict a heavy blow, especially after 2013. Erdoğan’s determination in starting a total war against the Gülen network’s strongholds in the state, economy, and media pushed the latter to organize an abortive coup on July 15, 2016. All these domestic struggles further deepened Erdoğan’s sense of existential insecurity. Ironically, a very religious network that promised to guard Erdoğan from the republican regime guardians attempted to overthrow it via a military coup. When we remember the prolonged struggle between the elected political parties and the appointed guardians of the tutelary democracy in Turkey, “going to the nation” through elections constituted one of the significant leitmotifs in right-​wing

Populism in Turkey    289 populisms. The dislike of intermediary institutions encouraged a desire for unmediated linkage with the people which empowered right-​wing parties’ embrace of majoritarianism (“majoricracy”) and a denial of political pluralism as an indispensable and legitimate aspect of democratic contestation. As I tried to show earlier, there were tensions inherent in this understanding of majoricracy which revealed themselves in times of crisis and moments of political polarization. Hence there are very strong historical factors (including the latent authoritarian potential of right-​wing populism) in Turkey which could account for backsliding from a prolonged tutelary democracy to competitive authoritarianism. The majoricratic political culture paved the ground for ultra-​ presidentialism, which further contributed to the de-​democratization process under Erdoğan. To distinguish Turkey from a defective democracy or a fully authoritarian regime, Esen and Gümüşçü (2016) point out the presence of institutions making power competition between the opposition and the ruling party possible: “Turkey is not a full authoritarian regime; there is universal suffrage; the authority of elected officials are not restricted by unelected tutelary powers; and at least one of the following criteria are met: 1) unfair elections, 2) violation of civil liberties, and 3) uneven playing field” (1586). Yet, all three criteria seem to be realized with increasing intensity in Turkey especially after the 2013 Gezi Protests (for these protests, see the chapter by Kaya in this volume). After the abortive coup on July 15, 2016, the AKP introduced a state of emergency characterized by massive rights violations. The instruments of the state of emergency allowed the government to fire 130,000 people suspected of being connected to the failed putsch and to arrest about 45,000. The purges were not restricted to the Gülen network. Several thousand members of a leftist-​progressive civil servants’ trade union (KESK) were also fired by the state. Many media outlets were shut down, while 145 journalists were arrested. A significant step in the ongoing de-​democratization process came with the AKP and MHP’s introduction of a constitutional package including eighteen amendments to move to an unchecked ultra-​presidentialism. In the April 16, 2017, referendum, the “Yes” vote slightly won with a narrow margin: 51.41 percent “Yes” and 48.59 percent “No.” Moreover, there were serious allegations of misconduct and fraud. Under the new system, the president gained enormous executive and legislative powers. The new system abolished the post of prime minister and transferred executive power to the president. It allows the president to issue decrees and appoint many judges and officials responsible for scrutinizing his decisions. Moreover, the president could form his cabinet from figures outside of the parliament. In comparison, the parliament was not given necessary instruments to check and balance the presidential powers. One of the worst elements of the new system is the fusion between the ruling party and the state as Erdoğan is entitled to exercise his presidential powers as the current leader of the AKP. Given these developments, is it still possible to call Turkey a competitive regime? If so, this is primarily because of the resilient and dynamic character of the opposition forces. Despite striking inequalities undermining a fair electoral competition during the 2017 Referendum, civil platforms supporting the “No” campaign created a surprising energy

290   Yüksel Taşkın and creativity. Realizing the significance of the non-​partisan campaign, the CHP leadership managed to act in tandem with civil society platforms and other opposition parties and achieved significant success in metropolitan cities including İstanbul, Ankara, and İzmir. Despite Erdoğan and his nationalistic alliance managing to stay in power as of 2019, there are growing signs of opposition in the midst of a severe economic crisis, which was primarily triggered by the political crisis inherent in the new ultra-​presidentialism. Under these conditions, opposition groups’ success in coalition building remains a key factor realizing progressive change in Turkish politics. Moreover, the emergence of a split within the ruling bloc in the aftermath of the March 2019 local elections signified the declining capacity of Erdoğan to keep the ruling party intact.

Conclusion Erdoğan seemed to have finally realized right-​wing populism’s long-​awaited dream of unmediated linkage with the people through ultra-​presidentialism by 2018. Yet the realization of this dream also meant the end of strong motifs of self-​victimization historically central to right-​wing populisms since the Menderes’ times. Erdoğan is now the state. He has unprecedented political powers to realize all the populist promises. Yet in a very short span of time he also built an authoritarian regime with the instruments and justifications that the guardians of the tutelary democracy had long employed. This inherent tension between populist promises and authoritarian governance became increasingly visible at a societal level, as the 2019 local elections demonstrated. The opposition forces were able to capture almost all the largest metropolitan mayorship positions in the March 31 elections. When the ruling parties, AKP and MHP, refused to accept the legitimate results of the Istanbul elections, a very vital test between the authoritarian and competitive elements of the regime emerged. The ruling bloc used its cadres within the Supreme Election Council (YSK) to cancel and repeat the Istanbul elections. This highly undemocratic act represented an unprecedented paradox as right-​wing populism always claimed the supremacy of ballot box. Yet the repeat elections held on June 23 brought a landslide victory for the CHP candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu. This decisive victory has significantly empowered the competitive character of the regime. İmamoğlu successfully combined populist and post-​populist elements in his election campaign. His anti-​corruption rhetoric against a “happy minority” and his promise of more empowered social services for the urban poor seem to mirror the AKP’s first years in power. Yet İmamoğlu also incorporated post-​populist themes such as the promise of societal peace against Erdoğan-​led polarization. He also promised participatory mechanisms in tandem with civil society and an accountable and transparent rule. The opposition’s success at coalition building also has critical core liberal themes such as building a democracy with check and balances, the separation of powers, and a promise of a civilian and democratic constitution, which

Populism in Turkey    291 would finally replace the 1982 Constitution imposed by the junta. The opposition’s ability to popularize their post-​populist arguments will be crucial for the destiny of the re-​democratization process in Turkey. Finally, Erdoğan’s populism can be briefly compared with contemporary populist movements. The populist movements in Europe and the United States have a xenophobic and anti-​immigrant character with an increasing Islamophobic component. Similar to Russian right-​wing populisms, Erdoğan’s populism displays a strong anti-​western and anti-​US character with two complementary elements: an embrace of the traditional religious rivalry between Islam and other Abrahamic religions and a contemporary reaction to the increasing Islamophobia. In line with Erdoğan’s claim of defense of a marginalized Muslim majority in Turkey vis a vis a secular-​Westernist minority, he stands as the uncompromising defender of victimized Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. Erdoğan’s claim of defending victimized Muslims as well as the other marginalized peoples of the Third World can be seen in his outspoken criticism of the UN leadership with his slogan “World is bigger than five.” Here he defends an opening up of the UN leadership beyond five permanent members. In this regard, Erdoğan has some parallel with Nasser’s challenge to the West in the 1960s. Ironically, Nasser and Erdoğan’s authoritarian iron fists at home made their calls for international justice less convincing.

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Chapter 14

Old and New P ol ariz ati ons a nd Failed Demo crat i z at i ons in Tu rk ey Murat Somer

A growing body of research shows that during the 2010s Turkey became one of the world’s most polarized countries (Aydın-​Düzgit, 2019a; Aytaç, Çarkoğlu, and Yıldırım 2017; Çarkoğlu, Baruh, and Yıldırım 2014; Erdoğan 2016; Erdoğan and Uyan Semerci 2018; KONDA 2017; Laebens and Öztürk, 2020; Yılmaz 2017; McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018; Somer 2010, 2019a). During the same period, the country suffered a democratic backsliding and breakdown (Diamond 2015; Esen and Gumuscu 2016, 2018; Freedom House 2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Özbudun 2014; Somer 2014, 2016; Sözen 2019; V-​Dem 2019). Simultaneously, many prominent scholars of Turkish politics highlighted the links between populism, polarization, and failed democratizations in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s (Ahmad 1977; Heper and Sayarı 2002; Karpat 1959; Kasaba 1993; Keyder 1987; Mardin 1978; Özbudun, 2000; Turan 1988). However, three key themes remain underexplored: (a) the causes of polarization and its typology—​for example how it fits with general types such as societal versus political-​institutional, or partisan versus ideological; (b) whether the current polarization is qualitatively different from Turkey’s past polarizations; and (c) the causal links between polarization and democratic backsliding (Somer 2019a; Somer and McCoy 2018). Addressing these three themes, this chapter discusses the differences between past and present polarizations and offers an analytical framework to assess the causes and consequences of polarization for democracy in Turkey. With respect to (a), there is a need to more systematically explain what motivates political elites and parties to behave in polarizing ways and clarify how political agency is interlinked with non-​agentic factors at societal as well as political-​institutional levels. An established line of inquiry posits that political-​systemic shortcomings are the main

296   Murat Somer causes of social and political polarization (Aytaç, Çarkoğlu, and Yıldırım 2017; Erdoğan and Uyan Semerci 2018; Heper and Sayarı 2002; Karpat 1959; Özbudun 2000). In turn, studies addressing elections and party systems underline trends such as changing voter preferences—​for example the electorate’s “conservative shift” and “bimodal polarization” since the 1990s, which are attributed to non-​agentic factors such as urbanization and the end of the Cold War (Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu 2009). Furthermore, qualitative research has long stressed the importance of Turkey’s longue durée socio-​political divisions such as the so-​called center-​periphery cleavage in explaining political behavior (Mardin 2005) and related religious-​secular tensions (Akşit et al. 2012). But how are these long-​term factors related to willful political actions? Hence, regarding (a) and to unpack Turkey’s history of polarizations, my analysis will draw on a “political and relational conceptualization” of polarization (McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018; Somer and McCoy 2019). Hence, polarization can simply be defined as the division of a polity into increasingly oppositional blocs of “us” versus “them.” While this process is often initiated by polarizing political actors—​elites as well as movements—​who aim to reach certain social-​political goals, it is exacerbated jointly by their actions and the reactions of their political opponents. During this process, polarizing agents draw on and refashion preexisting, long-​term divisions in society, but they do so by regrouping and remolding old cleavages while inventing new ones. Regarding (b) and (c), I show that neither polarization nor its democracy-​eroding implications are novel phenomena in Turkey,. Political actors frequently promoted and exploited polarization to achieve political-​economic aims in the past. Further, Turkey has long had some historically institutionally shaped “formative rifts” (Somer and McCoy 2019) such as the religious-​secular, Alevi-​Sunni, and Turkish-​Kurdish cleavages. These fault lines periodically contributed to polarization in the past and were further politicized as a foundation of the present polarization (Somer 2019a). The current polarization shares some commonalities with previous ones. However, the polarization of the 2010s has been more pernicious for democracy than previous polarizations, at least for the time being, because of new characteristics that involve the identity, ideology, and mass-​basis of the polarizing agents as well as the scope and severity of polarization. In order to analyze and conceptualize these novelties, I first distinguish two types of past polarizations, and suggest other studies should do the same. The first type of Turkey’s past polarizations was a radical version of “exclusionary polarization,” where “the dominant political motive and discursive focus seem to be . . . to exclude threatening outsiders” (McCoy and Somer 2019a, 248). In Turkey, various political actors and state agents incited and at times even managed such polarizations. They polarized public opinion and segments of the majority society against specific ethnic, religious, and ideological minorities, such as non-​Muslims, Alevi Muslims, or communists, aiming to exclude or persecute these minorities. Exclusionary polarizations were mainly localized and asymmetric—​mobilizing majorities against minorities. For example, these polarizations prepared the ground for the primarily anti-​ Greek pogrom in Istanbul in 1955 and the anti-​Alevi/​secularist pogrom in Sivas in 1993. The country’s social and political actors have not yet sufficiently reconciled this legacy,

Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in  Turkey    297 constituting an outright dangerous precedent for democracy and peace (for politics of remembrance on Turkey, see the chapter by Bakıner in this volume). The second type consists of episodes of “inclusionary polarization,” where the focus is on including previously marginalized groups (McCoy and Somer 2019, 248). These were initiated by political elites who primarily sought mass support to prevail in intra-​elite power struggles, but who did so by promising redistributive policies and inclusionary reforms. This type of polarization had democratizing potential. It mobilized new disadvantaged constituencies and challenged exclusionary structures, authoritarian veto players, and privileged social groups, often through employing disruptive, polarizing, and frequently populist rhetoric (for populism, see the chapter by Taşkın in this volume). Examples include the rise of the DP (Demokrat Parti) in the 1950s as well as that of the Democratic Left in the 1970s. However, the political elites who led these mobilizations and their oppositions failed to build elite consensus on inclusionary institutions and power-​sharing necessary for lasting democratization. As inclusionary polarizing actors turned exclusionary and authoritarian, democracy broke down through promissory military coups that temporarily ended polarization and reorganized elite power relations by fiat. In some respects, the current polarization, which began following the AKP’s ascendance to power in 2002 and turned pernicious in the 2010s, resembles earlier inclusionary polarizations. It began with the rise of a new political actor—​the AKP (Adalet Kalkınma Partisi)—​which challenged the powers that be by vilifying them and claimed to empower various culturally, economically, and ideologically disadvantaged social groups. Indeed, polarizing politics—​which initially was “micro-​textual” (Somer 2019a)—​helped the AKP garner mass support for and weaken institutional resistance against change. This then paved the way for important democratic reforms during the 2000s. Many analysts prematurely identified these as ends rather than means of democratization (Yavuz 2006). Yet, in recent years, many of them were reversed, often replaced by even more authoritarian structures (Somer 2016). In at least three critical respects, polarization under AKP rule differs from past polarizations. To begin with, in earlier episodes, the main challengers to the status quo—​the DP in the 1950s and the CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) and MC (Milli Cephe, National Front)1 governments of the 1970s—​were primarily continuations of the rival camps within Turkey’s founding republican elites. Hence, even though some were adamantly anti status quo, they were ideologically “reformist” rather than revolutionary “within-​regime elites”: they embraced the main tenets of Turkey’s secular-​republican nation-​state and semi-​democracy, which they aimed to either defend or reform without upending. Conversely, the AKP’s predecessor and organizational backbone, the RP (Refah Partisi) and its MG (Milli Görüş) movement were anti-​systemic, oscillating between reformist and revolutionary Islamist orientations (Tuğal 2009; see the chapter by Çınar in this volume). Although the AKP resulted from a split within the movement where reformists sought compromises with the within-​regime political elites, state agents, and neo-​liberal economic ideology, the party was still a continuation of the MG in terms of

298   Murat Somer its core leadership, ideology, and organization (Somer 2014; Tuğal 2016). Further, unlike other mainly patronage-​based political parties, the AKP developed a professional and simultaneously mass-​based party organization (Baykan 2018; Massicard and Watts, 2013). The deep distrust and fierce rows between the AKP and its opposition cannot be explained by power rivalries alone. They were deeply ideological and institutional. The AKP and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had a predisposition to turn “revolutionary” from the beginning, which they did after polarizing politics took on a life of its own, but there was a relational dynamic in play too (Somer 2019a). The pro-​secular opposition sensed an existential threat from the AKP’s ideology and its tactical coalitions with Gülenist Islamists, secular liberals, and Kurds.(Somer 2007, 2017). As the AKP gradually but clearly abandoned “forbearance” (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018) vis-​à-​vis the norms and institutions of Turkey’s established semi-​democracy, the opposition tried to stop the AKP’s rise with polarizing politics of its own, such as the veto powers of the president, mass protests, and controversial judicial interventions (Somer 2007). The latter deepened polarization and strengthened the AKP. During this process, the AKP’s previously inclusionary polarization was also transformed into exclusionary polarization—​ seeking now to exclude opposition voices—​and facilitated democratic backsliding. Second, polarization during the AKP years became more mass and party based. In earlier polarization episodes, authoritarian interventions led by bureaucratic-​ institutional actors such as the military and judiciary wreaked havoc on party and civil society organizations of the polarizing blocs, at best halting polarization until it came back with a vengeance, but also distorting and fragmenting its social expressions and political organization.2 However, this time, the AKP managed to discredit, dismantle, or pack with partisans the state institutions that had led such interventions. Both the incumbent and opposition took root in society and mass-​political parties. This has enhanced both autocratizing and long-​term democratizing potentials of current polarization (Somer 2016). As a result, and third, the durability, severity, and scale of polarization has reached unprecedented levels. Almost all legal and political questions, and, gradually social relations have turned into battlegrounds of pro-​AKP and anti-​AKP, more recently embodied in pro-​and anti-​Erdogan, debates (Selçuk, Hekimci, and Erpul 2019). In the seven national (legislative and presidential) elections and referendums of the last decade, these groups appear to have consolidated generally stable voting blocs with high levels of turnout.

Polarization and Democracy across the World Theoretical and empirical research has long considered the causes and consequences of polarization. Scholars have investigated polarization at the micro, individual, as well

Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in  Turkey    299 as macro, societal levels (Iyengar and Westwood 2015, Sherif et al. [1961] 1988). As is the case with other broad and multidimensional phenomena such as democratization or secularization, a consensus on the definition, causes, and consequences of polarization has not emerged. Polarization occurs in such variegated domains as media, economics, ethnic and religious relations, and ideology, thus, the nature of polarization in these domains differ. However, many scholars agree that polarization in general can be a source of disruptive conflict. Regarding polarization’s impact on democracy, however, there has been much less consensus, arguably because conflict can advance (Bermeo 1992, Dahl 1956, 1978) or erode democracy. Hence, various seminal theoretical studies of democracy and democratization maintained that polarization may be part and parcel of democratic politics (Rustow 1970; Tilly 2004).3 In the 2010s, two factors motivated new research on the relationship between polarization and democracy. Severe polarization has plagued both fragile and established democracies such as the United States, United Kingdom, India, Hungary, Venezuela, and Turkey, motivating cross-​region and cross-​regime comparative work (Carothers and O’Donohue 2019; McCoy and Somer 2018, 2019). This has triggered research over whether the world is suffering a crisis of democracy (Diamond 2019; Levitsky and Way 2015), and the novel, incremental processes that underlie current examples of autocratization, which are termed “democratic erosion or backsliding” (Bermeo 2016; Kaufman and Haggard 2016). Hence, it is crucial for current research to theorize the two-​way links between polarization and democratization/​autocratization (Somer and McCoy 2018; Svolik 2019; Laebens and Öztürk, 2020). As for the causes of polarization, the bulk of research has focused on structural-​ institutional factors exogenous to willful political action, such as demographic and technological transformations (Lelkes, Sood, and Iyengar 2017) and the inherent tensions of democratic systems (Stavrakakis 2018). These studies have emphasized distinctions between various consequences of polarization, such as ideological, emotional, informational, and “partisan sorting” (Abramowitz 2018; Abramowitz and Saunders 2008; Barber and McCarty 2015; Iyengar et al. 2019). Similarly, research on the causal links between polarization and democracy treat polarization as exogenously determined (Svolik 2019), not as endogenously shaped by the political processes of democratization or democratic erosion (Somer and McCoy 2018). Yet, causal case studies suggest that purposive political actions and strategies often instigate polarization. As a scholar of Hungary observed, “polarization of citizens’ preferences on a left-​right scale is not simply something given (exogenously) to parties, but is the result of the strategies of the parties and their leaders; that is, it is an endogenous factor . . . parties and the political elite [are] the principal actors of polarization” (Körösényi 2013, 15, 18). This is not to say, of course, that societal differences generated by factors such as preexisting socio-​economic cleavages, divergent citizen preferences, and a partisan media environment are irrelevant to polarization. They can facilitate and constitute potential bases of polarization. But difference, as in ideological distance, is not the same as polarization, and multiple cross-​cutting differences characterize most societies

300   Murat Somer at any given time. Polarizing agents rebundle these differences and newly created ones, simplify politics and, if they “succeed,” initiate a process of polarization “whereby the normal multiplicity of differences in a society increasingly align along a single dimension, cross-​cutting differences become instead reinforcing, and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ ” (McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018, 18; Somer and McCoy 2019). This zero-​sum perception of politics is key to understand the difference between polarization and partisanship–​strong party identification –​associated with comsolidated democracies. Partisanship in Turkey during the 2010s, for example, was associated with polarization and decreased electoral volatility as expected, but did not strengthen the party system and democracy (Çakır 2019; Yardımcı-​Geyikçi 2015) because polarization entailed more than growing partisanship. All this leads to a political and relational conceptualization of polarization (Somer and McCoy 2019). The political capacities and choices of polarizing agents determine how pernicious or democracy-​eroding polarization will be. These capacities and choices include the actor’s organizational characteristics and the extent to which they rely on their societies’ “formative rifts” (Somer and McCoy 2019, 8). Simultaneously, contemporary cases of polarization-​cum-​democratic erosion are jointly and relationally produced by polarizing political entrepreneurs and the reactions of their political opponents through electoral mobilization, judicial activism, and contentious politics (McCoy and Somer 2019b). Hence, the main cause of polarization is polarizing politics:—​willful actions of political actors to reach political aims such as power as well as the inherent dynamics of political competition (Somer and McCoy 2019)—​rather than cleavages and vulnerabilities on their own.

Turkey’s Two Formative Rifts and “Old” Exclusionary Polarizations The Republic of Turkey, established in 1923, was founded based on two competing ideals of nationhood and statehood, one revolutionary-​secular and the other Sunni-​Muslim (see the chapter by Akan in this volume). On one hand, the nation-​state of Turkey was based on the secular-​republican ideals of equal citizenship regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, and sect and on the revolutionary ideal of a sharp rupture with the Ottoman ancien régime at large. On the other hand, this secular-​republican ideal has constantly clashed with the historical fact that the republic was created, like many other nation-​ states, through war-​making (Tilly 1990) primarily against majority non-​Muslim states and people and it has a “navel” (Smith 1991) with the Sunni-​Muslim core of the late Ottoman state. A coalition of majority Sunni-​Muslim and secular nationalists led the political and military mobilization of Anatolia’s Muslim inhabitants for nation-​state formation for themselves. This mobilization stemmed from the great “unmixing” (Brubaker 1995) of the Muslim and non-​Muslim peoples of the former Ottoman

Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in  Turkey    301 Empire—​and neighboring lands. Finally, the new nation-​state was built upon the former Ottoman state institutions and traditions. All this led to a “Sunni-​Muslim” basis of Turkish nationhood and statehood, which has clashed with various social-​political realities including Turkey’s rich multi-​confessional and multicultural past, and the fact that secular or non-​Sunni Muslims, and non-​Muslim minorities constitute important portions of the population. The internal contradictions of and tensions between these secular-​republican and Sunni-​Muslim-​Ottoman ideals created a formative rift with lasting consequences for polarization—​ “long-​ standing and deep-​ cutting divisions that either emerged or could not be resolved during the formation of nation-​states, or, sometimes during fundamental re-​formations of states such as during transitions from communism to capitalism, or authoritarian to democratic regimes” (Somer and McCoy 2019, 8). In various periods, the Sunni-​Muslim navel of Turkishness has been employed by authorities and politicians to polarize majority public against non-​Muslim and non-​ Sunni Muslim minorities. Often, the implicit aim was to advance political-​economic elite interests. For example, the “Wealth Tax” during the Second World War was allegedly levied upon the wealthy in general to pay for the war costs, but in practice, it targeted non-​Muslim citizens—​some of whom died in deadly labor camps for not being able to pay—​to weaken them and bolster a new Turkish, i.e. Muslim, bourgeoisie. Such anti-​minority policies were preceded by press campaigns demonizing the non-​Muslim minorities (Akar 2006; Aktar 2013; Barutçu 1977, 263). The minorities were painted as a threat, leading the majority to overlook the cross-​ cutting interests it shares with “them.” Similarly, the September 6–​7, 1955, pogroms were preceded by the portrayal of Greek Istanbulites as a fifth column in the widely-​ read, nascent mass press (Kuyucu 2005). While the trigger and pretext was a row with Greece over the island of Cyprus, the policies of the incumbent DP toward non-​Muslim minorities had already turned exclusionary, partly in search of scapegoats for the declining economic conditions, replacing the party’s pro-​minority policies of the early 1950s (Güven 2005; Kuyucu 2005). Non-​Muslim minorities were not the only ones targeted by the politics of exclusionary polarization. Alevi Muslims have suffered discrimination by state policies favoring Sunni Islam (see the chapter by Lord in this volume). Others, such as communists, were even blamed by the DP government for the nationalist pogroms of 1955 (Kuyucu 2005, 362). The “Turk-​Kurd” cleavage is Turkey’s second formative rift. The mainly “intra-​ Turkish” political conflicts and decisions and geopolitical developments during the formative period (1918–​1926) led the republic to be founded as a nation-​state rather than state-​nation (Somer 2015). Hence, the state and secular as well as religious Turkish political elites have tried to include Kurds within the nation, as either Muslims or state-​defined Turks, while simultaneously denying legitimacy to a separate Kurdish identity and demands for rights and self-​rule. The conflict between the state and Kurdish nationalists has been the most violent conflict of the republic (Bozarslan 2008). State attempts to suppress autonomous Kurdish politics have been a main driver of politics.

302   Murat Somer For reasons beyond the scope of this chapter, the Turk-​Kurd cleavage has not produced any “mass polarization” between Kurds and Turks at the national-​popular level (Somer 2015). However, political polarization between “Turkish” and pro-​Kurdish parties has been a rigid cleavage, which, as I will argue later, has recently emerged as the major split dividing the anti-​AKP opposition. Further, localized social exclusion and occasional violence against Kurds have been major problems, often correlated with the conflict with the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) (Bilali, Çelik, and Ok 2014).

Turkey’s “Old” Inclusionary Polarizations Factional conflicts among within-​regime elites triggered Turkey’s “old” inclusionary polarizations. These elites founded the republican regime in 1923 and then constructed electoral democracy bounded by secularism, republicanism, and nationalism after the Second World War. Hence, these polarizations arose primarily as byproducts of the failures of these elites to settle their personal and ideological differences by agreeing on sustained rules of power sharing and forbearance. This is not to say that societal divisions and dynamics played no role in polarization. In order to mobilize masses for their own political purposes, polarizing elites worked with existing societal rifts and sensitivities. But societal rifts and demands did not gain their polarizing character on their own. This happened whenever (Somer 2019a, 44) factions within ruling elites selectively and creatively evoked and re-​bundled existing cleavages. They did so by employing meta-​narratives, and other political strategies, with an us versus them logic. From the late 1960s on, however, new social divisions linked with urbanization/​industrialization and the related rise of bottom-​up socialist, far-​right nationalist, and Islamist movements and parties contributed to the inclusionary polarizations of the 1970s and 1990s. In fact, the AKP and its predecessor RP (Refah Partisi) were among the major winners of these trends following the demise of the left after the 1980–​1983 military regime and the end of the Cold War. Hence, political Islamists were transformed from an Islamist-​nationalist fringe into mass-​based parties anchored in a social movement in the 1990s and 2000s. While the popularity of extremist parties pressures mainstream parties to move away from the center and from each other, centrist parties do not always succumb to such pressures (Capoccia 2005). Even if they do, ideological-​political distance is not the same as polarization (McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018). To put it differently, one would be hard pressed to say that social divisions would have caused severe polarizations on their own in Turkey. Political elites instrumentalized social divisions to serve their own interests and avoid political “settlements” of intra-​societal and intra-​elite differences (Heper and Sayarı 2002; Higley and Burton 2006; Higley and Gunther 1992; Özbudun

Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in  Turkey    303 2000). Polarization doesn’t need to become pernicious and can, as I noted earlier, even serve democratization if political elites can successfully represent ideological differences and manage power competition among themselves. Yet, such management of social-​political differences has not happened in any of Turkey’s polarization episodes (Özbudun 2000; Somer 2014, 2015). Time and again, major politicians tried to prevail in intra-​elite struggles and resolve socio-​economic crises by “going to the people” mobilizing them with inclusionary promises but also by polarizing and even criminalizing rival political interests in the process. They could not settle their conflicts based on power-​sharing agreements that would have de-​polarized politics before becoming pernicious either. Instead, these episodes ended with military coups in 1960 and 1980 and military interventions in 1971 and 1997. The army and other bureaucratic actors reshuffled political power and tried to establish new rules of democratic politics by force. Not surprisingly, these top-​down rules also lacked widespread elite and societal consensus. What explains the shortcomings of Turkish political elites in settling their differences based on long-​lasting compromises? In contrast to disputes between regime elites and political Islamists and Kurdish nationalists, these old intra-​elite disagreements do not appear to be so deep and irreconcilable that consensus-​based settlements were a priori unlikely. Many seasoned scholars of Turkish politics have pointed to Turkish political parties’ programmatic weaknesses, domination by powerful leaders with steadfast personalities and dependence on patronage politics (Heper and Sayarı 2002; Özbudun 2000). These political-​cultural and party-​organizational factors (for party organizations, see the chapter by Laebens in this volume) are offered to explain the polarizing and uncompromising nature of Turkish politics. In addition, while programmatic and organizational weaknesses incentivized political actors to engage in personalist and polarizing politics to mobilize voters (McCoy and Somer 2019; Somer 2019a), the resulting zero-​sum perceptions of interests locked them into antagonistically competitive behavioral patterns. Polarization can help political parties distinguish themselves from others without clear ideological, programmatic, and organizational differences. But then, polarizing politics molds political parties in ways that further undercut programmatic and organizational development, creating a vicious circle.

The Historical Making and Nature of Turkey’s Within-​Regime  Elites For the winning majority of Turkey’s Muslim inhabitants, the “National Struggle” (Milli Mücadele, 1919–​1922), which led to the formation of the Republic of Turkey, became a war of liberation from occupation and dismemberment (of the rump-​Ottoman state). But as national liberation struggles frequently are, it also was a divisive political struggle for the Muslims. It was waged against foreign powers as well as domestic opponents. The

304   Murat Somer latter included ardent monarchists (Sultanists), pro-​Caliphate Ottomanists, and ethnically and religiously motivated dissidents. Furthermore, the nationalist movement itself was a diverse coalition. It included Islamists, religious-​traditional, and secularist nationalist elites; members hailing from different regions of the country; different professions as various as the military, bureaucracy, law, agriculture, and commerce (Demirel, 2000; Frey 1965); and various ethnicities including Turks, Kurds, and Circassians. During the foundation of the republic and the subsequent one-​party era (1923–​1946), a narrower group of elites formed the republican regime elites by excluding Islamists who would not agree to key pro-​secular reforms such as the abolition of the Caliphate and independent religious schools. However, the within-​(republican) regime elites had their own divisions, too. A rift emerged between “ardent nationalists” led by Mustafa Kemal who wanted fast modernization and, therefore, a concentration of authoritarian power at the top, on one hand, and “post-​independence conservatives” who favored more power-​sharing and slower modernization, on the other (Frey 1965, 327–​330). While Kemalist nationalists almost single-​handedly and authoritatively transformed the country during the single-​party era, they maintained a “sincere commitment to eventual democracy”4 (Frey 1965, 329). This meant that post-​independence conservatives were not entirely excluded. They were dealt a much better deal than Islamists, such as Sufi Islamists who were relatively less controllable by the state, and socialists (Akal 2013). Hence, while communists and dissident Islamists were banned and criminalized, many post-​independence conservatives could reenter the ruling CHP and parliament after an initial clash, split, and persecution from 1925 to 1927. Post-​independence conservatives assumed government positions and were even encouraged to form a short-​lived opposition party in 1930. Other differences also emerged among the ruling elites during the 1930s and 1940s, especially with economic development and the rise of a domestic bourgeoisie. Hardliners favored a longer period of authoritarian modernization while moderates favored liberalization/​democratization. Disagreements also arose regarding state-​led and market-​based economic policies. However, none of these elites disagreed on the basic tenets of the Republican project, involving secular modernization, republicanism, and eventual democracy based on parliamentary sovereignty. Thus, although initially sidelined, post-​independence conservatives were still an important segment of the founding elites.

Polarized Transition to Democracy Turkey’s transition to multiparty democracy in 1946–​1950 resulted from a short-​lived agreement among these within-​regime elites. An opposition segment of the CHP split from the party and formed the DP in 1946. After the regime-​controlled elections of 1946, moderate leadership won the struggle within the CHP, and some more radical, anti-​ regime elements split from the DP. These reconfigurations pushed both parties toward “moderation” (Somer 2014; Tezcür 2010). Talks between the CHP and DP culminated in various protocols and a new electoral law. The DP agreed not to tamper with

Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in  Turkey    305 secularist-​republican reforms—​i.e., the mainstays of the regime—​and the CHP agreed to unmanaged, free, and fair elections. The CHP “perceived the DP leadership not as a counterelite but as part of the Kemalist elite” (Özbudun 2000, 19). This within-​regime elite compromise to give more say in politics to previously marginalized groups such as peasants, led to the peaceful transfer of power to the DP after the 1950 election. Rather than a robust and durable “elite pact” or settlement (Di Palma 1990; Higley and Burton 2006), however, this turned out to be a short-​lived agreement (Özbudun 2000, 17–​18). “Elite unity broke down pathologically just as the vote was given to the peasant” (Frey 1965, 391). Why did this promising but short-​lived agreement to peaceful transition to multiparty democracy collapse? The plurality voting system might have encouraged the DP to employ polarizing politics (McCoy and Somer 2019a). More importantly, even though the DP came to represent all the built-​up resentment against one-​party rule present among the rural masses and urban bourgeoisie, the programs of the DP and CHP could not be easily distinguished. They differed “about as much as the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States and had more in common than the Labour and Conservative parties in Britain” (Ahmad 1977, 40). Hence, lacking the programmatic means to represent the opposition, the DP leadership was convinced that the party could retain its unity only by keeping its ranks mobilized against the CHP. Thus the DP employed polarizing politics, which posed a simple binary choice between a vilified CHP representing the single party legacy and the DP with its motto “Enough is Enough! It is the Nation’s Turn to Speak!” (“yeter, söz milletin”). This helped the DP both obscure its similarities with the CHP and bring together diverse groups with conflicting interests such as large groups of peasants and culturally and professionally diverse segments of bourgeoisie. Personal distrust between CHP leader İsmet İnönü and DP leaders Adnan Menderes and Celal Bayar also contributed to the bitter rhetoric and collapse of elite cooperation (Harris 2002; Sayarı 2002a). Polarizing politics, of course went beyond antagonistic discourse. It shaped policies such as shutting down of People’s Houses (Halk Evleri), a major instrument of the CHP’s vision of social modernization, and nationalizing CHP property. Such practices were met with fierce denunciation by the CHP (Silverman 2019, 90–​91).

Polarization in a Liberal Constitutional and Multi-​Party  System The growing authoritarianism of the DP and deepening political polarization in the late 1950s culminated in the 1960 military takeover of the government. The coup and subsequent execution of DP leader Menderes only widened the chasm among regime elites. After the coup, the military and its allies in parties, judiciary and academia attempted to remake the political system based on enhanced power-​sharing, liberal pluralism, and

306   Murat Somer horizontal accountability, in an attempt to discourage majoritarianism and encourage consensus-​seeking among political elites. They changed the electoral system from first-​ past-​the-​post to proportional representation and created a bi-​cameral parliament with a newly instituted senate. They also made a more liberal constitution with expanded social-​political rights and freedoms, which, however, would be protected by a new constitutional court and military tutelage. Fearing new military interventions, political elites tried to share power during the first half of the 1960s. The first post-​coup civilian governments were coalitions. After 1965, however, the CHP was relegated to opposition status. The AP (Adalet Partisi), the main successor of the DP, secured the electoral majority and formed single party governments until the 1971 military intervention. In the 1970s the CHP transformed into a center-​left party with a zeal to regain power and a transformative agenda with which it garnered significant popular support. Framed in the context of the Cold War, the rightist parties coalesced against the perceived leftist revolutionary threat posed by this newly constituted CHP. This set the stage for the second major episode of polarization in Turkish politics. The internal politics of the CHP had long been shaped by rivalry between economically more conservative and radical camps. The former defended a mixed economy model, the latter promoted corporatist and quasi-​socialist systems. The veteran politician İnönü offered the term “left-​of-​center” (ortanın solu) as a possible new identity for the CHP within a stable bi-​party system. But as an ex-​soldier and ex-​president who kept the country away from both the Second World War and Soviet domination, İnönü was suspicious of socialist politics. Hence, it was his first young protégé and then rival within the party, Bülent Ecevit, who actually shifted the party to the left. Ecevit redefined the CHP’s goals in a simplified, socially transformative, and anti–​status quo fashion in his 1966 book Left of Center. He aimed to reclaim the CHP’s original intellectual/​revolutionary pro-​people (halkçı) orientation, and called upon the party to revert to this tradition. He sought to transform the CHP from an elite-​cadre to a mass party, relying on the burgeoning labor movement and rural interests. In reaction to Ecevit’s endeavors, more nationalist and conservative elements left the CHP and formed a new party5 that later joined right-​wing parties. Ecevit’s CHP aimed to empower “disparate social elements, such as peasants, agricultural producers, urban workers, middle-​classes and intelligentsia” and mobilize them in a broad coalition to transform the socioeconomic system (düzen) (Kınıklıoğlu 2000). The party “moved to a more leftist position, adopted a rhetoric that was heavily oriented toward mass appeal to the workers and small peasants, and engaged in vehement criticisms of the right-​wing movements and parties” (Sayarı 2002b, 14). Slogans such as “pro-​people Ecevit” and “land to the people who cultivate it and water to those who use it” (toprak işleyenin, su kullananın) reflected the anti-​elite, populist, and leftist-​ transformative political ambitions. These strategies found broad appeal, enabling Ecevit to seize the party chairmanship by defeating İnönü at the party convention of 1972 and carrying the CHP to electoral success. The party won pluralities of the national vote in 1973 and 1977, with 33

Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in  Turkey    307 and 41 percent of the votes respectively. However, all this did not produce a stable biparty system, which would have offered voters clear choices—​an example of polarization producing democratization. Instead, the late 1970s witnessed limited “polarized pluralism” in the party system and an unstable and increasingly violent democracy. The CHP’s rise led to exclusionary counter-​mobilization by right-​wing parties, which formed a “nationalist front,” MC, united by opposition to the CHP and left-​wing politics. The CHP could only govern for two years and nine months in total during the 1970s. A litany of political assassinations and increased street violence between right-​ and left-​wing extremists (Mardin 1978) clearly demonstrate the severity of this polarization. In 1980 alone, the violence claimed 3,500 lives (Dodd 1983). In September of that year, the military once again orchestrated a coup seeking to restore order, reestablish unity, and remake politics. Once again, the political elite’s inability to compromise was among the major reasons why polarization drove the country into chaos. Arguably, the CHP and AP could have counteracted polarization and deterred the coup by forming a grand coalition in the late 1970s. In fact, the joint denunciation of the 1971 coup by Ecevit and Süleyman Demirel, the AP leader, portended such a reconciliation. For his part, Ecevit was willing to form coalitions with right-​wing parties, the first one an unlikely partnership with Islamist nationalists in 1974. Even at the end of the decade Ecevit insisted on a grand coalition with the AP. However, his rhetoric was inflammatory, and he refused to condemn leftist extremists for their share in political violence. In turn, Demirel unapologetically rejected Ecevit’s coalition proposition, comparing Ecevit to the fallen Chilean socialist leader Allende. Demirel, too, refused to even acknowledge “right-​wing and nationalist” ’ culpability in violence. His discourse clearly reflected an us versus them logic, inflaming Turkey’s secular-​religious formative rift.6 Underlying their polarizing rhetoric, Demirel and Ecevit failed—​and in the case of Demirel, did not want—​to compromise on a common ground of political and economic reforms.

The Rise of Identity-​Based Polarization in the 1980s and 1990s Despite the military junta’s—and their civilian allies’—remaking of politics with a highly restrictive and repressive new constitutional order, the 1980s and 1990s also witnessed polarized politics. Intra-​elite bickering took place between center-​right and center-​left politicians and between secularists and first Prime Minister and then President Turgut Özal, a culturally conservative and economically liberal, reformist ex-​bureaucrat with connections to political Islamism. However, his party ANAP (Anavatan Partisi) simultaneously represented an attempt to unite a broad range of within-​regime elites together with some political Islamists. Nevertheless, intra-​regime elite discord continued and gained momentum after a hotly contested referendum in 1987 that allowed the politicians of the 1970s to reenter party politics.

308   Murat Somer Inter-​elite disputes even plagued the twelve-​year negotiations to re-​establish the banned CHP. In the immediate aftermath of the 1980 coup, two main parties emerged: Ecevit’s DSP (Demokratik Sol Parti) and the SHP (Sosyaldemokrat Halkçı Parti) headed by İnönü’s son. Largely on account of intra-​SHP disagreements, the CHP was re-​formed with its original name in 1992, introducing a third major center-​left party. The SHP ultimately merged with CHP in 1995. Similarly, the political base of the banned AP split into ANAP and DYP (Doğru Yol Partisi) and others, despite efforts to unite under one party. Following an initial secular mobilization against the governments of Özal in the 1980s, however, the 1990s did not witness the emergence of two opposing blocks. Instead, politics were torn asunder by the centrifugal forces of two anti-​regime political movements: political Islamism and Kurdish nationalism (Bozarslan 2008). Hence, the 1990s also witnessed major efforts among intra-​regime elites to cooperate in order to contain and subdue these centrifugal forces. These included a series of unstable and short-​lived coalition governments until the relatively longer DSP-​ANAP-​MHP government in 1999–​2002. Some within-​regime elites sought to engage the centrifugal forces,7 but, once again, non-​party state elements reigned in these attempts. Notably, an RP-​ DYP coalition government in 1996–​1997 was ended by a military ultimatum backed by a major anti-​Islamist civil society mobilization. The fractured state of politics in Turkey was only exacerbated by growing corruption among within-​regime elites as well as recurrent economic crises, short-​lived governments, military tutelage, and a vicious counterinsurgency war with the PKK.

Current Polarization The causes of the polarization of the 2000s do not lie in intra-​regime elite politics—​and their weaknesses regarding party programs and organizations—​but in the downfall of these elites and the ascendance of counter-​regime elites led by the AKP. The latter were determined to remake the regime, equipped with a charismatic leader, mass party organization and public support—​as opposed to mainly patronage-​based parties—​and a willingness to use polarizing politics by drawing on Turkey’s formative secular-​religious cleavage. These dynamics paved the way for a new, long-​lasting, and pernicious polarization combined with democratic backsliding. However, this happened incrementally, through the unfolding of a relational causal chain that also involved the opposition’s politics. The AKP came to power in the November 2002 elections, riding a wave of voter dissatisfaction with existing elites whom most voters blamed for the tumultuous 1990s and the disastrous 2000–​2001 financial crisis. The latter had already polarized the political sphere, by 35 percent, or from “somewhat” to a “noticeable extent” in one year according to one measurement (V-​Dem 2019).8 The AKP nearly won a supermajority in the parliament with 34 percent of the vote, thanks to a 10 percent electoral threshold instituted by the 1980 military junta. A self-​dubbed “conservative democratic,” the AKP’s formation resulted from a series of temporary compromises that the

Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in  Turkey    309 party’s Islamist founders made with Turkey’s political, socioeconomic, and international “centers” (Somer 2014) and neoliberal global economic system (Tuğal 2016). The party included many pro-​secular members (Ocakli 2015); however, the core leadership, ideology, rank-​and-​file members, and grassroots support of the party came from the Islamist MG and RP legacy. AKP governments can be divided into five sub-​periods regarding the evolution of polarization and democracy (Somer 2019a): 1. 2002–​2006: Trimodal, moderate, and “micro-​textual” polarization and reforms led by the AKP. Significant inter-​party cooperation. 2. 2007: Micro-​textual polarization culminates in a political confrontation. Beginning of macro-​textual polarization. 3. 2008–​2013: Growing macro-​textual polarization, decreasing trimodal and reversible polarization. Incremental democratic erosion. 4. 2014–​ 2018: Full-​ fledged bimodal and pernicious (self-​ propagating) polarization spiraling out of control and democratic backsliding. Polarization is increasingly personalized and ossified into pro-​and anti-​Erdoğan camps.9 5. 2019–​present: Opposition attempts to unite, split the ruling bloc, and agree on de-​ polarizing or pro-​democratic re-​polarizing strategies. The polarizing politics of the AKP was subdued in its initial period. The party had shed its predecessor RP’s explicitly anti-​system discourse in order to move to the center. Helped by the EU membership process, its policies were inclusionary and redistributive, winning its first election on a platform of empowering disadvantaged groups, including urban and rural poor and large swaths of the Kurdish minority. On a national level, the party presented a democratic-​reformist, non-​polarizing, and centrist agenda. While its political Islamist background automatically alarmed and antagonized segments of the pro-​secular elites and middle classes, it managed to draw support from many liberals and moderate-​seculars. However, the party’s non-​confrontational course was partially a calculated attempt at avoiding the ire of secularist civil society and state institutions. The party’s “micro-​ text” discourses—​which can be defined as what is said, written, and done in local and informal settings—​of rank-​and-​file AKP members (Tepe 2005), its Gülenist allies—​a globally organized Islamist-​nationalist movement that fell out with the AKP later (Yavuz and Balcı 2018)—​and pro-​AKP intelligentsia were different. These reflected a quietly revolutionary agenda, especially regarding the role of religion in society and partially state affairs, secularism, social pluralism, and the legacy of republican modernization (Somer 2010, 2011, 531–​537). They gradually reframed politics in terms of a simple binary of justice-​seeking/​victimized “black Turks” versus privileged/​oppressive “white Turks.” This us versus them logic shaped both party and supporter practices of bureaucratic recruitment, fine-​print legislation, disregard of parliamentary norms, and social discriminatory practices (Kart 2015; Somer 2007, 2017; Toprak et al. 2008). Still, political polarization was “noticeable” but stable, rising by a negligible 3 percent between 2002 and 2006 (V-​Dem 2019). Political divisions were trimodal, dividing seculars among hardliners and softliners and allowing many democratic reforms with bi-​partisan support (Somer 2019a; 2011: 527–​537).

310   Murat Somer Anti-​ AKP skepticism was mass-​ mobilized in 2007 when the AKP nominated Abdullah Gül, a soft-​spoken political Islamist who served as foreign minister, for the presidency. Within-​regime elites saw the presidency as a guarantor of the secular-​ republican regime, which should be held by a consensus-​based president. Massive “republican rallies” condemned the AKP. By focusing on secularism to unite the opposition, these protests invoked the country’s formative secular-​religious rift. They were also exclusionary insofar as the “they” rhetoric the protesters employed did not distinguish between the government and its supporters. Furthermore, critics of Gül’s nomination relied on a dubious judicial interpretation of parliamentary by-​laws, which was followed by a mysterious ultimatum published on the website of the military, both being “extra-​ institutional” (Gamboa 2017) interventions from the perspective of democracy. Hence, despite prima facie defending of democracy, the 2007 anti-​AKP mobilization fit with the pattern of opposition responses that contribute to the deepening of pernicious polarization (McCoy and Somer 2019). Indeed, political and social polarization rose significantly in 2007, by 8 and 44 percent (V-​Dem 2019). The AKP responded by intensifying its efforts to reframe politics as a struggle between those defending the “new and old Turkey.” Through various political maneuvers such as early elections and a constitutional referendum, the AKP capitalized on voters’ satisfaction with economic growth and public services, increased its votes, and tightened its grip on power. Between 2008 and 2013, the AKP consolidated its power against both political rivals and state agencies by skillfully employing a discourse of “those who take sides (with Us)” against opponents “who will be sidelined” (Somer 2019a, 52). Political and social polarization rose by 7 and 49 percent, respectively (V-​Dem 2019). Echoing other cases (Svolik 2019), severe polarization induced AKP supporters to overlook the party’s corruption and incremental policies of “stealth authoritarianism” (Varol 2015) reflecting a “menu of manipulation” (Schedler 2002). For example, the party gradually packed state institutions with partisans, waged a war against free media, and weaponized the law against its opponents. Opposition groups employed polarizing politics of their own, with a view to mobilize against the government and its Gülenist allies. They launched media campaigns and legal cases, including a Constitutional Court case to close the party in 2008 (Somer 2019a, 50–​51), pro-​secular electoral mobilization in 2010–​2011, and mass anti-​ government protests in 2013 (Özbudun 2013). Even though these mobilizations, especially the 2013 Gezi protests, were not necessarily exclusionary, they were actively portrayed as such by the AKP to its base. Hence, insofar as they activated a “kulturkampf ” (Kalaycıoğlu 2012), they served to existentially threaten and unite a winning majority of pro-​government constituencies. Several important characteristics of the fourth period, characterized by full-​scale polarization, are worth highlighting. First, from its initial rise to power, the AKP tried to cultivate a new regime elite. Since 2014 when Erdoğan was elected president and a 2016 failed coup attempt which it blamed entirely on Gülenists, the party also embarked upon building a new authoritarian regime (Esen and Gumuscu 2016, 2018; Somer 2016;

Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in Turkey    311 see also the chapter by Karakoç in this volume). In a 2017 referendum, it established a hyper-​presidential system still in the making (Selçuk 2016; Selçuk, Hekimci, and Erpul 2019; Sözen 2019). Second, polarizing politics helped the AKP maintain its support for radical change and liberate itself from military tutelage. Hence, the organizational base of polarizing politics lasted longer, absent military interventions that wroke havoc in party politics in earlier periods. Polarization has grown more pernicious. While causing democratic backsliding, it has also politicized almost every sphere of life, as conspiratorial thinking became central to political discourse (see the chapter by Göknar in this volume), and people reportedly began to shun supporters of rival parties in their social relations, from marriage to business partnerships (Aytaç, Çarkoğlu, and Yıldırım, 2017; Erdoğan 2016; KONDA 2017; Yılmaz 2017). As in previous periods, AKP’s polarization transformed from inclusionary to exclusionary, treating seculars as well as disloyal Kurds and pious Sunni Muslims as threatening others. Third, in the ensuing partisan public sphere, it became futile to document any corrupt or socially exclusionary practices of the AKP and its allies. Polarization divided Turks even over the question whether the country is polarized (Aydın-​Düzgit and Balta 2017). Some scholars even denied that Turkish democracy was troubled, instead claiming that the country has been experiencing a civic democratic revolution (e.g., Aktürk 2016), despite dramatic falls in all internationally recognized markers of democracy, which by 2018 downgraded Turkey from an electoral democracy to a “ not free” electoral authoritarian regime for the first time ever (Freedom House 2018). Fourth, while polarizing politics helped the AKP and Erdoğan consolidate a winning bloc, it also transformed and corrupted the party from within (Somer 2019a). Further, it led to major intra-​AKP conflicts, most notably with Gülenists after 2013, when Erdoğan reoriented his us versus them politics against Gülenists and other internal rivals including Abdullah Gül. Further, the MHP, which had been in opposition before joining the ruling bloc after the June 2015 elections, split into two, with the anti-​AKP segments forming a new party İP (İyi Parti). Finally, the AKP has been using exclusionary polarization against the pro-​Kurdish HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi), after the HDP refused to endorse constitutional changes that would concentrate power in the hands of Erdoğan in 2015. In the fifth period since the 2018 elections, politics have been shaped by deepening authoritarianism within the hyper-​presidential administration, the splintering of the AKP, and opposition attempts to unite and experiment with new strategies to defeat the AKP and Erdoğan. In the twin presidential and parliamentary elections of 2018, the CHP, İP, and two smaller parties, one political Islamist and one center-​right, formed an electoral coalition called Nation’s Alliance (Millet İttifakı - NA), but failed to overpower the AKP-​ MHP’s Public’s Alliance (Cumhur İttifakı - PA) in an unlevel playing field. The main presidential candidate of the opposition ran a negatively polarizing campaign focused on attacking Erdoğan, thereby mobilizing both the opposition base and in response, the AKP base, ultimately failing to defeat Erdoğan.

312   Murat Somer In contrast, in the 2019 local elections, the NA deliberately employed non-​ polarizing strategies by fielding moderate-​centrist candidates and reaching out to PA voters, highlighting unifying themes such as economic development, and securing the HDP’s outside support (Esen and Gumuscu, 2019). The CHP even instructed its members to follow guidelines in a “Book of Radical Love” (Cumhuriyet, 2019). As a result, the opposition both increased its support and defeated the PA in the country’s trendsetting metropolitan cities, including Istanbul and Ankara. After AKP-​forced repeat elections in the former, the opposition candidate won again, and by a greater margin (Somer 2019b). Finally, in 2019 and 2020, two new parties were established by prominent ex-​AKP politicians, GP (Gelecek Partisi) led by a former AKP prime minister, and DEVA (Demokrasi ve Atılım Partisi) led by a former AKP deputy prime minister. Facing competition from these parties over their right-​wing as well as centrist voters, time will show whether the AKP will respond by choosing to prioritize the preferences of right-​wing or centrist voters, or non-​electoral and authoritarian means to stay in power.

In Lieu of Conclusions The future of polarization and democratic backsliding in Turkey depends on the opposition’s agency and potential to secure a peaceful rotation of power so that the country may return to democracy. In the least democratic—​and the less likely, given the country’s long democratic experience—​scenarios, the hyper-​presidential authoritarian regime may become consolidated and polarization may subside as opposition parties are co-​opted as loyalist parties. This would mean that the counter-​republican regime elites would succeed in establishing a new regime, albeit perhaps not the one they originally intended. In the more likely scenarios, the opposition may manage to develop a mixture of non-​polarizing and constructively re-​polarizing political platforms (McCoy and Somer 2019), which mobilize a winning majority to replace Erdoğan and the AKP in government. While a non-​polarizing and service-​oriented strategy worked in 2019 local elections, mobilizing voters on national elections may require more. Garnering the support of pro-​HDP Kurds—​transcending exclusionary polarization against the Kurds—​as well as ex-​AKP voters and GP and DEVA supporters, requires non-​polarizing appealing strategies. Simultaneously, offering voters a clear choice between democracy and authoritarianism –​and its socioeconomic consequences -​-​may be necessary for the opposition to mobilize its ideologically diverse base singly united by their dislike of incumbent authoritarianism. Insofar as these strategies are supported by consensus-​ seeking and inclusive programs of democratization, they can also secure a restoration and even consolidation of pluralistic democracy.

Old and New Polarizations and Failed Democratizations in Turkey    313

Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Güneş Murat Tezcür and Ekrem Karakoç for valuable comments and Devin Patrick Brown, Ecem Ersözlü, and Metehan Tekinırk for comments and research assistance.

Notes 1. However, the MC included as junior partners the MSP (Milli Selamet Partisi), a political Islamist party and predecessor of AKP, and the MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi), a far-​right party, both of which could be considered anti-​system parties. 2. These interventions also kindled new identity-​based polarizations, as the 1980 coup did, further fragmenting democratic politics. 3. For a more recent contribution (LeBas 2011). 4. The democracy here, of course, is one bounded by the regime’s formative rifts, thus for example leaving Kurdish nationalist demands outside the sphere of legitimate politics. 5. The CGP (Cumhuriyetçi Güven Partisi). 6. For example, “the hand that pulls a trigger and the hand that draws a rosary cannot be the same” (tespih çeken el ile tetik çeken el bir olmaz), Saadetyan (2015). 7. In the case of Kurdish nationalists, any such efforts ended after the collapse of an alliance between SHP and an explicitly pro-​Kurdish party HEP (Halkın Emek Partisi) in 1991 and the expulsion of Kurdish nationalist MP’s from the parliament in 1994. 8. From 2.28 to 3.09, on a scale of 0–​4. 9. Somer 2019a, with minor modifications.

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Chapter 15

Ec onom ic Voti ng du ri ng the AKP Era i n  T u rk ey S. Erdem Aytaç

Since coming to power in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) registered an impressive electoral record: it won plurality of votes in all of the six general and four local elections held by 2019, and as the incumbent its vote share did not fall below 40 percent in general elections. As a result, the party was able to secure parliamentary majorities and form single-​party governments except for the brief period between June and November 2015 general elections. This electoral strength has also had significant repercussions beyond general and local elections: the party was able to push through three constitutional amendments via referenda, and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won two presidential elections in 2014 and 2018. In this chapter I explore to what degree Turkish voters’ economic evaluations played a role in AKP’s electoral fortunes. As one of the main approaches to voting behavior, the basic premise of the so-​called economic voting hypothesis is that the state of the economy is a key factor for election results: incumbents are more likely to be re-​elected in good economic times and cast out of office when the economy performs poorly (Lewis-​Beck and Stegmaier 2000). Economic voting has a certain normative appeal for democratic theory since it could serve as a mechanism for electoral accountability (Healy and Malhotra 2013)—​incumbents have incentives to improve public welfare if they know that they will be punished or rewarded at the polls for the state of the economy (Ferejohn 1986). Do we observe evidence for economic voting in a consistent and substantial manner during the AKP years in Turkey? The era of AKP rule in Turkey is a suitable case to test the economic voting hypothesis because the party’s long tenure in power entailed periods of both good and poor economic performance. The 1990s in Turkey was a period of economic and political instability, and the AKP came to power shortly after one of the deepest economic recessions the country experienced. Benefiting from a favorable global economy and EU and IMF anchors, the Turkish economy recovered swiftly and displayed mostly robust macroeconomic performance until about the end of the party’s second term in

320   S. Erdem Aytaç 2011, notwithstanding the effects of the global financial crisis of 2008–​2009. As such, the AKP leadership has been very vocal in emphasizing that it is a competent manager of the economy, and this theme played a pivotal role in the AKP’s election manifestos and campaign discourse (Aytaç 2017). Beginning with the party’s third term (2011–​2015), however, we observe a period of weak macroeconomic performance accompanied by democratic backsliding, especially since 2015 (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016; Somer 2017). Drawing on individual-​level data from nationally representative surveys conducted right after the general elections of 2007, 2011, June 2015, and 2018,1 and another one fielded in the summer of 2019 when the country was in the midst of a severe economic crisis, I find that individuals’ economic evaluations are a significant predictor of voting for the AKP throughout this period: people with more positive evaluations about the economy were more likely to vote for the AKP, even after controlling for several socio-​ demographic factors. This result holds if we take into account individuals’ partisanship and ideology as well, suggesting that the effect of economic evaluations on vote choice is not just an artifact of partisanship and ideological orientations. At the same time, we observe a growing partisan divergence in perceptions of the economy with supporters of the AKP reporting consistently and substantially more positive evaluations of the economy than other voters. Thus, while the effect of the economic evaluations on vote choice is not driven by partisanship alone, partisanship likely plays a significant role in the forming of these evaluations. This implies that economic evaluations may not necessarily correspond to objective economic conditions, and electoral accountability for actual economic outcomes might not be fully realized in Turkey’s politically polarized environment. The chapter is organized as follows. The first two sections present overviews of the economic voting hypothesis and the literature on economic voting in Turkey. Next comes the analysis of economic voting during the AKP era, starting with some descriptive patterns and followed by individual-​level multivariate analyses. I conclude the chapter with a brief discussion of the broader implications of findings in a comparative perspective.

The Economic Voting Hypothesis in Brief The literature on economic voting is vast; in fact, one could argue that it is the most studied aspect of voting behavior (Kayser 2014). Economic concerns are typically among the most salient and important electoral issues for voters (Lewis-​Beck and Stegmaier 2000; van der Brug, van der Eijk, and Franklin 2007), and thus it is reasonable to expect voters to hold governments accountable for the state of the economy at the ballot box. The continuing scholarly interest in exploring economic voting is partly driven by

Economic Voting during the AKP Era in Turkey    321 a motivation to show that electoral accountability, one of the main premises of democratic governance, does exist in practice (Healy and Malhotra 2013). While thorough overviews of the economic voting literature have been presented elsewhere (e.g., Healy and Malhotra 2013; Kayser 2014; Lewis-​Beck and Stegmaier 2013), the core argument is straightforward: people are more likely to vote for incumbents during good economic times and vote against them when the state of the economy is poor. This idea can be traced back to Downs (1957) who argued that each individual “votes for the party he believes will provide him with a higher utility income than any other party during the coming election period” (38–​39). Therefore, the likelihood of an individual voting for a party depends on her estimate of future economic outcomes under that party’s incumbency. But the future is fraught with uncertainties so that it is difficult to make prospective assessments. In turn, a simple heuristic that a voter can use is to consider how the incumbent performed during its tenure. This behavior is called retrospective voting—​voters base their decision of whether to re-​elect incumbents on their observed past performance, because it is informative of how the economy is likely to perform if the incumbent is re-​elected (Fiorina 1981; Key 1966). In line with this idea, empirical studies provide evidence that retrospective assessments of the economy are more strongly correlated with voting decision than prospective assessments (e.g., Anderson 2000; Kiewiet 1983; Nadeau, Lewis-​Beck, and Belanger 2013). Findings in the literature suggest that individuals’ perceptions of national economic conditions are more predictive of their voting decision than evaluations of their own personal finances (Kinder and Kiewiet 1981; Lewis-​Beck and Stegmaier 2007). The theoretical explanation for this finding is that the state of the national economy is a better signal of the incumbent’s competence in managing the economy (now and in the future) than changes in one’s personal finances, which are more prone to non-​political and idiosyncratic fluctuations (Kiewiet 1983; Kinder and Kiewiet 1979, 1981). Therefore, scholars of economic voting are more interested in voters’ evaluations of the national economy (their so-​called sociotropic evaluations) than their evaluations of personal finances (their pocketbook evaluations) to predict vote choice. Another dominant approach in the literature is to focus only on economic conditions temporally close to the election, typically a one-​year period. Accordingly, survey questions aimed to measure individuals’ evaluations of the economy usually ask them to think about the past year. People are thought to forget or discount past economic conditions significantly and form a perception of the economy only on the basis of what happened recently (Achen and Bartels 2016). Yet as Lewis-​Beck and Stegmaier (2013, 381) note, this approach rests on “reflexive practice” rather than rigorous testing of alternative time specifications. Moreover, all the evidence favoring this short time span approach regarding economic conditions comes from the US presidential elections (e.g., Achen and Bartels 2016; Kiewiet 1983; Kramer 1971), and we do not know whether this pattern is generalizable to other democracies. In fact, recent studies report findings that contradict voter myopia assumption (Aytaç 2018; Hellwig and Marinova 2015; Wlezien 2015).

322   S. Erdem Aytaç An ongoing source of concern in the economic voting literature is the infamous “instability problem”: studies trying to predict election results from macroeconomic outcomes draw a mixed picture rather than a clear link, as there is substantial variation in the impact of the economy on governments’ electoral standing (Duch and Stevenson 2008; Hart 2016; Lewis-​Beck and Paldam 2000). Consequently, scholars have come to emphasize the importance of the political and institutional context of voting. For instance, economic voting is strongest when policy responsibility could be clearly attributed to incumbents, and thus factors like bicameralism, dispersed policymaking power, weak party cohesion, parliamentarism, and coalition governments are associated with weaker economic voting (Anderson 2006; Anderson 2000, 2007; Duch and Stevenson 2008; Hellwig and Samuels 2008; Powell and Whitten 1993). There is also evidence that economic voting is weaker in countries that are more integrated into the world economy, because voters in such contexts are relatively less likely to attribute economic outcomes to the incumbents (Hellwig and Samuels 2007). Finally, an emerging literature suggests that economic voting might actually be driven by the relative performance of incumbents—​namely by how the national economy performs relative to recent past outcomes in the country or in a cross-​national perspective (e.g., Aytaç 2018; Kayser and Peress 2012).

Economic Voting in Turkey Şerif Mardin (1973) highlighted the importance of an overarching historical cleavage shaping modern Turkish politics, and this framework has been widely employed in empirical studies of voting behavior in Turkey. Mardin argued that the Turkish Republic inherited from the Ottoman Empire a deeply entrenched sociocultural cleavage between the ruling elites of the “center” and the parochial, traditionalist “periphery.” The military and judicial bureaucracy together with state-​dependent businesses and the mainstream intellectual community constituted the center during the Republican period. In turn, the periphery is characterized by various traditionalist provincial, ethnic, or religious groups that were systematically kept out of power. The fundamental premise of the center-​periphery cleavage approach for Turkish politics is that the party system and electoral competition are shaped by this sociocultural divide. The centrist constituencies are characterized by higher levels of education, urbanity, lower levels of religiosity, and have consistently supported the founding party of the republic, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), and other center-​left parties. The peripheral constituencies, who exhibit higher levels of religiosity, rurality, and lower levels of education, have formed the electoral backbone of first the Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti, DP) and later of other center-​right parties that claimed the heritage of the DP (Çarkoğlu 2012b; Kalaycıoğlu 1994). This sociocultural cleavage and the accompanying alignment of voters and parties have proved to be quite durable.2 Although the Turkish political context has not been amenable to long-​term

Economic Voting during the AKP Era in Turkey    323 political socialization and development of partisanship in the traditional sense (due to short-​lived parties and military interruptions), voters’ allegiance to party groups representing the center and periphery is strong and could be considered as a form of partisanship (Kalaycıoğlu 2008, 2010). Individual-​level empirical studies based on surveys have confirmed the relevance of the center-​periphery cleavage for voter preferences in Turkey. In one of the earliest studies in this field, Ergüder (1980) identifies significant differences between CHP and right-​wing Justice Party (Adalet Partisi, AP) voters in the 1977 election with respect to occupation and levels of education and religiosity, as predicted by the center-​periphery cleavage. Similar results have been reported in studies focusing on subsequent elections (e.g., Aytaç, Çarkoğlu, and Yıldırım 2017; Başlevent, Kirmanoğlu, and Şenatalar 2004, 2005, 2009; Çarkoğlu 2008, 2012a; Ergüder and Hofferbert 1988; Esmer 1995, 2002; Kalaycıoğlu, 1994, 1999, 2008, 2010). These studies highlight how the sociocultural divide (especially with respect to level of education, religiosity, and ethnicity), forming the center-​periphery cleavage as articulated by Mardin, continues to shape the voting preferences of Turkish citizens. Although the center-​periphery framework has been the dominant paradigm in studies of Turkish voting behavior, other empirical studies have employed a rational choice framework and investigate economic voting.3 It is certainly plausible that more educated citizens with greater access to information give relatively more weight in their voting decision to the economic performance of governments, especially when parties conduct more widespread and sophisticated electoral campaigning. An important question at this point is how widespread economic voting could be in a society with a deep sociocultural cleavage like that of Turkey. The earliest studies on economic voting in Turkey focused on the relationship between various economic indicators and aggregate-​level election results. Bulutay and Yıldırım (1968) and Bulutay (1970), for instance, analyze the relationship between province-​level agricultural income and election results between 1950 and 1969. They find a positive relationship between increases in agricultural income and support for the incumbent party. A comprehensive macro-​level analysis in the pre-​2000 period reports that low growth and increasing levels of unemployment and inflation had adverse effects on the incumbent party’s vote share (or that of the largest party in a coalition government) in the twenty-​one elections between 1950 and 1995 (Çarkoğlu 1997). More recently, Akarca and Tansel (2006) analyze twenty-​five general and local elections between 1950 and 2004 and report that one percentage-​point increase in the GDP per capita in the year prior to the election is associated with a 0.88 percentage-​point increase in the vote share of the incumbent party. A similar study focuses on the incumbency of the AKP and reports positive effects of macro-​economic indicators on the party’s vote share (Akarca 2015).4 While macro-​level studies are useful for demonstrating electoral effects of the economic performance of governments, survey-​based micro-​level studies are better suited to analyzing the relationship between individuals’ economic evaluations and their political preferences. Accordingly, an increasing number of studies utilize public opinion

324   S. Erdem Aytaç surveys to study voter behavior in Turkey. Başlevent, Kirmanoğlu, and Şenatalar (2004, 2005, 2009) present some of the earliest micro-​level studies with a research design informed by the broader literature on economic voting. These studies use data from surveys fielded in April 2002 and December 2003 that include voters’ socio-​ demographic information, policy positions, and pocketbook and sociotropic economic evaluations (both retrospective and prospective). The analyses show that all types of economic evaluations shaped electoral support for the government. Drawing on a nationally representative survey fielded after the July 2007 general election, Çarkoğlu (2008) evaluates the importance of long-​term ideological factors (such as left-​right self-​ placement, religiosity, and conservativism) vis-​à-​vis short-​term economic evaluations with respect to their effects on voting preferences, and reports strong effects of retrospective sociotropic evaluations on support for the incumbent AKP. In a later study, Çarkoğlu (2012a) analyzes the three general elections of 2002, 2007, and 2011 together and again highlights the importance of governments’ perceived economic performance for voting preferences. Scholars have also looked at the effects of economic perceptions in local elections and similarly report positive effects (Çarkoğlu 2014; Kalaycıoğlu 2014). Other recent studies highlighting the electoral importance of economic evaluations include Başlevent and Kırmanoğlu (2016) and Gidengil and Karakoç (2016). This review highlights that voting behavior in Turkey is strongly influenced by the state of the economy in addition to the relevance of factors associated with the center-​ periphery framework. In the following I present a comprehensive analysis of economic voting in the AKP era.

Economic Voting in the AKP Era Before conducting a multivariate analysis of individuals’ economic evaluations and vote choice, I first present the trajectory of the Turkish economy and AKP’s vote share in the post-​2002 era and briefly discuss the electoral salience of economic concerns during this period. Figure 15.1 plots AKP’s vote share in the four general and three local elections held between 2004 and 2018 (bars drawn to the axis on the left) and Turkey’s election-​year real GDP growth, the most commonly used macroeconomic indicator in economic voting studies (dotted line drawn to the axis on the right).5 We see that there is a certain level of correspondence between election-​year economic growth and AKP’s electoral fortunes.6 The lowest vote share received by the AKP during this period, 38 percent in the 2009 local election, also witnessed the lowest election-​year growth, and the party’s highest vote share, 50 percent recorded in the 2011 general election, coincided with highest election-​year growth. While the pattern in Figure 15.1 is suggestive for the presence of economic voting, is there micro-​level evidence that economic concerns were among the key issues for voters in elections? An open-​ended question in the pre-​election waves of the 2011, 2015, and 2018 Turkish Election Study surveys and in the summer 2019 survey asked respondents

Economic Voting during the AKP Era in Turkey    325 100

10 8.5

8.5

60

40

7.4 5.6

6

5.0

5.2

49.8

46.6

41.7

8

42.9

38.4

42.6

40.9

4

Annual GDP Growth (%)

AKP Vote Share (%)

80

2

20 0.9 0

0 2004 (Local)

2007

2009 (Local)

2011

AKP Vote Share (%)

2014 (Local) June 2015

2018

GDP Growth (%)

Figure 15.1:  Election-​year GDP growth and AKP vote share, 2004–​2018. Source: Turkish Statistical Institute (GDP figures) and Supreme Electoral Council (vote shares).

Percentage of Respondents (%)

100

72

75 60

57

50 37

35 26 26

25

22

12 0

4 2 1 3 Inflation

12

11 2

Unemployment

35

1

Economy (general) 2011

2015

15

Poverty

2018

8

6 8 All economic issues (combined)

14 4

Terrorism

2019

Figure 15.2:  Voters’ perceptions of the most important problems facing Turkey, 2011–​2019. Source: Author’s surveys.

the most important problem facing the country. Figure 15.2 presents the percentages of respondents mentioning economy-​related issues and terrorism, the most frequently mentioned noneconomic policy issue. We see that the economy was the key issue in the (June) 2015 and 2018 elections, and as of summer 2019, about 60 percent of voters in 2015, 57 percent in 2018, and 72 percent in 2019 thought that an economy-​related issue was the most important problem facing the country. Among the economy-​related

326   S. Erdem Aytaç issues, unemployment seems to be a particularly pressing problem. In 2011 only 15 percent of voters thought that the economy was a key issue; in this election terrorism-​ related concerns were more salient than the economy, with more than a third of voters (about 35 percent) mentioning terrorism as the most important problem facing the country. As we saw in Figure 15.1, growth in 2011 was the highest election-​year growth registered during the AKP era, thus it is not surprising that economic concerns were not that salient in this election. In contrast, the summer 2019 survey, fielded a few months after the 2019 local elections in which the AKP suffered a major setback, was conducted in the context of a contracting economy characterized by high levels of inflation and unemployment; accordingly, the economy was the primary source of concern for an overwhelming majority of voters. I now turn to public evaluations of the economy as measured in the surveys mentioned earlier. The nationally representative samples of the surveys, employing a similar probability sampling procedure, range from 1,071 to 1,388.7 The questions used to construct the variables in the analyses are identical in all surveys, facilitating comparisons across elections. The questions for respondents’ economic evaluations are presented in Table 15.1. Consistent with the economic voting literature, I consider four different measures: pocketbook retrospective, sociotropic retrospective, pocketbook prospective, and sociotropic prospective evaluations. Pocketbook evaluations refer to respondents’ household finances while sociotropic evaluations are about respondents’ views on the state of the national economy. Retrospective evaluations ask respondents to consider the past year and prime them to think about the effects of government policies. Prospective evaluations are about expectations in the coming year. In each case we presented respondents with a 0–​10 scale. In the retrospective questions, the value of 0 corresponds to a “very bad effect” and 10 to a “very good effect,” while in the prospective questions the value of 0 corresponds to “will be much worse” and 10 to “will be much better.” Figure 15.3 presents respondents’ mean economic evaluation scores (on a 0–​10 scale) across the surveys. A number of observations are worth noting. First, we see that respondents’ different types of evaluations exhibit consistency across years. The average levels of prospective evaluations (dashed lines) are consistently a little higher than those of retrospective evaluations, possibly reflecting the more optimistic nature of the former in general. The deterioration in economic evaluations in the second half of the period under analysis (2015–​2019) is also evident: while the mean levels of retrospective sociotropic evaluations are 5.3 and 5.4 in 2007 and 2011, they drop to 4.0 and 4.1 in 2015 and 2018, respectively, and further decrease to 3.9 in the summer of 2019. Figure 15.4 presents an alternative way of visualizing the trajectory of public economic evaluations during the same period. Recall that respondents were asked to indicate their evaluations on a 0–​10 scale with the value of five corresponding to the middle score of the scale. Therefore, we can define evaluations of six and above as being positive. Evaluations across the periods 2007–​2011 and 2015–​2019 exhibit a stark contrast: while close to half of respondents had positive retrospective sociotropic evaluations in 2011, less than 30 percent had such views in the 2015–​2019 period.

Economic Voting during the AKP Era in Turkey    327 Table 15.1: Questions Asked to Measure Respondents’ Economic Evaluations Pocketbook Retrospective When you think about the last year, what was the effect of government policies on the economic condition of your HOUSEHOLD? (0–​10 scale follows; 0 corresponds to “very bad effect,” 10 corresponds to “very good effect”) Sociotropic Retrospective When you think about the last year, what was the effect of government policies on the economic condition of TURKEY? (0–​10 scale follows; 0 corresponds to “very bad effect,” 10 corresponds to “very good effect”) Pocketbook Prospective When do you think about the coming year, how do you think your HOUSEHOLD’s economic condition will change? (0–​10 scale follows; 0 corresponds to “will be much worse,” 10 corresponds to “will be much better”) Sociotropic Prospective When do you think about the coming year, how do you think TURKEY’s economic condition will change? (0–​10 scale follows; 0 corresponds to “will be much worse,” 10 corresponds to “will be much better”)

Mean evaluation score

10 8 6

5.3

5.4

4

4.0

4.1

3.9

2 0

2007

2011

2015

Retro. sociotropic Prosp. sociotropic

2018

2019

Retro. pocketbook Prosp. pocketbook

Figure 15.3:  Mean economic evaluation scores across surveys. Source: Author’s surveys. Note: In the 2019 survey only retrospective sociotropic evaluations were asked. The data labels in the figure refers to retrospective sociotropic evaluations.

The literature suggests that economic evaluations are heavily influenced by partisanship—​partisans of the governing party evaluate the state of the economy more positively than others, while partisans of the opposition parties tend to have a more negative view (Evans and Andersen 2006; Evans and Pickup 2010). Do we observe a similar pattern in Turkey during the AKP era? To analyze this, I use a question in the surveys that asked respondents whether they feel close to a political party. Those who responded

328   S. Erdem Aytaç

Percentage of Respondents (%)

100 75 50

47

42

0

28

23

25

2007

2011

2015

Positive retro. sociotropic Positive prosp. sociotropic

28

2018

2019

Positive retro. pocketbook Positive prosp. pocketbook

Figure 15.4:  Percentage of respondents with positive economic evaluations across surveys. Source: Author’s surveys. Note: In the 2019 survey only retrospective sociotropic evaluations were asked. The data labels in the figure refers to retrospective sociotropic evaluations. Economic evaluations above the value of five in the 0–​10 scale are considered as positive.

Mean evaluation score

10 8 6 4

6.6

6.6 5.5

4.5

4.4 3.1

2 0

2007

2011

2015

Retro. sociotropic, AKP partisans Retro. sociotropic, others

5.8 3.0

2018

5.9

2.7

2019

Prosp. sociotropic, AKP partisans Prosp. sociotropic, others

Figure 15.5:  Mean sociotropic evaluation scores across surveys, broken down by partisanship (AKP partisans and others). Source: Author’s surveys. Note: In the 2019 survey only retrospective sociotropic evaluations were asked. The data labels in the figure refers to retrospective sociotropic evaluations.

affirmatively were then asked to name the party that they feel close to in an open-​ended fashion. I label respondents who declared feeling close to the AKP as AKP partisans. Figure 15.5 shows the sociotropic evaluations (both retrospective and prospective) of AKP partisans in comparison to other respondents. As expected, AKP partisans’ economic evaluations are consistently and significantly higher than those of other voters. Moreover, the difference in evaluations seems to be widening over time as well: while

Economic Voting during the AKP Era in Turkey    329 the difference in mean retrospective sociotropic evaluations between AKP partisans and others was 2.1 in 2007, it increased to 3.2 in 2018. This widening gap likely reflects the increasing partisan polarization in the country (Somer 2019). The analyses so far have presented the evolution of economic evaluations over time in broad strokes only. To dig deeper into the relationship between individuals’ economic evaluations and vote choices, I now present multivariate analyses of vote choice. The dependent variable is whether the respondent votes for the incumbent AKP, and the main explanatory variable of interest is individuals’ retrospective sociotropic evaluations (Econ. Eval.), the most commonly used variable to test the economic voting hypothesis in the literature.8 I perform my analyses in two stages. First, I inquire whether economic evaluations have an independent effect on vote choice after accounting for several socio-​ demographic factors. Next, I subject the economic voting hypothesis to a stricter test by taking respondents’ ideological positions and partisanship into consideration as well. The socio-​demographic variables include respondents’ gender (Female), age in years (Age), highest level of formal education completed (Education, ranging from no formal education, coded 1, to college, coded 5), Kurdish ethnicity (Kurdish, operationalized by a binary variable for respondents who can speak Kurdish), religiosity9 (Religiosity, measured by the frequency of prayer, namaz, during the past year, ranging from never, coded 1, to more than once a week, coded 6), urban residence (Urban), and income (Income, operationalized as five quantiles over reported monthly household income). Table 15.2 presents five logistic regressions, each utilizing data from a different survey, with voting for the AKP as the dependent variable.10 Looking at the socio-​demographic variables, we see that education and religiosity have the most consistent effects across the years: while higher levels of education are negatively associated with voting for the AKP, religiosity has a positive effect. This result resonates well with Mardin’s center-​ periphery cleavage framework, since the AKP could be considered as the latest incarnation of the political forces representing the periphery. There is also evidence that younger voters and those with Kurdish ethnicity are less likely to vote for the AKP, but the effects of these variables reach statistical significance at conventional levels only in some years. Turning to our main variable interest, we see that respondents’ retrospective sociotropic evaluations (Econ. Eval.) are consistently significant and positive—​meaning that individuals with better economic evaluations are more likely to vote for the AKP in all of the surveys considered. Recall that this effect holds after taking into account respondents’ socio-​demographic characteristics included in the models. How substantial are the effects of economic evaluations on voting for the AKP, controlling for other important socio-​demographic factors, like education and religiosity? Since the dependent variable is binary and I employ logistic regression in the analyses, interpreting effect sizes from the coefficient estimates in Table 15.2 is not straightforward. Therefore, I calculate the predicted probabilities of voting for the AKP for different values of variables of interest and plot the result. Figure 15.6 utilizes data from the survey fielded shortly after the 2018 general election. The left-​hand panel illustrates the effects of economic evaluations and educational attainment on voting for the AKP; it plots the predicted probabilities of voting for the

330   S. Erdem Aytaç Table 15.2: Determinants of Voting for the AKP

Dep. Var: Voting for the AKP Female Age

Model (1)

Model (2)

Model (3)

Model (4)

Model (5)

2007

2011

2015

2018

2019

0.01

0.24

0.24

0.42*

0.10

(0.13)

(0.18)

(0.18)

(0.17)

(0.27)

*

**

0.00

−0.01

−0.02

−0.01

−0.01

(0.00)

(0.01)

(0.01)

(0.01)

(0.01)

−0.27***

−0.22**

−0.45***

−0.30***

−0.33*

(0.07)

(0.08)

(0.09)

(0.08)

(0.13)

−0.30

−0.87***

−1.62***

−0.20

−1.30**

(0.20)

(0.24)

(0.29)

(0.27)

(0.42)

0.24***

0.39***

0.18**

0.24***

0.48***

(0.05)

(0.05)

(0.06)

(0.05)

(0.11)

Urban

−0.02

−0.29

0.12

0.04

−0.59

(0.14)

(0.24)

(0.21)

(0.31)

(0.37)

Income

−0.09

−0.06

−0.25***

−0.08

0.07

(0.06)

(0.07)

(0.06)

(0.06)

(0.11)

Education Kurdish Religiosity

Econ. Eval. Constant Pseudo—​R2 Observations

***

***

0.37

0.71

(0.03)

(0.06)

***

***

0.42

0.45

0.55***

(0.04)

(0.04)

(0.06)

−2.38

−4.02

−0.33

−2.03

−3.25**

(0.47)

(0.66)

(0.60)

(0.61)

(1.03)

0.16 1,256

***

***

0.33 898

0.22 849

***

0.25 873

0.34 437

Logistic regressions with robust standard errors in parentheses. ***

p