Authoritarian Politics in Turkey: Elections, Resistance and the AKP

by Bahar Baser, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk

Overview

President Erdogan's victory in the April 2017 referendum granted him sweeping new powers across Turkey. The constitutional reforms transform the country from a parliamentary democracy into a "Turkish style" presidential republic. Despite being democratically elected, Turkey's ruling AKP party has moved towards increasingly authoritarian measures. During the coup attempt in July 2016, the AKP government declared a state of emergency which Erdogan saw as an opportunity to purge the public sector of pro-Gulenist individuals and criminalise opposition groups including Kurds, Alevites, leftists and liberals. The country experienced political turmoil and rapid transformation as a result. This book identifies the process of democratic reversal in Turkey. In particular, contributors explore the various ways that a democratically elected political party has used elections to implement authoritarian measures. They scrutinise the very concepts of democracy, elections and autocracy to expose their flaws which can be manipulated to advantage.
The book includes chapters discussing the roots of authoritarianism in Turkey; the political economy of elections; the relationship between the political Islamic groups and the government; Turkish foreign policy; non-Muslim communities' attitudes towards the AKP; and Kurdish citizens' voting patterns. As well as following Turkey's political trajectory, this book contextualises Turkey in the wider literature on electoral and competitive authoritarianisms and explores the country's future options.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780755643523
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/25/2021
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

Bahar Baser is a research fellow at the Centre for Peace, Trust and Social Relations at Coventry University and a visiting research fellow at the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa (SIGLA) at Stellenbosch University, funded by the National Research Foundation. She completed her PhD in social and political sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. Baser is the author of Diasporas and Homeland Conflicts (2015) and co-editor of Migration from Turkey to Sweden (forthcoming 2017). She has various publications in peer-reviewed academic journals, including Terrorism and Political Violence, Ethnopolitics and the International Journal of Kurdish Studies. Ahmet Erdi Ozturk is a research assistant in the Faculty of Law, Social Science and History at the University of Strasbourg, where he has also been based for his doctoral research. He has held a research fellowship at the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz. He gained an MA from the Political Science Department, Hacettepe University and an MRes from the Political Science Department, Barcelona Autonoma University. Ozturk has recently published in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (2016) the Yearbook of Muslims in Europe (2016) as well in academic and online journals, books and newspapers, including Birgun, The Conversation, Hurriyet Daily News, Open Democracy, T24 and Diken. He is the Turkey correspondent for EUREL (Sociological and Legal Data on Religions in Europe) and has been a regular guest on television programs such as France 24 to discuss Turkish politics.

Table of Contents

Turkey in the Twenty-First Century: Bourgeois Revolution, Winners, and Losers
Hakan Y?lmaz
In Lieu of an Introduction: Is it Curtains for Turkish Democracy?
Bahar Ba?er and Ahmet Erdi Öztürk
2. How Did We Get Here? Turkey's Slow Shift to Authoritarianism
Onur Bak?ner
3. Electoral Integrity in Turkey: From Tutelary Democracy to Competitive Authoritarianism
Karabekir Akkoyunlu
4. Elections and Public Finance in Turkey: Public Spending as a Taciturn Election Campaign?
Taptuk Emre Erkoç and Abdulkadir Civan
5. Foreign Policy as a Legitimation Strategy for AKP's Hegemonic Project of "New Turkey"
Bezen Balamir Co?kun, Salih Do?an and Mustafa Demir
6. Power and Islam in Turkey: The relationship between the AKP and Sunni Islamic groups, 2002-2016
Emrah Çelik
7. Turks as a minority: Effects of minority situation in electoral behaviour
Samim Akgönül
8. Recasting the Parameters of Freedom of Religion in Turkey: Non-Muslims and the AKP
Anna Maria Beylunio?lu
9. Kurds and Elections Under the AK Party's Rule: Changing Internal and External Borders of the Kurdish Political Region
Cuma Çiçek
10. Vanguards of violation: freedom of assembly and notes on the Turkish political regime
K?vanç Atak
11. Freedom of Information in Turkey: Death of the Free Press and the Case of Academics for Peace
Efe Kerem Sözeri

12. Digital cultural capital as a counter-hegemonic tool in Turkey
Da?han Irak
13. Epilogue: The Desire is There
??tar Gözayd?n