Against austerity and repression: Historical and contemporary manifestations of progressive politicisation in Turkey

Pınar E Dönmez

doi:10.1177/2399654420920291

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the growing and deepening trend of politics of repression coupled with prolonged crisis and austerity politics, reflecting on the potentials as well as limitations of progressive politics in such a constrained context. Austerity policies continue pushing for anti-labour and reactionary politics in a variety of forms reflecting the unresolved crisis conditions of contemporary capitalism. While the liberal democratic state-form remains relatively intact in particular contexts, in others, it gradually evolves into repressive forms. The growing repression risks conceiving the anti-authoritarian struggles and the anti-capitalist and labour movements separate and/or mutually exclusive. This review article draws on the recent insights of (de)politicization, labour geography and history and political economy scholarships with specific reference to the case of Turkey while cautioning against the binary thinking of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in leftist and labour mobilisations. It proposes a historical perspective in order to appreciate the diversity and multiplicity of struggles against the intersecting nodes of austerity, capitalism and repression in the complex geographies of periphery.

Highlights

Austerity policies continue pushing for anti-labour and reactionary politics across Europe in a variety of forms reflecting the unresolved crisis conditions of contemporary capitalism
In other contexts (e.g. Turkey, Hungary, Ukraine, Bulgaria), it gradually evolves into repressive forms depending on the specific configuration of domestic class forces, dynamics of capital accumulation, and positioning within the hierarchy of global capitalism (Do€nmez and Zemandl, 2018; Ishchenko, 2014; Tsoneva, 2017)
This paper aims to explore the deepening trend of political repression coupled with prolonged crisis and austerity politics, reflecting on the potentials as well as limitations of progressive politics in such a constrained context

Summary

Introduction

Austerity policies continue pushing for anti-labour and reactionary politics across Europe in a variety of forms reflecting the unresolved crisis conditions of contemporary capitalism. Anti-politics is conceived as the disenchantment with and distancing from conventional modes of political agency and mobilization (Hay, 2007) which simultaneously opens up space for unconventional modes of politicization in reactionary (maintenance of capitalist status quo with liberal or authoritarian characteristics) or progressive form (challenging the capitalist foundations of status quo in its gendered, bordered, class-based and racialised manifestations). These trajectories are largely shaped by the historically specific configuration of social forces in particular nodes of global capitalism as noted earlier (della Porta, 2015; Haiven and Khasnabish, 2014). Austerity is not conceived here solely as a hegemonic ‘idea’ but an integral part of a continual, material restructuring process of capitalist social relations in line with dynamics of primitive accumulation (Federici, 2004; Streeck, 2013)

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion