Turkey’s State Crisis: Institutions, Reform and Conflict

Abstract

Turkish politics has constituted a puzzle for experts, journalists, policy makers, and academics since its foundation. The country is part of the Middle East but occupies a unique geographic position and therefore is an undeniable part of European history and politics as well. It is not possible to apply theoretical understandings of colonial politics to the Turkish case as we do for cases such as Iraq and Egypt. It also is not possible to simply analyze it in the same category as other autocratic regimes in the MENA region; understanding Turkey requires a complex approach, combining European and Middle East politics and a variety of theoretical understandings. Sweeping generalizations and predictions based on other cases in the MENA simply do not work. I believe Bulent Aras’s recent book Turkey’s State Crisis: Institutions, Reform and Conflict will contribute immensely to the growing literature on Turkey and help students of Turkish politics to understand continuities and change in the last two decades.Since the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, there has been a significant increase in efforts to understand Turkish politics from an authoritarian politics perspective and rightly so. The country has scored significantly lower than it previously has in democracy indexes. Currently, the Freedom House lists Turkey as Not Free, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Turkey 103rd among 167 countries, referring to it as a hybrid regime in 2020; and the V-Dem project describes it as an autocratizing country in their 2022 report. Turkey has never been a fully-fledged democracy, but what caused this discernible fall in rankings?When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power two decades ago, it made a promise: positive change by way of more reforms, democratization, economic growth, less societal polarization, as well as membership in the European Union. The party has been treated as a model for Muslim democracy by academics globally, and numerous articles and books have been published on how Turkey’s AKP can be a model for Arab Islamists as well. What was the breaking point that led to authoritarianism and state crisis? Many would argue that there have been numerous critical junctures that compelled the AKP to become more authoritarian in order to cling to power, while others would argue that this was their plan all along. The AKP managed to break old traditions, touching on all topics that were considered taboo in Turkey and challenging the military’s long-term tutelage, election after election, until they curbed its power completely. Some called it a silent revolution where the founding ideology, the Kemalist tradition, lost control over Turkish society and institutions. However, since the Gezi Park protests in 2013, democratic backsliding has been increasingly visible and the autocratizing nature of the AKP has become more dominant after the coup attempt in 2016. States of emergency paved the way for more control and surveillance over opposition politics and basic freedoms have shrunk gradually, in some cases to nonexistence. Corruption is on the rise, civil society is silenced―although resistance continues―and continuous economic crises are testimony that things are not going well for the rulers of the country. One way or another, the AKP elite and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan managed to transform Turkish politics during their reign; this transformation’s impact went beyond domestic politics and had implications for regional and global politics as well.As we try to understand what is going on, we try to categorize Turkey on a spectrum of nondemocratic regimes. Is it a hybrid or electoral authoritarian regime? Can it be categorized as competitive authoritarian or have we passed that point? Is it electoral sultanism? Many authors try to answer such questions and take the coup attempt as the critical juncture, a turning point in Turkish politics where the AKP started becoming more authoritarian. Did these tendencies come out of nowhere? How can we understand democratic backsliding in Turkey in historical perspective? Many authors also tend to make their arguments by emphasizing the importance of the one-man rule, resulting in analyses that usually revolve around the personality of President Erdoğan. Can one man’s behavior explain the conundrum that Turkey finds itself in today? What about Turkey’s institutional structure or its long-term contentious politics and their impact on policy making traditions? At this point, Bulent Aras’s book provides insightful answers to the readers by demonstrating the continuities and change in Turkish politics before and after the AKP.The book is a much-needed intervention in the growing literature on the Turkey-authoritarianism nexus. It is different from the alarmist accounts and evenly explains what happened, how, and why. The book also provides credible predictions for what the future holds. Turkey’s State Crisis will shortly become a go-to source for those who want to understand contemporary Turkish affairs. First and foremost, Aras is a prominent scholar in Turkish politics and his balanced approach to the main events and actors makes him a credible source on the intricacies of policy changes in Turkey. Secondly, the book is elegantly and meticulously written and complex political affairs were smoothly explained for readers who may not be familiar with certain aspects of Turkish politics. The merit of the book is that it does not focus on political, social, and economic developments issue by issue based on ethnic or religious cleavages but rather shows how intertwined these matters are and talks about Turkey’s long-standing contentious politics in each chapter.The introduction starts with an acknowledgment of Turkey’s decline over the last decade, stating that “Turkey has backtracked on its reform agenda, waived its conflict resolution role at home and abroad, and consequently lost its ability to project soft power in its neighbourhood” (1). Aras, then, rightly argues that although previous studies tried to understand the dynamics of authoritarian politics in Turkey, the underlying causes of such transformation have been neglected in the existing literature. Aras then states that the main aim of the book is to reflect on the historical, political, and geopolitical background of Turkey’s ever-evolving domestic and foreign policies and to examine the current conundrum that Turkey finds itself in at home and abroad. The following chapter, “Turkey’s Political Crisis,” introduces the main actors in Turkish politics over the last two decades and delves into the complexities of the government and the opposition. It first focuses on the 2002 to 2010 period when the AKP was praised as a reformer in Turkish politics. Aras explains the desecuritization and reform processes in detail. He shows the reader why the AKP was successful in certain areas and how it could present itself as the accelerator of a “silent revolution.” While focusing on this specific period, the merit of Aras’s style is that he goes back and forth in Turkey’s historical timeline and keeps underlining that some issues have deep roots in Turkish politics, predating the AKP. This chapter helps the reader understand the limits of AKP’s power in its initial years as the ruling party and the reasons why it had to turn to a securitization and survival strategy in order to stay in power. Aras explains that from 2010 onwards, the AKP period can be named as populism and deinstitutionalization. According to him, the authoritarian drift started in this second period, “after 2010, Erdogan gained the ultimate upper hand, at which point he decided to challenge and tame the remains of the state apparatus on his own” (16). The chapter provides an excellent overview of the existing literature on Turkey’s authoritarian drift and makes it clear that we need Aras’s additional analysis to make sense of the current situation. The following chapters focus on state and institutions in Turkey, the role of the state in conflict resolution, and the crisis in Turkey’s foreign and security policies. Each chapter carefully presents the different actors and their impact on policy making in Turkish politics, the intertwined interests of the various actors, and the consequences of their conventional or unconventional alliances. Reading these three chapters together, readers learn about what power politics mean in Turkey and how hard it is to unpack the current situation as a result of deinstitutionalization. The chapter on “State and Institutions in Turkey” clearly explains the difference between governance and state capacity in Turkey. It gives insightful analysis on the aftermath of the July 15, 2016, coup attempt and its critical impact on Turkey’s trajectory. Aras underlines that while there was a need for state reform, the zeitgeist induced a state of emergency and the vicious cycle of political crisis started in this era (38). There are also valuable arguments about the ownership and sustainability of the new presidential system. The following chapter, “The Role of State in Conflict Resolution in Turkey,” unpacks the politics, power, and state nexus in Turkey and asks meaningful questions about Turkey’s capacity as a conflict resolution actor both at home and abroad. This chapter addresses the government’s peace plan toward the Kurdish Question and includes details about the different approaches of various actors involved in the process. As this issue has not been dealt with adequately in the existing literature, it deserves further appreciation for its critical approach to Turkey’s role in this matter. The “The Crisis in Turkey’s Foreign and Security Policy” chapter starts by explaining intra- and inter-group relations, their interests, and clashes of power before it delves into foreign policy analysis.The last two chapters in the book wrap up the main arguments that Aras puts forward and provide an overview of the consequences of this state crisis and the way forward. Aras claims that “Turkey’s most recent state crisis once again underscored the need for reform within the state apparatus and the political system” (86). In the previous chapters, he shows how the institutions and the political system were dismantled in Turkey, and in chapter 5, “Reforming Turkey,” he suggests that the AKP and President Erdogan missed many opportunities to improve Turkish politics. According to Aras, the AKP had a contradictory approach: it wanted to reform but also to dominate the system. As a result of AKP’s policies, the fundamental state apparatuses have been dismantled, and the already weak institutions became weaker as a result of the ruling elite’s desire to cling to power (86). He further claims that the switch to the presidential system did not actually satisfy the need for reform as suggested by the AKP and its coalition partners. Aras underlines that “reform is urgent” (89) and tries to provide a roadmap to make it happen under three headlines: reforming institutions, reforming the state’s conflict resolution roles, and reforming foreign and security policy. The concluding chapter summarizes the main takeaway from this book: “The Turkey of early 2021 is far from the image of an associate of reform, reconciliation and rising soft power in global politics that it was at the turn of the millennium” (104). Aras explains that Turkey is not spared from the global trend toward populism and authoritarianism. Throughout the book, he explains that the AKP is not the only culprit, but Turkey already had weak institutions and was in crisis. However, he underlines that “Turkey’s crises are mostly self-inflicted and could have been ameliorated with proper state leadership” (104).Aras’ book depicts a realistic picture of Turkey’s state crisis today and finds institutional reform as a solution to its problems in all realms. Who can make this happen? As the 2023 elections are approaching slowly but surely in Turkey, presidential and parliamentarian transitions seem like a possibility. Will Erdoğan lose power and leave peacefully? Will the AKP and the president try to cling to power at all costs? Is there hope for Turkey? The book does not present a magical recipe to end Turkey’s crises and does not make predictions about these questions but rather shows us the heart of the problem in each realm at home and abroad. I believe this book will be a must-read book in Turkish politics and will be praised for its balanced approach to these sensitive and critical developments in the last two decades.