Democracy In Turkey Research Articles

Democratization, Foreign Military Intervention, and Rebel Fragmentation in Civil War: Evidence from the PKK Insurgency in Turkey

Abstract In this paper, by studying the fragmentation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 2004, I identify two distinct pathways to rebel fragmentation: one that is triggered by democratization in the home country (EU-anchored democratization in Turkey) and the other by the empowerment of a rival co-ethnic organization in a neighboring country through foreign military intervention (American invasion of Iraq and the empowerment of Iraqi Kurdish leadership). First, by expanding the room for nonviolent mobilization, democratization can result in an organizational fragmentation between soft-liners, who support laying down the arms, and hard-liners, who prefer the continuation of the armed insurgency under new circumstances. Second, foreign intervention in a neighboring country can radically change the distribution of power and empower an organization’s rival co-ethnic organization. This can lead some actors within the organization to rethink their alliances and advocate a better relationship with their rival co-ethnics and the intervening foreign power, resulting in organizational fragmentation over the organization’s external relationships. The paper broadly contributes to the literature on rebel fragmentation, the effects of democratization on civil war processes, international dynamics of civil wars, transborder ethnic-kin, and rebel alliances in civil wars.

Spring 1923: Turkey’s failed constitutional moment

This paper focuses on a specific historical period that preceded the proclamation of the Turkish Republic and tries to re-interpret its meaning for the development of liberal democracy in Turkey. Arguably, this era, which corresponds to the political events that took place roughly in the Spring of 1923, has not attracted the attention that it deserves. The article will assert that the Spring of 1923 has a unique meaning in the political development of Turkey due to the fact that it was one of the few genuine constitutional moments ever experienced until the present day. Although this era carried great potential in the sense of creating a suitable ground for the establishment of a new political regime through a considerable degree of inclusiveness, this ground of collective decision-making was soon lost. Accordingly, the interpretation presented in this article holds that the proclamation of the republic in October 1923 was not the product of the success of this constitutional moment but rather it was the product of its failure.

TÜRKİYE’DE ÖRGÜTSEL DEMOKRASİ ÇALIŞMALARI: LİSANSÜSTÜ TEZLERE YÖNELİK BİR İNCELEME

In this study, it is aimed to examine the postgraduate theses on organisational democracy by content analysis. Forty-one theses from 1993-2023 in the National Thesis Centre of the Council of Higher Education (YOK) were analysed. The most studies in master's theses were conducted in 2022 and in doctoral theses in 2019-2020. It was determined that the most frequently studied variables in master's theses were organisational democracy, democracy, organisation, organisational commitment; in doctoral theses, organisational democracy, democracy, organisational opposition, perception of organisational democracy. It was found that 89,66% of master's theses were quantitative and 6,90% were mixed method; 75% of doctoral theses were quantitative and 25% were mixed method. It is understood that Geçkil and Tikici's (2013) Organisational Democracy and Meyer-Allen's (1993) Organisational Commitment Scales were used to measure organisational democracy in master's theses prepared with quantitative method. In doctoral theses, Geçkil and Tikici (2013)'s Organisational Democracy, Basım and Şeşen (2006)'s Organisational Citizenship Behaviour and Kassing (2000)'s Organisational Opposition Scale were used. Master's theses on organisational democracy (n= 15) were prepared in the public sector and doctoral theses (n= 6) were prepared as mixed. While 34,48% of the master's theses were prepared in the Departments of Educational Sciences and Business Administration, 58,33% of the doctoral theses were prepared in the Department of Business Administration. The study is expected to provide new perspectives to researchers by revealing the developments in the field of organisational democracy in Turkey.

Elections and Democracy in Turkey: Reconsidering Competitive Authoritarianism in the Age of Democratic Backsliding

AbstractThis article reflects on the reasons why Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) could still win in the recent 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey despite, among other daunting issues, the deep economic crisis and their unsuccessful handling of the February 2023 earthquake. The article discusses the role of state apparatus and the media under a neopatrimonial system, as well as the role of the EU, which turned Turkey into a rentier state with the refugee deals. The discussion considers whether Turkey could still be seen as a competitive authoritarian regime and points to the difficulties in determining whether regimes such as the Turkish one are competitive authoritarian or not until the election results are seen and the opposition candidates actually win.

Tax Expenditures as a Rupture of Fiscal Democracy

Although each new administration claims to craft its own budget, in reality, spending plans always follow the choices made by its predecessors. To evaluate how much of a country's current budget is allocated to projects that do not need congressional approval or, more technically, to mandated expenditure programs, the fiscal democracy index was created. The Fiscal Democracy Index is calculated by subtracting mandatory spending and debt interest from total government revenues. The number reflects the amount of money left over from taxes that can be used for discretionary government programs. The ratio of the remaining public revenues to the total public revenues is the fiscal democracy indicator. Yet, tax expenditures may occur at any time during the fiscal year. Tax expenditures, on the other hand, are not always held to the same standards of transparency and accountability as other types of government spending. In this study, which aims to examine fiscal democracy in Turkey by deeming the impact of tax expenditures, we observed that Turkey's fiscal democracy index might be higher when considering tax expenditures. As a result, reducing tax expenditures will increase fiscal democracy.

Leaders and the Breakdown of Democracy in Turkey, 1973-1980

This article focuses on Turkey’s crisis-ridden years, from 1973 to 1980. As an under-explored era in English language scholarship, it makes a distinct contribution to the literature on pre-1980 coup Turkish politics. In doing so, it illustrates the implications for the democratic order arising from the two central political leaders of the era Süleyman Demirel and Bülent Ecevit’s tussle for power across the decade. The study draws on fieldwork interviews and critical reading of Turkish and English sources to reveal new insights into the leaders’ actions and decisions that trapped the country in a state of political paralysis, inflamed left-right violence, and politicized state institutions, ultimately dragging Turkey down one of its most turbulent periods. It illustrates how the leaders played crucial roles in shaping conditions that eventually resulted in the termination of multi-party politics with a military coup on 12 September 1980.

Social Democracy in Turkey: Global Questions, Local Answers

ABSTRACT This article assesses the prospects of social democracy in Turkey in light of two prominent debates regarding social democracy: the challenge of populism and the proper balance between a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition. By focusing on the Republican People’s Party (CHP), it shows that the main problem the party faces is to find ways of addressing the issues of recognition and redistribution. Success in addressing these issues would provide an effective alternative to the populist agenda of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and build channels for participatory democracy and institutions of accountability. We argue that social democracy, with its legacy of democratic rule and institutions, can serve as a significant anchoring point in such an effort. We point out, however, why current social, institutional, political, and cultural factors make the CHP’s task of pursuing a social democratic agenda in Turkey particularly difficult.

Emergency rule and democracy in Turkey

Emergency rule and democracy in Turkey

Sweden's ‘complicated’ relationship with genocide recognition

Scholars have unpacked the rhetorically nuanced ways political actors alter state narratives in resisting pressure to comply with international norms. But many of these rhetorical strategies apply in other contexts, where there exists sufficient norm ambiguity, too. For example, in response to Turkey's long-standing denialism, many governments have been asked to recognise the Armenian Genocide (or 1915 Genocide of Christians in the Ottoman Empire). But, because there exists no clear international norm about recognising genocides perpetuated by other states, even some of the most unlikely government officials adapt their rhetoric to resist recognition and pursue ulterior foreign policy objectives. Building on Dixon's rhetorical adaptation framework, this article argues that, between 1999 and 2021, Swedish political actors often adapted their rhetoric in ways similar to Turkish officials as a result of the normative ambiguity of states recognising the Armenian Genocide. In explaining why Sweden consistently resisted Genocide recognition efforts, this analysis focuses on its larger foreign policy commitments of spreading democracy in Turkey and managing the Syrian refugee crisis.

PARLIAMENTARISM, RATIONALIZED PARLIAMENTARISM AND APPLICABILITY IN TURKEY

Many explanations and interpretations about the origin, history and nature of the separation of powers doctrine show that the democratic value of the parliamentary government system is at a high level. Indeed, in contrary to the general knowledge, not only the presidency system but also the parliamentary government system keeps its democratic value at high level in many aspects and establishes a brake and balance mechanism between the powers. This study discusses the features of the parliamentary system, especially the rationalized parliamentary system, and the possibility of its applicability in Turkey. The study reveals that, for Turkey, the system inspired by the presidential system, which is called the Presidential Government System is more convenient than the parliamentary system in terms of breaking down democracy, and this brings deficiencies in terms of democracy as a whole, especially on the constitutional system including the fundamental rights and freedoms. In analysing the subject, the study argues that the capability of the rationalized parliamentary system which is a form of the parliamentary government system to provide inducement in bolstering the democracy in Turkey should be earnestly contemplated considering that the legislative, executive and judiciary powers that define the pure presidency system lack independence in terms of the power and influence map. It is claimed that the inducements created by the parliamentary system may offend democracy as well as strengthen the brake and balance mechanism between the powers. In this context, we briefly addressed the historical precedents of the current types of the parliamentary government, and we emphasized the presence of various different types of parliamentarism while discussing the main characteristics of the parliamentarism. We have also attempted to review the empirical evidence on which the answer to this question may be based for Turkey around the question of whether it is superior or more stable than presidential forms as a system of government. Here, we sometimes evaluated the deficiencies in the Presidential Government System. In this respect, we have tried to emphasize the importance of designing a rationalized form if Turkey is to adopt the parliamentary system. We said that by doing so, Turkey would have attained a higher level of constitutional fiction in terms of its democratic value and brake and balance system

Rethinking the Turkish socialist left’s perceptions of the US and USSR after the Second World War: an analysis of leftist publications

This article challenges conventional opinions that assume ever-presence of anti-Americanism among Turkish socialist leftist groups and that sees the Marxist account of the international as must-be theoretical tool of socialist leftists by investigating how they perceived the US and Soviet Russia during the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, as well as how they evaluated the pre-Second World War world order and changes in global politics after the war. It finds that leftists considered the existing inter-imperialist rivalry-driven international structure to be the main cause of world wars but expected that the US would replace it with a cooperation-based structure that would lead to lasting peace. They characterized the US as a peacemaker, as an anchor for democratization in Turkey, and saw the USSR as being pro-peace and viewed with suspicion Soviet demands for land from Turkey. Lastly, the article explores socialist leftists’ eclectic theoretical framework, which was a combination of imperialism theory, realism, and liberalism, as a window onto their views of international relations.

A Lonely Man at the Bend: Doctor Şerif

Çalışmanın “Edebiyat, Toplum ve Siyaset” bölümünde, edebiyatın genel bir tanımı yapılarak toplumun temel taşlarını oluşturan unsurlardan büyük ölçüde beslenmesi hususuna değinilmiştir. “Aşk ve Aşka Bakış” kısmında aşkın başta edebiyat olmak üzere güzel sanatların her dalını hatta hayatı besleyen en önemli duygu olduğu anlatılmaya çalışılmıştır. “Sosyalleşmeye Açılan Kapı Olarak Şehir Kulübü” bölümünde ise Türkiye’nin hemen hemen her yerinde ismiyle açılmış olan kulüplerin, aydınların bir sığınma yeri olduğu anlatılmıştır. Kalelerle, aşılmaz surlar ve hendeklerle çevrili bir derebeyi konağına benzeyen bu şehir kulüplerinde aslında aydın kesimin bunalımlarını, çıkmazlarını ve en önemlisi de kısır döngüsü anlatılmıştır “Demokrat Parti’nin Kuruluş Süreci ve Kasabalının Siyasetle İmtihanı” kısmında ise Türkiye’nin çok partili hayata geçiş sancıları ve demokrasiyle tanışma süreci anlatılmıştır. Tarık Buğra, Dönemeçte romanında çok partili hayata geçiş sürecini ve Demokrat Parti’nin de kuruluş yıllarını Akşehir’e odaklanarak yansıtmaya çalışır. Romanda siyasi gelişme ve değişimler, 1950’li yıllar Türkiye’sindeki aydın sorunsalı vb. sorunlarla birlikte Doktor Şerif, Handan, Savcı Yardımcısı Orhan, Eczacı Celal arasındaki karmaşık aşk ilişkisi de önemli bir yer tutar. Doktor Şerif, Türk siyasetinin ve aydınlarının düştüğü bunalımdan kurtarmak için mantıkta bulduğu çareler, uygulamada yetersiz kalır. Dönemeçte romanı ve Tarık Buğra ile ilgili yazılarda bu hususa birçok kez değinilmiştir. Bu çalışmada ise tarihî ve sosyolojik kaynaklardan da yararlanılarak romanın önemli kişilerinden, romanın kurgusunda da oldukça işlevsel olan Doktor Şerif karakterine odaklanılmıştır.

Democratization in Turkey under AKP Government

The term “freedom of expression” is quite broad and holistic. It includes, within its ambit, not only the conventional freedom of speech and freedom of media, but also the freedom of thoughts, cultural expression, conscience, and intellectual inquiry. Freedom of expression ensures an individual's right to express his/her views openly within the domain of constitution, which also contains the right to be criticial of the prevailing injustices, illegal, anti-social activities, and incompetence and failure of ¬¬¬the government. All this is with a guarantee of safety and without any apprehension or fear of retaliation. Freedom of expression, in contemporary times, also embraces the right to be informed and seek information by the public, to express opinions, and advocate amendments, including changing the regime without resorting to violent means through peaceful measures available in the public domain, with reasonable restrictions. In the past decade and half, Turkish experience as a transitional democracy presents an interesting case study to explain as to how the state of freedom of expression is causally related to the failure of the EU-driven reform process undertaken by the ruling AKP (Turkish: Adaletve Kalkınma Partisi) since the year 2002, when the party won the Parliamentary elections in Turkey for the first time. The issue about the press freedom and freedom of expression in Turkey has for very long time, attracted a great amount of scholarly attention and provoked extensive debate both inside and outside Turkey. Although Turkey remains one of the rare democracy in the West Asia, a region with strong monarchic and semi-monarchic tradition of government, a series of development in the past years has raised several interrogations about the qualitative and quantitative aspects of democracy in Turkey under the AKP.

Democratization in Turkey under AKP Government

Democratization in Turkey under AKP Government

Political Polarisation on Social Media: Competing Understandings of Democracy in Turkey

ABSTRACT Heightened political polarisation threatens democratic stability. While prior studies find polarisation in competing groups’ deployment of different terminologies to describe the same topic, we emphasise that it can also be evident in groups’ attachment of different meanings to the same terminology. Competition for dominance in the public sphere is reflected in social media which become sites of contestation, showcasing antagonistic claims of legitimacy. In a case-study of the June 2019 rerun Istanbul elections in Turkey, we used qualitative and computational methods to analyse approximately 116,000 tweets, focusing on discussions around the themes of ‘democracy’, ‘elections’, and ‘public service’. Twitter users associated the act of casting a vote not only with electing the candidate, but also with a competition over the future of Turkish democracy.

“Corrective Intervention” versus “Unfinished Revolution”: Transitions byReformaand the Military in Turkey and Greece

AbstractThe article compares the failed self-transformation attempt in 1973 in Greece and the actual transition that occurred in 1983 in Turkey. These two cases of regime-initiated transitions to democracy with differing outcomes beg the question: If the 1973 transition in Greece led to a crippled democracy controlled by the military (as in Turkey 10 years later), why was it brought to an abrupt end by the very group that it was supposed to benefit—i.e. the military themselves? The author seeks to answer this question by comparing the position of the Turkish and Greek military in their respective power structures, which produced different regimes (hierarchical in Turkey vs. non-hierarchical in Greece). Moreover, in both cases, the transitions were not perceived as equally benefitting the military—hence the different outcomes, i.e. the failure of the Greek transition and the problematic democracy in Turkey.

Authoritarian neoliberalism, crisis, and consolidation: the political economy of regime change in Turkey

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyze Turkey's recent authoritarian transformation from a critical political economy perspective and to examine the main determinants of, what we call, the ‘authoritarian consolidation attempt' of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). For that purpose, first, we sought answers to the following question: why did the AKP engage in a more authoritarian political agenda in the 2010s? We critically review the literature on the contemporary dynamics of authoritarianism, particularly focusing on two explanatory frameworks, competitive authoritarianism, and authoritarian neoliberalism. We argue that the crisis of authoritarian neoliberalism did not end up with democratization in Turkey in the 2010s, rather the power bloc initiated a strategy of the authoritarian fix as a reaction to the multiple crises that were a combination of the state crisis and the crisis of capital accumulation regime. Second, we analyzed how authoritarianism in Turkey is en route to consolidation in the aftermath of the transition to the Turkish presidential system in 2018, and what the fundamental factors of this consolidation are. We investigated the main features of Turkish presidentialism following the three-dimensional framework of authoritarian consolidation, including infrastructural, despotic, and discursive power analyses. As a result, we suggest a critical political economy account to unfold contemporary dynamics of authoritarianism based on the Turkish case.

‘Am I a terrorist or an educator?’ Turkish asylum seekers narratives on education rights violations after a crackdown following the 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey

ABSTRACT Democratisation in Turkey collapsed in the wake of the 2016 failed military coup and the crackdown that followed, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan launching a widespread rollback of academic and other liberties, systematically purging civic institutions of political opponents and critics that significantly harmed intellectuals, students, and educational rights. This paper analyses the narratives of Turkish citizens who were prosecuted, dismissed, abused, tortured, victimised, and imprisoned during the State of Emergency (OHAL) initiated after the failed coup attempt in July 2016. This narrative approach examines the transcripts of in-depth interviews about the experiences and critical life stories of 20 individuals now living in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Also included are field notes and documents that reveal the authorities’ violations of their educational human rights. These included the denial of education, unwarranted dismissal, elimination of academic freedom of thought, and harassment of academics and their children. Such violations have created a brain drain of educators fleeing the country. These deleterious changes in the Turkish education system have had severe social and political effects and have produced an education system that fails to meet the country’s needs, which, if not remediated, will ripple through the generations, dimming the nation’s future.

A Bibliometric Study on the Publications Investigating Democracy in Turkey

This study investigates the bibliometric characteristics of publications on democracy in Turkey, a country arguably having recently gone through a particular democratic backsliding. Focusing on SSCI and A&HCI between 1980 and 2019, a total of 691 publications were found: articles (83.79%) and book reviews (11.43%), with a particular increase of publications starting with the late 2000s. Most of the publications were written in English (95%), under the research category of Political Science. Turkish Studies was the journal where most of the publications appeared. The phrases that were mostly used within abstracts were the Justice and Development Party, the European Union, the Middle East, and democracy in Turkey. The results show that publications on democracy tend to appear mostly in regionally focused journals, be written mostly in the Political Science research category and in English, highlight the contemporary democratic advances and deficiencies of the countries, and be mostly within comparative frameworks.

Gender impartiality of public institutions, religiosity, and satisfaction with democracy: findings from Turkey

ABSTRACT Previous literature demonstrated that gender inequality is a major challenge for democratic consolidation. However, research that studies the effect of gender inequality on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy is limited. This study contributes to this literature by exploring the relationship between citizens’ perceptions of gender impartiality of public institutions and satisfaction with democracy in Turkey, where gender inequality is an acute problem. Analysis of a nationally representative survey showed that the perception of gender impartiality of public institutions is a major factor explaining citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. Results also revealed that perceptions of gender impartiality of public institutions affect citizens’ evaluations of the long-term performance of democracy. Another finding is that religiosity moderates the effect of perceptions of gender impartiality of public institutions on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. We conclude that gender inequality is not a peripheral issue to democratic consolidation in Turkey but a social problem that remains at the heart of it.