Justice And Development Party Research Articles

The Nation and its Sermons: Islam, Kemalism and the Presidency of Religious Affairs in Turkey

This article will attempt to develop an in-depth examination of the pivotal role of Islam in the articulation of Turkish nationalism and Turkish official identity by examining the sermons authorized and imposed by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (PRA), the state agency regulating religion, and how the their cosmologies of social, moral and political order are entwined. We will further argue that this role involves a twofold process; firstly, the Muslim identity was imagined as a prerequisite for being considered as a Turk and a Turkish citizen and, secondly, the ‘cultural intimacy’ of Turkish nationalism is grounded on the ‘root paradigms’ inherited and attained from the Islamic tradition and theology. These arguments are particularly pertinent at a time when Islamist JDP (Justice and Development Party) consolidated its power and began to instrumentalize PRA for its priorities and visions of Islam. This, however, does not bring a radical reshuffling of PRA. On the contrary, the continuity from the Kemalist-monitored PRA to the JDP-monitored PRA can be attested not only in its organizational features but also in its ideological make up; especially in terms of its perceptions of society, state and social order.

Turkey's New Labour Regime Under the Justice and Development Party in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century: Authoritarian Flexibilization

During the period of the Justice and Development Party (JDP), the longest uninterrupted ruling party in the history of modern Turkey (except for a period of single-party rule during the early Repub...

Turkey's Islamists: Accidental Democrats

When it was founded in 2001, the current ruling party in Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (JDP), unequivocally declared its commitment to democracy and secularism (JDP 2014). Nevertheless, the party's implementation of reforms aimed at strengthening Turkey's democracy after coming to power in 2002 surprised many observers because the JDP's top leaders had been known Islamists. The speed and dedication with which the government introduced and implemented laws aimed at “European-style normalization” even impressed the EU, leading to the historic decision of 17 December 2004 to open negotiations with Turkey for full membership (Kirişҫi 2004). Such commitment seemed to be a rarity and therefore did not escape the attention of scholars either. It led to the publication of several academic works, four of which are the subject of this review essay.

Intra-party Education and its Impact on Democracy

Abstract This paper scrutinizes the intra-party education of the political parties that hold a parliamentary group in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. These parties are the governing party Justice and Development Party (JDP), the major opposition party Republican Peoples Party (RPP), the ultra-nationalist party Nationalist Action Party (NAP) and the Kurdish Movement-Sympathetic/Corroborator Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). Drawing on a critical interpretative analysis of regulations, by-Laws and curriculum, it conveys the impact of intra-party education to democracy. By attempting to position the parties within Duverger's political party system, it speculates on whether the political parties attitude in the organization, recruitment and content of the education programs reflect their attitude on democracy. It is argued that ideologically loaded parties may display democratic attitudes within the party whereas this attitude may not be found in the broader spectrum of Turkish political life as ideology curbs the latitude of constituency.

Seventh Son of the East: Sezai Karakoç and His Doctrine of Revival

Although Sezai Karakoç has been a prominent figure in the Turkish intellectual life for almost five decades, nothing scholarly has appeared so far to introduce him to the Western academia. Aside from his being considered to be one of the greatest Turkish poets in the twentieth century, for many, he is also an influential intellectual who has put his mark on Turkish Islamism and affected the Islamic community as deep as Mehmet Akif Ersoy and Necip Fazıl Kısakürek. Mainly because of his deliberate choice of being low profile and his distanced attitude towards media, he is not a widely known figure in the popular political arena. His ideas, however, have influenced many politicians in the contemporary Turkish Politics, particularly the elite cadres of currently running the Justice and Development Party (JDP). It is appealing to notice that a great number of policies he formulated in 1980s and 1990s have been developed and implemented by the JDP government. To elucidate Sezai Karakoç's intellectual depth and cultural vision, this study, first, introduces him, then opens up his conceptualization of civilization the grasp of which seems to constitute a fertile ground for the JDP's political rhetoric both for domestic and regional audiences, and lastly reveals his “doctrine of revival.”

Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood: Crossing Roads in Syria

Relations between Turkey and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) have gained momentum in the light of post-Arab revolt developments. This study aims to present the historical background of the relationship between SMB and AKP and effects of this relationship on foreign policy. For the analytical discussion on the relationship between AKP and SMB integration to particular recent foreign policies of Turkey, first of all, it will be examined how the SMB is perceived in Turkey in social and political arenas. Thus, the socio-political dimensions of the process in which the SMB came to the fore and began to be known in Turkey will be explored along with its position in foreign policy during the Justice and Development Party (JDP) government and the Syrian crisis. This study aims to analyze transformation of the relationship between Turkey and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. In many points Turkey has moved away from traditional Turkish foreign policy in its attitude toward the Arab revolts. In this respect, Turkey began to support civil unrest as distinct from the idea that are the main actors in international relations. It was a significant shift from the dominant principle of maintaining the status quo in traditional Turkish foreign policy. The traditional foreign policy rule non-interference in the internal affairs of states was abandoned by Tukey, with the expectation of the Syrian regime would soon change. With the Syrian crisis and the Arab revolts in particular, Turkey for the first time embraced its position as a model country for the Middle East countries and applied this perception in its foreign policy. The visible signs in this major shift in foreign policy are Turkeys moving away from its secular foreign policy as one of the interested parties of the problem as a result of its systematic and explicit intervention and its policy of supporting refugees with many pre- established camps in the immediate vicinity of the border. In terms of foreign policy, Turkey began for the first time to be known for its relations with a non-governmental opposition party, namely the SMB and SMB-Turkey relations also attracted much attention from the foreign press. For example, in the analysis published by the New York Times in February (Thomas Jr., 2011), it is mentioned that Erdogans party has already established ties with the Muslim Brotherhood — a result of Mr. Erdogans long and successful campaign to present himself as a dominant and increasingly anti-Israeli voice in the Middle East. And according to research by Dore Gold at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, three members of the Muslim Brotherhood — two of whom serve in the Egyptian Parliament — were on the Turkish-sponsored ship that was attacked by Israeli forces on its way to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip in May. There is a great deal of ideological compatibility between the A.K.P. and the Muslim Brotherhood, said Mr.

Yerel seçimler ulusal düşmanlar

In this article, the focus is on the transformation of political relationship, in particular of 30 March 2014 local elections, between the ruling party and the opposition, including the Gulen movement, into a kind of enemization strategy through politics of fear. It was investigated how the politics of fear; solidifying the power of ruling party on the one hand, and transforming the society into an obedient mass on the other, affects the way of understanding politics and political struggle during the local election process. For the purpose of the study, a discursive reading has been made on all election rally speeches, and the texts of introductory meeting for election declaration and balcony speech of JDP (Justice and Development Party) leader Erdogan; the politics of fear condemning the opposition morally and politically and its nature, which expels political struggle from power-opposition relationship and transforms into friend-enemy relationship, have been tried to be questioned

A Study on the Policy of Justice and Development Party(JDP) toward Alevi in Turkey

A Study on the Policy of Justice and Development Party(JDP) toward Alevi in Turkey

Turkish Democracy Under the Justice and Development Party (JDP), 2002-2014

Democratisation has become an aspirational phenomenon in many parts of the world. This paper analyses the role of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (the ‘JDP’) in Turkey’s current democratisation process. In order to analyse the democratisation process led by the JDP government, we must understand the nature of the JDP. Critics argue that the JDP, though professing to be a conservative democratic party, is in fact a fundamentalist Islamic party with a hidden agenda to establish a Sharia-based regime in Turkey. They feel that the JDP, in hiding its real aims, performs a game of dissimulation (takiyye) in order to achieve political legitimacy and sufficient political and constitutional power to realise its hidden agenda. This argument raises a number of questions: Can a pro-EU party like the JDP, which gained significant and increasing support in the 2002, 2007 and 2011 Turkish general elections, have an Islamist hidden agenda? How would we explain the increasing public support for the JDP and the genuine democratisation reforms led by it? Could Conservative Democracy, the political identity of the JDP, be regarded as an appropriate political approach for Turkey? Is the ‘hidden agenda’ hypothesis real or imagined?These are some of the key questions being discussed by Turkey’s elites in relation to the JDP. Regardless of the point of view we take to answer these questions, there remains a grey zone, which the writer of this paper will attempt to clarify.

Locating Change in Turkish Foreign Policy: Visa Policies of the Justice and Development Party in the 2000s

This article evaluates foreign policy change under the Justice and Development Party (JDP). After examining the concept of change in foreign policy analysis and in the literature on Turkish foreign policy, the article offers an approach to visa regimes as significant indicators of change in foreign policy. It first provides a qualitative analysis of Turkish visa policies in comparison to those of the European Union (EU) and shows that, after a brief period of convergence, Turkish visa policies have increasingly diverged from the EU. Subsequently, by way of analyzing the incoming mobility of foreign nationals, first the JDP era is compared to its predecessors. Then, two distinct eras within JDP's period of rule are identified and compared. It concludes that, while there are differences between the JDP and the previous eras, the most significant change occurs between the first and second JDP governments.

A Decade of Erdoğan's JDP: Ruptures and Continuities

A decade after the beginning of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's leadership in Turkey, there is still hot debate on how to understand the politics of Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (JDP). The discursive and political legacies of the party are so diverse that many different views can find a basis in some or other point of reference. This also means that most studies of the JDP offer a narrow perspective and ignore a sizeable part of the legacy of the party. To ignore this defect, this article explains the decade of the Erdoğan by a simultaneous use of the terms rupture and continuity and reads the history of the JDP as that of a transformation from liberal conservatism to a more authoritarian politics. As we argue, the interests of the devout bourgeoisie have been one of the significant determinants of this transformation.

Moving ‘East’ or ‘West’?

ABSTRACTIn light of debates over the compatibility of Islam and democracy, their importance in the EU candidate state of Turkey which has been led by the religious-based Justice and Development Party (JDP) since 2002, and the paucity of research examining liberal-democratic value change, we examine liberal-democratic value change and its sources in Turkey between 2000 and 2008. The results of our descriptive, factor, and multivariate analyses of European and World Values Survey data (2000, 2001, 2007, and 2008) indicate that despite Huntington's (1996) and Turkish secularists' pessimism, people in Turkey have not adopted more politically religious values during this time. However, personal expressions of religiosity are on the rise, and they are intertwined with politically religious values to some extent. People in Turkey have generally adopted less politically authoritarian values, but they are more supportive of military rule in 2008 than before the JDP came to power. Ethnic tolerance peaked in 2007 but declined below its 2001 level in 2008. While human development theory helps to explain these trends and values, the case of Turkey reveals that other, more political factors –such as nationalism –may counteract liberal-democratic value change. The results are suggestive of a political realignment in Turkey that transcends a secular-religious divide. They further suggest that Turkey is moving neither ‘East’ nor ‘West’; rather, it is very much moving in its own direction.

Neoliberalism with a Human Face: Making Sense of the Justice and Development Party's Neoliberal Populism in Turkey

Abstract Ten years in power, the Justice and Development Party (JDP) of Turkey has displayed its commitment to a neoliberal agenda. Despite this commitment, public opinion polls reveal that the party received the majority of its votes from the poorest sections of society. Analysis of this anomaly calls for use of a theoretical concept “neoliberal populism,” whereby political leadership secures the hegemony of the power bloc dominated by the big bourgeoisie over the subordinate classes. The neoliberal dimension of neoliberal populism became manifest in the JDP's economic policies that rewarded the bourgeoisie: legalizing flexible labor, weakening welfare, and subcontracting the state's welfare provision duties to the private sector. The party displayed its populism in the form of skyrocketing means-tested social assistance programs. The JDP also made use of the symbolic/ideological sphere to constitute its hegemony by identifying the party with “common sense” in Turkey. Through embracing conservatism, Isla...

The ‘Europeanization’ of the Religious Cleavage in Turkey: The Case of the Alevis

The EU accession process reveals a series of paradoxes, which are not merely indicative of the complexity of Turkey's state–religion relations in general but also point to how the Justice and Development Party (JDP) government portrays controversies such as the Sunni–Alevi divide. The religious cleavages in Turkey have become Europeanized and found expression in the European political and legal structures. The Alevis have been one of the groups most affected by this issue partly because of their heterodox and transnational religious identity and partly as a result of their links with secularist political sectors. The paper underlines a dilemma of current Turkish politics. The case of the Alevis shows that the regime's current transformation undermines its basis through exclusion. The JDP's political strategy, focusing on the effective control of the mainstream Sunni base, does not willingly accept or tolerate the autonomy of some civil society groups, including the Alevis.

THE GINI ILLUSION OF TURKEY: AN APPROACH TO INEQUALITIES ON THE BASIS OF THE PALMA RATIO

The paper primarily aims to focus on inequality measurement on the basis of Gini coefficient following 2001 in case of Turkey. Although the Gini coefficient indicates some specific improvements in Turkey, there is a need to investigate in real terms the approaches to inequalities in the Turkish case. Drawing upon TurkStat, OECD and World Bank Development Indicators data related to Turkey, the Palma ratio (2011), the share of top 10 percent income to the bottom 40 percent income (D10/D1-D4) approach to inequality is applied to the balance sheet of Turkey in the last decade, after which, the relationship with related social and redistributive policies will be analysed. The paper strongly suggest that since the Palma ratio focuses on the top-, bottom- and middle-income groups, it will permit a deeper analysis of the inequalities and neoliberal policies of the last decade. Under these circumstances, following 2001 period, the political roots of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) and this particular phase of neoliberal policies in Turkey warrants further analysis, with a definition made of the relationship between the two. To this end, the paper begins with an analysis of the specific characteristics of the neoliberal era under the JDP, and then presents a brief summary of the redistributive and social policies that were enacted.

The Socialist BirGun Daily Newspaper and the Dersim Debate

In contemporary Turkey, the oppositional socialist BirGun daily newspaper attracts attention with its consequent disagreement with the ruling mildly-Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP); even if the harshly criticized Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sometimes seems to act in a congenial way through some (anti-nationalist) reforms and symbolic gestures like his historical apology for the military operations during the local Dersim uprising in the Ataturk era (Tunceli Incidents, 1937-1938). This region is inhabited by Zaza-speaking and Kurdish Alevis, who are critical of the JDP because of sectarian reasons. This study analyzes BirGun's critical and ambivalent reporting of the JDP government as well as of the Kemalist epoch, when it comes to the current Dersim debate on Erdogan's apology in November 2011.

Neoliberalism and Neopopulism in Turkey: The Political Economy of Religion

This paper’s main puzzle is: How does the ruling party in Turkey, Justice and Development Party (JDP), successfully maintain its agenda of aggressive neoliberal reforms – the results of which are generally to the detriment of the poor masses - and still manage to appeal to the urban poor? At first glance, neoliberalism and neopopulism appear to be contradictory political avenues but they somehow coexist in the Turkish context. We follow Kurt Weyland’s work on Peru and Argentina where neoliberalism and neopopulism served complementary rather than contradictory functions in the 1990s. We argue that the consensus between the state and society in Turkey in the 2000s is no longer being upheld by a paternal state, which is the provider of jobs and social services but rather a neoliberal state that derives legitimacy from its populism and affinity to the masses. Religion, thus, becomes an instrument in accomplishing the following tasks: Easing the tension between labor and capital, creating new capital formations loyal to the neoliberal state, and creating a populist legitimacy in the eyes of the masses. The paper concludes with some remarks on the potential problems the JDP may face in the near future.

Changes in Turkish Foreign Policy: A Shift or a Passing Interest?

Since 2003, following the election of the Justice and Development Party (JDP), Turkish Foreign Policy placed a clear emphasis on the Middle East, establishing and improving relations with the region. This, by some, was interpreted as a major shift away from the traditional Western oriented stance, while others argued that this was just an effort to develop a multi-dimensional foreign policy. The paper argues that the rising interest in the Middle East is not something we observe for the first time. There are two factors that determine Turkey’s interest in the region: government’s ideological position and the international context. Due to the developments in these two areas Turkey experienced periods of rising interest before. This being said, there are certain characteristics that distinguished JDP policies from previous experiences like an effort to act independently and a special emphasis on the Palestinian issue. The paper also argues that despite what we have been observing so far, Turkish foreign policy will continue to act alongside of the West in the region.

Turkey-US Relations in Justice and Development Partys Era

Emergence of the new dynamics that has come out along with the changes in the international system has affected the relations between The United States and Turkey. Emerging developments in international relations after the September 11 attacks and Justice and Development Party (JDP) came to power in 2002 was a turning point in Turkish-foreign policy. In this paper, the Turkey- US relations during the period of JDP after 2002 was explored in two chapters entitled as periods of Bush and Obama, and analyzed in the framework of two concepts strategic partnership and model partnership.

The Davutoğlu Effect in Turkish Foreign Policy: What if the Bowstring is Broken?

AbstractAhmet Davutoğlu became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2009, the second term of Justice and Development Party (JDP) government, and he is regarded as the architect of the JDP's foreign policy since 2002. During his term, Turkey has pursued an active and multi-dimensional foreign policy. The model of Davutoğlu in explaining the Turkey's multi-dimensional foreign policy is the bow and arrow analogy. Accordingly, he argues that Turkey, with its ideational and geographical advantages, is an archer, and the more it draws the back of the bow through the East, the farther the arrow flies West. However, the gap between theory and reality undermines the consistency of Davutoğlu's foreign policy formulation.