Authoritarian Politics in Turkey: Elections, Resistance and the AKP

by Bahar Başer, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk

Despite being democratically elected, Turkey's ruling AKP party moved towards increasingly authoritarian measures in the years that followed. After the coup attempt in July 2016, the AKP government declared a state of emergency which President Erdoğan saw as an opportunity to purge the public sector of pro-Gulenist individuals and criminalise opposition groups including Kurdish separatists, Alevites, leftists and liberals. The country experienced political turmoil and rapid transformation, and debates around constitutional amendments began that would change the regime to a "Turkish style" presidential system. This book identifies the process of democratic reversal in Turkey. In particular, contributors explore the various ways that a democratically elected political party 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.

288 pages, Hardcover

Published August 30, 2017

About the author

1983 yılında Bolu’da doğdu. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü’nden mezun olduktan sonra İsveç-Uppsala Üniversitesi’nde yüksek lisans, İtalya-Floransa’da doktora yaptı. Almanya’da Humboldt Üniversitesi’nde, İsveç’te Linköping Üniversitesi’nde ve Portekiz’de Instituto de Ciências Sociais’te ziyaretçi araştırma görevlisi olarak görev yaptıktan sonra, etnik çatışmalar ve şiddet konulu dersler verdiği Warwick Üniversitesi’nde çalışmaya başladı. Karabağ sorununu ele aldığı Third Party Mediation in Nagorno Karabekh adlı kitabı 2008 yılında yayımlandı.

Reviews

[Begum Zorlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a review that I have written previously about this book.

There is an increased interest in understanding the complex cases of decline in democracy where elected governments have become the forerunners of increasing authoritarianism. ( Baser & Ozturk, p. 3) In these cases, elections aren’t solely arenas of contestation but an institution that “serves distinctively authoritarian ends.” (Svolik, 2012, p. 12) In order to present an encompassing scheme about the characteristics of this new trend, the edited volume elaborates on the mechanisms, strategies deployed by the AKP (Justice and Development Party) along with resistance and response coming from different actors. The opening chapters of the book analyse the pathway of authoritarian transformation by mainly looking at elections because as Akkoyunlu (2017, p. 58) states they have become the “building block of one party dominated system” that placed Turkey among competitive authoritarian regimes. The subsequent chapters include alluring exploration of the dynamics of different ethnic, religious groups and the transnational dynamics of domestic politics. The last section of the book touches upon the deteriorating freedom of information, the effect of social media, freedom of assembly which are arenas of contestation under the authoritarian regime. Overall, the chapters of the book speak to each other and the book brings together both insights from the field and theoretical arguments to explain the complex shift towards authoritarianism in Turkey.