Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article argues that it is fallacious to promote the Turkish democratic experience under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) as a model for the emerging Arab democracies. Despite the early political reformism of the AKP, an empirical analysis of the government's recent crackdown on basic rights and freedoms demonstrates that the "Turkish model," defined as a marriage of Islam and liberal democracy, cannot respond to the demands of Arab reformers. In this regard, the article falls into three sections. In the first section, assets of the "Turkish model" according to various actors are examined, which casts doubt on the emancipatory discourse underlying the promotion of the model. The second section proposes the term "leader democracy"—or, more specifically, "Erdoğanism"—as a way of denoting the governmental structure of Turkey as of early 2014. The final section depicts the current Turkish democracy in terms of the state of checks and balances and of basic political and social rights.

Growing anti-Western sentiments around the world are currently
manifesting themselves through divergent ways ranging from peaceful resistance movements
to various forms of political violence. In the Middle East, unlike the earlier
partially secular and nationalist Cold War anti-Americanism, the current popular
anti-Western political movements are heavily equipped with Islamism, which
appears to be an all-inclusive ideology and political movement for almost all
dissidents. This applies to Turkey as well, despite its relatively long history
of secularisation. This research particularly aims therefore to discuss the
role of nationalism and Islamism on anti-Western sentiments in Turkish foreign
policy through the lens of neo-classical realism and a new, broader conceptual framework:
The Western Question. The research examines the contours, contents, and
consequences of the problem through comparing two cases, namely the Cyprus problem
of the 1970s and the crisis with the West that has surfaced after Turkey's
involvement in the Syrian Civil War.