AbstractIn this review article I classify the literature on the Turkish political regime during Justice and Development Party rule as two waves of studies, and a potential third wave. The first wave was prevalent at least until the Gezi uprisings in 2013. I argue that, in this wave, the main debate was between two rival and largely culturalist perspectives with conceptual toolkits that tended to interpret regime change through the lens of social transformations. I also maintain that scholarly works written from the hegemonic perspective of this wave, utilizing center–periphery and state–society dichotomies, and a narrow range of concepts from the democratization literature (from defective democracy to democratic consolidation), have misidentified/misinterpreted burgeoning autocratization in Turkey as democratization, albeit with problems. The Gezi uprisings brought to the fore already existing authoritarian features of the Turkish political regime and led to the second wave of studies. In the second wave, the focus was on naming Turkey's new political regime as a diminished subtype of authoritarianism, and thick descriptions of different facets of Turkey's new authoritarianism. Finally, I suggest that there is a need for a third wave that builds on recent studies and focuses on explaining Turkey's autocratization process and democratic breakdown, as well as the impact of autocratization on other aspects of Turkish politics and society.
In this article, I study the relationship of the Justice and Development Party's (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) populism-in-power and democracy, from a comparative and historical perspective, and based on a critical engagement with the populism literature. I begin by highlighting the political institutional expression of the populist political vision (to reflect the popular will in power), which prioritizes competitive elections among a variety of modern democratic institutions and mechanisms. Based on this perspective, I outline a particular populist route to competitive (or electoral) authoritarianism: when in power, because populists exalt elections and undermine existing liberal democratic mechanisms that bridge people to power, they deprive citizens of the power to hold rulers accountable. I then trace the lineage of the populist political imagination in Turkey, demonstrating the continuities and discontinuities between the Democrat Party's (Demokrat Parti, DP) and the AKP's conceptions of the people and democracy. I argue that despite these parties' differences on the level of the politicization of cultural divisions, there is a crucial continuity: the equalization of democracy with an exalted elected executive branch. Finally, I concentrate on the impact of the AKP's populism-in-power on the Turkish political regime. I argue that because the AKP came to power in a defective democracy (with extra-democratic checks on the elected rulers and prone to the concentration of power), by 2011, the party managed to reframe Turkish political institutions according to their right-wing populist vision of democracy, an authoritarian regime with competitive elections. ; Bu makalede Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisini'nin (AKP) iktidardaki popülizmiyle demokrasinin ilişkisini, karşılaştırmalı ve tarihsel bir perspektiften ve popülizm literatürüne eleştirel bir bakış açısıyla inceliyorum. Yazıya ilk olarak çeşitli demokratik kurumlar ve mekanizmalar arasında rekabetçi seçimlere öncelik veren popülist siyaset anlayışının siyasi kurumsal ifadesini (iktidardaki halk iradesini yansıtmak için) vurgulayarak başlıyorum. Bu perspektife dayanarak, rekabetçi (veya seçimli) otoriterliğe giden bir popülist rota belirliyorum: popülist iktidarlar, seçimleri yücelttikleri ve yurttaşlarla yönetim arasında köprüler kuran liberal demokratik mekanizmaları baltaladıkları için, vatandaşları, yöneticileri sorumlu tutma gücünden mahrum ediyorlar. Daha sonra, Demokrat Parti (DP) ile AKP'nin halk ve demokrasi anlayışlarının süreklilik ve farklılık gösterdiği yerleri belirleyerek Türkiye'deki popülist siyasi tahayyülün izini sürüyorum. Bu partilerin kültürel bölünmeleri siyasallaştırma düzeyindeki farklılıklara rağmen, önemli bir ortaklıklarının olduğunu iddia ediyorum: demokrasinin seçilmiş olmakla yüceltilmiş bir yürütme organıyla eşitlenmesi. Son olarak, AKP'nin iktidardaki popülizminin Türkiye siyasal rejimi üzerindeki etkisine odaklanıyorum. Kusurlu bir demokraside iktidara gelmesinden dolayı (seçilmiş yöneticiler üzerinde demokrasi dışı kontrol mekanizmalarının olduğu ve güç yoğunlaşmasına yatkın), AKP'nin, 2011 yılına kadar, Türkiye siyasal kurumlarını, otoriter bir rejimle rekabetçi seçimleri birleştiren sağ popülist vizyonuna göre, yeniden düzenlemeyibaşardığını iddia ediyorum.
