- Altınbaş University, Political Science and Public Administration, Faculty Memberİstanbul Kemerburgaz University, Political Science and Public Administration, Faculty Memberadd
- Digdem Soyaltin-Colella is an Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Aberdeen, UK, an... moreDigdem Soyaltin-Colella is an Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and a member of the global strategy reference group of Transparency International Berlin. Before joining the University of Aberdeen, she was an associate professor in Political Science at Altınbaş University in Istanbul, the academic director of the Jean Monnet Module titled “EU Good Governance Promotion Inside and Beyond Its Borders (EUGOGOV)” (2018-2021), and a board member at Transparency International Turkey. She received her Ph.D. degree in Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Stockholm University Institute of Turkish Studies (SUITS). Her main fields of interest are corruption, mechanisms of state capture, autocratic bureaucracies & governance, and Southeast European and Turkish politics. Her publications have appeared in international journals including Europe-Asia Studies, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, South European and Black Sea Studies, International Political Science Review, European Politics and Society, Turkish Studies, International Spectator, and Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. She is the author of EU Good Governance Promotion in the Age of Democratic Decline (ed, Palgrave, 2022) Europeanisation, Corruption and Good Governance in the Public Sector: The case of Turkey (Routledge, 2017) .edit
The European Union (EU) support for good governance reforms has been the cornerstone of its conditionality and funding policies and contributed its role as a transformative power. This book re-evaluates the EU’s governance promotion... more
The European Union (EU) support for good governance reforms has been the cornerstone of its conditionality and funding policies and contributed its role as a transformative power. This book re-evaluates the EU’s governance promotion capacity both within the EU and beyond its borders
in light of the simultaneous decline in democracy in Europe in particular, and across the whole world in general. The book is divided into three parts. Part I focuses on the EU’s good governance transfer to member and accession countries. Part II examines how and to what extent the EU’s governance promotion strategies travel beyond its borders and focuses on neighbors, partners, and aid recipient countries, especially in Africa. Part III turns to other regional and global actors and discusses the implications of illiberal contesters such as China and Russia on the future of the EU’s good governance promotion efforts. The findings of the book bring fresh insights into the scope and depth of the EU’s governance transfer capacity.
in light of the simultaneous decline in democracy in Europe in particular, and across the whole world in general. The book is divided into three parts. Part I focuses on the EU’s good governance transfer to member and accession countries. Part II examines how and to what extent the EU’s governance promotion strategies travel beyond its borders and focuses on neighbors, partners, and aid recipient countries, especially in Africa. Part III turns to other regional and global actors and discusses the implications of illiberal contesters such as China and Russia on the future of the EU’s good governance promotion efforts. The findings of the book bring fresh insights into the scope and depth of the EU’s governance transfer capacity.
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This study revisits the academic debate on rising populism and illiberalism in Europe that reduces the EU’s crises to those involving ‘liberal EU’ and ‘illiberal regimes’ without necessarily differentiating between these regimes. Applying... more
This study revisits the academic debate on rising populism and illiberalism in Europe that reduces the EU’s crises to those involving ‘liberal EU’ and ‘illiberal regimes’ without necessarily differentiating between these regimes. Applying Suchman’s multidimensional account of legitimacy to the EU, it unpacks the varying domestic contestations of two illiberal regimes against the different components of EU legitimacy within the context of two recent EU crises. Comparative analysis of how an illiberal insider (Hungary) and an illiberal outsider (Turkey) challenge the EU’s legitimacy in handling the rule of law and Syrian refugee crises, respectively, revealed two findings. First, Hungarian and Turkish actors raise divergent legitimacy contestations against the EU’s crisis management in the select cases. Second, their positionality towards the EU drives this divergence. While both countries seek to delegitimise the EU, their points of contention differ based on being in or outside the EU.
The European Union (EU) is regarded as par excellence in promoting good governance principles of participation, accountability, and transparency as a part of its fight against corruption policies. Yet, corruption remains a major problem... more
The European Union (EU) is regarded as par excellence in promoting good governance principles of participation, accountability, and transparency as a part of its fight against corruption policies. Yet, corruption remains a major problem within and in the periphery of the EU. The literature highlights the gap between legal institutions and implementation as the main reason for the ongoing corruption and governance-related problems and underlines the ineffectiveness of traditional anti-corruption interventions. Yet, we argue that the anti-corruption strategies in the EU lack a definition of good governance from a feminist intuitionalist perspective and thus fail to disrupt informal norms and unequal gendered power relations that feed corrupt and ill practices. This chapter illustrates the argument by focusing on participation, particularly that of women, as the fundamental principle of good governance in the EU and brings evidence from EU’s annual reports on equality between women and men, EU Gender Equality Strategy, and the statistics database of European Institute of Gender Equality.
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When and to what extent external actors, especially the EU, contribute to induce legal and administrative changes and help domestic authorities address the disconnect between good governance standards and corrupt practices? Comparing... more
When and to what extent external actors, especially the EU, contribute to induce legal and administrative changes and help domestic authorities address the disconnect between good governance standards and corrupt practices? Comparing external promotion of anti-corruption norms and provisions in civil administration, public finance management and public procurement in Turkey this book identifies the domestic conditions under which external actors can affect real-world outcomes. Providing a comprehensive, empirical account of Turkey’s fight against corruption, the book’s cross-sectoral analysis explores the power relations between major political actors and bureaucratic state elites, and examines how structural administrative factors filter external pressure for anti-corruption reforms and determine the prospects for institutional change in the Turkish public sector. This welcome addition to literature on Europeanisation and external good governance promotion makes an important contribution to the academic and policy debate regarding the "politics" of anti-corruption reforms in Turkey.
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Inherited from the Ottoman Empire the Republic of Turkey had established a strong, centralized, and highly bureaucratic state. Although political elites of the early Republican era introduced several institutional reforms in order to... more
Inherited from the Ottoman Empire the Republic of Turkey had established a
strong, centralized, and highly bureaucratic state. Although political elites of the
early Republican era introduced several institutional reforms in order to reach
modern Western standards, the patrimonial mentality and strong state characterized
the political culture in the country throughout the years In the early 2000s
the modernization project gained momentum when Turkey was given European
Union (EU) candidacy status in Helsinki in 1999. Coupled with demands coming
from the IMF and World Bank following the 2001 financial crisis the EU accession
process has resulted in adoption of an impressive amount of political and economic
reforms, which were expected to strengthen legal rules and procedures and
enhance opportunities for doing business in Turkey
Yet the empirical evidence suggests that substantial changes that have taken place
in the last decade hardly eliminated the institutional ambiguity and patrimonial
practices. Instead, they fostered new rent-seeking coalitions between the political
elites and various capital groups while formal institutions have increasingly
become subject to detrimental behavior of domestic actors.
strong, centralized, and highly bureaucratic state. Although political elites of the
early Republican era introduced several institutional reforms in order to reach
modern Western standards, the patrimonial mentality and strong state characterized
the political culture in the country throughout the years In the early 2000s
the modernization project gained momentum when Turkey was given European
Union (EU) candidacy status in Helsinki in 1999. Coupled with demands coming
from the IMF and World Bank following the 2001 financial crisis the EU accession
process has resulted in adoption of an impressive amount of political and economic
reforms, which were expected to strengthen legal rules and procedures and
enhance opportunities for doing business in Turkey
Yet the empirical evidence suggests that substantial changes that have taken place
in the last decade hardly eliminated the institutional ambiguity and patrimonial
practices. Instead, they fostered new rent-seeking coalitions between the political
elites and various capital groups while formal institutions have increasingly
become subject to detrimental behavior of domestic actors.
Research Interests:
Corruption is a complex social, political, and economic phenomenon that affects all countries to different degrees. There has been a dramatic resurgence of interest for the term in the early 21st century. As a term it has many meanings.... more
Corruption is a complex social, political, and economic phenomenon that affects all countries to different degrees. There has been a dramatic resurgence of interest for the term in the early 21st century. As a term it has many meanings. It is viewed most broadly as the misuse of office for unofficial ends. Transparency International defines it as one of the greatest challenges of the contemporary world. The catalogue of corrupt acts includes bribery, extortion, nepotism, fraud, and embezzlement. There are also different forms of corruption. While bureaucratic or petty corruption occurs at a smaller scale and within established social frameworks and governing norms, political or grand corruption occurs at the highest levels of government, involving significant subversion of political, legal, and economic systems. Political corruption is a relatively new challenge for social sciences, although it has been an issue for politics and society for many centuries. The topic attracts international scholars from various fields of social science such as political science, economics, international relations, philosophy, law, sociology, and history. The notion of corrupt and/or unethical behavior is usually analyzed by Western scholars from perspectives of political economy, behavioral ethics, organizational behavior, and management studies. However, some of the most important “classic” social science perspectives such as history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology provide important insights on corruption in particular for the non-Western contexts. There are a growing number of studies employing an interdisciplinary or even a holistic approach toward corruption that helps us to understand the complexity of the concept more adequately. In this regard, various empirical and theoretical studies have produced a bewildering array of alternative definitions, typologies, and remedies for corruption in various countries. Especially after the availability of wider data sets, empirical studies have flourished immensely to examine the causes and consequences of corruption. However, this has generated a rich methodological debate on how corruption could be measured and assessed. Coupled with emergence of wider data sets, including many countries around the globe, the signatures and ratification of international conventions against corruption resulted in significant anticorruption boom at the global scale. International efforts have promoted anticorruption provisions at national levels. Most of these anticorruption reform processes are driven to a large extent by government responses to economic crises. Following this trend, literature focusing on national anticorruption policies has emerged. Since then we have witnessed a boom of useful single and comparative country studies that analyze the diverging effects of international anticorruption initiatives. Yet, the cross-country comparisons revealed problems due to the fact that the definitions and meanings of corruption vary across countries, legal traditions, and cultures. Recently, more research has been conducted on country-specific conditions and implementation of anticorruption strategies in different contexts. The selected outputs listed below provide a general framework on political corruption including definition, historical background, measurement, and government responses at national, regional, and international level.
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The emerging middle powers in the Global South increasingly seek to produce domestic defence technologies. Drones in particular have become an important feature of middle power activism. The existing literature heavily focuses on the... more
The emerging middle powers in the Global South increasingly seek to produce domestic defence technologies. Drones in particular have become an important feature of middle power activism. The existing literature heavily focuses on the outcomes of the diffusion of drone technologies for regional and global politics. Yet not much has been written on the domestic impact of home-grown military technologies in middle powers. Therefore, we ask how the manufacture, export and use of drones promote regime survival, focusing on the case of Turkey. Turkey is a critical case because of its demonstrated middle power status and heavy investment in the development of armed drone platforms. Turkey's drone programme and warfare have considerably raised the international profile of the country's burgeoning defence sector. Yet we argue that the use of military tech also has boosting effects on domestic regime survival. This happens in three ways: promoting techno-nationalism and pride, strengthening border security and shaping regional order, and contesting global dynamics on the basis of national interests, security and self-sufficiency.
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Turkey has experienced a radical political transformation within the last decade. The promising reforms of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in its early years have gradually given way to autocratic politics. The transition to a... more
Turkey has experienced a radical political transformation within the last decade. The promising reforms of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in its early years have gradually given way to autocratic politics. The transition to a presidential regime has further widened the executive's control over the institutional checks and bureaucratic accountability mechanisms. Yet, the Court of Auditors-Turkey's supreme audit institutionhas continued to publish audit reports on numerous institutions, including AKP-run municipalities and private companies owned by AKP supporters, and revealed corruption, waste and irregularities in public spending. This article argues when certain domestic conditions (censored public servants, co-opted mainstream media, and suppressed opposition) are met, bureaucracy can function in autocratizing regimes since it does not generate political power costs for the government, but instead provides legitimacy to the incumbents in the international institutions of the liberal democratic order.
This study revisits the academic debate on rising populism and illiberalism in Europe that reduces the EU’s crises to those involving ‘liberal EU’ and ‘illiberal regimes’ without necessarily differentiating between these regimes. Applying... more
This study revisits the academic debate on rising populism and illiberalism in Europe that reduces the EU’s crises to those involving ‘liberal EU’ and ‘illiberal regimes’ without necessarily differentiating between these regimes. Applying Suchman’s multidimensional account of legitimacy to the EU, it unpacks the varying domestic contestations of two illiberal regimes against the different components of EU legitimacy within the context of two recent EU crises. Comparative analysis of how an illiberal insider (Hungary) and an illiberal outsider (Turkey) challenge the EU’s legitimacy in handling the rule of law and Syrian refugee crises, respectively, revealed two findings. First, Hungarian and Turkish actors raise divergent legitimacy contestations against the EU’s crisis management in the select cases. Second, their positionality towards the EU drives this divergence. While both countries seek to delegitimise the EU, their points of contention differ based on being in or outside the EU.
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The recent backsliding in judicial independence and erosion of rule of law in Turkey follow the findings of the existing literature which already informed us about the pathological effects and unintended consequences of the external... more
The recent backsliding in judicial independence and erosion of rule of law in Turkey follow the findings of the existing literature which already informed us about the pathological effects and unintended consequences of the external promotion of the EU conditions. Yet, we know little about the domestic strategies of the governments that enable them to capture the judiciary under the guise of EU-led reforms. This article argues that the frequent and ad hoc institutional changes demanded and funded by the EU and readily adopted by the political elites open a window opportunity for the consolidation of patronage networks within the judiciary system. This is achieved by the adoption of formal and informal domestic strategies of resistance-formal readoption, staff politicization and intimidation & bribery-remaking, distorting, and when necessary, reversing EU-led reforms in a way that enables governments to take control of the high judicial bodies and capture them from within.
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Inherited from the Ottoman Empire the Republic of Turkey had established a strong, centralized, and highly bureaucratic state. Although political elites of the early Republican era introduced several institutional reforms in order to... more
Inherited from the Ottoman Empire the Republic of Turkey had established a strong, centralized, and highly bureaucratic state. Although political elites of the early Republican era introduced several institutional reforms in order to reach modern Western standards, the patrimonial mentality and strong state characterized the political culture in the country throughout the years In the early 2000s the modernization project gained momentum when Turkey was given European Union (EU) candidacy status in Helsinki in 1999. Coupled with demands coming from the IMF and World Bank following the 2001 financial crisis the EU accession process has resulted in adoption of an impressive amount of political and economic reforms, which were expected to strengthen legal rules and procedures and enhance opportunities for doing business in Turkey Yet the empirical evidence suggests that substantial changes that have taken place in the last decade hardly eliminated the institutional ambiguity and patrimonial practices. Instead, they fostered new rent-seeking coalitions between the political elites and various capital groups while formal institutions have increasingly become subject to detrimental behavior of domestic actors.
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Europeanization as a crucial instrument for the democratization process in the target countries, requires gradual compliance with the EU membership conditions in that conditional positive incentives (ultimately the EU membership) in... more
Europeanization as a crucial instrument for the democratization process in the target countries, requires gradual compliance with the EU membership conditions in that conditional positive incentives (ultimately the EU membership) in return are offered as rewards. Provoked by the conflicts at domestic level, the current setbacks in Europeanization processes of several countries (here is Turkey and Serbia), however, put a query on the effectiveness of conditionality strategy. This study seeks to answer a highly related question to this debate: Does candidate status matters? And to what extent it matters? Unpacking the relationship between the Europeanization and the conditionality, the author argues that it is less the candidate/membership status per se that matters but rather unfavourable domestic factors that account for the limited impact of transformative power of EU and for low level of compliance in Turkey and Serbia. The empirical analysis of two cases reveals that credible acc...
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This paper examines the European Union (EU)’s actions regarding the rule of law (RoL) crisis in Hungary and Poland. As alignment among three EU institutions – European Parliament, European Commissi...
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ABSTRACT The Europeanisation process in Turkey that extended roughly from 1999 to 2006 boosted the political and cultural rights of diverse ethnic groups in Turkey, including Circassians, and strengthened their claims for equal... more
ABSTRACT The Europeanisation process in Turkey that extended roughly from 1999 to 2006 boosted the political and cultural rights of diverse ethnic groups in Turkey, including Circassians, and strengthened their claims for equal citizenship. With the loss or weakening of the EU as an anchor for democratic reform in the post-2007 period, however, the de-Europeanisation process has resulted in the disappearance of the main legal and institutional basis for the democratic integration of ethnocultural minorities. Nevertheless, analysis of the activities of four large Circassian communities in Turkey shows that the same process has enhanced the cultural reification of these groups as their survival strategy.
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As front runners in the EU accession process, Serbia and Montenegro have failed to control corruption yet managed to advance along the path to EU integration. Although they have stronger state capacity compared to other Western Balkan... more
As front runners in the EU accession process, Serbia and Montenegro have failed to control corruption yet managed to advance along the path to EU integration. Although they have stronger state capacity compared to other Western Balkan countries, the two have recently reverted to previous poor governance practices after initial headway meeting EU good governance conditions. An in-depth analysis of the two countries explains this paradox as the result of the combination of the EU accession process and increasing Chinese finance. While the EU’s stability-oriented strategy helped to consolidate these authoritarian regimes, Chinese funding policies have further strengthened patronage networks, fuelling corruption in the EU’s ‘stabilitocracies’.
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Europeanization as a crucial insrument for democrtatization process in target countries requires gradual complaince with EU membership conditions where conditional positive incentives (ultimately EU membership) in return are offered as... more
Europeanization as a crucial insrument for democrtatization process in target countries requires gradual complaince with EU membership conditions where conditional positive incentives (ultimately EU membership) in return are offered as rewards to acceding countries. Provoked by conflicts at domestic level, the current setbacks in Europeanization proceses of several countries (here is Turkey and Serbia), however, put a query on the effectiveness of conditionality strategy. This thesis seeks to answer a highly related question to this debate :Does candidate status matters? And to what extent it matters? Unpacking the relationship between Europeanization and conditinality, I argue that it is less the candidate/membeship status per se that matters but rather the unfavourable domestic factors, high costs of compliance, existence of domestic veto players and, the failure of the countries to include the civil society actors in the transformation process, that account for the limited impact...
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Research on Europeanization and domestic change has moved south-eastwards and was provided with another real-world experiment when it has meet with Turkey. This paper explores to what extent Europeanization approaches travel to Turkey,... more
Research on Europeanization and domestic change has moved south-eastwards and was provided with another real-world experiment when it has meet with Turkey. This paper explores to what extent Europeanization approaches travel to Turkey, which does have a membership perspective that looks, however, ever less credible. The first part outlines the main findings of research on ‘External Europeanization’ focusing on factors that have limited or at least qualified the domestic impact of the EU in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Western Balkan (WB) accession countries. The paper, then, discusses to what extent Europeanization approaches need further qualification when applied to Turkey, which squares on democracy with the Western Balkans (with the exception of Croatia), but whose statehood is less limited. We argue that existing Europeanization approaches, largely, account for the overall moderate degree of Europeanization in Turkey. Yet, selective and differential domestic chang...
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The recent backsliding in judicial independence and erosion of rule of law in Turkey follow the findings of the existing literature which already informed us about the pathological effects and unintended consequences of the external... more
The recent backsliding in judicial independence and erosion of rule of law in Turkey follow the findings of the existing literature which already informed us about the pathological effects and unintended consequences of the external promotion of the EU conditions. Yet, we know little about the domestic strategies of the governments that enable them to capture the judiciary under the guise of EU-led reforms. This article argues that the frequent and ad hoc institutional changes demanded and funded by the EU and readily adopted by the political elites open a window opportunity for the consolidation of patronage networks within the judiciary system. This is achieved by the adoption of formal and informal domestic strategies of resistance-formal readoption, staff politicization and intimidation & bribery-remaking, distorting, and when necessary, reversing EU-led reforms in a way that enables governments to take control of the high judicial bodies and capture them from within.
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This study presents an analysis of how the media reported the 2007 elections in Turkey. Past research on election campaign media coverage, particularly newspapers,suggests that the media can play an important role in informing voters.... more
This study presents an analysis of how the media reported the 2007 elections in Turkey. Past research on election campaign media coverage, particularly newspapers,suggests that the media can play an important role in informing voters. However, much of the research on campaign media coverage has focused on Western democracies with little attention paid to how features of the media system such as press regulations, ownership structures, journalistic practices, and partisan alignment in the press can both shape how election news is reported and its possible influence on voting decisions. In order to expand understanding of campaign media coverage outside Western democracies, this study examines how four Turkish newspapers covered parties and issues during the 10 weeks prior to the July 2007 elections.
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Monitoring is the formal instrument through which the Council of Europe imposes social sanctions on its member countries by publicly exposing their wrongdoings. As a soft governance tool, monitoring is argued to have a limited impact on... more
Monitoring is the formal instrument through which the Council of Europe imposes social sanctions on its member countries by publicly exposing their wrongdoings. As a soft governance tool, monitoring is argued to have a limited impact on state policies. Yet, in Turkey, Council of Europe monitoring worked to promote pro-democratic change and then backfired through the escalation of authoritarian practices. This article shows that being subjected to Council of Europe monitoring can lead to democratic change if and when its sanctioning requirements fit the political agenda of the incumbents and empower them against domestic opponents. In the case of misfit, the political costs of aligning with the Regional Organisations' sanctions increase for governments at home. Yet, as the Turkish case indicates, the outcome has not been inertia but rather the reverse as the government used the Council of Europe's social sanctions to legitimise its undemocratic measures until it regained power in internal political struggles.
This paper examines the European Union (EU)’s actions regarding the rule of law (RoL) crisis in Hungary and Poland. As alignment among three EU institutions – European Parliament, European Commission and European Council – is required for... more
This paper examines the European Union (EU)’s actions regarding the rule of law (RoL) crisis in Hungary and Poland. As alignment among three EU institutions – European Parliament, European Commission and European Council – is required for the enforcement of the punitive measures under Article 7 of the Treaty on EU, existing studies, to a great extent, rely on the conflict between the intergovernmental and supranational levels to account for the EU’s failure to sanction the RoL offenders. This article argues that EU’s failure to implement Article 7 cannot be explained by only one dimension of the internal power struggle in the EU. By exploring the complex politics underlying the RoL crisis, this article reveals four competing – Thin, Thick, Parochial and Global – visions of Europe supported by various EU institutions, member states, and extra-EU actors. Based on the EU’s official documents and media reports from the member states (more notable from Hungary since 2010 and Poland after 2015), the article suggests that cooperation and conflict between Thin, Thick, Parochial and Global Europe can better explain the ‘EU’s actions without sanctions’ approach towards the RoL crisis which has paradoxically provoked further public support for the RoL offenders instead of weakening them
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Monitoring is the formal instrument through which the Council of Europe imposes social sanctions on its member countries by publicly exposing their wrongdoings. As a soft governance tool, monitoring is argued to have a limited impact on... more
Monitoring is the formal instrument through which the Council of Europe imposes social sanctions on its member countries by publicly exposing their wrongdoings. As a soft governance tool, monitoring is argued to have a limited impact on state policies. Yet, in Turkey, Council of Europe monitoring worked to promote pro-democratic change and then backfired through the escalation of authoritarian practices. This article shows that being subjected to Council of Europe monitoring can lead to democratic change if and when its sanctioning requirements fit the political agenda of the incumbents and empower them against domestic opponents. In the case of misfit, the political costs of aligning with the Regional Organisations’ sanctions increase for governments at home. Yet, as the Turkish case indicates, the outcome has not been inertia but rather the reverse as the government used the Council of Europe’s social sanctions to legitimise its undemocratic measures until it regained power in internal political struggles.
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The paper introduces the curriculum, methods and workplan of a graduate course titled “EU Good Governance Promotion in Turkey”, taught by the author during the Spring semester of 2019-2020 at Altınbaş University in Istanbul, Turkey. It... more
The paper introduces the curriculum, methods and workplan of a graduate course titled “EU Good Governance Promotion in Turkey”, taught by the author during the Spring semester of 2019-2020 at
Altınbaş University in Istanbul, Turkey. It includes instructions for a simulation game on the European Council. The course endows students with knowledge on EU anti-corruption strategies whilst providing
analytical tools to understand good governance from a policy perspective and helps contextualize EU strategies and policies within the anti-corruption research. By doing so, the course aims to contribute to
the political science curricula at Turkish universities which remain rather weak when it comes to the EU-related issues of governance.
Altınbaş University in Istanbul, Turkey. It includes instructions for a simulation game on the European Council. The course endows students with knowledge on EU anti-corruption strategies whilst providing
analytical tools to understand good governance from a policy perspective and helps contextualize EU strategies and policies within the anti-corruption research. By doing so, the course aims to contribute to
the political science curricula at Turkish universities which remain rather weak when it comes to the EU-related issues of governance.
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EU’s membership incentives promoted rule of law (RoL) reforms that have enhanced the judicial capacity and promoted the modernisation of the judicial system in Turkey. However, they have hardly improved judicial independence and... more
EU’s membership incentives promoted rule of law (RoL) reforms that have enhanced the judicial capacity and promoted the modernisation of the judicial system in Turkey. However, they have hardly improved judicial independence and impartiality. In contrast, the institutional reconfiguration opened up opportunities for the judiciary capture. By unpacking the domestic politics of the RoL reforms, this paper reveals the foundations and mechanisms of the judiciary capture under the guise of the EU’s conditional incentives in Turkey. The empirical evidence coming from primary sources — EU’s legal documents, government reports, media outlets, and secondary sources –illustrates that the EU’s reward-based incentives enabled the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish acronym) with its Islamist roots to survive in the Kemalist state bureaucracy, reshuffle the power structures and establish its own patronage network in the judiciary. The incumbent AKP also benefited from the EU’s sanction-based incentives to shift the blame to the external actors and justify the emergency measures which are presented to the public as necessary to face exceptional threats in the aftermath of the July 2016 coup attempt. The emergency politics even mobilised further political and public support for the constitutional amendments in 2017 replacing the parliamentary regime with a presidential system and institutionalising a permanent state of emergency situation in the country.
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Son dönemde yeni Avrupa Birliği (AB) üyesi ülkelerde (özellikle Polonya ve Macaristan) yapılan bir takım anayasal ve yasal değişiklikler Birliğin kurucu ilkelerinden biri olan hukukun üstünlüğünü ihlal ettiği gerekçesiyle eleştirilmiştir.... more
Son dönemde yeni Avrupa Birliği (AB) üyesi ülkelerde (özellikle Polonya ve Macaristan) yapılan bir takım anayasal ve yasal değişiklikler Birliğin kurucu ilkelerinden biri olan hukukun üstünlüğünü ihlal ettiği gerekçesiyle eleştirilmiştir. Brüksel, üye ülkelerin oy hakkının bile elinden alınmasına imkan veren AB anlaşmasının yedinci maddesinin uygulanması yönünde adımlar atmıştır. Genel olarak ‘hukukun üstünlüğü krizi’ başlığı altında değerlendirilen bu gelişmeler, i) AB kurumlarının üye ülkelerde demokrasi, insan hakları, hukukun üstünlüğü gibi AB üyelik (demokratik) koşulluluğunun parçası olan kuralların ihlali karşısında gerekli donanıma sahip olmadığını ve ii) üye ülkelerin bu ihalelere karşı birlikte hareket etmekte zorlandıklarını göstermiştir. AB üye ülkelerinde etkin politikalar yürütülememesi, demokrasi, insan hakları, hukukun üstünlüğü ve yargı bağımsızlığı alanlarında üye devlet ortalamasından oldukça geride olan aday ülkelerde AB’nin izleyeceği strateji hakkında soru işaretlerini artırmıştır. Bu çalışma, AB’de hukukun üstünlüğü ilkesini denetleyen kurumsal mekanizmaları siyasi boyutları ile ele alırken, aday ülkeler için hukukun üstünlüğü ilkesini teşvik politikalarının genişleme strateji belgeleri çerçevesinde değişen gelişimini analiz etmektedir. Bulgular göstermektedir ki, AB, üye ülkelerde öğrendiği dersten hareketle genişleme stratejisi kapsamımda hukukun üstünlüğü ilkesinin teşvikine yönelik daha kapsamlı bir politika izlemeye başlamıştır. Bu haliyle çalışma, literatürde hukukun üstünlüğünü ihlal eden uygulamaları daha çok üye ülkeler nezdinde değerlendiren çalışmalara bir katkı yapmayı ve AB’nin bu alandaki politikalarına tarihsel bir derinlik ve karşılaştırmalı bir perspektif kazandırmayı amaçlamaktadır.
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Uluslararası yaptırımlar, devletlerin üyesi oldukları kurumların prensiplerini ihlal eden politikalarına karşı kullanılan önemlerdir. Ekonomik, cezai ve hukuki yaptırımların ihlalci ülkelerde sınırlı etkiye sahip olması bir alternatif... more
Uluslararası yaptırımlar, devletlerin üyesi oldukları kurumların prensiplerini ihlal eden politikalarına karşı kullanılan önemlerdir. Ekonomik, cezai ve hukuki yaptırımların ihlalci ülkelerde sınırlı etkiye sahip olması bir alternatif yöntem olarak kınama, ikna ve özellikle akran değerlendirmesine dayalı sosyal baskıyı öne çıkarmaktadır. Sosyal baskı, devletlerin üyesi oldukları kurumların değerlendirme takımları tarafından ortaya konan politika önerilerini dikkate almalarını, statü ve prestij kazanma arzusu veya statü kaybının yol açacağı dışlanma, aşağılanma gibi sosyal cezalardan kaçınma gibi motivasyonlarla reform yapmalarını teşvik edebilir. Uluslararası ve bölgesel örgütlerin üye ülkeleri için geliştirdikleri izleme yöntemleri ve değerlendirme takımlarının kurumsal yapısı sosyal baskının kapasitesini değiştiren özellikler taşıyabilir. İzleme ve akran değerlendirmesi tutarlı, şeffaf ve tarafsız şekilde uygulanır ve karşılıklı fikir alışverişine dayanırsa hedef hükümet tarafından daha meşru olarak algılanır ve sosyal anlamda oluşturacağı baskı da artar
Çalışma kapsamında Birleşmiş Milletler (küresel), OECD (alt-bölgesel), Avrupa Konseyi (bölgesel) ve Avrupa Birliği (bölgesel) gibi yolsuzlukla mücadelede öne çıkan rejimlerin kurumsal özellikleri incelenmiş ve sosyal baskı oluşturmak için belirtilen koşulları (karşılıklılık, tarafsızlık, tutarlılık, şeffaflık) ne ölçüde karşıladıkları analiz edilmiştir.Bu dört örgüt yolsuzlukla mücadele sözleşmelerinde yer alan ilkelerin üye ülkelerde ne ölçüde uygulanıp uygulanmadığını akran değerlendirmeleri ile izler ve detaylı öneriler ve eleştiriler sunarak ülkeleri baskı altına almayı hedeflerler. Fakat bu çalışma kapsamında yapılan karşılaştırmalı analiz, BM, OECD, Avrupa Konseyi ve Avrupa Birliği’nin yolsuzlukla mücadele rejimlerinin yol açtığı sosyal baskının varyasyonlar gösterdiğini ortaya koymuş, örgütlerin izleme ekiplerinin yapısı ve akran değerlendirme yöntemlerindeki farklıklara odaklanmıştır.
Çalışma kapsamında Birleşmiş Milletler (küresel), OECD (alt-bölgesel), Avrupa Konseyi (bölgesel) ve Avrupa Birliği (bölgesel) gibi yolsuzlukla mücadelede öne çıkan rejimlerin kurumsal özellikleri incelenmiş ve sosyal baskı oluşturmak için belirtilen koşulları (karşılıklılık, tarafsızlık, tutarlılık, şeffaflık) ne ölçüde karşıladıkları analiz edilmiştir.Bu dört örgüt yolsuzlukla mücadele sözleşmelerinde yer alan ilkelerin üye ülkelerde ne ölçüde uygulanıp uygulanmadığını akran değerlendirmeleri ile izler ve detaylı öneriler ve eleştiriler sunarak ülkeleri baskı altına almayı hedeflerler. Fakat bu çalışma kapsamında yapılan karşılaştırmalı analiz, BM, OECD, Avrupa Konseyi ve Avrupa Birliği’nin yolsuzlukla mücadele rejimlerinin yol açtığı sosyal baskının varyasyonlar gösterdiğini ortaya koymuş, örgütlerin izleme ekiplerinin yapısı ve akran değerlendirme yöntemlerindeki farklıklara odaklanmıştır.
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The Europeanisation process in Turkey that extended roughly from 1999 to 2006 boosted the political and cultural rights of diverse ethnic groups in Turkey, including Circassians, and strengthened their claims for equal citizenship. With... more
The Europeanisation process in Turkey that extended roughly from 1999 to 2006 boosted the political and cultural rights of diverse ethnic groups in Turkey, including Circassians, and strengthened their claims for equal citizenship. With the loss or weakening of the EU as an anchor for democratic reform in the post-2007 period, however, the de-Europeanisation process has resulted in the disappearance of the main legal and institutional basis for the democratic integration of ethnocultural minorities. Nevertheless, analysis of the activities of four large Circassian communities in Turkey shows that the same process has enhanced the cultural reification of these groups as their survival strategy
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Bu çalışmanın amacı, Avrupa bütünleşmesi çalışmalarında derogasyonların rolünü incelemektir. Bu kapsamda şu sorulara yanıt aranmaktadır: Derogasyon Avrupa bütünleşmesi bağlamında nasıl tanımlanmaktadır? Derogasyon hakkı kim tarafından... more
Bu çalışmanın amacı, Avrupa bütünleşmesi çalışmalarında derogasyonların rolünü incelemektir. Bu kapsamda şu sorulara yanıt aranmaktadır: Derogasyon Avrupa bütünleşmesi bağlamında nasıl tanımlanmaktadır? Derogasyon hakkı kim tarafından hangi kriterlere göre devletlere verilebilir? Bütünleşme sürecine derogasyonların etkisi nasıl olmuştur? Yer yer Hukuk, örgüt sosyolojisi ve siyaset bilimi literatürlerinde konu edilen derogasyon meselesine kavramsal ve kuramsal açıdan eleştiriler getiren bu çalışma, çeşitli AB derogasyonlarının vaka analizleri yoluyla Avrupa bütünleşmesine ilişkin rasyonalist açıklamaların yetersiz kaldığını göstermektedir
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This article examines the practical application of legal reforms to fight corruption in Turkey, focusing on three policy sectors: civil administration, public finance management and public procurement. Facing increasing pressure,... more
This article examines the practical application of legal reforms to fight corruption in Turkey, focusing on three policy sectors: civil administration, public finance management and public procurement. Facing increasing pressure, incumbent governments have adopted international anti-corruption norms and programs in the last two decades. However, the adoption and adaptation of formal institutions tends to remain decoupled from informal behavioral practices, thereby curbing the effectiveness of Europeanization in the Turkish public sector – albeit to varying degrees. The policy comparison of this article shows that external anti-corruption efforts, especially those initiated by the EU, can help domestic actors to address the problem of decoupling when certain domestic factors are present.
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""The book investigates the scope and limitations of the transformative power of EU enlargement in the Western Balkans. The extension of EU enlargement policy to the Western Balkans has generated high expectations that... more
""The book investigates the scope and limitations of the transformative power of EU enlargement in the Western Balkans. The extension of EU enlargement policy to the Western Balkans has generated high expectations that enlargement will regulate democratic institution-building and foster reform, much as it did in Central and Eastern Europe. However, there is very little research on whether and how unfavourable domestic conditions might mitigate the transformative power of the EU. This volume investigates the role of domestic factors, identifying ‘stateness’ as the missing link between the assumed transformative power of the EU and the actual capacity to adopt EU rules across the region. Including chapters on Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, leading scholars in the field offer up-to-date comparative analysis of key areas of institutional and policy reform; including state bureaucracy, rule of law, electoral management, environmental governance, cooperation with the International Court of Justice, economic liberalization and foreign policy. Looking to the future and the implications for policy change, European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans provides a new theoretical and empirical focus on this little understood area. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of EU politics, comparative democratisation, post-communist transitions and Balkan area studies.""