Papers by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
Democratization, 2024
Through a comparative study of Turkey and Israel, this article highlights a specific strategy tha... more Through a comparative study of Turkey and Israel, this article highlights a specific strategy that autocratizing populist incumbents in ethnically divided societies utilize when they face election setbacks. A "blood gambit" entails fomenting violent conflict to keep the opposition divided along identitarian cleavages, while creating a rallyaround-the-flag effect to help the incumbent win a renewed election. After failing to secure a parliamentary majority in June 2015, Erdoğan ended the Kurdish peace process and engineered repeat elections amidst heightened nationalist fervour and renewed conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). These elections gave the Justice and Development Party (AKP) a majority and marked the beginning of its alliance with the ultranationalists. Following Israel's March 2021 elections, Netanyahu increased state repression of Palestinians, which triggered interethnic violence and renewed confrontation with Hamas. The violence threw a wrench into coalitionbuilding efforts between ideologically and ethnically diverse opposition parties. The comparison of Israel and Turkey as two countries with different majority religions, ethnic compositions and socioeconomic levels shows that "blood gambit" is not a parochial strategy. Our analysis also demonstrates that the outcomes of these strategies are shaped by differing institutional and political contexts, in particular, the extent of executive aggrandizement and the level of party fragmentation.
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Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Journal of Politics in Latin America, 2021
Between 2016 and 2020, a group of activist generals successfully plotted the Brazilian military&#... more Between 2016 and 2020, a group of activist generals successfully plotted the Brazilian military's gradual return to the political center stage with powers unseen since the dictatorship. They achieved this without formally breaking the law, suspending the democratic process or overthrowing the government. We call this a “stealth intervention,” an incremental yet systematic attempt to redesign politics without causing a rupture, that fits neither in the existing typology of coups nor in the literature on democratic backsliding. We argue that Brazil’ stealth intervention, built upon the military’s existing tutelary prerogatives and driven by an unreformed praetorian worldview that resurfaced amidst a sustained crisis of democracy, challenges the prevalent view of the armed forces as a reactive force that intervenes in civilian politics only when its institutional interests are threatened. Finally, we show that democratic backsliding in Brazil started under Bolsonaro’s predecessor, ...
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Despite their notable differences, Brazil and Turkey have been widely compared as emerging econom... more Despite their notable differences, Brazil and Turkey have been widely compared as emerging economic powers led by popular governments in the 2000s. These comparisons have largely ignored the parallel institutional evolution of their civil service since the early 20th century. Throughout the past century, the two countries experienced simultaneous attempts to reform and modernise their public administrations mostly in the Weberian model. From the 1980s onwards, their paths diverged: Brazil a er re-democratisation reinforced the central, merit-based structure of its civil service, while Turkey introduced new private sec- tor arrangements and practices. Although today both civil services boast a mix of career and contract arrangements, they also display different structural characteristics, and face opposite sets of challenges regarding meritocracy, professionalism, efficiency and political patronage. While until recently Turkey could be viewed as a relatively successful example of economic and political liberalisation – including integrating NPM principles into the state bureaucracy – the country’s re- cent decline into authoritarianism and excessive political interference in state institutions have turned it into a cautionary tale for Brazil.
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Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2016
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Revista do Serviço Público
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This research project has two interconnected goals. First, it attempts to unpack and redefine ‘hy... more This research project has two interconnected goals. First, it attempts to unpack and redefine ‘hybrid regimes’ – a concept that has emerged from the ‘third wave’ democratisation literature in the late 1990s and shares with this literature its underlying cultural, ideological and teleological assumptions. I start with a critique of these dominant assumptions and point to the need to rethink hybrid regimes outside of these parameters. I then propose a more limited and lucid definition for hybrid regimes as political systems built on two contesting sources of legitimacy – elitist and popular – and corresponding institutions of guardianship and democracy. Hybrid regimes, in other words, are not ‘diminished democracies’ or ‘competitive autocracies’, but an altogether separate regime type that feature clearly defined tutelary and electoral institutions. Based on this redefinition, I present five hypotheses regarding the dynamics of change in hybrid regimes, which are subsequently applied ...
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Despite their notable differences, Brazil and Turkey have been widely compared as emerging econom... more Despite their notable differences, Brazil and Turkey have been widely compared as emerging economic powers led by popular governments in the 2000s. These comparisons have largely ignored the parallel institutional evolution of their civil service since the early 20th century. Throughout the past century, the two countries experienced simultaneous attempts to reform and modernise their public administrations mostly in the Weberian model. From the 1980s onwards, their paths diverged: Brazil a er re-democratisation reinforced the central, merit-based structure of its civil service, while Turkey introduced new private sec- tor arrangements and practices.
Although today both civil services boast a mix of career and contract arrangements, they also display different structural characteristics, and face opposite sets of challenges regarding meritocracy, professionalism, efficiency and political patronage. While until recently Turkey could be viewed as a relatively successful example of economic and political liberalisation – including integrating NPM principles into the state bureaucracy – the country’s re- cent decline into authoritarianism and excessive political interference in state institutions have turned it into a cautionary tale for Brazil.
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Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2016
This paper seeks to explain Turkey’s rapid de-democratization from the conceptual perspective of ... more This paper seeks to explain Turkey’s rapid de-democratization from the conceptual perspective of existential insecurity, which accounts for the unwillingness of incumbents to share or relinquish power. The Kemalist era, the multi-party period and the early AKP era have all shown elements of the radicalizing effects of political insecurity and the weak institutions which stem from them. The concurrence of a revisionist Islamist project and geopolitical and ideological crises in Turkey’s overlapping neighbourhoods, however, have driven existential angst and insecurity among the incumbents to novel proportions. Under the conditions of this aggravated insecurity, the consolidation of a stable authoritarian regime appears unlikely, reducing the possible scenarios for Turkey’s immediate future to a weak and contested authoritarian arrangement or further escalation of conflict and instability.
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Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2016
This introductory essay gives a synoptic overview of what we will describe as Turkey’s ‘exit from... more This introductory essay gives a synoptic overview of what we will describe as Turkey’s ‘exit from democracy’, a shift to authoritarianism and an Islamist ‘revolution from above’ that comes on the back of a much longer ‘passive revolution’. Secondly, it engages with the ideas and papers emanating from an International Symposium on ‘Populism, majoritarianism and crises of liberal democracy’, which the authors convened at the University of Graz in October 2015.
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Book Chapters by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
A Companion to Modern Turkey's Centennial, 2023
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Authoritarianism and Resistance in Turkey: Conversations on Democratic and Social Challenges, 2018
From the late 18th century onward, the twin revolutions of industrialization and nationalism pose... more From the late 18th century onward, the twin revolutions of industrialization and nationalism posed existential threats to multireligious, multiethnic, multicultural territorial empires like those of the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans. During this period, the imperial ruling elite responded to these new challenges using various ideological interventions. In the Ottoman Empire, these were, respectively, Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism. Kemalism is the offspring of this turbulent process, borne out of the rise and fall of these three ideologies and the experience of a decade of war and destruction between 1912 and 1922. It emerged as the ideology of revolutionary Westernization from above, conceived and carried out by the modernized intelligentsia of a largely premodern society.
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in Başer, B. and Öztürk, A.E (eds), "Authoritarian Politics in Turkey: Elections, Resistance and the AKP", London: I.B. Tauris, 2017
The transformation from a tutelary democracy to a competitive authoritarian regime, via failed de... more The transformation from a tutelary democracy to a competitive authoritarian regime, via failed democratization, has had a transformative impact on Turkey’s electoral institutions. This chapter surveys this transformation by examining the function and integrity of elections under Turkey’s tutelary democracy, during its brief “liberal moment” in the 2000s and under the AKP’s political hegemony in the 2010s. It also focuses on the repeat elections of 2015 to illustrate how a dominant party operating in an insecure political environment can respond when faced with an election loss.
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in Kadıoğlu, A., Öktem, K. and Karlı, M. (eds) "Another Empire? Turkey’s foreign policy in a new century", Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2012
Based on a talk delivered at the international conference on Turkey's foreign policy at St Anthon... more Based on a talk delivered at the international conference on Turkey's foreign policy at St Anthony's College, Oxford, in October 2010, this paper identifies Turkey's relationship with Iran as a 'delicate balancing act' and discusses its main determinants in light of the changing geopolitical dynamics at the early stages of the Arab Uprisings. Rejecting the claim, widely adhered to in western foreign policy circles circa 2009 and 2010, that Turkey was facing an existential choice between the East and the West vis-a-vis its Iran policy, it argues that the Turkish–Iranian relationship is driven neither by regime type nor ideology, but rather a balance of geopolitical interests.
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PhD Thesis by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
This doctoral thesis, submitted to the London School of Economics in February 2014, has two inter... more This doctoral thesis, submitted to the London School of Economics in February 2014, has two interconnected goals. First, it attempts to unpack and redefine ‘hybrid regimes’ – a concept that has emerged from the ‘third wave’ democratisation literature in the late 1990s and shares with this literature its underlying cultural, ideological and teleological assumptions. I start with a critique of these dominant assumptions and point to the need to rethink hybrid regimes outside of these parameters. I then propose a more limited and lucid definition for hybrid regimes as political systems built on two contesting sources of legitimacy – elitist and popular – and corresponding institutions of guardianship and democracy. Hybrid regimes, in other words, are not ‘diminished democracies’ or ‘competitive autocracies’, but an altogether separate regime type that feature clearly defined tutelary and electoral institutions. Based on this redefinition, I present five hypotheses regarding the dynamics of change in hybrid regimes, which are subsequently applied to the two case studies: the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey.
The second goal of the thesis is to present a new comparative framework to analyse the post-Cold War dynamics of change in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey, two countries with political systems that scholars have found difficult to categorise and observers often treated as polar opposites due to their seemingly inimical official ideologies, Khomeinism and Kemalism. Through studying their hybrid institutional characteristics and the role of structural factors and human agency at the critical political junctures that the two countries experienced in the late 1990s and the 2000s, I endeavour to contribute to the scholarly discussion on the dynamics of interaction and legitimation between popular and elite rule.
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Monographs by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
SEESOX Book Series, Feb 2013
In this essay, we try to dis-entangle the threads of the Western condition in the case of Turkey ... more In this essay, we try to dis-entangle the threads of the Western condition in the case of Turkey and the new Middle East in three phases. We start with the current state of play in the region, analysing above all the shift taking place around the Sunni-Shia axis and what this means for the use and misuse of ‘Turkey as a model’. We move on to a historically informed lay-out of the three phases of AKP foreign policy, which also correspond to three fundamental logics of Turkey’s “western condition”, namely “Europeanisation”, “Autonomisation” and “Americanisation”. Finally, we ask whether and how these three dimensions may be combined in the current climate, and suggest options for doing so.
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Adelphi Paper, 2007
There is no recipe for democratisation that can be readily applied to all countries. Every countr... more There is no recipe for democratisation that can be readily applied to all countries. Every country presents unique factors that influence the fate of its democratic reforms, which must therefore be evaluated within their specific socio-political, cultural and historical context. Building on this premise, this paper examines military reform and democratisation through the experiences of Turkey and Indonesia, two democratising countries with predominantly Muslim populations, secular regimes, and militaries that are deeply involved in politics. The paper strives to explain why both the Turkish and Indonesian militaries, which have developed a sense of ownership over the state, may be wary of democratic change; how ‘the people’ perceive the military’s traditional role in society; and the direction in which societal and military attitudes towards democratic reform have been shaping over the years. In relating these domestic observations to various external factors, it seeks to identify the regional and global trends, events and actors that promote and obstruct the development of substantive democracy in each country, and to draw broader lessons for the study of democratisation and military reform. (Adelphi Paper No. 392, Nov 2007)
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Opinion Pieces by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
OpenDemocracy, 29 May 2017 - This obsession with personalities can fuel the very passions and ten... more OpenDemocracy, 29 May 2017 - This obsession with personalities can fuel the very passions and tensions that such individuals feed on, and obscure the underlying factors that explain their rise in the first place.
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Huffington Post, 23 April 2017 - It seems that Erdoğan’s strategy of ruling by tension and polar... more Huffington Post, 23 April 2017 - It seems that Erdoğan’s strategy of ruling by tension and polarization is proving increasingly costly not just for Turkey, which is mired in ever-deepening socio-political and economic problems, but also for the AKP government as well.
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Huffington Post, 17 March 2017 - Even by the standards of its troubled past, the academic purges ... more Huffington Post, 17 March 2017 - Even by the standards of its troubled past, the academic purges sweeping Turkey today are unprecedented in scope and intensity.
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Papers by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
Although today both civil services boast a mix of career and contract arrangements, they also display different structural characteristics, and face opposite sets of challenges regarding meritocracy, professionalism, efficiency and political patronage. While until recently Turkey could be viewed as a relatively successful example of economic and political liberalisation – including integrating NPM principles into the state bureaucracy – the country’s re- cent decline into authoritarianism and excessive political interference in state institutions have turned it into a cautionary tale for Brazil.
Book Chapters by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
PhD Thesis by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
The second goal of the thesis is to present a new comparative framework to analyse the post-Cold War dynamics of change in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey, two countries with political systems that scholars have found difficult to categorise and observers often treated as polar opposites due to their seemingly inimical official ideologies, Khomeinism and Kemalism. Through studying their hybrid institutional characteristics and the role of structural factors and human agency at the critical political junctures that the two countries experienced in the late 1990s and the 2000s, I endeavour to contribute to the scholarly discussion on the dynamics of interaction and legitimation between popular and elite rule.
Monographs by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
Opinion Pieces by Karabekir Akkoyunlu
Although today both civil services boast a mix of career and contract arrangements, they also display different structural characteristics, and face opposite sets of challenges regarding meritocracy, professionalism, efficiency and political patronage. While until recently Turkey could be viewed as a relatively successful example of economic and political liberalisation – including integrating NPM principles into the state bureaucracy – the country’s re- cent decline into authoritarianism and excessive political interference in state institutions have turned it into a cautionary tale for Brazil.
The second goal of the thesis is to present a new comparative framework to analyse the post-Cold War dynamics of change in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey, two countries with political systems that scholars have found difficult to categorise and observers often treated as polar opposites due to their seemingly inimical official ideologies, Khomeinism and Kemalism. Through studying their hybrid institutional characteristics and the role of structural factors and human agency at the critical political junctures that the two countries experienced in the late 1990s and the 2000s, I endeavour to contribute to the scholarly discussion on the dynamics of interaction and legitimation between popular and elite rule.