2020, Vol. 1(1), 9-29
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
https://dergi.bilgi.edu.tr/index.php/reflektif
DOI: 10.47613/reflektif.2020.3
Received: 08.08.2020
Accepted: 30.08.2020
Online Published: 01.10.2020
Yunus Sözen*
Popular Will against Democracy: Populist Autocratization in Turkey
Abstract
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 elected rulers and
prone to concentration of power), by 2011, the party managed to reframe Turkish political institutions according to its right-wing
populist vision of democracy, an authoritarian regime with competitive elections.
Öz
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 düzenlemeyi
başardığını iddia ediyorum.
Keywords
Populism, autocratization in Turkey, executive aggrandizement; DP, AKP
Anahtar Kelimeler
Popülizm, Türkiye’de otoriterleşme, yürütmenin güçlendirilmesi, DP, AKP
*
Le Moyne College, sozenmy@lemoyne.edu, ORCID: 0000-0001-8415-4709.
9
Yunus Sözen
Introduction
10
Although populism is a controversial social science concept, currently there seems to be an
acknowledgement in both social scientific and public debates that populist parties, movements
or leaders are on the rise (Judis, 2016; Rooduijn, 2019; Lacey, 2019). In fact, in the last two
decades, populists have been gaining momentum not only in populism’s traditional stronghold, Latin America, but also, they have been acquiring power or reconfiguring party systems
well beyond the region, including in consolidated democracies in Europe and North America
(Roberts, 2007; Rooduijn, 2019; Lacey, 2019). Since its transition to a competitive regime
after the Second World War, Turkey has also been one of the prominent, if understudied,
cases where populists have constituted a major political force. In the 1950s, during the earlier
wave of populism (the 2nd wave), Turkey experienced right-wing populism-in-power during
the rule of the DP (1950-1960) (Sunar, 1983, pp. 2079-2086; Sayarı, 2002, pp. 77-80; Taşkın,
2007, pp. 91-103; Sözen, 2010, pp. 378-388). In the last wave of populism, Turkey produced
another major case of populism-in-power with the AKP’s right-wing populism.
To different degrees, these two single party rule periods satisfy major components of
most established definitions of populism (Ostiguy, 1998; Mudde, 2004; Moffitt, 2016). However, despite various recent studies of global populist waves within the literature (Woods,
2014; Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017, pp. 21-41), the DP case has not become one of the
acknowledged cases for the second wave of populism like its contemporaries, which include
among others, the cases of the Vargas (Brazil) and Peron (Argentina) governments1. On the
other hand, conceptualizations of the AKP as an instance of populism have taken a rather
convoluted route. Until well into the AKP’s third term in office (2011-2015), the concept of
populism did not receive serious scholarly attention as a central component of this party’s
ideology. In fact, with the exception of a few early examples that named the party’s ideology
as “neo-conservative populism” (Sözen, 2008; also see: 2010, pp. 415-423; 2011, pp. 7-23),
or “neoliberal populism” (Yıldırım, 2009), or the party’s political strategy as “conservative
populism” (Taşkın, 2008, p. 54), the debate centered mainly on whether the AKP was a conservative democratic or an Islamist party, and/or whether it represented the continuation of
the center-right tradition in Turkey, or the Islamic one (Tepe, 2005; Dağı, 2008; Özbudun
and Hale, 2010; Heper, 2013). Yet recently, after the deepening of the AKP’s authoritarian
politics, and in line with “the recent explosion of populism studies” (Rooduijn, 2018, p. 363)
which resulted in response to the rise of populist leaders/parties/movements in Europe and the
US, the AKP is now widely considered to be a major case of this global phenomenon (Elçi,
2019; Çelik and Balta, 2020).
After outlining a particular populist route to competitive (or electoral) authoritarianism,2 my first argument is on the populist conception of democracy in Turkey, and the AKP’s
place in it. I maintain that, from the beginning of its rule, the party has been in one crucial respect a clear continuation of the center-right tradition in Turkey: its populism. To demonstrate
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
this, I trace the continuity of the main aspects of populism in Turkey from the DP period (1950
to 1960) to the AKP period (2002 to present), most importantly, their shared populist vision
of democracy and this vision’s political institutional expression. I also note that, although the
social content of their populisms differed, and these two parties faced different institutional constraints (most importantly different constitutional frameworks), their shared vision of
populist democracy was nonetheless instrumental in the autocratization processes of both of
these periods.
The second focus of the paper is on the regime dynamics under the rule of the AKP. On
this issue, until recently, the hegemonic position within the academic and intellectual debates
interpreted these dynamics using the language of democratization and its challenges. In such
accounts, Turkey was seen as democratizing, or experiencing problems/challenges with its
democratic consolidation process (İnsel, 2003; Hale and Özbudun, 2010; Müftüler-Baç and
Keyman, 2012). There were early exceptions to this position, for example, those that claimed
that after 2007, Turkey started moving “from tutelary democracy to populist competitive
authoritarianism” (Sözen, 2008, p. 80), or that from 2007 on, the AKP was “on its way to
institutionalizing an electoral authoritarian regime” (Sözen, 2010, p. 423), or that by 2011,
uncertainties in Turkish politics rendered Turkey’s “affinities with ‘hybrid democracies’ more
striking than ever” (Aslan-Akman, 2012, p. 92). However, since the 2014
3 harsh government
crackdown on the Gezi uprisings, and concomitant with Turkey’s steep decline on most political regime indexes, there is now a growing body of literature, and a growing consensus,
maintaining that Turkey is transitioning to some form of authoritarianism under the rule of
the AKP (Özbudun, 2014; Somer, 2016; Başer and Öztürk, 2017).
In line with assessments that point out the earlier authoritarian slide in the AKP period,
I argue that an autocratization process started during the second term of the party, and by
its third electoral victory in 2011, the AKP had already managed to design Turkish political
institutions according to its populist authoritarian vision. Therefore, based on this perspective, politics in Turkey after 2011 should be seen as politics in an authoritarian-heavy mixed
regime and major political crises as critical moments in the autocratization process that was
already under way. As such, events like the Gezi uprisings and the government’s heavy-handed
reaction to it in 2013, the December 17-25 crisis of 2013 and the government’s response to
it, the repeat elections in 2015, and the constitutional referendum in 2017, do not constitute moments where the AKP government had a populist or authoritarian turn (or shift or
drift) (Özbudun, 2014). Instead, they are instances where a populist government that had
already amassed an abundance of authoritarian instruments, intervened into politics in ways
that would be impossible in a democracy, even if the government’s actions in these critical
moments furthered autocratization.
11
Yunus Sözen
Below, I begin by briefly defining populism and democracy, and then overview the
literature on their relationship, locating my argument in it. I then trace the continuities and
discontinuities of the populist conception of politics between the DP and the AKP in Turkey.
Finally, I explicate populist autocratization in Turkey under the AKP.
Popular Will in Power against Democracy: Populism and Autocratization
For the most part, the academic debate on populism has revolved around three issues: the
concept’s definition, the origins of populism (the reasons for the emergence of populist parties/leaders/movements), and populism’s impact on political regimes. In this section, I briefly
define the two main concepts of the article, populism and democracy. I then outline my main
argument on their relationship, locating it within the literature on populism’s impact on democracies. I overview the origins of populism debate later in the article when I discuss the
emergence of the AKP’s populism.
Populism
12
On the nature of populism, there are accounts that define populism as a political strategy,
style, discourse, or ideology (Ostiguy, 1998; Weyland, 2001; Mudde, 2004; Moffitt, 2016).
I make use of an ideological definition of populism by distinguishing its social and political
visions. Mudde defines what I call the social vision of populism (drawing boundaries internal
to the society) as follows: “a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately
separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt
elite’” (Mudde, 2004, p. 543). Also, in line with this definition, I view “populism’s political
vision (and its conception of democracy) as the reflection of the popular will in politics, or
as making the popular will preponderant” (Sözen, 2019: 268). Kaltwasser argues for this
ideational definition of populism in comparative research, referring to its ability to travel well
between different time periods and contexts (2015: 191). But also, this definition of populism
as a thin-centered ideology makes better sense of why disparate groups with divergent substantive ideologies (conservatives and liberals or left and right-wingers) are often capable of
coming together in different contexts -- against the social or political groups that they deem
the establishment, or the elite. In other words, this definition of populism captures what more
mechanical definitions cannot adequately account for: the appeal of populism. This appeal is
centered in the cross-cutting democratic allure of populism’s core concepts of the popular will,
people’s power, and the righteousness of popular values. This illusion of populist democracy
often coalesces disparate groups that maintain a strong disdain of what they conceive to be the
degenerated elite or the establishment – as well as the large segments of the society that they
view as culturally associated with these anti-populist political actors.
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
Finally, although it is not part of the definition, populism’s political vision (or its conception of democracy) has a clear institutional expression as well. Populists primarily rely on
competitive elections as the mechanism to reflect the popular will in power, and they view
other aspects of modern democracy, like constitutional mechanisms (if they are designed as
checks on power), as redundant or as obstacles against the translation of popular will in
power (Sözen, 2019). One salient example of the populist emphasis on the ballot box as a
popular-will revelation mechanism is the description of real democracy by Argentina’s popular leader Peron as “the expression of the people’s will in free elections” (1950, p. 180). De
la Torre makes a similar observation for two contemporary cases of populist rule: “President
Rafael Correa of Ecuador views elections as the ultimate expression of the people’s will, as did
the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela” (2015, p. 13).
Democracy
In this article, I utilize a procedural definition of democracy that emphasizes competitive elections (Schumpeter, 1962) and oppositional liberties - freedom of expression, information,
and association – which make those elections genuinely competitive (Dahl, 1989, p. 233).
In addition, modern democracies include constitutional mechanisms of checks and balances
along with relatively autonomous state institutions (Bobbio, 2005, p. 13). As a result, modern democracy is built on a complex system of relationships between different political and
state elites. Moreover, in a modern democracy, the coexistence of different power centers that
check each other protects the liberties that make it possible for the opposition to challenge the
government-in-power. This protection, in turn, ensures a level playing field between the ruling
groups and the opposition.
A critical issue about modern representative democracy defined as such, is that it is
based on the competition between different factions of political elite that rule with considerable autonomy after they come to power. Also, separate dimensions of modern representative
democracy (elections, oppositional liberties, and constitutional mechanisms) are not by themselves necessarily democratic or authoritarian. For example, the electoral mechanism tends to
generate rulers that are broadly autonomous from the ruled/citizens, “because elections are
not authorizing rulers on concrete matters (no specific binding mandates and formal instructions), but authorizing them to rule in general” (Sözen, 2019, p. 274; for a broader discussion
of the issue, see: Manin, 1997, pp. 266-268). Also, other dimensions of modern democracy,
like individual or collective liberties and constitutional mechanisms of checks and balances, are originally designed to protect individual liberties or produce good/stable government.
However, they fulfill a democratic function when they restrict the autonomy of the electorally
authorized faction of the ruling elite, to an extent forcing them into giving an account of their
actions to the general public (Manin, 1997; also see: Sözen, 2019).
13
Yunus Sözen
Based on these definitions, below, I locate my argument on the relationship of democracy and populism within the general literature.
Ideal Populist Democracy as Competitive Authoritarianism
14
On the relationship between democracy and populism, among the theoretical studies, there
are accounts that consider populism as ambivalent about democracy (Kaltwasser, 2012) or
potentially democratic (Mouffe, 2000; Laclau, 2005). Still, a majority of scholars see populism
as a threat to democracy (Abst and Rummens, 2007; Espejo, 2015, Müller, 2016). Among the
more empirically oriented research, Levitsky and Loxton use a political strategic definition of
populism, and connect populism to the emergence of competitive authoritarianism (2013).
Mudde and Kaltwasser, on the other hand, employ a definition of populism as a thin-centered
ideology and argue that populism can be both a threat and a corrective on democracy (2012).
In this paper, I use Mudde and Kaltwasser’s ideological definition, but unlike them,
I posit that populism is an authoritarian threat, and populists’ ideal regime type fits well
with competitive or electoral authoritarianism. This is because populists-in-power bring out
authoritarian aspects of competitive elections, unless they engage in institutional innovation
(outside the spectrum of modern democracy) and build alternative populist democratic institutions that would form and then translate popular will to power (participatory mechanisms
such as citizenship assemblies). This is the case because populists legitimize the eradication of
constitutional limits in front of the elected faction of rulers, as well as the restriction of oppositional liberties, in the name of reflecting the popular will in power. In other words, the populist
claim of reflecting the people’s will in power carries the potential of “exalting elected rulers
and generating strong rulers and weak citizens” (Sözen, 2019, p. 269). This fits well with what
Bermeo names ‘executive aggrandizement’ as a mechanism of “democratic decline” (2016).
Therefore, first and foremost, because populists denigrate institutions of checks and
balances and oppositional liberties, they end up emphasizing the authoritarian features of
the very mechanism of competitive elections that they deem as the most democratic. But also,
there is a second mechanism that connects populists’ vision of democracy to democratic erosion (or autocratization in a democracy), and it is related to populist leadership. As emphasized in liberal political theory (Holmes, 1995), leaders should practice self-restraint for the
modern representative framework to function as democracy. However, populism carries the
danger of turning this liberal democratic virtue of self-restraint into a democratic vice. This is
because populist leadership claims to reflect popular will in power, and as such self-restraint
would mean betrayal of the power that is “entrusted to” (Canovan, 1999, p. 8) them by the
people. Thus, populist leaders should be expected to do what they can and not what the norms
and conventions of modern democracies stipulate that they should do.
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
Both of these features of populism were in place in Turkey’s recent autocratization. Below, I trace the ideational origins of the AKP’s populism first and then discuss AKP’s populism
and Turkey’s recent populist path to authoritarianism.
The Ideational Origins of the AKP’s Populism: The Democrat Party
In this section, I focus on the DP’s use of core populist concepts and its populist vision of democracy during its rule between 1950 and 1960. I maintain that these core populist concepts
are later taken up by the AKP leadership, and most importantly DP’s executive-centric conception of democracy.
The ‘National Will’ in Kemalism: Non-populist conception
The DP was formed in 1946 as the most significant opposition to Turkey’s founding party, the
Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) that ruled the country as a single
party regime from 1923 to 1950. The CHP’s official ideology, Kemalism, as articulated by its
founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, maintained that for Turkey’s political survival as an independent country, Turkish society needed to be transformed into a homogeneous and civilized
country. Homogeneity implied a nation without social conflicts and pluralism; civilizationism,
on the other hand, was a set of principles that aimed at becoming European in all social and
political facets of life (Köker, 2000, pp. 133-137; Bora, 2017, pp. 129-139; see for the terminology of homogeneity and civilizationism: Sözen, 2010, pp. 84-132).
Kemalists also used extensively the concept of the national (or sometimes popular) will,
but in a non-populist framework. In fact, Kemalism was an anti-populist ideology for two
reasons. On the one hand, it was a transformative ideology, and as such it did not exalt the
presumed values of the actually existing Turkish society; on the other hand, Kemalism was not
based on extracting a faction of the Turkish society and naming it as the pure people against
another faction of it, pejoratively labeled the elite. Instead, it was a nationalist homogenizing
ideology that conceived of the national will as the expression of the whole society against
external (external to the society) forces -- these forces were other countries, the caliphate, the
sultanate but not other groups within the society (for a relevant discussion on the Kemalist
conception of the Republic, see: Parla, 1994, pp. 136-138; for the differences of Kemalist and
populist conceptions of national/popular will, see: Sözen, 2010, pp. 274-284). The DP’s political ideology was shaped by the opportunities and limitations provided by this foundational
ideology of Turkey.
15
Yunus Sözen
DP’s Populist “National Will”
16
The DP was formed by four dissident former CHP members, with Celal Bayar being the “preeminent personality” (Sayarı, 2002, p. 68), as he held various important positions during the
single party period, including minister of the economy and prime minister (Eroğul, 1998, pp.
29-30). After the 1950 election victory that started 10 years of single-party rule, Bayar ended
up becoming the president (1950-1960), while the prime ministry (1950-1960) and the party’s
chairmanship went to another one of the four, Adnan Menderes. Below, I briefly discuss the
main ideological themes of this party based on these two figures.
During the 1950 electoral campaign, the DP tried to frame its position as against the
authoritarian and transformative single-party regime’s policies, while remaining loyal to the
foundational principles of the Republic (Sayarı, 2002, p. 69). Also, both the CHP and the DP
were run by elites with backgrounds in the secularist-nationalist single-party period, and their
differences were minimal on the left-right axis. In spite of these similarities, the DP managed
to differentiate itself considerably from the CHP on the axis of populism versus anti-populism
(Sözen, 2010, p. 380). From very early on, DP leadership started to transform the previously
non-populist terms of “national will” (milli irade) or the “people’s will” (halkın iradesi) into
populist ones. For example, right after the 1950 electoral campaign, where the DP used the
slogan of “enough, let the people speak”, Menderes repeatedly emphasized the legitimacy
that national will brings, connecting it to the majority votes in the election (Menderes 1991
[1950], pp. 15-16). Menderes expressed this idea of national will as something that the society transfers to the rulers through the majority of votes as follows: “although there were not
even superficial reasons for it, the fact that [the opposition] attacked us from the first day on,
shows the hate that they harbor for the national will that did not elect them” (Menderes 1991
[1951], p. 46).
In terms of the DP’s populist social vision, the party started to frame the people, empirically composed of peasants and merchants, in an antagonistic relationship with the “tyrannical [ceberrut] bureaucratic elites” (Sunar, 1983, p. 2086; also see: Sayarı, 2002, p. 79). But
the social/cultural references of this anti-elitist language did not signify large social groups as
anti-people, but instead were mainly directed against the CHP, bureaucrats, and intellectuals. The CHP, according to Menderes, was still under the illusion of being the owners of the
country: “they [the CHP] lose all the elections and still say that ‘this country is ours’” (1991
[1954], p. 160). Also, he criticized “the opposition in the bureaucracy, press, and universities
as harboring tendencies for ‘enlightened despotism’ and not respecting the votes of the people
that they see as ‘a useless crowd’” (Bora, 2005, p. 487).
However, right-wing populisms’ hyperpoliticization of social/cultural divisions was not
a pronounced feature of the DP’s populism. The party did not explicitly identify the religious
masses as the authentic Turkish people nor did it construct secular social groups as the anti-people, alienated from their own culture. Sunar argues that Islam was available as a tool for
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
sectional populist mobilization, however, due to limitations like their own background in the
Atatürk period, or the presence of a strong secular elite, Islam as a tool for populist mobilization was not activated by the party (1983, pp. 2079-2080). Menderes, for example, argues
that they “would remove measures that are heavy like a millstone in people’s conscience and
that are not embraced by them” (quoted in Bora, 2005, p. 496). However, the DP did not go
further than moderating the cultural modernization of the Kemalist project (civilizationism)
and only “objected to the social engineering project” (Bora, 2005, p. 498).
Nevertheless, the DP’s populist vision of politics and democracy was very clear. DP
leadership consistently employed an understanding of democracy as the popular will in power,
and Menderes himself “equated democracy and democratic politics with ‘the national will of
the people’” (Sayarı, 2002, p. 88). This populist political vision, in turn, delegitimized oppositional liberties, and found its institutional expression in the exaltation of the elected rulers.
Bayar, for example, argues that: “democracy is based on the assumption that the majority is
more intelligent, more talented, and more virtuous. That is why nations refuse to be ruled but
aim to rule themselves. If the axiom that the majority would not be wrong did not exist, there
would not be a democracy” (2006, p. 41).
In political institutional terms, DP leaders envisioned a “real democracy” where national will is directly linked with the ballot box, and in their vision, all other mechanisms of
modern democracies that make elections an institution of democracy, were pulling the regime
away from that “real democracy”. Menderes, states that “to give immunity, which means a
kind of autonomy to the judiciary, means taking away jurisdiction from the people” and connects the existence of autonomous judiciary in the West to their class society, which Turkey
lacks (quoted in Bora, 2002, p. 502). Bayar, along the same lines, juxtaposes “real democracy”
with autonomous institutions and a system of checks and balances:
An idea that creates a lot of conflict is as follows: will Turkey implement a democracy that is based
on [the idea that] ‘sovereignty belongs to the people without any condition and reservation, and
the nation makes use of it directly’, or is it going to be based on ‘soft popular sovereignty’ which
relies on autonomous institutions, and regulation, as there are examples in certain places [Western
Europe] (2010, p. 11).
He further argued that:
[Because European societies have conflicting classes] instead of a real democracy that gathers its
foundational legitimacy from the people and governmental legitimacy from a majority, they needed to rely on a ‘balance democracy’ that checks election based popular sovereignty with autonomous institutions [he states that these are “courts and others”] (2006, p. 45).
17
Yunus Sözen
18
Therefore, DP leaders’ democratic institutional imagination fit perfectly with a populist
vision of democracy, which enhances the power of the elected faction of the rulers over the
ruled and renders them unaccountable (and thereby weakens citizens). However, with their
backgrounds in the CHP and the Kemalist ideological paradigm, unlike the AKP, they could
neither hyper-politicize the social nor construct the secular social segments as the anti-people.
As such, although in the DP’s ideology there was anti-elitism, an appeal to a conception of the
popular will that can be reflected in power through competitive elections, and an understanding of oppositional liberties and constitutional limits as impediments against real democracy,
the DP leaders’ conception of the people (and elites or anti-people) did not have a strong cultural content. In other words, they did not construct the antagonistic relationship within the
society in outwardly cultural terms.
Finally, the longer the DP stayed in power, the more the interaction between the political ideas of the party’s rulers with the political institutions of the time, moved Turkey towards
a competitive authoritarian regime. The existing 1924 constitutional framework that was in
effect when the DP came to power did not include an effective system of checks balances that
would limit the majority party in the parliament (Özbudun, 2000, pp.52-53; Demirel, 2011,
p. 65). Also, given the highly majoritarian electoral system of the period and party discipline,
the aggrandized executive was already inscribed in the political institutional framework. As
such, DP leadership did not even need to change the constitutional framework to carry out
their populist authoritarian vision of democracy. Still, DP leaders forced even these weak constitutional limits. For example, in 1960, shortly before the military coup, DP formed a parliamentary investigation committee with judicial powers, which was basically tasked to inquire
into the opposition’s and oppositional press’s activities (Eroğul, 1998, pp. 234-238; Demirel,
2011, pp. 315-328).
The AKP’s Populism and Autocratization in Turkey
From the very beginning of their rule, the AKP leaders claimed to be continuing “the mission
of the DP” (Taşkın, 2002,
8 p. 53). For example, in 2003, Erdoğan stated that “the people gave
us the mission of realizing the democracy for the first time since Menderes. Ours is the Second
Menderes era.” (quoted in Taşkın, 2008, p. 63fn). In fact, Hale and Özbudun argue that “AKP
seems to be solidly rooted in the center to center-right of the political spectrum” (2010, p. 43),
and also “it is difficult to characterize the AKP as an Islamist… or ‘moderate Islamist’ party”;
instead, they characterize it as a conservative democratic party, whose conservatism is “more
cultural and social than political or ideological” (2010, p. 29). However, as discussed above, the
center-right tradition in Turkey also included an authoritarian executive-centric populism and it
is perhaps in that sense that the AKP’s continuity with the center-right tradition in Turkey (particularly with the DP) is most pronounced. Also, this populist element in the AKP’s ideological
platform had a profound impact on recent Turkish regime dynamics (autocratization).
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
Below, I briefly describe the AKP’s populism, the conditions of its emergence, and then
conclude by arguing that the autocratization in Turkey under this party’s rule can be explained
by the interaction of ideas and institutions.
The AKP’s populism
The AKP was formed in 2001 by the reformist wing of the Turkish Islamist movement. The
party came to power in 2002 with a clear parliamentary majority and also secured parliamentary majorities in 2007, and 2011. In 2015, on the other hand, the party initially failed to gain
the parliamentary majority in the June elections; however, after the election, it managed to
control the process of government formation and regained its parliamentary majority with the
repeat elections of November 2015.The leader of the party, Erdoğan, became Prime Minister
in March 2003, and was then elected to the position of president in 2014. Finally, in 2017,
he led a campaign to successfully transform the form of government to a hyper-presidential
system, and was subsequently elected to that position in 2018.
From early on, Erdoğan and the AKP leadership made use of themes from the DP’s populism, but placed far greater emphasis on the politicization of cultural differences than their
predecessor. Like all populists and the DP leadership, for Erdoğan, “popular will” (“national
will”) is a sacred concept. He claims that there is “nothing higher than the national will in
the human realm” (2011 [2009], p. 456), and that popular will also constitutes the core of
democracy: “democracy is the reflection of the popular will in power” (2011 [2004], p. 143).
On the social vision of populism though, unlike the DP leadership, Erdoğan hyper-politicizes the social, constructing secular citizens in juxtaposition to conservative Sunni Muslim
Turkish citizens. While the specific groups that he targeted as anti-people have changed at
times, this category has always included the opposition, mainly composed of the secular media
and other secular political or state actors who, he argues, are trying to corrupt the popular
will from their “ivory towers” (2011 [2003], p. 567; 2011 [2005], p. 208), or “glass mansions” (2011 [2006], p. 160). But also, his construction of the people and the anti-people went
beyond these categories, seeking, through the use of overlapping lower class and religious
cultural references, to form “the people” as a politically and culturally oppressed majority.
Sontag argues in 2003 that, “Erdoğan styled himself as an authentic representative of the
masses,” quoting him as saying: “In this country, there is a segregation of Black Turks and
White Turks…Your brother Tayyip belongs to the Black Turks.” (2003, p. 45). Moreover,
and again highlighting his divergence from the DP leadership, Erdoğan was clear on the cultural and religious differences between those he deemed the authentic people, and the alienated
elites (White Turks). For example, in his first presidential candidacy speech (2014), he explains
why he was engaged in politics. In this speech, loaded with cultural and religious symbolism,
he constructed himself as pursuing politics for the downtrodden, the culturally oppressed, and
those who suffered at the hands of secularists:
19
Yunus Sözen
Because we were studying in İmam Hatip [religious vocational high schools where he studied],
they insulted us… Because we were giving the salute of God, they called us reactionaries [mürteci],
because we were praying, they called us reactionaries [gerici]… They found strange and they called
reactionaries those who enter their homes taking their shoes off, sitting down on the floor, crossing
their legs to eat… They made life unbearable to our wives, daughters, and sisters who wear headscarves in accordance with their faith.
20
Therefore, to Erdoğan, politics is a battleground between the authentic yet oppressed
people (religious, conservative Sunni masses) of Turkey and the degenerated anti-people,
“elites who are detached from the people’s values” (Erdoğan, 2012 [2010], p. 108; 2011
[2010], p. 378; 2012 [2011], p. 608).
As per the political vision of Erdoğan’s populism, very much like the DP leadership
before him, he claims that popular will is transferable to government through elections, as
he states repeatedly “the national will is a nation’s proclamation of its preferences through
elections…” (2011 [2009], p. 364), and in those election the people “hand over” or “consign”
their will to the rulers (2011 [2004], p. 143; 2012 [2009], p. 396). Therefore, according to
Erdoğan, as other populists from different time and spaces have claimed, “democracy means
the government of the people by its authentic representatives” (as Palacio, a Peronist, declared
in 1941, quoted in Schwartz, 2009, p. 117). In fact, this view of democracy and elections as the
measure of authenticity has gained surprising allies for the AKP. For example, Ahmet İnsel, a
left-wing liberal intellectual, just after the AKP’s first electoral victory, argued that under the
AKP the Turkish political regime can normalize and democratize, getting rid of the fetters of
the Republican elite. He added that “the AKP’s ‘unstoppable march to power’ could be understood as a more authentic and humble continuation of the process that started with Özal…
Among the political leaders prominent in the history of the Turkish Republic, Erdoğan was the
person most clearly and authentically ‘one of the people’” (2003, p. 303).
Finally, very much like the Bayar’s conception of “real democracy”, in Erdoğan’s populist vision of politics, constitutional mechanisms that limit elected representatives are illegitimate. Instead, their function should be to serve the people, by becoming the instruments
of the elected rulers. For example, before the 2010 constitutional referendum that increased
executive branch’s control over the judiciary, Erdoğan repeatedly claimed during his campaign
that opponents of the constitutional amendments cannot “digest” these changes because “the
judiciary, which used to be their back garden, is now going to be the nation’s [people’s] front
garden” (2010, Istanbul meeting). A year later, after the successful reconfiguration of the judiciary and just before his party’s third consecutive electoral victory in 2011, Erdoğan argued
that, “a handful of elite” used to say to the people, “you should not interfere with the government, you don’t know democracy”, but now, “the nation took control of the government…
Politics under tutelage has ended. Today, democracy became meaningful. The national [popular] will start to work in the most potent way” (2011, Sakarya Meeting).
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
In sum, as in other cases of populism-in-power, and also in line with the DP tradition,
Erdoğan closely links one ambivalently democratic mechanism of modern democracies (elections) with a concept he sacralizes: the popular/national will. On the other hand, other components of modern democracy (the oppositional liberties and constitutional limitations on the
rulers) are reformulated as illegitimate. As such, his populist conception of democracy exalts
the electorally authorized faction of the rulers, potentially rendering them unaccountable, and
weakening citizens, very much like the DP’s “real democracy”. However, the AKP’s populism
also contains a “redemptive” (Canovan, 1999) promise for the culturally and politically oppressed majority, and as such, it potentially extends authoritarianism, and oppression beyond
the political realm.
Below, I discuss the conditions of the emergence of the AKP’s populism and then connect it to the populist autocratization process in Turkey. I argue that the Turkish political
constitutional framework at the onset of AKP rule was not a full modern democracy, but a
defective democracy. This particular constitutional system was, on the one hand, prone to the
concentration of power in the hands of elected executive branch, requiring self-restraint from
elected officers to be sustainable. On the other hand, the checks that this system instituted over
the elected government were not democratic checks (military’s veto power) and this provided
avenues for the appeal of the populist authoritarian promise of democracy.
Conditions of the Emergence of the AKP’s Populism
Empirical studies of the emergence of populism tend to bring forward either demand or supply-side explanations. The former group of explanations locates the growing frustrations,
grievances, and resentments of citizens as the source of the resurgence of populism, thus highlighting the availability of social groups potentially receptive to the populist appeal (Germani,
1967; Kriesi, 2014; also see: Kaltwasser, 2015). The latter, supply-side explanations, argue
mainly that political factors, such as the party system or populist leaders, are the critical components that facilitate the emergence of the phenomenon (Mair, 2002; Roberts, 2012).
In Turkey, before 2002, both supply and demand-side factors were in play. The AKP
arose in the context of the deep economic crisis of 2001, and the ensuing collapse of the party
system. These developments occurred in tandem with an incorporation crisis: the inability of
the system, instituted after the soft-coup of February 28, 1997, to deal with the rising power
of the devout bourgeoisie and the political Islamic movement, as well as the more diffuse religious conservative sentiment (for the incorporation crisis, see: Luna and Filgueira, 2009; for
the political dynamics of the period in Turkey, see: Taşkın, 2008). In fact, under these conditions, in the 2002 elections, another new populist party (the nationalist-populist Youth Party)
entered the political scene and received over 7% of the votes. Therefore, the conditions that
both supply and demand side explanations emphasize were present in Turkey. These conditions allowed the rise of a strong populist party/movement that would mobilize the grievances
21
Yunus Sözen
22
of large sectors within the society, by naming and dignifying them as the authentic people and
responding to the representation crisis by offering to carry them to power.
While conditions were suitable for the rise of a strong conservative populism, conditions
for the reproduction of populism-in-power were also present. A theoretical debate on populism’s locus within democracies (a literature related to the empirical studies on the emergence
of populism), provides avenues to make sense of the reproduction of AKP’s populism-in-power
and the party’s ability to shape Turkish politics according to its authoritarian populist vision
of democracy. Within the discussion on the locus of populism within democracies, there are
accounts that view populism’s emergence as pathological or as reflective of the poor health of
representative government (Urbinati, 1998; Taggart, 2002). Alternatively, populism is also situated within the internal contradictions of liberal constitutional democracy, tensions between
its liberal and democratic, or constitutional and democratic elements (Mouffe, 2000; Mudde
and Kaltwasser, 2012). Finally, there are also studies that maintain that populism is situated
within the tensions of modern democracy’s ideal and its reality (Meny and Surel, 2002; also
see: Canovan 1999).
Studies that emphasize tensions between the idea and reality of modern democracies
broadly overlap with the framework I employ in this paper. These studies emphasize the constitutive tension between democracy’s “ideology (the power of the people) and its functioning
(the power of the elites chosen by the people)” (Meny and Surel, 2002, p. 8). In my framework, I express this paradox found at the core of modern democracies as follows: the source of
legitimacy for modern democracy is the idea of popular rule, but in reality, modern democracy
is practiced through political institutions and mechanisms (like elections) that grant a large
amount of autonomy to rulers. Therefore, in all modern democratic countries, there is always
space for populists to emerge by claiming that the country’s democracy does not reflect popular will in power, but that it should (Sözen, 2019, pp. 279-280). However, when in power,
populists’ ability to reframe political institutions in accordance with their authoritarian vision
of democracy gets enhanced if the political regime in that context diverges from basic modern democratic features (or if instead of consolidated modern democracies, they are defective
democracies or hybrid regimes). In Turkey, as I briefly demonstrate, at the time of the AKP’s
emergence in the early 2000s, not only were major conditions of emergence of populism present, but the country’s political regime was a defective democracy, which made it easier for the
AKP to reframe political institutions to exalt the position of the elected rulers and make them
unaccountable by the citizens. Below, I briefly describe that process of autocratization by executive aggrandizement.
From Tutelary Democracy to Competitive Authoritarianism
When the AKP came to power in 2002, in terms of the organization of power, the 1982 constitution was more or less intact. By the end of its second term in 2011, the party had managed
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
to turn this framework into one that fit competitive authoritarianism, without a complete
overhaul (with the notable exception of the transformation of the judicial branch with the
2010 referendum)3.
The 1982 constitutional framework was different than the 1924 framework that was
in place when the DP came to power. This constitution, under which the AKP took power,
had two basic features concerning the organization of power. First, the executive branch was
strongly defined and difficult to hold accountable; second, the military had an enhanced position as well as autonomy within the system (Özbudun, 2000, pp. 105-123; Parla, 2007, pp.
86-97). Also, in terms of vertical division of powers, Turkey was clearly defined as a highly
centralized unitary state (Uygun, 2007), depriving the citizens of any scope afforded by separate sources of power at national and sub-national levels of government and thereby of ruling
groups checking each other. Even more significantly, in terms of horizontal divisions of power, under the 1982 constitution, Turkey remained a parliamentary system with an unusually
strong presidency (Heper and Çınar, 1996). Particularly relevant to checks and balances were
the presidency’s appointment powers to the high courts, such as the highest administrative
court of the country (the Council of State) and the Constitutional Court. The president’s parliamentary election required only a majority of the full membership of the parliament, which
meant that any single party majority at the time of the presidential election would guarantee its
candidate’s election. As such, any party that has a parliamentary majority at the time of presidential elections, would have not only the control of the executive and legislative branches, as
in all parliamentary democratic systems, but would also be able to slowly extend its powers
vis-à-vis the judiciary – and the AKP managed to get its candidate elected in 2007. Finally, in
addition to the concentration of power at the centre and weak limits on that power, Turkish
parties, and particularly the AKP, have been leadership dominated, and hierarchically organised (Ayan, 2010). As a result, power was not divided at that level either.
In short, by 2007, when the AKP started its second term, it already had very extensive
powers as well as prospects for further extension of those powers as it stayed in government
and controlled the presidency - powers that would be hard to accumulate in a democratic
regime with checks and balances. The critical challenge in front of the AKP’s full control was
the military’s enhanced position in Turkish politics, the most significant feature of Turkey’s
tutelary democracy at the time. In fact, Parla argues that the 1982 constitution stipulates a
“triple executive branch”, because the military bureaucracy was added to the dual executive
of the parliamentary systems – the president and the cabinet (2007, pp. 86-97). Therefore, this
was indeed an anti-democratic challenge, and fighting against that challenge and further concentrating power in its own hands in the process, buttressed the appeal of the AKP’s populist
authoritarian vision of democracy. In power politics terms, the military’s slow retreat from
politics had already started in the late 1990s, corollary with the EU accession reforms at the
time (Heper, 2005). Moreover, after 2007, the military’s veto power was progressively delegitimized through a series of highly politicized (and procedurally problematic) large-scale trials
23
Yunus Sözen
24
(primarily the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer trials) of purported coup plotters and others
allegedly involved in illegal activities that imprisoned scores of the higher echelons of the military (Gürsoy, 2015). These developments left the AKP free of the veto power and guardianship
of the military and made the already strongly defined executive branch even more dominant.
Finally, in this framework with an already aggrandized executive, the concentration of
power further increased with the 2010 constitutional referendum that significantly redesigned
the judiciary. This referendum (approved by 58%) increased the power of the executive over
the judiciary via a number of appointments allotted to the executive branch (or to the institutions heavily influenced by it), and the way the executive branch managed to exert influence on
critical elections to the judiciary on October 2010 (Kalaycıoğlu, 2012). All of these developments, while being in line with Erdoğan’s populist ideal of “making the judiciary the people’s
[elected rulers] back garden” (2010, İstanbul Meeting), weakened divisions between ruling
factions, made elected executives branch preponderant, and citizens weaker.
This process of reconfiguring political institutions in line with the supremacy of the
elected officers constitutes the first way that a populist authoritarian conception of democracy
relates to regime outcomes. However, as outlined above, there is a second mechanism that
connects populism-in-power to autocratization, one that runs through populist leadership:
Populist democracy not only interprets external checks over elected officials as being against
democracy, but also views internal checks (self-restraint) of the leadership (conceived as embodiments of the popular will) as immoral and anti-democratic.
In line with this logic, at every opportunity, the AKP leadership has used its existing
powers to further concentrate power in its own hands and to restrict oppositional liberties. For
example, in 2009, the Ministry of Finance sent tax inspectors to the then biggest media group
(Doğan media, a media group that was not controlled by the government), penalizing it with
a record $2.5 billion tax fine (FT, 2009), leading the group to progressively sell its assets (especially after the 2010 referendum, which made it very hard to challenge the penalty through
the courts). Another illustrative example is the appointment of 41-year old Alparslan Altan
as a substitute member to the constitutional Court a few months before the 2010 referendum.
He used to be a rapporteur to the Court, and in order to be able to place him on the bench,
he was first appointed to the position of vice-undersecretary of maritime affairs for 31 days.
This appointment was only devised to make him eligible as a high bureaucrat for a seat in the
Court (Radikal, 2010). Also, Constitutional changes shortly after, would make him a regular
member, while his pre-referendum appointment to the court would enable him to stay there
until he reached the age of 654 – although the constitutional changes limited the term of later
appointees to 12 years. Though neither of these actions violated existing rules, they nonetheless clearly violated the norms that make a modern democracy survive. However, from the
perspective of the populist conception of ideal democracy, these moves freed the popular will
from the fetters of elite supervision and were therefore democratic.
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
Overall, through both of these mechanisms, by the 2011 elections, the Turkish political regime was already shaped in accordance with a populist vision that glorifies competitive
authoritarianism as ideal democracy. In turn, in all the ensuing major crises such as the Gezi
uprisings, the 17–25 December crisis, and the repeat elections in 2015, the party employed the
authoritarian instruments (such as control over the judiciary and media) that it had already
accumulated in this period (2007–2011), to deepen the already existing authoritarian features
of the regime.
Conclusion
In this paper, my argument about the relationship of populism and democracy is that the
populist vision of democracy (reflecting the popular will in power), if implemented within the
existing political institutional framework of modern democracies (without any other innovative mechanism of popular will translation), carries the potential to lead to strong rulers and
weak citizens and a competitive authoritarian regime.
In Turkey, the AKP came to power when the conditions were suitable for the rise of a
strong conservative populist movement. Moreover, the existing political institutional framework was conducive to the constitution of a populist authoritarian regime, because the system
was prone to the concentration of power, and the most significant checks on this power were
extra-democratic. In tandem, these features provided opportunities for the conservative AKP
to autocratize the Turkish political regime, while presenting its populist authoritarian vision
as democratic and securing non-conservative allies (like liberal intellectuals).
Finally, the AKP’s populism is built on a strong tradition of right-wing populism in
Turkey, that first came to power in 1950 with the DP’s rule. This tradition has a clear vision
of democracy: reflecting national will in power via elections. This conception is sometimes
called a majoritarian approach to democracy (Sayarı, 2002, p. 78; Özbudun, 2014). However,
majorities do not naturally exist in the society. If the term refers to electoral majorities, it is
important to remember that elections are statistical apparatuses that aggregate votes cast for
the same party for different reasons at a particular point in history. Turkish right-wing populists from the DP to the AKP single out these statistical apparatuses (elections) as the singular
democratic mechanism, by claiming that it reveals the popular will. However, this vision of
democracy, on the one hand delegitimizes institutions and mechanisms of modern democracy
that would weaken the rulers and strengthen citizens (like checks and balances and oppositional liberties); on the other hand, it fails to replace them with any alternative mechanisms of
democratic empowerment (e.g. innovative participatory mechanisms or measures like specific
mandates). Therefore, their ideal political regime conception is best described as populist competitive authoritarianism, and not as majoritarian democracy.
25
Yunus Sözen
1
2
3
4
It is possible to conjecture two reasons for this exclusion: first, until recently the use of the concept of populism-in-power
was more or less confined to Latin American studies; second, the DP’s conception of the people was different than the
‘working class’ or ‘working people’ populisms of its paradigmatic contemporaries in the second wave, and closer to the
agrarian populisms of the first wave of late 19th century.
The conceptual relationship I build in this article between populism and an authoritarian conception of competitive
elections fits well with both ‘electoral authoritarianism’ (Schedler, 2006) and ‘competitive authoritarianism’ (Levitsky,
and Way, 2002) concepts. For simplicity, for the rest of the article I use the term ‘competitive authoritarianism’.
There were two other significant changes: the initiation of the popular election of the president with the 2007 referendum, which was implemented for the first time in 2014; and the transition to a hyper-presidential system in 2017.
However, since this section is on the formation of the competitive authoritarian regime framework by 2011, and these
changes came after that (2014, and 2017). As a result, I did not include them to the list.
Alparslan Altan could not complete his term, as he was removed from his position after the July 2016 coup attempt.
References
Abts, K. and Rummens, S. (2007). Democracy versus populism. Political Studies, 55(2), 405–424.
Aslan-Akman, C. (2012). The 2011 parliamentary elections in Turkey and challenges ahead for democratic
26
reform under a dominant party system. Mediterranean Politics, 17(1), 77–95.
Ayan, P. (2010). Authoritarian party structures in Turkey: A comparison of the Republican People’s Party and
the Justice and Development Party. Turkish Studies, 11(2), 197–215.
Başer, B. and Özturk, A. (Eds.). (2017). Authoritarian politics in Turkey: Elections, resistance and the AKP.
London: I.B. Tauris.
Bayar, C. (2006). Bir darbenin anatomisi: Celal Bayar anlatıyor, I. Bozdag (Ed.). Istanbul: Emre Yayınları.
Bobbio, N. (2005). Liberalism and democracy. London: Verso.
Bora, T. (2005). Adnan Menderes, in Liberalizm (pp. 482–507), İstanbul: İletişim.
Bora, T. (2017). Cereyanlar: Türkiye’de Siyasal ideolojiler, İstanbul: İletişim.
Canovan, M. (1999). Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy. Political Studies, 47(1),
2–16.
Çelik, A., and Balta, E. (2020). Explaining the micro dynamics of the populist cleavage in the “new Turkey”.
Mediterranean Politics, 25(2), 160–181.
Dağı, İ. (2008). Turkey’s AKP in power. Journal of Democracy, 19(3), 25–30.
Dahl, R.A. (1989) Democracy and its critics. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press. de la Torre, C.
(2015). Introduction: Power to the people? Populism, insurrections, democratization. In C. de la Torre
(Ed.) The promise and perils of populism: Global perspectives (pp. 1–28). Lexington, KY: University
of Kentucky Press.
Demirel, T. (2011). Türkiye’nin uzun on Yılı: Demokrat Parti iktidarı ve 27 Mayıs darbesi, İstanbul: İstanbul
Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları.
Elçi, E. (2019). The rise of populism in Turkey: a content analysis. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies,
19(3), 387–408.
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
Erdogan, R.T. (2010). Referandumda EVET İstanbul mitingi, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=M5xKkTWzKFA
Erdogan, R.T. (2011). Başbakan Erdoğan. Sakarya mitingi, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=brxIGyt0NKM
Erdoğan, R. T. (2011). Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Siyaset Sözlüğü. Istanbul: Kalem Kitabevi.
Erdoğan, R. T. (2012). Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ne diyor? İstanbul: Kim ne diyor,
Erdoğan, R. T. (2014). Cumhurbaşkanlığı adaylık konuşması : 1 Temmuz 2014, Retrieved from https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=TYCtNooS0is
Eroğul, C. (1998). Demokrat Parti: Tarihi ve ideolojisi. Ankara: İmge Kitabevi.
Espejo, P. O. (2015). Power to whom? The people between procedure and populism. In C. de la Torre (Ed.).
The promise and perils of populism: Global perspectives (pp. 59–90). Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
Financial Times (2009). Dogan hit by record $2.5bn tax fine. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/
e91d2bac-9c9f-11de-ab58-00144feabdc0
Germani, G. (1967). Transformation of the social and political structure. In J.R. Barager (Eds.). Why Peron
came to power: The background to Peronism in Argentina (pp. 110-126). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Gürsoy, Y. (2013). Turkish public opinion on the coup allegations: Implications for democratization. Political
Science Quarterly, 130(1), 103–132.
Hale, W. and Özbudun, E. (2010). Islamism, liberalism, and democracy in Turkey. London: Routledge.
Heper, M. (2005). The European Union, the Turkish military and democracy. South European Society and
Politics, 10(1), 33–44.
Heper, M. (2013). Islam, conservatism, and democracy in Turkey: Comparing Turgut Özal and Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan. Insight Turkey, 15(2), 141–156.
Heper, M. and Cinar, M. (1996). Parliamentary government with a strong president: The post-1989 Turkish
experience. Political Science Quarterly, 111(3), 483–50.
Holmes, S. (1995). Precommitment and the paradox of democracy. In J. Elster and R. Slagstad (Eds.). Constitutionalism and democracy (pp. 195–240). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
İnsel, A. (2003). JDP and the normalizing democracy in Turkey. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 102(2/3),
293–308.
Judis, J. (2016). The populist explosion, New York: Columbia Global Reports.
Kalaycıoğlu, E. (2012). Kulturkampf in Turkey: The constitutional referendum of 12 September 2010. South
European Society and Politics, 17(1), 1–22.
Kaltwasser, C. R. (2012). The ambivalence of populism: Threat or corrective for democracy. Democratization,
19 (1), 184–208.
Kaltwasser, C. R. (2015). Explaining the emergence of populism in Europe and the Americas. In C. de la Torre
(Ed.). The promise and perils of populism: Global perspectives (pp. 189–227). Lexington: University
of Kentucky Press.
Köker, L. (2000). Modernlesme, Kemalizm, ve demokrasi, İstanbul: İletişim.
Kriesi, H. (2014). The populist challenge. West European Politics, 37(2), 361–378.
27
Yunus Sözen
Lacey, N. (2019). Populism and the rule of law. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 15(1), 79–96.
Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason. New York: Verso.
Levitsky, S. and Way, L. (2002). Elections without democracy: the rise of competitive authoritarianism, Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 51-65.
Levitsky, S. and Loxton, J. (2013). Populism and competitive authoritarianism in the Andes. Democratization,
20(1), 107–136.
Luna, J.P. and Filgueira, F. (2009). The left turns as multiple paradigmatic crises. Third World Quarterly,
30(2), 371–395.
Mair, P. (2002). “Populist democracy Vs. party democracy. I”n Y. Mény & Y. Surel (Eds.). Democracies and
the populist challenge (pp. 81–98). Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Manin, B. (1997). The principles of representative government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Menderes, A. (Ed.). (1991). Basbakan Adnan Menderes’in meclis konuşmaları, F. Sükan (Ed.) Ankara: Kültür
Ofset.
Moffitt, B. (2016). The global rise of populism: Performance, political style, and representation. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Mouffe, C. (2000). The democratic politics. London: Verso.
Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 542–563.
28
Mudde, C. and Kaltwasser, R. (Eds.). (2012). Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or corrective for
democracy? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mudde, C. and Kaltwasser, R. (2017). Populism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Müller, J. (2016). What is populism? Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Müftüler-Baç, M. and Keyman, F. (2012). Turkey under the AKP: The era of dominant–party politics. Journal
of Democracy, 23(1), 85–99.
Ostiguy, P. (1998). Peronism and anti-Peronism: Class-cultural cleavages and political identity in Argentina.
PhD. thesis, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley.
Özbudun, E. (2000). Contemporary Turkish politics: Challenges to democratic consolidation, Boulder, CO:
Lynn Rienner.
Özbudun, E. (2014). JDP at the crossroads: Erdoğan’s majoritarian drift. South European Society and Politics,
19(2), 155–167.
Parla, T. (1994). Türkiye’de siyasal kültürün resmi kaynakları, Vol. I, İstanbul: İletisim.
Parla, T. (2007). Türkiye’de Anayasalar, İstanbul: İletisim.
Peron, J.D. (1950). The voice of Peron. Buenos Aires: Year of the Liberator, General San Martin.
Radikal (2010). Alparslan Altan Ataması Hilelidir. Retrieved from http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/alparslan-altan-atamasi-hiledir-988951/
Roberts, K. M. (2007). Latin America’s populist revival. SAIS Review, 22(1), 3–15.
Roberts, K. M. (2012). Populism and democracy in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. In C. Mudde & C.R.
Kaltwasser (Eds.). Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or corrective for democracy (pp.
136–159). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reflektif Journal of Socıal Scıences, 2020, Vol. 1(1)
Rooduijn, M. (2019). State of the field: How to study populism and adjacent topics? European Journal of
Political Research, 58(1), 362–372.
Sayarı, S. (2002). Adnan Menderes. In M. Heper and S. Sayarı (Eds.). Political leaders and democracy in Turkey (pp. 65-85). Lanham: Lexington Books.
Schedler, A. (Ed.). (2006). Electoral authoritarianism. London: Lynn Rienner Publishers.
Schumpeter, J. A. (1962). Capitalism, socialism and democracy. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Schwartz, D. (2009). Argentinean popular nationalism: A reaction to the Civilizadores’ Liberal Project, Journal
of Political Ideologies, 14 (1), 93–114.
Somer, M. (2016). Understanding Turkey’s democratic breakdown: Old Vs. new and indigenous vs. global
authoritarianism. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 16(4), 481–503.
Sözen, Y. (2008). Turkey between tutelary democracy and electoral authoritarianism. Private View, 13, 78–84.
Sözen, Y. (2010). Politics of the people: Hegemonic ideology and regime oscillation in Turkey and Argentina.
PhD. thesis, Department of Politics, New York University, September.
Sözen, Y. (2011). AKP ve bir otoriterleşme ideolojisi olarak neo-muhafazakar popülizm. Yeniyol, 43, 7–23.
Sözen, Y. (2019). Populist peril to democracy: The sacralization and singularization of competitive elections.
Political Studies Review, 17(3), 267–283.
Sunar, İ. (1983). Demokrat Parti ve popülizm, in Cumhuriyet Donemi Türkiye Ansiklopedisi, Vol. 8 (pp. 20762086). İstanbul: İletisim.
Taggart, P. (2002). Populism and the pathology of representative politics. In Y. Meny, & Y. Surel, (Eds.). Democracies and the Populist Challenge (pp. 62–80). Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Taşkın, Y. (2008). JDP’s move to conquer the center-right: Its prospects and possible impacts on the democratization process. Turkish Studies, 9(1), 53–72.
Tepe, S. (2005). Turkey’s JDP: a model Muslim-democratic party? Journal of Democracy, 16(3), 69–82.
Uygun, O. (2007). Federal devlet: Temel ilkeleri, başlıca kurumları ve Türkiye’de uygulanabilirliği. İstanbul:
Oniki Levha.
Weyland, K. (2001). Clarifying a contested concept: Populism in the study of Latin American politics. Comparative Politics 34(1), 1–22.
Woods, D. (2014). The many faces of populism: Diverse but not disparate. Research in Political Sociology,
22, 1–25.
Urbinati, N. (1998). Democracy and populism. Constellations, 5(1), 110–124.
Yıldırım, D. (2009). AKP ve neoliberal popülizm. In AKP kitabı: Bir dönüşümün bilançosu, İ. Uzgel and B.
Duru (Eds.). Ankara: Phoenix.
29