Browsing by Author "Esen, Berk"
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Item Open Access An alternative account of the populist backlash in the United States: a perspective from Turkey(Cambridge University Press, 2019) Esen, Berk; Yardımcı-Geyikçi, Ş.Scholars tend to assume that consolidated democracies are free from the global retreat of democracy due to their strong institutions and economic development. Yet, populist forces that challenge the liberal democratic model have started to increase their support even in Western countries. However, in no country has democratic backsliding taken scholars by more surprise than in the United States. This article addresses the question of how a populist figure like Donald Trump managed to win the presidential election and subsequently undermined the democratic institutions in one of the world’s oldest democracies. We contend that the upsurge of populist leaders in contemporary Western democracies resulted from the political establishment’s failure to juggle responsiveness and responsibility simultaneously. In addition to our discussion of American politics, we draw parallels with the Turkish case to demonstrate our causal argument and offer suggestions on how to reverse democratic backsliding in the United States.Item Open Access Building a competitive authoritarian regime: state-business relations in the AKP’s Turkey(Routledge, 2017-11) Esen, Berk; Gümüşçü, S.The most recent global wave of democratic reversal is marked by executive takeovers. Politically motivated interventions in domestic markets aimed at restructuring the underlying power dynamics in society have been part and parcel of these takeovers. This article investigates the new political economy behind the AKP’s competitive authoritarian rule in Turkey as an example of this larger trend. The article argues that the AKP government has built a loyal business class through an elaborate system of rewards and punishment since 2002. With the aim of consolidating its business constituency, the AKP politicized state institutions (debt collection, tax authorities, privatization, public procurement) and eroded the rule of law to distribute rents and resources to its supporters, transfer capital from its opponents to its supporters, and to discipline dissidents in business circles. These mechanisms allowed the party to skew the political playing field in its favour through its access to private resources as well as its disproportionate access to the media—built by pro-AKP businessmen—and thus underpinned the AKP’s competitive authoritarian regime.Item Open Access The far right, labor unions, and the working class in Turkey since the 1960s(Middle East Institute, 2021) Aytürk, İlker; Esen, BerkThis article tracks far-right attitudes and policies toward organized labor and the working class in Turkey since the 1960s. In particular, we attempt to explain why nationalist attitudes have remained unchanged over nearly six decades, whereas political Islamists have shifted to neoliberal policies since the 1990s under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In explaining Erdoğan’s neoliberalism, we highlight the working relationship between Islamist mayors and the so-called pious bourgeoisie in local governments as well as the willingness of neoliberal ulema to endorse these ties.Item Open Access Killing competitive authoritarianism softly: the 2019 local elections in Turkey(Routledge, 2019-11) Esen, Berk; Gümüşçü, Ş.On 31 March 2019 Turkish voters ended the Islamist local governance in the country’s largest cities after 25 years and handed the ruling AKP its most serious electoral defeat since its rise to power in 2002. The article explores the electoral strategies of major parties in the local election, offers a comparative analysis of the results, and discusses post-election developments, including the rerun in Istanbul. The election and its aftermath reaffirmed the competitive authoritarian nature of the regime, as the governing bloc enjoyed an uneven playing field, while the opposition had to meet a higher electoral bar than the incumbents to win. The economic crisis, growing discontent with the government’s policies, and effective coordination of opposition parties facilitated this outcome.Item Open Access The perils of "Turkish presidentialism"(Cambridge University Press, 2018) Esen, Berk; Gümüşçü, Ş.Turkey has switched to a presidential system via a referendum held in April 2017 that will take full effect after the 2019 presidential elections. Turkish presidentialism increases the prominence of the executive at the expense of the legislative branch and concentrates power in the office of the president. Executive aggrandizement will deepen ideological polarization and electoral mobilization by significantly raising the stakes of the game for both the incumbent and the opposition. As such, we posit that the new presidential system will institutionalize the de facto personalism and majoritarian rule that the AKP has hitherto established in recent years. This trend is likely to trigger a transition from a competitive authoritarian to hegemonic electoral authoritarianism in case of Tayyip Erdoǧan's election, thus placing Turkey on par with the strongest executive systems around the globe such as Russia and Venezuela.Item Open Access Praetorian army in action: a critical assessment of civil–military relations in Turkey(Sage Publications, 2021-01) Esen, BerkWith four successful and three failed coups in less than 60 years, the Turkish military is one of the most interventionist armed forces in the global south. Despite this record, few scholars have analyzed systematically how the military’s political role changed over time. To address this gap, this article examines the evolution of civil– military relations (CMR) in Turkey throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Based on a historical analysis, this article offers a revisionist account for the extant Turkish scholarship and also contributes to the broader literature on CMR. It argues that the military’s guardian status was not clearly defined and that the officer corps differed strongly on major political issues throughout the Cold War. This article also demonstrates that the officer corps was divided into opposite ideological factions and political agendas and enjoyed varying levels of political influence due to frequent purges and conjectural changes.Item Open Access The Turkish presidential elections of 24 June 2018(Routledge, 2020) Esen, Berk; Yardımcı-Geyikçi, Ş.On 24 June 2018 Turkish voters headed to the polls to elect a new president and parliament after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decision to call for snap elections eighteen months earlier than scheduled. The election was noteworthy for several reasons. First, the electoral campaign took place under emergency law that was initially issued after the failed 2016 putsch. Following the coup attempt, the government carried out a widespread purge of its opponents in the public sector, curtailed political space for dissent, and subsequently consolidated its hold on power, thus tilting the already uneven playing field. Furthermore, this was the first election held after the 2017 constitutional referendum that created an executive presidency with limited checks and balances. Allied with the opposition leader Devlet Bahçeli, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rationalized his decision to call for snap elections by suggesting that the country needed to inaugurate the new system to ensure effective decision-making during hard times. Indeed, there was worry among pundits that the Turkish economy was heading for an economic crisis, as evidenced by the rising levels of unemployment and inflation rate, not to mention the weak national currency. As such, the timing of snap elections was chosen with the intention of hindering the opposition’s ability to cooperate, particularly when socio-economic worries, as well as the large number of Syrian migrants in the country, had begun to erode the government’s popularity. Throughout the campaign, the opposition candidates faced an uneven playing field against the incumbent due to the excessive coverage of the latter in national media and his unfair access to public and private resources. While Erdoğan was the clear frontrunner, he defied the opinion polls by winning the presidency in the first round with 52.6 per cent of the vote. We contend that in addition to benefiting from the uneven playing field that has been a feature of Turkey’s competitive authoritarian regime (Esen & Gumuscu, 2016), Erdoğan owes this victory to his lasting popularity and growing hegemony over the political system. As the country’s undisputed leader, Erdoğan still enjoys strong support among the conservative voters, many of whom attribute their economic achievements under the AKP rule to him. Erdogan consolidated this electoral base by portraying the election as a contest between his nationalist-conservative camp and the rest. In particular, he resorted to media sanctions and intimidation to sideline credible rivals from the conservative camp, while eliminating the popular pro-Kurdish candidate through imprisonment. It should be also noted that the ruling party did not hesitate to resort to extrajudicial methods, such as vote rigging, ballot stuffing, and voter intimidation. Although these methods do not account for Erdoğan’s victory in the end, they demonstrate that meaningful electoral competition in Turkey is becoming exceedingly difficult. With his victory Erdoğan has become the head of the executive branch and will directly govern the country through his cabinet.Item Open Access Why did Turkish democracy collapse? A political economy account of AKP’s authoritarianism(SAGE Publications, 2021) Esen, Berk; Gümüşcü, Ş.After decades of multiparty politics, Turkey is no longer a democracy. A theory-upending case, the country has descended into a competitive authoritarian regime under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP), despite rising income and education levels and strong links with the West. What accounts for democratic breakdown in such an unlikely case? Instead of ideological and institutional factors, we offer a political economy account. We contend that the coalitional ties that the AKP forged with businesses and the urban poor through the distribution of public resources has altered the cost of toleration for the party leadership and their dependent clients, while reducing the cost of suppression for incumbents. This new political calculus led to increasing authoritarianism of the AKP government through securitization of dissent, mounting repression, and systematic violation of civil liberties.