Browsing by Subject "Populism"

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13

Open Access
A process-oriented approach towards democratic backsliding: evidence from Hungary and Turkey
(2023-07) Işık Canpolat, Ece Adviye
This thesis explores different factors affecting the democratic backsliding process in today's world, where a cult of personality is established by using populism as the essential tool for achieving their goals. Considering the importance of weakening the checks and balances system, it also sheds light on other factors as the structure of the internal party organization, personalization of politics, and the political culture. Conducting a comparative case study analysis on Turkey and Hungary, this research aims to take a step forward in the democratic backsliding literature. Taking one step forward from the argument that democratic backsliding takes place when the checks and balances system abolishes, the research asks, "what happens after supposing that such governments do not fit the doctrine of separation of powers?" Through examining Turkey and Hungary as examples of hybrid regimes taking steps toward democratic backsliding day by day under AKP’s and Fidesz’s rule, the research seeks an answer to the question of "after diminishing the checks and balances system, what takes place and affects the democratic backsliding process in such examples?"
Open Access
Collective memory and the populist cause: the Ulucanlar Prison Museum in Turkey
(Sage Publications, 2021-10) Uğur-Çınar, Meral; Altınok, Berat Uygar
This article focuses on how political actors appropriate the past by utilizing collective traumas for their populist cause. We demonstrate how the Ulucanlar Prison Museum in Turkey and the oppression of military interventions, for which it served as a backyard, became a tool for the AKP’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi Justice and Development Party) populist agenda. Through a particular narration of history embedded in the museum, the AKP aimed to forge an internal frontier within the society between an envisioned homogenous body of people on the one hand and the elite on the other. Situating itself as the people’s authentic voice against this elite, the AKP tried to further its popular appeal and legitimize its extension of power. What appeared as coming to terms with the past was instead the instrumentalization of the past for a singular political agenda, eager to remove the complexities and pluralism of the past for the sake of telling a politically useful story.
Open Access
Digital diplomacy and international society in the age of populism
(Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023-02-05) Erpul, Onur; Hare, P. W.; Manfredi-Sánchez, J. L.; Weisbrode, Kenneth
In recent decades, states have extended their diplomatic efforts to engage with the international community and their domestic audiences as a tool of legitimization. With the advent of the internet, this trend has culminated in regularized public interactions over social media. While the internet presents yet another avenue for diplomatic agents to communicate benign messages consistent with the aims and scope of traditional diplomacy, social media also offers populist democracies and authoritarian states the opportunity to broadcast politicized, divisive, propagandistic, and personalistic messages aimed at domestic consumption that are incompatible with the purposes of diplomacy. The main goal of this chapter is to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the potential adverse effects of diplomatic agents’ internet and social media usage by exploring the Turkish government’s social media practices. Turkey offers an opportune case study as a state that has exhibited elements of populism, authoritarianism, and personalization of politics, while also showcasing abundant examples of negative diplomatic interactions on social media, stemming from the vicissitudes of its relations with major powers and allies alike.
Open Access
How to weather the storm: a comparative case study on populist trajectorıes to COVID-19 pandemic
(2021-07) Güllüoğlu, Tümay H.
Why populist leaders have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic differently? This thesis addresses this question through a paired comparison of Brazil, Mexico, and Turkey. These three countries, despite being similar, have employed unique responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The cases are explained based on two sets of indicators. First, the national indicators address the overall conduct within the case where vaccination efforts, closures, quarantines, local and national policies are assessed. The second set of indicators address the leaders’ attitude, their recognition of the seriousness of the pandemic, and assess their populist tendencies during the crisis. Crisis management, populism, and recently emerging COVID-19 politics literature have been used alongside articles in media to trace the change in the policies and leaders’ evolving discourses. These changes are explained through three factors: the left-right continuum, social aid capabilities, and opposition strength. After the analyses, the thesis suggests new terms for unique trajectories. Adversarial denialism for Brazil indicates an environment where during the downplaying of the pandemic, efforts of other parties are demonized. Defective inclusionism for Mexico denotes a setting where the leader gradually defects his denialistic positions after popular pressure while failing to provide inclusionist policies. Partisan affirmation for Turkey signifies a monopolization of the conduct where efforts of others are systemically prevented.
Open Access
The imperfect balance: populists between economic nationalism and neoliberalism
(2021-07) Kuleli, Anıl
The recent surge of populism around the world has been accompanied by a rise in economic nationalism, mostly pursued by populists in government. Despite changes in the global economy, neoliberalism still remains the dominant paradigm, and therefore creates constraints on governments which follow unorthodox economic approaches. This thesis questions how populist governments pursue economic nationalism in a neoliberal world. It argues that populists seek to maintain an imperfect balance between economic nationalist and neoliberal policies, in an attempt to satisfy different audiences at the same time, including the electorate, the domestic private sector, and international markets. In order to analyze populist governments’ attempts at maintaining the imperfect balance, the thesis explores the policies of the Fidesz government in Hungary and the AKP government in Turkey, by looking at how they have been trying to reconcile economic nationalism with neoliberalism over the past decade. The ability of Fidesz to sustain a relative macroeconomic stability and continued foreign investment demonstrate the determining role played by audience constraints in the success or failure of populists’ attempts to maintain the balance.
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İşçi sınıfı, edebiyat ve halkla bütünleşme
(1980) Bezirci, Asım
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Lecture 2 : Multi-Culti and its Discontents
(1993) Hughes, Robert
Open Access
Memory politics in 21st-century trauma site museums in Turkey
(2023-02) Altınok, Berat Uygar
This research focuses on the memory politics of the Justice and Development Party through the reading of trauma-site museums that focuses on the past’s political violence. Based on the fieldwork conducted in four different trauma-site museums opened between 2010 and 2021, the research argues the specific formation of these memory spaces and the instrumentalization of trauma sites are a case of a populist memory regime. The fieldwork includes Ulucanlar Prison Museum (Ankara), Memory July 15 Museum (İstanbul), July 15 Democracy Museum (Ankara), and Kahramankazan Martyrs of July and Democracy Museum (Ankara). The four museums chosen for this research symbolize different phases of the JDP government’s populist memory regime; the Ulucanlar Prison Museum display’s narrative, which aims to construct a people vs. establishment axiom, while the post-July 15 museums’ narratives aim to establish a people vs. traitors axiom. Overall the research focuses on the constituent role of collective trauma in populist identity politics and how trauma sites are instrumentalized in the mnemonic strategies to construct memory communities.
Open Access
Negotiating Iran's nuclear populism
(Brown University, 2005) Afrasiabi, K.; Kibaroglu, M.
[No abstract available]
Open Access
Social Democracy in Turkey: Global Questions, Local Answers
(Routledge, 2023-04-25) Çınar, Meral Uğur; Açıkgöz, Ali
This article assesses the prospects of social democracy in Turkey in light of two prominent debates regarding social democracy: the challenge of populism and the proper balance between a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition. By focusing on the Republican People’s Party (CHP), it shows that the main problem the party faces is to find ways of addressing the issues of recognition and redistribution. Success in addressing these issues would provide an effective alternative to the populist agenda of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and build channels for participatory democracy and institutions of accountability. We argue that social democracy, with its legacy of democratic rule and institutions, can serve as a significant anchoring point in such an effort. We point out, however, why current social, institutional, political, and cultural factors make the CHP’s task of pursuing a social democratic agenda in Turkey particularly difficult.
Open Access
Spatial-making of urban populism: The case of post-gezi Taksim
(2023-08) Kaynar, Melek
This thesis explores public participation in the production of space through the recent history of Taksim Square, analyzing the “Taksim Square Urban Design Competition” (2020) and the structure “Kavuşma Durağı” (2020). The thesis refers to Chantal Mouffe’s discussions on the democratic possibilities of populism (left populist strategy) and examines the role of left “urban” populism in repairing democratic values. Asking the question, “What kind of a role can space design play in contributing to democratic urban politics?” the study addresses design competitions with voting systems through discussions about public participation. Linking the recent participatory design attempts with Gezi Protests, the thesis reframes the production of “public space” through “urban populism” in the Turkish context. As examples of left urban populism, those space-making initiations mediate the repair of democracy by improving public contestation and dissensus concepts in the urban sphere and discursive space, and they provide re-politicization of governance and citizens.
Open Access
Turkey and Argentina: a comparative study on industrial policies in the post – 2001 financial crisis period
(2018-07) Görgen, Hatice İdil
In this study, the industrial policies of Argentina and Turkey in the post2001 crisis are analyzed from a comparative perspective. The study discusses both countries’ industrial policies through the prism of populist economic agendas. In particular, the study investigates foreign trade policies, investment incentives, sectoral policies and privatization attempts in Argentina and Turkey. Within the scope of this research, comparative method was used. Although it was a qualitative study, descriptive statistics, macroeconomic parameters and shifts on industrial policy preferences were addressed. As a consequence, this study found that Argentina followed selective industrial policy by state led development while Turkey pursued horizontal industrial policy in accordance with a liberal agenda. When both pursued those policies, it might be said that Argentina had a multi class populist alliance, as Turkey mostly followed one or single class populist cooperation.
Open Access
Understanding the experiences of the politics of urbanization in two gecekondu (squatter) neighborhoods under two urban regimes: ethnography in the urban periphery of Ankara, Turkey
(The Institute, Inc., 2011) Erman, T.
This article investigates the politics of urbanization in the Turkish context. It is built upon the premise that the "urban coalition" in the era of nationalist developmentalism, which was populist in nature, is replaced by a "new urban coalition," a neoliberal one, since the 1980s. I argue that the bargaining power of gecekondu (squatter) residents with municipal authorities for their "extra-legal" practices in building their houses in the former era was lost after neoliberal policies were adopted. This argument is substantiated by the ethnographic fieldwork in which the experiences of gecekondu residents in building, improving and (not) defending their houses and neighborhoods were obtained. Two ethnographic studies were conducted in two different sites in Ankara: a neighborhood where the Alevis were the majority, which became the site of leftist mobilization in the 1970s, and a district where conservative Sunnis lived, who supported right-wing politics. By situating the two neighborhoods in the context of the two different urban regimes, namely, those in the populist and neoliberal eras, the article points out the changing relationship of the gecekondu residents with the state, showing variances with respect to the differing political positions and social compositions of the two neighborhoods. © 2011 The Institute, Inc.