Browsing by Subject "Presidentialism"
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Item Open Access Letter from Ankara(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2015-09) Cinar, M. U.This article focuses on the relationship between discourses of economic development and prospects for democracy in Turkey. It does so by tracing the political discourse of highranking government officials and journalists close to them to show how they use arguments for economic development as a tool to politically legitimise interventions into liberal democracy. I first illustrate the dangers caused by the discourse surrounding economic development to democracy by looking at the Gezi protests. I show how demands for pluralism and respect for different lifestyles—which are crucial aspects of liberal democracy—were instead framed by the government as chaos created by agents of the so-called ‘interest rate lobby’ and provocations caused by those who want to stop Turkey’s economic development. I analyse Gezi in comparative perspective with presidentialism debates and the corruption scandal of December 2013. In these cases too, demands for democracy, transparency, checks and balances are pitted against economic development. Citizens are made to choose between a vaguely defined notion of economic development and democratisationItem 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.