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Dialectics of Reform and Repression: Unpacking Turkey's Authoritarian “Turn”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 May 2018

Sinan Erensü  and
Ayça Alemdaroğlu
Sinan Erensü
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
Ayça Alemdaroğlu
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Abstract

Twenty-first century Turkey has been shaped by two conflicting trends: all-encompassing reform in almost all aspects of law that were transformative if not altogether progressive, and an increasing erosion of the rule of law, which finally culminated in a nation-wide emergency regime and the April 2017 constitutional referendum. The pressing question for many is why the promising reform era was abandoned for crude repression? In this essay, we answer this question by challenging its very foundation and pointing instead to an alternative line of inquiry concerning Turkish politics and society, one that focuses precisely on the interplay between reform and repression. The constitutional referendum of April 2017 compels observers and scholars of Turkey to reevaluate the interplay between reform and repression. Rather than reading contemporary Turkey as a case of relapse from reform into repression, as many commentators do, we suggest approaching reform and repression as concomitant and complementary modes of government.

Keywords

authoritarianismlawemergencyreformrepressiondissent
Type
Special Focus on Turkey: The Evolution of a Referendum
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , April 2018 , pp. 16 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc. 2018 

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References

1 We thank Sultan Tepe for her constructive criticism and valuable comments.

2 While providing an exhaustive list of these reforms is beyond the limits of this paper the most notable and oft-cited ones include improvements in fundamental rights and liberties (2001), abolishment of the death penalty (2003), prevention of torture and mistreatment (2003), revision of the Anti-Terror Law, improvement of the Penal Code (2004), and reinforcement of the equality of sexes principle (2004). Most of these changes are part of nine “harmonization packages” enacted between 1999 and 2004 with the motivation to meet the Copenhagen Criteria. As such, while the reform wave shapes the early AKP years, its origins the AKP era. For a comprehensive review see Özbudun, Ergun, “Democratization Reforms in Turkey, 1993 2004,” Turkish Studies 8, no. 2 (2007): 179–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Babül, Elif, Bureaucratic Intimacies: Translating Human Rights in Turkey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017), 14–17Google Scholar.

3 These include but are not limited to, the restructuring of the National Security Council to replace the military dominance with a civilian one (2003), ratification of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (2003), abolition of State Security Courts (2004). For more on constitutional changes and judicial restructuring under AKP, see Bali, Aslı, “Shifting into Reverse: Turkish Constitutionalism under the AKP,” Theory & Event 19, no. 1 (2016).Google Scholar

4 The most characteristic feature of the state of emergency in Turkey is that it warrants the president the authority to issue decrees by the power of law (kanun hükmünde kararname, KHK), which could limit fundamental rights and liberties. While this exception is exclusive to the state of emergency, one of the amendments voted in the April 2017 referendum lifts this precondition and expands the applicability of decrees to non-emergency times.

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7 This three-day long conference, between 26–28 October 2017, was funded and organized by the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program at the Buffett Institute. In our conference call, we asked thirty-five participants whose research covers a myriad of disciplines and methodologies to reflect on the question “How did Turkey get here?” by examining the entanglements of law and politics in their respective research area such as mass-media, the environment, urban politics, gender, human rights and the state. Unfortunately, given the briefness of this paper, we are not able to engage with all here.

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35 In fact, our critique is valid for some of those who saw the AKP government as having a hidden agenda from the very first day as most of those early opponents, too, refused to take the interplay between reform and repression seriously by casting reform merely as window dressing and denying their political role.