Search

This paper introduces a special issue focusing on the intricacies of Turkey's party system and the evolution of Turkish party competition amid democratic challenges. The introduction provides a brief overview of each paper in this special issue, which delves into the relationship between economic factors and voter behavior, offering insights into the continued dominance of the ruling party. While doing so, the special issue specifically examines the 2023 Turkish General elections, presenting alternative perspectives on how the incumbent party maintains its electoral success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate how emotions guide and shape diasporic communities' interpretation/perception of socio-political developments in their place of origin. Based on our study of members of the Armenian diaspora who are originally from Turkey and who now live in Melbourne, Australia, we argue that these Armenians have formed their views on political issues under the influence of their emotional experiences, stemming from direct or indirect victimhood. The paper finds that several key emotions – fear, hate (and lack of hate), anticipation, and pessimism, inform and shape the Australian Armenian diaspora's making sense of political developments in their place of origin, Turkey. The paper's contribution to the relevant scholarship is twofold. First, it contributes to the studies on emotions in diasporas by examining how emotions shape individual members of a diaspora make sense of political developments in their place of origin. Second, it contributes to the literature on modern Turkey by studying Armenians from Turkey and their emotions on socio-political phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between regime type and foreign policy through the observational lens of the Serbian – Turkish bilateral relationship starting from 2009 to 2018. The approach was chosen to analyse sources of authoritarian power at the points of convergence between domestic and foreign policy, in a realm free from EU conditionality and the push towards liberal democracy. The article argues that investigating foreign direct investment (FDI) in hybrid regimes dependant on foreign capital provides more granular insight into the wielding and consolidation of incumbent power. An empirical examination of the mutual economic relations and the trajectory of the Turkish factory in Serbia indicate that, while Turkish FDI are of smaller financial worth than investments of EU actors, they are highly valuable in qualitatively portraying the complexity of political power. The paper employs the concept of hybridity more holistically to incorporate the regime ambivalence across the entire trio of politics, economy, and society, thus providing simultaneous insight into the embeddedness of informal mechanisms throughout formal institutions, the fusion of economic and political authorities, and the personalization of political power in Serbia. Process-tracing was the primary method of analysis.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between Kosovo and Turkey are unique because of the difference in their sizes, potential and influence of these two countries in international arena, and their shared history. Studies on Turkey–Kosovo relations often fail to focus on Turkish foreign policy, which this paper attempts to remedy by analysing the political factors that shape relations between Kosovo and Turkey. This paper assesses the disappearance of the bipolar world order and up to the present. It later discusses relations between the two countries since 1990, when the issue of Kosovo took centre stage in international politics. Further, we explore the evolution of Turkey's policy towards the Balkans, including Kosovo's perceptions of its relationship with Turkey. Finally, the analysis focuses on the triangular relations between Kosovo, Brussels and Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the dynamics of ideological party competition within the context of the 2023 Turkish elections. Focusing on the role and appeal of ideology, it provides insights into the changing landscape of ideological competition during this pivotal electoral period. The study examines whether ideology operates as a guiding principle for Turkish voters grappling with intricate economic and social issues. Despite acknowledging that economic concerns may not singularly determine ideological positions, the paper highlights the enduring significance of ideology in shaping perceptions. The transformative nature of the 2023 elections, marked by the emergence of new parties and electoral alliances, further underscores the relevance of ideology. Additionally, the article assesses the appeal of ideological competition by investigating voters who cannot position parties or themselves on the ideology scale. This analysis reveals that factors such as media consumption, education, gender, and political efficacy significantly influence the ideological appeal in the 2023 elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with how Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments navigated the politics of household indebtedness in Turkey and utilized it towards the 2023 elections. It argues that household debt is a political tool with positive and negative consequences for incumbent governments. Households have been able to access debt instruments such as credit cards, consumer credit, car loans, and mortgages in Turkey since the onset of financialisation in the 2000s. AKP governments have benefited from the micro-level household wealth/debt accumulation as well as its macro-level economic implications for the construction-led, credit-dependent economic growth model. On the other hand, household debt has had destructive societal consequences such as bankruptcies, divorces, and suicides that became commonplace in the opposition narratives. Pinpointing the responsibility for indebtedness among households, financial system, regulatory agencies, and government, as well as devising policy solutions, has become a political struggle in the months leading up to the 2023 elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the 100th anniversary of the Republic, Turkey experienced another multi-party election. This paper aims to analyse the role partisanship played in determining the outcomes of the 2023 General Elections. The literature provides valuable insights about the effects of partisanship on the vote choice in Turkey, and underscores the influence of political socialization, newly emerging political parties, clientelist ties and voters' threat perceptions on party identification. To contribute to this literature, this study provides individual level analysis of the data gathered via Turkish Election Studies (TES) and compares the results of 2018 and 2023 elections. This comparison includes comparative examination of partisanship vis-à-vis the effects of such individual variables as social class, political ideology, voters' perceptions of the recent performance of the macro economy, and cultural identities. The findings show that partisanship and cultural divisions seem to be crucial determinants of vote choices in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on elections in unconsolidated democracies and electoral authoritarian states has identified violence a problem that commonly afflicts electoral processes. Yet there is still little understanding of citizen reactions to violent acts and how voters attribute blame for attacks, intimidation, forceful obstruction of campaign activities and other violations of electoral peace. This paper aims to add to the growing micro-level literature on the dynamics of electoral violence by providing evidence of factors that shape regional heterogeneity in reactions to this phenomenon. Taking as our frame of reference the 2018 Turkish presidential elections, we probe the role of party identification and region of residence in conditioning blame attribution, separately and in combination. We find that the process of blame attribution is shaped by party identification, but that this effect is highly dependent on the regional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financialization and neoliberal globalization have increased the dependency of peripheral countries on core economies. This paper tracks the neoliberalization processes of Greece and Turkey, two neighbouring countries on the periphery of Europe. By using a comparative political economy method and borrowing from the variegated capitalism literature, it critically investigates how these two Mediterranean countries were affected by the 2008 global financial crisis, their variant responses, and the impacts of those responses within their historical specificities. The development trajectories of these two countries were similar until the 1980s, but diverged thereafter. Before the 2008 financial crisis erupted, both Greece and Turkey had neoliberal trajectories; the process they experienced through the crisis (how they were impacted by the crisis, as well as how they responded) varied; yet, capitalist restructuring deepened in both countries after the crisis. This was achieved through rising authoritarian populism in Turkey and the pressure of international institutions (both the International Monetary Fund [IMF] and the European Union [EU]) in Greece. Given that Greece is a member of the EU and Turkey is a longstanding candidate, the variances between Greece and Turkey's neoliberalization processes and the differing impacts the 2008 global financial crisis had on them make studying the contrasts between these countries important and timely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roma are one of the most marginalized and discriminated-against groups in Turkey. During the last decade, however, a new trend has emerged: the institutionalization of Roma civil society. Roma civil society has moved from having no registered organizations in 2004 to having 336 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as of 2020. This paper critically analyses the rapid expansion of Roma NGOs in Turkey and discusses the impact of this expansion on Roma communities. Based on a systematic analysis of 14 semi-structured interviews conducted with those who have experience within Roma NGOs, this article argues that the potential positive effects of the expansion of institutionalized Roma civil society have been hampered by limited resources, blurred state-civil society relations, as well as polarization in Turkish society. As a result, Roma civil society became politicized and polarized. While providing insights into an understudied segment of civil society in Turkey, this study also provides further evidence for criticisms about the current state of Turkish civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the 2000s, extensive academic research has echoed one popular opinion, 'Turkey is back to the Balkans'. These studies have been scrutinizing the complicated role of Turkey in the Balkans, usually drawing upon the use of soft power by the former. This impact in the region remained intact during the 2010s, although the overall Turkish foreign policy in the 2010s has been highly securitized and de-Europeanized, losing its soft power character that had been its trademark starting from the early 2000s. In this regard, this paper aims to decipher different dimensions of Turkey's foreign policy in the Balkans through a more general exploration of the de-Europeanization of Turkish foreign policy in the 2010s. Through more than 80 semi-structured interviews, which were conducted between 2016–2020, with political actors, diplomats, religious leaders, scholars and journalists in Turkey and the Balkans, we address the question of whether the divergence of Turkish foreign policy from a soft power perspective and its concomitant de-Europeanization tendency had been crystallized in its policy towards the Balkans within the context of the 2010s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Weber's articulate conceptualisation of the nexus between religion and economics, these phenomena have been examined through various academic viewpoints. While some take religion as a determining factor of economic performance, others argue that it is the economy that influences religiosity. This paper focuses on the manifestation of religion and economics in the political sphere regarding the case of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP). After discussing the literature on the relations between religion and economics, it scrutinises the AKP period, considering three specific pillars: (a) the early years of the AKP in which Western economic policies were implemented as a continuation of the Kemal Derviş period; (b) between 2008 and 2015, when the idea 'we can do as well' maintained the centre stage; and (c) 2015 and onwards, when the Islamist influence on economic policy became highly apparent, particularly regarding interest rates. This study argues that the AKP changed politically in terms of Islamic influence upon the economic sphere, however this remains at the discursive level for the time being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sketches out the historical emergence and progress of political Islam in modern Turkey by emphasizing its statist and clientelistic aspects emanating from the authoritarian basis of Turkish political modernization. The paper contends that there has always been an authoritarian and autocratic tendency in modern Turkish politics that depends on a peculiar and modernist articulation of both Islamism and secularism, which eventually stand on the same ground. This very ground is formed upon a sacred understanding of the state that can be defined as an all-encompassing and absolute perfection of political power, which manifests itself differently in content for secular nationalists and Islamists, and yet produces the same authoritarian tendency. Both the secular nationalism and Islamism appear to be state oriented movements in the sense that they both have emanated from the state, and envisage to control the state in an absolute sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to explain the newly found momentum in the China-Turkey relationship over the course of the past decade. Attention is given to two interlocking processes involving global dynamics and domestic politics in Turkey in a rapidly shifting international context. At the global level, significant power shifts away from the West and the growing global reach and assertiveness of China during the Xi Jinping era have played an important role. At the domestic level, profound power shifts and attempts to consolidate a new and yet fragile political-economic model associated with a highly centralized and authoritarian presidential system have emerged as crucial factors. Our central point is that the China-Turkey partnership embodies an important political dimension that goes beyond a narrow economic partnership. Given the inherently political nature of the relationship, the future path of the China-Turkey partnership will depend crucially on Turkey's domestic political trajectory over the next decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper talks about the impact of Turkish aid on the macroeconomic development of Northern Cyprus. Since the physical division of the island of Cyprus in 1974, Turkey has been sending considerable financial aid to the de-facto state in its northern part, but the impact of this aid on local economics and politics has been controversial. We show that foreign aid has not been directly relevant for economic growth of Northern Cyprus. We suggest that persistence of aid, despite its negative impacts, can be explained by Turkey's geopolitical interests on the island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the Alevi-Sunni social conflict in Turkey through an examination of how the politically engaged youth of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) perceived the rights of the Alevi population around the time of the AKP's 'Democratic Opening'. Based on qualitative fieldwork involving 78 interviews conducted between 2009 and 2011 in seven different cities, the research focuses on the boundaries of AKP identity concerning Alevis' democratic demands and different modes of reconciliation with these. The results show the issue of Alevi politico-religious rights to reveal the religious, institutional and national boundaries of AKP political identity. In addition, the demand for the construction of a museum to commemorate the 1993 Madımak Massacre in Sivas triggered the Sunni memory boundaries of young activists in that city. The AKP youth also presented some approaches that reconciled with Alevi demands, classified as pragmatic, political and subjective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the role of pro-state paramilitary groups in Turkey's Kurdish conflict from the 1990s to the present. The role of paramilitaries in civil wars has been heavily discussed in general but remains understudied in the context of Turkey's war with the PKK. Turkish state authorities established a number of paramilitary groups in the initial stage of the conflict. Their impact grew during the 1990s in line with the change in the state's war strategy to a low-intensity conflict (LIC). This article discusses the evolution of the role of pro-state paramilitary groups in Turkey's war with the PKK, focusing on their changing relationship with government agencies. It characterizes the first half of the 1990s as the paramilitarisation of the state and demonstrates the continuing impact of this into the 2000s. The data was collected from media resources, interviews, criminal prosecutions of national and local cases, and NGO reports. Overall, this article develops a better understanding of the nexus between paramilitarism and the state through the prism of Turkey's Kurdish conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how and why Alevis in Turkey have insisted that they are not a minority community and have been reluctant to formulate their religio-cultural demands in the framework of minority rights, thereby challenging what is often called liberal multiculturalism. Inquiring into the type of minority community Alevis form, alongside Turkey's minority rights history, it explains why the case of Alevis necessitates a certain revaluation of liberal multiculturalism, as well as a reformulation of group-specific minority rights. We argue that the liberal multiculturalist understanding of minority rights may force minorities to lead a socially isolated and apolitical life, with no possibility to participate in a pluralistic reconstruction of the mainstream symbolic framework in society, which is contrary to the aims of Alevis in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special section provides a timely reflection on current debates that are of extreme relevance in order to gain a better understanding of the concepts of citizenship and active citizenship in Turkey, by looking at the determinants of civic and political participation, at the patterns of political and civic mobilization and at the orientations of political behaviour. Its originality stands on the specific focus on young people in comparison to other age groups. The different papers remark upon the importance that the reframing of the notions of citizenship and active citizenship have in the Turkish context along with the determinants that make this remark more relevant than ever. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes an alternative form of conflict resolution to analyze ethnic conflict and Kurdish dissent in the polarized and divided society of Turkey. It does so by employing Mouffe’s concept of agonism and radical democracy, in conjunction with Laclau’s model of populism. Through an analysis of the role of the Kurdish-led, left-leaning populist party, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), and its approach to Turkish-Kurdish reconciliation, the paper makes the case for the political and theoretical effectiveness of an agonistic approach, illustrating the possibility of dispute resolution by taking conflict into the centre of the peace building process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper revisits the Greek-Turkish rapprochement, taking as its point of departure the two states' economic relations, and explores possible linkages to political cooperation. The paper finds growing collaboration in a context characterized by the proliferation of non-state actors in economic decision-making, and underlines the role played by FDI flows and trade decisions in stimulating cooperation. At the same time, it rejects an uncritical acceptance of economic functionalism and stresses the salience of politics, above and beyond Turkey's EU candidacy, to consolidate the gains from the rapprochement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Erdoğan and the AKP government initiated a comprehensive restoration process immediately after the failed coup in mid-July 2016. In fact, the country has been experiencing a very comprehensive and violent regime transformation since this time. I assert that recent political developments paved the way for institutionalization of a 'plebiscitary presidential regime' that depends on a particular combination of supreme power of the leader, an extremely weak parliament, and elections of a plebiscitary character. In this context, the paper aims to shed light on the role of the new strategic legalism which allows rule of law to be replaced by a rule by law approach, the executive prerogative principle to be dominant, and the law to be used for demobilization, all playing a highly critical role in the suppression of democratic opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asserts that Turkish secularism and Islamism represent two faces of one coin - contemporary Turkish politics - when one considers their goals and strategies. The two ideological movements have shaped one another and each now seeks to impose itself as superior. This article unpacks these differences and similarities in the following steps: (a) it defines the socio-historic modes of Turkish secularism and (b) examines its social and political origins; (c) it then explores Islam's return to the public domain as an oppositional Turkish identity; (d) and thereafter considers the diverse understandings of secularism resulting from neoliberal policies that relaxed state control over Islam, which then prompted socially-acceptable reinterpretations of Islam; and finally (e) describes how the AKP's has re-imagined secularism while (mis)using Islam as a political instrument. The comparison highlights such commonalties as a collectivist character, a desire for state control as a vehicle to realize an ideology, intolerance of diversity and criminalization of other perspectives, and the differentiation of religion as morality in the private sphere versus its cultural role in the public sphere. It concludes that, under the AKP government, Islam is used as a tool to consolidate the power of Erdoğan's kleptocratic regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this paper is to explain the rise of competitive authoritarianism in Erdoğan's Turkey. The recent literature has mainly focused on the taxonomical debate about the type of regime established by Erdoğan, dealing only rarely with the factors explaining the Turkish autocratization. Building on Levitsky and Loxton's framework, which underlines the catalyst role played by the election of populist leaders for the rise of competitive authoritarianism in Latin America, the analysis identifies the interactions among Erdoğan's populism and threats and opportunities provided by both domestic and international environments as the major cause explaining Turkish autocratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given its duration and intensity, the decades-old civil war in Turkey between the Turkish state and the PKK has resulted in relatively low levels of lethal inter-communal conflict between Kurdish and Turkish populations. However, around the June 2015 elections an unprecedented wave of systematic anti-Kurdish violence swept across western Turkey. The paper will assess these events in relation to literature on communal riots and electoral violence. It will consider the impact of state led anti-Kurdish discourse and the growth of the HDP, as potential factors that aggravated the dormant tensions and laid the groundwork for widespread inter-communal violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey had its fourth National Assembly elections on 7 June 2015 in the twenty-first century and this time they resulted in a hung parliament. The efforts at establishing a coalition government failed and the country moved to a snap, ‘repeat’ election on 1 November 2015. This paper focuses on how the voters registered their party preferences almost 5 months apart in the same legislative general elections and why. Using the same sample and interviewing those who lived at the same addresses as those in the ISSP Citizenship survey conducted February to April 2015 and again in October 2015, a panel data-set was constructed. A theoretical framework for voting behaviour that uses party identification, political ideology, ethnic, religious, social class identities and perceptions of the performance of the economy of the respondents to understand what factors help to influence the party preferences of the same respondents 5 months apart. A multivariate (binary logistic regression) analysis of the pre-June and October 2015 data sets revealed that economic voting had been the predominant factor in the June elections, but security concerns also interacted with popular economic evaluations in the November 2015 elections to reinstall the AKP to power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about the main framework and the rationale of the special issue, which deals with Turkey's increasing ethno-religious, pragmatic and complicated involvement and activism in the Balkans since 2002, under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP). The main focus of the Issue is how the intersectionality between domestic and foreign policy has played an important role in Turkey's recent relations with the Balkan countries and how the Europeanization process influences this relationality. The overall claim is that religion, ethnicity and kin politics as indispensable components of identity politics, have the capacity to transform Turkey's foreign policy attitudes as well as the orientations of the Balkan countries and the impact of the processes of Europeanization and de-Europeanization on the relationship between Turkey and the Balkans needs to be included into the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borrowing the Copenhagen school’s lexicon of desecuritization, the present paper appraises the EU’s role as a desecuritizing agent for Turkey, with a particular focus on security speech-acts about ‘Kurdish separatism’ and ‘political Islam’. Taking up the illustrative cases of silencing the military and abandoning limits to freedom of speech reflected in EU-Turkey accession documents, this paper observes the ways in which the EU membership conditionality has been an important catalyst for Turkey’s desecuritizations; yet argues that the EU’s impact is limited due to the necessities of the interplay between various desecuritization agents/processes as well as the existence of EU conditionality efficacy factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Black Sea has been a site of contention and confrontation for centuries, though changes since the end of the Cold War allowed for the emergence of a cooperative environment. Due to its strategic location in the middle of Eurasia, controlling the region represents a unique geopolitical interest. This uniqueness at times turns into threats for regional and international peace and stability; thus its fortuitous location can become a curse. This paper argues that increased big power (US, EU and Russian Federation) attention does not guarantee prosperity, and can create occasional clashes. It looks at how the security interests of the big powers came to focus on the Black Sea, and explores one of the regional alternatives for its future political, economic and security structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation is key to the discussions of democracy and justice. For all citizens, no matter their differences, having the ability to participate is a difficult but required condition for a just and democratic political community. Based on the recent research on citizenship in Turkey, this article aims to explore, first, whether young citizens’ political participation shows a different pattern when compared to the rest of the population and, second, whether being young still determines the outcome when controlled for demographical factors and economic status. We then question whether belonging to different collective identities plays a different role in the way young citizens participate, and how. Last, mostly focusing on young citizens’ perceptions of the Gezi Park protests, the paper will discuss the role of politicized collective identities in the formation of conventional and unconventional political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to explain Turkey’s rapid de-democratization from the conceptual perspective of existential insecurity, which accounts for the unwillingness of incumbents to share or relinquish power. The Kemalist era, the multi-party period and the early AKP era have all shown elements of the radicalizing effects of political insecurity and the weak institutions which stem from them. The concurrence of a revisionist Islamist project and geopolitical and ideological crises in Turkey’s overlapping neighbourhoods, however, have driven existential angst and insecurity among the incumbents to novel proportions. Under the conditions of this aggravated insecurity, the consolidation of a stable authoritarian regime appears unlikely, reducing the possible scenarios for Turkey’s immediate future to a weak and contested authoritarian arrangement or further escalation of conflict and instability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper traces the ideology of democratic autonomy, as developed by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan from the libertarian and anarchist writings of Murray Bookchin, as an alternative to the authoritarian and centralist nation state, not only in the Kurdish-inhabited provinces, but in Turkey at large. It explores, first, the ideological underpinnings and second, the practical implementation of democratic autonomy both in south-eastern Turkey and in north-eastern Syria, or Rojava. Divergences between the two, I will argue, are not merely the result of contradictions between ideology and practice, or of the PKK’s enduring Leninist vanguardism, but also arise because the ideology itself remains ambiguous or implicit on the questions of party organization and the legitimacy of armed resistance. These ambiguities help to account for the apparent tension between grassroots anarchism and Leninist centralism in democratic autonomy, not only in practice but also in theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses the youth and education policies of the Turkey’s third Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) government from 2011 to 2014. This government period was marked by the emergence of a new myth of youth in Turkey: the myth of a pious generation, aimed at replacing the previous myth of a modern and national youth, prevalent in Turkey’s political culture since the nineteenth century and reinforced by the Kemalist Republic. The article first situates the education and youth policies of the AKP in the history of youth in Turkey and discusses the continuities and ruptures between the Kemalist and AKP youth projects. Secondly, through a critical reading of the political discourses of AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and of specific youth and education policies of the government, the paper conceptualizes this newly emerging myth in the context of neoliberal economic and conservative social policies of the AKP government and its aim to control the future through reshaping the young. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the impact transnational cooperation with European Union (EU) partners has had on Turkish political parties – the ruling Justice and Development Party and the Republican People’s Party. Two main platforms of transnational cooperation, i.e., affiliation with political families in the European Parliament and the workings of the EU–Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, are scrutinized. The article posits that transnational cooperation with partners on a European level has had a limited – if any – socialization effect on Turkish political organization. This stems mainly from ideological divergences between Turkish political parties and their European counterparts, EU scepticism which permeates political elites in Turkey as well as rising anti-Turkish sentiments within the EU establishment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although Turkey is no stranger to protest events, there has been only limited research into why some people participate in protests, such as demonstrations and boycotts, while others do not. Using the 2008 European Values Study data, this paper investigates how socio-economic and demographic variables, political attitudes and orientations, social capital and religiosity explain variations in the likelihood of engaging in unconventional political activity in Turkey. Comparing results for Turkey with results for the European Union (EU), the present study finds that traditional explanations of participation in unconventional forms of political action in stable democracies do not seem to explain participation in Turkey. Education, institutional trust, democratic satisfaction and religious beliefs are the only factors that shape non-traditional participation in Turkey. Socio-economic and demographic characteristics, political attitudes and orientations, social capital and religious beliefs explain most of the variation in unconventional activism in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research indicated that partisan affiliation, ideological and economic factors are the main determinants of the voters’ party preferences at Turkish elections. However, as Turkish political parties have been non-institutionalized structures, the role played by their political leaders seems to be larger than life. This paper seeks to assess the relative impact of the party leaders on the voters’ party preferences vis-à-vis ideology, partisan identity and economic satisfaction through empirical analyses with binary logistic regression. The data for the study were compiled as nationally representative surveys of the Turkish voters in June–July 2007 and May–June 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to analyze the institutionalization of the Turkish–American alliance through the Turkish pursuit of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership. It examines the external as well as some of the internal factors that shaped this transformation during the period of 1945–1952, starting with the end of the Second World War and lasting until Turkey’s accession to NATO. The main argument of this paper is that Turkey’s NATO membership has institutionalized three important transformations. The first one is the culmination of Turkey’s long-lasting search for security. The second one is Turkey’s quest for Westernization and an acknowledgement of its identity and role as an integral part of the West and its institutions. Finally, the third and more specific one is the institutionalization of the Turkish–American alliance through Turkey’s NATO membership, which has become one of the main pillars of Turkish foreign policy to this date. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the identity of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) - the conservative-democratic party in power in Turkey since November 2002 - and assesses its role in the EU's decision to open accession negotiations with Turkey. It argues that the AKP leadership has successfully employed an identity-based strategy highlighting the possibility of being Muslim and sharing European norms and values at the same time and the importance of Turkey's EU membership to refute 'the clash of civilizations' thesis to get Turkey closer to the EU in the post-September 11 global political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the issue of early preferences of national political parties in the EU regarding Turkey's accession. Two main hypotheses are proposed. First, national moderate parties contribute mainly to the de facto transformation of the accession in an 'open' process by developing volatile attitudes. Second, in the case of moderate parties, volatile attitudes and concrete political discourses on Turkey's accession are mainly determined by explanatory factors other than ideology (structural and strategic factors). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the political participation of Turkey’s two largest minorities, the Kurds and the Alevis. It argues that the political participation of Kurds and Alevis is disproportionately weak compared with their population size both for historical reasons and due to state practices. Creating an environment conducive to strong political participation of Turkey’s Kurds and Alevis will comprise a decisive step in the course of Turkey’s transformation from a procedural to a substantive democracy. Political integration of Kurds and Alevis would also mean the removal of a potential source of domestic conflict and enhance the long‐term stability of the Turkish political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how state policies towards minorities are defined in new nation‐states. It compares the treatment of Turks in Bulgaria and Kurds in Turkey from the foundation of both states until the 1940s. Imperial legacy, elite unity, responses of minority groups and the international context are important factors that influenced government policies to include or exclude minority groups. In Bulgaria, government policies towards the Turkish minority varied from indifference to tolerance and later to assimilation. In Turkey, the trajectory of state policy shifted from tolerance to assimilation in the early years of nation‐state formation. Findings suggest that when unified central governments and organized minority reaction coincide, state policies tend to aim at the assimilation of minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the establishment of the Republic in 1923, Turkey has sought its place in the West based on the premise of Turkey’s Western identity. In doing so, the secular elite have consciously repressed the country’s Muslim identity while simultaneously promoting Turkey as a bridge between East and West. After 9/11, however, Turkey’s Muslim identity has become increasingly ‘marketable’, particularly under the stewardship of the Welfare and Development Party (AKP), a conservative democratic party with Islamist roots. This paper examines Turkey’s value for the West as a Muslim, democratic model. Applying the theories of critical geopolitics, the author questions the adaptability of Turkey’s identity to the post 9/11 world and the response of the Turkish Armed Forces—guardians of Atatürk’s secular legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The framework of transnationalism has offered a sustained critique of dichotomous understandings of home and host country. Nevertheless, the recognition of immigrants’ embeddedness in more than one nation‐state should not come at the expense of investigating the abiding grip that nation‐states exert on the dislocation experience. Through an analysis of Bulgarian‐Turkish return migration, it is argued in this paper that the framework of transnationalism, while recognizing dual attachments, has to remain attuned to the national contexts into (and out of) which migration occurs. In analysing constructions of homeland among Turkish immigrants from Bulgaria, the tensions between the phenomenological experience of dislocation and the discursive formations of nationalism shape and limit those experiences. This article analyses transnationalism from an anthropological perspective and is based on eighteen months of field research conducted by the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many studies examine Erdoğan's growing control over the Turkish media sector, there are hardly any studies that look at how post-truth affects the low-income urban consumers of partisan media in Turkey, which this article aims to do. This focus group study reveals that the partisan media has a significant impact on the views and behaviour of the relatively less educated urban poor, but personal experiences prove a significant factor in the success of post-truth politics. If interviewees are locked into a relation of interest with Justice and Development Party organizations, particularly if they are recipients of social aid, their loyalty to Erdoğan and inclination to believe fake news from partisan media are stronger. However, when their personal experiences are diametrically different from the claims made in fake news, these individuals are harder to be persuaded by partisan media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personality approaches suggest that who the leader is crucial to adequately understanding the conjuncture and historical dynamics in studying politics. In thisagent-centred perspective, personal traits and leadership styles play significant roles in shaping a leader's policy-making process. This article provides a chance to get inside the personal 'black-box' of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, one of the most influential political figures in the history of the Republic of Turkey, in questioning who he is affects how he makes political decisions and how he reacts to institutional and situational constraints, such as e-memorandum and party closure case of the AKP. Reflecting the detailed results of systematic and comparative research, this article also empirically broadens the literature about Turkish leaders and provides a theoretical contribution to international leadership studies by highlighting the effects of a Turkish leader's traits and styles on the domestic policy orientations in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years Turkey has made Humanitarian Diplomacy (HD) an essential element of its foreign policy. This article analyzes Turkey's Humanitarian Diplomacy as a role conception and role performance by focusing on two cases, Somalia and Afghanistan, as the two most significant cases of Turkey's Humanitarian Diplomacy. It is argued that Humanitarian Diplomacy as foreign policy has provided Turkey with enough flexibility and ambiguity to bring together humanitarianism with interest. At the same time, Turkey's foreign policy interests started to become more legitimate and accepted by linking it to widely respected norms. Finally, HD also helped the AKP to consolidate its international state identity as well as its domestic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crony capitalism as a type of capitalism entailing the close relations of political authorities and business circles based on mutual profit maximization is not a new phenomenon in Turkey. However, crony relations have accelerated with the Justice and Development Party (Adalet Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) rule. Despite growing scholarly work on crony relations in the AKP era, the literature remains inward-oriented without analysing the external dimension of crony capitalism, which this article intends to alleviate by providing an analysis of crony capitalism and bringing back the external dimension through an analysis of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-related crony relations. It argues that the case of Turkey demonstrates how the BRI is used to feed instrumental cronyism without the promotion of China and how recipient countries use and misuse Chinese BRI investments to create alternative resources for the government's cronies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on trading states has advanced our understanding of foreign economic policy dynamics, but what constitutes a proper trading state and determines its resilience remains somewhat unclear. This article contributes to the literature by developing a political economy framework to assess the role of 'state capacity' in conditioning Turkey's foreign economic policies. Using Turkey as a case, we argue that states are more likely to show suboptimal economic engagement in case of weak state capacity, as (i) they fail to pursue effective industrial policy resulting in low exit costs, (ii) business elites cannot put pressure on the political leadership for the preservation of existing trade ties in the event of an external shock, and (iii) weak financial support mechanisms lead to insufficient assistance to national firms operating abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyse the importance of diaspora politics and Islam in Turkey and Morocco. The main premise of the article is that both states have increasingly relied on diaspora politics and religious diplomacy to attain both domestic and foreign policy gains. Using a Most Different Systems Design (MDSD), this article first examines each country's political framework to determine how diaspora politics and foreign policies are outlined. Then, it demonstrates how both states use diaspora politics and religious diplomacy to access their diaspora groups in European countries, enhance their regional and global influence, and alter domestic political arrangements to amass power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To counterbalance the deep systemic global crisis triggered by the COVID-19, many countries introduced a vast arsenal of fiscal policy instruments coupled with monetary accommodation. Yet, Turkey's response had almost exclusively relied on credit expansion and loan guarantees while minimizing the role of fiscal policy. Within that context, this article has three interrelated objectives. Firstly, we evaluate the effects of the crisis and the implemented policies on poverty and income distribution. Second, we measure the macroeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on the Turkish economy through a general equilibrium model. We find that these policies had a limited impact on reducing crisis-induced poverty. Finally, we propose alternatives to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, which are compatible with fiscal constraints. Our results suggest that by pursuing a targeted fiscal income transfer programme covering wage earners and small-sized enterprises, Turkey could have achieved a more egalitarian and effective response to the Covid-19 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]