Turkey’s New State in the Making. Transformations in Legality, Economy and Coercion

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Since the Gezi uprisings in June 2013 and AKP’s temporary loss of parliamentary supremacy after the June 2015 general elections, sharp political clashes, ascending police operations, extra-judicial executions, suppression of the media and political opposition, systematic violation of the constitution and fundamental human rights, and the one-man-rule of President Erdoğan have become the identifying characteristics of Turkish politics. The failed coup attempt on 15th July 2016 further impaired the situation as the government declared emergency rule at the end of which a political regime defined as the “Presidential Government System” was established in July 2018. Turkey’s New State in the Making examines the historical specificities of the ongoing AKP-led radical state transformation in Turkey within a global, legal, financial, ideological, and coercive neoliberal context. Arguing that rather than being an exception, the new Turkish state has the potential to be a model for political transformations elsewhere, problematizing how specific policies the AKP adapted to refract social dispositions have been radically redefining the republican, democratic and secular features of the modern Turkish state. Author Bio Pınar Bedirhanoğlu is an associate professor in the Department of International Relations at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Politics at York University in Toronto, Canada. She got her Ph.D. in international relations from University of Sussex in 2002. She has published in English and Turkish, and also has articles translated into German and French on neoliberal state transformation, state-capital relations, privatizations and financialization in Turkey; the political economy of corruption and neoliberal anti-corruption policies; and the politics of capitalist transformation in Russia. Her most recent research addresses the neoliberal transformation of state security structures, and state transformation within and through financialization with a focus on Turkey and Global South. Caglar Dolek received his Ph.D. degree in Sociology with a Collaborative Specialization in Political Economy from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada in 2019. He has a B.A. in International Relations (2008), Minor Diploma in Sociology (2008), and M.A. in Political Science (2011) from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. He has articles published in Science and Society, Critical Sociology, and Austrian Journal of Development Studies. His research reflects a transdisciplinary engagement with critical criminology, urban sociology, political economy, and police science from a comparative-historical perspective of the Global South. He is currently working on a book project with the following tentative title: “Thieves, Kabadayıs, and Revolutionaries on the Margin: A Social History of the Police in the Altındağ Slums in Ankara, Turkey (1920s-1970s).” Funda Hülagü works as a research associate at the Department of Political Science, Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. After receiving her M.A. in the field of Political Theory at the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, 2005) and Ph.D. in the field of International Relations at Middle East Technical University (Ankara, 2011), she worked as an assistant professor in different universities in Turkey. Since 2015, Hülagü has been living and teaching in Germany. She has several publications in the fields of critical political economy of security, state theory and critical theories of international relations. She has been currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled as “Police Reform in Turkey: Human Security, Gender and Political Violence under Erdoğan”. Hülagü’s current research interests include feminist international political economy, feminist state theory, and restructuring of the state in Turkey. Özlem Kaygusuz is an associate professor in the Department of International Relations at Ankara University in Ankara, Turkey. She studied international relations at Middle East Technical University and completed her Ph.D. in political science at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. She was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University in Fall 2003-2004 and at Stanford University in Fall 2012. She is giving undergraduate and graduate courses on globalization, IR theory, critical security, democratization, and Turkey-EU relations. Her articles and works in these areas appeared in various academic journals and books both in Turkish and English. Front Cover Half Title Title page Copyright Contents List of tables List of figures List of abbreviations and acronyms Notes on contributors Acknowledgements and beyond Introduction: Putting the AKP-led state transformation in its neoliberal historical context Introduction Why not a simple regime change? Bringing back the state transformation in critical analyses on neoliberalism Critical debates on neoliberal state transformation in Turkey Towards a new political form for Turkey’s capitalist state Appendix: The course of events in the 2010s in Turkey Notes References PART I: GLOBAL POLITICAL CONTEXT OF STATE TRANSFORMATION 1: Social constitution of the AKP’s strong state through financialization: state in crisis, or crisis state?. Introduction: Turkey’s political and legal impasse Formation of the AKP’s strong neoliberal state through financialization: 2002–13 State transformation after 2013 in the grip of financial breakdown Conclusion: the class nature of Turkey’s political impasse Notes References 2: Deconstitutionalization and the state crisis in Turkey: the role of the Turkish Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights Introduction Turkey’s tradition of authoritarian constitutionalism and deconstitutionalization Deconstitutionalization: definition and conceptual framework Political deconstitutionalization in Turkey through AYM and ECHR decisions The move towards an exceptional state in Turkey? Notes References 3: Turkey’s double movement: Islamists, neoliberalism and foreign policy Introduction Identity politics as democratization and the agent of transformative diplomacy The second phase of transformation The US, Trump and the tacit support for Turkey’s authoritarianism The EU and a disgraceful bargain over refugees Conclusion: towards a new form of the state Notes References 4: A shift of axis or business as usual?: Turkey’s S-400 procurement decision and defence industry Introduction Decoding the S-400 procurement decision At risk: defence-industrial cooperation and integration between Turkey and the West Conclusion Notes References PART II: POLITICS OF ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT 5: Understanding the recent rise of authoritarianism in Turkey in terms of the structural contradictions of the process of capital accumulation Introduction Capital accumulation in late capitalist countries: ‘structural change’ and ‘change within the structure’ Signals of contradictions in the accumulation process The AKP’s failure to perform some basic functions of capitalist states The AKP’s postponement mechanisms Conclusion Notes References 6: Turkey’s financial slide: discipline by credit in the last decade of the AKP’s rule Introduction Discipline by credit and debtfarism More of the same State-sponsored credit expansion and the 2018 currency crisis Conclusion Notes References 7: The AKP’s move from depoliticization to repoliticization in economic management Introduction: beyond a binary exposition Depoliticization in economic management and its limits The repoliticization of economic management since 2014 Conclusion: state-centred neoliberalism Notes References 8: The AKP’s income-differentiated housing strategies under the pressure of resistance and debt Introduction Tracing the changes in the housing agenda in Turkey State housing strategies for middle- and upper-income households Housing strategies for low-income households Conclusion Notes References Interviews conducted in 2016 Interviews conducted in 2018 PART III: POLITICS OF DOMINATION 9: The transformation of the state–religion relationship under the AKP: the case of the Diyanet Introduction The Diyanet: a biography The Diyanet under the AKP Legal and social expansion Transformation from a national to a transnational to aglobal actor Dissociation from secularism Conclusion Notes References 10: From military tutelage to nowhere: on the limitations of civil–military dualism in making sense of the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey in the 2010s Introduction The liberal dream: the AKP as the democratic actor ending the military tutelage regime The rise of authoritarianism and the liberals’ hopeless search for the ‘Kemalist agent’ The 15 July trauma as the AKP’s founding myth of the ‘New Turkey’ Post-coup measures and the new context of civil–military relations in Turkey Conclusion Notes References 11: Courtrooms as solidarity spaces and trials as sentences: defending your rights and asking for accountability in Turkey Introduction The Cumhuriyet trials The Gezi trial The Academics for Peace trials Conclusion Notes References 12: SETA: from the AKP’s organic intellectuals to AK-paratchiks Introduction The founding of SETA and its place in a system of quid pro quo relationships The 2005–13 era: SETA as the home/sanctuary/heaven of AKP’s organic intellectuals The collapse of the AKP hegemony and SETA’s transformation into party apparatchiks Conclusion Notes References PART IV: POLITICS OF COERCION 13: Domesticating politics, de-gendering women: state violence against politically active women in Turkey Introduction The imaginary of the ‘woman in politics’ De-gendering to monopolize ‘femininity’ Victimization of politically violent women Conclusion Notes References 14: The war on drugs: a view from Turkey Introduction A brief history of narcotic drugs and their criminalization in Turkey Criminalization of and penal responses to narcotic drugs in Turkey Authoritarianism and the war on drugs Conclusion Notes References 15: ‘The law of the city?’: Social war, urban warfare and dispossession on the margin Introduction The making of police power from the margin Conclusion Notes References Index