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Illiberal Democracy or Electoral Autocracy
... There is a notion that Turkish elections have become "free and unfair" because Turkey's political playing field is known to be massively tilted in Erdoğan's favour [37]. It has been described that Erdoğan or his supporters have autocratised the media, the judiciary, civil society and academia [38,39]. Our analysis suggests that it may be more appropriate to describe Turkish elections as "mostly free and unfair", as consistent trends of small but discernible electoral irregularities can be consistently found by electoral forensic tools. ...
Concerns about the integrity of Turkey’s elections have increased with the recent transition from a parliamentary democracy to an executive presidency under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Election forensics tools are used to identify statistical traces of certain types of electoral fraud, providing important information about the integrity and validity of democratic elections. Such analyses of the 2017 and 2018 Turkish elections revealed that malpractices such as ballot stuffing or voter manipulation may indeed have played a significant role in determining the election results. Here, we apply election forensic statistical tests for ballot stuffing and voter manipulation to the results of the 2023 presidential election in Turkey. We find that both rounds of the 2023 presidential election exhibit similar statistical irregularities to those observed in the 2018 presidential election, however the magnitude of these distortions has decreased. We estimate that 2.4% (SD 1.9%) and 1.9% (SD 1.7%) of electoral units may have been affected by ballot stuffing practices in favour of Erdoğan in the first and second rounds, respectively, compared to 8.5% (SD 3.9%) in 2018. Areas with smaller polling stations and fewer ballot boxes had significantly inflated votes and turnout, again, in favor of Erdoğan. Furthermore, electoral districts with two or fewer ballot boxes were more likely to show large swings in vote shares in favour of Erdoğan from the first to the second round. Based on a statistical model, it is estimated that these shifts account for 342,000 additional ballots (SD 4,900) or 0.64% for Erdoğan, which is lower than the 4.36% margin by which Erdoğan was victorious. Our results suggest that Turkish elections continue to be riddled with statistical irregularities, that may be indicative of electoral fraud.
... It aims to understand the methods used by these states to control and manipulate the flux of news through the mass media. Turkey's media system has been chosen as a case study, because the recent political developments in the country, characterized as "competitive authoritarianism" (Esen and Gümüşçü 2016;Özbudun 2015) or "electoral authoritarianism" (Coskun and Kölemen 2020;Kaya 2015), show that the authoritarian turn has been conceived under a façade of democracy. Against this backdrop, this article aims to answer to the following question: How can we classify methods and strategies used by the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-Justice and Development Party) government to capture the media in Turkey? ...
This article focuses on the forced transformation of the mass media as an institution in new authoritarian states. It aims to understand the methods used by theses states to control and manipulate the flux of news through the mass media. Turkey’s media system has been chosen as a case study because the recent political developments in the country offer worrisome und devastating examples. This article aims to answer to the following question: How can we classify methods and strategies used by the AKP government to capture the media in Turkey? Why and how do the methods used by the AKP government differ from those applied by previous governments? To answer to these questions, the article draws on media capture as a framework of analysis. It argues that the AKP captured the media by using new strategies which can be divided into three overlapping and interconnected categories: capture by creating its own private media, capture through financial sanctions, and capture by intimidating and criminalizing journalists.
This article focuses on the forced transformation of the mass media as an institution in new authoritarian states. It aims to understand the methods used by theses states to control and manipulate the flux of news through the mass media. Turkey's media system has been chosen as a case study because the recent political developments in the country offer worrisome und devastating examples. This article aims to answer to the following question: How can we classify methods and strategies used by the AKP government to capture the media in Turkey? Why and how do the methods used by the AKP government differ from those applied by previous governments? To answer to these questions, the article draws on media capture as a framework of analysis. It argues that the AKP captured the media by using new strategies which can be divided into three overlapping and interconnected categories: capture by creating its own private media, capture through financial sanctions, and capture by intimidating and criminalizing journalists.
Gábor Polyák looks at the media and politics in illiberal Hungary. This chapter examines some of the typical methods that illiberal regimes, such as that of Hungary in recent years, employ and combine into a sustainable state censorship system. These systems are neither hold-overs nor re-makes of the preceding totalitarian control systems. Limitations are imposed simultaneously on media pluralism, on freedom of opinion, and on freedom of information, both in the legacy, and in the online, media. In Hungary, Viktor Orban’s second arrival to power in 2010 gave him a constitutional majority in Parliament, which he has used to an extent unprecedented in the EU, although it is will have many familiar aspect to those schooled in the world of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. His establishment of ruling party domination has relied heavily on the use of media laws, coupled with control of the both the regulatory bodies and the media market. The chapter gives and overview of the major objectives of these policies and the means employed to effect the ensuing transformation in the media landscape.
This article problematizes the role played by a football fan club—Çarşı—in one of the largest social movements in Turkish political history, the Gezi Park protests of June 2013. The authors suggest that as “unusual suspects” in social movements, Çarşı’s role in the Gezi Park protests can be understood with the conceptual toolbox provided by theories of contentious politics. Since action repertoires, or “known sequences for acting together,” are key to contentious politics and social movements, Çarşı’s organized and effective performance during the Gezi Park protests shows how previous encounters with the police can be decisive in terms of social upheavals. This study suggests that Çarşı members, who were already accustomed to making ethical judgments on a variety of issues both political and non-political, should be taken as a prominent example of how supporters on terraces and fan clubs facilitate the framing processes described by the social movement literature.
In March 2016, the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) ruled that the rights of the Turkish journalists Can Dündar and Erdem Gül had been violated, leading to their release from prison after three months. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan responded by criticizing the TCC sharply, questioning its existence and legitimacy. This had not been the first time over the last years, that the Court had been attacked. The constitutional amendments, that will be put to referendum in April 2017, seemed to be a golden opportunity to change the composition and cut back the broad competences of the TCC. Did the AKP-led Parliamentary Constitutional Committee seize this opportunity?
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi [HDP]) was one of the leading actors in Turkey's double parliamentary elections in 2015. Under the leadership of Selahattin Demirtaş, it has enjoyed great success, crossing the ten percent threshold and entering parliament in the June 7, 2015 elections. Yet the hype was mitigated by the party's poorer results in the November 1, 2015 elections. This electoral performance manifested the strengths as well as the limits of the HDP's ability to maintain its support in a polarized political environment. Yet the HDP remains an indispensable actor for the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue.
In the last few years, a sequence of protests and uprisings occurred across the planet from the student's movement in Chile, to the Egyptian revolution, the Spanish Indignados, Occupy Wall Street up to the Gezi Park protest in Turkey. Despite their respective singularity these events
seem to reveal new practices and forms of political subjectivity. The paper focuses on three aspects by analysing the recent Turkish case, the Gezi Park protests. Firstly, it explores what the authors call the process of 'recomposition of people', which is connected to the emergence
of new subjectivities and social practices, and eventually to the emergence of new norms, as indicated by the pervasive reference to the 'Spirit of Gezi'. Secondly it discusses the virtually classical phenomenon of emergence by examining infrastructures and practices of 'commoning', which
created what many participants of the protests lived as a transgressive experience. Thirdly, drawing on a Spinozan theoretical framework, the authors investigate the affective dimensions of the Gezi protest, emphasising the transformative role played by humour during the uprising.
During the 2013 Gezi Park protests, the widespread demonstrations against the government triggered by the attempt to demolish one of the last green spaces in central Istanbul, Turkish broadcasters initially failed to feature the large-scale protests. Instead, they preferred to air wildlife documentaries, an editorial choice that quickly became a comedic symbol representing the lack of press freedom in Turkey. However, press censorship is no laughing matter. In most open societies, the media would have jumped to cover the 2013 popular street demonstrations which followed the government's plans to demolish one of Istanbul's last remaining green spaces. However, the Turkish media failed properly to report the demonstrations. It was only after the protests garnered international attention and became impossible to ignore that the protests saw light of day in the Turkish media.
Legal constitutionalism – Political constitutionalism – Emergence of illiberal constitutionalism as a tertium genus – Examination of constitutional courts under three illiberal governments: Poland, Hungary, and Turkey – Illiberal governments’ strategies to seize control of constitutional courts – Illiberal governments’ aim to secure leverage over constitutional judges and restrict the powers of review of the court – Constitutional courts under illiberal rule invert the traditional functions that were assigned to them under the original Kelsenian approach – Instead of a check on power, illiberal constitutional courts become a device to circumvent constitutional constraints and concentrate power in the hands of the ruling actors.
On 11 January 2016, 1128 academics in Turkey and abroad signed a petition calling on Turkish authorities to cease state violence in mainly Kurdish populated areas of the country, which had been under curfew and an extended state of emergency. The petition received an immediate reaction from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who accused the signatories of treason and terrorist propaganda. He subsequently demanded that public prosecuters launch an investigation. Criminalisation of the petition has been exacerbated by disciplinary action by universities against many of the signatories. Many have suffered insults, arrest, detention or suspension as a result of the ensuing smear campaign. This massive crackdown on academic freedom has been masked by discourses of counterterrorism, which have also been deployed to criminalise dissent more generally in Turkey as a part of a process of rapid “democratic retrenchment” since 2013. This article is an attempt to put the criminalisation of academics within the larger framework of human rights violations, increasing curtailments of academic freedom and rising authoritarianism in Turkey. It argues that the prosecution of the signatories of the petition is an extension of an established tradition of targeting academic freedom in times of political crisis in Turkey but is also a product of growing authoritarianism under the ruling party and President Erdoğan. It shows that counterterrorism laws can be extended far beyond eliminating security threats by instrumentalising them to suppress dissent in a declining democracy.
Turkey has always been considered an “illiberal democracy”, or in Freedom House’s terms, a “partly-free” country. In recent years, however, there has been a downward trend toward “competitive authoritarianism”. Such regimes are competitive in that opposition parties use democratic institutions to contest seriously for power, but they are not democratic because the playing field is heavily skewed in favour of incumbents. One of the methods employed by competitive authoritarian leaders is the use of informal mechanisms of repression. This, in turn, requires a dependent and cooperative judiciary. Thus, in Turkey the year 2014 can be described as a period when the governing AKP (Justice and Development Party) made a sustained and systematic effort to establish its control over the judiciary by means of a series of laws of dubious constitutionality.
Judicial independence is understood as a cornerstone of rule-of-law and, as such, an essential component of democratic transitions.
But in contexts of democratization, the definition of judicial independence may require refinement to take account of the
special challenges of moving from the rule of the few to the rule of the many. In particular, an independent judiciary may
stall legislative and constitutional reform by engaging in a form of constitutional review designed to shield elite preferences
from democratic reversal. This article explores this problem through a detailed examination of a recent set of controversial
constitutional cases in Turkey to illustrate the risks of a narrow definition of judicial independence and explore the appropriate
balance between autonomy and accountability of the judiciary in periods of democratic transition or democratic consolidation.
The cleavage between the secular centre and the religious-conservative periphery has been the most important dividing line in modern Turkish politics. In the past, centre-right parties have successfully appealed to the peripheral majority, emerging as victors in almost all parliamentary elections since 1950. This trend continues with the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In power since 2002, winner of three consecutive elections with increasing majorities, the AKP qualifies as a predominant party. The article focuses on the AKP's recent drift towards an excessively majoritarian conception of democracy, or even an electoral authoritarianism of a more markedly Islamic character. Topics discussed include the Gezi Park events in May–June 2013, the conflict with the Gülen movement, corruption charges against government ministers, recent legislation weakening judicial independence and restricting freedom of expression, and the 30 March 2014 local elections.
In the Arab world, ideological resistance of supporters during football matches have coalesced with another rebellion, of youth breaking the chains of patriarchal power. The political implication of this social process is tremendous. As youth have experienced that they have had to yield to the will of parents and grandparents at home, and to the old dictators in the public field, finding a social arena where one could liberate one-selves from the former implicated a congruent dissolution of authority ties also towards the latter. As football is a primary medium through which youth autonomy could be experienced, football has a seismic political potential. The role of ultras supporters in the Egyptian revolution and the political role of nationalist supporters in Jordan in killing political taboos are cases where supporters represent more than simply a barometer of political trends. The supporters have initiated struggles crucially affecting political developments in their countries.
Around the world, democratically elected regimes are routinely ignoring limits on their power and depriving citizens of basic freedoms. From Peru to the Philippines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon: illiberal democracy. It has been difficult to recognize because for the last century in the West, democracy--free and fair elections--has gone hand in hand with constitutional liberalism--the rule of law and basic human rights. But in the rest of the world, these two concepts are coming apart. Democracy without constitutional liberalism is producing centralized regimes, the erosion of liberty, ethnic competition, conflict, and war. The international community and the United States must end their obsession with balloting and promote the gradual liberalization of societies.
This paper seeks to contextualise the 1999 Turkish earthquake within the institutional structure of Turkey's development. Particularly focussed upon the role-and culpability-of the state in the disaster, it outlines a number of key continuities within Turkey's political tradition. In all, it argues that Ankara's inadequate response can be understood both in terms of the persistence of these older social structures and in a more recent weakening of the public sector. Despite a pronounced sense of instrumental activism which emerged in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the result, it is concluded, is a perpetuation of both state insularity and a fragmented pattern of civil organisation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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