Politics and the Turkish military

As NATO prepares to expand into Eastern Europe, the military of one its longest-standing members, Turkey, is openly at odds with the country’s democratically elected government. Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, under pressure from his generals for months, has been forced to concede political power. The military’s successful challenge to civilian authority, in keeping with Turkey’s praetorian traditions, could have dangerous consequences. The very threat that it now struggles against – radical Islam – could deepen its hold on Turkish society as a result of the armed forces’ challenge to the political order.     

The Russian–Turkish rapprochement

Relations between Russia and Turkey have recently swung from comprehensive discord to wide-ranging cooperation, spanning the energy, economic, military and diplomatic spheres. But their rapprochement remains far from a strategic partnership, defined more by tensions and uncertainties than by clearly shared national interests. The pendulum could swing back again.     

The Saudi–Turkish antagonism

The long-standing rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Turkey has given way to open hostility and a power struggle extending across the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. The antagonism is affecting Ankara and Riyadh’s ties with actors from outside the region and complicating the policies of these actors in the Middle East.     

Biometrics and anthropometrics: the twins of Turkish modernity

ABSTRACT

In the first half of the twentieth century, eugenic debates and policies revolved around positive (encouraging the reproduction of ‘superior’ individuals) and negative (preventing the reproduction of ‘inferior’ individuals) applications for the purpose of improving hereditary characteristics and preventing social problems. However, their particular manifestations varied because eugenic agendas responded differently to putative social problems in different local contexts. Despite the wealth of scholarly studies on eugenics, particularly in Germany and the United States, eugenic debates in Turkey have so far not received any attention. The significance of eugenics in the Turkish context stems from its conflation with republican modernization efforts. While Turkish republican reformers were diligently searching for anthropometric proof of the whiteness, Europeanness and ancientness of Turks, they also supported biometric scholarship that proposed eugenic measures to protect and improve recently ‘discovered’ historical essences. At a time when western eugenicists were classifying non-western peoples as inferior, Turkish reformers creatively adopted the methods and vocabulary of race science to establish the Turks’ innate ability to modernize. In order to demonstrate the wide appeal of eugenics in the Turkish context, Ergin presents findings from a content analysis of educational conferences organized by the government between 1938 and 1941, and argues that the future-oriented project of biometrics was as important as the past-oriented project of anthropometrics for the formulation of Turkishness in negotiation with race and modernity.     

Denationalization of Citizenship? The Turkish Experience1

Turkism as a political project aiming at the construction of a Turkish national identity was spelled out in 1904. The realization of this project included processes of assimilation and exclusion of non-Turkish and non-Muslim “others”. There was also an attempt on the part of the Republican elite to construct oblivion in the society about the multicultural Ottoman past in order to constitute a Turkish national identity. Hence, Turkish citizenship emerged as membership to a national state defined on the basis of a single religion (Sunni sect of Islam) and single language (Turkish). The increasing visibility of the non-Turkish and non-Muslim identities in the 1990s unleashed a process of denationalization of citizenship. Denationalization of citizenship gained momentum after Turkey's official candidacy in the European Union in 1999. Many reforms were undertaken in the parliament towards the utilization of languages other than Turkish as well as the practice of multiple religions. These reforms were upheld by the activities of civil societal organizations in order to portray the presence of multicultural identities in Turkey. Unless reversed by a nationalist backlash, these processes point to the denationalization of citizenship in Turkey.     

Discourses of popular politics,war and authenticity in Turkish pop music

Turkey and the United States (US) have had a close mutually beneficial political and military relationship since the end of World War Two. However, this relationship came under pressure when the US government and Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) tried to cooperate closely in the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. AKP's leadership failed to persuade Turkey's parliament to accept the deployment of US troops and equipment in Turkey partially due to public opinion. Despite Turkish media and its government being intertwined to the extent where subversive discourses are all but silenced, some popular music videos were able to articulate discourses which questioned AKP's military policies. This paper analyses lyrics, visuals and sounds of one of these songs to look at the way war and political issues become articulated through a form of simplified popular politics, despite being presented as serious and authentic by a number of key signifiers across the different modes. A number of scholars have addressed the issue of subversion in music both as actual political challenge and as popular counter culture. This case study is used to assess subversion in music in these terms in order to consider its likely place in political debate in Turkey.     

Regression Discontinuity diagnostics reveal statistical anomalies in Turkish elections

Using Regression Discontinuity diagnostics we document a number of statistical anomalies in the 2004 Turkish mayoral elections. The governing party that controls the parliament is much more likely to win close races than lose. Moreover, compared to close governing party losses, there is a sharp drop in turnout and contending party votes in close governing party wins. Finally, the parties that disproportionately lose very close races are exclusively ideological competitors of the governing party. Among the potential mechanisms that may create those anomalies, electoral manipulation seems to a plausible explanation. Those anomalies show that the outcomes of very close popular elections can be non-random and that the assumption of the continuity of the expected potential outcomes at the threshold could be violated. We discuss implications of our findings for Regression Discontinuity Designs and for understanding the consolidation of the right-wing electorate in Turkey during the last decade.     

Repression,spontaneity, and collective action: the 2013 Turkish Gezi protests

Scholars have identified various conditions that influence the formation of spontaneous collective action. Certain types of opposition strategies and geographic conditions make it likelier for protesters to be able to overcome reactive repression and keep mobilizing after experiencing state violence. As such, it is still unclear why a small protest sometimes diffuses into an unforeseen mass wave of dissent. Through examination of Turkish civil society, this study introduces a framework to explain the emergence of the 2013 Gezi protest, which was the largest in the Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (Justice and Development Party) government-led era of Turkish politics. A sequence of mechanisms including viral diffusion, elite updating/cover-up, public outrage, and coordination are categorized and linked to previously identified antecedent conditions as well as Twitter activity of social movement organizations which took part in the protests. The framework advances our knowledge of repression backfire by identifying its causal mechanisms and classifying a configuration of conditions under which the phenomenon is likely to empirically take place.     

Stalemate and Stagnation in Turkish Democratization: The Role of Civil Society and Political Parties

Both civil society organizations (CSOs) and political parties are expected to be vital actors in democratic societies, yet the ideal relationship between the two types of groups has not been fully explored. This article analyses how the interaction between CSOs and political parties has affected democratic consolidation in contemporary Turkey. Through personal interviews with leaders of both types of groups, the study finds that traditional power relations have shifted to include a greater number of political actors. Islamists, who were previously peripheral in politics, have joined the traditionally dominant secular nationalists at the ‘centre’ of political power. However, instead of increased pluralism, the study finds Turkish society now polarized along secularist/Islamist lines, both in political parties and among CSOs. While restrictions against non-governmental organizations have been lifted in recent years and the number of groups has grown, most are still viewed as ‘arms’ of political parties, lacking an independent voice and political power. These findings suggest that the civil society sector in Turkey is underdeveloped and unable to contribute positively to the democratization process.