Abstract
Revisiting some of the main tenets of the moderation theory, Çınar suggests three possible factors accounting for the Turkish AKP’s decay from a potentially “Muslim democrat” political force, embracing the universal principles of rule of law, human rights and pluralism, to a “populist authoritarian” political force. The latter redefines democracy in nativist terms to dismiss democratic opposition, centralize and concentrate power in its hands, and deploy the Islamic moralist language of “forbidding evil, commanding good” to legitimize its “instructive” policies. The three factors include strong leadership and internal party structure, the political context within which the AKP interacted with secular actors and the impact of the shifting international context on the revival of the AKP’s Islamist ideology.
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Notes
- 1.
The AKP’s political identity has been a matter of controversy for a number of reasons. First, the party was established by the younger generation of Islamist, who were pious Muslims and who claimed Conservative Democracy to be their new identity. But this was a vaguely defined identity designed to achieve political legitimacy in a context where the parameters of legitimate political activity was set by Turkey’s military-led secular establishment. Second, the predominance of Orientalist/essentialist approaches that denied the possibility of a change in Islamist politics has further complicated the problem and hindered a better understanding of the true nature of the AKP. And, third Islamism has been a broad term used in referring to violent as well as participatory (civil and political) movements. Fourth, as the party got leader centered, the relative weight of Conservative Democracy as the AKP’s original political program/identity has decreased. To the extent that a conscious epistemological and ontological reference to “Islam” is regarded as the essential feature of Islamism, the AKP can be considered as a case of renewed Islamism. At the outset, the AKP’s “new Islamism” did not entail a political project to capture the state for a top-down Islamism or Islamize the social sphere by way of investing it with Islamic signs and symbols, but a willingness to meet the Islamic demands, like freedom to wear headscarf at university campuses, with a view to transform individuals. The AKP has problematized the Kemalist illiberal practice of secularism out of this “Islamic sensitivity,” which may be called “Islamism without Islamists”. The AKP’s “new Islamism” in a sense entailed the defense of the negative liberties of the Islamic identity in Turkey. It has also retained the Islamist claim to a distinct civilizational identity, but, in radical contrast to the clash of civilizations perspective of the “old” Islamism of its predecessors, taken civilizational dialogue between the West and Islam as essential. See Çınar and Duran (2008) and Yıldız (2008).
- 2.
After containing the military and taking over the Presidency, a package of Constitutional amendments rendering the last bastion of the establishment, the judiciary, a more heterogeneous and friendly institution were accepted by popular vote in a referendum in 2010.
- 3.
These policies included creating a “religious generation”, compelling the students to choose religious schools and courses and introducing regulations to restrict the sale of alcohol. When defending the last, the AKP leader Erdoğan made the following illustrative statement: “The regulation of the sale of alcohol is not an intervention into anyone’s identity, ideology, life style. Those who perceive it otherwise are mistaken and those who portray it otherwise are ill-intended. Drink at your home, if you want to drink. Unfortunately, in the last 200 years our youth has been detached from their own values, alienated from their own civilization and land, and moulded with an approach that imitates and imports [from the West]. What’s more this has not been a natural process. The youth were subjected to impositions, children were wanted to be formatted, people’s freedom of choice was taken away from them. I thank everyone who, by playing a part in the introduction of this important regulation, created the right climate for the growth of the generation of 2023, 2053, 2071” See, Hürriyet (2013a).
- 4.
In the run up to November 2015 elections, threats and acts of violence against the Istanbul daily Hürriyet, its columnist Ahmet Hakan and pro-Kurdish HDP supporters by the leader of the AKP’s youth branch and by a mob leader went without a neat public disapproval by the AKP leaders, let alone a serious police investigation. The leader of the Youth Branch, Abdurrahim Boynukalın, then was honored with a seat in the board of the AKP’s September 2015 Congress.
- 5.
“Their duty is to prepare the report and ours is to go our own way” Erdoğan once stated, cited in Kubicek (2013). Also, counter-reports dismissing the EU’s criticisms were published by the relevant government bodies, see Radikal (2013). For Edoğan’s most recent rejection of a European Parliament report on the declining state of democracy, see Hürriyet (2016a).
- 6.
In a number of statements he made in the mid-1990s Erdoğan likened his change to a change in the shell. Later, he referred to the change AKP represents as “taking off the [Islamist] National Outlook shirt”. As a Muslim he was assigned by God with the task of preparing the ground for the good. In the realization of the good, he stated “they [the secular sectors] will get used to some things, like they got us used to some things in the past”. See his interviews with Karaalioğlu (1996), Cerrahoğlu (1996) and Düzel (1995).
- 7.
The importance of the intra-party democracy for the future of the party was emphasized by Ertugrul Yalçınbayır, one of the top policymakers of the AKP between 2002 and 2007, see Gül (2012).
- 8.
One of the founding Islamist leaders Abdullatif Şener left the party over disagreement with Erdoğan on the issues of corruption and polarization in 2008; another one, Abdullah Gül, was moved to the impartial, non-executive seat of the presidency in 2007 and his team was marginalized and gradually purged. Despite his apparent disagreement with Erdoğan on many issues from the handling of Gezi protests and the peace process with the Kurds to the categorization of opposition as enemies rather than rivals, Bülent Arınç stayed within the party at the cost of a very effective marginalization by Erdoğan and his stalwarts.
- 9.
For example, parts of Abdullah Gül’s interview, expressing his contributions to the AKP’s successful resistance to the e-memorandum issued by military on the eve of the 2007 Presidential elections was censored in the pro-AKP media, see Özvarış (2014). Also, Bülent Arınç was practically prohibited from a number of tv channels, including the public channel TRT, which was under his portfolio as the Deputy Prime Minister, see Hürriyet (2015).
- 10.
Rare instances of failure to toe the line, even if they were in a friendly manner and from within the ranks of loyalist organizations, were subject to harsh response by Erdoğan and his stalwarts in the form of termination of employment/business contracts or ostracization. Ali Akel of pro-AKP daily Yeni Şafak was fired for he called on the AKP to account for the bombing of Turkey’s Kurds by fighter jets on the Syrian border.
- 11.
Davutoğlu was compelled to withdraw the “Political Ethics and Transparency Bill”, designed to fight against widespread corruption, upon Erdoğan’s strong disapproval in public. Davutoğlu also invited the head of the National Intelligence, Hakan Fidan to apply for nomination as a parliamentary candidate on the AKP list. But, again upon Erdoğan’s strongly worded disapproval, Fidan had to withdraw his application for nomination.
- 12.
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Çınar, M. (2018). From Moderation to De-moderation: Democratic Backsliding of the AKP in Turkey. In: Esposito, J., Zubaidah Rahim, L., Ghobadzadeh, N. (eds) The Politics of Islamism. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62256-9_5
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