Country: Turkey

July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3

How Erdoğan’s Populism Won Again

The opposition thought they had Turkey’s autocratic president on the ropes. But Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s brand of authoritarian populism triumphed. A more divisive and repressive chapter will almost surely follow.

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October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4

How Authoritarians Win When They Lose

Turkey’s ruling party has developed a new tool: When its local candidates lose, it dismisses them and appoints its own choice under a guise that maintains the veneer of democracy. It is an autocratic innovation that may soon spread.

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January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1

Turkey: How the Coup Failed

When parts of the Turkish military attempted a coup in July 2016, the competitive authoritarian AKP regime was able to bring both its competitive and its authoritarian features to bear, stopping the coup and launching a crackdown.

January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1

Tunisia’s Islamists and the “Turkish Model”

Ennahda has long felt an especially strong kinship with Turkey’s AKP, which has seen as representing a combination of piety, prosperity, and democratic credibility. How might their relationship be affected by the AKP's more recent authoritarian turn?

April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2

Turkey’s Two Elections: The AKP Comes Back

In power since 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seemed as if it might be losing its hold when Turkish voters went to the polls in June 2015. Yet that “hung election” gave way to another contest in November, and the AKP came roaring back.

January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1

Turkey Under the AKP: Civil-Military Relations Transformed

Read the full essay here. Recent years have seen a transformation in Turkish civil-military relations—away from the traditional picture of weak elected officials overseen by a strong military, to one of a strengthened civilian government and a military with decreased influence. This article explores the questions of how this transformation has occurred, whether it will…

January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1

Turkey Under the AKP: Are Civil Liberties Safe?

Read the full essay here. In the West, Turkey is considered a model for a secular democracy in the Muslim world, yet the country finds itself mired in a crisis of civil rights and liberties under a third term of the pro-Islamic AKP government. Ironically, while the government maintains a discourse on political reform—including constitutional…

January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1

Turkey Under the AKP: The Kurdish Question

Read the full essay here. Turkish state policy toward the Kurds, the Republic of Turkey’s largest ethnic minority, has evolved from denial and mandatory assimilation to cultural recognition to acknowledgment of the Kurds’ contested status as a political problem demanding political solutions. The election of 36 Kurdish-nationalist lawmakers, most of whom now sit in parliament…

July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3

Islamist Parties and Democracy: Turkey’s AKP in Power

The rise of Islamist parties poses new challenges to efforts to understand the relationship between Islam and democracy. A diverse group of authors investigates this new phenomenon and its implications for the future of democracy in the Middle East.

July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3

Islamist Parties and Democracy: Why They Can’t be Democratic

Read the full essay here. This article makes a case of the basic distinction between Islam and Islamism and presents three central arguments: 1. through religious reforms and a rethinking of the Islamic doctrine, the cultural system of Islam can be put in harmony with democracy, 2. this (first) argument does not apply to Islamism…

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January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1

Turkey Divided

Events surrounding Turkey's 2007 elections reveal a country with a vibrantly democratic political sphere and a society badly split over the role of Islam in national life.

July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3

Turkey’s AKP: A Model “Muslim-Democratic” Party?

Is the Islamic-oriented party that has ruled since 2002 really the harbinger of 'Muslim democracy,' or is it something more familiar in Turkish politics: a hierarchical group none too closely in touch with society and overly focused on one man?

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April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2

The Rise of “Muslim Democracy”

The incentives created by competitive elections in a number of Muslim-majority countries are fueling a political trend that roughly resembles the rise of Christian Democracy in twentieth-century Europe

July 2000, Volume 11, Issue 3

The Kurdish Question in Turkey

One of the greatest obstacles to democratic consolidation in Turkey has been the country's treatment of its Kurdish citizens. The root of the problem lies in the very nature of the Turkish state, which confuses unity with uniformity.

Is Erdoğan on His Way Out?

The Turkish president came to power as an antiestablishment everyman. Twenty years later he is an authoritarian leader clinging to power. Will the forces that catapulted him to power be his demise?

Political Parties and Democracy

Political parties are one of the core institutions of democracy. But in democracies around the world, there is growing evidence of low or declining public confidence in parties. But are they in decline, or are they simply changing their forms and functions?