Populism, violence and authoritarian stability: necropolitics in Turkey

Abstract

The literature on populism overwhelmingly deals with the factors behind the rise of populism: the supply factors, and the economic and political crises. However, there is a lack of engagement in the literature on the construction of populist narratives and especially on the relations between populist narratives and violence. This paper addresses these gaps. Based on an empirically rich case study of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its leader President Recep T. Erdoğan, it shows that the populist narrative of the party and its leader is necropolitical as it is based on narratives of martyrdom, blood and death. The paper also shows that to maintain authoritarian stability, the incumbents instrumentalise these populist necropolitical narratives for repression, legitimation and co-optation. We analyse this complex case by combining the literatures on populism, necropolitics, politics of martyrdom and authoritarianism, and contribute to all of them.

Keywords:

• Authoritarianism
• necropolitics
• populism
• violence
• martyrdom
• Turkey

Introduction

Much has been written about de-democratisation and populism. The literature generally deals with the demand and supply factors behind the rise of populism,¹ and the economic and political crises.² In particular, the focus has been on how populist movements and populists in power erode liberal values within democracy.³ However, as Taş⁴ notes, with few exceptions,⁵ the ways in which the populists construct and propagate their narratives have largely been overlooked. A confrontational cosmos, enmity, politics of victimhood, and siege mentality have been some usual aspects of populist narratives. However, there is particularly a lack of engagement in the literature on the relationship between the populist movement narratives and violence.⁶ This has usually been the discursive territory of the far-right groups.

This paper addresses these gaps in the literature. Based on a case study of Turkey’s ruling party (Justice and Development Party, AKP) under the leadership of President Recep T. Erdoğan, it argues that populism has also a pro-violence dimension centred around blood, death and martyrdom narratives. We call this populist necropolitics. Our use of necropolitics in this paper denotes the politicisation of death and the construction and political instrumentalisation of narratives about blood, death and martyrdom for everyday political use. AKP and Erdoğan construct their necropolitical narrative in a populist fashion and argue that the nation is facing existential life and death threats that can only be tackled by sacrificing lives. They also simultaneously use these sacrificed lives to rally people around the flag, to legitimate actions of the AKP and Erdoğan, to justify repression and revengeful violence against the opposition, and to co-opt some oppositional groups. Thus, this necropolitical populism is used to consolidate and stabilise the AKP’s authoritarianism.

What is exclusively populist in the Erdoğanist necropolitics is that populists construct the present time as an historical juncture for the people’s survival. They manipulate public fears, exaggerate the real or imagined threats to the nation and present a dark picture of the nation under continuous threat.⁷ In the populist narrative, the future is presented in two deterministic alternatives: either the magnificent past comes back or the nation is destroyed in a doomsday scenario. ⁸ Thus, populist mobilisation becomes a matter of ‘life and death’, and dying for the salvation of the people against the evil enemies at home and abroad becomes an existential issue. This enables them to maintain authoritarian stability as they use violent rhetoric (in our case, necropolitics based on populist narratives of martyrdom, blood and death) for repression, legitimation and co-optation.

To analyse this complex case and to answer our research question – How have the AKP and Erdoğan constructed and instrumentalised populist necropolitical narratives for the authoritarian stability of the regime? – we analyse the rich empirical case of the Erdoğan and his AKP by combining the literatures on populism, necropolitics, politics of martyrdom and authoritarianism, and contribute to all of them. We show that the AKP’s necropolitics is more complex than the literature has so far shown, and thus the concept and especially its use in populist competitive authoritarian settings for authoritarian stability could be further developed.

We should note that we are not arguing that necropolitical narrative has been the most decisive tool of the populist authoritarian toolbox, as it is hard to distinguish the particular impact of this tool on such a large outcome (populist authoritarian regime stability and longevity). Populist necropolitical narrative is only one of the elements of the authoritarian discursive toolkit used along with other instruments – but it has not been analysed so far.

The paper proceeds as follows. We first look at the literature on necropolitics and show how the concept has been evolving and expanding. Then we introduce historical examples and the development of politics of martyrdom and present our more expanded concept of necropolitics that will enable us to analyse the complex Turkish case. Next, we briefly present the literature on the AKP’s transformation from a pro- European Union (EU) democratising party to a competitive authoritarian populist one, identifying a gap in this literature. We then introduce how after this authoritarian turn, Erdoğan and the AKP have started using this populist necropolitical narrative for several purposes such as myth-making, social engineering, top-down Islamisation of society, political mobilisation, militarism and irredentism. However, we leave these aspects to other studies and focus only on the authoritarian stability aspect. To be able to analyse the use of populist necropolitical narratives for authoritarian stability, we briefly introduce authoritarian stability’s three pillars: repression, legitimation and co-optation. After these theoretical summaries, we present our empirical case under three headings on the three pillars. These three sections discuss the empirical material in line with the theoretical framework of the previous section, showing how Erdoğan and the AKP have used populist necropolitical narrative of martyrdom for repression, legitimation and co-optation, respectively. In the concluding section, we very briefly refer to a few populist authoritarian milieus to place our findings in a wider context.

Necropolitics and martyrdom narratives

In its original meaning as conceptualised by Achille Mbembe, necropolitics is the right of the sovereign to determine who shall live and who shall die.⁹ In a similar vein, necropower either decimates populations through massacres or else commits populations to unliveable conditions in which they are continually exposed to violence and deprived of a properly human life, where they are destined to a death-in-life.¹⁰ To date, Mbembe’s concept has been applied to several other contexts.¹¹ Necropolitics has now been expanded to include how the realm of the dead can be a site of violence, a surrogate for the government of the living, a means of delineating the boundaries of political community and a conduit for the production of collective memory.¹² In this usage, necropolitics is not the reduction of the living to ‘the status of living dead’, but ‘the dishonouring, disciplining and punishment of the living through the utilisation of the dead as postmortem objects and sites of violence’.¹³ Further studies have complicated the concept and offered new dimensions of necropolitics, examining how it is operative in courts, prisons and political cemeteries, martyrdom, gender politics, collective memory and reparation claims.¹⁴ Carney also expands the concept and talks about a discursive and representational necropolitics that fetishises death for the nation, is fascinated with and champions death on behalf of the nation.¹⁵

The meaning of necropolitics has also been expanded to include positive means of constituting community through the practice of caring for the dead, positive interventions into dead bodies, burials and grief.¹⁶ The term has also been applied to show how the authoritarian incumbents employ different politicisations of death: they control the narrative around the news of death to maintain discursive hegemony regulating death; depoliticise death to eliminate the risk of dissident mobilisation after deadly incidents; normalise death as an inherent feature of some citizens’ occupational, socioeconomic and – in some cases – gender position; and expand martyrdom, a concept hitherto used as a religious and/or nationalist justification for military casualties, into the civilian sphere.¹⁷

We argue that not only expanding the concept of martyrdom to include civilians but also using the martyrdom narrative for everyday politics, such as mobilising the masses, encouraging them to sacrifice their lives for the leader’s political cause, and using martyr narratives to justify revenge and to threaten dissidents by stating that the ruler’s followers are ready to die to crush the enemy (ie the opposition), are necropolitical acts.

Nationalism’s ability to mobilise people through the power of the dead has been described as ‘the necromantic power’.¹⁸ It is well known that for many centuries nationalistic and religious rhetoric from many countries and cultures have expressed encouragement of self-sacrifice for a greater cause. Before the emergence of nationalism, martyrdom appeared in the earliest human history. The religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia and ancient Greece included the notions of heroism and sacrifice in defence of good against evil.¹⁹ In repressed societies, such as the Jews during the Hellenistic period or the early Christians in the Roman era,²⁰ martyrdom played several roles at once: forging authority, escalating the struggle, reinforcing the ranks, legitimising the alternative culture, and creating a sense of differentiation and animosity vis-à-vis the enemy.²¹ In ancient Greece, ritual ceremonies were dedicated to fallen heroes in patriotic wars, and in these ceremonies and orations, heroic death was skilfully presented as desirable. In the most famous of these, Pericles praises the sacrifices of the dead so that others will imitate them as Athens was so glorious that it was worth dying for.²² Islam, for a variety of reasons, is now the most well-known religion for its emphasis on the virtues of martyrdom.²³

Martyrdom is a significant paradigm in creating collective memory.²⁴ The martyrdom narrative, be it secular or religious, is one of the most ‘powerful tools of political action and potent weapons employed in political struggles’ for ‘creating and maintaining popular support’ for nationalist as well as religious struggles.²⁵ Glorification of martyrdom, death and blood narratives has been used in both democratic and non-democratic regimes as a tool for building collective memory, rituals, symbols, myth-making and mass mobilisation.²⁶ Martyrs play a dual role by delegitimising the enemy outside while consolidating the status of the martyr’s group in the community.²⁷

Governments have imposed cemeteries of martyrs or martyry monuments upon the daily lives of citizens whose daily routines and commutes traverse such spaces. These monuments and spaces have been called ‘necropolitical spaces’²⁸ as they condition the masses to die for the sovereign, in a process in which the sovereign’s overt ‘right to kill’ is transformed into a covert ‘encouragement to die’.²⁹

The literature on populism has consistently shown that populists rely heavily on ideational narratives of nationhood, historical myths, and struggle between good and evil, but they have not analysed the populist use of martyrdom narratives. Similarly, the literature on martyrdom has not sufficiently analysed how populist necropolitical use of martyrdom has been one of the instruments of the authoritarian toolbox in maintaining their authoritarianism and their regime’s stability, resilience and longevity. This paper also addresses these gaps.

At this point, it is important to note that nationalism and populism should not be conflated since they are two distinct analytical categories.³⁰ While nationalists worship such necropolitical elements embedded in political culture, populists exploit them. However, ‘the present conjuncture is not simply populist; it is (with a few exceptions) national-populist’.³¹ The AKP is a case in point. Necropolitical narrative is part and parcel of the AKP’s ‘Islamist populist’³² and nationalist discourse.

Before, proceeding to Erdoğan and AKP’s populist construction of necropolitical martyrdom narrative, we will first of all look at the literature on the transformation of the AKP under Erdoğan from a pro-EU democratising party to a competitive authoritarian populist party.

The emergence of populist competitive authoritarianism in Turkey

Despite their differences in defining populism as ‘a logic’,³³ ‘a tactic’,³⁴ ‘a political strategy’,³⁵ ‘a repertoire’³⁶ or ‘a thin ideology’,³⁷ almost all scholars of populism concur that populist leaders portray themselves as saviours of ‘the people’, defender of the victimised little men against the evil and corrupt elite in an attempt to turn politics into a struggle between the forces of good and evil, a Schmittian existential ‘life and death’ fight between friends and enemies where state sovereignty is based on the existential distinction between friend and foe.³⁸ As Laclau put it, enmity is the logic of populism.³⁹ Populists not only ‘thrive on conflict and encourage polarization; they also treat their political opponents as “enemies of the people” and seek to exclude them altogether’⁴⁰ to be able to come to power or stay in power. For this purpose, populists employ emotional, simplistic and manipulative narratives directed at the ‘gut feelings’⁴¹ and ‘resentments’⁴² of the people, aimed at getting majoritarian support.

After coming to power in late 2001, the AKP has promised pro-EU democratisation reforms, and by 2007, many reforms had been achieved. During these years, the AKP paved the way for the desecuritisation of the Kurdish issue and pro-Kurdish opposition. Various reforms were made to resolve the Kurdish issue. The far-right Turkish Nationalist Action Party (MHP) had staunchly opposed these AKP-led initiatives, including the ‘Kurdish opening’, which promised to grant Kurds cultural and linguistic freedoms, in total contradiction to the traditional Kemalist homogenising and assimilationist policies. However, beginning gradually from 2007–2008 but especially after the June 2015 elections, the AKP started emulating the nationalist⁴³ and even far-right MHP narratives against the Kurdish opposition to co-opt the MHP, and have become an authoritarian populist party.⁴⁴

There have been many studies discussing the AKP and Erdoğan’s authoritarianism and populism in different ways.⁴⁵ For instance, while Bayulgen et al. argue that the authoritarian reversal in Turkey happened as a result of the strategies of centralisation, legitimation and repression pursued by the AKP,⁴⁶ Yilmaz, Caman and Bashirov show how ideational narratives around nationalism and populism, existential threats to the nation, a siege mentality, internal and external enemies of the nation, and the greater ‘New Turkey’⁴⁷ have facilitated the AKP’s co-optation of some of the opposition parties.⁴⁸ Previous studies have focussed on populism in the AKP’s Turkey as ‘a medium of mass mobilization’,⁴⁹ as Erdoğan’s ‘ruling strategy’,⁵⁰ and as a catalyst for the rise of competitive authoritarianism.⁵¹

According to this literature, existential insecurity of the AKP elite and their perceived ‘victimhood’,⁵² triggered by the Kemalist and militarist interference in the 2007 presidential elections, and the attempt to ban the AKP in 2008 prompted Erdoğan to resort to authoritarian populist tactics to avoid further existential threats to his power.⁵³ On the other hand, Erdoğan’s pursuit of an authoritarian regime has raised the AKP’s insecurities exponentially, and accelerated Turkey’s exit from democracy.⁵⁴ Competitive authoritarian ‘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 favor of incumbents’.⁵⁵ Challenges from the old elite, the Kemalist establishment, opposition parties, economic problems and protests, and parting ways with old allies such as the liberals and Gulenists but also having to compete in the elections led Erdoğan to resort to populist rhetoric. As a result, through typical populist strategies, such as constructing an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ divide, ‘Erdoğan gained a greater control of crucial state institutions, including those of the horizontal accountability, which lost to a good extant their capacity to act as checks and balances over the executive’.⁵⁶ In this process, all kind of oppositions were securitised as existential enemies of the people, whose only genuine representative is presented as Erdoğan and his AKP. Bureaucracy, the judiciary and the separation of powers were framed as barriers to people’s general will to be implemented by Erdoğan.⁵⁷

As can be seen, even though several aspects of authoritarianism and populism of Erdoğan and the AKP have been thoroughly analysed in the literature, their populist use of necropolitical narrative as one of the tools for authoritarian stability and regime consolidation has not been analysed. This paper addresses this gap as well. Now, we will briefly look at how Erdoğan constructs a necropolitical martyrdom narrative for populist purposes.

Erdoğan’s populist construction of the necropolitical martyrdom narrative

The Turkish nation-building project has been under the influence of a siege mentality called the ‘Sèvres Syndrome’, the fear that Turkey is surrounded by external enemies that are collaborating with its internal ones with the aim to destroy the Turkish state and send the Turks back to Central Asia. According to this mentality, Turkey’s territory is a source of envy that necessitates that Turkish subjects should be willing to die for the fatherland, the nation, and the state without question.⁵⁸ This has been called the ‘necrogeopoliticisation of Turkey’.⁵⁹

Similar to many other historical and contemporary contexts, blood and death and martyrdom narratives have been used for political purposes in Turkey too for myth-making, building a collective memory, inculcating the masses with the nationalistic emotions and fervour, militarism⁶⁰ and collective mobilisation.⁶¹ This outlook has been propagated and perpetuated through national curriculum, media, popular culture, law and state-controlled religious institutions.⁶²

After entering into de facto alliance with the MHP in 2015, the AKP has actively started capitalising on this aspect of Turkish political culture. Erdoğan and AKP have simply but consistently used this militarist, Islamo-nationalist and necrogeopolitical culture of Turkey to rally the people around the flag. For instance, from a stage where Erdoğan was leading a rally, he spotted a 6-year-old girl in the crowd, dressed in military-style camouflage and wearing a maroon beret and asked the girl to be lifted towards the stage to meet with him. However, she was shy and began crying. After kissing her on both cheeks, Erdoğan turned to the flag-waving crowd and said:

Look what you see here! Girl, what are you doing here? We have our maroon berets here, but maroon berets never cry. God bless her. Her Turkish flag is in her pocket. If she becomes a martyr, God willing, she will be wrapped with it. She’s ready for everything. Isn’t she?⁶³

Because the AKP has tried to construct 15 July as one of the cornerstones in building the New Turkey, necropolitical narrative based on martyrdom has become a consistent and strong theme in the discourse of Erdoğan and the AKP after the 15 July 2016 coup attempt.⁶⁴ In Erdoğan’s Islamist populist narrative, the coup attempt was another attempt by the West to invade Turkey, to fulfil the Sevres Treaty that was not implemented because of the Independence War (1919–1922). This narrative enabled him to mobilise the masses on the coup night. In his live TV speech on the coup night of 15 July 2016, Erdoğan called civilians to occupy city squares and airports to protest against the plotters. In response to Erdoğan’s invitation, some members of the public tried to capture the Bosporus Bridge back from the soldiers, while others tried to occupy military bases in various cities. During these clashes, 251⁶⁵ anti-coup people died and about 30 soldiers were either lynched to death or shot by unknown civilians.

The incident has been fixed as one of the most important official memorial days of Turkey. Placing 251 killed officials and civilians at the core as ‘martyrs’ of that night, Erdoğanists have seen this event as an opportunity for the ‘invention of tradition’,⁶⁶ collective memory and myth-making. In Erdoğan’s words: ‘July 15 has become one of the symbols of our national history just like the Victory of Manzikert, Conquest of Istanbul and August 30 Victory as well as the foundation of Seljuk and Ottoman states and our Republic’.⁶⁷

The narrative about those who were killed resisting the coup attempt was constructed as those were martyred while saving the fatherland, nation, national will, democracy and even Islam against the Crusader invaders (ie the West) and their traitor puppets inside the country. In an attempt to create this founding myth for the AKP’s ‘New Turkey’, the AKP quickly founded a new necropolitical narrative and started forming necropolitical spaces around Turkey in different ways.⁶⁸

Of the 251 people who died, 182 were civilians. The AKP declared the fallen civilians martyrs.⁶⁹ The names of the people – the ‘martyrs’ – who were killed during the attempted coup were given to streets, parks and stations within the public transport network, with a martyr (şehit) prefix before their names.⁷⁰ Specially designated posters, murals, billboards and night rallies were organised in the public sphere. The first week of the school year has been dedicated to the subject of the ‘epic’ of July 15, and the martyrs who fell that night. Martyrdom monuments were constructed everywhere in Turkey and named after the date of the failed coup.⁷¹ Commemorations have been held to honour the martyrs during the anniversaries of the coup attempt, and dissident voices have fallen on deaf ears because of the atmosphere of commemorating and celebrating martyrdom.⁷²

In the forthcoming sections, we will look in more detail at how this populist necropolitical martyrology narrative has been used by the AKP (1) to securitise the opposition and thus to repress them, (2) to sacralise the regime and thus boost its legitimacy claims, and (3) to co-opt the nationalists who were flagbearers of necropolitical nationhood narratives well before the AKP.

Three pillars of authoritarian stability: repression, legitimation and co-optation

Autocratic survival is complex, and authoritarian regimes use multiple, non-exclusive survival strategies.⁷³ The research on the new authoritarianism that emerged since the 1990s focussed on the stabilising role of institutions, including elections, but also on the neopatrimonial arrangements, nationalist ideas and repressive methods.⁷⁴ This literature has identified repression, legitimacy and co-optation as the three major tools (or pillars) that authoritarian regimes use to secure their continuing rule.⁷⁵

It is clear that there is a direct relation between authoritarian regimes and political repression.⁷⁶ Repression is ‘commonly used by authoritarian and totalitarian governments against their own people, to spread fear and make political opposition impossible’.⁷⁷ Relying on repression alone can be too costly as a means of sustaining authoritarian rule and cannot provide the necessary stability to autocracies since it can have destabilising effects in the long run.⁷⁸ Thus, as a second pillar of authoritarian stability, a regime’s claim to legitimacy is important for explaining its means of rule and, in turn, ensuring its stability and resilience. Legitimation means ‘the process of gaining support’ and seeking ‘to guarantee active consent, compliance with the rules, passive obedience, or mere toleration within the population’.⁷⁹ Regimes and citizens exchange political support for decreased repression. This exchange makes the regime less vulnerable to conspiracies, military coups, and violent rebellions and reduces the extent of repression of citizens.⁸⁰

There are six claims to legitimacy. Foundational myth, ideology, personalism, procedures, performance and international engagement create a sense of normative obligation that helps ensure voluntary compliance with undesirable rules or decisions made by the rulers.⁸¹ These identity-based legitimacy claims work especially well for obtaining loyalty and allegiance, which often go hand in hand with distancing from external or internal enemies.⁸²

The third pillar of authoritarian stability is co-optation, which refers to the capacity to ‘tie strategically-relevant actors (or a group of actors) to the regime elite’.⁸³ Co-optation usually involves neo-patrimonial arrangements between the ruling elite and the co-opted groups, such as those belonging to military, business and political spheres, and aims to prevent the emergence of strong opposition actors. Co-optation thus becomes a more viable and cost-effective way to consolidate power, legitimate actions and advance authoritarian reach.⁸⁴ Patronage, clientelism and corruption are the most commonly used instruments in co-optation.⁸⁵ The existing literature has so far looked at the material benefits, institutional inclusion and bureaucratic appointment aspects of co-optation. However, the role of violent rhetoric and the populist necropolitical use of martyrdom narratives have not been studied.

Populist necropolitics and repression

AKP and Erdoğan have used necropolitical narrative to securitise and criminalise the opposition. When infamously describing the failed coup attempt of July 2016 as ‘God’s grace’, Erdoğan was underlining this opportunity for securitisation and thus repression. He consistently framed the coup attempt as a foreign (ie Western) conspiracy that used its traitor pawns inside Turkey, but has underlined that thanks to the martyrs, the conspirators could not achieve their aims.⁸⁶

He openly and publicly promises that he will continue to ‘behead’ the traitors, implying there were external powers behind them. Erdoğan continued: ‘Without crushing out the pawns, we cannot beat the rooks, bishops, knights, queen and the king. For that reason, we will [firstly] decapitate these traitors’.⁸⁷

In the post-2015 period, political discourse and media production have converged on imagining Turkey as a martyr nation, and public declarations of wanting to kill and die for the regime have permeated the public sphere.⁸⁸ Here, death does not belong only ‘to the “Other”, as is the case with a more traditional understanding of necropolitics. Rather death becomes the one and only condition to become “oneself”, shifting our understanding of necropolitical boundary-making’.⁸⁹

During and in the aftermath of the coup attempt, martyrdom and risking of life were used by Erdoğan: ‘We will continue this struggle with our nation at the expense of our lives if needed …. There is nothing can stop the nation who is not afraid of death’.⁹⁰ To mobilise the crowds against his ‘enemies’, he insinuated that there would have been serious consequences if people had not sacrificed their lives at that night.⁹¹ He argued that ‘250 martyrs are our sun because, in return for them, we saved our future’.⁹² Ever since the coup attempt, the AKP has been trying to convince its supporters that it is possible to write history with their own bodies, to reach democracy and to express the national will at the same time.⁹³

After the coup attempt, a considerable portion of the civil and military bureaucracy, including approximately 50% of all admirals and generals in the Turkish military, about 4000 judges and prosecutors, more than 9000 police officers, more than 8000 academics, 28,000 teachers, and more than 150,000 public servants, have been purged since 2016.⁹⁴ About 150,000 people were detained and more than half a million people have been prosecuted on terrorism charges. Many universities, thousands of private schools, more than a thousand civil society institutions and 130 media outlets, including TV stations, newspapers, news agencies, radio stations, and publishers were disbanded or liquidated without any judicial proceedings.⁹⁵ Since the coup, the AKP has constantly argued that ‘opposition to the Government is an insult to the “democracy martyrs” [those killed on 15 July]’.⁹⁶ Erdoğan consistently justified the purges with a populist necropolitical narrative and promised the crowds that he could not stop wiping out the ‘virus’ which has spread throughout the state like a ‘cancer’.⁹⁷ He also said that ‘we can’t slow down … this isn’t a twelve-hour-operation’.⁹⁸

Amidst and through necropolitical siege mentality narratives, Erdoğan has eliminated any criticism in which he is accused of arbitrary and illegitimate acts. For instance, following the coup attempt, purged state officials have been denied judicial process and domestic remedies, and they demanded justice but were tarnished publicly by Erdoğan: ‘people died what are you talking about huh!?’⁹⁹ In response to the criticism of the opposition parties regarding the extrajudicial acts and excessive measures, and when these purged people applied to the courts to be reinstated, Erdoğan used the same necropolitical narrative to legitimate why he ‘intervened’ in the judicial process and asked the judiciary to proceed with the purges: ‘Some of the [purged] people apply [to the courts] claiming that they were exposed to unjust treatment. What on earth are you talking about? Who will pay my 251 martyrs’ families’ ransom?’¹⁰⁰

Erdoğan frequently reiterated this decisive repressive attitude towards over 500,000 indicted people after the coup attempt: ‘Sorry! Our judiciary is doing what is needed …. Otherwise, how do we give account to our 251 martyrs, 2 thousand 193 ghazis?’¹⁰¹ After the imprisonment of a lawmaker from the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the CHP organised a protest march (Justice March). Erdoğan responded to this with a similar narrative: ‘You will not be able to survive …. There is justice in this country thus you will not succeed to escape from the claws of the justice …. The justice we are looking for is the blood of our 250 martyrs’.¹⁰²

Erdoğan’s necropolitical narrative of 250 martyrs has been employed also by the other AKP politicians to silence the opposition. For instance, in reaction to the CHP leader Kemal Kılılçdaroğlu’s criticism on the mass detentions, purges and imprisonments following the coup attempt, an AKP minister, Mehmet Özhaseki, stated that ‘there is nothing to take serious in his remarks …. We have 250 martyrs’.¹⁰³ When another lawmaker criticised the purges, an AKP lawmaker, Julide İskenderoğlu, who was also the AKP’s chair of the women’s branch, claimed that the opposition lawmaker should pay the price as he ‘has no right to harm the souls and the families of the 250 martyrs’.¹⁰⁴

From time to time, Erdoğan has added to this necropolitical narrative a threat of capital punishment to spread fear. He publicly underscored that he was ready to reinstate the death penalty as the president ‘if the people demand it’.¹⁰⁵ In another incident, Erdoğan declared at a local election rally held on 19 March 2019: ‘We have made a mistake by abolishing the death penalty [in 2004]. Why mistake? I cannot bear feeding those who martyred my 251 citizens, my soldiers, my policemen, in the prisons’.¹⁰⁶

The AKP has systematically heightened the necropolitical narrative during elections since the coup to curb opposition. In popular and local elections held between 2015 and 2019 (seven in total), martyrdom has been consistently used to create a sense of righteousness and legitimacy for the high-intensity state terror and political repression. Seeing that the necropolitical narrative was useful in earlier election campaigns, Erdoğan has continued to use it in attempts to increase the AKP’s vote and secure longevity for his autocracy. To give an example, in the Constitutional Referendum campaign held on 16 April 2017, which was to replace the parliamentary system with a Turkish style presidential system without checks and balances, he declared that more lives and blood would need to be sacrificed: ‘Oh my brothers! We will have more orphans to be caressed. We have much more bloods [sacrifices] to be shed for our motherland, independency, future’.¹⁰⁷

As these examples show, the AKP has used necropolitical narrative as an instrument of repression to suppress and intimidate opposition, to justify its unlawful judiciary intervention, and to signal that other punitive actions, such as civil war or reinstatement of the death penalty, are also at their disposal. Similarly, necropolitics has been used for legitimation by the AKP and Erdoğan.

Populist necropolitics and legitimation

Necropolitical narrative has been a useful tool for claiming legitimacy for Erdoğan and the AKP. As seen in the statements of Erdoğan and his colleagues discussed in the previous section, this narrative not only legitimates and justifies repression, but also lends legitimacy to the continuation of autocracy while simultaneously delegitimising and securitising the opposition.

Since ‘particularly strong solidarity ties are established during periods of violent struggle such as war and liberation movements which are often used as powerful legitimation narratives’,¹⁰⁸ the Erdoğan regime has been trying to turn the 15 July coup attempt and ‘the Democracy Martyrs who saved the nation, its will, the fatherland and Islam’ into a new ‘foundational myth’¹⁰⁹ of the Turkish nation. This necropolitical siege mentality narrative helped the AKP to construct itself in the leading role of the modern liberation movement of 2016 according to this novel foundational myth.¹¹⁰

The ‘martyrs’ of the 15 July incident have been used by the AKP to play a legitimating role for the regime by building identity, mass mobilisation, and collective memory. The democracy martyrs have been enshrined in textbooks, official commemorations, statues and murals. By keeping martyrdom visible and alive in the politics, media, movies, TV serials, schools, mosques, commemorations and everyday social life of the Turkish people, the AKP elite have sacralised and thus legitimised their political discourse, ideology and actions.

The failed coup, and stories of 250 Democracy Martyrs, have now taken prominent places in the textbooks of the current era, framing Erdoğan and the AKP as defenders of the national will and Islam who did not hesitate to sacrifice their lives for the survival of their nation, state, country and religion against internal and external enemies. This necropolitical foundational myth of the AKP regime that has sacralised Erdoğan’s rule thanks to the martyrdom narrative has resonated with the MHP especially, as we will see in the next section on co-optation.

Populist necropolitics and co-optation

Co-optation by necropolitics is an expected potential outcome of legitimation by necropolitics. Legitimating narratives and constructs have helped the AKP to successfully co-opt the opposition far-right nationalist party, the MHP.¹¹¹

As mentioned above, the necropolitical narrative of the AKP is not new, and its equivalent is deeply embedded in the Turkish militarist culture and Turkish nation-building project. The most prominent and staunch advocate of this narrative has always been the far-right MHP. The MHP is the embodiment of far-right Turkish nationalism in the parliament.¹¹² It has based its political outlook on a relentless opposition to the Kurdish minority’s rights and also on the martyrs whose lives were lost as a result of the pro-Kurdish outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)’s attacks.

Until mid-2015, the MHP accused the AKP of treason, and accused Erdoğan of being a leader who sold out the nation and its martyrs by serving the separatist PKK and its foreign (ie Western) sponsors, Turkey’s eternal enemies.¹¹³ Three weeks before the 7 June 2015 elections, the MHP leader Devlet Bahceli said that these elections were the most important in Turkish history and implied that the AKP was working for the USA conspiracists that aimed to divide and rule the Middle East. ¹¹⁴ However, this tension eased following the AKP’s loss of majority in the parliament in the elections, after the AKP failed to co-opt the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP). Thus, Erdoğan changed his pro-Kurdish rights policies and demonised the HDP. This move enabled Erdoğan and the AKP to move closer to the MHP’s narrative and policies on Kurds and facilitated a co-optation of the MHP.¹¹⁵

Even though the U-turn on the Kurdish rights, AKP’s move towards Turkish nationalism, the vilification of the HDP, and the usual co-optation incentives such material benefits, power-sharing and letting the MHP pack the bureaucracy with its militants have been the most decisive factors in the AKP’s co-optation of the MHP, it is plausible that the necropolitical narrative of the AKP that simply parroted the previous MHP lines has also been an additional enabling factor. The use of martyrdom as a foundational myth has played a key role in the ‘rally around the flag’ effect,¹¹⁶ which not only legitimises the sovereign’s coming acts but also facilitates its co-optation of other actors that espouse the same foundational necropolitical myth repertoire.

The AKP has also used martyrs and attendance of martyr funeral ceremonies by the elites to minimise the differences between different groups in society and to gather them under the same interests, which were designed by the AKP. By allowing key players from various political parties to attend while denying permission for certain others to attend, the AKP sends a message to its and MHP’s supporters that the AKP and MHP are in conformity, at least temporarily, and not enemies for the time being.¹¹⁷

The martyrdom narrative is so powerful and irresistible in the Turkish political culture that by employing this narrative, the AKP has forced other political parties, not just the MHP, to side with it against the pro-Kurdish HDP on different occasions.

Conclusion

This paper contributes to the literatures on populism, authoritarian stability and necropolitics by showing, in the case of Turkey, how an authoritarian regime uses a populist necropolitical martyrdom narrative for repression, legitimation and co-optation. We showed that the AKP’s necropolitics is much more complex than the literature has so far shown and expanded the concept. While not arguing that populist necropolitical narrative has been the most decisive tool of the authoritarian toolbox for authoritarian regime stability and longevity, we showed that the populist necropolitical narrative is used alongside other better known and more widely used authoritarian stability instruments.

As discussed above, the very rich literature on martyrdom shows that it has always been used for nationalist, political mobilisation and myth-making throughout centuries in different polities. These are also directly related to authoritarian legitimation. It is expected that especially in authoritarian regimes with a history of strong militarist and martyrdom memory culture, the incumbents will resort to populist necropolitics (in the sense that we use the term in this paper) to legitimise their rule, and to repress and to co-opt the opposition and the elite.

Illiberal rulers such as Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez have developed forms of authoritarianism that try to conceal their violence against the opponents.¹¹⁸ When they kill, crush or commit forced disappearance against the opposition, they prefer to deny responsibility. However, in the Turkish case, quite the opposite is seen. The Erdoğanist regime has publicly announced it will continue to ‘shed blood’, ‘crush’ or ‘behead’ the opposition. Arguably, the difference may stem from the fact that Erdoğanists can employ necropolitics by using the 15 July coup attempt to fuel a desire to avenge the 250 martyrs of the coup night. The only other populist leader in power who openly supports violence is the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, but his violent rhetoric is neither part of his populist narrative nor directed at the opposition, unlike our case here. The closest example to our case is the populist prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, who stands out for his well-known use of populist necropolitical narrative. Like Erdoğan, Modi has been using martyrs extensively in his political action to rally people around the flag.¹¹⁹

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ihsan Yilmaz

Ihsan Yilmaz is Research Professor and Chair of Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He has conducted mixed-method research on several themes: (1) Islam–state–law relations in majority and minority contexts; (2) Islamism, Islamist populism, politics of victimhood and resentment, and emotions in politics; (3) global Islamic movements; (4) nation-building, citizenship, and ethnic, religious and political minorities and their securitisation; (5) socio-legal affairs, identities, belonging, political participation and intergroup relations of Muslim minorities in the West (the UK, Australia and the USA); (6) authoritarianism and democratic decay; (7) Turkish politics; (8) Turkish diasporas (the UK, Australia) and transnationalism; and (9) Muslim youth in the West. He has been invited by several eminent think-tanks, universities and governmental bodies in many parts of the world as a keynote speaker, guest lecturer or expert witness in areas related to his expertise. He was a professor of political science at Istanbul Fatih University (2008–2016), a lecturer in law, social sciences and politics at SOAS, University of London (2001–2008), and a fellow at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Islamic Studies (1999–2001).

Omer F. Erturk

Omer F. Erturk is working as an Independent Researcher in Berlin, Germany with an interest area focused on Turkish politics, Islamist movements in Turkey, relations between politics and religion, radicalism and autocracy.

Notes

1 Moffitt, Global Rise of Populism; Aalberg et al., Populist Political Communication in Europe; Aslanidis, “Is Populism an Ideology?”; De Cleen and Stavrakakis, “Distinctions and Articulations.”

2 See eg Taguieff, “Political Science Confronts Populism”; Weyland, “Clarifying a Contested Concept”; Taggart, “Populism and the Pathology of Representative Politics”; Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”; Rydgren, “Is Extreme Right‐Wing Populism Contagious?”; Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism in Europe and the Americas; Müller, What Is Populism?; Brubaker, “Why Populism?”

3 De la Torre and Lemos, “Populist Polarization and the Slow Death of Democracy”; Batory, “Populists in Government?”; Yilmaz, Caman and Bashirov, “How an Islamist Party Managed to Legitimate.”

4 Taş, ” Chronopolitics of National Populism.”

5 Rydgren, “Is Extreme Right‐Wing Populism Contagious?”; Arzheimer and Carter, “Political Opportunity Structures”; Aalberg et al., Populist Political Communication in Europe.

6 For a few works on populism and violence see Berlet, “Violence of Right‐Wing Populism,” and Koelble, Politics of Violence and Populism. However, they do not look at how the populists construct their narratives on violence. The populist president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, is well known for this violent rhetoric – but this is part of his war on drugs and drug traffickers, not an element of his populist narrative.

7 Wodak, Politics of Fear.

8 Taş, “Chronopolitics of National Populism,” 10.

9 Mbembe, “Necropolitics”; Mbembe, Necro-Politics.

10 Mmembe, “Necropolitics,” 21.

11 See eg, for works on the Turkish context, Ahmetbeyzade, “Gendering Necropolitics”; Bargu, “Another Necropolitics”; Bargu, Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory; Zengin, “Violent Intimacies”; Akıncı, “Sacred Children, Accursed Mothers”; Islekel, “Absent Death: Necropolitics and Technologies of Mourning”; Carney, “Resur(e)Recting a Spectacular Hero.”

12 Bargu, “Another Necropolitics”; Bargu, Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory, 17.

13 Bargu, Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory, 9. Verdery, Political Lives of Dead Bodies, calls this ‘dead body politics’.

14 Bargu, Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory, 5–6.

15 Carney, “Resur(e)Recting a Spectacular Hero,” 94, 101.

16 Akıncı, “Sacred Children, Accursed Mothers”, 47.

17 Bakiner, “These Are Ordinary Things,” 26.

18 Aciksoz, “Sacrificial Limbs of Sovereignty,” 115.

19 Szyska, “Martyrdom: A Drama of Foundation and Tradition.”

20 York, Purple Crown.

21 Hatina, Martyrdom in Modern Islam, 5; Klausner, “Martyrdom,” 233.

22 Bosworth, “Historical Context of Thucydides’ Funeral Oration,” 14; see also Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome; Rosoux, “Politics of Martyrdom”; Roberts, “Mourning and Democracy.”

23 See Hatina, Martyrdom in Modern Islam and its bibliography for many works on Islam and martyrdom.

24 Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory.

25 Sluka, “From Graves to Nations,” 49.

26 Anderson, Imagined Communities; Dorraj, “Symbolic and Utilitarian Political Value of a Tradition,” 489.

27 Klausner, “Martyrdom,” 231–2.

28 Yanık and Hisarlıoğlu, “They Wrote History with Their Bodies.”

29 Ibid., 48.

30 De Cleen and Stavrakakis, “Distinctions and Articulations.”

31 Brubaker, “Why Populism?,” 1.

32 Yilmaz, AKP’s Authoritarian, Islamist Populism.”

33 Laclau, On Populist Reason.

34 Roose, New Demagogues.

35 Weyland, “Clarifying a Contested Concept.”

36 Brubaker, “Why Populism?”

37 Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist.”

38 See for details Vinx, “Carl Schmitt.”

39 Laclau, On Populist Reason.

40 Müller, What Is Populism?, 4.

41 Krastev, ”Populist Moment,” 2.

42 da Silva and Vieira, “Populism as a Logic of Political Action.”

43 Ongur, “Performing through Friday Khutbas.”

44 See for details Yilmaz, Shipoli and Demir, “Authoritarian Resilience through Securitisation.”

45 See for instance, Taş, “Turkey – from Tutelary to Delegative Democracy”; Bayulgen, Arbatli, and Canbolat, “Elite Survival Strategies and Authoritarian Reversal”; Yilmaz and Bashirov, “AKP after 15 Years”; Çapan and Zarakol, “Turkey’s Ambivalent Self.”

46 Bayulgen, Arbatli, and Canbolat, “Elite Survival Strategies and Authoritarian Reversal.”

47 AKP’s ‘New Turkey’ concept puts a major emphasis on independent, strong, well-developed Turkey, freed from its internal and external enemies. Yilmaz, Caman and Bashirov, “How an Islamist Party Managed to Legitimate,” 272.

48 Ibid; Yilmaz, Shipoli and Demir, “Authoritarian Resilience through Securitisation.”

49 Türk, “Populism as a Medium of Mass Mobilization.”

50 Yilmaz and Bashirov, “AKP after 15 Years.”

51 Esen and Gumuscu, “Rising Competitive Authoritarianism in Turkey”; Castaldo, “Populism and Competitive Authoritarianism in Turkey.”

52 Yilmaz, “Erdogan’s Political Journey.”

53 Öniş, “Sharing Power: Turkey’s Democratization Challenge.”

54 Akkoyunlu and Öktem, “Existential Insecurity,” 507.

55 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 5.

56 Castaldo, “Populism and Competitive Authoritarianism in Turkey,” 478.

57 Taş, “Turkey – from Tutelary to Delegative Democracy”; Yabanci, “Populism as the Problem Child of Democracy”; Selçuk, “Strong Presidents and Weak Institutions”; Yilmaz and Barry, “AKP’s de-Securitization and Resecuritisation of a Minority Community.”

58 Yanık and Hisarlıoğlu, “They Wrote History with Their Bodies,” 57; see also Düzcan, “Çanakkale İçinde Kurdular Beni.”

59 Değirmencioğlu, “Kurgunun Deşifresi: Şehitlik Söylemini Anlamak.”

60 Altınay, Myth of the Military-Nation.

61 Azak, “Reaction to Authoritarian Modernization in Turkey.”

62 Yilmaz, Creating the Desired Citizen, Chapter 1; Yanık and Hisarlıoğlu, “They Wrote History with Their Bodies,” 55; Özkan, From the Abode of Islam to the Turkish Vatan, 9–11.

63 Erdoğan, “Erdogan Tells a Weeping Girl.”

64 Yanık and Hisarlıoğlu, “They Wrote History with Their Bodies,” 57; see also now Baykan, Gürsoy and Ostiguy, “Anti-Populist Coups d’État.”

65 Authorities have been giving inconsistent figures about the number of martyrs, such as 248, 251 and 250. It is generally being rounded up to 250.

66 Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.”

67 Erdoğan, “July 15 Has Become One of the Symbols.”

68 Yanık and Hisarlıoğlu, “They Wrote History with Their Bodies,” 57.

69 Bakiner, “These Are Ordinary Things,” 29.

70 Bişkin, “15 Temmuz Sonrası Nerelerin Adı Değişti?”

71 Yanık and Hisarlıoğlu, “They Wrote History with Their Bodies,” 57–8.

72 Bakiner, “These Are Ordinary Things,” 29.

73 Maerz, “Many Faces of Authoritarian Persistence.”

74 See for details Gerschewski, “Three Pillars of Stability”; von Soest and Grauvogel, “Identity, Procedures and Performance”; Kailitz, “Classifying Political Regimes Revisited.”

75 Gerschewski, “Three Pillars of Stability”; see also Schneider and Maerz, “Legitimation, Cooptation, and Repression.”

76 Sluka, “Introduction: State Terror and Anthropology,” 2.

77 Walzer, Arguing about War, 130.

78 Davenport, State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace; Escribà-Folch, “Repression, Political Threats, and Survival under Autocracy.”

79 Gerschewski, “Three Pillars of Stability,” 18.

80 Ibid., 21; von Soest and Grauvogel, “Identity, Procedures and Performance,” 288.

81 Von Soest and Grauvogel, “Identity, Procedures and Performance.”

82 Kneuer, “Legitimation beyond Ideology,” 190.

83 Gerschewski, “Three Pillars of Stability,” 22.

84 Holdo, “Cooptation and Non-Cooptation”; Maerz, “Many Faces of Authoritarian Persistence.”

85 Maerz, “Many Faces of Authoritarian Persistence,” 67.

86 Erdoğan, “Ölümden Korkmayan Bir Milleti.”

87 Erdoğan, “250 şehidimiz bizim güneşlerimiz”; Erdoğan, “President Erdogan Vows to Behead ‘Traitors.’”

88 Bakiner, “These Are Ordinary Things,” 33–4.

89 Yanık and Hisarlıoğlu, “They Wrote History with Their Bodies,” 63.

90 Erdoğan, “Ölümden Korkmayan Bir Milleti.”

91 Ibid.

92 Erdoğan, “250 şehidimiz bizim güneşlerimiz.”

93 Yanık and Hisarlıoğlu, “They Wrote History with Their Bodies,” 63.

94 OHCHR, Report on the Impact of the State of Emergency.

95 BBC, “Turkey Shuts More than 130 Media Outlets.”

96 Houston, “Plotters and Martyrs,” 537.

97 Erdoğan, “Erdoğan: Bu iş 12 Saatlik Bir iş Değil”; Erdoğan, “Erdoğan: Bu virüs kanser gibi.”

98 Erdoğan, “Erdoğan: Bu iş 12 Saatlik Bir iş Değil.”

99 Erdoğan, “Erdoğan: Acırsanız acınacak hale gelirsiniz.”

100 Ibid.

101 Erdoğan, “Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan: Şu Anda Cezaevlerinde.”

102 Erdoğan, “Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan: Bizim Aradığımız Adalet.”

103 Özhaseki, “Özhaseki: 15 Temmuz’da.”

104 İskenderoğlu, “250 Şehidimizin ruhunu ve onların ailelerinin.”

105 BBC, “Turkey Coup Attempt.”

106 Erdoğan, “Erdoğan: Yeni Zelanda Saldırgandan.”

107 Erdoğan, “Erdoğan: Vatan için, istikbal için.”

108 von Soest and Grauvogel, “Identity, Procedures and Performance,” 290.

109 For foundational myth and legitimacy, see ibid., 290.

110 Taş, “The 15 July Abortive Coup,” 14–15.

111 From guardians of Kemalist tutelage such as Doğu Perinçek’s Homeland Party to various Islamist, nationalist circles, there are many parties and figures co-opted under the shadow of AKP, named Cumhur Coalition. However, in this study, we have only taken MHP as it is the strongest coalition partner of AKP.

112 Celep, “Turkey’s Radical Right and the Kurdish Issue,” 130–31.

113 See for details ibid.; Selçuk, Hekimci and Erpul, “Erdoğanization of Turkish Politics.”

114 Bahceli, “Aksaray Mitinginde konuşma.”

115 Erdoğan, “Erdoğan HDP’yi tehdit etti”; Erdoğan, “Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan: Omuzların üzerinde baş kalmayacak.” See for details Yilmaz, Shipoli and Demir, “Authoritarian Resilience through Securitisation.”

116 Pevehouse and Goldstein, International Relations, 121.

117 https://www.haberturk.com/gundem/haber/1126814-daglica-sehidi-okan-tasan-son-yolculuguna-ugurlandi

118 Guriev and Treisman, “Informational Autocrats,” 100.

119 See for instance Modi, “PM Modi Launches Dictionary of Martyrs”; Modi, “Sacrifice of Every Martyr’s Family.”