https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8409-3045
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ABSTRACT
This article tackles the puzzle of how Turkey’s ruling Islamist populist Justice and Development Party (AKP) was able to co-opt the secularist far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and to ensure the MHP’s support in creating an authoritarian regime, despite their previous antagonistic relations and ideological opposition. We investigate this puzzle through the combination of authoritarian resilience/stability theory and securitization theory. The article develops an empirically grounded account of how co-optation has happened in Turkey. In a novel way, it shows that the ruling party’s successful securitization of the MHP’s antagonists (pro-Kurdish opposition) has facilitated the co-optation of the MHP by the ruling party. This article contributes to the authoritarian stability theory by introducing securitization theory to this literature. It also contributes to the co-optation literature by showing a novel phenomenon: a powerful incumbent party’s ideological move towards the smaller to be co-opted party. The article also contributes to the securitization theory debates about the role of securitizing actors and their audiences, as well as the “right” of functional actors in securitizing an issue, despite their initial non-decisive authority.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Kneuer, “Legitimation Beyond Ideology”; von Soest and Grauvogel, “Identity, Procedures and Performance.”
2 Carkoglu, “Economic Evaluations vs. Ideology,” 519.
3 Maerz “Many Faces of Authoritarian Persistence.”
4 Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars of Stability”; Schneider and Maerz, “Legitimation, Cooptation, and Repression.”
5 Magaloni, “Longevity of Authoritarian Rule,” 728; von Soest and Grauvogel, “Identity, Procedures and Performance,” 288.
6 Gandhi, “Elections and Political Regimes”; Saikkonen, “Electoral Mobilization and Authoritarian Elections”; Kneuer, “Legitimation Beyond Ideology.”
7 Cheeseman and Klaas, How to Rig an Election; Harvey and Mukherjee, “Methods of Election Manipulation.”
8 Kneuer, “Legitimation Beyond Ideology,” 190.
9 Gandhi and Przeworki, “Cooperation, Cooptation, and Rebellion.”
10 Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars of Stability,” 22.
11 Geddes, “What Do We Know About Democratization,” Bertocchi and Spagat, “Politics of Co-optation”; Lust-Okar, “Elections under Authoritarianism”; Gandhi and Przeworski, “Cooperation, Cooptation, and Rebellion,; Brownlee, Authoritarianism; Magaloni “Longevity of Authoritarian Rule”; Svolik, Authoritarian Rule; Boix and Svolik, “Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government”; Pepinsky, “Comparative Authoritarianism”; Schmotz, “Index of Co-optation”; Buehler, “Continuity through Co-optation”; Holdo, “Cooptation and Non-cooptation”; Maerz, “Many Faces of Authoritarian Persistence.”
12 Lust-Okar, “Elections under authoritarianism”; Brownlee, Authoritarianism; Buehler, “Continuity through Co-optation”; Schmotz, “Index of Co-optation”; Maerz, “Many Faces of Authoritarian Persistence,” 67.
13 Buehler, “Continuity through Co-optation,” 367.
14 Selznick, TVA and the grass roots, 34; Gamson, The strategy of social protest, 29; Piven and Cloward, Poor people’s movements, 30.
15 Holdo, “Cooptation and non-cooptation,” 444.
16 Buzan, Waever and DeWilde, Security: A New Framework of Analysis; Waever, “Securitization and Desecuritization”; Buzan and Waever, The Structure of International Security.
17 Waever, “Securitization and Desecuritization,” 55; Buzan, Waever and DeWilde, Security: A New Framework of Analysis, 26.
18 Williams, “Words, Images, Enemies,” 513.
19 Balzacq, “A theory of securitization,” 9; Balzacq, “A new framework for securitization analysis,” 34; Adamides, “Securitization.”
20 Floyd, “Securitisation.”
21 Philipsen, “Performative Securitization”; Balzacq, “Securitization Theory: Past, Present, and Future.”
22 Williams, “Words, Images, Enemies.”
23 Leonard and Kaunert, ‘Audience in Securitization Theory,” 67.
24 Balzacq, “The Three Faces of Securitization”; Roe “Actor, Audience(s).” Securitisation is not only used by authoritarian regimes. Securitisation of ethnic minorities in electoral democratic settings have been noted especially in the contexts of Sri Lanka and Colombia.
25 Emmers, “Securitization,” 111.
26 Buzan, Waever, de Wilde, Security: A New Framework of Analysis, 4.
27 Behnke, “Desecuritization.”
28 Weiss, “Securitization and Kurdish Minority,” 569–70.
29 Hansen, “Reconstructing Desecuritisation.”
30 Shipoli, Islam, Securitization, 211–232.
31 Balzacq, “Securitization Theory: Past, Present, and Future”; Baysal, “20 Years of Securitization”; Tulumello, “Agonistic Security,” 6.
32 Shipoli, International Securitization; Jamal, “Ontological Counter-securitization”; Paterson and Karyotis, “Securitisation and Counter-securitisation.”
33 For the role of emotions in the Turkish nation-building, see now in detail, Yilmaz, Creating the Desired Citizens.
34 Jongerden, Turkey and the Kurds, 213.
35 Bilgin, “Securityness of Secularism,” 593.
36 Yilmaz and Barry, “AKP’s De-securitization and Re-securitization.”
37 Birdisli, “Securitization of Kurdish Question”; Romano and Gurses, “Conflict, Democratization”; Geri, “The Securitization of the Kurdish Minority”; Weiss, “Securitization and Kurdish Minority”; Martin, “The A.K. Party and the Kurds”; Ozpek, “State’s Changing Role.”
38 Karakaya Polat, “Parliamentary Elections,” 133; Weiss, “Securitization and Kurdish minority”; Geri, “The Securitization of the Kurdish Minority”; Ozpek, The Peace Process; Martin, “The A.K. Party and the Kurds”; Karakoc, “Revisiting Multilateralism”; Demir, The Geopolitics of Turkey-Kurdistan.
39 Kolcak, “The Kurdish Issue,” 31.
40 Candar, “Perennial Kurdish Question.”
41 Yilmaz and Bashirov, “Emergence of Erdoğanism.”
42 See in detail Tas, “The 15 July Abortive Coup”; Bashirov and Yilmaz, “Rise of Transactionalism.”
43 The pro-Kurdish opposition has established several political parties. The constitutional court shut down pro-Kurdish parties on the basis of threats to national integrity. Thus, the pro-Kurdish opposition had to establish a new party each time a party was shut down. The most recent is the HDP.
44 Ozpek, “State’s Changing Role”; Geri, “The Securitization of the Kurdish Minority.”
45 www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/dolmabahce-anlasmasi-224047; www.milliyet.com.tr/siyaset/dolmabahce-de-tarihi-aciklama-2021055
46 Tepe, “The Nationalist Action Party.”
47 Celep, “Turkey's Radical Right,” 130–1.
48 Celep, “Turkey's Radical Right,” 136; Selcuk, Hekimci and Erpul, “Erdoğanization of Turkish Politics,” 555.
51 The Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920 in Sèvres, France, aimed to liquidate the Ottoman Empire and virtually abolish Turkish sovereignty, leaving to the Turkish sovereignty a fraction of modern Turkey in Central Anatolia. Because of the Turkish Nationalist resistance and Independence War (1919–1922), the Treaty of Sèvres could not be realized and was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923), which defined the border of today’s Turkey. Nevertheless, Sèvres has had a lasting legacy. It has paved the way for the siege mentality that is known as Sèvres Syndrome, Jung, “The Sèvres Syndrome.” This is the belief that Turkey is encircled by enemies and in immediate need of self-defence. The syndrome is the source of many Turkish collective anxieties and conspiracy theories (see for instance Nefes, “The Sèvres Syndrome”).
55 Birdisli, “Securitization of Kurdish Question”; Candar, “Perennial Kurdish Question”; Geri, “The Securitization of the Kurdish Minority”; Ozpek, The Peace Process; Ozpek, “State’s Changing Role.”
56 Geri, “The securitization of the Kurdish minority,” 196.
57 Candar, “Perennial Kurdish Question,” 262.
58 Ozpek, “State’s Changing Role,” 39.
59 Ozpek, The Peace Process, 47.
60 Jongerden, “Conquering the State.”
61 Bianet, “HDP Leader.”
62 Weiss, “Securitization and Kurdish Minority”; Ozpek, The Peace Process; Geri, “The Securitization of the Kurdish Minority”; Martin, “The A.K. Party and the Kurds”
63 Candar, “Perennial Kurdish Question,” 262.
64 www.deccanchronicle.com/151101/world-middle-east/article/demirtas-kurdish-obama-man-beat-turkey-vote
65 www.deccanchronicle.com/151101/world-middle-east/article/demirtas-kurdish-obama-man-beat-turkey-vote
66 Yilmaz,“Islamic populism”; Yilmaz and Bashirov, “Emergence of Erdoğanism”; Yilmaz, “The AKP's Authoritarian”; and Yilmaz.
67 See now in detail, Yilmaz, Creating the Desired Citizen.
68 Martin, “The A.K. Party and the Kurds,” 543.
69 www.hurriyetdailynews.com/hdp-has-inorganic-link-to-pkk-erdogan--85555. Italics are ours in all the quotations.
70 Golosov, “Co-optation,” Kosterina, “Co-Opted Party.”
74 OHCHR, “Report.”
75 Floyd, “Securitisation.”
76 Philipsen, “Performative Securitization.”
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 (ADI), Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He has conducted research on nation-building; authoritarianism; Islamism; Islamist populism and emotions; citizenship; ethnic-religious-political identities and their securitisation (Turkey); and Islam-state-society relations in majority and minority contexts.
Erdoan Shipoli
Erdoan Shipoli is a visiting professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. He has extensively published on the securitization theory, Islam and the United States.
Mustafa Demir
Mustafa Demir is a Research Associate at the Department of International Relations, Staffordshire University. His area of specialisation is Kurdish politics in Turkey and the UK.