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ABSTRACT
The Turkish Republic has been undergoing a plethora of changes since the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) came to power in 2002. These changes have steadily increased their pace and reach in recent years and have produced substantial changes in Turkey’s socio-political and legal structure that point to an overall and radical transformation of the Turkish Republic. The different contributions to the special issue assess how and by which means this transformation is taking place. This introductory piece briefly sets out the purpose and background and provides a short introduction of the articles comprising this special issue.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Note on contributor
Olivia Glombitza is an Adjunct Professor of International Relations at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Open University of Catalonia. She is also a fellow for the ‘Sectarianism, Proxies and De-Sectarianization’ project based at Lancaster University and for the research project ‘Transnational Dynamics and Actors in the Middle East and North Africa: A Genealogy of Elites and Social Movements between the Local and the Global’ based at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. In addition, she has led projects on the current ongoing transformation of the Republic of Turkey and the role of identity and ideology in peace-building in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, both supported by the International Catalan Institute for Peace. Her research interests include the politics and international relations of the Middle East, particularly Iran’s and Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies; relations of power; symbolic politics; conceptualizations of ideology and identity; peace building and mediation; media representation; and discourse analysis.
Notes
1 The World Bank, “The World Bank in Turkey.”
2 Somer, “Understanding Turkey’s Democratic Breakdown.”
3 Keyman and Gumuscu, Democracy, Identity, vii.
4 Incidentally, these reforms also gave way to a change in civil-military relations and the dismantling of power of the Turkish military, formerly a pivotal actor on the political stage and perceived as a major contender by the AKP. According to Taş, the former ‘military’s position as supra-parliamentary power and veto player rested on its self-assigned role as the guardian of the secular regime.’ Taş, “Turkey,” 779.
5 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2020.”
6 Polat, Regime Change, 3.
7 Somer, “Understanding Turkey’s Democratic Breakdown.”
8 Opinions about the AKP’s and its leader’s democratic ambitions have been divided ever since the AKP came to power. While some perceived the party’s aspirations as positive, others remained skeptical. In his article “Faulty Assumptions,” Kubicek, for example, critically assesses the early assumptions regarding the AKP’s democratizing potential.
9 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2019.”
10 Somer, “Understanding Turkey’s Democratic Breakdown.”
11 See for example, Taş, “Turkey”; Esen and Gumuscu, “Rising Competitive Authoritarianism”; Somer, “Understanding Turkey’s Democratic Breakdown”; Akkoyunlu and Öktem, “Existential Insecurity”; and Tansel, “Authoritarian Neoliberalism.”
12 See Gavriely-Nuri, The Normalization of War, 15, and Wodak and Meyer, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 2–3.