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ABSTRACT
Turkish Republic was founded as a new state, a homeland for Turks, and on a Turkish identity that had yet to be created which would serve as the basis of the political community. This paper analyzes the overall regime properties of the Turkish political system in that period, which has been mired in legitimacy and national identity crises. This paper identifies the varying substance and style of successive Turkish political regimes, examine the domestic and international factors influencing their changing characteristics. The frequent change in the nature of Turkey’s political regime have been major sources of its political instability.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See Zurcher, “Three Turning Points.”
2 Soysal, Dinamik Anayasa Anlayışı.
3 Tunaya, “Hakimiyet-I Siyasiye.”
4 Özbudun, 1921 Anayasası, 77–81.
5 Mardin, “Center-Periphery.”
6 Mardin, “Power”; Frey, “Patterns”; and Zürcher, The Unionist Factor.
7 Soysal, Dinamik Anayasa Anlayışı.
8 Until 1946 the election of the representatives of the people was not direct; it took two rounds of elections where the people elected second level electors (müntehib-i sani), who elected the deputies (milletvekilleri) to the TBMM. Until 1934 only men participated in the process of election and representation. Thereafter women also participated in the national elections both as voters and candidates.
9 Mardin, “Power,” and Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 110–33.
10 There is, of course, a vast literature on this period and debates over the democratic nature of the regime. For a review of some of these issues, see the contributions by Turan (“Never Quite Making It”) and Kubicek (“The Failure of Liberalism”) in this Special Issue.
11 This was hardly a novel development. It was alleged that Massimo D’Azeglio argued right after the unification of Italy in 1861 that “ … We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians … ” (Poggi, “The Nation-State,” 72). The Turkish cultural revolution of the 1920s was also motivated by a similar need.
12 Pamuk, Türkiye’nin İki Yüz Yıllık, 199–208, and Kayra, Savaş.
13 For a thorough analysis of this transition, which includes considerations affected by the Cold War, see Yılmaz, “Democratization” and Karaömerlioğlu, “Turkey’s Return.”
14 Pamuk, Türkiye’nin İki Yüz Yıllık, 223–60.
15 Mardin, “Center-Periphery.”
16 Kudat, “Patron-Client Relations”; Sayarı, “Political Patronage”; Sayarı, “Interdisciplinary”; and Sunar, State, 121–34.
17 The CHP leaders did not consider the results of the 1957 elections as fair, and the DP was also skeptical that some of its supporters had switched to the CHP. Thus neither party was happy with the result, and relations between them became even worse, turning into what Frey (“Patterns”) called a no-hold barred war. In 1959 the DP government began to punish İsmet İnönü the leader of the CHP and interrogate the CHP as well, and the CHP began to organize rallies across the country, which were attacked by DP supporters and the security forces. This polarization provided the rationale for the 1960 coup.
18 Sartori, Parties.
19 Sayarı, “Clientelism,” 81–94, and Çınar, “A Comparative Analysis.”
20 Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics.
21 Sweet, “Constitutions.”
22 Bayar, Ben de Yazdım.
23 These decrees were to be examined by the relevant parliamentary committees and could be struck down, this rarely happened. For more, see Kalaycıoğlu, “Cyclical Development,” 204–6.
24 Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics.
25 Kalaycıoğlu, “The Conundrum.”
26 Kalaycıoğlu and Kocapınar, “Turkey’s Constitutional Referendum.”
27 Yesilada, “Problems.”
28 Aybay, “Patron-Client Relations.”
29 For a more thorough analysis see Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics.
30 Kalaycıoğlu and Kocapınar, “Turkey’s Constitutional Referendum.”
31 “‘Allah’ın lütfu’nda ikinci perde: Erdoğan’a göre 15 Temmuz hayırlara vesile oldu.” Diken, July 15, 2018, available at https://www.diken.com.tr/allahin-lutfunda-ikinci-perde-erdogana-gore-15-temmuz-hayirlara-vesile-oldu/.
32 This vote was controversial, as it was mired in charges of irregularities opposition political parties, which never accepted its legitimacy. See Kalaycıoğlu and Kocapınar, “Turkey’s Constitutional Referendum.” For more details on Turkish presidentialism, see Kalaycıoğlu, “16 Nisan 2017,” and Adar and Seufert, “Turkey’s Presidential System.”
33 See Kalaycıoğlu, Halk Yönetimi, as well as Chehabi and Linz, Sultanistic Regimes, for a fuller discussion of a sultanistic regimes.
34 For a broader treatment of the corresponding concept development see Kalaycıoğlu, “16 Nisan 2017.”
35 Kalaycıoğlu, Halk Yönetimi, 120–31.
36 Chehabi and Linz, Sultanistic Regimes.
37 See Sofos, Turkish Politics.
38 See Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, 20, for more detail on the clashing images of the good society in both Ottoman andTurkish societies.
39 Mardin, “Center-Periphery.”
40 Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics and Kalaycıoğlu, Halk Yönetimi.
41 Yalman, “Some Observations,” 152.
42 Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu, Fragile but Resilient?, and Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu, Elections.
43 Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu, Elections.
44 Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu, The Rising Tide.
45 Kalaycıoğlu, “From Parliamentary Uni-Partyism,” 116.
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Ersin Kalaycıoğlu
Ersin Kalaycioğlu is a Professor of Political Science at Sabanci University. He has written or edited numerous works on Turkish politics, particularly elections, political parties, political institutions, and political culture. His most recent books (with Ali Çarkoğlu) are Fragile but Resilient? Turkish Electoral Dynamics 2002–2015 (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and Elections and Public Opinion in Turkey: Through the Prism of the 2018 Elections (Routledge, 2022).