Turkish Big Business in the Age of Democratic Consolidation: The Nature and Limits of its Influence

Abstract

This article addresses the nature and limits of the contribution of big business to democratic consolidation by focusing on the role of TÜSİAD, the major association of big business interests in Turkey, during the country's democratisation process in the 2000s. While TÜSİAD has been an important pro-democratisation actor, big business's contribution to the consolidation process is contingent on the broader institutional and political environment. The issues of secularism and EU membership prospects play an important role in Turkish politics and in understanding TÜSİAD's stance, as they have constrained its ability to act as the vanguard of democratisation reforms.

Keywords:

• Democracy
• European Integration
• Civil Society
• Economic Actors
• Business Associations
• Globalisation
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the members of the editorial team of South European Society and Politics, Anna Bosco, Susannah Verney and Senem Aydın Düzgit, and the journal's anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, and Neslihan Burçin Tamer, Süheyla Nihan Memişoğlu, Nurettin Onur Toy and Rıza Murat Güner for their research assistantships.

Notes

 [1] See Özbudun (1999) and Öniş and Keyman (2007) on the nature of the Turkish political system and recent political developments, Cizre (1997) on the role of the military as a key actor in Turkish politics, and Özbudun (2007) and Müftüler-Baç (2005) on the democratisation reforms implemented in Turkey during the recent era and the EU role in this process.

 [2] In 1992, TÜSİAD commissioned a group of academics to work on a new Constitution, which was then presented to the Parliament Speaker's Office. This report received little attention.

 [3] The Copenhagen criteria are the requirements for a candidate country to obtain EU membership, including democratic governance and human rights, a functioning market economy, and the acceptance of the EU aims and acquis, including treaties and laws.

 [4] Previously, a 1999 progress report had been published which responded to the reactions to the 1997 report.

 [5] TÜSİAD's relations with the Nationalist Action Party were also contentious due to the Kurdish question.

 [6] TÜSİAD released a report in 2005 on the ethical state, including the armed services, which focused on issues of corruption and violations of rule of law.

 [7] These schools were originally established to train government employed imams, but over time they became popular among conservative families and became much more than just vocational schools. As their popularity and number of graduates increased, secularists associated them with preparing cadres for the Islamist parties in Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended such a school.

 [8] Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül was the AKP candidate in the 2007 presidential elections. The opposition parties did not support him, partly due to questions concerning his commitment to secularism. When he was not elected, AKP called for early elections, resulting in a new victory for AKP, which won 46.6 per cent of the popular vote (12 per cent more than in 2002). AKP then passed a constitutional amendment for the President to be directly elected and Gül was subsequently elected as Turkey's 11^th President.

 [9] Rather than secularism, a more accurate term for the Turkish word laiklik would be laicism, which has different connotations. However, we use secularism here as it is used more in English. See Çarkoğlu and Toprak (2007) for discussions of religion in Turkey.

[10] In 2007, AKP campaigned with a promise to end the headscarf ban in universities and following the election passed an amendment allowing for such a change (see Çelik Wiltse 2008). This was subsequently annulled by the Constitutional Court as violating the Constitution's founding principle of secularism.

[11] Women's participation in formal political institutions remains very low in Turkey. The election of 46 women Members of Parliament in 2007 was clearly an improvement compared with the 24 women in the previous Parliament. Nevertheless, Turkey ranked considerably behind even recent EU members such as Bulgaria and Romania when it came to women's political and economic empowerment indices.

[12] In 2008, AKP found itself facing closure as a party and the banning of many of its senior members from politics for alleged anti-secular activities. The Constitutional Court ultimately decided, by a majority of one, against disbanding AKP for violating secularism.

[13] A good example of this weakening commitment and the reluctance to confront the military directly was TÜSİAD's opposition in July 2009 to a change that would enable civilian courts to try military personnel who attempt to stage a military coup, potentially a crucial step in the direction of introducing civil control over the military. TÜSİAD's opposition raised question marks concerning the organisation's commitment to democratic deepening (Dağı 2009).

[14] It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the reasons for TÜSİAD's support for secularism. TÜSİAD members, with their family backgrounds and political socialisation, are likely to belong to social strata which value secularism highly.