Surviving the Covid-19 Pandemic under Right-wing Populist Rule: Turkey in the First Phase

ABSTRACT

Turkey survived the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic relatively successfully. Compared to some other populist governments, the AKP did not deny the seriousness of the crisis or the importance of medical expertise. The demographics of the population helped, but precautionary measures and the healthcare reform implemented earlier also contributed to this relative success. As a right-wing populist party, the AKP implemented healthcare and economic policies that appealed simultaneously to business and low-income groups. Populist rhetoric blaming the opposition and exclusion from policymaking of unfavourable sectors including opposition-run municipalities deepened the existing polarisation. The crisis response also revealed how the personalised and centralised nature of the executive in the new presidential system can lead to inconsistencies and arbitrariness.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• Erdoğan
• healthcare
• polarisation
• neoliberalism
• pandemic
• economy
• crisis

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2021.1985497

Notes

1. For the information on the pandemic experience we mostly relied on news sources. Please see the Online Appendix for a list of these news sources.

2. The National Pandemic Plan was published in 2006 and the relevant directive on infectious disease surveillance and alert system was issued by the MoH in 2007. It was updated to include Covid-19 on 22 April 2020.

3. The share of doctors aged 55 and older is much lower than the OECD average (34 per cent) at 18 per cent (OECD Health at a Glance 2019, p. 175).

4. At the end of December 2019, Turkey’s net external debt to GDP ratio stood at 32.5 per cent (Ministry of Treasury and Finance). As of January 2020 the unemployment was at 12.7 per cent and youth unemployment at 23.1 per cent. In January 2020 inflation rate was at 14.52 per cent (TÜIK). Turkey’s foreign currency reserves had declined to $77.1 billion in December 2019 (IMF).

5. Turkey has only reported cases confirmed by PCR tests and did not report clinical or epidemiological diagnosis of Covid-19.

6. On 30 June 2020 MoH published its first report outlining the epidemiological situation (Ministry of Health 2020c). Daily and weekly reports are published, available in English at https://covid19.saglik.gov.tr/TR-68443/covid-19-durum-raporu.html

7. Besides health monitoring, the app’s functions were developed to request masks, to get a code to travel by bus, ferry or plane after June 2020.

8. Art. 17 of Law No. 2911 on Demonstrations and Gatherings and Art. 32/Ç of Law No. 5442 on Provincial Administration.

9. In order to implement some of these measures, parliament had to make legislative amendments in two omnibous bills: Law no. 7226 (26 March 2020) and Law no. 7244 (17 April 2020).

10. The campaign is called We are Enough for Ourselves, My Turkey [Biz Bize Yeteriz, Türkiyem].

11. According to data compiled by the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), as of mid-July, 44 health workers including 23 medical doctors had passed away from Covid-19 (TTB 2020, p. 154).

12. These organisations under the leadership of governors and district-governors operated with public employees and voluntary activists from civil society organisations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Özge Kemahlıoğlu

Özge Kemahlıoğlu is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Sabancı University. Her research focuses on party politics, sub-national governments, distributive politics and incumbency advantage. Her articles on these topics have appeared in Comparative Politics, Journal of Politics, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, South European Politics and Society and Public Choice. She is the author of Agents or Bosses? Patronage and Intra-party Politics in Argentina and Turkey (ECPR Press, 2012).

Oya Yeğen

Oya Yeğen is a visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Sabancı University. Before joining Sabancı, she received her PhD in Political Science from Boston University and worked at Simmons College. Her research interests include politics of constitution-making, judicial politics and authoritarianism.