Embattled Ballots, Quiet Streets: Competitive Authoritarianism and Dampening Anti-Government Protests in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Mass protests frequently occur in electoral autocracies. However, the opposite is true in Turkey, despite mounting grievances and a strong opposition presence with institutional resources. We argue that competitive authoritarian regimes, a subset of electoral autocracies, may dampen mass protests, allowing the opposition an opportunity to defeat the incumbents through elections. Studying Turkey’s main opposition party, we identify three mechanisms that show how politicians strategically respond to the regime’s incentives and constraints leading to protest-averse behaviour. First, the regime’s repression capacity discourages the opposition from openly supporting a mass protest. Second, the opposition learns to target the median voter, which leads to political moderation and protest averseness. Finally, prospective electoral success reinforces the opposition’s commitment to a ballot-centred approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Opposition
• electoral autocracy
• elections
• repression
• CHP
• political elites
• AKP
• authoritarian regimes

Acknowledgments

This research is based on the authors’ dissertation projects at Bilkent University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. We would like to thank Rebecca Clendenen, Berk Esen, M. Tahir Kılavuz, Mary Painter, and Tijen Demirel-Pegg for their valuable feedback and contributions at different stages of this article. We would also like to thank Didem Naz Dioken for her assistance with the figures.

Disclosure statement

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

List of interviews

Table

Notes

1. Competitive authoritarianism is a regime type where competition is ‘real but unfair’ due to manipulations in elections, exploitation of state resources, and injustices in the playing field in favour of incumbents (Levitsky & Way 2010, p. 3). Whereas electoral autocracy is a broader term that includes both competitive authoritarian and hegemonic authoritarian regimes, where elections are not meaningful.

2. There might be other mechanisms at work that can explain the absence of mass protests. For instance, the global pandemic that started in March 2020 has brought about restrictions to assembly. However, this is not a valid argument for Turkey, because the lack of mass protests precedes 2020 (see Figure 3). Another factor could be the relatively weak organisational capacity of the opposition compared to the government to support a mass protest. While this is true, the opposition parties have already demonstrated their ability to organise highly coordinated events, such as the march for justice in 2017 called Adalet Yürüyüşü initiated by the CHP.

3. Although Turkey’s transition to the CA regime was not completed until 2015 (Esen & Gumuscu 2016), its preceding democratic decline had started much earlier (Sözen 2020). This means that the grievances that Turkey’s authoritarian regime generated did not appear overnight but rather accumulated over the years and peaked as the regime consolidated. Thus, although our analysis is limited to the post-2015 era, the seeds of grievances can be traced back to even earlier periods.

4. The AKP is an Islamic-oriented conservative political party that has been in power since 2002. In its initial years, it was known for its democratic agenda and moderate policies. In the second decade of its rule, however, scholars started to emphasise the party’s democratic retreat and label the regime as an authoritarian one (Sözen 2020).

5. Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey data. For more information, see: https://www.tcmb.gov.tr/wps/wcm/connect/TR/TCMB±TR/Main±Menu/Istatistikler/Enflasyon±Verileri/Tuketici±Fiyatlari.

6. People who do not approve of President Erdoğan have risen to 54.4 per cent in January 2022 from 27.4 per cent in July 2016.

7. Data is taken from V-Dem; see https://www.v-dem.net/. Countries were selected from each continent (Africa, South America, Europe, and Asia) based on Levitsky and Way’s (2020, p. 53) list of CA regimes. We tested the same comparison with different countries in the same list and obtained similar results.

8. For more information, see https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp.

9. The data is taken from the dataset created by one of the authors exploring protest, repression, and pro-government contentious dynamics in Turkey. Based on protest event analysis as the method of data collection, it was human-coded systematically using two newspapers, Cumhuriyet and Yeni Şafak, from 1 January 2013 to 30 April 2019.

10. Our dataset does not cover the post-April 2019 period. Several minor or issue-based protests have been organised from May 2019 until today such as pride marches of LGBTQ groups, feminist demonstrations, or Boğaziçi University protests. However, all these protests have remained within their limited scope and did not turn into mass protests. This can be confirmed by the ACLED dataset, which does not report any mass protest activity in Turkey during this period. For more information, see https://acleddata.com/dashboard.

11. We assigned numbers for each interviewee to maintain confidentiality. The list of interviews can be found at the end of the article.

12. Whereas all the other parties in the opposition are either newly formed within an already emerging context of opposition unity (e.g. İYİP [İyi Parti – the Good Party]), or minor parties without a large constituency (SP [Saadet Partisi – the Felicity Party]), or an ethnic party without a coherent mainstream policy platform (e.g. the HDP [Halkların Demokratik Partisi – the People’s Democratic Party]).

13. These were riots in southeast Turkey in support of the Kurds in Kobanî (Syria) who were under imminent threat of attack from ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria]. These riots turned into urban warfare with the involvement of the terrorist organisation PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party], and they were repressed by the security forces, resulting in hundreds of casualties and leading to the dissolution of the peace process between the HDP and the state.

14. Although we assume the presence of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey for the period we investigate, it does not operate monolithically. For instance, particularly after the June 2015 elections, the regime disproportionately heightened its repressive capacity in the southeastern region, where the Kurdish population is dominant, compared to other parts of Turkey. The government declared curfews that lasted for weeks and intervened in electoral processes. Elected politicians were arrested, removed from office, and replaced by government-appointed trustees. These interventions effectively reversed the outcome of the elections in the region (see Arslanalp & Erkmen 2020a, 2020b), thus, making ‘prospective electoral success’ less of an incentive to avoid protests. Therefore, the threefold explanation we offer may not be equally applicable at the sub-national level. However, this does not change the outcome at the national level, but rather, shows that repressive mechanisms can be more effective in hindering protest mechanisms in some contexts than variables such as opposition learning or prospective electoral success.

15. On 15 July 2016, a religious clique in the state, called the Gülenist movement, attempted a coup to overthrow the AKP government and failed. Thousands of citizens resisted on the streets upon the call of President Erdoğan, leading to the death of more than 200 citizens. In the aftermath, a new era started in Turkish politics marked by a series of state of emergencies, engendering several cases of violation of rights and liberties.

16. Freedom House Country Freedom Report, Turkey, 2017 https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkey/freedom-world/2017.

17. As of February 2021, there were 1,336 motions to lift immunities in the Turkish parliament against 195 MPs, including the chairman of the CHP.

18. The alliance was composed of four parties: CHP, İYİP, SP, and DP (Demokrat Parti – The Democratic Party). The pro-Kurdish party HDP was excluded.

19. In fact, it was these same municipal elections in 1994 that gave way to the AKP’s rise in Turkish politics.

20. This is factually incorrect. In 1950 the DP (Demokrat Parti – the Democratic Party) defeated the CHP’s authoritarian government.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anıl Kahvecioğlu

Anıl Kahvecioğlu is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University. His dissertation focuses on contentious pro-government mobilisation under the AKP rule. His research interests include social movements, contemporary Turkish politics, authoritarianism, and populism.

Semih Patan

Semih Patan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His dissertation work focuses on the role of legislatures in competitive authoritarian regimes. His broader research interests include political behaviour, opposition strategies, and local politics in authoritarian regimes.