Assessing centralization: on Turkey’s rising personalist regime

ABSTRACT

Research on non-democratic regimes has accelerated in the post-Cold War world, but inordinate attention paid to procedural definitions of regime type and democratization has reduced the study of utilitarian components in assessing cases of political transition. We utilize two frameworks oft-cited within the comparative authoritarianism literature to evaluate our claim that Turkey has moved from a dominant-party system to one resembling a personalist regime while arguing that elite defection and institutional degradation may catalyse political centralization. In doing so, we refocus evaluative attention on the substantive content of the regime rather than mere modes of perpetuation while reasserting the value of the literature’s diagnostic frameworks to empirically place Turkey’s subtype of authoritarianism.

KEYWORDS:

• personalist regimes
• Turkish politics
• AKP
• regime transition
• political centralization
• institutional degradation

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Juliette Tolay and Aykut Öztürk for their feedback on previous versions of this paper and the reviewers for their very helpful reviews.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. In Turkish, Erdogan used the term ‘yetki;’ alternately translated as power or authority.

2. For more detailed analysis about the differences between personalism as a character and type, see Van den Bosch (2015).

3. While the competitive authoritarian literature is oft-used in situations such as these, many explanations of competitive authoritarian regimes describe the term as exemplifying the contest between the incumbent regime and outside parties, not classifying the regime itself. The competition we refer to throughout the paper is within the AKP.

4. The criteria of frameworks are compiled from Greene (2007), Frantz’s (2018) and Geddes, Wright, and Frantz’s (2018).

5. Hadenius and Teorell (2007) note that some level of “personalism” is found in most nondemocratic regimes. We focus on institutional and substantive elements of personalism, not the deification of the leader. For Turkish personalism, Baykan’s (2018) study is a useful source.

6. The table is compiled from the data of Freedom House, Polity and V-dem.

7. Parliamentary sessions could be held only if at least 1/3rd of the total number of members would meet and the quorum of decision is 1/4th of the total number of parliament members.

8. President Erdogan stated he was unaware of the team’s formation. Arınç ascribed Erdogan’s disagreement to Erdogan’s personal opinions. This was a tangible sign of political autonomy amongst party members, despite Erdogan’s displeasure.

9. Erdogan stated, “public will respond to the Gezi protesters in the election”, emphasizing that he was an elected prime minister.

10. When the Gezi protest broke out, the president was Abdullah Gül, and the prime minister was Tayyip Erdogan. Although Erdogan was becoming more dominant internally, there were still other institutions such as the presidency curtailing unfettered power.

11. Some of the party members were purged after the coup attempt due to allegedly supporting FETO. Others left simply due to age or disagreement.

12. Although Gül wanted to serve for the party once his presidency has ended, the party had blocked the way for his return as the party leader by organizing the election of the party leader just one day before Gül’s presidency ended. In Turkey under the parliamentary system until 2018, the law required the president not to be affiliated with the political party.

13. See the tenure of Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Seeking a fractured chain of command to rid himself of the potential threat of a cohesive military, Saddam frequently gave unreasonable orders, pitted branches against each other and promoted generals solely based on political loyalty. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in poor battlefield performance during the Iran-Iraq war. Once he reversed this trend and promoted generals based on competency, the war began to turn, only to cut military effectiveness once again in 1991 by returning to loyalty-based promotion.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sevinç Öztürk

Sevinç Öztürk is an assistant professor at Bitlis Eren University, Turkey. She finished her Ph.D. in Political Science department at Rutgers University. Öztürk’s research interests include regime types, Turkish foreign policy, and foreign aid policies.

Thomas Reilly

Thomas A. Reilly is a visiting assistant professor at Marist College. His research primarily focuses on the diversionary theory of war, Chinese foreign policy, International Relations theory, and authoritarian regimes.