The New Turkey and Its Discontents by Simon A. Waldman and Emre Caliskan (review)

This book is a good account of developments since the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and serves the purpose of drawing attention to what is happening in what is a pivotal country in the region as well as in global affairs. While authors Simon Waldman and Emre Caliskan’s coverage of many topics remains mixed in their depth, the manuscript is appropriate for general readership. Chapters cover the role of the military in politics, decline of the generals’ influence, the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, from the Turkish Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to power, Erdoğan at the helm, the impact of urbanization and rural migration on Turkey’s socioeconomics and politics, the seemingly impossible peace process with the Kurds and its aftermath, and relations with regional neighbors and the reorientation of Turkey’s foreign policy under Ahmet Davutoğlu. Tackling each one of these topics is a monumental undertaking. The authors, while trying their best to provide sufficient analysis, sometimes fall short of connecting the key points to account for Turkey’s political decline into authoritarianism and its consequences.

While the main purpose of The New Turkey and Its Discontents is to account for developments since the AKP’s rise to power, the authors provide a good overview of civil-military relations dating back to the first coup of 1960 and political developments thereafter in the introductory chapter. Waldman and Caliskan explain the beginnings of the Kurdish issue, the role of the generals in shaping Turkey’s constitutional order after three coups, the rise of Islamist groups with private political agendas like the movement of Fethullah Gülen and its role in the failed July 2016 coup, and societal cleavages that will shape future of Turkey. One such cleavage is a product of the AKP’s political message: “White Turks” versus “Black Turks,” or members of the secular, bureaucratic-military elite from the Balkans versus conservative, rural Anatolians. Other societal cleavages that could have been identified are the divides between Kurdish and Turkish nationalists and advocates of laicism and Islamism that threaten to tear the Turkish nation apart. Second, the introduction of “weak state” versus “deep state” is not only a problem of perception and of the capabilities of state institutions but of a lack of democratic consolidation in the country. This is perhaps the key point that is not properly addressed in the book, because the chapters are not linked through a theoretical analytic framework. Description of different aspects of events and developments lack a coherent theoretical paradigm that could help readers better understand the complexities of cause and effect in modern Turkey’s political development.

Chapter 1 sets the stage for Turkey’s transition from the tutelary rule of the military to a democratic system in 2002 when the AKP came to power in a landslide victory. This sounds like there was no democratic order in Turkey prior to 2002. It should be noted that the most democratic constitutional order of the country came as a result of a coup in 1960 with the constitution of 1961; rather ironic indeed. But it was short-lived, as the 1971 military intervention reduced individual civil and political rights, and the subsequent coup of 1980 eliminated democratic order altogether. This initial chapter has a rich discussion of how the Turkish military established itself as the guardian of the republic and of the reforms of its first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The authors show, though rather briefly, how successive coups shaped Turkey’s political system and eventually resulted in a major confrontation with the conservative political groups with Islamic leanings. The 1997 “soft,” or “postmodern,” coup against Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan and the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) also exposed the clash between the Western bourgeoisie and the new Islamist capitalists of Anatolia. The reader is also introduced to how failure of the traditional secular parties and closure...