Introduction: Democratization Betrayed—Erdogan's New Turkey

History will remember your wiles to stay in power, your clandestine coups, your manhunt and rejection of differences, the victims of your tortures and the deaths on your conscience, in all the regions of Turkey.

—Kamel Daoud

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already established his place in history books, but the nature and the meaning of his legacy will be determined by researchers, intellectuals, scholars, and activists—people who observe, record, and study his leadership. In this special issue of the Mediterranean Quarterly—"Critical Crossroads: Erdogan and the Transformation of Turkey"—we attempt to join the arduous task of documenting and analyzing the decline of a twenty-first-century, democratically elected government into a domestically punitive and regionally aggressive authoritarian regime.¹

The Justice and Development Party (AKP), an Islamist conservative party with staunch neoliberal aspirations, was created in 2001, came to power in 2002, and has continuously held a majority of the seats in the Turkish parliament ever since. Similar to the cases of many modern authoritarianisms since the "Age of Anxiety" of 1918–38, Erdogan's leadership is marked by his popular appeal and the majoritarian support of his party. However, unlike twentieth-century authoritarian regimes, the AKP rose to power as an explicit challenge to the statist nationalism of the old guard embodied in the authoritative ranks of the Turkish military. Its unambiguous conflict with the guardianship of the laicist establishment and resolute position against the military tutelage, coupled with its explicit intention to reorganize state institutions, were initially perceived as moves toward democratization of the country and caused many left-liberal segments of the Turkish intelligentsia to give tacit and critical support to the rise of the AKP, resulting in polarized positions on the Left.² In the absence of a viable democratic opposition, the AKP became a regional, national, and, to a certain extent, global political force to reckon with, given the opportunities created by the ongoing strife in the Middle East.

Mechanisms of de-democratization often resemble mechanisms of democratization. As Charles Tilly states, "Bureaucratic containment of previously autonomous military forces … appears to come close to a necessary condition for democratization, but it also has significant effect on the capacity of government, the likelihood of civil war, the level of domestic violence, and even the prospect that a given state will engage in international war."³

The presumed prospects for democratization in the new Turkey soon soured into authoritarianism marked by the AKP's oppressive treatment of all forms of opposition, contemptible disregard for the rule of law, hostile attacks against freedom of expression, and violent repression of ethnic conflicts at home and across the country's borders. Starting with the violent clampdown on the 2013 anti-AKP demonstrations that started from Taksim Gezi Park and turned into country-wide protests,⁴ the AKP's undemocratic behavior continued with punitive political measures to marginalize and criminalize representatives of the Kurdish minority in 2015.⁵ This was followed by massive purges of civil servants and imprisonment of people in the wake of the July 2016 attempted military coup.⁶ In turn, the democratically elected AKP regime rapidly vanished into one of majoritarian control through which Erdogan claimed his legitimacy.⁷ Ostensibly defending democratic institutions against its former ally, the Gulen movement,⁸ the AKP regime dismissed, and even imprisoned, judges, teachers, civil servants, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, and academics who are known non-Islamic members of the dissent. According to Human Rights Watch, twenty-eight thousand teachers were dismissed for being Gulenists following the 2016 coup attempt, although eleven thousand of them were actually "guilty" mainly of being members of the left-leaning union Egitim-Sen.⁹ Similarly, many of the 160 media outlets that were shut down after the coup attempt were targeted not because of their participation but simply because they were Kurdish. Erdogan notoriously referred to the failed coup attempt as "a gift from God" and immediately started ruling the country through emergency decrees used to silence his opposition.¹⁰ With the leadership of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic...