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Toward a new political regime in Turkey: From competitive toward full authoritarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2018

Koray Çalışkan
Koray Çalışkan*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University, 34342, Beşiktaş, İstanbul, Turkey, koray.caliskan@boun.edu.tr.
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Abstract

This article argues that Turkey’s contemporary political regime is competitive authoritarianism. Tracing the evolution of Turkey’s political system from tutelary democracy to its current state, it describes the developments that resulted in the dissolution of the army’s prerogatives in politics and the rise of a new form of authoritarianism in the country. Associating this substantive change with the global emergence of competitive authoritarianism, I argue that the competitive authoritarian regime of Turkey has been institutionalized by the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) and that, since the 2017 referendum, the regime has displayed a tendency toward full authoritarianism that may render elections non-competitive by narrowing the legal channels through which the opposition can contest for political power.

Keywords

Turkeypolitical regimecompetitive authoritarianismfull authoritarianismdemocracytutelary democracyJustice and Development Party
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 58 , May 2018 , pp. 5 - 33
Copyright
© New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

Author’s Note: I would like to thank Taha Parla, Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Biray Kolluoğlu, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments, criticism, and support, as well as Ezel Şahinkaya and Ayşe Savut for research assistance.

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