Caliskan From Competitive To Full Authoritarian Regime

5
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

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

democracy; tutelary democracy; Justice and Development Party
Introduction
Turkey has served as a paradigmatic case in comparative politics ever since the
discipline’s emergence in the mid-20th century. Because Turkey is frequently
characterized as the most developed Muslim country, scholars of the time expected
Turkish politics to show a more rapid response to the transformations that were
reaching Anatolia from the West. And that response did indeed come. Seen as the
defining story of Modernization Theory, Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional
Society: Modernizing the Middle East drew on the country as a case study. Locating
Koray Çalışkan, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University, 34342,
Beşiktaş, İstanbul, Turkey, koray.caliskan@boun.edu.tr.
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.
New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 58 (2018): 5–33. © New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2018
10.1017/npt.2018.10
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6 Koray Çalışkan
the young republic as the fastest modernizing country in the “traditional” world,
both Lerner and his followers expected that Turkish politics would evolve into
democracy rather quickly, if not necessarily at a pace as fast as that of its economic
modernization.1 However, since the publication of Lerner’s book, Turkey has been
shaken by three military takeovers, and as a result democracy did not follow in the
wake of the country’s socioeconomic modernization.
Democracy dragged its feet in other parts of the world as well. The fall of
the Soviet Union led to optimism for those studying the dynamics of political
regime change: the transition to the post-Soviet era gave birth to a body of
literature on the transition to democracy, thereby creating a somewhat
premature expectation that dictatorships would fall and be followed by the
rise of democracies. Yet the direction of transition navigated away from
democratization and toward hybrid regimes that simultaneously incorporated
practices of both democracy and authoritarianism. Depending on the theore-
tical prioritization of the respective scholar, these regimes have been
characterized as “semi-democracy,” “pseudo-democracy,” “illiberal democracy,”
“semi-authoritarianism,” or “soft authoritarianism.”2
Scholars expected Turkey to respond to the end of the Cold War
faster than the rest of the world. However, Turkey failed to institutionalize
democracy and instead jumped on the bandwagon of regime hybridization,
swinging back and forth between authoritarianism and democracy. Moreover, the
persistence of the Turkish military’s intervention in everyday politics institutiona-
lized another political regime hybridity, one commonly termed “tutelary demo-
cracy.”3 But in the first decade of the 21st century, the military lost its prerogatives
and the tutelary character of the regime disappeared. This has even been discussed
as a model: “Turkey’s successful exit from a military tutelage demonstrated that a
mild and peaceful transition away from autocracy is possible.”4
At a time when the academic literature was focused on the dissolution of the
country’s military tutelary regime, on July 15, 2016 Turkey faced another coup
1 Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (New York: Free Press of
Glencoe, 1964).
2 For a review of this literature, see Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of
Democracy 13, no. 1 (2002): 5–21; Marina Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-
Authoritarianism (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003); Steven
Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010); Andreas Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of
Unfree Competition (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006); Valerie J. Bunce and
Sharon L. Wolchik, “Defeating Dictatorship: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive
Authoritarian Regimes,” World Politics 62, no. 1 (2010): 43–86; and Yonatan L. Morse, “The Era of
Electoral Authoritarianism,” World Politics 64, no. 1 (2012), 161–162.
3 Alain Rouquié, The Military and the State in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
4 Akif M. Kireçci, “Relating Turkey to the Middle East and North Africa: Arab Spring and the Turkish
Experience,” Bilig 63 (2012), 111.
7

attempt, this time organized and executed by Gülenist officers and their
collaborators in the army and elsewhere.5 The success of civilian moves toward
the dissolution of the military’s political power, however, contributed—
paradoxically—not only to the emergence but also to the failure of this coup
attempt. The overpowering of the coup plotters by the secular army did not
result in the reinstutionalization of military tutelage; on the contrary, the chief
of staff of the Turkish armed forces was placed under the political responsi-
bility of the Minister of Defense, and then, following the 2017 referendum,
under the president.
The slow-paced erosion of the military’s control was followed by a
fast-tracked emergence of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey. As soon as
the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) was
certain of the end of the tutelary regime, it changed Turkey’s political direction
from democracy to authoritarianism in three successive steps. First, it de facto
froze the EU accession process, thus limiting the country’s openness to
Western pro-democratic influence. Second, the party introduced a process of
judicial reform that weakened checks and balances within the regime, resulting in
a phenomenal increase of political control over the judiciary that was more suitable
for silencing and/or punishing political dissent. And third, following
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s contested and narrow victory in the referendum of
April 2017—the first “victory” of the AKP that was not conceded by the
opposition—Turkey’s regime transformation was steered toward a full author-
itarianism that may, in the future, immensely limit or even effectively close off the
legal channels through which the opposition can contest for political power.
Since the end of the tutelary regime, the political science literature
has aimed to provide analysts with a concept that would lend itself to
comparative perspectives, and to this end scholars have been pursuing theore-
tical attempts to describe Turkey’s new political regime and its transformation.
These efforts have opened a valuable discussion in the literature on Turkey’s
new political regime by defining this regime as “electoral authoritarianism,”
“illiberal democracy,” “delegative democracy,” “rising neo-fascism,” and “weak
authoritarianism.”6
5 For an explanation of the emergence of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, see Koray Çalışkan,
“Explaining the End of Military Tutelary Regime and the July 15 Coup Attempt in Turkey,” Journal of
Cultural Economy 10, no. 1 (2017): 97–111. Gülenists are followers of the authoritarian Islamist preacher
Fethullah Gülen, who has been living in the United States since 1999; for a detailed discussion of
Gülenism, see Cihan Tuğal, “Gulenism: The Middle Way or Official Ideology?” Jadaliyya, July 5, 2013.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/28949/Gulenism-The-Middle-Way-or-Official-Ideology.
6 Ekim Arbatlı, “Turkey’s New Path: The Rise of Electoral Authoritarianism,” Research Turkey, December
16, 2014, http://researchturkey.org/turkeys-new-path-the-rise-of-electoral-authoritarianism/; Hakkı
Taş, “Turkey: From Tutelary to Delegative Democracy,” Third World Quarterly 36, no. 4, (2015):
776–791; Gülay Türkmen Dervişoğlu, “Turkey: From ‘Role Model’ to ‘Illiberal Democracy,”’ Open
Following Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, scholars such as Ozan

Örmeci, Koray Çalışkan, Ergun Özbudun, and Berk Esen and Şebnem
Gümüşçü have presented a convincing empirical framework within which to
locate a “drift” to or “rise” of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey.7
Contributing to this literature, this article argues that Turkey’s new political
regime qualifies and is indeed institutionalized as competitive authoritarianism.
It demonstrates that, out of a total of eleven qualifications within a set of three
indicators of competitive authoritarianism as theorized by Levitsky and Way,
between 2010 and 2017 Turkey’s political regime repeatedly displayed nine
such qualifications, a performance surpassed by only five other countries:
Armenia, Cameroon, Madagascar, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. During and after
the 2017 constitutional referendum, all eleven qualifications of competitive
authoritarianism were observed for the first time since 2010.
However, the aftermath of the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016 and
the 2017 constitutional referendum structured a new path of political regime
transformation in the country, creating a clear drift toward full authoritarianism.
Full authoritarian regimes mark political contexts where the opposition’s ability to
compete for power is restricted in real terms to the extent that elections become
structurally non-competitive.8 In such settings, which narrow the formal channels
through which the opposition can contest for political power and in which
the incumbent mobilizes formal and informal means of neither sharing nor
abandoning political power, opposition parties open channels of participation that
move beyond formal politics and mimic social movements on the ground.
After discussing these contemporary developments, the article concludes with a
discussion of the consequences of the constitutional amendments following the
2017 referendum and analyzes the drift toward full authoritarianism in Turkey.
Democracy, December 11, 2015, https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/gulay-turk

men-dervisoglu/turkey-from-role-model-to-illiberal-democracy; Cihan Tuğal, The Fall of the Turkish
Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought down Islamic Liberalism (London: Verso, 2016); Karabekir
Akkoyunlu and Kerem Ö ktem, “Existential Insecurity and the Making of a Weak Authoritarian Regime
in Turkey,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 16, no. 4 (2016): 505–527.
7 Ozan Örmeci, “Turkey towards Competitive Authoritarianism,” Politika Akademisi, August 8,
2014, http://politikaakademisi.org/2014/08/06/turkey-towards-competitive-authoritarianism/; Koray
Çalışkan, “Competitive Authoritarianism: The New Political Regime of Islamists in Turkey,” paper
presented at CERI (Centre de Recherches Internationales, Sciences-Po, Paris, May 27, 2014); Ergun
Özbudun, “Turkey’s Judiciary and the Drift Toward Competitive Authoritarianism,” The International
Spectator 50, no. 9 (2015): 42–55; Berk Esen and Şebnem Gümüşçü, “Rising Competitive
Authoritarianism in Turkey,” Third World Quarterly 37, no. 9 (2016): 1581–1606. Also contributing to
this literature, though without clarifying a specific theoretical position on the nature of
authoritarianism, Bahar Başer and Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, eds., Authoritarian Politics in Turkey: Elections,
Resistance and the AKP (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017) chronicles the advent of Turkey’s authoritarianism in
some detail.
8 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 6–7.
9

The theory of competitive authoritarianism
An extensive political science literature has described the forms of

encounter between democracy and authoritarianism as “disguised dictatorship,”
“semi-authoritarianism,” “hybrid regimes,” “semi-democracy,” “the gray zone,”
“pseudo-democracy,” “defective democracy,” and “semi-dictatorship”.9
Much of the literature presents convincing case studies, yet very little
of it provides a working concept that would lend itself to robust comparative
analysis. Andreas Schedler has offered the notion of “electoral authoritarianism,”
defining such regimes as follows:
Electoral authoritarian regimes play the game of multiparty elections by

holding regular elections for the chief executive and a national legislative
assembly. Yet they violate the liberal-democratic principles of freedom and
fairness so profoundly and systematically as to render elections instruments
of authoritarian rule rather than “instruments of democracy.”10
Effectively narrowing the theoretical focus, this definition includes those

regimes that use democracy as a façade that conceals electoral authoritarianism,
and thus risks flattening the categorical distinction between those authoritarian
regimes where elections are merely devices meant to save face and those regimes
where elections are contested but still competitive. The concept of competitive
authoritarianism addresses the problem of flattening more effectively.
Theorizing competitive authoritarianism as a response to the formal expansion
and substantial decline of democracy after the end of the Cold War, Levitsky
and Way defined it as follows:
In competitive authoritarian regimes, formal democratic institutions are

widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political
authority. Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such an extent,
however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for
democracy […] Although elections are regularly held and are generally free
of massive fraud, incumbents routinely abuse state resources, deny the
9 Marina Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism; Larry Jay Diamond,
“Thinking about Hybrid Regimes,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 21–35; Larry Jay Diamond,
Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with
Democracy (Boulder: L. Rienner Publishers, 1995); Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Avalos, Hakan Yılmaz,
and Ana I. Planet, Turkey’s Democratization Process (London: Routledge, 2014); Paul Brooker, Non-
Democratic Regimes: Theory, Government, and Politics (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000); Carothers, “The
End of the Transition Paradigm,” 5–21.
10 Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism, 3.
opposition adequate media coverage, harass opposition candidates and their

supporters, and in some cases manipulate electoral results.11
Incumbents in competitive authoritarian regimes tolerate competition as long

as they are almost sure to win.12 However, the electoral character of the regime
does not create a mere façade of democracy: elections are competitive and real.
Remaining in the game instead of choosing an exit strategy, the opposition
knows, or at least believes, that it has a chance to win.13 In competitive
authoritarian regimes, election procedures are rarely openly violated; instead,
“incumbents are more likely to use bribery, co-optation, and more subtle forms
of persecution, such as the use of tax authorities, compliant judiciaries, and
other state agencies to legally harass, persecute, or extort cooperative behavior
from critics.”14
In elaborating on competitive authoritarianism’s defining characteristics,
Levitsky and Way posit that, if incumbents are restricted by such
unelected tutelary powers as the military, regimes cannot be qualified
as competitive authoritarian.15 Thus, an empirical test of competitive
authoritarianism is possible only if the tutelary character of such a regime
disappears.
Levitsky and Way locate three areas in reference to which a given political
regime’s competitive authoritarian character can be empirically tested: the
electoral arena, civil liberties, and an uneven playing field.16 In connection with
these areas, they argue that competitive authoritarianism can be observed if the
ruling party in a given regime breaches at least one of the following attributes of
democracy: (1) free elections, (2) the general protection of civil liberties, and
(3) a reasonably level playing field.17 In competitive authoritarian regimes, the
electoral arena may be compromised if any one of the following indicators can
be observed: (1) at least one major candidate is barred; (2) electoral abuse is
centrally coordinated or tolerated; (3) the opposition is prevented from
11 Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy
13, no. 2 (2002), 52–53.
12 Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, “Defeating Dictatorship: Electoral Change and Stability in
Competitive Authoritarian Regimes,” World Politics 62, no. 1 (2010), 43.
13 Bunce and Wolchik have shown that “elections in competitive authoritarian regimes […] have
sometimes led to the victory of the opposition. This is precisely what happened, for example, in the
elections that took place in the Philippines in 1986, Nicaragua in 1990, Slovakia in 1998, Indonesia in
1999, Mexico in 2000, Madagascar in 2001, and Ukraine in 2004. In fact, from 1996 to 2005 there was a
wave of elections in the post-communist region in particular that ended the rule of authoritarians and
brought democratic oppositions to power.”; ibid., 44.
14 Levitsky and Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” 53.
15 Ibid., 32 and Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 363.
16 Levitsky and Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” 54.
17 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 7.
11

campaigning on an equal footing with the incumbent; and (4) electoral
authorities evidence systematic bias in favor of the incumbent.18
Violation of civil liberties takes form through the following attributes:
(1) frequent harassment of the media for political reasons (including
censorship, legal harassment, the use of unfair taxation, and discretionary use of
broadcasting licenses for the purpose of punishment or control); (2) political
attacks on the media within a one-year period, which is meant to curb press
independence (such as initiating legal action in terms of tax fines);
(3) occasional engagement in actions that restrict the freedom of speech or of
association; and (4) attacking opposition actors within a one-year period, which
has a “chilling effect” on civic activity.19
Finally, a regime can be considered competitive authoritarian if one of the
three ways of creating an uneven playing field is observable: (1) the state is
deployed to control the opposition’s ability to compete; (2) there is uneven
media access (such as control of state-owned media and “packing” a significant
share of private media); and (3) there is uneven access to resources during
election campaigns.20 Overall, a regime is competitive authoritarian if at least
one of the eleven qualifications above is met, if elections are not merely a façade,
if there exists broad adult suffrage, and if the regime does not display a tutelary
character.21
Competitive authoritarianism in Turkey
The beginning of the dismantlement of Turkey’s tutelary regime also marked

the beginning of the transformations that have since institutionalized compe-
titive authoritarianism in the country. The theory of competitive authoritar-
ianism has only become relevant for an understanding of Turkey’s politics
following the tutelary regime’s end. Under tutelary democracy, Turkey’s poli-
tical regime could not be qualified as competitive authoritarian, not because it
was not yet a hybrid authoritarian regime, but rather because civilians were
competing on a level playing field for political power that would be shared with
the military. Soldiers never allowed civilians to compete with them on matters
of structural importance.
Following the constitutional referendum of 2010 and after three general
elections (2011, June 2015, and November 2015), one local election (2014),
one presidential election (2014), and one constitutional referendum (2017),
18 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 366.

19 Ibid., 367.
20 Ibid., 368.
21 Ibid., 365.
the Turkish political regime no longer qualifies as a tutelary democracy.22 The

country’s tutelary regime was a democracy that succeeded in achieving an

acceptable level of separation of powers, press freedom, and regular elections,
but the civilian regime had to share its power with the military on matters of
structural importance, such as military promotions and the defense budget.23
In the first decade of the 21st century, the tacit consent between Turkey’s
civilians and soldiers came to an end as a result of the dissolution of military
prerogatives. Beginning in 2005, the army began to lose its rights to intervene in
politics as well as the tools and social support for such intervention.24 By 2010, the
military had a limited say only on matters concerning the defense sector, and by
2012 the political science literature had begun to discuss the dynamics of the end of
the tutelary regime.25 As it had lost all of the prerogatives theorized by Alfred C.
Stepan,26 it was no longer possible to describe Turkey as a tutelary regime.27
However, the end of the tutelary nature of the regime has not resulted in
further democratization of the country. New developments, as well as the
reproduction of older authoritarian political threads in the country, have dis-
played attributes of competitive authoritarianism in all three of the areas
mentioned by Levitsky and Way; namely, the electoral arena, civil liberties, and
an uneven playing field. As discussed below, the 2017 referendum—being the
first civilian-organized voting process since 1950 to be declared illegitimate and
to be neither recognized nor conceded by the main opposition28—constituted a
turning point in Turkey’s political regime. It was precisely then that a drift
toward full authoritarianism began to be observed.
The electoral arena

Of the four indicators that Levitsky and Way defined as testing competitive
authoritarianism in the electoral context for any given polity, it was not
22 Çalışkan, “Explaining the End of Military Tutelary Regime”; Ahmet T. Kuru, “The Rise and Fall of Military
Tutelage in Turkey: Fears of Islamism, Kurdism, and Communism,” Insight Turkey 14, no. 2 (2012): 37–57.
23 Çalışkan, “Explaining the End of Military Tutelary Regime.”
24 Zeynep Alemdar, “‘Modelling’ for Democracy? Turkey’s Historical Issues with Freedom of Speech,”
Middle Eastern Studies 50, no. 4 (2014), 569.
25 Kuru, “The Rise and Fall of Military Tutelage in Turkey”; Uğur Burç Yıldız, “Rethinking Civil-Military
Relations in Turkey: The Problems of the Democratic Governance of the Defense and Security
Sectors,” Turkish Studies 15, no. 3 (2014): 386–401; Karabekir Feyzi Akkoyunlu, “The Rise and Fall of the
Hybrid Regime: Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey” (Ph.D. dissertation, London School
of Economics and Political Science, 2014).
26 Alfred C. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988).
27 Koray Çalışkan, “Explaining the End of Military Tutelage in Turkey,” working paper, Boğaziçi University,
2015); Çalışkan, “Explaining the End of Military Tutelary Regime.”
28 Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP), Merkez Yönetim Kurulu Raporu (Referandum 16 Nisan 2017), Ankara,
April 25, 2017. http://www.chp.org.tr/Public/0/Folder//90961.pdf.
13

until 2017 that credible international and national observers were able to prove
the existence of the first two; namely, the barring of at least one major candidate
and centrally coordinated or tolerated electoral abuse. The existence of the
other two indicators, however—i.e., the presence of significant formal or
informal impediments to prevent the opposition from campaigning nationally
on an equal footing and uneven access to resources and media during election
campaigns—has been well documented.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)
monitors all elections in Europe’s 57 countries and presents the most authori-
tative assessment of any given election. Observing the 2014 presidential
election in Turkey, the OSCE concluded that the then Prime Minister
Erdoğan enjoyed “a significant bias” as compared to the other candidates
and parties.29 This bias was based on the existence of the aforementioned
impediments of preventing the opposition from campaigning on an equal
footing and providing only uneven access to resources and media. The OSCE’s
media monitoring results showed that “three out of the five monitored TV
stations, including the public broadcaster, TRT1, displayed a significant bias in
favour of the Prime Minister.”30 The report concluded as follows:
The overall disproportionate coverage on television, the main source of

political information, in favour of the Prime Minister, including live
broadcasting of his events and speeches, coupled with the limited amount of
paid political advertising featuring the other two candidates, gave the Prime
Minister a distinct advantage, and limited pluralistic information on
political alternatives for voters.31
The Turkish state news agency (Anadolu Ajansı, AA) also exhibited
bias towards the AKP’s presidential nominee, Erdoğan, during the 2014
presidential elections. When the vote count still covered less than 25 percent of
all ballot boxes, the AA’s general manager—himself an AKP candidate in the
2015 general election—announced a landslide victory for Erdoğan at
63 percent, showing the opposition candidate, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, at
26 percent. In doing this, the AA aimed to psychologically compel opposition
supporters to leave the ballot boxes; later, toward the end of the count, the
agency decreased the “final result” of Erdoğan’s numbers to the actual
51.7 percent.
29 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Office for Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights, Republic of Turkey Presidential Election Final Report (Warsaw: Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe, 2014), 2.
30 Ibid., 2.
31 Ibid., 19.
Impediments preventing the opposition from campaigning increased in

frequency during the elections of June and November 2015. In both elections,
the OSCE documented that the great majority of broadcasters favored the
incumbent, thereby keeping the opposition from reaching the electorate on an
equal footing with the incumbent.32 Furthermore, in both elections, the
Supreme Electoral Council (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu, YSK)—the body that
administers elections in the country—as well as lower election boards refused
to open to the media and to international observers.33 In addition, following
the November 2015 election, the constitutional court ruling prescribing that
YSK “decisions cannot be reviewed, even for violations of fundamental rights
and freedoms, further restricted the opportunity for stakeholders to seek
judicial redress.”34 Finally, in both elections President Erdoğan actively
campaigned for the incumbent despite the fact that the president is required by
Turkey’s constitution to be non-partisan and impartial toward campaigns
within the country. According to the OSCE, Erdoğan’s campaigning in this
manner contravened paragraph 5.4 of the 1990 OSCE Copenhagen Document
and Section I.2.3a of the Venice Commission’s Code of Good Practice in
Electoral Matters.35
Composed of active-duty judges, the YSK is funded by the Ministry of
Justice, thus making it financially dependent on a ministry under the control of
the incumbent. Additionally, the series of judicial reforms that was launched
between 2011 and 2014 had already increased government control over the
judiciary, thus decreasing the YSK’s autonomy. The Ministry of Justice holds
the authority to discipline and dismiss judges, thereby giving it control over
election administrators who are also active judges. Despite numerous formal
demands from the opposition and independent observers, the AKP insisted on
removing the YSK’s decisions from judicial review and set no final legal
deadline for the council’s adjudication of electoral disputes, thus leaving the
timing to the heat of public discussion and criticism. Coupled with the removal
of the right of the media and observers to monitor the council’s activities, this
has made the voting and counting process more inscrutable and accordingly
decreased the transparency of elections.
32 OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Republic of Turkey, Parliamentary
Elections, 1 November 2015, OSCE/ODIHR Limited Election Observation Mission Final Report”
(Warsaw: OSCE, 2016), http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/turkey/219201?download=true, 2 and
OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Republic of Turkey, Parliamentary
Elections, 7 June 2015, OSCE/ODIHR Limited Election Observation Mission Final Report” (Warsaw:
OSCE, 2015), http://www.osce.org/odihr/ elections/turkey/177926?download=true, 16.
33 OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Final Report [2016],” 7 and OSCE Office
for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Final Report [2015],” 7.
34 OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Final Report [2016],” 3.
35 OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Final Report [2015],” 1.
15

According to the OSCE, the YSK also used its power in favor of Erdoğan
by shortening the campaign period for the 2014 presidential election by three
weeks, with “[t]he resulting 10-day campaign period benefitt[ing] the Prime
Minister and [being] insufficient to adequately ensure equal opportunities for
all candidates to compete in the election.”36 Finally, the OSCE report reveals
that Erdoğan used state resources for his campaign, thus gaining an unjustifi-
able advantage over other electoral contestants. In addition to the deployment
of state resources, Erdoğan’s campaign also violated election law by drawing on
the AKP’s distribution of food parcels and vouchers, a violation that went
undenied by several AKP officials.37
Similar instances of compromised election practices had been reported in
the 2011 general election as well. One OSCE report demonstrated that, during
this election, the “legislation continued to unduly limit freedom of expression,
freedom of association, and electoral rights” in Turkey.38 However, overall this
election was largely regarded as being more in compliance with democratic
standards than the two elections of 2014. Both the OSCE’s election
observation report and that of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly
confirm this conclusion.39
The 2014 local elections suffered from YSK-related problems concerning
compromised autonomy and fairness. A report by the Association for
Monitoring Equal Rights (Eşit Haklar İçin İzleme Derneği, ESHİD), based on
research at 466 ballot stations around the country, observed various forms of
potential election fraud believed to have been carried out by the incumbent.40
Discontent regarding the YSK’s handling of the election was in fact so
widespread that, for the first time in Turkey’s history, a series of demonstra-
tions and sit-ins blocked entry to the council’s building, resulting in the street
being closed and police fencing off the YSK’s offices.
The 2014 local election in the capital of Ankara is still, even three years
later, being contested by the opposition candidate, Mansur Yavaş, and might
serve as something of an emblem of Turkey’s compromised election process.
The actual voting was overshadowed by frequent power cuts that occurred
36 OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Republic of Turkey, Presidential Election,
10 August 2014, OSCE/ODIHR Limited Election Observation Mission Final Report” (Warsaw: OSCE,
2014). http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/turkey/126851?download=true, 19.
37 Ibid., 15.
38 Ibid., 14.
39 Council of Europe, Observation of the Parliamentary Elections in Turkey (Brussels: Council of Europe,
2011); OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Final Report [2014].”
40 D. Çiğdem Sezer, E. Ezra Elbistan, G. Zekiye Şenol, and Nejat Taştan, 30 Mart 2014 Mahalli İdareler ile
Mahalle Muhtarlıkları ve İhtiyar Heyetleri Seçimi Gözlem Raporu (İstanbul: Eşit Haklar Iç̇ in Izleme
̇
Derneği [ESHİD], 2014). http://www.esithaklar.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Yerel-Se%C3%
A7im-Raporu.pdf.
during the ballot count, by allegations of ballot stuffing and the disposal of
opposition votes, by police harassment, and by election day campaigning, all of
which resulted in the widespread belief that the election was compromised.
Losing to the incumbent by a margin of just 1 percent, Yavaş’s legal objections
and the evidence he presented regarding 23 percent of all counted votes were
not accepted by the YSK. His petition to the Constitutional Court was also
dismissed by a decision that contained a preamble explaining the dismissal as
being due to “the court’s limited jurisdiction over election administration.”41
Growing public criticism of the YSK’s administration of the 2014 local
elections led to the cancellation of local elections in thirteen districts, with
reelections taking place on June 1, 2014 and resulting in a decline of votes for
the incumbent. In these regions, the elections not only went ahead with no
reported abuse, but also led to the success of opposition candidates. Never-
theless, these elections covered less than 1 percent of the country’s local
administrative regions.
Civil liberties
According to Levitsky and Way, under competitive authoritarianism the vio-
lation of civil liberties takes the form of four general attributes, as outlined
above. Since 2010, Turkey’s political regime has featured various and repeated
instances of civil liberty violations falling under all four of these general attri-
butes. For instance, a recent Freedom House report has shown that, since
2008, Erdoğan’s government, “unable to suppress the temptations of authori-
tarianism, […] has increasingly employed a variety of strong-arm tactics to
suppress the media’s proper role as a check on power.”42 These tactics have
been documented as falling under five categories: intimidation, mass firings, the
buying off or forcing out of media groups, wiretapping, and imprisonment.43
These tactics aimed at controlling the press date back to at least 2009, when a
newspaper from Doğan Group—a secular news group owned by Aydın
Doğan—criticized then Prime Minister Erdoğan’s political allies on the basis
of charges of corruption. Just a few weeks after the criticism, Doğan Group was
fined USD 2.5 billion for supposedly “unpaid taxes,” a record fine that
41 Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Anayasa Mahkemesi, “Mansur Yavaş ve Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Başvurusu.”
Application No. 2014/5425. Date of Decision: July 23, 2014. http://www.kararlaryeni.anayasa.gov.tr/
BireyselKarar/Content/f2be0ce5-74de-47d9-b43a-3b3d8dfe9581?wordsOnly=False.
42 Susan Corke, Andrew Finkel, David Kramer, Anne Robbins, and Nate Schenkkan, Democracy in Crisis:
Corruption, Media, and Power in Turkey (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2014), 1. For an academic
overview of the historical transformation of the freedom of the press in Turkey, see Ceren Sözeri, “The
Political Economy of the Media and Its Impact on Freedom of Expression in Turkey,” in Turkey’s
Democratization Process, ed. Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Ávalos, Hakan Yılmaz, and Ana I. Planet
(London: Routledge, 2014): 391–403.
43 Corke et al., Democracy in Crisis, 1–2.
17

corresponded to the market value of all of its publications combined and that
led to a stock market dive for the group’s shares, resulting in a loss of 20 percent
in less than a week.44 Three weeks later, the tax authorities increased the fine to
USD 3.2 billion, forcing the group to sell off its major assets.45
Though openly criticized for these actions by the European Union, the
European Commission, the International Press Institute, and the OSCE,
Erdoğan’s government dismissed these criticisms and refused to revise the tax
fine until the group decided to sell two of its three major newspapers, Milliyet
and Vatan, to a partnership led by Yıldırım Demirören, a businessman who
was very close to Erdoğan. Following this sale, the second-largest media group,
Sabah-ATV, was sold to the Çalık Group, whose CEO, Berat Albayrak, is
now Erdoğan’s son-in-law and the minister of energy.46
During the same period, such economic harassment of the free press was
accompanied by the firing, imprisonment, and detention of journalists. The
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported that the number of
journalists receiving prison sentences declined to 40 in 2012, but then increased
again to 81 in 2016—the highest number in any one country at any time since
the founding of CPJ in 1981 and accounting for one-third of all journalists
jailed worldwide for the year 2016.47 The AKP government strongly denied
the CPJ’s reports, arguing that no journalists were imprisoned in the
country, despite the fact that the Venice Commission reported the arrest of
151 journalists in Turkey in 2017.48 The imprisoned journalists were charged
with “knowing and being willing to aid someone who commits a crime in the
name of a [criminal] organization,” a vague penal clause that the government
has repeatedly used to prosecute journalists and academics.49 Such legal
measures against journalists resulted in a steep drop in Turkey’s press
44 Ayla Jean Yackley, “Turkey Gov’t Hits Media Group Dogan with Tax Fine,” Reuters, September 8, 2009.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2009/09/08/turkey-dogan-idUKL815352620090908.
45 “Doğan’a Vergi İncelemesi ‘Rutin,’” HaberTurk, October 6, 2009. http://www.haberturk.com/medya/
haber/177221-dogana-vergi-incelemesi-rutin.
46 Corke et al., Democracy in Crisis, 12. For a detailed account of this transformation, see Reuben
Silverman, “Dogan versus Erdogan: Business and Politics in AKP-era Turkey,” Mediterranean Quarterly
25, no. 2 (2014): 131–151.
47 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), “Turkey’s Crackdown Propels Number of Journalists in Jail
Worldwide to Record High,” December 13, 2016. https://cpj.org/reports/2016/12/journalists-jailed-
record-high-turkey-crackdown.php.
48 Council of Europe, Turkey: Opinion on the Amendments to the Constitution Adopted by the Grand
National Assembly on 21 January 2017 and to be Submitted to a National Referendum on 16 April 2017,
Opinion No. 875/2017 (Strasbourg, March 13, 2017). http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/
default.aspx?pdffile= cdl-ad(2017)005-e, 10.
49 İnsan Hakları Derneği (İHD), “2013 Türkiye İnsan Hakları İhlalleri Bilançosu,” https://www.ihd.org.tr/
2013-turkiye-insan-haklari-ihlalleri-bilancosu/; “Polis Şiddeti 183 Kişiyi Hayattan Kopardı,” Cumhuriyet,
February 18, 2015. http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/turkiye/216613/Polis_siddeti_183_kisiyi_
hayattan_kopardi.html.
freedom index score according to Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans

frontières, RSF), from the 99th rank in 2002, when the AKP formed its first
government, to 151st in 2016 and then to 155th in 2017, out of a total of
180 countries.50
The overall state of media freedom in Turkey has recently been described as
follows in a report by the European Commission:
At present journalists in Turkey still face threats to their safety and

professional independence from overly restrictive laws, hundreds of
questionable criminal investigations and a number of new prosecutions of
journalists, limitations on access to the Internet, improper government
interference with the work of the media, and intolerance of criticism on the
part of the government.51
Declining media freedom in Turkey has paralleled declining freedoms of

expression, association, and demonstration in the country. The Gezi movement
in 2013 marked the beginning of a new era in terms of civil liberties in
Turkey.52 Protesting Erdoğan’s decision to construct a shopping mall over the
only public park in Taksim, İstanbul’s most important square, demonstrations
engulfed the country: protests occurred in 78 of 81 provinces, resulting in the
death of 10 demonstrators and more than 8,500 injuries and 3,000 arrests.53
The government’s repression of the peaceful demonstrations drew criticism
from around the world, even to the extent that the Secretary-General of the
United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, and the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights, Navi Pillay, called on the government to defuse tensions in the
country.54 Since the Gezi movement, the government has continued to
suppress the freedoms of expression and peaceful demonstration through
recourse to police brutality, with Turkey becoming the world’s largest
50 Reporters without Borders (RWB), “2016 World Press Freedom Index,” Reporters without Borders.
https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2016.
51 Gvozden Srećko Flego, “Protection of Media Freedom in Europe,” Council of Europe, Parliamentary
Assembly, Doc. 13664, January 12, 2015, 18.
52 For analyses of the Gezi movement, see Yeşim Arat, “Violence, Resistance, and Gezi Park,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 4 (2013): 807–809; Erdem Yörük and Murat Yüksel,
“Class and Politics in Turkey’s Gezi Protests,” New Left Review 89 (2014): 103–123; Bülent Eken, “The
Politics of the Gezi Park Resistance: Against Memory and Identity,” South Atlantic Quarterly 113, no. 2
(2014): 427–436; and Şebnem Yardımcı-Geyikçi, “Gezi Park Protests in Turkey: A Party Politics View,”
Political Quarterly 85, no. 4 (2014): 445–453.
53 Amnesty International, Gezi Park Protests: Brutal Denial of the Right to Peaceful Assembly in Turkey
(London: Amnesty International, 2013).
54 “Senior UN Officials Urge Restraint, Dialogue to Defuse Tensions Fuelling Protests in Turkey,”
UN News, June 18, 2013. https://news.un.org/en/story/2013/06/442552-senior-un-officials-urge-restraint-
dialogue-defuse-tensions-fuelling-protests.
19

consumer of tear gas for three consecutive years from 2012 to 2014. In the
latter year, Turkish police utilized tear gas on 224 days of the year, and in
response to nearly any sign of social unrest.55 Overall, since 2002, the Turkish
police have used at least 628 tons of tear gas and a minimum of USD 21.2
million has been spent on this item alone.56
According to the Turkish Human Rights Association (İnsan Hakları
Derneği, İHD), the mass punishment of public dissent has also entailed the
disappearance or death of 183 persons since 2006, with no substantial
punishment being meted out to police officers who committed homicide during
demonstrations and/or detention.57 Developments in 2014 further escalated
the violence in the country: in the span of less than one month in October,
demonstrations against the government’s alleged support for the Islamic State
(IS) in the Syrian town of Kobanî resulted in the death of 50 civilians,
but no special government investigation was subsequently launched despite
demands by both the opposition and the international community. The AKP
government’s response was to pass a new internal security bill in 2015, giving
governors and district heads the right to detain suspects without the order of a
judge or prosecutor and relaxing the conditions under which the police and
gendarmerie may use live ammunition.58
Additionally, the government’s weak response to the issue of terrorism
resulted in a significant increase in the number of terror attacks, which also had
an impact on elections. Just a few weeks before the November 2015 election, a
suicide bombing targeting a peace rally in the capital of Ankara claimed the lives
of 109 people, making it the deadliest terror attack in the country’s history.
The bombing targeted voters of the two largest opposition parties, the Peoples’
Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP) and the Republican
People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), subsequently resulting in a
tarnished campaign period for both parties.59
The extraordinary contraction of press freedoms and civil liberties in
Turkey has been accompanied by a historic collapse of the separation of powers
that makes it very difficult for the government and police force to be held
accountable for their decisions and practices. In response to investigations
55 Biber Gazı Yasaklansın İnisiyatifi, “Biber Gazı Yasaklansın Raporu 2014.” http://www.bibergaziyasak-
lansin.net/icerik/bgyrapor2014.pdf.
56 “628 Ton Biber Gazı Kullanıldı,” Milliyet, July 27, 2012. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/628-ton-biber-gazi-
kullanildi/gundem/gundemdetay/27.07.2012/1572415/default.htm.
57 İHD, “2013 Türkiye İnsan Hakları İhlalleri Bilançosu”; “Polis Şiddeti 183 Kişiyi Hayattan Kopardı,”
Cumhuriyet, February 18, 2015.
58 Jonny Hogg and Gulsen Solaker, “Turkey Passes Tough New Security Law, Raising Fears of Election
Crackdowns,” Reuters, March 27, 2015. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-parliament-security/
turkey-passes-tough-new-security-law-raising-fears-of-election-crackdowns-idUSKBN0MN0WD20150327.
59 OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Final Report [2015].”
of corruption initiated against four AKP ministers by various public prosecu-

tors, Erdoğan’s government launched the most widespread overhaul of
the judiciary and police force in the history of the republic. Presenting the
Gülenist movement’s influence over the judiciary and police force as the reason
for this overhaul, the government demoted all prosecutors, judges, police
officers, and investigators who were legally pursuing the corruption charges
against the AKP ministers, one of whom was the Minister of the Interior,
Muammer Güler, who refused to resign until he himself had overhauled the
police department that was investigating the corruption charges against himself
and his son.
Furthermore, in 2014, with the aim of increasing its political control over
the judiciary, the government enacted a new law to restructure the High
Council of Judges and Prosecutors (Hâkimler ve Savcılar Yüksek Kurulu,
HSYK), the highest body responsible for judicial promotions, appointments,
and severances.60 This move was made possible by a new law that had given
politicians the right to appoint 10 of the 22 members of the HSYK, presided
over by the Minister of Justice.61 The rest of the members were elected by
judges and prosecutors, but this was an election that was heavily influenced by
the AKP’s informal network, thus further contributing to the politicization of
the judiciary.
An uneven playing field

Levitsky and Way argue for three indicators to evaluate the presence of an
uneven playing field: deployment of state resources to control the opposition’s
ability to compete, uneven media access, and uneven access to resources.
Turkey has exhibited all three of these indicators since 2010 as well as during
the general elections of 2011, June 2015, and November 2015, the local
elections of 2014, the presidential election of 2014, and the 2017 constitutional
referendum. During all of these voting processes, the incumbent mobilized
state resources in order to win votes. Furthermore, autonomous state institu-
tions whose neutrality is a precondition for a working democracy—such as the
YSK and the judiciary, as explained above—have consistently been further
politicized, thereby decreasing the credibility of elections and compromising
their political and economic autonomy.
As discussed in the previous section, uneven media access has been one of
the best documented pieces of evidence regarding competitive authoritarianism
60 Ergun Özbudun, “Turkey’s Judiciary and the Drift toward Competitive Authoritarianism,” The
International Spectator 50, no. 2 (2015): 42–55.
61 Naim Karakaya and Hande Özhabeş, Judicial Reform Packages: Evaluating Their Effect on Rights and
Freedoms (İstanbul: TESEV, 2013), 11.
21

in Turkey. The incumbent single-handedly controls and exerts direct influence
on “40% of all newspaper sales, including major, and seemingly mainstream,
Turkish dailies. Likewise, major TV channels are all either directly controlled
by Erdoğan or influenced by his great sway over the network’s broadcasters.”62
Finally, the incumbent has also been observed to use public resources in order
to curb the opposition’s ability to compete on a reasonably equal footing. These
developments have resulted in a complete sea change in the way in which
credible international institutions and ad hoc observational bodies have
assessed the country’s democratic performance.
The 2017 Freedom House Report presented Turkey as having the largest
one-year decline in democratic performance in the world for that year,
downgrading Turkey’s press freedom from “partly free” to “not free” while
maintaining the regime’s freedom status as “partly free”; in 2018, however, this
was also downgraded to “not free.” Similarly, describing Turkey as a “hybrid
regime,” the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has observed the country’s
unprecedented drop in democratic ranking, situating it at 98th among
167 countries:
[T]he deterioration in [Turkey’s] score last year [from 5.63 to 5.12] was
outstripped by just two other countries in the world: Libya and Thailand.
This reflects the continuing fraying of the social, political, and institutional
fabric as Turkey becomes steadily more polarised under the increasingly
unchecked rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.63
What is more, Human Rights Watch, which has issued two reports regarding
the country’s democratic performance, as well as the European Commission
and the OSCE, which had previously considered elections in Turkey
democratic, now observe authoritarianism in the country.64 In addition to
these indicators, the OSCE also documented that a massive increase in cases
criminalizing criticism of and libel against the president has, at an ever
increasing pace since June 2015, been limiting freedom of speech and
campaigning in Turkey.65
62 A. Kadir Yıldırım, “Turkish Elections: Money and the Media,” Open Democracy, April 8, 2014. https://
www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/akadir-yildirim/turkish-elections-money-and-media.
63 Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Turkey: Country Report (London: Economist Intelligence Unit,
2015), 1.
64 Human Rights Watch (HRW), “World Report 2015: Turkey.” https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/
country-chapters/turkey.; “Turkey: President Should Veto Judiciary Law,” Human Rights Watch,
February 21, 2014, https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/21/turkey-president-should-veto-judiciary-
law; Flego, “Protection of Media Freedom in Europe”; OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights, “Final Report [2014].”
65 OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Final Report [2015].”
The 2017 referendum and the drift toward full authoritarianism

The constitutional referendum of April 16, 2017 marked a turning point in

Turkish politics. Prepared by the AKP and endorsed by the leadership of the
Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), the reform
proposed 18 amendments to the 72 articles of the constitution, to be voted on
as a single package. Removing from voters the opportunity to differentiate
the various parts of the amendments that might be either endorsed or opposed,
the ballot itself lacked any explanation regarding the nature of the choice that
the voters were to make. In fact, the ballot had just two words on it: “Yes” and
“No.” Furthermore, in contradiction to Article 175 of the constitution and
Article 94 of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s (Türkiye Büyük Millet
Meclisi, TBMM) procedural rulebook, the secrecy of the parliamentary vote
concerning the proposed amendments was not respected, with many AKP
members of parliament displaying their votes publicly on social media.66
Following the TBMM’s acceptance of the amendments, the YSK announced
that the referendum was to take place on April 16, 2017.
Building on the political opportunities granted by the failed coup attempt of
July 15, 2016, on July 21 the AKP had declared a state of emergency, subse-
quently extending it six times, each time for three months. The referendum
thus took place during the state of emergency, thereby providing the AKP with
potent instruments enabling it to silence or punish political dissent. The AKP’s
first target was the HDP, one of whose co-chairpersons had declared,
“Erdoğan, you won’t be the president as long as the HDP continues to exist.”67
In less than nine months, a total of 2,165 HDP party members and local
administrators, as well as both of its chairpersons, 83 of its mayors, and 13 of its
members of parliament were arrested.68
Moreover, ever since the initial declaration of the state of emergency, over
100,000 individuals have been detained; more than 40,000 have been arrested;
more than 150,000 civil servants have been dismissed; and 312 academics who
had signed a petition criticizing the AKP’s handling of the Kurdish issue have
been fired from their universities, with all signatory academics being sued by
public prosecutors in high penal courts. Additionally, 60 television and radio
stations, 19 newspapers, 29 publishing houses, and 5 press agencies have been
66 TBMM’de ‘Açık Oylama’ Skandalı Sonrası Oylama Tekrarlanacak mı?” Sözcü, January 10, 2017. http://
www.sozcu.com.tr/2017/gundem/tbmmde-acik-oylama-skandali-sonrasi-oylama-tekrarlanacak-mi-
1615051/.
67 “Seni Başkan Yaptırmayacağız,” Cumhuriyet, March 17, 2015. http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/
siyaset/231943/_Seni_baskan_yaptirmayacagiz_ .html.
68 “HDP Referandum Baskı ve İhlal Raporu’nu Açıkladı,” BirGün, April 21, 2017. https://www.birgun.net/
haber-detay/hdp-referandum-baski-ve-ihlal-raporu-nu-acikladi-156409.html.
23

closed down. These arrests and closures were not limited to journalists or
media outlets connected to the Gülenist movement or the coup plotters:
12 administrators and journalists working for the newspaper Cumhuriyet—a
national secular newspaper openly critical of both Gülenists and the AKP—
were arrested for alleged Gülenist activities, a fact that testifies to the ever
broadening authoritarian agenda in Turkey. Documenting these developments,
the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights described the
government’s move against the press as a “mass liquidation of media outlets.” 69
The AKP and the judiciary under the incumbent’s influence began to use
legal instruments to silence freedom of expression with increasing frequency.
The instruments most frequently deployed for this purpose have been cases
concerning either libel against the president or insult of the dignity of state
organs, both of which are felonies defined in strategically vague fashion in the
Criminal Code. In 2016 alone, public prosecutors opened 46,193 criminal
investigations drawing on these laws, and they brought a total of 4,939 persons
to court, including 240 children. Of these cases, 64 percent had reached a
verdict by 2017, with 34 percent of these resulting in prison terms. Again, of
the latter, 27 percent deferred the prison term on the condition that the
accused not commit the same “crime” again within five years. In the remainder
of the cases, the accused were either found not guilty or had their cases referred
to the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay).70
These developments took a new turn following the sentencing of an influ-
ential CHP member of parliament and the former editor-in-chief of the
influential secular daily Hürriyet, Enis Berberoğlu, to five years and ten months
in prison on charges of espionage: he was accused of stealing information from
the state and giving it to journalists. The information in question, which had
already been published multiple times in the national press, was based on
coverage of the illegal transfer of weapons and ammunition from the Turkish
government to the Islamist opposition in Syria.71 Contrary to both expecta-
tions and judicial traditions, the court decided to arrest Berberoğlu rather than
wait for appellate procedures to take place. The arrest marked the first time
that the AKP-influenced judiciary had jailed a member of parliament of the
main opposition party.
69 Nils Muižnieks, “Memorandum on Freedom of Expression and Media Freedom in Turkey,” Council
of Europe, 2017. https://wcd.coe.int/com.instranet.InstraServlet?command=com.instranet.CmdBlob
Get&InstranetImage=2961658&SecMode=1&DocId=2397056&Usage=2.
70 “Adliyelerin 2016 Gündemi Hakaretti,” Cumhuriyet, June 27, 2017. http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/
haber/turkiye/769406/Adliyelerin_2016_gundemi_hakaretti.html.
71 “Aydınlık: Evet, MİT TIR’ları Haberini Cumhuriyet’ten Önce Yaptık, Gelip Tutuklasınlar!” T24, December
5, 2015. http://t24.com.tr/haber/aydinlik-evet-mit-tirlari-haberini-cumhuriyetten-once-yaptik-gelip-
tutuklasinlar,319129.
Following the verdict, the CHP took an unprecedented oppositional stance:

on June 15, 2017, the CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu began a 450-kilometer
march from Ankara to the prison in İstanbul where Berberoğlu was being held.
The Justice March (Adalet Yürüyüşü), as the CHP called it, mobilized thou-
sands of people and signaled the beginning of a new era in mainstream party
politics. Even during the high tensions and passions of the Gezi movement in
2013, the CHP had formally steered clear of street politics and social move-
ments, limiting its politics at the time to legal and institutional political
instruments. The Justice March, however, marked the first time that the CHP
openly displayed full distrust in the formal institutions of Turkey, including the
TBMM and the judiciary themselves.
Signaling a significant erosion of belief in the electoral capacity to effect any
transfer of power, and of belief in the power of the TBMM itself, the CHP
thus moved toward non-institutional politics by resorting to organizing a social
movement outside of the formal political framework. Together with the fact
that the CHP did not concede the 2017 referendum but instead declared it
illegitimate, this most recent turn toward social movement politics by the main
opposition party has made more visible not only the narrowing of formal
channels of political power contestation, but also the main opposition’s
increasing skepticism of the incumbent’s capacity and willingness to either
share or abandon political power. It is in this post-referendum context that the
drift to full authoritarianism has emerged in Turkey.
This drift has also entailed a radical reorganization of the country’s judicial and
institutional framework in such a way as to go beyond competitive authoritar-
ianism, a trend that was made possible by Erdoğan’s narrow and disputed victory
in the April 2017 referendum. Keeping referenda out of their field of focus,
Levitsky and Way present an analysis of competitive authoritarianism that draws
on qualifying elections and the nature of the political environment around them.
Yet referenda also provide researchers with a valuable opportunity to test for the
presence of competitive authoritarianism. Of Levitsky and Way’s eleven indicators
to test for the nature of authoritarianism, only one draws directly on the nature of
voting in elections; namely, the electoral arena may be compromised if at least one
major candidate is barred. But with just a minor rethinking of the first of the
qualifications for competitive authoritarianism, one can identify the advent of
competitive authoritarianism during Turkey’s 2017 referendum.
The preliminary findings of the OSCE delegation observing the 2017
referendum open with a clear statement that is worth quoting at length:
The 16 April constitutional referendum took place on an unlevel playing

field and the two sides of the campaign did not have equal opportunities.
Voters were not provided with impartial information about key aspects of
25

the reform, and civil society organizations were not able to participate.
Under the state of emergency put in place after the July 2016 failed coup
attempt, fundamental freedoms essential to a genuinely democratic process
were curtailed. The dismissal or detention of thousands of citizens
negatively affected the political environment. One side’s dominance in the
coverage and restrictions on the media reduced voters’ access to a plurality
of views. While the technical aspects of the referendum were well
administered and the referendum day proceeded in an orderly manner, late
changes in counting procedures removed an important safeguard and were
contested by the opposition […] Although the Supreme Board of Elections
(i.e., the YSK) adopted regulations and instructions to address some aspects
of the process, the legal framework remained inadequate for the holding of a
genuinely democratic referendum.72
Of the eleven qualifications of competitive authoritarianism theorized by

Levitsky and Way, in 2017 Turkey’s political regime displayed all of the qua-
lifications for the first time since 2010. Firstly (1), both co-chairpersons of the
second-largest opposition party in Turkey, the HDP, had been arrested and
hence, together with other arrested HDP members of parliament, were effec-
tively barred from campaigning during the referendum. Secondly (2), there was
centrally tolerated electoral abuse in the sense that, according to the YSK’s
official results, 2,398 ballot boxes displayed votes that exceeded the number of
electorates assigned to that ballot box, while in 960 ballot boxes the number of
“yes” votes supporting the incumbent’s agenda amounted to 100 percent.73 The
YSK, however, blocked a legal survey of these proven irregularities. Further-
more, under political pressure by the incumbent, the YSK breached the laws
governing its procedures by accepting ballot envelopes and ballots that had not
been officially stamped. Thirdly (3), the opposition was prevented from cam-
paigning on an equal footing with the AKP and its supporters. And finally (4),
the systematic bias of the electoral authorities favored the AKP’s choice to the
extent that, upon the AKP continuing to petition even during the vote count,
the YSK decided to rule against its own law so as to change the referendum’s
counting procedure under political pressure by the incumbent.74 Changing the
72 OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Republic of Turkey, Constitutional
Referendum, 16 April 2017, OSCE/ODIHR Limited Referendum Observation Mission Final Report”
(Warsaw: OSCE, 2017). http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/turkey/324816?download=true, 1.
73 “Oy ve Ötesi Referandum Raporunu Açıkladı,” Cumhuriyet, April 20, 2017. http://www.cumhuriyet.
com.tr/haber/turkiye/724822/Oy_ve_Otesi_referandum_raporunu_acikladi__2_bin_397_sandikta_
secmenden_fazla_oy_cikti.html.
74 For other empirical evidence regarding these abuses, see OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights, “Republic of Turkey – Constitutional Referendum, 16 April 2017: Statement of
rules of the game during the game itself thus created an uneven playing field for
the opposition.
The OSCE also documented President Erdoğan’s breaching of the con-
stitution during the campaign period. According to the Turkish constitution,
which went into force in 1982 and is still de jure in effect, the president is
required to remain non-partisan and to perform his duties without bias. The
OSCE, however, concluded that “[t]he president became the face of the ‘Yes’
campaign and toured the country extensively, holding nearly daily events in
support of the amendments.”75
The violation of civil liberties that occurred immediately before and during
the campaign period drew on (5) frequent harassment of the media for political
reasons, (6) political attacks on the media within the preceding one-year period
in order to curb press independence, (7) occasional engagement in actions
restricting the freedom of speech or association, and (8) attacking opposition
actors within the preceding one-year period, resulting in a “chilling effect” on
civic activity. The OSCE delegations documented the presence of all four of
these indicators multiple times, ultimately reaching the following conclusion:
Freedom of expression was curtailed under the state of emergency; the arrest
of an unprecedented number of journalists and the surge of media outlet
closures has led to widespread self-censorship. OSCE media monitoring
results showed that the “Yes” campaign dominated the media coverage.76
Furthermore, AKP-appointed governors prohibited various political meetings

and campaigns on the part of the opposition, and at times public officials even
joined the “Yes” campaign, which prompted OSCE observers to argue that
“[t]hese instances blurred the line between the party and the state.”77
Finally, immediately before and during the campaign period, (9) the state
was deployed to control the opposition’s ability to compete, (10) uneven media
access was observed,78 and (11) there was uneven access to resources.79
According to the OSCE:
Public ceremonies, such as those opening infrastructure projects, were used

for campaigning. Public transport was regularly made free for the day of the
Preliminary Findings and Conclusions” (Warsaw: OSCE, 2017). http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/

turkey/311721?download=true, 1, 3, 5, 6, 13.
75 OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, “Final Report [2017],” 11–12.
76 Ibid., 2.
77 Ibid., 7.
78 Ibid., 10.
79 Ibid., 7–8.
27

event in the cities concerned. Moreover, the president and other officials
linked the outcome of the referendum to the government’s support for the
regions hosting the events. This all contributed to the lack of equal
opportunities, contrary to paragraph 7.6 of the 1990 OSCE Copenhagen
Document.80
This analysis of the uneven nature of the campaign environment and the counting
procedures of the 2017 referendum thus demonstrates the further institutiona-
lization of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey. However, the nature of the
constitutional amendments themselves—which were accepted by only a slim
majority—can shed more light on the future of authoritarianism in Turkey.
The 18 amendments, which would result in the modification or repeal of 72
articles of the 1982 constitution, categorically change the nature of the rela-
tionship between the judiciary, the executive, and the legislature in Turkey.
Describing the new system of government as a Turkish-style presidential sys-
tem, the AKP government has thus managed to forge a new system wherein the
fundamental checks and balances and separation of powers of a working
democratic regime are radically compromised.
Endowing the presidency with an excessive concentration of executive
power, the amendments preclude any possibility of effective democratic
accountability on the part of the president. The TBMM is deprived of the vote
of confidence for the president. The possibility of interpellation is blocked.
Furthermore, members of parliament can only ask written questions addressed
to vice-presidents, who would then send these questions on to the president.
While impeachment would be possible, it would have to be decided on by the
Constitutional Court—whose members are either directly or indirectly
appointed by the president.
A formal separation of powers is guaranteed, but this is effectively com-
promised because the president has the power to choose both ministers and an
unspecified number of vice-presidents, some of whom can also be members of
the legislative branch. This endows the president with powerful instruments
with which to influence the legislature. The TBMM will have no role in
appointing or approving the president, ministers, or vice-presidents. Further-
more, the president has the power to rule via presidential decree, which,
according to the constitution, must pertain to “executive matters of concern.”
Yet the vagueness and absence of a definition of the nature of “executive mat-
ters” allow the president to freely interpret the nature of the executive character
of her orders. Thus, the executive can constitutionally bypass the legislature
and legalize its political choices by means of decrees.
80 Ibid., 8.
The amendments limit the length of the presidency to ten years, with
elections scheduled to take place every five years. However, the relevant
amendment also makes it possible for the president to run for a new term if the
current term is not completed on time owing to a new election. Theoretically,
this can extend the term for as long as elections are called prior to the end of an
executive term. Reviewing the constitutional amendments in detail, the Venice
Commission described this situation as follows: “In such a case, the president
could stay in office for a potentially unlimited period of time.”81
By effectively destroying the fundamental checks and balances of Turkey’s
political regime, these constitutional amendments have created an opportunity
structure for the executive to further develop and deploy the instruments of
expanding authoritarianism in Turkey. In concluding its evaluation of the
amendments, the Venice Commission found that they “would introduce in
Turkey a presidential regime which lacks the necessary checks and balances
required to safeguard against becoming an authoritarian one.”82
Conclusion: Whither Turkey?
For the 60 years between 1950 and 2010, Turkey’s political regime was a
tutelary democracy. The regime’s “tutelary” character came from the fact that
the military institutionalized a number of prerogatives in order to be able to
produce and deploy in politics various instruments of power. Yet the regime
was simultaneously democratic because the military steered clear of everyday
politics and did not intervene in free and fair elections. Civilians thus were able
to pursue democratic competition on a level playing field in order to gain
political power, though this power had to be shared with the military on
matters of structural importance, as defined by the military.
The end of the regime’s tutelary character spelled the end of democracy
itself. Once the AKP government had removed the military’s prerogatives,
Turkey’s political direction was reversed, going from democracy toward
authoritarianism. Levitsky and Way’s theory of competitive authoritarianism
provides the most accurate and useful theoretical tools for an assessment of the
nature and future of authoritarianism in Turkey. Drawing on their work, this
paper has shown that Turkey qualifies as such in all three of the relevant
indicators. Of a total of eleven qualifications across these indicators, through
the time of the 2017 referendum Turkey’ political regime demonstrated the
existence of nine of the relevant qualifications. Moreover, the political context
of the 2017 referendum further institutionalized competitive authoritarianism
81 Council of Europe, Turkey: Opinion on the Amendments to the Constitution, 14.

82 Ibid., 29.
29
in the country by displaying all of the eleven qualifications for the first time in

the political history of Turkey.
Levitsky and Way identified 35 competitive authoritarian regimes extant
between 1990 and 1995. Because Turkey was a tutelary democracy at that
time, they did not include the country in their analysis. Since 2008, two of
Levitsky and Way’s countries, Belarus and Russia, have evolved into full
authoritarianism; 14 have evolved into democracy; and 19 continue to be
classified as competitive authoritarian. Between 2010 and 2015, only five
countries surpassed Turkey’s performance in terms of competitive authoritar-
ian governance—Armenia, Cameroon, Madagascar, Malawi, and Zimbabwe—
but in 2017, Turkey joined this group in displaying all the qualifications of a
“perfect” competitive authoritarian regime.
Levitsky and Way identified two structural variables that have an effect on
the future of competitive authoritarian regimes. First, if linkage to the demo-
cratizing effect of the West is limited, as is the case in most of Africa and in the
post-Soviet countries, a weaker democratizing process is to be expected.
Second, if the organizational power of the state and the incumbent are strong, it
is less likely for a regime to democratize. In Turkey, the AKP has institutio-
nalized the deployment of state power during and between elections by drawing
on an unusually strong party organization, and with the changing of the
constitution in 2017 to allow for Erdoğan to serve as the party chairman, the
AKP’s organizational strength can only be expected to increase.
On April 25, 2017, in criticizing the democratic standards of the 2017
referendum, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)
downgraded Turkey’s status and reopened a monitoring process, one that will
be continued until the country succeeds in meeting the Copenhagen Criteria.
On June 6, 2017, the European Parliament voted in support of the latest
progress report concerning Turkey’s bid for membership. This report
suggested a suspension of negotiation talks between Turkey and the EU.
Furthermore, owing to the AKP’s actively distancing itself from the EU, it is
unlikely that the competitive authoritarian character of the regime will weaken
and allow for democratization in the near future. In addition to these two
variables, both the new amendments to the constitution, which upset the
country’s checks and balances and damaged the already frail rule of law, and the
main opposition’s decreasing trust in the AKP’s willingness to share or transfer
power as evidenced by the implementation of non-competitive elections, have
cleared the way for the emergence of a clear drift toward full authoritarianism
in Turkey.
The April 2017 referendum that signaled the rise of full authoritarianism in
Turkey created a transformation reminiscent of Russia’s swing from competi-
tive to full authoritarianism in 2008. Benefiting from an authoritarian political
opportunity context created by the state of emergency declared and

subsequently renewed multiple times following the failed coup attempt of July
15, 2016, the AKP issued 30 emergency decrees in the course of 17 months.
Despite a clear constitutional requirement for TBMM approval of such
decrees, only six of them were actually debated in parliament;83 the remainder
have failed to reach a conclusion due to the absence of TBMM approval,
thus rendering 24 of the decrees unconstitutional as of December 2017.
Incorporating a total of 1,199 articles amending 369 laws and 1,199 regula-
tions, these illegal and/or illegitimate emergency decrees have now replaced
everyday legislation even in matters of concern that are irrelevant to emergency
contexts, such as the regulation of civil servants’ employment conditions, urban
traffic, and the moving of the town of Gemlik to a new location.84 The decrees
have also been frequently deployed to remove dissenting academics and
educators from private or public universities and schools.
Full authoritarianism is a repressive regime in which effective channels for
the opposition to contest for power either disappear or are reduced to a mere
façade. In Turkey, in areas ranging from local administration to the TBMM
itself, the AKP has been employing various instruments to either make the
opposition obsolete or to bypass the constitution, which would guarantee a
transfer of power in the country. As the first election process since 1950 not to
be conceded by the main opposition, the 2017 referendum and the substantive
changes it entailed not only resulted in a stronger execution of authoritarian-
ism, but also paved the way for a constellation of power that may end up
reducing the effective formal channels through which the opposition can con-
test for power, which would in turn amount to an institutionalization of full
authoritarianism in Turkey.
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5

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

Keywords: Turkey; political regime; competitive authoritarianism; full authoritarianism;

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

Following Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, scholars such as Ozan

Democracy, December 11, 2015, https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/gulay-turk

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

An extensive political science literature has described the forms of

Electoral authoritarian regimes play the game of multiparty elections by

Effectively narrowing the theoretical focus, this deﬁnition includes those

In competitive authoritarian regimes, formal democratic institutions are

opposition adequate media coverage, harass opposition candidates and their

Incumbents in competitive authoritarian regimes tolerate competition as long

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

Competitive authoritarianism in Turkey

The beginning of the dismantlement of Turkey’s tutelary regime also marked

18 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 366.

the Turkish political regime no longer qualiﬁes as a tutelary democracy.22 The

country’s tutelary regime was a democracy that succeeded in achieving an

The electoral arena

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

The overall disproportionate coverage on television, the main source of

Impediments preventing the opposition from campaigning increased in

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

freedom index score according to Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans

At present journalists in Turkey still face threats to their safety and

Declining media freedom in Turkey has paralleled declining freedoms of

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

of corruption initiated against four AKP ministers by various public prosecu-

An uneven playing ﬁeld

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

The 2017 referendum and the drift toward full authoritarianism

The constitutional referendum of April 16, 2017 marked a turning point in

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

Following the verdict, the CHP took an unprecedented oppositional stance:

The 16 April constitutional referendum took place on an unlevel playing

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

Of the eleven qualiﬁcations of competitive authoritarianism theorized by

Furthermore, AKP-appointed governors prohibited various political meetings

Public ceremonies, such as those opening infrastructure projects, were used

Preliminary Findings and Conclusions” (Warsaw: OSCE, 2017). http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

Conclusion: Whither Turkey?

81 Council of Europe, Turkey: Opinion on the Amendments to the Constitution, 14.

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

opportunity context created by the state of emergency declared and

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY

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