Governing Through Criminal Selectivity and Lawfare
Non‐Democratic Politics to Entrench Authoritarian Populist Imagination
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20109119 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Erman Örsan Yetiş (0000-0001-7088-8138, School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations The University of Sheffield Sheffield UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-20 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Social Science Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-8701 • E-ISSN: 1468-2451 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/issj.70054 |
| OpenAlex | W7161969637 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 27 |
Across much of the Global South and increasingly in the Global North, authoritarian populist imagination blurs boundaries between legality and illegality, weaponising law to suppress dissent while tolerating violence by allied actors. This imagination establishes a symbolic boundary mechanism between punitive/eliminative violence for political dissidents and marginalised groups, and the impunity of violence for privileged groups aligned with incumbent political power. Non‐democratic politics in Turkey demonstrate how the incumbent regime's shifting sense of power due to declining popular support translates into more explicitly coercive strategies and the masculinist entrenchment of authoritarian populist imagination. Criminal selectivity and lawfare are utilised for this purpose; however, their effectiveness is underpinned by cultural intimacies that reflect the cultural and political processes of negotiation and recognition between the top‐down majoritarian–authoritarian–securitarian political agenda and its bottom‐up receptions. Cultural intimacies rooted in masculinist entrenchment involve both the enactment of familial codes as a cultural template for the masculinist protection of the family, state and nation, and the performance of swashbuckling masculinity as a cultural script for righteous aggression against targeted groups. Both reframe the mechanism of criminal selectivity and lawfare, reinforcing the incumbent regime's authoritarian populist imagination by constantly presenting itself as an indispensable and invincible ruling actor
Authoritarianism · Cognitive reframing · Contentious politics · Impunity · Negotiation · Political dissent · Politics · Power (physics) · Political Conflict and Governance · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Turkey's Politics and Society
Lawfare
Turkey’s Judiciary and the Drift Toward Competitive Authoritarianism
Pro-state paramilitary violence in Turkey since the 1990s
Existential insecurity and the making of a weak authoritarian regime in Turkey
Taking the matter into your own hands
Cultural Intimacy
Relocating gendered violence and anti-genderism within authoritarian populist imagination in Turkey
Turkey’s Evolving Political Terrain
Understanding the moral economy of state-civil society relationships
Proliferation of neopatrimonial domination in Turkey
Navigating Masculinities
Anti-genderism in Turkey
The ‘competitive authoritarian’ turn in Turkey
Turkey – from tutelary to delegative democracy
Ruling through exception
Beyond authoritarian populist imagination
Competition in a Populist Authoritarian Regime
How Authoritarians Win When They Lose
The Spirit of Ultra-Realism
The Concept of the Political
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |