Necropolitics under competitive authoritarianism
Martyrdom, fatalism and contested responsibility for death in Turkey
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24230441 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ihsan Yilmaz (0000-0001-8409-3045, Deakin University), Omer F Erturk (0000-0002-7467-2163, Independent researcher) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-20 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-08 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-3857 • E-ISSN: 1743-9639 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14683857.2026.2745260 |
| OpenAlex | W7221158631 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
Blame avoidance is usually theorized through democratic institutions, where elections, opposition parties, courts and independent media can contest official accounts of failure. This article extends blame avoidance theory to competitive authoritarianism by developing the concept of necropolitical blame avoidance: the conversion of responsibility-threatening deaths into governable objects of meaning, distribution and credit. Using evidence from Turkey under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) from 2014 to September 2026, it identifies five mechanisms: reclassification, counter-attribution control, blame reassignment, compensatory incorporation and credit conversion. The AKP did not invent Turkish martyrdom politics; its innovation was to expand an older republican and military repertoire into a civilian, religious-populist and administrative technology for managing deaths linked to disaster, workplace risk, military exposure, intelligence failure and terrorism. The article shows that authoritarian blame avoidance is not only rhetorical but also institutional, coercive and distributive.
blame avoidance · competitive authoritarianism · disaster mortality · Fatalism · intelligence failure · Justice and Development Party (AKP) · Martyrdom · military exposure · necropolitics · occupational risk · religious populism · Terrorism · Turkey · Memory, violence, and history · Political Conflict and Governance · Turkey's Politics and Society
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| Highly cited | No |
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