The Parcelled State

A Political and Historical Framework for the Current Intra-State Crisis in Turkey

Bibliographic Data

ID3986453
AuthorsAhmet Bekmen (0000-0003-4500-4796, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Political Sciences, Istanbul University, Turkey, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume54
Issue3
Pages502-522
Publication date2024-05-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary Asia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-2336 • E-ISSN: 1752-7554
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00472336.2023.2205863
OpenAlexW4376254773
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited47

This article puts Turkey's current state crisis into a historical perspective. During the transition to neo-liberalism after the hegemony crisis of the late 1970s, a critical objective for those in the high echelons of bureaucracy and ruling politicians was to ensure the security of state apparatuses. However, the policies implemented to achieve this led to fragmentation in both the state and the political spheres. Thus, during the second half of the 1990s and during the 2000s, the state became a field for open warfare between power networks that had established direct links between state apparatuses, political society, and civil society. These fragmentations – that is the parcellation of state apparatuses – triggered an intra-state crisis. Regarding the formation of the state and the political spheres in the neo-liberal era, this article shows that Turkey is a unique case in the debate on variegated forms of authoritarian statism.Key Words: Authoritarianismauthoritarian statismpower networksstate crisisTurkey Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 For a study comparing the cases of Turkey, Brazil, and Thailand regarding the rise and demise of neo-liberal populism, see Bekmen and Özden (2022 Bekmen, A., and B. Özden. 2022. "The Rise and Demise of Neoliberal Populism as a Hegemonic Project: Brazil, Thailand and Turkey." Rethinking Marxism 34 (3): 338–360.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).2 For earlier analyses of Turkey with reference to Poulantzas' theoretical framework, see Oğuz (2008 Oğuz, Ş. 2008. Globalization and the Contradictions of State Restructuring in Turkey. Unpublished PhD thesis, York University. [Google Scholar], 2010 Oğuz, Ş. 2010. "Türkiye'de Otoriter Devletçiliğin Gelişimi: Seksenler Dönüm Noktası mı?" [The Development of Authoritarian Statism in Turkey: Is the Eighties a Turning Point?] In Tarih, Sınıflar ve Kent [History, Classes and the City], edited by B. Şen and A. Doğan, 197–221. Anlara: Dipnot Yayınları. [Google Scholar]) and Karahanoğulları and Türk (2018 Karahanoğulları, Y., and D. Türk. 2018. "Authoritarian Statism, Neoliberalism, Turkey." Mülkiye Dergisi 42 (3): 403–448. [Google Scholar]).3 Özkazanç's (1998 Özkazanç, A. 1998. Türkiye'de Siyasi İktidar ve Meşruiyet Sorunu: 1980'li Yıllarda Yeni Sağ [Political Power and the Legitimacy Problem in Turkey: New Right in the 1980s]. Unpublished PhD diss., Ankara University. [Google Scholar]) perspective on the parcellation of the state inspired this study.4 In Turkish academia, the literature on the state is mainly written from a "political theology" perspective. According to this viewpoint, the Turkish Sonderweg dates back to the classical Ottoman era or even, in some cases, to the Byzantine era. Although Weberian, Marxist, and other approaches have developed different interpretations of this specific history, they share the view that the non-hegemonic character of the bourgeoisie and/or the non-democratic character of the modern state is related to the enormous historical continuity characterised by a strong state tradition (see Heper 1985 Heper, M. 1985. Strong State Tradition in Turkey. London: Eothen Press. [Google Scholar]; Keyder 1987 Keyder, Ç. 1987. State and Class in Turkey. London: Verso. [Google Scholar]; Mardin 1973 Mardin, Ş. 1973. "Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?" Daedalus 102 (1): 169–190. [Google Scholar]). This approach, which continues to be a mainstream perspective, started to affect the political opposition after the 1980 coup. With the suppression of the political left after the 1980 military coup, a new democratisation discourse that positioned itself against the idea of "omnipotent Kemalism," appeared. This particular political and intellectual stance, with its liberal, left-liberal, and Islamist versions, treated the military and the high judiciary, which were dominated by the Kemalist bureaucracy, as the current institutional actors of the "strong state." Thus, the ideological dimension of power in modern Turkey was reduced to Kemalism while state power was identified with the Kemalist bureaucracy, especially the military.5 These organisations were built according to a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) concept and were not unique to Turkey. It is well known that the history of counter-guerrilla forces such as Gladio in Turkey, which was supposed to organise unconventional war in response to any communist invasion of NATO countries during the Cold War, started in 1952 with the Tactical Mobilisation Group financed by the Joint US Military Mission for Aid to Turkey. These unofficial coercive apparatuses, previously used to counter the rise of the left in the 1970s, were reactivated in the 1990s, in the struggle against the Kurdish movement (see Ganser 2004 Ganser, D. 2004. NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe. London: Frank Cass. [Google Scholar]; Işık 2021 Işık, A. 2021. "Pro-state Paramilitary Violence in Turkey since the 1990s." Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 21 (2): 231–249.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).6 Nationalitarianism, here, is used as the translation of the Turkish term ulusalcılık, which refers to the secular and Kemalist section within the wider world of nationalism in Turkey. For a detailed analysis see Öztan (2013 Öztan. G. 2013. "The Struggle for Hegemony between Turkish Nationalisms in the Neoliberal Era." In Turkey Reframed: Constituting Neoliberal Hegemony, edited by İ. Akça, A. Bekmen, and B. Özden, 75–91. London: Pluto Press. [Google Scholar]).7 Poulantzas proposed authoritarian statism with regard to dominant countries without offering a general theory of capitalist states by extending it to dependent ones. However, he also suggested that "these changes affect every capitalist country insofar as they have their origin in the current phase of international reproduction of capitalism" (Poulantzas 1980 Poulantzas, N. 1980. State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso. [Google Scholar], 204

Authoritarianism · Bureaucracy · Capitalism · Democracy · Economic system · Economics · Hegemony · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · State capitalism · Statism · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Turkey's Politics and Society

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