Murat Somer

Moderate Islam and Secularist Opposition in Turkey: Implications for the World, Muslims and Secular Democracy

Abstract Developing an argument based in theories of democratic consolidation and religious competition, and discussing the reasons for the secularist opposition to the government, this article analyses how government by a party rooted in moderate Islamism may affect Turkeys peculiar secular democracy, development and external relations and how Muslims in the world relate to modernization and democracy. Arguing that secularism in advanced democracies may be a product of democracy as much as it is the other way around, the article maintains that democratic consolidation may secure further consolidation of Turkish secularism and sustainable moderation of Turkish political Islam. Besides democratic Islamic – conservative actors and other factors, democratic consolidation requires strong democratic – secularist political parties so that secularist and moderate Islamist civilian actors check and balance each other. Otherwise, middle class value divisions and mistrust in areas like education and social regulation may jeopardise democratisation and economic modernisation and continuing reconciliation of Islamism with secular democracy and modernity.

RESURGENCE AND REMAKING OF IDENTITY Civil Beliefs, Domestic and External Dynamics, and the Turkish Mainstream Discourse on Kurds

This article analyzes the case of Turkey and theorizes about the causal mechanisms that can explain discursive transformations through which dominant perceptions of ethnic identities are suppressed, revived, and remade. Systematic content analysis of a major Turkish newspaper from 1984 through 1998, comparisons across subperiods, in-depth interviews with prominent journalists, and detailed examination of the historical events constitute the empirical analysis. Arguing that the state elites did not form a monolithic group, it is shown that the transformation of the mainstream discourse during the 1990s occurred after several reversals, relatively swiftly, and at least partly despite resistance from with in the state. The Kurdistan Worker’s Party conflict; shifting instrumental elite beliefs; breakdown of cooperation among moderates; external developments, including those in Iraq; and cascade mechanisms played causal roles. The explanation contributes to a multidisciplinary body of literatures on public-political discourse, cascade theories of social-political change, ethnic conflict, democratization, Turkey, and Kurds and derives policy implications.

Failures of the Discourse of Ethnicity: Turkey, Kurds, and the Emerging Iraq

This article analyzes the discursive-ideational barriers restricting regional cooperation by examining Turkey’s relations with Iraqi Kurds from a critical, theoretical perspective in the context of Turkey’s domestic reforms and its relations with the USA and the EU. It is argued that the ethnicity discourse undermines cooperation, insofar as it feeds the perception of rival groups with zero-sum interests. Presenting a simple model, the article argues that replacing the ethnicity discourse with alternative, post-ethnic discourses requires combining alternative discourses with policies that produce positive-sum interests, coordination between groups, and opportunities for joint collective actions. Hence, state capacity to formulate and implement such policies is crucial. Predictions and policy implications are generated accordingly. First, further reconciliation of Turkey’s domestic Kurdish conflict through democratic and administrative reforms, EU integration, and the promotion of national-identity models that are more flexible and more reflective of diversity will facilitate cooperation with Iraqi Kurds. Second, prosperity and democratic stability in Iraq will help achieve a lasting resolution in Turkey. Third, regional cooperation requires that domestic and external actors promote the positive-sum perception of Turkish and Kurdish interests. Fourth, research can help by developing linguistic-analytical categories that transcend the narrow discourse of ethnicity in favor of discourses that reflect multiple and compatible group belongings.

Moderation of religious and secular politics, a country's “centre” and democratization

Based on a within-case comparative analysis of Turkish democratization since the 1920s and data on elite values, this article develops a general theoretical framework to better explain the moderation of religious and secular politics and democratization. First, it is maintained that the content of moderation and its effects on democracy will vary across countries depending on its domestic and international context – called a countrys “centre” – and political rivals’ reactions. Second, moderation can further democratization only insofar as it happens with a democratic centre. Third, absent a democratic centre, moderation may involve adoption, retention and reproduction of the centres undemocratic attributes. In such cases, the challenge of democratization is not moderation per se but the construction of a new, democratic centre by transcending the existing centre. Fourth, moderation is interactive between religious and secular actors, multidimensional and reversible. Turkish democratization began with the moderation of authoritarian-secular actors, but generated only a semi-democracy because the changes were not institutionalized through explicit and formal compromises to produce a fully democratic centre. Turkish political Islamism moderated during the 1990s. But, despite major achievements, democratization remained ambiguous under the rule of moderate Islamists because they compromised and associated themselves with the semi-democratic centre, and secular-religious cooperation failed while some secular actors de-moderated.

Does It Take Democrats to Democratize? Lessons From Islamic and Secular Elite Values in Turkey

Do political-Islamic elites need to be democrats for participation in democracy, how do their values compare to secular elites’, and how do their values change through participation and affect democratization itself? A comparative-systematic content analysis of three Islamic-conservative and two pro-secular Turkish newspapers over nine years shows that, overall, political-Islamic elites adopt democratic political values. Furthermore, they began to view that liberal-democratic rights and freedoms serve their interests. However, value democratization, and, thus, moderation and democratization, is not a linear and inexorable process automatically resulting from participation or socioeconomic development. It occurs through ruptures such as conflicts with secular actors, and interdependently through the interactions of secular and religious actors. Hence, religious actors’ adoption of more democracy may paradoxically make some secular actors less democratic. The consolidation of pluralistic democracy requires the emergence of both religious and secular democrats by resolving complex problems of commitment, and of clashes in areas like social pluralism where Islamic values are less open to change.

Media Values and Democratization: What Unites and What Divides Religious‐Conservative and Pro‐Secular Elites?

Abstract This article presents a systematic content analysis of three religious‐conservative and two pro‐secular newspapers in 1996–2004 in Turkey, and discusses some findings and their implications regarding elite values and democratization: considerable internal pluralism within both religious‐conservative and pro‐secular elites; general consensus on democracy but not on democratic norms’ application to specific issues and groups other than one’s own; a division of values on religion, secularism, and social pluralism; political value change in favor of liberal democracy but social conservatism among religious‐conservative elites; fragmentation and relative cynicism, but not necessarily authoritarianism, among pro‐secular elites; weak ideational change on the Kurdish issue. The article argues that the press plays a significant political role as a site where elite values change or are reproduced through discussion, deliberation, or silence. Values affect and are affected by political developments.

Understanding Turkey’s democratic breakdown: old vs. new and indigenous vs. global authoritarianism

Abstract Turkey’s ‘authoritarian turn’ in recent years indicates a democratic breakdown that can best be analysed by analytically distinguishing between two simultaneous developments. The first is the reproduction of Turkey’s long-existing semi-democratic regime – which the article calls old authoritarianism – in a new historical and dominant political–ideological context and under an Islamist-leaning government. The second is the emergence of a new type of authoritarianism – dubbed new authoritarianism – that is in many respects unprecedented for Turkey, is in need of better comprehension and displays important parallels with contemporary troubles of democracy in the world. Focusing on political society and institutions is insufficient to adequately examine the emergent authoritarian regime, for example to identify it as a regime type, to explain its popular support and to foresee how durable and repressive, and to what extent party-based rather than personalistic, it may become. It is necessary to combine insights from the new political economy of welfare, transition and communication with those from political and institutional democratization. Doing so suggests that new authoritarianism generates a new kind of state–society relationship where, paradoxically, political power becomes simultaneously more particularistic, personalized and mass-based. Hence, new authoritarianism has democratizing potential, but can also become more oppressive than any other regime Turkey has previously experienced. Oscillation between these two outcomes is also possible.

Ethnic Kurds, Endogenous Identities, and Turkey's Democratization and Integration with Europe

Introduction This article argues that, in examining the domestic dynamics of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey, research should focus on finding new ways of conceptualizing different formulations of ethnic and national identities. The dominant understandings of these identities should be treated as variables rather than as predetermined and fixed categories, and their variation should be explained by changing state policies and economic-political developments. The articles goals are, first, to offer a conceptual framework for such an analysis, and, second, to use this framework to analyze the bottlenecks of Turkish democratization vis-avis the Kurdish conflict. One such bottleneck is identified as restrictive policies that systematically crowd out social-political actors who could promote inclusive and harmonious understandings of Turkish and Kurdish identities. The articles focus is on improving our theoretical approach to this conflict, although limited policy implications and projections into the future will also be generated.

Conquering versus democratizing the state: political Islamists and fourth wave democratization in Turkey and Tunisia

ABSTRACT What do we learn from Turkey and Tunisia regarding the relationship between political Islamism and democratization? Variables identified by current research such as autonomy, “moderation”, and cooperation with secular actors can cut both ways depending on various political-institutional conditions and prerogatives. Particularly, the article argues that preoccupation with “conquering the state from within as opposed to democratizing it” has been a key priority and intervening variable undermining the democratizing potential of the main Turkish and Tunisian political Islamic actors – primarily the AKP and Ennahda. These actors have prioritized acceptance by and ownership of their respective nation states over other goals and strategies, such as revolutionary takeover or Islamization of the state and confrontations with state elites. This has led to a relative neglect of designing and building institutions, whether for Islamic or democratic transformation. Hence, while contributing to democratization at various stages, these actors have a predisposition to adopt and regenerate, reframe and at times augment the authoritarian properties of their states. Research should ask how secular and religious actors can agree on institutions of vertical and horizontal state accountability that would help to address the past and present sources of the interest of political Islamists in conquering rather than democratizing the state.

Polarization and the Global Crisis of Democracy: Common Patterns, Dynamics, and Pernicious Consequences for Democratic Polities:

This article argues that a common pattern and set of dynamics characterizes severe political and societal polarization in different contexts around the world, with pernicious consequences for democracy. Moving beyond the conventional conceptualization of polarization as ideological distance between political parties and candidates, we offer a conceptualization of polarization highlighting its inherently relational nature and its instrumental political use. Polarization is a process whereby the normal multiplicity of differences in a society increasingly align along a single dimension and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of “Us” versus “Them.” The politics and discourse of opposition and the social–psychological intergroup conflict dynamics produced by this alignment are a main source of the risks polarization generates for democracy, although we recognize that it can also produce opportunities for democracy. We argue that contemporary examples of polarization follow a frequent pattern whereby polarization is activated when major groups in society mobilize politically to achieve fundamental changes in structures, institutions, and power relations. Hence, newly constructed cleavages are appearing that underlie polarization and are not easily measured with the conventional Left–Right ideological scale. We identify three possible negative outcomes for democracy—“gridlock and careening,” “democratic erosion or collapse under new elites and dominant groups,” and “democratic erosion or collapse with old elites and dominant groups,” and one possible positive outcome—“reformed democracy.” Drawing on literature in psychology and political science, the article posits a set of causal mechanisms linking polarization to harm to democracy and illustrates the common patterns and pernicious consequences for democracy in four country cases: varying warning signs of democratic erosion in Hungary and the United States, and growing authoritarianism in Turkey and Venezuela.