Previewing Türkiye's Election

Views from the political science literature on Erdogan's prospects and Turkish democracy

This weekend features one of the more important elections in recent world politics, not just in the Middle East. Unlike most elections in the region, it’s actually competitive — not, at this late stage of President Recip Tayyib Erdogan’s rule, genuinely free and fair, but still with a realistic if not great prospect of an opposition victory. Polls suggest a narrow advantage for opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, but there are so many unknown factors — including the lingering effects of the devastating earthquake in the south and Erdogan’s prodigous incumbency advantages after two decades in power — that it’s hard to know. While we wait to see what happens, I wanted to highlight some recent contributions by political science scholars that can help make sense of it all

First, for the Middle East Political Science Podcast last week, I talked with three academic observers of Turkish politics: Lisel Hintz of Johns Hopkins University, Şebnem Yardımcı Geyikçi of University of Bonn, and Harun Ercan of Binghamton University. All emphasized the difficult path of Turkey’s divided opposition towards a form of unity which could potentially finally displace Erodagan personalistic grip on power. Hintz offered a sweeping overview of the electoral landscape, with a clear-eyed view of the stakes; she also, as is her way, presented some absolutely fascinating vignettes from Turkish television and pop music as windows into the electorate’s thinking. Geyikçi focused on the opposition campaign, how Kilicdaroglu has sought to maintain unity while breaking through the AKP’s monopoly over the mainstream media. Finally, Ercan focused on the ever-central Kurdish issue, including Erdogan’s perhaps surprising reservoirs of support. Listen to it now as you get ready for the voting:

Second, check out the sensational symposium organized by Gamze Cavdar for MENA Politics, the newsletter of the American Political Science Association’s section of the same name which I once edited and which is now run by the powerhouse triumverate of Cavdar, Nermin Allam and Sean Yom. Cavdar brought together some of the very best Turkey scholars out there: Sultan Tepe on the AKP; Charlotte Joppien on local politics; Bilge Yabanci on Turkish civil society; Ali Burak Güven on the economy; Lisel Hintz on foreign policy; Zeki Sarigil on the Kurdish question; Melih Yeşilbağ on land policies; Sebnem Gumuscu on the effects of the earthquake; and Simten Coşar & Didem Unal on gender. It doesn’t get any better than this — download here and read it before the weekend.

There’s a lot more in the MENA Politics Newsletter of course, once you’re done catching up on Turkey. You’ll find interesting reflections by Michael Robbins on the path of Arab Barometer and an introduction to the incredibly cool looking ACSS Dataverse by Charles Kurzman, Seteney Shami and Neil Ketchley. There’s a roundtable on social policy. There’s a tremendous roundtable discussion on race and racialization in the MENA region featuring Houda Mzioudet, Yasmeen Abu Laban, Amanda Sahar d’Urso, Abigail Bakan, and Nisrine Hilizah. Oh, and there’s a roundtable of reviews and responses of some book called The Political Science of the Middle East that you might want to check out (it’s on sale for under $20 right now, just saying).

Third, for a really deep dive, a great starting point is the Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics, edited by Günes Murat Tezcür. Unfortunately, like most of these handbooks, it’s priced to not be read, but you may be able to get access through your academic institution. It’s a world-class, downright definitive collection of some thirty five experts covering all dimensions of Turkish politics - the political system, political economy, foreign policy, and even cultural dimensions. This one is worth exploring and coming back to repeatedly.

There’s a few more books I’ve read relatively recently which I’m happy to recommend. Gonul Tol’s Erdogan’s War documents the intimate interconnections between Erdogan’s foreign policy and his consolidation of domestic authoritarianism. Sebnem Gumuscu’s Democracy or Authoritarianism tracks the performance of Erdogan’s AKP in power, in close comparison with the failures of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s Ennahda. I spoke with Gumuscu about her book here. Ceren Lord’s Religious Politics in Turkey is one of the most thorough and rigorous studies of the AKP, placing it within a broader context of religion and society. You can listen to my conversation with Lord here.

Women in Turkey by Gamze Cavdar and Yavuz Yasar is a richly original study of, well, women in Turkey. The Special Issue of British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies edited by Zafer Yilmaz and Bryan Turner, “Turkey’s deepening authoritarianism and the fall of electoral democracy,” sums up where the literature was a few years ago during the last critical election deciding the fate of Turkish democracy. Of course you can’t go wrong with Lisel Hintz’s Identity Politics Inside Out, the best available study of the connections between domestic and foreign policy, with a genuinely original use of popular culture for insights into the role of identity politics. And you will love Noah Amir Arjomand’s Fixing Stories, now available in paperback, which will change the way you think about the production of news and knowledge in Turkey and beyond.

Now let’s wait and see how election day goes… and what follows.