Managing Democratization: Achievements and Limitations in AK Party Era.

• Author: Babacan, Abdurrahman
• Position: ARTICLE

Conceptual Frame and Turkey's Stand

When reviewing the near political history of modern Turkey, it will be substantive to notice that Turkey has had a long path towards gaining the institutional democracy it now enjoys, passing through breakdown periods caused by coups every ten years consistently in its short history of the multi-party rule since 1950. Thus, referring to Huntington's classification on waves of democracy, (1) Turkey has suffered much in attaining the transition from an authoritarian centralist pattern to a regime based on principal tenets of democracy. In his coding, the democratization has been a nonlinear process, as waves of democratization have been followed by reverse flows in successive periods, the transition from the single party has symbolized a fluctuant path due to the settled perceptions of political culture in Turkey which have conventionally been of an undemocratic nature.

The global flows have had sprawling impacts with a 'snowballing' effect, but also with the warning that a snowball can melt in unfavorable environments. (2) In this regard, the environment to meet the requirements for the settlement of democracy in political culture is related with the economic sphere, sociological transformation, international politics and communicative processes as well. The liberal democratic notion tries to get a consistent system of equations by taking the combination of the interrelated multiplier effects to get a democratic institutionalism, both at the national and global scale. Therefore, the political transition in favor of democratization within a country works visa-vis an optimal level of economic development; which means in a mutually reinforcing frame, economics can serve as leverage for politics to build political-economic institutionalism in a country. Such as Kant's reputed "perpetual peace" (3) based on democratic/liberal values in foreign affairs, which assumes there is a positive correlation between the democratization of political cultures and improvement towards peaceful struggles in international politics. Moreover, processes regarding the transformation of the sociological base in the form of urbanization, globalization and postmodernism within the political-economic and philosophical contexts respectively, create a new view for the assessment of the democratization of politics. By this means, apparency and efficiency of a transparent and independent civil society could set itself to manage the legal and political relationship between the state and the individual and to insure the preservation of basic rights pertaining to the individual and the society as a whole, against any sort of abuse. As the sociological dynamics have to be more open and transparent to allow access for all individuals, the identity-based issues come to the fore with the new challenging questions, such as pluralism and multiculturalism.

Taking into consideration the above, when adapting the democratization waves of the world political culture to the Turkish experience, an inconsistent picture emerges. Namely, the inter-war period was the foundation period of a new state, which mainly resorted to the top-down approach in the creation of a new nation. This was in contrast to the period of efforts for consolidation of democratic institutionalism throughout the Western world, towards which the new republic also aspired. Thus, it can be stated that the Turkish experience has been through both a historic and unparalleled process in terms of democratic mentality and methods, which have been an ever-repeating structural deficiency for the Turkish political culture in the following periods. The consequence here has been important and critically deliberating, leading to challenge and question the structural grounds and root causes; which facilitate understanding of the fluctuant and non-institutional democratization path that has been experienced in Turkey over time. As Schumpeter calls democracy as 'institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote,' (4) Turkey with its fragile civil political culture regarding the democratic governance, lacks the sine qua non conditions towards institutionalization of democracy. The dichotomous and ambivalent situation of achieving social modernization on one side, while having structural failures to make its modernity more democratic, liberal, plural and multicultural on the other, has been a systemic obstacle for deepening and consolidation of Turkish democracy. This has manifested itself in three main bases: i) democratic struggle and subsequent regime breakdowns with total damages to the political, economic and social development process of the country, ii) emergence of identity-based conflicts, iii) problem of the strong state mode of governing. (5)

While becoming more globalized in its economic, cultural and foreign relations; being profoundly affected by the Europeanization process resulted in the emergence of new perspectives on political culture forming a new urbanized sociological structure. This had direct impacts, along with political-economic dimensions such as the growth of new, mainly small- and medium-sized, economic actors together with all the socio-economic implications to the urban transformation process in Anatolian cities. In addition, a post-modernized context has opened up a new field for political identities; all of which may appear as an indication of development on the one hand, while as a fragility in terms of generating substantive democracy based on a genuinely pluralistic political order which will gain meaning in relation to the infrastructure of the country on the other hand. But, in any case, the transformation has led to the increasing power shift in Turkey by its political-economic base and mentality codes towards the sphere of bureaucratic governance and civil society. What is certain is that it will not be able to sustain a state-centric secular, homogeneous modernity pattern in Turkey for much longer.

The democratization perspective and transformation in Turkey within the AK Party era can be historically classified in three main stages. The first is 2002-2007, a period which can be seen as mostly dominated by EU accession process and democratization reforms in parallel. The second period is 2007-2013, which can be stated as the phase of the evolution of the Copenhagen criteria into the Ankara criteria -the initiated reform process to be institutionalized in line with the internal dynamics of the country particular to the Turkish case (such as civil-military relations, new political, legal and cultural envisagement including the Kurdish issue, minority rights, problematic of freedom concerns etc.). And the last one is from 2013 to today, a full-blown period with new developments -internally and externally- and a rippled path on the issue of democratization.

When dealing with the first two periods together, the priority agendas to be faced with are the transformation of the nature of civil-military relations and the new political, legal and cultural envisagement emerging on the basis of human rights and sphere of freedoms. In this regard, AK Party adopted a range of constitutional and legal democratization reforms connected with the EU accession process covering issues such as freedom of thought, faith, expression and assembly, the legal and practical improvements regarding the Kurdish issue, opening process on the Alevite question, a new libertarian stress and vision on minority rights, and diminishing, even eliminating the prerogatives of the military which historically and conventionally dominated the civil, social and cultural sphere in Turkish politics.

As Onis puts, certainly, the most important dimension of change in a positive direction has been a dramatic decline in the power and influence of the military in Turkish politics, Turkey has experienced frequent breakdowns of its democratic regime by military interventions and even in normal times, the military's active involvement in Turkish domestic politics, self-declared guardianship position on issues relating to secularism and national unity as well as its constitutional standing and institutional standing over civilian political actors such as the status of the Chief of the Armed Forces and the National Security Council (NSC). (6)

Parallel to the civilianization of civil-military relations, a new door was also opened in which the old Kemalist reflexes with its hardline interpretations based on strict "secularism" politics and one-dimensional identity politics gradually began to lose power and influence within the state structure, and left its place to a more diversified understanding. So, within the context, the civil-military relations throughout the history of the modern republic, particularly since the multi-party rule of the 1950s and transformation process in the last ten years are worth discussing more deeply, expressing the baseline, which the various components of the democratization issue directly and depend on as a prerequisite.

The Civil-Military Relations and Transformation

As modern armies become professional, they have achieved an important and sustained position within the public bureaucracy and society as well. This position has been on the agenda of many countries, regardless of the developed-developing distinction. However, while the system of institutionalization and civil society is in a better situation in modern countries, the functioning of the decision making and implementation mechanisms are found to be less effective, limited, and defined, leaving the routine only for exceptional circumstances; the effect of the army in the countries that are in the process of modernization has created more and more situations that can go beyond the borders.

Thus, Turkey since the 19th century has been a country that felt the effects...