Essay: Which concepts of populism exist and how do those concepts fit in the political landscape of Turkey today?

A. Introduction
Populism is a widely used codeword for describing the political landscape of the early 21st century, be it in scientific or popular literature or in newspapers. But oftentimes, it is not quite clear what is actually meant by the term. Populism comes in many variants, from the left-wing Populism of Venezuela, over right wing neoliberal Populism of Donald Trump and the arch-conservative Populism movements of the European far right to a version of so called neoclassical Populism (Finchelstein 2017: 101 f.). The Turkish variant, often portrayed regarding the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is seen as a case of the latter one (Finchelstein 2017: 102), while also receiving the term “Islamic Populism”, that is seen by Finchelstein as a term too generic (Finchelstein 2017: 236 f.).
This paper aims at elaborating, what concepts of populism exist and how those concepts fit in the political landscape of Turkey today. Thereby, I will not only look at the acts of the ruling party, but also at the historical development of the political system of Turkey and how that favoured populist politics. I will also have a look at the Kemalist bourgeoisie that effectively ruled the country the country for the greater part of its existence and at the resistance movement that came together at the Gezi protests in 2013. At last, I will elaborate if the sometimes-raised claim that Turkey is already a dictatorship, holds truth.
B. What is Populism
As seen above, the expression “Populism” holds a variety of different, sometimes confusing meanings. The sole commonality of these meanings seems to be the fact, that they are not talking about a specific set of policy contents, but a mode of politics that sets the will of the populous against the will of a significant other. Therefore, it is often used as a synonym for popular politics or resistance against an oppressive regime or neoliberal politics in general (Finchelstein 2017: xv, 161).
To set a theoretical foundation for this paper, I will refer to two distinct definitions of Populism, the first being the work of Ernesto Laclau (2005) and the second one being that of Federico Finchelstein (2017).
Laclau states (2005: 36 ff.), that social demands, brought forward by parts of society and being consistently neglected by the government lead to moments of frustration. If there are several neglected demands and the people putting them forward find together, these demands get connected by a so-called equivalential chain. For the equivalential chain to be strong, there has to be one demand that assumes representation over the other demands. Laclau names the demands of the Solidarnosc movement in communist Poland as an example (Laclau 2005: 39). These demands were the demands of organised workers, but at the same time represented the demands of people striving for more political and social freedom in the country. By assuming representation over the other demands, the central demand tends to lose its particular content. This is what Laclau calls an empty signifier (Laclau 2005: 38 ff.). In the end, the empty signifier is represented by the name of the leader of the movement. Consistency in neglect also leads to the building of two societal camps of “the people” and “the elite”, what Laclau calls the “Internal Frontier”. This dichotomy has to be consistently reiterated and the existing institutional order be put into question, so that the equivalential chain remains strong. This enmity between the elites and the underdogs is what Laclau calls “the same as politics” (Laclau 2005: 47), because it provides an alternative to the ways in which the system works now.
Finchelstein however sees this dichotomy as highly problematic, because it lets no room for the plurality and the compromises that define a democratic society (Finchelstein 2017: 173). He portrays modern Populism a manifestation of post-Fascism, first encountered after 1945 in Argentina in the form of Peronism. The lesson that Peron learned from the defeat of fascism was to turn away from totalitarian dictatorship and political violence and to try to gain electoral majorities as a means to show political legitimacy (Finchelstein 2017: 21 ff.). Although formally democratic, he still views Populism as a danger for democracy, since, as stated above, a truly populist regime sees no legitimate room for an Opposition. When a regime like this starts to actually persecute dissidents or the free press, it starts to slip back towards its historical roots of dictatorship (Finchelstein 2017: 27).
For Finchelstein, Populism combines in all its forms several common features (Finchelstein 2017: 103f.):
“1) An attachment to an authoritarian, electoral, antiliberal democracy that practically rejects dictatorship 2) An extreme form of political religion 3) An apocalyptic vision of politics that presents electoral successes, and the transformations those transitory electoral victories enable, as revolutionary moments in the foundation or refoundation of society 4) A political theology founded by a messianic and charismatic leader of the people 5) A consideration of political antagonists as the antipeople namely, as enemies of the people and traitors to the nation 6) A weak understanding of the rule of law and the separation of powers 7) A radical nationalism 8) A notion of the leader as the personification of the people 9) An identification of movement and leaders with the people as a whole 10) The claim of antipolitics, which in practice means transcending politics as usual 11) The act of speaking in the name of the people and against the ruling elites 12) A self-presentation of its standing for true democracy and against imagined or real forms of dictatorship and tyranny (the European Union, the parallel or deep state, empire, cosmopolitanism, globalization, military coups, etc.) 13) The homogenizing idea of the people as a single entity that, when populism becomes a regime, is then equated with its electoral majorities 14) A deep antagonism, and even aversion, to independent journalism 15) A dislike for pluralism and political tolerance 16) A stress on popular culture and even, in many cases, on the world of entertainment as embodiments of national traditions.”
I will elaborate in the next chapters, which of these elements can be seen in the case of Turkey. But at first I will have a look at the historical development of the Turkish political system up to today, to see if any conditions could favour the emergence of populist movements.
C. Development of the Political System of Turkey
My observation in this section begins during the Ottoman Empire. Köksal (2011) tells us, that the Empire left behind a patrimonial political system and a centralised-authoritarian understanding of state affairs with the Sultan in its centre as its political and religious leader (Köksal 2011: 134). After the end of the first World War, parts of Turkey were occupied by foreign powers like Greece and a division of the country was planned, including the creation of a Kurdish state in parts of Anatolia. The leader of the resistance war that emerged, Mustafa Kemal, had to defeat this foreign armies to force the Entente powers in negotiating a new peace treaty (History of Turkey 2018). Hence, the survival of the state and a centralised-authoritarian manner was also seen as a necessity for the new Turkish Republic (Köksal 2011: 135) under Mustafa Kemal “Atatürk”, whose title literally translates to “Father of Türks” and whose face is today seen on all pieces of money, on the wall of public buildings, in schools and Universities. This fear of control by foreign powers and initial authoritarianism led to a situation in which personal and political freedom were worth less than the strength and cohesiveness of the state and its military (Köksal 2011: 136). It also led to a disregard of the political opposition (Köksal 2011: 139, 142), with the one-party-system only being abolished in 1950 (Köksal 2011: 146). With the military being the only strong institution decades into the states’ creation, it saw itself as the self-proclaimed protector of Atatürks’ Kemalist values of secularism and nationalism (Köksal 2011: 147). In the patrimonial tradition they intervened whenever they saw these values in danger, which led to military coups in 1960, 1971, 1980 and one so-called postmodern coup in 1997 (Schweers/ Osiewicz 2008: 71 f.), after which the Islamic government of the time resigned. After these coups, the developing civil society was always hindered in its free development, with the heaviest impact after the coup in 1980, when a lot of left-wing activists were detained and killed, and a neoliberal Agenda started to be implemented (Akcay 2018: 3; The Guardian 2015). Köksal also tells us, that another legacy of the Ottoman Empire is a tendency for corruption and cronyism (Köksal 2011: 137). Later, the weak democratic structures led to oligarchic structures in parties and relationships based on loyalty between the voter bases and the parties (Köksal 2011: 139). As can be seen, many features of the Turkish democracy were weakly developed and helped populist politics and movements to develop. At this point, it is also worth mentioning, that “Populism” is one of the core concepts of Kemalism as laid down by Atatürk. Here it describes the sovereignty of the “nation”, which stands against the sovereignty of the sultan in the monarchy (Oxford Islamic Studies Online 2018). It is, however, a concept developed before the second World War and therefore belongs not in the line of tradition of modern Populism, even though it describes “a closer relation between the ruler and the ruled” (Mateescu 2006: 228).
D. Kemalist Elites
As we have seen above, democracy in Turkey developed very weakly and so gave way to possible populist manifestations. In this section, I want to look at the Kemalist elites and bourgeoisie, that, for the most parts of its existence were in positions of political and economic power in Turkey. They are concentrated in the economic powerhouses of the country, the metropolitan areas at the west and the south coast (Bora 2011). As Atatürk himself, they stand for an orientation to the west (Arat-Koç 2018), the connection with the NATO and the European Union. In this regard, they developed a cultural distinctiveness (Arat-Koç 2018) from what they saw as uncivilised Anatolia and its pious population. These populations had two very different visions about Turkeys future (Arat-Koç 2018). These differences in culture and vision led to the invention of the terms “white Turk” and “black Turk”, with “white Turk” being a self-designation of the, in their self-image, more sophisticated members of the ruling Kemalists (Arat-Koç 2018). After the military coup in 1980, agricultural subsidies were abolished, and a rural depopulation occurred, with many of the former peasants now living in Istanbul or other urban centres (Arat-Koç 2018). This, in combination with a strengthening of movements of the Political Islam led to a fear among Kemalist Bourgeois of outright invasion and the urban centres being overtaken by Anatolian Muslims (Arat-Koç 2018). This discourse of fear escalated in racism-like defamations of the poor newcomers, exemplified by the famous cartoon character Maganda, who showed, how many culturalist prejudices existed at the time (Arat-Koç 2018).
But is this discourse sign of a populist formation? When we look at the common features of populist movements defined under B, then we see the need of a leader. We could assume the dead Atatürk being this leader, being the eternal father of the nation still overwhelmingly present in the public to this day, and serving as an empty signifier for the demands of preserving secularism and supposed cultural superiority for the Kemalist Elites. There are other political patriarchs (Köksal 2011: 137) that could, for a time, could lead such a movement, but only in the name of Atatürk himself, whose name could be charged with every meaning they wanted. Since he died a long time ago, he could not resist such attempts. There is also the necessity for an Internal Frontier to be built up. In this case, the frontier runs between the white and the black Turks, and the former see the latter as a threat for their way of life and unfit for living in an urban environment. There was even the occasional appearance of mass politics in the form of mass rallies, especially in the year 2007, when the Foreign Minister and AKP member Abdullah Gül was about to be elected President (Tambar 2009: 523). He was seen in a negative light by Kemalists because his wife wore a headscarf (Elver 2014), a clear connection to the aforementioned culturalist discourse. However, the main reason why this social class did not develop into a consistent populist movement was that Kemalists were never particularly anti-elitist or anti-institutionalist. In the contrary, they were defending the very system that started with an emphasis on centralised authority and the military and the military even supported the rallies of 2007, a fact that was critically remarked by Erdoğan at the time (Tambar 2009: 526). So, the resistance of the old Kemalist elites against the rise of Islamic movements could at best be described as a form of incomplete or weak populism. However, the racism-like culturalist discourse could be used by islamist parties in the 90s and the 2000s to foster their support among the pious and the poor. “Black Turk” became a populist self-designation and a source of proud instead of shame. The arrogant discourse the Kemalists started backfired at them and was a reason why the AKP came to power.
E. Neoliberal, Turkish-Islamic Populism: The AKP
In the 90’s, Necmettin Erbakans Welfare Party came to power in a coalition government but was ousted from power by the so-called “postmodern coup” of 1997, where a memorandum of the General staff of the Turkish military was the reason for the government being dissolved (Akcay 2018: 10). But only 5 years later, after a catastrophic economic crash, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party was equipped with the majority of the seats in the Parliament. The aforementioned discourse not only helped them to gain the majority of the votes (The Economist 2002) of conservative and pious voters and rally them against the “arrogant elites”, but also shifted the focus away from materialistic interests (Arat-Koç 2018). So, it was later possible for the AKP to pretend to care for the poor masses through measures of Islamic charity (Kirdiş/Drhimeur 2016: 606), while at the same time implementing neoliberal policies (Özen 2015: 537; Arat-Koç 2018). Every rift between the government and its followers (and their interests) could just be avoided by reiterating the conflict with the Kemalist elites. The process of accession to the European Union could be used to push aside the Kemalist influence in society through strengthening civil rule over the military and to weaken existing democratic institutions like unions by liberalising the economy and labour laws (Akcay 2018: 6 ff.). At the same time, the government expanded loans for low-income households to keep the economic demand high and also expanded Islamic-style charity for the “deserving poor” (Arat-Koç 2018). So, their own clientele would not be hit by the neoliberal reforms they enacted. At the same time, they pursued their Islamic-culturalist Agenda by lifting the ban on headscarfs in Universities (Dinçşahin 2016: 621), but also by imposing their own values onto the society by restricting alcohol consumption in public (Özen 2015: 538) or by turning public schools into religious Imam Hatip schools (Gall 2018).
From the beginning, the most prominent role in the AKP played Erdoğan himself. He as a leader has been given a plethora of titles, from “Reis” (Leader) to “the Master” (Selçuk 2016: 576). He has been portrayed in a fashion of a personality cult (Selçuk 2016: 576), someone coming from simple conditions in a poor neighbourhood of Istanbul, rising up to the top of the nation, only to let his hair being cut in the same poor neighbourhood he grew up in (Kirdiş/Drhimeur 2016: 606). He is a man from the people, fighting for the people against the arrogant elites (Arat-Koç 2018) and the coup lovers (Dinçşahin 2016: 621) of the deep state (Dinçşahin 2016: 636). He grants the people dignity and gives them their right of democratic participation. He is the embodiment of the New Turkey (“Yeni Türkiye”) (Selçuk 2016: 576). All these are characteristics of a populist leader.
The AKP rule is marked by a direct-democratic majoritarianism in which those who get the most votes should have the last say (Dinçşahin 2016: 629; Selçuk 2016: 576). Plebiscitary measures have been used to weaken existing institutions or to exert direct control over them, be it the referendum to change the voting mechanisms for the presidency to a direct vote instead of a parliamentary one (Hürriyet Daily News 2017) or the constitutional referendum of 2017, in which the presidency was strengthened, the post of Prime Minister was abolished, and the government gained broad control over the judiciary system (Shaheen 2017). The AKP, after being perceived as a liberalising force in the early years of its government (Kirdiş/Drhimeur 2016: 606), has now no more regard for any kind of opposition, who is at times framed as foreign agents (Selçuk 2016: 577; Özen 2015: 546), leaning back to the old fear of foreign interventions. Erdoğan himself famously called young people participating in the Gezi protests of 2013 “çapulcular” (marauders) (Selçuk 2016: 588).
There is also widespread control over the media, be it TV-stations or newspapers, by businessmen close to Erdoğan (Jones 2018). He himself has shown numerous times that he disregards the free press and that he sees critical journalists as criminals (Dinçşahin 2016: 637; Wintour 2018). During his career, he constantly sued journalists for supposed insults personally (Payton 2016). Social Media channels, a way for freely connecting and expressing opinions, are under constant surveillance (Park 2017: 170).
After all this, I conclude that the rule of the AKP in Turkey is a prime example for a populist movement in power. What started as an oppositional movement and a way to expand the possibilities of societal participation, ended in an authoritarian rule in which Opposition as such is disregarded. I would not call the AKP a case of Islamic Populism, since the term is too generic (Finchelstein 2017: 237), but rather one of neoliberal Populism with a platform of nationalistic and Islamic policies.
F. The Gezi Protests
In this section, I want to examine the Gezi Protests of 2013. Hayriye Özen (2015) looks at them from the perspective of Ernesto Laclau’s work.
The Gezi Protests emerged as a resistance against a neoliberal project of privatising a public park and turning it into a shopping mall (Özen 2015: 533, 540). The Gezi Park is the last bit of green near Taksim square and Istiklal street, so a group consisting of architects and leftist activists started to protest the planned construction project, at first with petitions, then with rallies and then by occupying the park with tents. This occupation was met with police brutality (Özen 2015: 533) and disregard by politicians of the ruling AKP (Selçuk 2016: 588; Özen 2015: 540).
Özen (2015: 540 ff.) argues, that Gezi developed into an empty signifier, with equivalential chains to other social and political demands, like political and personal freedom and the economic situation of people working in precarious jobs. These demands have been neglected by the government. So, the fight for the specific issue of the Gezi Park turned into a fight of the people against the enemy of the people in the government and the new Islamic elites. This fight has been expressed mostly through social media, since the established media ignored the protests in the beginning. Famous is the case of CNN Türk, that aired a documentary about penguins while the protests were going on (Oktem 2013). One known example of a Gezi meme going viral was the woman in the red dress, a “ordinary” looking woman attacked by a pepper spray wielding police officer (Way 2016: 433 f.). This perfectly summed up the self-image of ordinary people fighting against an aggressive elite out of control. However, after gaining massive support all over the country and rallying millions of protesters in every big city, the Gezi movement dissolved after the park itself was evacuated by the Police (Özen 2015: 544 ff.). Also, the AKP spread false accusations of protesters drinking alcohol in a mosque and attacking a woman in a headscarf, so that the movement could not reach out to more conservative parts of the population. Furthermore, particularisms of some organisations in the movement prevented a coherent message, so the claim of absolute representation of the people through an empty signifier was weakened. Plus, there was no leading figure or political party to rally around. In the end, Özen comes to the conclusion, that Gezi was “unfinished Populism”. I however would question if there was Populism at all, or if there was just a very successful popular movement. This possible confusion stems from the fact that Laclau’s approach can only explain populist movements in Opposition and has no clear distinction between popular movements and Populism (Finchelstein 2017: xv), so that popular movements could ex post be declared to be populist, although acting very different against political opponents when in power.
G. Conclusion and Outlook
As we have seen, the only fairly complete example of modern Populism in Turkey is the AKP government. But it could not be this way if it were not for the political history of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic and its weak democratic institutions, civil society and democratic self-image of the population.
Since there is always the danger for populist regimes to slip backwards to its dictatorial roots when disregarding political opponents turns into actually punishing them (Finchelstein 2017: 27), it is worth asking if this is happening to Turkey as well. Since political violence is not a central ideological feature of the AKP rule, one cannot call it fascist. However, especially after the Gezi protests and the attempted coup of 2016, there have been massive crackdowns on journalists, civil servants, Universities, leftists, supposed gülenists and many more (Morris 2018). Over 200.000 people have been detained or arrested, over 300 of them journalists alone (Turkey Purge 2018). The organisation Reporters without Borders lists Turkey at place 157 in its Press Freedom Index, behind states like Belarus (Reporters Without Borders 2018). There are also reports of the government supporting and arming gunned groups as a so-called shadow army (Spyer 2018). The snap elections of this summer confirmed the AKP and Erdoğan in their position at the top (BBC 2018). The situation looks dire, but there is still an Opposition in- and outside of parliament, elections take place and the AKP gets very consistently only around 50% percent of the vote. The CHP, main Opposition party, is in power in a lot of the big cities and municipalities. So, there are clear signs of the populist regime of Erdoğan turning into a dictatorship, but until now, it is still incomplete. The future will show if the Turkish Opposition can rise from its depression after this year’s election and can challenge Erdoğan next time.