“Turkey’s State Crisis: Institutions,Reform,and Conflict” Book Review

In Turkey’s State Crisis: Institutions, Reform and Conflict, Bülent Aras provides a comprehensive examination of the derailment and the eventual halt of the reform process initiated by the AKP in the early 2000s, pinpoints agents, structural elements, and hallmark developments that instigated a vicious cycle of political polarization, rising authoritarianism, deinstitutionalization in Turkey, altogether which intensified the current state crisis, and finally presents policy recommendations for reinstating a constructive reform process in all areas of the state. Based on his extensive experience working within the Turkish state apparatus and a rich blend of interviews with policymakers and state elites, the author provides a robust analysis of the historical, political, and geopolitical background of the ongoing state crisis.

Chapter 1 analyzes the root causes and characteristics of the political crisis in Turkey from the perspectives of political and institutional reforms. The author states that the 2002–2010 period of the AKP governments functioned as a transition from tutelary democracy to hybrid governance, wherein the established nationalist-secular elements within the judiciary, bureaucracy, and the army collaborated to counter what they deemed as an assault on secular and Kemalist nature of the state. This was evident in their approach to sensitive issues such as the Kurdish question, rights of sub-identities, and the potential growth of the influence of Islam in Turkish politics. At this stage, Erdogan, and by extension the AKP elite, presented themselves as a powerless government with an emphasis on vulnerability vis-à-vis the establishment. The author argues that with strategic and tactical retooling as well as building alliances with the Gulenists and the other conservative constituencies, Erdogan was able to win the battle and advance the reform agenda. The author argues that such determination and political resolve fueled political and institutional reform at all levels of the state and singled out Turkey as a model country in the region. However, the author observes, this was to change throughout the next decade (2010–2020), a period characterized by authoritarian drift, populism, and deinstitutionalization. Faced with an array of adverse developments such as the Mavi Marmara incident, graft probes, growing Kurdish opposition, and finally the 2016 coup attempt perpetrated by FETO, the AKP changed its domestic alliances and opted for securitizing domestic as well as foreign politics. This, according to the author, reproduced and aggravated old problems, and caused a volte-face shift from a reformist democratic agenda to authoritarian politics.

In Chapter 2, the author traces the causes of state crisis in Turkey in the workings of bureaucracy, the government and major state institutions by analyzing previous state reform initiatives, their motivations, impediments to such administrative and bureaucratic reforms, and the connection between democracy, institutions and state capacity. Defining state capacity as compatibility of state apparatus, protection of stability and effective management of the economy, and conceding the fact that the meaning of state capacity is in flux, the author argues that the state elite has been wary of sharing power and authority owing to their underlying mistrust of society. The author suggests that critical Turkish foreign policy decisions, such as holding multiparty elections and the EU membership were initiatives taken to cover this mistrust and to gain domestic and international legitimacy. Analyzing the motivations of growing tutelage of Gulenists within the bureaucracy, police, and the military prior to the July 15 military coup attempt, and the tools and tactics they used to sideline secular bureaucracy, the author argues that Gulenists crippled the state’s institutional capacity and thus paved the way for the growing state crisis in the post-coup state-of-emergency atmosphere. The crisis borne out of such a bitter fight for complete hegemonic control over state institutions, according to the author, was exacerbated with the alla turca presidential system which engendered a monopolistic political order replete in nepotism, favoritism, clientelism, and partisan practices purportedly done for strengthening state capacity. Chapter 2 concludes by maintaining that the recent constitutional changes regarding the executive presidential system have blocked the channels of reform by making the Parliament almost redundant, sidelining bureaucrats, polarizing society and upsetting the checks and balances within the state apparatus.

Chapter 3 zeros in on the role of the state in conflict resolution and the determinants of this role. He traces the roots of this role in the tensions between “bureaucratic center” and “democratic periphery” in Turkish political history and argues that state elite in Turkey found in themselves an exclusive right to act as agents of change on account of a prevailing belief in the Turkish political thought, that is, the well-being of society is predicated on the well-being of the state. Consequently, the author believes, Turkish state elite failed to understand the societal, ideational and ethnic dynamics and complexities of conflict resolution, which compounded social polarization and the state crisis as was evidenced in the co-optation and coercion practices of the AKP governments vis-à-vis the military and judiciary bureaucracy as well as secular and Kurdish dissent. Referring to Kalevi Holsti, the author suggests that the lack of effective and meaningful role of the state in conflict resolution runs the risk of perpetuating the problem of political legitimacy and relegating Turkey to the league of “weak states.” According to the author, at the root of the Turkish state elite’s aversion to employing accommodation and desecuritization as conflict resolution tools lies their decades-old bureaucratic reflexes, that is, the so-called state memory, which sees political competition as a zero-sum game and which reproduces security paranoias and self-fulfilling existential threats. To this backdrop, the author identifies three main conflict resolution deficits in the Turkish state: 1) state elite’s aversion to learning from past events, 2) lack of prudent planning, and 3) lack of institutions to manage conflict resolution. The chapter concludes that the executive presidency has so far failed not only to give a unifying ethos for political and social stability but also to break the prevailing thought that the interests of the state trumps all others.

Chapter 4 focuses on the interplay between the systemic changes ushered in by the executive presidential system in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt and the ramifications of such changes on Turkish foreign and security policies within the broader context of exacerbating state crisis. By examining some of the recent political/institutional practices that left an indelible mark on Turkey’s domestic political landscape such as the aggravating social polarization, blurring of the boundaries between domestic and foreign policies, erosion of democracy, elimination of traditional institutions shaping Turkish foreign and security policies, and prioritization of security concerns, the author suggests that the domination of these areas by Erdogan closed traditional channels of consultation and delegation of work to capable cadres. The author maintains that although the failed coup presented an opportune moment of national consensus to redirect and recalibrate problematic foreign and security policies, the political leadership failed to take advantage of the said consensus due to dismissal of previous staff, ignoring existing resources and expertise, the absence of a refined vision and reform plan, prioritization of gains in domestic politics over foreign relations, political reluctance toward capacity and institution building, and finally excessive securitization of foreign policy as was seen throughout the Arab Spring. The author concludes that lukewarm and short-termist measures thrown at serious systemic problems engendered by partisan attitudes of incompetent cadres herald broader failures in Turkish foreign policy in the period ahead. Thus, the author suggests breaking the self-constructed siege mentality, formulating a set of inclusive foreign and security policies based on bipartisan consensus, and finally strengthening coalition-building.

In Chapter 5, the author maps the contours of the growing state crisis in Turkey and the ramifications of this crisis on Turkey’s foreign and security policies within the larger domestic and regional political context, and he provides suggestions as to how to manage state reform, deal with deficits in state conflict resolution roles and finally policy recommendations for the increasing need for an overhauling of Turkey’s foreign and security policies. The author argues once more that the AKP emphasized the notorious tradition of nonelectoral intrusion on elected governments in its early days and promised reform, governance and consensual domestic and foreign policy, but resorted to excessive securitization in later stages, which gradually dismantled the fundamentals of the state apparatus. Categorizing reform recommendations in three main areas, that is, state institutions, state conflict resolution roles, and foreign and security policies, the author cautions against polarization, rhetorical escalation, arbitrary implementation of laws and regulations, and nepotism, with all its corollaries, and advises improvements to the executive presidency and related institutions. Underlining the vitality of a plural and democratic political atmosphere attentive to the needs of all components of society, the author suggests prioritization of competence, revitalization of bureaucratic ethos, and efficient use of existing material and human resources not only for realizing effective institutional reform and enhancing of state’s role in resolving conflicts but also for coping with multiple regional security challenges.

The book conducts a painstaking analysis of the ongoing state crisis in Turkey by shedding light on its root causes, actors and implications. Each chapter provides accurate examples of how each aspect of the state crisis has manifested itself and how the combination of these factors affected the state apparatus, the society as well as Turkey’s relations with its neighbors and major international players. This book compensates for an obvious gap about the structure, workings and implications of the executive presidential system both from the perspective of actors within the system and those that are external to it. Perhaps the only conspicuous drawback in the book is the duplication of ideas throughout the book such as the urgency of reform, impact of state-of-emergency practices on bureaucracy, and the state in the post-July 15 era, the importance of consensual policy-making and the adverse impacts of the executive presidential system. The current state crisis could have been better contextualized if the historical background of it was elaborated more, especially the early days of the transition from the Ottoman monarchy to the Turkish republic. Additionally, the analysis of the ruling party’s populist tendencies and rising authoritarianism could be juxtaposed against the regional and global political context where such tendencies seem to have become the new normal in many countries. Taken all together, this remarkable contribution to the literature on Turkish politics is a great resource to understand the subtleties of the current state crisis in Turkey and how state actors can redress this situation by embracing reform.