FRAGILE HEGEMONY, FLEXIBLE AUTHORITARIANISM, AND GOVERNING FROM BELOW: POLITICIANS' REPORTS IN EARLY REPUBLICAN TURKEY

2011-11-01
Metinsoy, Murat
This article scrutinizes election district and inspection district reports written by the deputies of the Turkish single-party government and the role of these reports in state decision making. Underscoring social discontent and the fragile hegemony of the new regime-both of which motivated the republican elite to monitor state and party administrations and public opinion-the article argues that the practice of reporting was neither a project of social engineering nor a practice peculiar to the Turkish state but rather a requirement of a polity concerned with the opinion of its citizens. In the absence of direct political participation of the people in government, the reports mediated between the state and society. Contrary to conventional accounts of the single-party period, the article argues that the republican elite did not govern the country through top-down decrees but instead sought to ascertain public opinion and its own administrative defects so as to consolidate its fragile hegemony. Based on these findings, I propose that we redefine the early republican state as a flexible authoritarian regime that was not detached from the society.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST STUDIES

Suggestions

Transformation of Turkish Islamism and the Rise of the Justice and Development Party
Şen, Mustafa (2010-01-01)
Deviating from the mainstream analyses of the AKP that see the rise of AKP to power as a result of the struggle between ocentero and operiphery,o this study is an attempt to analyze and understand the modalities of inclusion and accommodation of Turkish Islamism into the sociopolitical structure of Turkey. Therefore, it specially focuses on three interwoven processes: the articulation of Turkish Islamism with the Turkish Islamic synthesis; permanent enlargement of the religious field; and articulation betwe...
Challenges for Regional Governance in Turkey: The Role of Development Agencies
Ertugal, Ebru (Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Architecture, 2017-11-20)
This article examines the functioning of Regional Development Agencies (DAs) in Turkey from a policy instruments approach with a view to uncovering their intended and unintended consequences for regional governance. The policy instruments approach challenges the functionalist view that instruments are merely technical and neutral devices for realizing policy aims in the most effective way. Instead, the article shows that as policy instruments, the DAs are highly political with important political consequenc...
The Role of the EU in Turkey's Legislative Reforms for Eliminating Violence against Women: A Bottom-Up Approach
Ozdemir, Burcu (2014-01-01)
This paper analyses Turkey's legislative reforms on violence against women (VAW) with particular focus on the European Union (EU) role and impact in triggering the reform process. By using a bottom-up Europeanization approach, the paper traces the reform process from the 1980s up until 2005 in terms of the interaction of external and domestic factors. The empirical evidence shows that the impact of external factors (be it the EU accession process or the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Fo...
What are the prospects for Turkey-EU cooperation in foreign policy? Compatibility of Turkish foreign policy with the EU foreign policy
Torun, Zerrin (2018-10-08)
This paper analyses Turkish foreign policy under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government with a view to identify its compatibility with that of the European Union. The paper starts with a section on characteristics and evolution of Turkish foreign policy. Following this, it focuses on the foreign policy of AKP governments, which have been in power since 2002. Between 2002 and 2011 examples of divergence between Turkish and EU foreign policies can be observed. However, the prevailing ethos ...
Durable and nondurable consumption, health and education expenditures over the life-cycle in Turkey
Cilasun, Seyit Mümin; Kırdar, Murat Güray (Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (Ankara, Turkey), 2015-8)
In this paper, we investigate the life-cycle profiles of household consumption and its components in Turkey using the 2003 Turkish Household Budget Survey. We find that consumption tracks income quite closely over the life-cycle, which contradicts the implication of the life-cycle model. However, the adult-equivalent consumption profile is much flatter. Although this could be interpreted in favor of the life-cycle model, some life-cycle dynamics are still apparent in the adult-equivalent consumption pr...
Citation Formats
M. Metinsoy, “FRAGILE HEGEMONY, FLEXIBLE AUTHORITARIANISM, AND GOVERNING FROM BELOW: POLITICIANS’ REPORTS IN EARLY REPUBLICAN TURKEY,” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST STUDIES, pp. 699–719, 2011, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63508.