ABSTRACT
The massive protests in Turkey in June, 2013, which began in Istanbul’s Gezi Park, challenged the democratic credentials of the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP). Protesters, among other complaints, charged the AKP with creeping authoritarianism and disregard for rule of law. AKP leaders, including then prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, dismissed the protesters as “hooligans” and part of a foreign plot to bring down his government. He tried to delegitimize critics by suggesting that they should “know their place” (haddini bil) and that he could stage even larger rallies among his supporters. Furthermore, he maintained that a democratic government is only answerable at the ballot box, where his party had prevailed in three consecutive elections, each time polling an increased number of votes.1 After allegations of corruption in December, 2013 posed another threat to the government, Erdoğan asserted that the March, 2014 municipal elections would, in effect, serve as means to judge the AKP’s guilt or innocence. The AKP prevailed, and, in response to yet another protest in the wake of the tragedy in Soma in May, 2014 which killed over 300 coalminers and led to calls for his resignation, Erdoğan dismissed the “rascals” leading the protests by claiming that past elections have “clearly given the people the necessary answer. Particularly in Soma, they [those critical of the government] have lost disastrously.” On the other hand, Erdoğan praised those who voted for the AKP, claiming that they gave a “full Ottoman slap to the protesters” and said, in effect, “We are the owners of this country” (Gürcan and Peker 2015: 158-159). He similarly extolled the “national will” (milli irade) which propelled him to the presidency in August, 2014 and appeared to give legitimacy to his vision of a “New Turkey” that would, if he had his way, possess a much stronger presidency. While Erdoğan’s critics might note that he prevailed with only 52 percent of the vote in this election, this did not deter him. As he remarked to one critic in 2011, “I have 50 percent of the votes. You surely are not smarter than the 50 percent” (quoted in Çınar and Sayın 2014: 378). Such statements, combined with actions such as government interference in the media, use of anti-terror laws to go after political opponents, the closure of internet sites, and efforts to gain greater control over the judiciary, make some fear for democracy in Turkey. These concerns are well documented throughout
this volume and in numerous other sources. However, Erdoğan and his defenders justify their actions and views, not only by citing the need to combat alleged plots or conspiracies against the government, but also because they believe a genuine, fairly elected democratic leader should not cave into critics or protesters on the streets, who constitute, from their perspective, merely a vocal minority.2 In short, by winning elections and representing what they take to be the views and interests of the majority, in their interpretation of democracy they are abiding by democratic principles; certainly elected leaders in well-established democracies routinely refer to such electoral victories as giving them a “mandate” to rule. This, however, constitutes a limited understanding of what democracy entails, a point established in Wolfgang Merkel’s model of “embedded democracy” developed in the opening chapter of this volume. This model, in both its value orientation and institutional design, reflects a liberal democracy, one that is focused not only on elections but how those who win at the ballot box rule. It is predicated on respect for individual rights and limited government (Merkel 2004). However, whereas there is a strong connection between liberalism and democracy, one can agree with Alan Ware (1992: 130) that “liberal democracies are only one kind of logically possible system of representative democracy.” Countries may have a competitive political system in which leaders are chosen by the people but do not resemble Merkel’s model. These have acquired different labels: “electoral democracy” (Diamond 1996), “illiberal democracy” (Zakaria 1997), “populist democracy” (Plattner 2010), “pseudo-democracy” (Volpi 2004), and “delegative democracy” (O’Donnell 1994) rank among the most common. These may all belong to genus of democracy, although, if machinations of the authorities severely constrain electoral competition, they may be better described as “competitive authoritarianism” (Levitsky and Way 2010), a notion taken up more fully in the following chapter by Ergun Özbudun. This chapter adopts the term “majoritarianism” – what may also be called “ballot box reductionism” (Gürcan and Peker 2015: 159) – for the interpretation of democracy described above. This is a subspecies among various types of “illiberal democracy,” one that hinges on the elected leaders securing majority support and their subsequent elevation of the will of the majority, often equated with the “national will” itself, as the paramount principle to legitimate their rule and policy choices. As Jenny White (2014: 204) argues, this understanding assumes that “the ballot box has the same magical power as a military tank to manufacture rule with no checks on power.” In short, whoever has the most votes not only wins but is right, and legitimately able to do as he or she pleases. Opposition is delegitimized, and the risk becomes tyranny of the majority, a classic problem in democratic theory. The fundamental issue, therefore, is how democracy is conceptualized. Although this departs from Merkel’s more institutional model of democracy, it constitutes an important a priori concern, given that intellectual constructions or interpretations often inform both formal institutional design and more informal behavioral practice. As such, this topic, which is often discussed with respect to contemporary Turkey, constitutes a logical
departure point for a consideration of the “macro challenges” of democratic consolidation. This chapter is composed of three additional sections. First, it will briefly distinguish between liberal democracy and its majoritarian variant as I define it and suggests several hypotheses that might explain why the latter may predominate in a given political system. Second, it will examine these hypotheses with respect to the Turkish case, and in so doing also help substantiate the charge that majoritarian interpretations of democracy have gained traction in Turkey. Finally, it will suggest what the implications of this development are, in particular in light of the 2014 presidential and 2015 parliamentary elections, the latter of which gave the AKP, on a second attempt, a new parliamentary majority while creating more uncertainty about Turkey’s future.
