ABSTRACT
This chapter provides insight into the nondemocratic elements introduced in the guise of a presidential system by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. It further assesses the systematically taken steps by the government to create the conditions for regime change after the constitutional deadlock created by the June 2015 elections, by shedding light on the recourse to the politics of exclusion. In particular the state-centred measures following the failed coup attempt in July 2016. Further it is discussed to what extent Turkey’s path of regime change was facilitated by securitization policies in the form of Carl Schmitt’s state of emergency and the reemphasis on narratives of an ethnically Turkish nation-state accompanied by necropolitical approaches to both the oppositional Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the Kurdish population. The chapter argues that the Schmittian understanding of the state of exception, as well as biopolitical conceptualizations of sovereignty have made regime change possible.
