ABSTRACT
The 2016 post-coup attempt measures in Turkey have been evaluated as a process of backsliding on civic rights and freedoms. This contribution takes a different approach, arguing that the idea that a process of democratization in Turkey derailed after the coup only feeds the myth that there had been such a process of pre-coup democratization. In this article, it is argued that the reforms often held up as a ‘democratization’ were rather instruments opportunistically employed in the Justice and Development Party’s struggle to conquer the state from a Kemalist elite and to roll back and contain the Kurdish movement. This conquering of the state, referred to as an organizational coup, has now morphed into an overt authoritarianism, in which a regime of exceptions, not unknown to the Kurds and the Kurdistan region in Turkey, has become the norm.
