Political and Ideological Background to the Constitutional Amendment

The referendum formed the provisional end point of a constitutional debate that had flared repeatedly since 1982, when the putschists of the 1980 coup had a new constitution approved by referendum before lifting martial law. The 1982 constitution defined nation and state in ethnically Turkish terms and privileged Sunni Islam over other sects and religions. Still, the constitutional commitment to secularist principles remained intact. As a result, the new con­stitution severely narrowed the space for legal politi­cal action and legitimised extra-parliamentary vetoes, first and foremost, that of the military. In the 1990s, it became a central obstacle to further democratisa­tion.

The AKP government built these criticisms of the 1982 constitution into its campaign to introduce a presidential system, presenting the proposed con­sti­tutional amendments as a necessary step to free the elected legislature and executive from the tutelage of the military, bureaucratic and judicial elites. In fact, since the introduction of the multi-party system in 1946, elite intervention in the political process was not uncommon. Three military coups – in 1960, 1971 and 1980 – were directed against conservative governments. In 1997, the military forced the resig­nation of the Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, and the AKP only narrowly escaped being banned by the Constitutional Court in 2008 – while governing with an absolute majority. Against this background, Erdoğan presented his plans for a presi­dential system as a means to democratise the country. But it gradually became apparent that Erdoğan’s em­phasis on democratisation was largely rhetorical and far from expanding the space for political participation, strengthening the rule of law or protecting the division of powers. In fact, the constitutional amend­ment skated over the authoritarian aspects of the 1982 constitution, which remained untouched.³

According to Erdoğan “more democracy” means a situation where the constitution, state and govern­ment – the entire political system – represent the cultural, moral and religious values of the large cons­ervative section of the population. Previous constitutions had failed to embody ‘the nation’s values’ because, Erdoğan asserted, they had been ‘imported’ from the West rather than ‘grown on this [local] soil’.⁴ Erdoğan conceives the Turkish nation in strongly religious and conservative terms, as a Turkish Muslim confessional community (millet).⁵

Figure 1

The demand for a culturally authentic constitution has far-reaching political implications. One marker of its ‘authenticity’ is that the new constitution estab­lishes a system ‘based on our long-standing traditions of government’,⁶ referring to the imperial governance of the Ottomans as Erdoğan reads it. Further, it is asserted, all political powers – executive, legislative, judicial – should reflect the nation’s identity and intentions, and should not come into conflict with one another. Erdoğan did indeed note that the old constitution created ‘a conflictual rather than a har­monious relationship between the political powers’.⁷ The reason for this, he said, was the desire of the old elites to curtail the will of the people – as represented by the elected government – through the judiciary placing tight limits on the actions of the government. From this perspective, the solution lies in ideological and political conformity: ‘If the new constitution adopts the spirit of harmony and balance rather than conflict, and if the political powers complement ra­ther than weaken one another, the problem resolves itself’.⁸

According to Erdoğan, it is, however, not only the old constitution and the old political system that osten­sibly lack harmony with ‘the nation’s values’. The existing laws similarly fail to reflect the will of the people. ‘If we had acted pedantically in reshaping Tur­key, we would have gotten nowhere’, he said, and continued: ‘We achieved what we achieved by inter­preting the laws as we saw fit. Otherwise, the bureau­cratic oligarchy would have come along and laid down the law and our hands would have been tied’.⁹

Five cornerstones identify this worldview. The first is the ideal of a culturally homogenous and thus con­flict-free nation, which is in essence a ‘confessional community’ on the basis of Islam’s centrality to its identity. The nation thus defined is the bearer of the country’s culture, defining its character and shaping its fate. The second is the postulate of an overriding political conflict between the nation as confessional community, suppressed by an elite alienated from its own culture. Third is the assertion that many existing laws serve primarily to maintain that repression, and therefore lack validity. This applies, fourthly, also to the division of powers, raison d’être of which is to perpetuate the conflict between the people and the elite. This conflict can only be overcome, fifthly, by placing power in the hands of an individual who con­sistently embodies the nation’s identity and inten­tions and – because directly elected – need to share his power with no-one.¹⁰ The constitutional amend­ments reflect this particular perspective on political representation, institutional checks-and-balances, and national identity. They concentrate the powers of the executive in a single person, weaken the parliament’s control over the executive, make the president the cen­tre of a competing legislature, and drastically strength­en the executive’s influence over the judi­ci­ary.¹¹

A New Constellation of Powers

The concentration of executive powers in a single per­son involves the president simultaneously assuming the powers of the prime minister and the council of ministers (the cabinet), both of which were abolished by the new system (Article 8). Ministers are now chosen not among members of parliament, but from outside; they are appointed and dismissed by the presi­dent without the parliament’s involvement, and thus are reduced to the status of a political civil serv­ant (Article 106). The President also chooses alone his own deputy and appoints the senior civil servants in all ministries. As such, he directly controls the bu­reau­cracy without the involvement of a cabinet.

Parliament is no longer required to confirm the government. It can no longer hold confidence votes, nor dismiss the government on political grounds (Articles 75–100). Parliamentary questions are ad­dressed to the deputy president and the ministers and answered in writing (Article 98). No minister is required to answer to parliament and no sanctions are provided for failure to respond (Article 98). Par­lia­ment only has the possibility to initiate investigations against the president in the case of criminal mis­conduct, and that requires a three-fifths majority. Launch­ing a criminal prosecution against the presi­dent requires a two-thirds majority (Article 105).¹² Otherwise parliament can only force early presiden­tial elections by dissolving itself with a three-fifths majority. Parliamentary and presidential elections are always held simultaneously.

The constitutional amendments also water down parliament’s legislative monopoly.

The constitutional amendments also water down parliament’s legislative monopoly. One tool to this end is the expanded presidential veto: Parliament now requires an absolute majority of its members to override a presidential veto of legislation it has passed, rather than a simple majority of those present.¹³ Another instrument is the presidential decrees that – unlike legislative decrees previously issued by the council of ministers – cannot be chal­lenged before the Council of State, the highest administrative court, by any affected citizen.¹⁴ Now cases against presidential decrees can be brought to the Constitutional Court only by the two largest parliamentary groups, or by a group of deputies representing one-fifth of the seats in parliament.¹⁵ Even though the president normally can only use presidential decrees to regulate matters that are not already covered by legislation, this changes under a state of emergency, which the president can now declare on his own. The permissible grounds are extremely broadly couched. Under a state of emergency there are no limits to the scope of presidential decrees, against which no objections can be lodged with the Constitutional Court. Under these circum­stances, presidential decrees come into immediate effect without requiring parliament’s approval. Par­lia­ment can only act retrospectively to cancel them.

Yet, such a parliamentary majority is extremely unlikely in the new system because future presiden­tial and parliamentary elections will be held on the same day. This design aims at ensuring the desired political alignment of executive and legislature, lim­it­ing the possibility of a sound power division between them. On a rhetorical level, such a construction ren­ders the government liable to represent the vote as a moment of fate for nation and state, as happened in the 2018 elections. Given the depth of polarisation within Turkish society, the AKP most likely assumed that this would almost automatically lead to the vic­tory of the conservative bloc’s presidential candidate.

Moreover, the new constitution allows the presi­dent to be a member of a political party. Immediately after the referendum, Erdoğan unsurprisingly resum­ed the AKP leadership, enabling him to control the largest parliamentary party as well as the executive. This combination permits the president and his party to exercise far-reaching influence over the judiciary as apparent in the composition of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors, which appoints judges and prosecutors to the lower courts. Two of its members are the justice minister and secretary of state, who are ap­pointed by the president. The president also appoints another four members, while parliament chooses seven. If no consensus is achieved in parliament, only a simple majority is required – meaning that the gov­erning party (or the group of parties backing the government) can ultimately determine all the mem­bers appointed by parliament.¹⁶ The same applies to the composition of the Constitutional Court. Twelve of its 15 members are appointed by the president, three by parliament, if necessary, by simple majority.¹⁷

Structure and Expansion of the Executive

On 1 October 2018, in his address at the opening of parliament after the summer recess, Erdoğan noted that he possessed sole executive power, and that all veto powers had been abolished.¹⁸ The president’s power over institutions is indeed enormous. He alone appoints all ministers and all senior civil servants in all departments. All the central agencies (generally known as başkanlık or ‘presidiums’) exercising direct control over the bureaucracy, the military, the econo­my, the media, civil society and public religious life are answerable to him: the State Supervisory Council (DDK), whose inspectors are responsible for investigations throughout the bureaucratic apparatus, includ­ing the military; the Secretariat-General of the Nation­al Security Council (MGKGS) which coordinates pro­mo­tions within the armed forces; the Presidium of the Defence Industries (SSB) which manages procure­ment projects; and the Presidium for Strategy and Budget (SBB) which prepares the state budget. The Turkey Wealth Fund (TVF) established in August 2016 bundles the assets of major state enterprises and gives the president a crucial role in investment decisions, while the Presidency of Religious Affairs (DIB) defines the official version of Islam at home and forms the reli­gious flank of Turkish diplomacy abroad.¹⁹

The president also heads four inter-ministerial “offices” (ofis) dealing with the cross-cutting issues of digitali­sation, investment, finance and personnel. Together with the aforementioned presidiums they form a kind of parallel administration vis-à-vis the ministries, which they also oversee.²⁰ In addition to his many advisors, President Erdoğan has surrounded himself with new ‘councils’ (kurul). These institutionalised gatherings of representatives of business, academia, politics and civil society are tasked to develop ‘long-term visions and strategies’ in almost all policy areas, to monitor the work of the ministries, to prepare ‘pro­gress reports’ and submit ‘policy recommendations’.²¹ As such they assume functions that would normally fall in the domain of political parties and parliament. Yet, they serve only the President rather than the political sphere.

The President’s reach extends to the in­telligence service as well, whose role has steadily expanded in recent years.

The President’s reach extends to the intelligence service as well, whose role has steadily expanded in recent years. An amendment to the Law on State In­tel­ligence Services in 2014 led to the National Intel­ligence Organisation (MIT) assuming operational tasks, immensely expanding its access to documents

and resources of other agencies, and massively streng­thening the criminal immunity enjoyed by its mem­bers.²² Legislative Decree No. 694 of 15 August 2017 further expanded its powers and placed it under the sole control of the president.²³ Where the head of MIT had hitherto been appointed by the president ‘at the proposal of the prime minister, following consulta­tions in the National Security Council’, the president gained the right to make the appointment without consultation; the same also applies to the second and third management tiers.²⁴

Another point relates to the expanded influence of the intelligence service among the different elements of the security apparatus. Paragraph 41 of the afore­mentioned decree authorises MIT to operate within the armed forces and to gather intelligence concerning the military and civilian staff of the Defence Minis­try. That power had previously been denied to it, as a legacy of the former institutional autonomy of the military complex and its resulting strong political influence in ‘old Turkey’ – which has now been sup­posedly overcome. Today MIT’s central role is not restricted to counterterrorism and monitoring the bureaucracy. President Erdoğan apparently also uses it to keep his own party under control. For example, in January 2019 he stated publicly that the National Intelligence Organisation and the Police Intelligence Department would screen the AKP’s candidates for the local elections ‘from head to toe’.²⁵

Parliament Weakened

Stripped of parliamentary immunity, the criminalisation and vilification of deputies is not uncommon. A total of 33 legal proceedings were sent to the parlia­ment on 24 February 21, including those to remove the immunity of nine deputies from the pro-Kurdish left-leaning People’s Democratic Party (HDP).²⁶ In June 2020, three MPs from the leading opposition party Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the HDP were stripped of their immunity.²⁷ In accord with the rheto­ric that the president and his party alone rep­resent the nation, the government again sharpened its tone towards the opposition following the elec­tions on 24 June 2018 as well as ahead of the local elections on 31 March 2019, accusing the CHP of supporting ‘terrorist organisations’.²⁸ Such accusa­tions have since continued. Yet, criminalisation of deputies goes far back. In 2016, the parliament voted (376 out of 550) to lift the immunity of HDP MPs. Since then, many deputies from the HDP have been arrested and some including the party’s co-chairs Sela­hattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ were sentenced to jail.²⁹

In open violation of the constitution, even speeches before parliament can lead to criminal investigations where laws are interpreted flexibly, and facts delib­erately twisted.³⁰ Political and prosecutorial pressure on opposition deputies is heightened by the executive’s intervention against parliament’s remaining rights. Turkey’s Grand National Assembly, as it is offi­cially called, finds its legislative monopoly gradually hollowed out by excessive use of legislative decrees. This trend began in summer 2016 with emergency decrees under the state of emergency,³¹ and contin­ued with presidential decrees. According to the data collected by the CHP, President Erdoğan, since the transition into the new system, wrote and approved 2,229 sections, whereas the parliament discussed only 1,429 sections of legislation.³²

The National Assembly’s budgetary rights are also being further eroded in practice. Already before the transition into the presidential system, one key issue concerning the Assembly’s budgetary rights was the growing lack of transparency.³³ Similar to 2016 and 2017 budgets in which unspecified expenses were particularly high in ‘payments to construction com­panies’, the 2019 draft budget, which was the first to be presented by the President’s Office, did not list payments to construction firms for public-private infrastructure projects.³⁴ This is significant because these projects are especially susceptible to corruption. The executive’s persistent overruns without a sup­plementary budget also undermine the parliament’s budgetary rights.³⁵ Moreover, recent legal changes made in October 2020 to the budgetary classification rules also add to the existing ambiguities about trans­parency and accountability.³⁶

The government keeps its cards close to its chest on other issues as well. At the end of August 2018, 435 of 440 parliamentary inquiries to ministries or the Presi­dent’s Office had received no response within the spe­cified period.³⁷ The government increasingly refuses even to accept questions, on the grounds that they are formulated in a ‘crude’ or ‘hurtful’ way, particularly referring to the use of expressions such as ‘assimila­tion’, ‘torture’, ‘discriminatory practices’, ‘Kurdish entity’ (in Iraq), ‘violation of rights of civilians’ or ‘sexual violence’.³⁸ In another restriction of parlia­ment’s rights to information and political oversight, the executive withholds relevant information on the activities of the TVF.³⁹ All this occurs despite the AKP’s control over the parliament – holding as it does the chair of all parliamentary committees⁴⁰ – and parliament is unable to pursue any initiative against its will.

Undermining Local Government

Local government is also not immune to the personalisa­tion and centralisation of power; but increasing control over municipalities preceded the presidential system. A state of emergency decree issued a couple of months after the 2016 coup attempt allowed the government to replace elected mayors in the Kurdish southeast and east by ‘trustees’, who were appointed by the interior minister.⁴¹ By the time local elections were held in March 2019, a total of 95 mayors had been removed from office.⁴²

The second step targeted representatives from Erdoğan’s own party. In late summer 2017, he forced seven AKP mayors to resign and instead, had his own personal choices elected.⁴³ These included the mayors of Ankara and Istanbul, the two largest conurbations with populations of five and 15 million respectively. Moreover, in October 2018 the Interior Ministry dis­missed 259 properly elected muhtars⁴⁴ on the grounds that there was reason to believe that they stood ‘in connection with structures assessed to represent a danger to national security’.⁴⁵ Neither proper dis­ci­plinary proceedings nor court rulings preceded their removal from office.

Erdoğan made it clear that he would be choosing the AKP’s candidates for the 2019 local elections.

Erdoğan also made it clear that he would be choosing the AKP’s candidates for the 2019 local elections.⁴⁶ He announced that in the Kurdish areas he would prevent HDP candidates who had been put forward ‘in coordination with the terror organisation’ (referr­ing to the PKK) from standing. As such, he usurped responsibility for decisions that are actually the pre­rogative of the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK), which is theoretically an independent institution. If need be, he said, such individuals would again be replaced by ‘trustees’ after the election.⁴⁷ After the local elections of March 2019, the Interior Minister removed the mayors of 47 of the 65 municipalities in which the HDP came out as the winner and replaced them by trustees once more.⁴⁸

Even though a similar system of trustees was not applied to the opposition-won municipalities in Istan­bul and Ankara, the central government has since then either ‘generated decrees to return much of the metropolitan municipalities’ powers to the ministries, or – like in Istanbul – the AKP-led Metropolitan Municipality council has managed to take over the decision-making power’.⁴⁹ Opposition-run municipal­ities were even prohibited by the Ministry of Interior from collecting donations at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic after Erdoğan had announced a national donation campaign, mimicking similar cam­paigns initiated by the Istanbul and Ankara metro­politan municipalities. Criticising the CHP-run muni­cipalities for failing to provide services, Erdoğan signalled on 20 August 2020 the preparation of local governance reform to solve the ‘chronic problems’ of municipalities.⁵⁰ Last but not least, a presidential decree legislated on 21 January 2021 allows further cuts to budgetary funding allocated for debt restruc­turing and public debts.⁵¹

Increasing Dysfunctionality of the Judiciary

Not even the judiciary can escape the President’s con­centrated power. In February 2016 Erdoğan became the first Turkish president to publicly reject a ruling of the Turkish Constitutional Court.⁵² That rebuke prepared the ground for Istanbul’s 26th High Crimi­nal Court in January 2018 to ignore a ruling by the Constitutional Court requiring detained writers and journalists to be released. Instead, the High Criminal Court ordered that they remain in detention. Neither the Justice Minister nor the Council of Judges and Prosecutors protested against this violation of legal hierarchy, which made a complete mockery of legal security.

A recent example of the increasing dysfunctionality and politicisation of the judiciary is the Kafkaesque trial of the philanthropist Osman Kavala. On 18 Feb­ruary 2020, Kavala, together with eight other defend­ants, was acquitted from charges of attempting to ‘overthrow the government’ in connection with the Gezi demonstrations in 2013; only to be retaken into custody the same day on charges of attempting to ‘overthrow the constitutional order’ in connection with the 2016 failed coup attempt. In a speech he delivered on 19 February, the President noted that Kavala’s acquittal was due to the manoeuvres of some groups within the judiciary and that the court’s deci­sion would not change the perceptions of ‘our people’ that the ‘Gezi events were a heinous attack targeting the people and the state, just like military coups’.⁵³

It remains unclear whether Kavala’s acquittal was simply a legal tactic to circumvent the European Court of Human Rights ruling for his immediate release, as was the case also for Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-leader of the HDP.⁵⁴ It is also unclear whether the decision to acquit and then to re-detain were both related to a struggle within the judiciary, and how much Erdoğan knew in advance and controlled the process. This ambiguity about motivations and actors driving the decision-making process constitutes in and of itself a proof of the erosion of the judiciary’s institutional legitimacy.

Fear of acting independently of the Presi­dent increases the hesitation of judges and prosecutors during the decision-making process.

In 2020, new legislation, accepted in parliament on 11 July 2020 through the votes of the AKP and the MHP, introduced a multiple bar system. The new system allows the two parties increasing control over bar associations by interfering in their elections, on the one hand, and in the selection of association heads, on the other hand.⁵⁵ As such, the judiciary today suffers from high levels of politicisation. By summer 2018, the state prosecutor was prepared to investigate anyone who criticised the economic situation.⁵⁶ Fear of acting independently of the Presi­dent increases the hesitation of judges and prosecutors during the decision-making process. The criminal investigation started by the Council of Judges and Pros­ecutors on the judges who ruled for acquittal of the defendants in the Gezi trial is in this respect tell­ing.⁵⁷

Still, political instrumentalisation is not the only difficulty with which the Turkish judiciary must contend. The extent of the transformation within the judiciary was starkly revealed by the purges of the bureaucracy following the failed coup. The turmoil of recent years calls into question the proper function­ing of the courts as a whole. About four thousand judges and prosecutors have been dismissed since the attempted coup, more than one-third of the total. Around seven thousand new officials were appointed in their place, many of them novices.⁵⁸ Even in the higher courts many judges now lack requisite experi­ence.⁵⁹ The Turkish judiciary was already chronically overstretched before these events, and the quality of jurisprudence was deteriorating rapidly. Little more than one quarter of the population still trusts the judi­ciary,⁶⁰ and even state agencies increasingly ignore legal rulings where it suits their interests.⁶¹

A Largely Paralysed Bureaucracy

Ever since coming to power in 2002 the AKP has com­plained about the ‘cumbersome’ and ‘ineffective’ bureaucracy, which was perceived as a hindrance to the government’s ambitious plans.⁶² Among the moti­vations to introduce the presidential system was to jolt the bureaucracy into action and slim down the state.⁶³ Yet, bureaucracy has grown under the AKP government, with the number of public employees rising from 2.7 per 100 population to 4.2 between 2003 and 2018.⁶⁴ Despite the decline in overall em­ployment, public sector employment has continued to increase since that time. As of June 2020, a total of 4,767,286 Turks hold public service jobs.⁶⁵ Despite such rapid growth of the public sector, the administration appears paralysed for a number of reasons.

The first is purging the actual or putative support­ers of the preacher Fethullah Gülen – who the government blames for the attempted coup in 2016 – and the subsequent appointment of new staff to the vacant posts. The extent of this restructuring is enormous, constituting the biggest purge in the his­tory of the Republic of Turkey: 559,064 people have been investigated, 261,700 have been detained, and 91,287 have been remanded to pre-trial detention.⁶⁶ Yet, the process seems to be ongoing, with arrests continuing to occur and civil servants still being removed. Secondly, a reconfiguration of the executive’s nerve centres is under way. The Prime Minis­ter’s Office was dissolved, as officials took up their posts in newly created institutions in the more than one thousand offices of the Presidential Palace. At the same time – supposedly to streamline decision-mak­ing – the number of ministries was reduced from 26 to 16, leading to further wrangling and major re­shuffles. Thirdly, dissatisfaction is proliferating with­in the civil service. Central personnel management is hopelessly overstretched. In the immediate aftermath of the transition into the new system, large numbers of officials found themselves in limbo, relieved of their former function but not yet assigned to a new responsibility.⁶⁷ It was primarily to AKP depu­ties that unhappy officials turned, warning that frustration over the difficulties of the transition threat­ens to morph into open rejection of the new system,⁶⁸ especially given the sketchy justification for the deep restructuring.

A fourth factor negatively impacting the state insti­tutions is the high level of politicisation that they have been subject to. According to a report by the US State Department, purges have often been conducted ‘on the basis of scant evidence and minimal due pro­cess’.⁶⁹ Their character is thus highly arbitrary and political, generating a climate of fear within the bureaucracy. New appointments are generally decid­ed not by qualifications and suitability but by extra­neous loyalties such as membership in religious net­works, political parties and closeness to Erdoğan and his family. From 2003, shortly after it first took office, the AKP – whose own cadre of appropriately trained candidates was quite thin – paved the way for sup­porters of Fethullah Gülen and graduates of his schools to join the civil service, especially the police, judi­ciary, intelligence service and military.⁷⁰ Since the failed coup, adherents of extreme conservative reli­gious orders and members of the MHP have been occupying the newly vacant posts en masse.⁷¹ In fact the opening of the bureaucracy – especially the police and intelligence service – to members of the MHP forms the basis of the party’s alliance with the AKP.⁷² Correspondingly poor is the quality of the new recruits, whose institutional activities tend to lack objectivity and adherence to rules. Politicisation of bureaucracy as such blurs the boundaries between party membership and public office.

Alongside suspected adherents of the Gülen move­ment as well as liberal and secular actors, AKP cadres who fail to convey an impression of unconditional personal loyalty to the President have also been ex­cluded. Personal loyalty to the President and loyalty to the AKP’s original objectives are no longer syn­ony­mous. This largely explains the apparent paradox that ‘pro-reform and mostly pro-AKP conservative ele­ments in the bureaucracy have largely been either purged, intimidated or side-lined, and the higher echelons have once again been filled by pre-2010 nationalist/secularist elements that saw the post-July 15 purges as a second chance to resuscitate their “entitlement” to power’.⁷³

Even before the official introduction of the presidential system in June 2018, pro-AKP members of the bureaucracy were complaining about a ‘weakening’ or even ‘collapse’ of the institutions.⁷⁴ A ‘triangle’ of President’s Office, Interior Ministry and Ministry of Justice, it was asserted, determined the entire activity of the government and closed itself entirely to influ­ence from any other political actor. Even at that time, formally independent economic and financial regu­lators such as the Competition Authority (RK), the Central Bank (TCMB), the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK), the Banking Regulation and Super­vision Board (BDDK) and the Capital Markets Board (SPK) were finding it hard to contradict the President’s orders.⁷⁵ The transition made this situation worse. A climate characterised by power struggles, party pro­portionality, deep mistrust and an expectation of absolute loyalty is anything but conducive to recruit­ing personnel with real qualifications. It stifles initia­tive and leads to procedural rules, decrees and laws being interpreted and applied with a degree of par­tiality, rendering predictable and reliable institutional activity impossible, as the following section demon­strates.

Deteriorating Quality of Institutions: Examples

Examples of institutional deterioration in terms of lacking objectivity and political neutrality abound, extending from the very top down to local administrations. The Turkish Wealth Fund is one primary example. In September 2018, Erdoğan appointed him­self chair of its executive board with a presidential decree, and chose as his deputy his son-in-law Berat Albayrak, who resigned from his post at the Fund on 27 November 2020. Managing resources worth around US$33.5 billion and amounting to 40 percent of the central budget, the Fund has become a political and financial instrument in the hands of the President (and until recently also his family), arbitrarily regu­lating and using state-owned economic assets.

The Wealth Fund is exempt from the oversight of the Court of Auditors and subject to independent auditing. Yet, the independence of the procedure is highly questionable. The auditing in 2018 was con­ducted by the State Supervisory Council, members of which are appointed by the President.⁷⁶ Conclusions of the auditors were only discussed at the National Assembly in June 2020. Neither the board members (excluding the general manager) nor the managers were present during the discussion.

State institutions’ collapse into crony net­works – and the influence of the President and his family – is expan­sive.

State institutions’ collapse into crony networks – and the influence of the President and his family – is expansive. In October 2018 it became known that the President’s appointee as director-general of the state-owned electricity generator EAÜS AG was a partner in a firm whose customers included the power company. That is, the new director-general can direct public orders to his own private company.⁷⁷ The Turkish Statistics Institute’s deputy director responsible for determining the rate of inflation had to vacate his desk around the same time after announcing the latest figures – which were far higher than the fore­casts announced by then Finance Minister Albayrak. A close associate of the minister replaced the offi­cial.⁷⁸ In early November 2018 the deputy chair of the Court of Accounts resigned ‘at his own request’. In October the press had discussed reports addressing profligacy in the Presidential Palace and extensive corruption in government agencies.⁷⁹ Transparency International called on the Turkish judiciary to follow up the Court of Accounts reports with legal investigations. In July 2019, the Central Bank governor, Murat Çetinkaya, was dismissed by Erdoğan because he did not lower interest rates in line with the President’s request. Only 14 months later, on 7 November 2020, the newly appointed CB governor, Murat Uysal, was also ousted after the lira plunged to record lows.

Examples of institutional deterioration are not limited to the economic realm. In October 2016 an emergency decree stripped state universities of their already restricted right to choose their own rectors, with the power passing instead to the President.⁸⁰ Since then there have been increasing reports of uni­versity rectors acting as AKP representatives or even personal emissaries of the President.⁸¹ Moreover, with a new law legislated in April 2020, the Supreme Coun­cil of Education was given new duties including the power to shut down universities which have been temporarily inactive.⁸² Şehir University, which was founded by Ahmet Davutoğlu – former prime minis­ter and the founder of Gelecek Party – was shut down in June 2020. The new governance system also allows the President to launch university faculties without any consultation with the university ad­min­istration.⁸³

Emigration and Capital Flight

Unsurprising in this atmosphere of deteriorating quality of state institutions is that certain societal sec­tions are already ‘voting with their feet’. Even though emigration peaked in the aftermath of the coup attempt with the number of emigrants – Turk­ish citi­zens and foreigners without refugee status – grow­ing by 42.5 percent from 2016 to 2017, to almost 254,000,⁸⁴ it still continues, albeit at a slower pace. A recent survey shows that one in every two Turkish citizens wants to live abroad and even one in three voters for the AKP wants to leave Turkey.⁸⁵ According to official statistics, 330,289 people left Turkey in 2019.⁸⁶ Among these, those aged between 25 and 29 made up the highest proportion. Since the 2016 failed coup attempt, the number of Turkish asylum-seekers has grown continuously, with a cumulative total of more than 35,000 applying in EU member states.⁸⁷ Rather than leaving immediately, others have been making thorough preparations. In 2016 and 2017 about two thousand Jewish Turkish citizens acquired Portuguese nationality as their entry ticket to the EU.⁸⁸ After Chinese and Russians, Turkish citizens represent the third largest group acquiring a five-year residence permit for Greece by investing at least €250,000.⁸⁹ Between 2016 and 2018 the number of Turkish applications for an American Green Card also rose by 65 percent.⁹⁰

Capital is fleeing as well. In 2018, the year in which Turkey was also hit by a severe currency crisis, the country lost about 10 percent of its billionaires, the highest rate among the top ten countries accord­ing to the net outflow of wealth.⁹¹ In 2019, a total of $2.8 billion in long-term investment left the country. In 2019, foreign direct investment flows declined by 35 percent, to nearly 8.4 billion.⁹² International firms are putting investments on hold, with many planning to move existing production facilities to neighbouring countries in South-Eastern Europe. For instance, in July 2020, Volkswagen announced abandoning plans to build a factory in Turkey.⁹³

Creeping Loss of Voters and the Growing Share of Undecided Voters

It is a good nine years since the AKP reached its zenith. At the parliamentary elections in June 2011, it was able to garner the support of almost half the voters: 21.3 million votes amounting to 49.8 percent of the total. Since then, the party has experienced alternating decline and stagnation at the ballot box. And even though Erdoğan won the 24 June 2018 presidential election in the first round against four rivals, with an absolute majority of 52.6 percent – one percentage point more than he gained in 2014, when he was first directly elected president – in the 2018 elections he had to rely (as he did in November 2015 snap elections) on the votes of the nationalist MHP.

In 2014, the MHP still strictly rejected the presidential system and called on its supporters to vote for one of the opposition candidates. In 2018, the AKP vote alone was no longer sufficient: in the simultaneous parliamentary elections the party gained only 42.6 percent, with voter surveys showing that about one presidential vote in five was attributable to the MHP. Adding insult to injury, in the 2019 local elections the AKP lost Istanbul and Ankara metropolitan munici­palities to the National Alliance’s candidates, Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş.

Crucial in the defeat was the changing nature of electoral politics in Turkey. The transition to the presi­dential system introduced the alliance logic as the new parameter in electoral rivalry because in the new system any candidate requires at least 50 per­cent +1 of the votes to be elected as president in the first round.

Even the strategy to replace declining AKP votes with MHP support has run its course with growing signs of decreasing support, especially in major and coastal cities and among young people. In the 2018 parliamentary elections the AKP lost almost one in ten of its voters to the MHP.⁹⁹ In a speech MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli delivered after the elections, he noted that the ‘Turkish nation has not only brought his party to a key position within the parliament, it also gave the MHP a major responsibility to balance power’.¹⁰⁰ Even though Erdoğan won the presidency, the MHP – the AKP’s alliance partner – continues to wield significant political influence, sometimes even to the disadvantage of the President and the AKP.

In the 2019 local elections, for instance, the AKP paid heavily because of its alliance with the MHP and, relatedly, due to the framing of the elections as a matter of the country’s territorial integrity and sur­vival.¹⁰¹ This rhetorical tactic, firstly, worked in favour of the AKP’s extreme nationalist partner MHP, which won eleven municipalities, up from the eight municipalities it had captured in the previous local elections in 2014. Moreover, of these 11 municipalities, seven were taken from the AKP. The alarmist propaganda, secondly, turned the local elections into a de facto referendum on the People’s Alliance. Los­ing the major metropolitan municipalities to the oppo­sition was thus a major loss for the AKP.

Conservative Criticism of the Policies of Recent Years

The mounting dissatisfaction within the AKP milieu – and even within its organs and branches – is greater than its still relatively strong electoral support would suggest. The most recent sign of this is the formation of two splinter parties, DEVA, led by Ali Babacan, one of the AKP’s founding members who later served as minister for economy and finance as well as foreign minister, and Gelecek headed by the former foreign minister and short-lived prime minister Ahmet Davu­toğlu, whom Erdoğan forced to resign from the post of prime minister in May 2016. Both parties have in­creased their membership numbers since their respec­tive founding in March 2020 and December 2019. As of 12 January 2021, DEVA has 15,862 registered members, whereas Gelecek has 18,281.¹⁰² These new parties constitute a considerable challenge to the AKP due to their potential to offer an alternative to the AKP’s disillusioned religiously conservative voters. In addition, they also risk disintegrating the party. Former AKP members such as Mustafa Yeneroğlu, ex-interior minister Beşir Atalay, Selçuk Özdağ, Ayhan Sefer Üstün and Abdullah Başcı resigned and joined the new parties. So did former AKP mayors and pro­vincial heads who were dismissed from duty. Aware of the challenge that these splinter parties might cause, President Erdoğan not only occasionally attacks them but also reportedly work towards preventing further departures from the party. The President’s recent moves for rapprochement with the Muslim conservative SP and the Nationalist Outlook move­ment should be interpreted within this context.

The growing discontent is, however, not new and definitely not confined to the formation of new par­ties. Kemal Öztürk, former advisor to Erdoğan, former chair of the supervisory board of the state news agency, Anadolu Agency, and a former columnist at the pro-Erdoğan Yeni Şafak, criticised in his column in May 2019 the Supreme Election Council’s decision to rerun the Istanbul elections: ‘Ekrem Imamoğlu will become an important political figure as someone whose mayorship was taken away’.¹⁰³ When Yeni Şafak refused to publish the piece, Öztürk announced that he would suspend writing for a while and shortly after joined the monthly Islamist Sebîlürreşâd.¹⁰⁴

One of the earliest signs of dissatisfaction within the AKP milieu was the establishment in April 2015 of the newspaper Karar¹⁰⁵ to constructively criticise the party and its leadership, emphasising the im­portance of rule of law and economic reforms. Its column­­ists state that ‘collective decision making’ (as opposed to personalisation and centralisation of power) had once made Turkey into a country that the ‘democratic world’ had lauded as a model for the entire region.¹⁰⁶ Karar’s authors, including theologi­ans, regularly argue against viewing Islam as the basis for a political programme, or instrumentalising it to legitimise an authoritarian style of governance.¹⁰⁷ Most of its columnists had previously been marginalised in the pro-government press or had already been shown the door. In 2018, the editorial board of Karar issued a statement noting that since the establish­ment of its print version the newspaper had faced an unofficial advertising boycott, subjecting firms that buy space to government pressure and risking loss of business.¹⁰⁸

Discontent is proliferating even among the Islamists.

Discontent is proliferating even among the Islamists. Abdurrahman Dilipak, chief ideologist of the radical newspaper Yeni Akit, has for a while now been criticising Erdoğan for believing he could decide every­thing on his own and, thus, for making mis­takes. Dilipak castigates the greed and profligacy that have taken hold in the AKP and criticises the presidential system for blurring the boundaries between bureaucracy, the AKP’s provincial organisation and munici­palities.¹⁰⁹ The sharpest criticism from the conserva­tive religious camp was formulated in early Novem­ber 2018 by Cihangir İslam, when he was still an MP for the SP. He said the AKP had to be held account­able for having illegally shared out the state and bureaucracy with the followers of the preacher Gülen. In those days, he said, the AKP was using the fight against ‘FETÖ’ to muzzle any opposition.¹¹⁰

Degrading the AKP to the President’s Electoral Machine

Party members can certainly no longer express such criticisms publicly. Decisions are made by a small circle around Erdoğan. This circle also decides the fate of mayors of AKP-governed cities. The ‘election’ of the Extended Central Executive Committee (MKYK) at the sixth party conference in August 2018 clearly showed where the buck stops: on the basis of a single list presented by the leadership, 60 percent of the mem­bers were replaced without discussion.¹¹¹ When it came to nominating candidates for parliament, no democratic pretence was required at all, with appli­cants placed on the lists quite officially by the party leadership. Although this practice is not exclusive to the AKP and is used by most of its rivals, a party leadership that sees no need to pay the slightest heed to internal balance but can instead change its can­didates for parliament at will and – as before the last election – replace about half of them is unusual even in Turkey.

Ali Babacan, Ahmet Davutoğlu and Beşir Atalay, all of whom are said to be close to former President Abdullah Gül, who had been widely expected to stand against Erdoğan for the presidency, were not on the candidate list.¹¹² Deputies suspected of erstwhile con­tact with the followers of the preacher Gülen were also excluded, along with, interestingly, the two chairs and four members of the parliamentary com­mission that investigated the attempted coup of 2016, which the government blames on the Gülenists. Kurdish deputies who had engaged in the AKP expli­citly in order to contribute to resolving the Kurdish question were also weeded out, including Mehmet Metiner, Orhan Miroğlu and Galip Ensarioğlu. Inter­esting to note here is that exclusion of Kurds from political representation is not only limited to the party but also extends to the bureaucracy.¹¹³

Erdoğan had already liberated himself almost com­pletely from party influence on his policies after his first election as president in August 2014. Today he again decides the fate of the AKP as party leader – but has cut himself and his government completely free of the party. In this way the party is degraded to his electoral tool and loses its function as a channel for political participation. Even though Erdoğan does not face overt challenge from within the party, there are signs of intra-party struggle among cliques for wider influence within the AKP.¹¹⁴ The popularity of Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu and of Defence Minister Hulusi Akar has recently been on the rise.

In an obvious move to counter inner-party rivals and to reaffirm his grip on the religious-conservative part of the electorate, President and party leader Erdo­ğan most recently is working towards the co-optation of persons and organisations from the so-called Milli Görüş movement. The movement is known as the traditional undercurrent of Turkey’s overtly Islamist parties in which Erdoğan started his political career and from which he separated himself when establish­ing the AKP in 2001. In preparation for the AKP’s seventh regular party conference, scheduled for 24 March 2021, Erdoğan announced Nuri Kabaktepe as the new head of the AKP’s most influential provincial organisation, that is, Istanbul. A former member of the religious-conservative SP, Kabaktepe served as an active member in various conservative foundations and is currently the deputy chairman of the Maarif Foundation’s board of trustees.¹¹⁵ Erdoğan presented Kabaktepe’s tenure as an attempt to ‘reach our 2023 goals with the spirit of 1994’, when Erdoğan was elected as the mayor of Istanbul on the ticket of the Islamist Welfare Party (RP).¹¹⁶ Besides Kabaktepe, four former SP members joined the board of the Istanbul organisation.¹¹⁷

Given the AKP’s weakening influence as a political party and its decreasing voter share, these moves are arguably in line with the President’s efforts to revi­tal­ise the party’s support base. The ease with which Erdoğan is able to not only determine appointments in the party but also manipulate the party’s ideologi­cal profile, clearly shows that the AKP has gradually turned into the President’s electoral machine.

From Adversary to Enabler of the Presidential System

The 2016 coup attempt emboldened the rapprochement between the AKP and the MHP. Just a few months after the attempted coup, Bahçeli proposed to Erdo­ğan that the parliament should discuss the AKP’s proposals to alter the constitution and introduce a presidential system, despite his earlier stark opposition to such a system. The MHP was ready, Bahçeli said, to let the nation decide: his party would support the proposal in parliament in order to open the way for a referendum.¹²¹ Three months later, in January 2017, the Grand National Assembly adopted the pro­posal for constitutional amendments with the votes of both parties. The proposal was approved in April 2017 with 51.4 percent of the votes in a popular referendum where the AKP and MHP campaigned jointly for the proposal.

Bahçeli’s assistance to Erdoğan did not end there. In January 2018, he declared that the MHP would not nominate a candidate of its own for the upcoming presidential election but instead called on its sup­por­ters to vote for Erdoğan. In return, the AKP agreed to an electoral alliance that guaranteed the MHP par­lia­mentary seats. On 24 June 2018 the alliance achieved an absolute majority with 53.7 percent of the votes. MHP’s electoral performance was undoubtedly one of the main surprises. Beating the forecasts of almost all pollsters, the party gained 11.1 percent of the votes, preserving its vote share in the November 2015 snap elections. This came as a surprise especially because of the formal split within the MHP in 2017 when Meral Akşener and several other dissidents left to form the İyiP which was expected by many to divide the nationalist vote. Important to note here, as will be further discussed in the next section, is that the MHP’s votes have since then been declining, whereas the IyiP has steadily increased its vote share.

What persuaded the MHP leader to make this U‑turn? When he first mooted his proposal in October 2016 – at a point when Erdoğan was already presi­dent but the presidential system still a long way off – Bahçeli himself said that he was concerned for rule of law. Although the office of president required its holder to display neutrality and reserve, he said, Erdoğan was continuing to govern the country as if he were still prime minister, and although he had stepped down as leader he was still acting as if he were the head of the AKP.¹²² If it was not possible to show the President the limits of his powers and force him to obey the constitution, Bahçeli said, then the constitution had to be changed. As absurd as that thought must sound under the premise of restoring the rule of law, the worry Bahçeli followed it up with – again cryptically – was real. He said that con­tinuous violations of the constitution set the politi­cal leadership at odds with the constitutional order and made the state vulnerable, exposing Turkey to great risks.

It was indeed the question of preserving the state (devletin bekası) that drove Bahçeli, and it still continues to do so. His concern is not democracy and rule of law; but preserving the state within the existing parameters of an (ethnically and culturally) Turkish republic that keeps non-state religious actors in check and excludes cultural or political concessions to its Kurd­ish citizens. Already in October 2016, Bahçeli asserted that after the coup attempt Turkey was ‘fight­ing for its very existence’.¹²³ Before the 2017 ref­er­endum on the constitutional amendment, he put it in a nutshell: The MHP supported the proposal for the sake of ‘the nation, the state and Turkishness’.¹²⁴

The Threat Perception

For Bahçeli, the failed coup was the writing on the wall and nothing would ever be the same as it was on 14 July: a warning that the state bureaucracy had been infiltrated by a religious secret society.¹²⁵ As well as being part of a mysterious international network, the group was also closely allied with the AKP, which Bahçeli believed had just placed dynamite underneath the foundations of the state by conducting nego­tiations with the PKK to resolve the Kurdish ques­tion and potentially calling into question the uni­tary character of the state and its nation. Large parts of the military, the security apparatus and the bureaucracy shared this perception, including numerous small – but in certain sectors well-established – secularist nationalist groups with Eurasian inclinations. For these actors, both the AKP’s policies and the presence of Gülen’s followers were a threat to the state, and restoration of the safeguards that enabled an inde­pend­ent state bureaucracy to rein in dangerous ex­peri­ments by the government was necessary.¹²⁶ Com­menting about the 2018 elections, Alaattin Çakıcı, an organised crime leader who was released from prison in 2020 in the context of a selective amnesty that the MHP demanded and politically put through, express­ed the underlying worldview much more explicitly than Bahçeli: ‘Those who cast their vote for the People’s Alliance did not vote primarily for Erdoğan but for the survival of the state that faced existential threats’.¹²⁷

The timing was auspicious for Bahçeli as the attempted coup had weakened the AKP and its lead­er­ship. This granted the MHP unexpected leeway and an opportunity to exert lasting influence on the gov­ern­ing party’s policies given the massive purges in the bureaucracy that pressured the AKP on two fronts. Given that the AKP’s voters and Gülen’s fol­lowers came from the same social milieu, the purges in the bureaucracy were inevitably going – sooner or later – to negatively affect support for the governing party. And the removal of countless government offi­cials created a vacuum into which MHP members and sup­porters could move or even return. In a speech he delivered in 2003, Bahçeli had complained that around 70 percent of the bureaucrats who were dis­missed by the AKP upon coming to power worked at the min­is­tries with the most MHP cadres.¹²⁸ The coup attempt enabled Bahçeli to reclaim these lost posi­tions.

Bahçeli’s political U-turn took place in this context. The MHP’s support for the new system opened the door for its cadres to enter the state bureaucracy, where they – together with anti-Western secularist forces and members of religious orders – filled the newly vacated posts. This has granted the MHP a degree of political influence much greater than its numerical representation in parliament because MHP cadres fit in easily with the bureaucracy’s deeply rooted authoritarian tradition. At the same time, Erdo­ğan and his AKP needed the alliance with the MHP to preserve electoral majority and remain in power. As a result, while the MHP developed into an overwhelmingly decisive political force, Erdoğan and his party found themselves on the defensive for the first time in years.

New Electoral Dynamics Unfold: The Local Elections of March 2019

The 2019 local elections served as a proof of the new system’s impact on Turkey’s future electoral develop­ment.¹³¹ The AKP considered gaining full command over municipalities the crowning finish in taking unlimited control over the country. Even though the AKP and MHP converted the local elections into a fateful struggle for the sheer survival of nation and state, the majority of the electorate in Turkey’s metro­politan and coastal cities cast their vote for the oppo­sition alliance’s candidates. In four out of five of Turkey’s largest metropolitan areas (Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Adana) the CHP candidates emerged victorious, and in two of them AKP mayors were ousted. The areas with local administration now run by the CHP make up 40 percent of the population. Among these, Istanbul alone contributes one third of the country’s economic output. Moreover, for the first time since the AKP’s ascent to power, the opposition not only defended the coastal areas of the Aegean and the Medi­terranean but stormed the town halls of the Ana­tolian municipalities surrounding the capital Ankara.

The results put an end to the apprehension that the opposition would entirely fail to challenge the AKP at the ballot box due to its ideological differences. In their rhetoric of a necessary return to de­moc­­racy, the CHP and IyiP limit themselves to reintroduc­ing parliamentarism in what they call an ‘enhanced version’.¹³² What exactly constitutes this proposed new form of parliamentarianism and what would be the main points of compromise among the parties constituting the Nation’s Alliance is at the moment of writing still unclear, at least publicly. The CHP and IyiP overwhelmingly stress the absence of meritocracy in state bureaucracy, deterioration of rule of law, and poor economic governance.¹³³ However, both parties – to shield themselves against the People’s Alliance vili­fication attempts and arguably not to scare off their voters – tend to sweep under the carpet the deci­sive role that Kurdish votes played in their success in the municipal elections. The splinter parties, DEVA and Gelecek, also share these concerns. Both CHP and IyiP also emphasise their commitment to the republican foundations of Turkey and to the figure of Atatürk as a distinct secular ruler. Yet, the leaders of both parties recently also seem to be paying special attention to not falling into the trap of culture wars concerning religion, at least in their rhetoric.

Declining Vote Share of the AKP/MHP Alliance

As a whole, electoral prospects for the AKP/MHP appear to be increasingly uncertain. According to the polls, the AKP’s voter share has been fluctuating within the 28.5–35 percent range since early 2020, whereas the MHP’s share has remained within the window of 6.7–8.5 percent.¹³⁴ Meanwhile, the per­centage of undecided voters remain high. In the most recent polls, the opposition alliance seems to be gather­ing more sympathy among voters than the People’s Alliance.¹³⁵

The ruling alliance’s electoral flexibility is increasingly limited. Even as bold a political move as the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque in July 2020 was, for instance, not enough to trigger a lasting upward effect in vote share. This also applies to foreign policy decisions that keep nationalist sen­timents high and rally the opposition around the flag; but seem to fail to generate a long-lasting impact on reviving support for the AKP/MHP. The ruling alli­ance’s electoral performance in the monthly polls is best defined by a steady downturn that is every now and then interrupted by short-term upward fluctuations driven by political events or statements. Sec­ondly, COVID-19 seems to have worsened electoral support for the AKP/MHP. In the pollster MetroPoll’s November 2020 survey, for instance, 63.7 percent noted that Turkey was on a negative track, whereas 21.5 percent expressed optimism towards the future.¹³⁶ Unsurprisingly, those surveyed said that economic concerns constituted the most important challenge facing Turkey at the current moment.

The Turkish economy was already ailing even before the COVID-19 crisis erupted, due to the com­bined effect of a weakening currency that was hit particularly hard during the 2018 crisis, a high cur­rent account deficit (one of the highest in the world¹³⁷) and last but not least, a maturing debt, more than half of which has been accrued during the last two decades by the private sector.¹³⁸ Turkey entered the pandemic without having fully recovered from the 2018 crisis. The unemployment rate within the non-agricultural sector increased from 11.8 percent in January 2018 to 14.7 percent in September 2020.¹³⁹ Lockdown measures during the first three months of the pandemic led to a significant decrease in labour force participation. With awareness of the high amounts of debt accrued by these enterprises and the growing rate of bad loans risking bankruptcy, in October 2020 the AKP announced the most comprehensive debt restructuring package in recent his­tory.¹⁴⁰ There is an urgent need for an influx of for­eign capital to foster economic growth and credit expansion.

Talk of Reform in Economy and Law

Against this backdrop of increasing competition by the opposition, the AKP/MHP alliance’s declining voter share, and last but not least, an ailing economy and pressing need for foreign capital, on 11 November President Erdoğan announced a new era of eco­nomic and legal reforms to improve the credibility and reliability of the Turkish economy.¹⁴¹

The announcement of upcoming reforms followed two rather dramatic events. Less than a week before this writing, on 6 November the governor of the Cen­tral Bank was sacked after the lira fell more than 30 percent against the dollar despite a series of interest rate hikes since August.¹⁴² He was replaced by Naci Ağbal who served as the Secretary of the Finance Minister between 2009 and 2015 and as the Finance Minister between 2015 and 2018, and as head of the Presidency of Strategy and Budget after the transition into the presidential system.

Still, if it were not for the rather unexpected and unconventional resignation two days later of Berat Albayrak, Erdoğan’s son-in-law, from his post as the Minister of Finance and Treasury, the ousting of the Central Bank’s head, which happened for the second time in 16 months, would alone have perhaps not signalled a major change in economic governance. Since the beginning of 2020, criticism has openly targeted Albayrak as the opposition leaders strongly connected economic woes to the personalisation of power and direct involvement of Erdoğan’s family.¹⁴³ During Albayrak’s tenure as the finance minister since 2018, the Central Bank net reserves hit negative as the bank is estimated to have sold over 100 billion dollars in the last year.¹⁴⁴ Albayrak was replaced by Lütfi Elvan, a former bureaucrat between 1989 and 2007, and the Minister of Transport, Maritime and Communication from 2013 to 2015.

Since the appointment of the new leadership, the lira has appreciated by nearly 11 percent.¹⁴⁵ The Cen­tral Bank increased interest rates from 10.25 percent to 15 percent – the largest increase since June 2018.¹⁴⁶ Meanwhile, the new Finance Minister together with the Justice Minister held meetings in November and December with different stakeholders including the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TÜSİAD), Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Ex­changes (TOBB) and the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (MÜSİAD) to discuss and consult about the scope of necessary economic and legal reforms.¹⁴⁷ Important to note here is that in the months leading to the announcement of reforms, TÜSİAD called on Ankara to respect the rule of law in order to boost Turkey’s economic credibility.¹⁴⁸ Yet, these efforts seem to have fallen on deaf ears as Cen­tral Bank’s new governor Ağbal was sacked on 20 March. Hitting the markets and investors as a big sur­prise, the decision led to a 15 percent fall in the lira.¹⁴⁹

Cracks within the Ruling Alliance

Still, further economic deterioration during Albayrak’s tenure and the mounting pressure by economic interest groups are arguably not the only reasons behind his resignation and its acceptance by the palace. Already for a couple of years now, there has been criticism within the AKP against Albayrak’s in­creasing influence over the President and the party at the expense of sidelining senior AKP members, while at the same time competing against Süleyman Soylu, the Interior Minister, who joined the AKP in 2012.¹⁵⁰ Through his positions as the finance minister and the deputy chairman of the Turkey Wealth Fund, Albay­rak held considerable power, and was also able to transfer public resources to cronies and loyalists. His influence seems to have extended beyond the party and reached to the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the media.¹⁵¹ Albayrak is often associated with the so-called Pelikan, a network of militant journalists and opinion leaders, at the centre of the controversy that led to Ahmet Davutoğlu’s resignation in 2016 as prime minister.¹⁵² The same network was also influ­ential in the decision to rerun the Istanbul municipal elections.¹⁵³ Further, Albayrak is reportedly supported by the so-called Istanbul Grubu, a clique within the judiciary.¹⁵⁴ This is the reason why some journalists even claimed in the immediate aftermath of the re­form announcements that the announced legal reforms were essentially about eliminating Albayrak’s reach within the judiciary.¹⁵⁵

Even though it is difficult to know the exact rea­sons behind the resignation and its acceptance by the President, discussions following the incident demon­strate that the cracks within the ruling alliance entered a new era at the beginning of November, and the balance of power seems to have been further tilted in favour of the MHP. This has been clear in the subsequent discussions about whether legal reforms should involve substantive changes concerning issues such as lengthy pre-trial detentions and the politicisa­tion of decision-making in judiciary. Critical com­ments by senior AKP members such as Justice Minis­ter Abdülhamit Gül¹⁵⁶ and AKP’s founding member Bülent Arınç¹⁵⁷ of existing practices, such as in the cases of Selahattin Demirtaş and Osman Kavala, were met with harsh response from not only Bahçeli¹⁵⁸ but also Erdoğan. The spat ended with the resignation of Arınç from his role as a member of the Presidential Supreme Consultation Board.

Devlet Bahçeli seems to be pulling the wires within the People’s Alliance in shaping the limits of policy, especially concerning law and order issues.

Taken together with the Constitutional Court’s ruling on 29 December 2020 that Osman Kavala’s imprisonment did not constitute a violation of his right to individual freedom and security,¹⁵⁹ and Erdo­ğan’s criticism about a week earlier against the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights ruling for an immediate release of Selahattin Demirtas,¹⁶⁰ Devlet Bahçeli seems to be pulling the wires within the People’s Alliance in shaping the limits of policy, especially concerning law and order issues. At the same time, he also works towards moulding the AKP after his own image. Erdoğan is on the defensive, as he had to sacrifice his son-in-law and loosen his grip on the economy. These increasingly visible and tense cracks render Turkey’s ruling alliance vulnerable and pre­vent stabilisation of the new governance system.

Responses from European Institutions and EU States

The introduction of the new system of government marked the provisional end of a development extend­ing over several years, and as such a turning point in the history of Turkey. This marks the unhappy end – for both Turkey and the EU – of a long period of reforms.

The European institutions and individual EU states reacted very differently to the dismantling of democ­racy and rule of law in Turkey. In 2016, the European Parliament called on the Commission to temporarily freeze accession talks on account of Turkey’s repres­sive measures under the state of emergency.¹⁶⁵ The Par­liamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided in April 2017 to place Turkey under monitoring again, pending action on the part of the country to adequately address the Council’s concerns over human rights, democracy and rule of law.¹⁶⁶ Just three months later, in July 2017, the European Par­lia­ment struck a sharper tone, calling on the Commission and the EU member states to officially suspend the acces­sion talks if Ankara implemented the planned con­stitutional reform amendments.¹⁶⁷ Al­though the gov­ernments of the member states have to date shied away from this step, the European Council noted on 26 June 2018, two days after official intro­duction of the presidential system, that Turkey had moved fur­ther away from the EU and the accession talks had de facto come to a standstill. It had neither been pos­sible to open or conclude accession chapters, nor was it planned to begin talks about modernising the EU-Turkish Customs Union.¹⁶⁸ On 20 February 2019, the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee voted to suspend the accession talks.¹⁶⁹

EU-Turkey relations have since then further deteri­orated. Turkish invasion of parts of Northeast Syria in October 2019 incited harsh reaction from the EU. On 14 October 2019, the EU Council issued a joint state­ment condemning Turkey’s military action and agree­ment by the member states to restrict arms exports to Ankara.¹⁷⁰ Shortly after, the MEPs called for sanctions against Turkey.¹⁷¹ Turkey’s decision on 28 February 2020 to open its border with Greece for the passage of refugees was another point of escalation in the rela­tions. In a joint press statement in Greece on 3 March, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen emphasised that the Greek border was ‘also a Euro­pean border’ and that EU leaders went to Greece ‘to send a very clear statement of European solidarity and support to Greece’.¹⁷² Most recently, the relations were further strained over the escalating tensions between Greece and Turkey in the Eastern Mediterra­nean. On 28 August 2020, the EU warned Turkey that it could face fresh sanctions unless it took steps to deescalate.¹⁷³ The European Council Conclusions on 1 October formalised this warning, while at the same time offering Turkey a positive agenda conditional upon the termination of aggression until the Decem­ber meeting. No significant sanctions came out of the December meeting and the offer of positive agenda continued. Even though March 2021 Conclusions con­tinued along the same path, the language was much more carefully crafted offering Turkey the prospect of a positive agenda as long as it continues de-escalation concerning the Eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus, on the one hand, and using the threat of sanctions in case of escalation. Since the end of 2020, Turkey has been in a charm offensive both against the EU and the US under the influence of Joe Biden’s election into the White House and deepening economic woes. Statements by various government officials in Turkey including the President himself following the US elec­tions underlined Ankara’s willingness to work to­gether with the Biden-Harris administration, whether towards resolving the S-400 issue or cooperating in containing Russia, and a willingness to improve rela­tions with the EU.

As EU-Turkey relations continue to crumble due to the deterioration of rule of law in Turkey, on the one hand, and the mounting discomfort within the EU about Turkey’s increasingly militaristic foreign policy, on the other hand, the governments of the member states are taking different positions vis-à-vis Turkey. Since the end of 2019, developments in Libya and in the Eastern Mediterranean have brought together France, Greece, Cyprus and Austria in their advocacy for a harsh and even military stance against Turkey. Italy, Spain and Germany, on the other hand, are seeking to avoid confrontation in order not to jeop­ardise economic relations with Turkey and coopera­tion over migration management.¹⁷⁴ As far as Turkey is concerned, modernisation of the Customs Union, continuation of EU financial support for refugees and visa-free travel for its citizens in the Schengen area seem to be the main demands.¹⁷⁵

Little Basis for Politics beyond Transactionalism

Moves by the Turkish government back towards democ­racy and rule of law are difficult to imagine in the coming years, still less reforms in the scope of the accession process. There are two great obstacles to efforts of this ilk. On the one hand, Erdoğan and his circle are deaf to European admonishments on liber­alisation and rule of law, and refuse to grant the op­po­sition greater leeway. On the other hand, the threat perception of the MHP and broad circles in the bureaucracy obstructs liberal reforms. In accord with the country’s authoritarian state tradition – which the AKP in its early years heavily criticised and vowed to transform – the latter two actors automatically equate democratic liberties and political rights (and even just acknowledgement of cultural plurality) with undermining the foundations of the state. Moreover, the rivalry and latent tension between the two ele­ments of the government camp (Erdoğan/AKP and MHP) suggest that the current deliberate strategy of polarisation and invocation of one new foreign threat after the other will continue, and the strongly anti-Western tone in Turkish politics will consolidate.

Although more determined than ever to bring an end to the presidential system, the parliamentary opposition faces significant challenges. Even though the defeat of the AKP in the 2019 local election was an important boost for the opposition, a rapid and smooth transition to democracy is not easy at the very least because the existing power relations are there to stay for the coming years, certainly until the next elec­tions in 2023. Another reason is the rapid de­terio­ration of state institutions. Those are poor prospects for a European policy that makes deeper cooperation conditional on progress on democratisation – which is a stance that increasingly amounts to nothing more than rhetoric. The EU cannot force Turkey into re­forms. Democratisation presupposes a favourable climate and relevant political currents. Both elements are currently weak.

Against this backdrop and given that the popula­­tions of important EU member states harbour critical attitudes towards Turkey, the EU and its member states have little short-term alternative in their deal­ings with Turkey than to use cooperation with An­ka­ra to pursue shared economic and security inter­ests. And, given that Europe can have little interest in an economically unstable Turkey, the economic rela­tion­ship needs to be secured in the medium to long term and the country’s ongoing access to the Single Market guaranteed. To this end, a modernised Customs Union might serve as a useful instrument.

The EU also needs to think fundamentally about whether and how Turkey’s accession process should continue. Certainly, candidate status grants Europe legitimacy to demand that Ankara abide by particular standards of democracy and rule of law and to sup­port Turkish civil society. And, as is repeatedly asserted, it secures Turkey’s ‘ties’ to Europe. Yet, the faltering accession process has long become a dia­logue of the deaf in which Ankara regularly rebuffs European expectations as interference in its internal affairs. As such the deadlock in the accession process generates anti-European sentiment in Turkey, while in Europe it upholds the illusion that Brussels could both block the process and at the same time use it to incentivise reforms. And even if Turkish accession is unlikely, this does not prevent the topic being ex­ploited by populist movements, as seen in the cam­paign for the 2016 Brexit referendum. This continues to poison the Turkish-European relationship.

Still, given the decreasing voter share of the ruling AKP/MHP and the increasingly visible cracks within their alliance, the EU should keep membership talks as a normative instrument for the long run – if and when Turkey begins to pursue democratic repair. In the meantime, the EU should also continue supporting civil society actors who are committed to improv­ing rule of law, inclusive citizenship and democracy. Important in this regard is that Europe should voice stronger criticism of Ankara’s repression of its citi­zens. While first and foremost a matter of principle, calling Ankara out is also in the EU’s own interests. While European policy-makers have often enough prioritised stability over democracy in relations with authoritarian states, that logic is associated with two problems in the case of Turkey. For one thing, it is unclear whether an authoritarian but stable Turkey would cooperate harmoniously with the EU.

Even more importantly, the stability of authori­tarianism in Turkey is uncertain for several reasons. First, Turkey’s economic capacity depends heavily on popular consent, in particular because the country lacks the kind of natural resources that can be ex­ploited through coercion. Second, the country’s sociopolitical diversity makes it difficult for the AKP to thoroughly penetrate the civil sphere; future pro­tests are highly likely. Finally, the personalisation of power and the tensions within the ruling alliance make the government vulnerable. While the EU cer­tainly cannot force Turkey into democratic re­forms, it can and should hold Turkey more ac­count­able – especially at a time when Ankara is turning to the EU for economic support.