Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the sources of AKP’s electoral hegemony with respect to the four transformational processes which have started at different points after the establishment of the republic and continue to the present in Turkey. We also analyze the ways in which AKP’s hegemony shaped these processes as well as corresponding social cleavages. We suggest that this experience and the electoral success of the AKP are related to the recent transformation of Turkish modernity, whose multidimensional and multiplex impacts and ramifications have been making Turkey a much more “complex society.” Our main assertion is that the AKP’s rise to power in 2002 and its eventual hegemony have been closely intertwined with Turkey’s transformation processes and have resulted from its ability to effectively govern these processes. The AKP, in that respect, has realized the risks and potential attached to transformation and preferred to engage with transformation as an opportunity for growth and empowerment rather than resisting and reacting to it. As such the AKP has actively engaged with globalization and Europeanization to overcome the challenges of bifurcated modernization manifested in the center-periphery cleavage and to consolidate its position in the left-right cleavage. The fact that the AKP effectively engaged with processes of modernization, Europeanization, and globalization to establish its hegemony does not mean that the party could effectively govern the process of democratization.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Resat Kasaba, “Introduction,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume (4), ed. R. Kasaba (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 2.
Gary Gereffi, “Global Production Systems and Third World Development,” in Global Change, Regional Response: The New International Context of Development, ed. B. Stallings (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 100–142;
Sebnem Gumuscu, “Class, Status, and Party: The Changing Face of Political Islam in Turkey and Egypt,” Comparative Political Studies, 43 (7) (2010): 835–861.
Ayse Bugra, Devlet ve Isadamlari (State and Businessmen) (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 1995); “Class, Culture, and State: An Analysis of Interest Representation by Two Turkish Business Associations,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 30 (1998): 521–539.
Ziya Onis, “The Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence in Turkey” and Ergun Ozbudun and E. Fuat Keyman, “Globalization and Turkey: Actors, Discourses, Strategies,” in Many Globalizations, ed. P. Berger and S. Huntington (Oxford: Oxford University, 2002);
Keyman and Koyuncu , “Globalization, Alternative Modernities and the Political Economy of Turkey,” Review of International Political Economy, 12 (1) (2005): 105–129;
E. Fuat Keyman and Ziya Onis, Turkish Politics in a Changing World: Global Dynamics and Domestic Transformations (Istanbul: Bilgi University Publications, 2007), chapter 4; Gumuscu, “Class, Status, and Party.”
It should be noted that this expanding economic power in the periphery did not only perform in economic production but also supported the emergence of a new Islamic media and press houses, educational institutions, and thus a new Islamic intelligentsia. For further details, see Hakan Yavuz, “Opportunity Spaces, Identity, and Islamic Meaning in Turkey,” in Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Q. Wiktorowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 270–288; Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2009).
Ziya Onis and E. Fuat Keyman, “A New Path Emerges,” Journal of Democracy, 14 (2) (2003): 95–107.
For a detailed and comprehensive account of these elections, see Ali Carkoglu, “New Electoral Victory for the ‘Pro-Islamists’ or the ‘New-Centre Right’?,” South European Society and Politics, 12 (4) (2007): 501–519.
Rabia Karakaya Polat, “The 2007 Parliamentary Elections in Turkey: Between Securitization and Desecuritization,” Parliamentary Affairs, 62 (1) (2009): 129–148.
Similar developments have occurred in March 2004 and March 2009 municipality elections. In both elections, despite the decline of its votes to 38.8 percent in March 2009 from 42 percent in 2004, the AKP won most of the provincial or greater city mayorships. For a detailed and comprehensive account of these elections, see Ali Carkoglu, “Turkey’s Local Elections of 2009,” Insight Turkey, 11 (2) (2009): 1–18.
Meltem Muftuler-Bac and E. Fuat Keyman, “Turkey under the AKP: The Era of Dominant Party Politics,” Journal of Democracy, 23 (1) (January 2012).
Keyman and Onis, Turkish Politics in a Changing World; Meltem Muftuler-Bac, “Turkish Foreign Policy Change, Its Domestic Determinants and the Role of the European Union,” South East European Politics and Society, 16 (2) (June 2011): 279–291;
Umit Cizre, “Problems of Democratic Governance of Civil-Military Relations in Turkey and the European Union Enlargement Zone,” European Journal of Political Research, 43 (1) (January 2004): 107–125.
Burhanettin Duran, “JDP and Foreign Policy as an Agent of Transformation,” in The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the AK Parti, ed. H. Yavuz (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006).
Sebnem Gumuscu, “The Emerging Predominant Party System in Turkey,” Government and Opposition, 48 (2) (April 2013): 223–244.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 E. Fuat Keyman and Sebnem Gumuscu
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Keyman, E.F., Gumuscu, S. (2014). Constructing Hegemony: The AKP Rule. In: Democracy, Identity, and Foreign Policy in Turkey. Islam and Nationalism Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137277121_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137277121_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34632-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-27712-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political Science CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)