The Trajectory of Democracy: The Social Roots of Regime Change in Turkey

[摘要] This dissertation is an analysis of the long-term trajectory of democracy in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic with a focus on class relations, revolutionary struggles and coup d’etats over the last century. I argue that two factors have intertwined to determine the trajectory of the political regime: social movements and competition within the power bloc. I make four main arguments, which diverge from the existing literature on democratization.First, by using a two-dimensional conceptualization of democracy, I argue that during the last century, the Turkish political regime, far from being ;;trapped’ in the ;;unconsolidated’ domain, experienced four different modalities of democracy. I conceptualize coups, not as symptoms of democratic immaturity, but as means of regime transition. Second, I challenge the argument that a weak civil society and the absence of social dynamics explain the fragility of Turkish democracy. I identify two waves of revolutionary movements-- from 1912 to 1930 and from 1974 to 1998--that have impacted the regime and vice-versa. Third, in contrast to the widely used Weberian ;;center-periphery” analysis, I trace three cycles of capital accumulation in the last century, with a different group assuming the hegemonic role in each: (1) the palace-centered bureaucracy, (2) the party-centered bureaucracy, and (3) a coalition between the capitalist army and Istanbul capital. Each cycle gave rise to a competitive period within the power bloc (a crisis of hegemony) that politicized society and paved the way for coups.Finally, I explain the interaction between social movements and competition within the power bloc.The nature of the resolution of each crisis within the power bloc depended on the nature of social struggles. Right now, Turkey is in the middle of a new regime crisis, the resolution of which will again depend on the nature of social struggles.The empirical foundations of the dissertation are built on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including official statistics as well as two major databases compiled by the author from Turkish newspaper reports and other published sources on the instances and intensities of various forms of social unrest between 1876 and 2014.

[发布机构] Johns Hopkins University

[效力级别] Democratization

[关键词] Democracy;Democratization;Turkey;Revolution;CUP;Regime;Marx;Schumpeter;Kurds;labor;unrest;Coup;Army;Bourgeoisie;Social Movements;Contentious Politics;Sociology