Authoritarian neoliberalism, crisis, and consolidation: the political economy of regime change in Turkey

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze Turkey's recent authoritarian transformation from a critical political economy perspective and to examine the main determinants of, what we call, the ‘authoritarian consolidation attempt' of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). For that purpose, first, we sought answers to the following question: why did the AKP engage in a more authoritarian political agenda in the 2010s? We critically review the literature on the contemporary dynamics of authoritarianism, particularly focusing on two explanatory frameworks, competitive authoritarianism, and authoritarian neoliberalism. We argue that the crisis of authoritarian neoliberalism did not end up with democratization in Turkey in the 2010s, rather the power bloc initiated a strategy of the authoritarian fix as a reaction to the multiple crises that were a combination of the state crisis and the crisis of capital accumulation regime. Second, we analyzed how authoritarianism in Turkey is en route to consolidation in the aftermath of the transition to the Turkish presidential system in 2018, and what the fundamental factors of this consolidation are. We investigated the main features of Turkish presidentialism following the three-dimensional framework of authoritarian consolidation, including infrastructural, despotic, and discursive power analyses. As a result, we suggest a critical political economy account to unfold contemporary dynamics of authoritarianism based on the Turkish case.