Reproducing the Paradigm of Democracy in Turkey: Parochial Democratization in the Decade of Justice and Development Party

Abstract

Recent democratic performance of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) indicates the dissolution of its original liberal ambiguity in ways that hinder the possibilities of a full-fledged democracy in Turkey. This study finds the explanation in the perpetuation of a specifically Turkish paradigm of democracy/democratization, which has emerged in the early years of the Turkish experiment with democracy and has been reproduced by the Turkish political class ever since. In doing so, the article draws attention to the predominance of a defective conceptualization of democracy, which, while emphasizing the elected government's supremacy over the tutelary state elite, fails to come to terms with the inevitability of political disagreement and the normative imperative of seeking consensus for a positivesum politics.