Revisiting the Process of Democratisation in Turkey

The aim of this paper is to analyze the domestic and international context which led to the backlash in the process of democratic consolidation in Turkey while revisiting theories of democratization and democratic consolidation. The argument is that the Turkish case, with a significant parliamentary experience and consolidated multi-party system, evoles to a deviant case for the conceptualization of the democratic consolidation. This eventually resulted in the questionning of the regime type as well since a referandum to vote for the presidential system has been scheduled for April 2017. In the existing literature, although preconditions and requirements for democratic consolidation have been extensively studied, potential threats and challenges which can hinder the democratic path are not widely referred to. Inspiring from the Turkish domestic context where patterns of de-democratization occured, the paper aims to question the underyling reasons for the threats which challenge democratic consolidation.