Evaluating the Reconfiguration of Security Sector and its Impact on Democratization in Turkey Under AKP Rule

Starting from 2002, Turkey has undertaken an unprecedented project to demilitarize its politics. This paper aims to explain why the acclaimed civilianization project of Erdogan’s AKP government did not achieve meaningful democratization in Turkey. It aims to reveal a process of political demilitarization where a new coercive structure has been forged, together with the rebuilding of the political and social domain. The core argument is that under the country’s unique ‘scope conditions’, a political demilitarization agenda in Turkey can lead only to the loyalization of the potential drivers of change and institution-grabbing by the power central that is the civilian government. As a result, the state and its coercive arms go through a re-structuring process where the police, the intelligence services and the paramilitary agents gain significant power and space. Politically, the patriarch of the motherland changes face. The new patriarch, with the notion of personality cult heavily present, creates a new modernity where nationalism, Islam, and security play a significant role in the social domain and any counter-hegemonic movement is pacified in the political domain. Under this set of circumstances, Turkey’s democratization project, ignited by political demilitarization, then ultimately fails and authoritarianism starts to appear. The research will utilize the process-tracing method and collect evidence from the period 2002-2017.