HOW DEMOCRACY BACKSLIDES. Tracing the Pathway in Turkey

Abstract

Democratic backsliding is a gradual process that negatively affects the countries in terms of democracy. The different levels of democracies can face a number of challenges as a result of democratic backsliding and this is due to various factors. For this thesis, the main aim is to find the variables which affect the Turkish case. Turkey is a special case because once it was shown as an example of a modern and moderate Muslim state which combines secularism and constitution for the autocratic regional countries but its democracy turned to an electoral autocracy. In this thesis, the starting point will be the old autocratic regime in Turkey which was restrained by the new regime which was aiming for reforms as regards the EU accession process but this major change and it was expected by the democracy defenders in Turkey that reforms for the EU normally should evolve the country to a higher level of democratic accountability but the old authoritarian regime was eventually replaced by a new authoritarian one led by Erdogan and his ruling AKP party. In this thesis, to solve the reason behind this issue, process tracing is used. The main findings is that Erdogan’s clientelist policies are influenced by the old authoritarian regime. Moreover, the new regime became autocratic as result of some complementary factors: politicization of the institutions, clientelism, patronage system and reform avoidance.