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This paper analyses the right‐wing populist rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) in Turkey, focusing on the crisis of capitalism, emerging discontent in the rural populations, and opportunities for and obstacles to a successful left‐wing populist mobilisation. We put forward three arguments. First, through an examination of the historical evolution, class‐based and social‐demographic foundations of the ruling right‐wing populist alliance between the AKP and the Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP), we argue that the MHP is a more classical case of far‐right populism, whereas the AKP is a “heterodox” case that borrows several elements from the left. These “heterodox” features of the AKP, together with the interlinked crisis of the 1990s, played a significant part in the support the AKP received from the subordinate majority. Second, we argue that the success of the AKP's hegemonic right‐wing populism from 2002 to 2013 was linked to an unusually favourable macro‐political‐economic climate that helped the AKP counterbalance its neoliberal policies with pragmatic social assistance programmes. However, together with the disappearance of this macro‐political‐economic climate in the second decade of its rule (2013‐present), the disastrous consequences of the AKP's neoliberal policies became more explicit, and the AKP's populism moved from a hegemonic to an authoritarian right‐wing populist type. Third, we claim that today, due to the deepening of the current economic crisis (further exacerbated by the Covid19 pandemic), the AKP's cross‐class alliance began to break down, and the rural movements in the Turkish countryside have been playing a major role in unmaking the AKP's hegemony. However, in the absence of a strong left‐wing populist movement with a stronghold in the Turkish countryside, emergent possibilities for a radical progressive transformation are not utilised. Instead, the groundwork is being laid for another wave of right‐wing populism.

There is debate in the literature regarding whether China can become a new world hegemonic power in the 21 st century. Most existing analyses focus on economic aspects of world hegemony-building processes and ignore its macro-political dimensions. This article starts with the premise that reshaping the geopolitical configuration of the inter-state system is an important part of world hegemony-building processes. One of the ways in which previous and current world hegemonic powers established their world hegemonies was through the inclusion of new nations by co-opting, supporting or sometimes selectively leading a section of nationalist movements into independence. Our comparative analysis shows that, as of now, contemporary China has not been following this historical pattern. Compared to Mao-era China, which was perceived as a champion of national liberation-at least when colonial and semi-colonial areas were at stake-today's People's Republic of China (PRC) is emerging as a champion of the global geo-political status quo. The current Chinese government is not actively pursuing the transformation of the inter-state system or seeking to create instabilities at different levels. This is because, unlike previous and current world hegemonic powers, during its rise to global preeminence, Chinese territorial integrity has been challenged due to rapid escalation of nationalist/secessionist movements within its own state boundaries. Hence, the PRC's foreign policy has consistently been concerned with creating and preserving macro-political stability at national and international levels.There is a major debate in the literature regarding whether China can become a new world hegemonic power in the 21 st century. 1 In this paper we provide a critical assessment of China's possible rise to global political-economic preeminence with a focus on macro-political dimensions of world hegemony building processes. Although there is a flourishing literature, which discusses limits and prospects of China's possible ascendancy (Ciccantell and Bunker 2004;Arrighi 2007;Jacques 2009; Lachmann 2010:202-206;Gulick 2011;Hung 2015), most existing analyses focus on economic aspects alone and ignore macro-political dimensions of world hegemony building processes.Our analysis stems from two premises: (1) Until now, efforts to reshape the geopolitical configuration of the inter-state system have been an important part of world hegemony-building processes. (2) One of the ways in which previous and current hegemonic powers-the United Provinces, the United Kingdom and the United States-transformed the geopolitical configuration of the inter-state system was through the inclusion of new nations by supporting, co-opting, and sometimes leading selected nationalist movements into independence. We argue that by leading a select group of subject nations to independence, rising great powers enhanced their hegemonybuilding capacities by (1) gaining the "intellectual and moral leadership" (Gramsci [1971(Gramsci [ ] 2003 of these new states, (2) we...

This article analyses how periods of geopolitical conflict and violence have affected the development of capitalism and class formation in Turkey. We argue that all major episodes of conflict, violence and war—from forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of the non‐Muslims in the late 19th and the early 20th century, to Kurdish secessionist warfare in the 1990s and the Syrian Civil War—have become major historical turning points in the development of historical capitalism in Turkey. These “hostile conjunctures” transformed capitalism through their direct and indirect effects on dispossession, class formation, and capital accumulation. Although each of these conflicts produced a violent dispossession process, none of them resembled the rural dispossession process in England. To make sense of Turkey's experience, we turn our attention to what we call the “Castilian/Spanish road,” and what Lenin called the “Junker/Prussian road” and the “farmers/American road.” Our analysis shows that these differential paths of dispossession, class formation, and capital accumulation have produced highly variegated rather than uniform outcomes. We conclude that we are living in a new “hostile conjuncture,” which is pregnant to a major structural crisis and is generating the preconditions of another historical transformation in the way capitalism operates.

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