“…Erdoğan's political project of reforming the Turkish state focused on establishing Turkey as a dominant regional power (Kalin, 2010; Özcan, 2017, p. 10). This repeatedly put him at odds with the United States, which responded negatively to the way Erdoğan handled the Gezi protests in 2013–14, which Erdoğan blamed on internal traitors and external collaborators (Bilgiç, 2018), while Obama blamed Erdoğan for excessive use of police violence and a violation of freedom of assembly and expression (Agence France Presse, 2013). There were also corruption allegations targeting Erdoğan's inner circle, producing new protests, leading to several arrests and the removal of hundreds of police officers; a reformation of the judicial system, and the blocking of social media.…”
Section: Interpreting the Erdoğan‐obama Friendshipmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…One such manifestation of this was the emotional response to the handling of the Gezi protests, which quickly transformed from protests about urbanization to a greater dissent regarding the broader state of political affairs, producing a redrawing of:[i]dentity dichotomies that had been constructed in Turkey over decades, such as Islamist vs. secular, Kemalist vs. Islamist, Turk vs. Kurd, men vs. women, [which] were abandoned in that particular space and time. (Bilgiç, 2018, p. 269)…”
Section: Interpreting the Erdoğan‐obama Friendshipmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…[i]dentity dichotomies that had been constructed in Turkey over decades, such as Islamist vs. secular, Kemalist vs. Islamist, Turk vs. Kurd, men vs. women, [which] were abandoned in that particular space and time. (Bilgiç, 2018, p. 269)…”
Section: Interpreting the Erdoğan‐obama Friendshipmentioning
s 2009 visit to Turkey resulted in an Obama-Mania in Turkish media, followed by a friendship between Obama and Recep Erdoğan, which was widely reported in the media and emphasized in their rhetoric. This article explains the existence of the Erdoğan-Obama friendship narrative, in spite of no actual political friendship existing. We first interpret their relationship through five key components of political friendship (affect, grand project, altruistic reciprocity, moral obligations, equality) and argue that, despite a strong friendship narrative, their histories, leadership styles, and political goals diverged to such an extent that a friendship never existed. We then introduce sentimental utility theory (SUT) to explain the utility of maintaining the appearance of a friendship. Through SUT, this article illuminates the utility of collective emotions and offers insight into how collective emotions produce ingroup identities and generate stability for a state's population. SUT reveals how Erdoğan utilized the Obama-mania in Turkey to create a personal bond with Obama which linked himself, and his policies, to Obama and his progressive policies. Future research can deploy SUT to make sense of other claims of friendship and special relationships between states and between state leaders.
“…Erdoğan's political project of reforming the Turkish state focused on establishing Turkey as a dominant regional power (Kalin, 2010; Özcan, 2017, p. 10). This repeatedly put him at odds with the United States, which responded negatively to the way Erdoğan handled the Gezi protests in 2013–14, which Erdoğan blamed on internal traitors and external collaborators (Bilgiç, 2018), while Obama blamed Erdoğan for excessive use of police violence and a violation of freedom of assembly and expression (Agence France Presse, 2013). There were also corruption allegations targeting Erdoğan's inner circle, producing new protests, leading to several arrests and the removal of hundreds of police officers; a reformation of the judicial system, and the blocking of social media.…”
Section: Interpreting the Erdoğan‐obama Friendshipmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…One such manifestation of this was the emotional response to the handling of the Gezi protests, which quickly transformed from protests about urbanization to a greater dissent regarding the broader state of political affairs, producing a redrawing of:[i]dentity dichotomies that had been constructed in Turkey over decades, such as Islamist vs. secular, Kemalist vs. Islamist, Turk vs. Kurd, men vs. women, [which] were abandoned in that particular space and time. (Bilgiç, 2018, p. 269)…”
Section: Interpreting the Erdoğan‐obama Friendshipmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…[i]dentity dichotomies that had been constructed in Turkey over decades, such as Islamist vs. secular, Kemalist vs. Islamist, Turk vs. Kurd, men vs. women, [which] were abandoned in that particular space and time. (Bilgiç, 2018, p. 269)…”
Section: Interpreting the Erdoğan‐obama Friendshipmentioning
s 2009 visit to Turkey resulted in an Obama-Mania in Turkish media, followed by a friendship between Obama and Recep Erdoğan, which was widely reported in the media and emphasized in their rhetoric. This article explains the existence of the Erdoğan-Obama friendship narrative, in spite of no actual political friendship existing. We first interpret their relationship through five key components of political friendship (affect, grand project, altruistic reciprocity, moral obligations, equality) and argue that, despite a strong friendship narrative, their histories, leadership styles, and political goals diverged to such an extent that a friendship never existed. We then introduce sentimental utility theory (SUT) to explain the utility of maintaining the appearance of a friendship. Through SUT, this article illuminates the utility of collective emotions and offers insight into how collective emotions produce ingroup identities and generate stability for a state's population. SUT reveals how Erdoğan utilized the Obama-mania in Turkey to create a personal bond with Obama which linked himself, and his policies, to Obama and his progressive policies. Future research can deploy SUT to make sense of other claims of friendship and special relationships between states and between state leaders.
“…The party's repeated attempts at constitutional reform, its 'civilianisation' efforts (Cizre 2011; Gürsoy 2012; Bardakçı 2013) and its consequent battles with the apparatuses of the so-called 'tutelary regime' (Aydınlı 2013; cf. Akça & Balta-Paker 2012) led some observers to represent AKP as an agent of 'subaltern democratisation' (Yel & Nas 2013), a denomination that neatly mapped onto the party's own claim to represent the 'national will' (see Bilgiç 2018). AKP's seemingly successful formula of 'conservative democracy' was further framed as a potential blueprint for democratisation in other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.…”
Section: The Narrative Of Political Progressmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…We interrogate how developments in these areas have been linked to the broader transformation of the state under the AKP rule, and how these reforms have been enforced through antidemocratic means -often through executive centralisation -or have facilitated and normalised further authoritarian practices. We further examine the repercussions of the changing politics of security (Kaygusuz 2018) and of consent generation (Bilgiç 2018).…”
Section: Repertoires Of Authoritarian Neoliberalismmentioning
Unpacking the core themes that are discussed in this collection, this article both offers a research agenda to re-analyse Turkey's 'authoritarian turn' and mounts a methodological challenge to the conceptual frameworks that reinforce a strict analytical separation between the 'economic' and the 'political' factors. The paper problematises the temporal break in scholarly analyses of the AKP period and rejects the argument that the party's methods of governance have shifted from an earlier 'democratic' modeldefined by 'hegemony'-to an emergent 'authoritarian' one. In contrast, by retracing the mechanisms of the state-led reproduction of neoliberalism since 2003, the paper demonstrates that the party's earlier 'hegemonic' activities were also shaped by authoritarian tendencies which manifested at various levels of governance. The recent trajectory of Turkish politics under the government of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-Justice and Development Party) is increasingly positioned as a signature node in the global web of 'democratic backsliding'. The latter concerns contemporary cases of democratic debilitation defined by 'promissory coups' , 'executive aggrandisement' and 'longer-term strategic harassment and manipulation' of the electoral processes. 1 Once touted as a 'model democracy' (Akyol 2011; cf. Bâli 2011) for a region in turmoil, the academic and 'popular' 2 portrayals of AKP's Turkey have changed gradually from 2011 to 2013 onwards. This is a period marked by the party's third electoral victory and the intensification of its subsequent attacks on rights and freedoms as demonstrated by the Gezi Park protests. In contrast to the earlier positive assessments of the party's first two terms in office (2002-2007 and 2007-2011), the 2011-2013 period has come to be seen as a watershed. After this period, the terms of the debate have shifted from unpacking the mechanisms of the party's selfproclaimed 'conservative democracy' (Özbudun 2006; Duran 2008) to charting its 'authoritarian turn' (Benhabib 2013). This recent focus has spawned a considerable literature that attempts to explain the conjunction of AKP's authoritarian streak with its ongoing commitment to a minimal representative democracy and its insistence on legitimising itself by invoking a majoritarian conception of a 'national will'-justified by the party's electoral success. Accordingly, positioned against the earlier image of a (liberal) 'democratic' agent of reform, AKP in recent
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