The Pandora's box: democratization and rule of law in Turkey

A prominent question in the literature on democracy is concerned with the role of external factors in stimulating the process of democratization and uploading rule of law. This paper tackles the following questions: How does the political conditionality of an international organization—the EU in this case—stimulate democracy in third countries? Equally important, does conditionality always have a positive impact and could it be possible to witness the EU undermining democracy in an unexpected manner? This paper addresses these questions through an analysis of the Turkish democracy in the light of its accession to the EU and through an application of the EU membership conditionality by looking at rule of law in Turkey. The general contention in the political conditionality literature is that the EU enables an acceding country to adopt its democratic principles, and facilitates transition to democracy, while strengthening rule of law. However, the Turkish transformation seems to challenge this contention. This paper proposes that the EU’s political conditionality in bringing about political transformation in Turkey as a membership precondition unexpectedly illuminated the underlying anti-democratic tendencies and tensions in Turkish politics. The democratization process in Turkey since 1999, partly stimulated by the EU, has opened up a Pandora’s box releasing the conflict between the secularists and religious conservatives in Turkey that has long been suppressed. This paper analyzes these cleavages through the prism of EU political conditionality with regards to rule of law

Hegemonic Masculinity in Times of Crisis: 15 July Coup Attempt and the Turkish Football

In the evening of 15 July 2016, Turkey was shaken to its pieces by an unexpected yet abortive coup attempt. Just like the previous ones, this recent attempt to stage a coup had a substantial impact on various social and cultural realms including football. By developing a holistic approach to the notion of hegemonic masculinity (a concept coined by R. Connell) and assessing the interplay of hegemonic masculinity in the realm of ideology, state institutions and military on the one hand and that on football pitches on the other hand in their relationality, this chapter argues that the climate culminating around the attempted coup in Turkey witnessed an intense display of the already existing hegemonic masculinity structures, including those which could be seen in Turkish football