2000’Lİ YILLARDA TÜRKİYE’DE DEMOKRASİ TARTIŞMALARI (original) (raw)

2012, YILDIZ TEKNİK ÜNİVERSİTESİ SİYASET BİLİMİ VE ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER ANABİLİM DALI SİYASET BİLİMİ VE ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER PROGRAMI YÜKSEK LİSANS TEZİ

DEBATES ABOUT DEMOCRACY DURING 2000’S IN TURKEY YTÜ Politics and International Relations Masters Program Dissertation Today, although procedural democracy exists in many countries around the world, authoritarian and totalitarian practices continue to survive within these mechanisms as well. Although prospects for democratization occurred in Turkey in conjunction with the AKP government, the authoritarian and totalitarian practices have become widespread in the 2000's. This kind of political practices are seen as exogenous to liberal democracy and it is assumed that such authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies would be reduced by approaching to liberal democracy. However, predisposing conditions of totalitarianism are built in liberal society. In this study, junctures between such practices and the structure of liberal society, procedural democratic mechanisms and neoliberalism are studied. It is proposed that, totalitarian practices exist within liberal democratic mechanism with different levels of intensity, so, they are inherent to liberal democracy. Also, with reference to Hannah Arendt's theory, it is argued that individualism, the isolation created by liberalism and citizens’ indifference to politics in the liberal democratic mechanism cause dissolution of the society, which in turn prepare the ground for the totalitarian practices. Furthermore, the reasons why authoritarian and totalitarian practices have prolified on a global scale in neoliberal era are considered and the relationship between political practices in Turkey and such neoliberal tendencies is discussed. It is defended that, neoliberalism needs a repressive and authoritarian state to dispossess the lower classes and open common properties and natural resources to the market. It is revealed that, in neoliberal era, totalitarian practices which erode the basis for sociality and the political are observed, such as applying security politics, creating a sense of constant threat and criminalizing the opposition forces. It is proposed that, those practices are caused by the claim that neoliberalism is “natural” and has no alternative. The main thesis of this study is, the totalitarian practices during AKP rule should not be understood as a deviation from the goal of liberal democracy and the neoliberal orientation, but they should be considered in relation to the totalitarian tendencies inherent to liberal democracy and neoliberal politics, which target certain social groups systematically as enemies, criminalize and make them "disposable" so s not to disturb the operation of neoliberalism.