WEBINAR 5: ASIA (OVERVIEW) - Defending Local Democracy Against Democratic Decay in the Post-Covid World
Atagün Mert KEJANLIOGLU
20 November 2020
Last year, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suffered the most significant electoral blow of his political career. Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost the political control of the municipalities of Turkey’s two biggest cities: Istanbul and Ankara (the capital). The race was very tight in Istanbul. The opposition candidate, Ekrem İmamoğlu, won the election by a tiny margin. However, the High Council of Elections annulled the elections, and in the re-run elections, İmamoğlu won very comfortably. This victory marked a very important loss for Erdoğan, not only electorally but also symbolically, because İmamoğlu has become a prominent figure in the Turkish political scene since he pulled a surprise win and became the mayor of Istanbul in 1994. The AKP defeat also weakened Erdoğan’s claim to be the people’s only true voice, as the opposition scored wins outside of its usual electoral strongholds. Less than a year later, COVID-19 hit Turkey and Istanbul became one of the hot spots. As COVID-19 experiences around the world have proved, a balanced mixture of local and national solutions is necessary to tackle the pandemic effectively. Nevertheless, under Erdoğan’s rule, Turkey’s local democracy has been weakened and there has been a trend towards centralization. Of course, this trend is also in line with the contemporary populist mentality, promoting a unified and simplistic understanding of power and the people. At the same time, it highlights the opportunities that local democracy and subnational units might offer to uphold a pluralistic democracy. This post will illustrate how Turkey’s experience can offer insights into the importance of subnational units that might act as a brake on rising populism.
Populism in the 21st century
Populism is indeed a polysemic concept. When we talk about populists, we can refer to the Narodniki in 19th century Russia, to Peron’s political movement in mid 20th century Argentina, or to Donald Trump today in the United States. Although there are objections and criticisms to the concept’s coherence, many political scientists make sense of this category by offering universal definitions of the concept. Amongst these definitions, Mudde and Kaltwasser’s definition stands out. They define populism as “a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.”
By singling populism out as a thin-centered ideology, this definition acknowledges the possibility of the different shapes that populism can take in different contexts while maintaining a meaningful core. Thus, we need to determine how populism works today. On that point, Jan-Werner Müller’s account of populism in his book “What Is Populism?” is compelling. According to Müller, one distinctive feature of contemporary populism is anti-pluralism. This feature entails hostility towards anyone who does not belong to the ‘people’ in the populists’ perspective. In other words, there is an exclusionary form of identity politics that defines populism beyond simply being against a class of ‘elites’. This approach to populism is particularly relevant in the context of constitutional law because the anti-pluralist stance of populists heightens their interest in challenging the checks and balances that would constrain government when they come to power. They are inherently opposed to one of the main aims of constitutionalism: the limitation of power. Yet, their stance is not about destroying all institutions. Instead, they tend to capture them in order to consolidate their power.
Attempts to Capture the Institutions of Local Democracy in Turkey
The capture of courts by populists is a well-known and widely discussed method of weakening checks and balances in comparative constitutional law literature. Turkey’s current political climate strongly reflects these elements too. Instead of shutting down all of the institutions, Erdoğan captured them, starting with the judiciary using the simple technique of court-packing. However, last year’s municipal elections shed new light on the importance of local democracy in countering populists’ intention to capture the institutions. Especially during the re-run elections for the Istanbul mayorship, Erdoğan’s divisive populist rhetoric became even more visible. Erdoğan has always insisted on the importance of the “national will” as the real source of political power but once the electorate’s will turned away from his party, the anti-pluralistic façade of his populism became more visible. He went as far as claiming that the opposition candidate İmamoğlu was the candidate of those with a terrorist mentality. The electorate’s response was quite telling: İmamoğlu’s margin of victory rose from 0.28 to 9 points.
To be clear, this is not Erdoğan’s first or only outburst against local democracy in Turkey. In 2016, 24 mayors who are members of the pro-Kurdish party, HDP, were removed from office at different times based on allegations of ties to terrorism and subsequently replaced by government-appointed trustees. During the 2019 local elections, the HDP was able to regain these seats in many of the municipalities ruled by these appointed trustees. Yet, after the elections, a new series of investigations were launched against those mayors. As of September 2020, only seven of the HDP mayors elected in 2019 remain in their seats. The government has appointed trustees to replace 58 mayors.
These government actions show how populism took an authoritarian turn in Turkey. They also prove the government’s clear intention to capture any institution that they deem to be out of line with Erdoğan’s understanding of the people. But what happens when they fail to capture some of those institutions? The way Turkey has handled the COVID-19 pandemic offers insight in response to this question too.
What did the COVID-19 Crisis Expose?
The chaos that the pandemic created has revealed how unprepared most of the countries around the world were for a major health crisis. Turkey is not an exception. The country’s statute relating to the control of pandemics dates back to 1930, with only minor revisions made to this date. The government tried to act swiftly despite this challenging legal background, and in some cases did so with measures of questionable legality, such as the complete curfew for people over 65.
While these types of draconian measures can only be taken by the central government or the central government’s local representatives (i.e., governors), mayors also tried to use their authority to mitigate with the crisis. For his part, İmamoğlu launched a charity campaign seeking donations of money for those in need. He also called for more effective lockdowns instead of the partial lockdowns that were imposed only during the weekends.
Erdoğan’s first response to İmamoğlu’s charity campaign was to launch his own campaign while condemning İmamoğlu’s campaign as an attempt to “create a state within the state.” Later on, the Ministry of Interior issued a directive that explicitly banned İmamoğlu’s campaign along with the other campaigns launched by mayors from opposition parties. This ban was based on a mere technicality. While Municipality Act Section 15 (1) explicitly gives municipalities the authority to receive donations, Sections 6 and 7 of the Act on Collecting Charitable Donations make any donation campaign subject to the approval of the Ministry of Interior or the government representative in the region if the campaign is only regional. Section 31 of the Act on Collecting Charitable Donations states that provisions regarding “public institutions” in other relevant statutes shall be reserved. Nevertheless, the government claimed that donations and charitable donations are different and that the statutory provision on donations in the Municipality Act is inapplicable in this case because the term “public institutions” does not include municipalities. After banning these campaigns, the Minister of Interior also launched an investigation into the municipalities that started these campaigns.
As this reliance on the very detailed legal technicalities should make obvious, the government goes to great lengths to apply pressure on opposition municipalities. This tendency has continued during the current second wave of the pandemic with İmamoğlu not invited to the emergency meeting on taking the pandemic under control in Istanbul. It is quite telling that during a full-blown crisis, Erdoğan prefers to keep the mayor out, refusing to consult him. Even a basic consultative procedure is deemed unnecessary because the government’s sole concern is to avoid legitimating the mayor in the eyes of the public, even though a mere consultation could have facilitated a possible blame-shifting game in the future.
In addition, COVID-19 necessitates a balanced mixture of local and national responses. As the virus is transmitted in clusters, local action remains crucial. Because the severity of the situation might change from region to region, a decentralized response is necessary. In fact, this has been Canada’s approach in coping with the pandemic. Similarly, a study on Germany shows that a decentralised response to the pandemic can be effective when it is well-coordinated.
The complete exclusion of opposition mayors from the decision-making process does not, however, mean that the Turkish government completely ignored the importance of local involvement during the pandemic. Instead of including mayors in the discussion, the government relied on governors who are simply central government representatives and do not hold any electoral legitimacy. However, this move brings one of the main pillars of populism into question: its insistence on electoral legitimacy by focusing on the ‘will of the people.’ If the people’s will is the primary source of expression in politics, why do populists in Turkey try so hard to exclude the opposition mayors? Can this inconsistency provide useful insights in contemplating how to counter the rising trend of populism?
Considering Local Democracy Against Populism
As explained above, one of the main features of populism is its insistence that the ‘will of the people’ is the only source of legitimization in politics. This will is mainly concretized through electoral participation. At the same time, its division of society into two antagonistic camps– the people vs. elites–oversimplifies the diversity of the people. However, any attempts to protect this pluralism through the judiciary also suffers from a lack of electoral legitimacy.
Nevertheless, when institutional pluralism is strengthened through local democracy rather than the judiciary, the populists’ monopoly on the “electoral legitimacy” argument ends. The anti-pluralist vein within contemporary populism overrides its rhetoric of electoral legitimacy. As this anti-pluralist tendency gains strength, it exposes the incoherence of populists’ actions as against the rhetoric of populism. This incoherence, once exposed, tends to generate mistrust of populists among the electorate. Increased support for İmamoğlu in the re-run election shows that when the central government tries to intervene in local democratic processes, the backlash becomes stronger.
The attempts to undermine local democracy in Turkey also show that populists perceive local democracy as a threat. Indeed, it is a threat because it counterweighs their understanding of the people as a unitary entity instead of a plurality. This is precisely one of the main reasons to consider local democracy an essential pillar of liberal democracy and a bulwark against populism. After all, the debate comes down to the question of ensuring a divided government; in the sense of avoiding concentration of power. Instead of solely relying on the judiciary, a focus on local democracy opens up the possibility of a division of powers while still counting on popular legitimacy. This approach also allows us to partially re-orient the debate away from the usual dichotomy that pits popular sovereignty against the protection of rights.
Moreover, the focus on local democracy might tackle one of the core issues that contributes to the rise of populism and democratic decay: lack of trust in institutions. While the mere existence of local democracy does not necessarily ensure more effective citizen engagement, it is easier to increase participation in politics at the local level than on the national level. Greater citizen participation in local decision-making might, in the long run, increase levels of trust in democratic institutions, slowing the process of democratic decay.nd the rule of law.
Atagün Mert Kejanlıoğlu is a DCL candidate at McGill’s Faculty of Law. He has an undergraduate degree in law and a master’s degree in public law from Galatasaray University (Istanbul, Turkey). He obtained another master’s degree in fundamental public law from University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2016 with his dissertation on Turkish and French presidency. He also worked as a research and teaching assistant in the constitutional law department at MEF University Faculty of Law (Istanbul, Turkey). His doctoral research focuses on the rise of populism and reconstituting the “people” as a legal concept in the context of constitutional amendments. For his doctoral studies, Atagün received a research grant from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FQRSC). His research interests include comparative constitutional law, constitutional theory, and European human rights law.