Incorporating Youth Into the Political Arena: Elite Structures, Elite-Youth Linkages, and Youth (De-) Mobilization in Post-1960 Turkey (1960-2016)

Incorporating Youth into the Political Arena: Elite Structures, Elite-Youth Linkages, and Youth (De-) Mobilization in post-1960 Turkey (1960-2016)

Begum Uzun Taskin

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science University of Toronto

Incorporating Youth into the Political Arena: Elte Structures, Elite- Youth Linkages, and Youth (De-)Mobilization in post-1960 Turkey (1960-2016)

Begum Uzun Taskin

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Political Science University of Toronto

2019 Abstract

This dissertation investigates why the Turkish state encountered sustained youth contention and failed to contain it in the 1960s and the 1970s, while it proved more capable in preventing the emergence/escalation of youth dissent in the post-1980 period. Studies on social movements have not treated youth as a central category (Bayat 2010) and have under-theorized the processes of youth mobilization and demobilization. Besides, scholars of state-society relations in the

Global South have paid scant attention to the political role of youth and elite attempts at incorporating young people into the political and economic structures. This study undertakes a comparative-historical analysis of political elite-youth linkages to explain the trajectory of youth political participation in post-1960 Turkey. By elite-youth linkages, I refer to the attempts of the power-holder elites at regulating youth political participation in accordance with their particular interests and to the ways young people benefit from, negotiate, or at times challenge elite claims to exert control over youth political agency. This study contends that the more fragmented the

Turkish elites in the period from 1960 to 1980, the more they turned to participate themselves in youth mobilization via the process of partisan incorporation. Elite fragmentation in part facilitated militant youth behavior, left the Turkish state vulnerable to youth contention, and ii created youth mobilization that was sustained over a long period. The more cohesive the Turkish elites in the post-1980 coup period, the more they turned away from establishing partisan linkages with youth and the more they subscribed to incorporation as moderation and control.

Elite cohesion curbed the mobilizational capacity of youth and ultimately triggered youth political disengagement. Finally, the more the ruling party elites perceived threats to emerging elite hegemony in the post-2010 period, the more they adopted hybrid incorporation to secure incumbency and sustain political hegemony. Elite hegemony weakened oppositional youth politics and politically empowered pro-government youth.

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Dedicated to my mom and dad to whom I owe my passion for knowledge and teaching.

Acknowledgments

I wrote this dissertation in two countries and over several years. I called different places and different people as home. My sense of belonging has become weaker; it has become stronger. They say, "it takes a village to raise a child." Even if not comparable to the development of a human being, I would not be able to complete this challenging journey without the support, guidance, and inspiration from my people of the village.

First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Paul Kingston. From the beginning, Paul kept reminding me that I should come out as a scholar of Turkish Politics from this intense period of research and writing. His critical comments and mentorship have forced me to think about Turkish politics and state-society relations in Turkey from a different perspective. Our conversations in person and over Skype have sharpened my mind, re-stimulated my interest in my research, and encouraged me to start over when I felt most hopeless and exhausted. In addition to his intellectual guidance, I was fortunate to have Paul's support during politically challenging times in Turkey.

I want to thank my committee members, Courtney Jung, and Nancy Bertoldi. Courtney has always become supportive of this research project, and her feedbacks on several drafts have played a significant role in my progress. I have always admired Courtney not only as a scholar but also as a person. She has been an inspiring, strong, and intelligent mentor. Without Nancy, the theoretical framework of this dissertation would be elusive and weaker; her feedback in critical moments was of extreme importance. With Nancy, I also shared the attachment to Turkey; being able to talk with one of my committee members in my native language always felt comforting. I also need to thank Kanta Murali, my internal reader. Kanta’s feedback on my work and her solidarity in the last stages towards completion have kept me afloat. I wish I could get to know her earlier. My external examiner, David Waldner from the University of Virginia, provided me with very detailed and constructive comments. Prof Waldner’s comments have forced me to approach my work from a different angle, and I consider them very helpful towards a book manuscript.

The decision to pursue an academic career came out of my admiration for my undergraduate professors at Marmara University. I want to thank Günay Göksu Özdoğan, Ayhan Aktar, Belkıs Kümbetoğlu, and Ahmet Demirel for the intellectual stimulation and their sincere approach to teaching. I have also learned a lot from my MA supervisor at Boğaziçi University, Yeşim Arat, about how to conduct good and reliable research. I would like to thank Demet Lüküslü as well. Not only I have admired and extensively cited her comprehensive works on youth politics in Turkey, but I have also had the chance to conduct collaborative research with Demet on religious and secular youth. I have vastly benefited from Demet’s insights during our fieldwork in Istanbul and Adana, and when turning the research results into a book.

My fieldwork in Turkey was a challenging yet positively transforming process. During my field research, I had to confront my insecurities while constantly re-discovering the reasons behind my decision to pursue a PhD in the first place. Without my interviewees, resourceful, and inspiring young people from different walks of life, this project would not be possible. I want to thank all of them for candidly sharing their stories with me and for restoring my hope and faith in Turkey. Since 2014, I have taught a course, Youth and Politics, that I have designed based on my PhD research. My students in this course at the University of Toronto, Marmara University, and lately MEF University, have inspired me with their curiosity and enthusiasm and I have learned a lot from them. I also need to thank Zeyno and Yunus. I have met these amazing young people at Marmara University. They both turned from students to friends and have cheered me up during depressing times of dissertation writing on our WhatsApp group talks.

I also would like to acknowledge the financial assistance provided by the International Development Research Centre Doctoral Research Award, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the School of Graduate Studies Travel Grants, Mitacs Globalink Research Award, and the Youth Research Grant co-funded by Bilgi University Youth Studies Center and the Foundation of Community Volunteers. The generous support of these institutions enabled me to conduct extensive field research in Turkey.

During many years of the PhD, I have made wonderful friends. I have grown with them, learned from them, and have shared many moments with them- sad moments, fun moments, but always memorable ones. First and foremost, I would like to thank my partners in crime Özlem Aslan and Ümit Aydoğmuş. From the day we had traveled to the capital city to apply for a

Canadian visa until the last winter and summer we spent in Toronto, we have stayed together. I shared the same living spaces with Özlem, all those cozy houses in different parts of the city, which turned a friendship into a sincere and caring sisterhood. I have always admired Özlem’s intellect, empathy for others, patience, resilience, and creativity. We have cried together, have taken vacations, cooked together; we have shared life. I thank her for her mere presence; I thank Özlem for all the laughter, and even for the anger, disappointments, and tensions; the latter have made our friendship deeper and our persona stronger. When I first met Ümit in 2006, I could not imagine that our relationship would blossom over the years. I have become almost addicted to Ümit’s intelligence, his unique sense of humor, and integrity. I thank Ümit for all the long conversations, critiques, walks, and food. I thank Ümit for a friendship that I am sure would be life-long. Without Özlem and Ümit, I do not know how I could survive the Toronto days.

I want to thank Sude Bahar Beltan. She started her PhD at the University of Toronto two years before me. Since the day I had arrived in Toronto until the very last day, she has fed me, nurtured me, calmed me down, amused me, and intellectually stimulated me with her brilliant mind. Despite many challenges, Sude has managed to become a good scholar and a good mother. I feel very lucky to have connected with Sude’s daughter Saranur; Saranur has become a source of joy and hope in the bleakest days before the completion. I would not be able to cope with the hurdles of the PhD without Dragana Bodružić. We had survived the comparative politics class and the comprehensive exams together and Dragana was always there for me when I needed someone to talk and or to edit my work. I thank Dragana for all the long conversations, good company, and her solid solidarity. I need to thank Jaby Matthew. Jaby was sitting next to me in the comparative politics class, but it took us another year to finally start talking to each other. Since then, Jaby has become one of my close friends in Toronto and I thank him for all the fantastic conversations, city walks, and writing sessions. My friends from the department, Khalid, Semir, and Marie, have made the PhD program more bearable and I feel very lucky to have the chance to know these brilliant minds.

If I did not have the support and company of Ebru and Nefise in the last few months before the completion, I would not be able to survive those stressful times. I know Ebru from Boğaziçi University and I have always admired her kind, caring, calm personality, and her intelligence. I met Nefise in 2010 in a Persian class at the University of Toronto. Having realized that we had grown up in the same town and later attended the same university, but only met in vii

Toronto miles away from home, has always amused me. Those connections cultivated a strong friendship from the beginning and it has always been a bliss to have generous, caring, funny Nefise in my PhD life. There are many more friends without whom I would not be able to survive the PhD and the Toronto winters. I want to thank Aslı, Seçil, Hülya, Burak, Tuğçe, Nishant, Prasad, Meghana, and Melanie for all their great company and amazing dance parties.

My oldies, but goldies, Esra, Çiğdem, Hasan, and Sarper from LAL, I do not know how I could survive the last few years without our WhatsApp group. Thank you so much for all the inspiration, support, laughter, and all the amazing summer meetings that have rejuvenated my mind and soul. I also need to thank my undergraduate friends Işıl and Esra for being there for me and supporting me in difficult times.

I dedicate this dissertation to my mom Sevinç Uzun and my dad Attila Uzun. They have been caring and compassionate parents, but they have also respected my autonomy and independence. Otherwise, I would not be able to imagine pursuing a PhD in the other side of the Atlantic, in that distant country miles away from home. I also owe my passion for knowledge and teaching to my parents; both worked as teachers and have always believed in the transforming role of education. I very unwillingly left my younger sister and roommate Bengü behind, when I traveled to Canada for a PhD. She has always supported me during hard times and encouraged me to continue when everything seemed very hopeless. I thank her for support and I apologize her for all the times I spent on the PhD instead of hanging out with her. My aunt Sevil and cousin Ceren were also always there when it felt overwhelming and stressful; without their support the writing process would be more unbearable. I also want to thank my grandmom Necmiye Uzun. She has always believed in me and loved me so much.

Finally, I want to thank my partner Yüksel. If you were not in my life, this dissertation would be a different dissertation, and I would be a more depressed, and a less resilient person. I thank you for our endless discussions on Turkish politics, and amusing conversations on people and life. I thank you for cheering me up all the times I felt overwhelmed and for always believing in my capacity to finish the PhD. Never mind my occasional sarcastic comments, your optimism has always empowered me.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...... v Table of Contents ...... ix 1 Introduction ...... 1 1.1 The Puzzle, the Context, and the Causal Mechanisms ...... 1 1.2 The Conceptual and Theoretical Framework ...... 13 1.2.1 Defining the category of ‘youth’ and the review of studies on elite-youth linkages ...... 13 1.2.2 The Typology of Elite Structures ...... 19 1.2.3 Elite Structures and Elite-Youth Linkages ...... 28 1.2.4 Elite Structures and Political Incorporation of Youth: Partisan Incorporation vs. Incorporation as Moderation and Control ...... 30 1.2.5 Elite Structures, Youth Incorporation, and Youth (de-)Mobilization ...... 45 1.3 The Argument ...... 46 1.4 Methodology: Case Selection, Methods, and Data Collection ...... 49 1.5 Outline of Chapters ...... 58 2 The Historical Context: Elite Transformation, Challenges of Political Incorporation, and Elite-Youth Linkages in Modernizing Turkey (1923-1960) ...... 61 2.1 Introduction ...... 61 2.2 From Ideologically United Elites to Elite Disunity ...... 63 2.3 Elite-youth Linkages in Modernizing Turkey: Navigating between Partisan Youth Incorporation and Incorporation as Moderation and Control ...... 73 2.4 The Beginning of Youth Contention: the 1960 Student Protests ...... 77 2.5 Conclusion ...... 78 3 Elite Fragmentation, Partisan Incorporation, and Youth Mobilization (1960-1980) ...... 80 3.1 Introduction ...... 80 3.2 The Elite Structure in Turkey from 1961 to 1980: The Making and the Intensification of Elite Fragmentation ...... 83 3.3 Elite-Youth Linkages in Turkey from 1960 to 1980: Elite Fragmentation and Partisan Incorporation of Youth ...... 100 3.4 The Impact of Partisan Youth Incorporation: Youth Militancy and Political Violence in Turkey (1978-1980) ...... 122 3.5 Conclusion ...... 125 4 Elite Cohesion, Incorporation as Moderation and Control, and Youth De-mobilization (1980-2002) ...... 127 4.1 Introduction ...... 127 4.2 The Elite Structure in the 1980s and the 1990s: The Making and the Consolidation of Elite Cohesion (1980-2002) ...... 130 4.3 Elite-youth linkages in the 1980s and the 1990s: Elite Cohesion and Incorporation as Moderation and Control ...... 148 4.4 The Impact of Incorporation as Moderation and Control: Youth Demobilization in the 1980s and 1990s ...... 166 ix

4.5 Conclusion ...... 168 5 Elite Hegemony, Hybrid Incorporation, and Youth (de-)Mobilization in the late AKP Period (2010-2016) ...... 170 5.1 Introduction ...... 170 5.2 The Elite Structure in the AKP Period: From Fragmentation to Fragile Hegemony ...... 173 5.3 Elite-youth linkages in the post-2010 period: Elite Hegemony and Hybrid Incorporation ...... 186 5.4 The Impact of Hybrid Incorporation: The De-Mobilization of Anti-Government Youth and the Emerging Activism of Pro-Government Youth ...... 209 5.5 Conclusion ...... 216 6 Conclusion ...... 218 7 Bibliography ...... 229

1 Introduction

1.1 The Puzzle, the Context, and the Causal Mechanisms

Scholars of state-society relations in the Global South have investigated how various social forces as diverse as workers, peasants, ethnic minorities, and immigrants have turned into political forces and how the states have attempted to incorporate those sectors into the political and economic structures. Young people in the Global South have also mobilized against the established system, or they have counter-mobilized in defense of the status quo, while young people have sometimes remained politically quiescent for long periods. However, the studies that investigate the underlying dynamics of the political interactions between the state and social forces have paid little attention to why the states in the Global South encounter youth as a political force at particular moments in time, while young people might turn to become weak challengers/defenders at other times.

This study will focus on the case of post-1960 Turkey to explain the variance in youth political participation in a given context and over time. Specifically, it will address the puzzle of "why did the Turkish state encounter sustained youth contention and fail to contain it in the 1960s and the 1970s, while it proved more capable in preventing the emergence/escalation of youth dissent in the post-1980 period?” It will argue that elite fragmentation in the period from 1960 to 1980 led the political elites in Turkey to participate themselves in the mobilization of youth sectors conceived as societal allies in order to benefit from youth activism in defeating rival elite factions. As a result, fragmented elites contributed in part to the emergence of youth as a fully contentious force. However, relatively cohesive elites and later hegemonic elites in the post-1980 period largely stayed away from ‘partisan linkages' with youth and instead sought to moderate youth demands for political participation in a concerted fashion. Therefore, oppositional youth in the post-1980 period that encountered a completely different incentive structure for political activism compared to the 1960s and the 1970s could not sustain their

1 2 mobilization over a long period and ultimately disengaged from even conventional forms of political participation1.

Young people in Turkey acted as a significant contentious force in the period from 1960 to 1980, during which the political arena manifested fragmentation and ideological polarization among the political elites. In contrast, young people could not sustain their mobilization over a long period and ultimately disengaged from political activism in the post-1980 period that was characterized by a relatively cohesive and hegemonic elite structure, respectively. In the period from 1960 to 1980, for example, youth became one of the most politically active sectors in Turkey, engaging in increasingly radical contentious politics to enable broader political change. The first contentious appearance of young people on the political scene was during the student demonstrations in April and May 1960, when university and high school students took to the streets against the increasingly authoritarian rule of the Democrat Party (DP) government (Yılmaz 1997; Kabacalı 2007). These student demonstrations played a decisive role in crystallizing popular discontent against the DP, helping to precipitate a military coup that ousted the popularly elected DP government on May 27, 1960 (Neyzi, 2001:418). In the second half of the 1960s, university students, in particular, came under the influence of socialist ideas and mobilized within left-wing student organizations where they gradually became a more autonomous and organized political force (Alper 2009). Further influenced and empowered by the advent of student activism around the world, university students in May 1968 boycotted classes and occupied university buildings, demanding regulations in the examination system and broadly more representation in the administration of universities (Lüküslü, 2015:57-8).

Even though the 1971-73 military-led technocratic governments banned youth associations and imprisoned student activists, youth rapidly re-mobilized on- and off-campus. In

1 The central thesis of this study draws inspiration from David Waldner's 1999 book titled State Building and Late Development. In his small-N study of Turkey, Syria, Korea, and Taiwan to explore the relationship between state- building and economic development, Waldner (1999) convincingly demonstrates that levels of elite conflict play a pivotal role in the timing of popular incorporation with transforming effects on the trajectory of economic development. Despite being anchored in political economy and the study of institutional origins, Waldner's book has not only encouraged me to think about the impact of elite interactions on the unfolding of elite-youth relations, but Waldner's analysis has also become empirically useful when establishing the historical narrative on elite disunity and fragmentation in Chapter 2 and 3, respectively.

3 the 1970s, youth politics also ideologically diverged along a ‘right’ and ‘left’ divide with each group pulling in completely different directions to shape the future political trajectory of Turkey. Youth dissent in this period rapidly moved outside the legal terrain and turned more militant, with frequent outbreaks of violence between ideologically opposed youth groups. The ruling parties and the security apparatus remained mostly ineffective in terminating youth violence, and the situation became alarming when the rate of political killings among youth reached an average of twenty per day by the spring of 1980 (Tachau and Heper, 1983:25; Ahmad, 1993:175). The 1960s and the 1970s in Turkey were thus characterized by sustained youth contention against the state and by the inability of the coercive agents in containing the growing militancy of youth. It was the 1980 coup and the three-years long military dictatorship that eventually demobilized highly politicized urban youth by dismantling youth organizations and imprisoning many activists both from the left and the right.

Turkish youth in the wake of the 1980 coup, on the other hand, have been identified as “apolitical and apathetic” (Neyzi 2001) vis-à-vis previous generations of overtly contentious youth activists. Even though the Kurdish and Islamist movements recruited considerable numbers of their followers from among youth in the 1990s, and despite the fact that young people, albeit in limited numbers compared to the pre-1980 period, revived the student movement in the second half of the 1990s, contentious youth mobilizations in the post-1980 period became short-lived or did not reach the grassroots. Recent research reveals that young people in Turkey show little interest in politics and have low levels of political participation (Yılmaz and Oy 2014; Erdoğan and Uyan 2016). While the image of contemporary youth as ‘politically apathetic’ changed overnight when secular youth took to the streets en masse in the summer of 2013 to stand against the authoritarian policies of the ruling party, the youth returned ‘home' after two weeks of street politics amidst police violence and detentions. This spontaneous youth mobilization has not so far turned into a more organized form of youth politics. It is thus possible to conclude that the Turkish state has not encountered sustained youth contention in the post-1980 period or has effectively contained it when it emerged.

Specifically, in order to address the puzzle of “why the Turkish state encountered sustained youth contention and failed to contain it in the 1960s and the 1970s, while it proved more capable in preventing the emergence/escalation of youth dissent in the post-1980 period”, this study will focus on the historical trajectory of ‘political elite-youth linkages' in post-1960

Turkey. Political elites are "relatively small groups or strata that exert great influence, authority, and power of decision" (Collier and Collier 2002: 782). In the context of post-1960 Turkey, influential political elites comprise some subgroups such as the military-bureaucratic elites, party elites, economic elites, and the intellectuals. By political elite-youth linkages, I specifically refer to the attempts of the power-holder elites in a polity at regulating youth political participation in accordance with their particular interests and political visions and to the ways young people benefit from, negotiate, or at times challenge elite claims to exert control over youth political agency. Scholarly attempts to analyze the nature of political elite-youth relations in the Global South, however, are rare, lack a ‘politics-focused' perspective, and do not propose a theoretical framework that might apply to different contexts. This study draws on the studies of political elites, the literature on social movements and revolutions, and the studies concerning the dynamics of political incorporation. It will show that the type of the elite structure in a country, namely the patterns of political interaction and distribution of power among the influential elites, shapes the course of elite-youth linkages, which in turn plays a significant role in the unfolding of youth (de-)mobilization. The elite structure is, thus, the independent variable of this study. Drawing inspiration from the studies that propose different typologies of elite structures (See:Field and Higley 1980; Burton and Higley 1987, Burton and Higley 2001) this study will identify three types of elite structures in post-1960 Turkey: elite fragmentation (1960-1980), elite cohesion (1983-2002), and elite hegemony (2010-2016)2.

Youth (de-)mobilization is the dependent variable of this study. Adopting Tilly and Tarrow(2007)’s brief definition of mobilization, I define youth mobilization as a process of “how [youth] at a given point in time are not making contentious claims start to do so” (Tilly and Tarrow, 2007:35). However, youth mobilization does not only refer to protest politics of youth characterized by the relatively spontaneous outbreak of street protests and rallies initiated by young people; it more broadly entails the organized politics of youth sustained over a long period

2 . Following the rise of the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party(AKP) to power in 2002, the period from 2002 to 2010 revealed the recurrence of elite fragmentation characterized by intense power struggles between the secularist and pro-Islamist elites. However, this period of elite fragmentation is not part of the explanatory framework. It constituted a transition phase before the ruling AKP has finally consolidated political and state power and started to build hegemony in the political arena. Only after the emergence of an elite structure characterized by elite hegemony, the ruling party has undertaken a more systematic approach in regulating youth political participation.

5 through membership to or affiliations with political organizations or student associations. Youth demobilization refers to the disappearance of young people from the political scene as an organized political force most of the time due to concerted state coercion. However, in the context of post-1980 Turkey, I also adopt the term youth demobilization in referring to young people's disengagement from conventional/non-contentious forms of political participation as well as to their feeling of exclusion from the political arena. I use the terms youth (de- )mobilization and patterns of youth political participation interchangeably to avoid redundancy.

In order to unpack the trajectory of political elite-youth linkages in post-1960 Turkey, this study will draw upon the theoretical propositions that emphasize elite-based explanations on the outbreak of collective protests, social movements, and revolutions (see: Tilly 1978, Skocpol 1979, Burton 1984, Tarrow 2011 ). The first causal mechanism of this study then contends that when the elites are highly fragmented and ideologically polarized, they participate themselves in youth mobilization in order to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rival elites. Since the role of elite interactions on the process of de-mobilization is under-theorized in relevant studies, drawing upon empirical evidence, this study proposes the counter-factual causal mechanism. It asserts that elite structures characterized by cohesion or hegemony instead lead the elites to refrain from involving themselves in youth mobilization and, to undertake attempts to moderate youth demands for political participation with the purpose of sustaining the status quo.

Scholarly analyzes that emphasize the relationship between the character of elite interactions and the outbreak of contentious movements also under-theorize how elite disunity functions to foster popular mobilization. In other words, the political instruments the fragmented elites employ to facilitate the mobilization of certain segments of society are mostly underexplored. This study will consider elite attempts at politically incorporating youth into the political arena in order to better identify the trajectory of political elite-youth linkages and relatedly the causal mechanisms between elite structures and youth (de-)mobilization in post- 1960 Turkey. Youth political incorporation is thus the intervening variable of this study. By political incorporation, I refer to elite attempts at integrating popular sectors as diverse as workers, urban middle classes, women, ethnic and religious groups, and youth into the political arena. Specifically, political incorporation entails “institutional arrangements, public policies, and legitimating discourses”(Heydemann 2007:25) forged by the political elites either to politically activate particular social forces for partisan causes or to moderate the demands of

6 social forces for political participation with the ultimate goal of preventing societal dissent. This study will argue that in implementing political incorporation, the elites alternate between various instruments: pluralist and limited-pluralist policies, various political discourses targeting youth, and corporatizing initiatives, for example, functioned as the primary means of youth incorporation in post-1960 Turkey. Finally, even though the process of political incorporation primarily relies on non-coercive mechanisms, it also includes selective repression of social forces that are left outside the incorporating process.

Building on the studies of political incorporation (See: Huntington 1968, O'Donnell 1979, Waldner 1999, Collier and Collier 2002) this study will identify three paths of youth incorporation, each an outcome of a different type of elite structure: partisan incorporation, incorporation as moderation and control, and hybrid incorporation. I argue that fragmented elites adopt ‘partisan youth incorporation’. I define partisan youth incorporation as elite attempts at politically activating particular sectors of youth conceived as potential societal allies or facilitating the mobilization of already politicized youth sectors. The elites undertake partisan youth incorporation to make electoral and political gains, establish themselves as the authentic representatives of the dissatisfied youth sectors, or to secure incumbency in part through youth support. Incorporation as moderation and control, undertaken by cohesive elites, rather entails elite attempts at moderating youth demands for political participation with the ultimate goal of preventing the emergence/recurrence of youth dissent against the state. Hybrid incorporation, which is a product of elite hegemony, is when those two forms of youth incorporation unfold simultaneously.

The use of repression also plays out differently under different types of youth incorporation. Building on Tilly (1978) and Tarrow (2011), this study will contend that a fragmented elite structure characterized by the lack of an elite consensus on resorting to repression against youth contenders and by an ideologically divided coercive apparatus in tandem with elite polarization debilitates the will and the coercive capacity of the government in responding to militant youth action. In contrast, one of the significant features of a cohesive or a hegemonic elite structure is the elite consensus on the systematic use of repression against contentious forces. Therefore, while partisan youth incorporation is characterized by the lack of effective and concerted repression against contentious youth, incorporation as moderation and

7 control often relies on a unified coercive apparatus that undertakes repression effectively and continuously.

Finally, the second causal mechanism of this study stresses how particular types of youth incorporation influences the unfolding of youth participation. In other words, while the first causal mechanism hypothesizes about elite behavior in interfering with youth participation, the second causal mechanism diverts attention to how young people appropriate, negotiate, or challenge elite claims to exert control over youth political agency. It argues that partisan incorporation provides politicized youth with vast opportunities for militant political action, facilitates youth radicalization, and eventually empowers youth beyond intended levels. As a result, the state becomes vulnerable to youth contention and fails to contain it, while youth sustain their mobilization over a long period. In contrast, incorporation as moderation and control significantly shrinks the spaces available for youth to pursue oppositional politics, weakens the mobilizational capacity of activist youth, and ultimately prevents the grassroot- ization of youth mobilization. As a result, while the state effectively prevents the escalation of youth protests, young people might develop disenchantment even with conventional forms of political participation. Finally, hybrid incorporation prevents spontaneous youth mobilization from growing into organized youth opposition while creating opportunities for pro-government youth to build organizational capacity.

In this context, this study will specifically focus on the following questions: what types of elite structures have prevailed in the Turkish political arena since 1960? How do we account for the transformation of elite structures? Why and how have different types of elite structures shaped the course of elite-youth linkages in post-1960 Turkey and with what impacts on youth (de-)mobilization? I will argue that the more fragmented the Turkish elites in the period from 1960 to 1980, the more they turned to participate themselves in youth mobilization via the process of partisan incorporation. Elite fragmentation eventually facilitated militant youth behavior, left the Turkish state vulnerable to youth contention, and created youth mobilization that was sustained over a long time. The more cohesive the Turkish elites in the period from 1983 to 2002, the more they turned away from mobilizing youth sectors and the more they subscribed to incorporation as moderation and control. Elite cohesion in part hindered the capacity of youth for mobilization and even triggered youth political disengagement. Finally, the more the ruling party elites came closer to achieve elite hegemony and the more they perceived

8 threats to emerging elite hegemony in the post-2010 period3, the more they adopted hybrid incorporation to secure incumbency and sustain political hegemony. Elite hegemony weakened oppositional youth politics and politically empowered pro-government youth.

It is important to note that this study does not treat young people as the instruments of influential elites and youth political agency as easily manipulated by the elites in accordance with particular political projects. Instead, it aims to unpack the role of various forms of elite interferences with youth's relation to politics on the complex dynamics driving the cycles of youth mobilization and de-mobilization in a given context and over time. Besides, the concept of elite-youth linkages is also attentive to the ways young people negotiate, maneuver, and at times challenge elite claims to exert control over youth political agency, and the analysis accordingly attracts attention to youth responses towards elite policies as well as to unintended consequences of elite interferences with youth politics.

If this study emphasizes elite transformations to explain the outcome of youth (de- )mobilization, does it bracket the problem of state autonomy? What about the role of the state as an actor on and of itself in regulating the micro arena of youth political participation? In other words, did not the Turkish state as an autonomous actor at times interfere with youth politics in order to pursue its particular interests? By employing the term elite structure and tracing elite transformations in post-1960 Turkey, this study pursues to disaggregate the high echelons of the Turkish state - the elites that have access to varying forms and degrees of state power- in order to highlight modalities of conflict and consensus in governing the micro-arena of youth participation. Disaggregating the Turkish state into its various parts will highlight the changing relationship of particular elite factions with the state and will unpack elite interactions in framing the priorities and the interests of the state in its relations with social forces. Therefore, I argue that the overall analysis of elite politics and elite-youth linkages will shed light, in part, on the contested nature of state autonomy in post-1960 Turkey.

3 In the broader context of democratization in the early AKP years, the period from 2002 to 2010 witnessed some democratic openings in the area of youth incorporation. Several progressive laws enhanced youth political rights and particularly the freedom of association. However, the AKP systematically replaced initial democratic openings with a limited-pluralist approach and selective repression against oppositional youth groups in the post-2010 period. In other words, it was not until 2010 that the ruling AKP has undertaken a concerted approach to youth incorporation.

Elite fragmentation that created a diffused power configuration and a fragmented state bureaucracy debilitated the power of the state as an autonomous actor in the period from 1960 to 1980. When elite fragmentation forged partisan youth incorporation that ultimately empowered activist youth beyond intended levels and left the state vulnerable to youth contention, the Turkish military intervened two times ‘on behalf of the state’ in order to restore state authority, prevent civil strife, and safeguard regime stability. In 1971 and 1980, the army, "used state power to stave off or deflect threats to national order"(Skocpol 2010:10) from dissident social forces and in particular from youth rebels. During the martial law orders (1971-73 and 1980-83), the military employed systematic coercion against politicized youth intending to demobilize youth activists. Unlike the 1971 intervention, the Turkish military in 1980-83 did not only pursue to demobilize youth activists, but also institutionalized a new scheme of youth incorporation, which this study refers to as incorporation as moderation and control, in order to cultivate a politically compliant youth that would not possess the will and the capacity to contend the state. The broader political reforms, especially after the 1980 coup, clearly manifested statist goals in the sense that they sought to terminate elite fragmentation and to protect the rights and the authority of the state vis-à-vis potentially dissident social forces. However, as the military interventions reflected the interests of the business that felt threatened by the growing popularity and the militancy of the left-wing movement, they also helped aggravate the power of the military vis-à-vis civilian elites. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that after a period of intense elite conflict, the Turkish state managed to exhibit relative autonomy bypassing the fragmented elites and the dissenting social forces. A relatively autonomous state sought to alter the nature of elite-youth linkages as well in order to counteract the perceived crisis of state authority and political order.

When the elites managed to establish "compromises among themselves"(Waldner 1999) over a number of contested issues in the post-1980 period, which created an elite structure characterized by relative cohesion, the Turkish elites claimed to do so for the sake of overarching state interests: market-based economy would accelerate national economic development; a limited-pluralist democracy would permanently restore state authority over society, and coercive measures against the Kurdish insurgents and the Islamists would strengthen national unity and safeguard the secular regime respectively. Accordingly, when re-organizing their linkages with youth, the Turkish elites frequently referred to the state interests. They refrained from

10 participating themselves in youth mobilization and turned to rely on incorporation as moderation and control, the path of youth incorporation initially instituted by the 1980 coup coalition, in order not to jeopardize political stability and regime durability. When realizing incorporation as moderation and control, the elites also relied on the state powers of legislation, coercion, and social engineering. In short, even though parochial elite and societal interests were at play in the formation of elite cohesion in the post-1980 period, the elites framed their compromises in the vocabulary of state interests to accelerate their political power and to increase their access to state power.

Finally, this study will argue that elite hegemony in the post-2010 period has brought about the fusion of the party and the state in Turkey. Therefore, while the process of de- democratization of state-society relations has functioned to sustain its political hegemony, the ruling AKP has frequently legitimized its regime- and society-shaping actions by referring to national unity, political order, and economic stability. Similarly, the ruling party has framed its interventions in the micro arena of youth participation with reference to overarching state interests. That is why protesting youth were portrayed as terrorists that sought to undermine state authority and distort societal peace, while pro-government youth were identified with patriotism and regime guardianship.

In short, in the post-1980 period, the absence of elite fragmentation enabled the Turkish state to manifest greater autonomy, but in contested and paradoxical ways due to the peculiarities of elite politics. The analysis will demonstrate that while particular elite factions pursued to capture state power by claiming to take action on behalf of the state, others framed their policies in the vocabulary of state interests to increase their political power. Overall, the analysis will highlight that state autonomy might "come and go"(Skocpol 2010:14) or the state might exercise varying degrees of autonomy over time. Therefore, this study does not bracket the problem of state autonomy but instead aims to demonstrate that the autonomy of the Turkish state has been contested, negotiated, reframed or reproduced by power-holder elites and dominant social forces. The state is thus not a unit of analysis, and state autonomy is not a variable as part of the explanatory framework, but the problem of state autonomy still permeates the analytic narrative frequently and in subtle ways.

This dissertation is a single-case analysis that exclusively focuses on the case of post-1960 Turkey. Despite the focus on a single case, however, it adopts a comparative-historical approach by analyzing three time periods as different cases (1960-1980, 1980-2002, and 2010-2016). Combining the contextualized comparison of different time periods with the examination of within-case processes, it simultaneously adopts the comparative and process-tracing methods to analyze secondary sources and archival materials of newspapers, parliamentary proceedings, relevant policy reports by independent organizations, and published memoirs. Also, by utilizing a snowball sampling technique, I carried out 80 semi-structured interviews with veteran youth activists, the youth members of the ruling AKP, and with university students and recent graduates who participated in the Gezi Park protests in 2013. Interviews were conducted in İstanbul and the capital city of Ankara during 12 months of field research in total (June- December 2013 and October 2014- April 2015).

But, why should we care about different patterns of youth participation and the origins of the variance in youth politics in a given context and over time? This study makes several empirical and theoretical contributions: first, as Bayat (2010) argues social movement debates have largely excluded youth as a unit of analysis (p.28) or "youth as an analytical category appears in them, for the most part, incidentally"(p.27). This study treats youth as a central category when exploring the process of social mobilization. Furthermore, the process of demobilization has largely been under-theorized in social movement theory and the literature on revolutions. By examining the process of youth de-mobilization in post-1980 Turkey, this study aims to shed light on the complex dynamics of popular disengagement from the political arena.

Second, within the fields of comparative politics and political sociology, scholars of state- society relations in the Global South have analyzed the relationship between the state/elites and the social forces including workers, peasants, ethnic and religious minorities, and immigrants. Despite being a critical population group for the political elites as agents of nation-building and desired political transformation, defenders of the status quo, or as troublemakers disrupting the established order, youth have ceased to exist as a unit of analysis in these studies. By attempting to explore the trajectory of elite-youth linkages in a historically comparative fashion, this study contributes to the debates on the variance in elite strategies of political control and domination, while simultaneously exploring the particular repercussions of elite-youth relations on the political landscape.

Third, “how” the elites participate themselves in social mobilization has also been under- theorized in social movement theory. By proposing the process of political incorporation as the intervening variable, in which different instruments of pluralist policies, corporatist initiatives, and particular discourses are adopted by the elites to integrate social forces into the structures of political and economic power, this study aims to fill in a theoretical lacuna in social movement debates. Finally, this study also conceptualizes two types of political incorporation. By distinguishing between partisan incorporation and incorporation as moderation and control, this study seeks to demonstrate that the incorporating agents pursue different objectives when they carry out particular projects of political incorporation.

This chapter will proceed as follows: First, it will discuss how the category of youth is defined in public policy discourse and scholarly analyses and will highlight the approach adopted in this study in conceptualizing youth. Next, it will engage with the studies that focus on particular aspects of state-youth relations in the Global South and will discuss why those studies are not readily applicable to the historical study of elite-youth linkages. Second, it will review and expand on the new elite paradigm and will arrive at a typology of elite structures in Turkey from 1960 to 2016. Third, it will discuss the theoretical propositions in the literature on social movements and revolutions about the relationship between elite structures and elite behavior in interfering with popular mobilization in order to establish the first causal mechanism of this study. Fourth, it will engage with the studies on political incorporation and identify divergent paths of youth incorporation as the intervening variable of this study. Fifth, it will establish the second causal mechanism by highlighting the impact of a particular path of youth incorporation on the trajectory of youth participation in a given period. Finally, it will propose the main argument in detail and outline the methodology.

1.2 The Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

1.2.1 Defining the category of ‘youth’ and the review of studies on elite- youth linkages

Defining Youth: The Construction of Youth as a Political Category

Defining youth as a particular life stage and through specific age cohorts relies on the insights of development psychology (see, for instance, Erikson, 1968). Development psychology focuses on discrete stages at the physical, cognitive, and emotional levels to categorize changes from infancy to adulthood (Raby, 2006:40). In this development process, youth is conceived as a phase between childhood and adulthood, which is marked by emotional instability and semi- dependence (Kett, 1971, cited in Jeffrey, 2010:497). Since development psychologists conceive of the development process as linear and progressive, adulthood being the final destination, young people's biological attributes, and psychosocial abilities are expected to develop towards the ideal norm of adulthood gradually (Raby, 2006:44; Wyn and Woodman, 2006:497). Adopting the terminology of development psychology, the United Nations refers to youth “as a period of transition from the dependence of childhood to adulthood’s independence” and defines ‘youth,' “as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years”(see: UNESCO website). However, considering youth as a transition stage from childhood to adulthood disregards the broader political, cultural and socioeconomic processes in the formation of adolescence and assumes that the characteristics of youth as a life stage are universal for all young people in particular age categories (Wyn and Woodman, 2006: 497). Therefore, Comaroff and Comaroff (2005) convincingly argue that public discourse in the West considers youth as a “transhistorical and transcultural” category, as if “it has existed everywhere and at all times in much the same way” (p.19).

While procedures and practices in areas as diverse as medicine, family, education and labor market attribute specific characteristics to being youth, the particular ways the state manages population groups (Scott 1998 cited by Durham 2004:594) by imposing certain age limits for voting, licensing to drive or access to free healthcare (Durham 2004:594) also play a salient role in constructing one's life course. For example, in Nigeria, familial norms impose that youth ends when someone finally has a dependent. Having a wife or a child moves a young male into the status of an adult (Last 2005:40). Similarly, in Turkey, marriage has been an important

14 marker of adulthood. A single young female still at school is young; a 19-year-old mother is an adult. However, government documents may not match the societal constructions of youth and adulthood. Like in Lebanon (see Harb 2016), The National Youth Policy Document in Turkey (2013) defines youth as those persons between the ages of 14 and 29 regardless of their marital or employment status.

As a category “always in the process of being remade in sociopolitical practice”(Durham 2004:601), youth is also a highly heterogeneous population group characterized by economic inequalities and cultural divisions. That is why Pierre Bourdieu (1993) once said: " ‘Youth' is just a word." However provocative the claim might seem, Bourdieu has a strong point. He argues that people of young ages share no vital common interests and the social universes they occupy reveal very different features. Bourdieu (1993) is mostly concerned with how class distinctions create social universes for people of young age that are entirely distinct from each other. Adolescents who are already at work experience conditions of existence, labor market, or time management entirely different from youth with (upper) middle-class backgrounds who are at school. Students of various ages still go through "the artificial universe of dependency, based on subsidies, with low-cost meals and accommodation, reduced prices in theatres and cinemas" and a more considerable amount of time for leisure (p.95).

In addition to class, gender, ethnicity, and cultural backgrounds also constitute the so- called stage of youth as a process characterized by heterogeneous experiences (Nguyen 2006:329). For example, in Cameroon, young women become youth and adult within a single day when they move between instances associated with being young and adult (e.g., going to school in the morning, taking care of their siblings in the afternoon) (Johnson-Hnaks 2002, cited by Jeffrey 2010:498). As Bayat and Herrera (2010) rightly argue, many rural youths in the Global South "may have little opportunities to undergo "youthfulness"……by virtue of their lack of participation in, or access to education, youth leisure activities, media, and markets" (p.7).

As the above discussion reveals, there exists widespread consensus, especially among anthropologists and sociologists, that youth is a socially, culturally and institutionally constructed category (Bourdieu 1993, DeBoeck and Honwana 2005, Durham 2004, Nguyen 2006, Comaroff and Comaroff 2005, Orock 2013). Most important for the purpose of treating youth as an analytical category in political science research, however, is to consider the

15 construction of youth as a political category by the influential political elites. Throughout history, the power elites have constructed youth as a political category by referring to youth as "builders of the future" or by stigmatizing young people as "disruptive agents" (Bayat and Herrera 2010:3). For example, young leaders of African decolonization struggles "were enticed" by the older leaders "to enter the ranks of the reigning elite, to set themselves against each other, or were banned" (Abbink 2005: 13). Furthermore, the African post-colonial regimes in Kenya, Cameroon, and Malawi have created youth wings of the ruling party, and the ruling elite has usually manipulated youth wing members into violence against the opponents (ibid:15). Likewise, since Eritrean young people and students became the forerunners of early protests against the Ethiopian regime, the Eritrean post-liberation state, referring to the young martyrs of the liberation war, created "the ethos of youthful sacrifice" in constructing the symbols of nationhood (Rich-Dorman 2005:190-92).

Similarly, in the first decade of the Islamic revolution in Iran, the ruling elites, exalted young people as "heroes and martyrs" referring to their activism in the revolution and their sacrifices as soldiers in the war with Iraq (Bayat 2010:32). But, when the officials started to notice "degenerate behaviour" among Iranian youth starting by the 1990s based on youth's non- conformity with Islamic principles (ibid:33), the conservative elites accused Iranian youth of "immortality, depravity, and indecency"(ibid: 39). In order to confront "immoral youth in Iran," the Islamic regime has recruited fundamentalist youth as the Basiji which have functioned as a pro-regime militia force to police streets against anti-Islamist and anti-regime behavior (ibid:36). More recently, former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali stated in his last election campaign in 2009 that “Youth are the key to success and the guarantor for achieving our people’s aspirations for further prosperity and progress….. We are always keen on imbuing them with national values and with the sense of patriotism, sacrifice, and allegiance to Tunisia alone while disseminating the sense of civic behavior and the culture of volunteerism among them and encouraging them to take interest in public matters.”(quoted by Murphy 2012:5). Tunisian youth turned out to become ‘troublemakers’ vis-à-vis the ruling elites when they led the revolution in 2011 to overthrow Ben Ali from power.

It is the construction of youth as a political category by the influential political elites, which this study will draw upon in conceptualizing youth as an analytical category. When establishing political linkages with youth, the Turkish elites either exalted young people as the

16 saviors of the regime and builders of the future or politically stigmatized them by identifying youth activists as troublemakers and even terrorists. The early republican elites, for example, reconstructed the social category of youth as a political category (Lüküslü 2009) and assigned to youth the mission of safeguarding the new republican regime against internal and external enemies (Neyzi 2001). While the 1960 coup coalition of Kemalist elites referred to youth as the saviors of the republican regime and as the guardians of freedoms and democracy, the right-wing elites and the top military in the 1970s came to identify activist youth, in particular, left-wing student activists, as anarchists undermining state authority and status quo. Recently, Erdoğan, the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party stigmatized young participants of the Gezi Park protests as looters and terrorists, but identified pro-government youth as the builders of the future.

The Studies on Elite-Youth Linkages in the Global South

A number of studies in different disciplines explore political engagements between power- holders and youth in the Global South or indirectly provide insights into the nature of what this study refers to as elite-youth linkages. These studies address different forms of political and social control over youth in order for the state to hinder the disruptive potential of youth political agency. They also highlight youth responses to various forms of elite interventions in the youth sector. The existing studies provide a starting point and valuable insights in identifying the historical trajectory of elite-youth linkages in a particular context. However, they hardly constitute a coherent and identifiable literature; they are usually not in conversation with each other and rarely cite other works’ findings. They also do not propose a theoretical framework that might apply to different contexts. Finally, these studies lack a ‘politics-focused' perspective and do not highlight how elite interactions and power struggles among the elites might shape the course of elite interferences with youth politics.

In an article where they trace the history of student politics in Taiwan, Teresa Wright (2012) for example discusses strict political controls over student expression and association before the 1990s by the ruling Kuomintag party (KMT). Among these political controls were the recruitment of ‘class spies' who were responsible for reporting anti-KMT opinions and activities among university students, monopolization of the selection of student representatives by school authorities or KMT-sponsored student groups, expulsion of students for frequent anti-KMT

17 political behaviour, and strict controls over university administration and curricular contents (pp.107-108). Wright (2012) argues that the party-state's control over students even permeated their daily lives. High school students were required to answer questions on KMT-ideology in national university entrance exams and each student once in college was accompanied by a KMT-affiliated counsellor who lived with students in the dormitory and closely scrutinized their actions and behavior (p.107). Wright(2012) posits that starting with the late 1980s, the openings in the political system characterized by a number of liberalizing reforms, provided university students with more opportunities to engage in on- and off-campus democratization struggles. However, it is notable that despite their converging political stance with the oppositional Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the students have carefully portrayed themselves as an independent and nonpartisan social force (pp.116-117) in fear of KMT suppression. In other words, Taiwanese students' claim to "autonomy and purity was a practical response to KMT- controlled political environment" (p.119).

Similarly, El-Shornouby (2015) discusses political state strategies during the Sadat and Mubarek rules in Egypt that largely suppressed youth involvement in the political sphere. The Sadat regime’s repressive student bill enacted in 1979 introduced university guards on campus, allowed the university administrations to interfere with student elections, and prohibited political parties to operate inside university campuses (Shehata 2008 cited by El-Shornouby 2015:181). In the 1990s, when the Muslim Brotherhood increased its sphere of political influence on university campuses, the Egyptian state again employed repressive strategies of political exclusion against students in order to break the Muslim Brotherhood influence among university students (El- Shornouby 2015:181).

In addition to various forms of political control, Bayat and Herrera (2010) highlight systematic forms of social control over youth by repressive moral regimes in the form of the “violation of rights to a lifestyle”. In Iran, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, “through different types of policing, states mandate what the young can wear, how they should look, who they can associate with (especially if unmarried), where they can go, what they can listen to, and so on”(Bayat and Herrera 2010:13). Bayat (2011) shows that Iran’s post-revolutionary youth have engaged in everyday cultural struggles and normative subversion to reclaim their youth habitus from state control and moral authority (58). These everyday cultural struggles which Bayat (2011) calls a “non-movement” have taken a variety of forms: “distanciated dating” through

18 which girls and boys chatted, flirted and expressed love through electronic waves; bad- hijabi(laxity in veil wearing) among school girls and female university students; invention of “Hussein parties” by North Tehrani youths which turned a highly austere occasion of religious mourning during the ritual of Muharram into an evening of glamour, fun, and sociability ( pp. 54-55).

El-Sharnouby (2015) attracts attention to the shifting state discourse on youth in Egypt, starting with the Sadat era that resulted in youth exclusion from the economic and social spheres. Once heralded as the hope of the country, Egyptian youth and especially Egypt's growing youth bulge came to be identified as a problem and "a burden in and for society"(p.178). The Mubarek administration mainly focused on increasing youth's employment opportunities and providing training for youth that would fit market needs (p.179), but the government failed to "develop a holistic, inclusive social and political strategy"(pp.180-181). Middle Eastern youth's response to their social and economic exclusion became highly contentious. Murphy (2012) contends that youth activism during the Arab Spring should be understood as a "generational narrative based on commonly shared experiences of marginalization and exclusion"(p.18). After all, the catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution was the self-immolation of a young man, Mohamed Bouazizi, in December 2010 at the age of 26. Bouazizi was a long-time unemployed who set himself on fire in protest of the confiscation of his fruit cart by the local authorities (Worth 2011).

These studies offer a stimulating research agenda with their focus on accommodating strategies of youth to counter political and social control by the state. In other words, they highlight how young people in politically repressive contexts might retreat from confrontation with the state, but they still employ innovative strategies to develop political and cultural autonomy vis-à-vis the state. However, concerning elite strategies of governing youth, these studies exclusively underscore repressive mechanisms of political and social control over youth. Thus, they overlook elite attempts at politically incorporating youth into the political arena by non-coercive mechanisms such as institutional arrangements, public policies, and discourses. If we consider the high costs of repression even for authoritarian regimes, it would not be wrong to claim that policies of incorporation have played more notable roles in weakening youth capacity for subversive actions. More broadly, these analyses do not offer a coherent framework to address the puzzle of this study; they lack a conceptual and theoretical framework applicable to other cases. Therefore, this study will instead engage with the literature on elite structures, social

19 movements, and revolutions and with the studies on political incorporation in order to analyze the changing dynamics and consequences of elite-youth linkages in post-1960 Turkey.

1.2.2 The Typology of Elite Structures

Building on the works of Masco (1939) and Pareto (1935) and on Putnam (1976), Field, Higley, and Burton propose a new elite paradigm that focuses on the variations in elite structures "among societies and within them over time"(Burton and Higley 1987:296). The paradigm seeks to explain how different elite structures and the transformation from one elite structure to another shape major political outcomes and in particular the regime type of a country (Field and Higley 1980; Burton and Higley, 1987; Burton, Gunther and Higley 1992; Burton and Higley 2001). The authors define the ‘elites’ as the persons who occupy "top leadership"(Burton and Higley 1987:296) and/or "strategic" (Field and Higley 1980:20) positions in governments, parties, militaries, top business, trade union and other occupational organizations, media, religious and educational organizations (ibid) as well as in socio-political movements (Burton and Higley 2001:182). Including both "establishment" and "counter-elite" factions (Burton and Higley 1987:296), the elites "participate in or directly influence national political decision- making"(Burton and Higley 2001:182). While the elites "may hold widely varying attitudes towards the existing social, economic, and political order"(Burton, Gunther, and Higley 1992:8), unlike the non-elites, they still have the ability and the organized capacity "to affect political outcomes regularly and substantially”(Burton, Gunther and Higley 1992:9, emphasis mine).

An “elite structure” refers to the “amalgam of attitudes, values, and interpersonal relations among factions making up the elite”(Burton and Higley 1987:296)4. Burton and Higley (2001) propose two dimensions to identify different types/structures of elites: the extent of differentiation and integration among the elites. Differentiation refers to "the process through which groups making up political elites become more autonomous, organizationally diverse, functionally specialized, and socially heterogeneous" (Keller 1963;1990 cited by Burton and Higley 2001:183-84). Whereas integration entails "the structure and the character of elites'

4 Burton, Gunther, and Higley (1992) and Burton and Higley(2001) do not employ the term "elite structure" and simply refer to "types of elites", when addressing variations in elite attitudes and interactions between different countries or within a country over time. This study retains the concept of "elite structure," as it allows to more rigorously constructing the elite variable as an analytical and explanatory category.

20 internal relations"; differentiation involves the ways elites "organize their relations and deal with each other politically"(ibid:184). Based on these dimensions, the earlier works of Burton, Field, Gunther, and Higley identify three different types of elite structures: disunified or divided elites, ideologically unified elites, and consensually unified elites (Field and Higley 1980; Burton and Higley 1987; Burton, Gunther and Higley 1992). Burton and Higley (2001) add another subtype to this typology, which they call fragmented elites.

An elite structure characterized by disunity arises out of “elite factions [that] deeply distrust each other" to such an extent that "interpersonal relations do not extend across factional lines, and factions do not cooperate to contain societal divisions or to avoid political crises"(Burton and Higley 1987:296). The elite factions in disunified structures constantly struggle with each other "for careerist and partisan advantages"(Field and Higley 1980:35). That is, a disunified elite structure manifests "weak integration," but since the elites "are clustered in two or three distinct and well-organized camps," they also display "narrow differentiation"(Burton and Higley 2001:188). Ideologically unified elites are characterized by elite factions "publicly profess[ing] the same ideology and publicly support[ing] the same major policies." The persons occupying elite positions are from the same party or movement, and intra- elite interactions are sharply centralized and hierarchical (Burton and Higley 1987:296). Soviet elites under Stalin, German elites under Hitler and North Korean elites under Kim Il Sung exemplified the almost ideal forms of ideologically unified elites(Burton, Gunther and Higley 1992: 2) revealing "strong integration and narrow differentiation" (Burton and Higley 2001: 187). In an elite structure identified with the existence of consensually unified elites, the elite factions despite their "opposing ideological and policy stances," stay away from "pushing their disagreements to the point of violent conflict"(Burton and Higley 1987: 296). Conceiving of each other as "legitimate players" in the political arena and of their "competitions as positive- sum bargaining exercises", the consensually united elites display "strong integration and wide differentiation" (Burton and Higley 2001:187) and they opt for "restrained partisanship" (Burton and Higley 1987: 296). Finally, a fragmented elite structure that is characterized by "weak integration and wide differentiation," includes elites "arrayed across numerous competing and conflicting factions and functional domains." Fragmented elites lack consensus on the political rules and codes, and they hold genuinely opposing belief and goals. Unlike disunified elites,

21 however, the high degree of elite pluralism prevents any one faction from becoming the dominant group and exercising power over other factions (Burton and Higley 2001: 187).

Burton, Field, and Higley's works on different types of elites provide the scholars focusing on elite-based explanations of political change and continuity with a theoretically robust analytical toolbox. In particular, the typology of elite structures offers a well-grounded analytical framework to historically trace the variations in the number and composition of and interactions among the national elites in different contexts and within the same country over time. Yet, the new elite paradigm proposed by the authors has a number of setbacks: First, it contends that "once a particular type of elite is created in a country, it strongly tends to persist, and so do the practices associated with that elite type"(Burton and Higley 2001:181, also see: Burton, Gunther and Higley 1992:13). To put it differently, even though the authors do not use the historical- institutionalist jargon, it would not be wrong to claim that they conceive of the elite structures as ‘path-dependent' and the shift from one type of elite structure to another as rare events forged by ‘critical junctures'(e.g., by independence struggles, anti-colonial struggles, or revolutions). This study instead argues that the elite structures are reflections of changes in underlying dynamics in society and of the ways the influential elites respond to the crises stemming from large-scale societal and political change. They are thus more temporal, elastic, and prone to middle-term change, and most importantly, they do not necessarily follow a linear-progressive path from disunity to consensual unity. In other words, as Cammack (1990) points out the national elites "move back and forth over time" between different elite structures "without achieving consensual unity or experiencing regime breakdown" (p.417).

Second, in identifying different types of elite structures, a more nuanced focus is needed on the distribution of power among the political elites in order to better trace the character of elite interactions. In addition to differentiation and integration, this study thus adds the third dimension of ‘the nature of power configurations within the state.' Power configuration or distribution of power refers to whether political and state power is mostly concentrated in one single elite faction or diffused among different elite groups. By concentration, I specifically refer to the rule of a dominant political party with significant electoral majorities that achieves one-party rule at least for three consecutive terms. In contrast, diffusion of power refers to an electoral system with political parties failing to reach electoral majorities but also to the existence of powerful non-elected elite factions in the political arena that possess significant veto

22 powers over civilian politics (e.g., the military, high judiciary). This study argues that the nature of power configuration is strongly related to the dimension of integration proposed by the new elite paradigm. While significantly shaping the character of elite interactions, it also plays a notable role in the composition of the bureaucratic elites in particular.

Finally, this study, drawing upon the case of post-1960 Turkey, also proposes two alternative subtypes of elite structures in order to capture the variations in elite types in a fine- grained manner. It argues that between fragmented and consensually united elites, lies the subcategory of ‘cohesive elites.' An elite structure characterized by cohesion refers to the emergence of a consensus or "sticking together"(Burton and Higley 2001:185) among established elite factions on vital economic and political issues on which the elites had taken partisan positions in the past. However, the challenge from newly emerging counter-elites operates as a strong stimulus to the formation of elite cohesion in the political arena as well. In other words, cohesive elites, unlike the consensually unified elites, do not conceive of all elite factions as legitimate players in the political arena, but rather stick together to undermine the power of rising counter-elites, further their interests, and defend the status quo. Relatedly, despite the emergence of "restrained partisanship" (Burton and Higley 1987: 296) among the established elites, a cohesive elite structure manifests only ‘selective integration' along with wide differentiation. Lastly, Burton, Field and Higley's typology of elite structures and their explanatory framework that establishe linkages between different types of elite structures and the regime types leave out the type of elites that might precipitate hybrid regimes. Drawing upon empirical evidence on post-2010 Turkey, where a hybrid regime characterized on the one hand by competitive elections , but increasing restrictions on the freedom of expression, association, and media, and on the other hand by the electoral predominance of a political party over long years, this study proposes the subcategory of ‘elite hegemony'. By elite hegemony, I refer to the dominance of a single political party in the political arena and its increasing monopoly of power over key state institutions (a concentrated power configuration). In an elite structure characterized by elite hegemony, political and bureaucratic recruitments are largely conducted according to the criterion of loyalty to the dominant party, but the old bureaucratic cadres are not yet wholly removed from the state. The elites of oppositional political parties are still diverse and legitimate players (wide differentiation), but their political influence in national political decision-making is largely constrained. An elite structure characterized by hegemony, thus

23 inherits the features of both cohesive and ideologically united elites and manifests ‘mixed integration and wide differentiation' along with a concentrated power configuration.

In tracing the relationship between elite structures and youth (de-) mobilization in post- 1960 Turkey, the elites that are relevant to the primary focus of this study and are included in the analysis comprise the military-bureaucratic elites, party elites, economic elites, and the intellectuals. Military-bureaucratic elites or state elites mainly include the top army officers and the high judiciary who exerted great control and authority over the political processes until Turkey’s tutelary system of checks and balances that provided the military and high judiciary with significant veto power vis-à-vis the elected elites was largely dismantled in 2010. Also included in the analysis are the state elites of the presidents of the Higher Education Council and the university administrators (presidents and deans) who are appointed by the Turkish president and have played notable roles in elite attempts at regulating the area of youth political participation. Party elites comprise the high echelons of the ruling party and the main opposition parties. Intellectuals referring to technocrats, university professors, journalists, and writers are also under analysis since the intellectuals assumed essential roles in the period from 1960 to 1980 and a lesser extent in the post-1980 period in framing new constitutions and shaping the content of political and economic reforms. Finally, this study will also mention the economic elites and address their roles in the political processes when relevant. The economic elites include the owners of large corporations in industrial and trade sectors.

This study will identify three types of elite structures in post-1960 Turkey: elite fragmentation (1960-1980), relative elite cohesion (1983-2002), and elite hegemony (2010- 2016). In the 1960s and the 1970s, the Turkish political arena revealed ‘elite fragmentation’ characterized by the following features: first, the political arena witnessed the numerical proliferation of influential elites. As small parties were founded both in the left and the right and some of these parties managed to gain parliamentary seats, the leaders of new labor federations and business associations also emerged on the political scene (wide differentiation). Second, while none of the political parties attained the status of the dominant party in the electoral arena, the political elites had to share power with the military and the high judiciary that were granted with veto powers over civilian politics through the 1961 Constitution (a diffused power configuration). Third, there existed deep ideological splits among right wing and left-wing elites, and accordingly, the Turkish elites remained largely divided over the pattern of economic

24 development, the nature of popular incorporation, and the state response to growing popular mobilization. While fostering intense rivalry in the electoral arena as well as weak and unstable coalition governments, those splits hindered cooperation among the elites on the resolution of the pressing problems of economic development, national cohesion and in particular of youth incorporation (weak integration). As proposed by Burton and Higley (2001), elite fragmentation created an "unstable representative regime"(p.188-89); the Turkish army undertook three interventions in the period from 1960 to 1980.

The elite structure that prevailed in the period from 1983 to 2002 could be identified with ‘relative elite cohesion.' While vast veto powers granted to the top military, the high judiciary, and to the president created an unequal distribution of power that fuelled power struggles among the state and political elites (a diffused power configuration), fragmentation in the party system also resurfaced in the 1990s giving rise to weak and unstable coalition governments (wide differentiation). However, unlike the pre-1980 period, the dominant elites, namely the top military, high judiciary, centrist parties, and the metropolitan bourgeoisie became cohesive over a number of contested political issues: the established Turkish elites did not diverge from market-oriented growth; they sought to moderate the demands of urban sectors for political participation; and they turned to rely on coercion to counteract the new radical movements of the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement. Concerted coercion against the Kurdish and Islamist movements in part aimed to undermine the power of newly emerging counter-elites (Islamist and Kurdish elites) and to exclude them from the political arena (selective integration).

After the recurrence of elite fragmentation following the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party’s(AKP) rise to power in 2002, the post-2010 period (2010-2016) witnessed ‘elite hegemony’ in the Turkish political arena. By elite hegemony, I refer to particular institutional and ideological configurations during the late AKP period. First, it refers to the AKP's long years of electoral predominance that marked the ruling party as the dominant actor in the political arena. Second, elite hegemony was also characterized by the AKP's increasing monopoly of power over the key state institutions of the police, the judiciary, the parliament, and to a certain extent, the military. In other words, whereas the distribution of political power in the period of elite cohesion was still diffused, the AKP largely consolidated political and state power by bypassing the tutelary powers of the military-bureaucratic elites and filling up bureaucratic positions with party followers. Third, elite hegemony had an ideological dimension

25 as well. The AKP challenged the ideological underpinnings of the Turkish state, to a particular degree nationalism as well as secularism, and instead emphasized religious conservatism that created significant policy shifts in the areas of foreign policy, education, social policy, etc. However, while elite hegemony did not prevent the presence of diverse and competing party elites in the electoral arena, the AKP also felt increasingly insecure in power due to a number of crises at the elite and societal levels (the breakdown of the alliance between the AKP and the Gulen movement, and the Gezi Protests). The perceived threats to its hegemony led the AKP to take an authoritarian turn in its relations with the rival elite factions and the anti-government sectors of society.

Explaining Elite Transformations

But, how do we account for the transformation of elite structures in a particular country over time? Since the new elite paradigm particularly seeks to explain the stability and survival of democratic regimes and propose the existence of ‘consensually unified elites' as a precondition for democratic consolidation, it primarily focuses on the conditions precipitating the transformation of disunified or fragmented elites into consensually unified ones(see:Burton and Higley 1987; Burton, Gunther and Higley 1992; Burton and Higley 2001). The scholars identify two paths for the formation of consensually unified elites: elite settlements and elite convergence. Elite settlements are defined as "relatively rare events in which warring national elite factions suddenly and deliberately reorganize their relations by negotiating compromises on their most basic disagreements"(Burton and Higley 1987:296). Disunified elites enter into settlements and transform into consensually unified elites in two significant ways: The elites may decide to compromise after a recent elite experience of costly but inconclusive conflict such as a civil war. Alternatively, a major political crisis involving the head of the state and his or her policy failures and power abuses might precipitate elite attempts at seeking settlements (ibid:298). In both cases, one major precondition for reaching an elite settlement is to enjoy considerable autonomy from the non-elite pressures (Burton and Higley 1987:301; Burton, Gunther and Higley 1992: 18).

The second path to the formation of consensually unified elites is an elite convergence, which takes place in unconsolidated democracies with fragmented elites. It refers to a broad electoral coalition formed by opposing elite factions in order to "realize a reliable majority of

26 voters [and] win elections repeatedly." Elite convergence gets completed, when major dissident elites who have failed to defeat the dominant coalition in successive elections, abandon their "antisystem and semi-loyal stances" (Burton, Gunther and Higley 1992: 24). It would not be wrong to conclude that even though the high level of socioeconomic development is proposed as a facilitating condition for the emergence of an elite convergence, the authors primarily stress that both elite settlements and elite convergence arise out of autonomous elite choices rather than reflecting broader social and structural forces.

This study alternatively proposes that in post-1960 Turkey, elite transformations emerged due to two dynamics: First, the shift from one type of elite structure to another reflected the underlying changes in society triggered by the large-scale socioeconomic transformation. Second, the elite transformation was also shaped by the elite choices in responding to the crises of representation and incorporation that are driven by societal change as well as to the crises at the elite level. Therefore, rather than solely arising out of autonomous elite choices, elite transformations in Turkey emerged as the outcome of both structural change and elite agency. Starting with the 1950s, Turkey witnessed the diversification of social forces and their increasing political demands on the state - a process spurred by the advent of economic development and urbanization. The peasants came to realize their growing political influence and considered the ballot "as a means of improving their status"(Ülman and Tachau 1965:159); the workers became organized for better working conditions; an emerging urban middle-class sought to increase its political leverage on policy-making; and the new migrants in the cities looked for political arrangements that would facilitate their upward mobility. The diversification of social forces and their political demands drastically transformed the political arena; new political parties, as well as interest groups (labor unions and business associations), appeared on the political scene seeking to represent divergent societal interests and to incorporate contentious forces into the political arena. The result was the transformation of disunified elites (1946-1960) into fragmented elites that came to adopt increasingly divergent stances on the course of economic development, the nature of popular sector incorporation, and state response to growing popular mobilization.

Turkey underwent a significant socioeconomic and political transformation in the aftermath of the 1980 coup. The transition to a free-market economy in the early 1980s economically strengthened the established bourgeoisie and helped create a new bourgeoisie with

27 provincial and conservative backgrounds, while injecting hope and optimism into Turkey's lower and middle-classes for achieving personal enrichment. Unlike the 1960s and the 1970s, the established elites of top military, centrist parties, and the bourgeoisie rather developed a cohesive stance following the transition to a civilian regime in 1983 in subscribing to market-based development. However, it became apparent by the late 1980s that the neoliberal experiment in Turkey deepened economic divisions in society that intersected with and perpetuated long- standing cultural divisions (urban-rural, secular-Islamist, and Turkish-Kurdish) (Cizre- Sakallıoğlu and Yeldan 2000:492). The rise of the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement, in particular, became unsettling for the Turkish elites and significantly destabilized the political arena. In order to defeat the rising counter-elites of the Islamists and the Kurdish and to further their particular interests, the established elites also remained unified in identifying the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement as the new national security threats that needed to be suppressed via repressive measures under the leadership of the Turkish military. The rise of a popular form of Turkish nationalism amidst Kurdish insurgency and the urban secular sectors' perception of threat from the rising Islamist movement facilitated the cohesion among the established elites in undertaking concerted coercion against the Kurdish insurgents and the Islamists. Consequently, despite the recurrence of fragmentation in the party system in the 1990s, the established elites in Turkey abandoned their partisan stances in vital political and economic issues from 1983 to 2002 and turned to cohesion.

After the recurrence of elite fragmentation following the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party’s(AKP) rise to power in 2002, the post-2010 period witnessed ‘elite hegemony’ in the political arena. Elite hegemony was the product of the AKP’s success in three areas: first, the AKP offered convincing proposals to resolve the economic crisis, corruption, and long-lasting cultural disputes that allowed the party to establish a broad and cross-class coalition of loyal voters. Thus, the AKP established itself as the dominant party in the electoral arena. Second, it established a long-lasting elite coalition consisting of the economic elites and the Gulen movement. Third, it emerged victorious out of its power struggles with the tutelary secularist elites.

This chapter now turns to lay out the first causal mechanism of this study by offering a theoretical framework on the relationship between elite structures and elite-youth linkages.

1.2.3 Elite Structures and Elite-Youth Linkages

Elite-based explanations and in particular the type of the elite structure have taken a central place in the study of popular mobilization. There exists a consensus among the scholars of social movements and revolutions that the existence of divided and polarizing elites in a polity provides a strong impetus for mobilization (Burton 1977, Tilly 1978, Skocpol 1979, Tarrow 1996, McAdam et al. 1996, Lachmann 1997, Goldstone 2009). In theorizing the relationship between divided elites and collective protests, Burton (1985) argues that "unable to count on each other for cooperation and forbearance, the factions of a disunified elite regularly mobilize segments of non-elites for both defensive and offensive warfare against other elite factions"(p.55). Tarrow (1996) also contends that divisions among the elites provide incentives for certain elite factions "to seize the role of ‘tribune of the people' " in order to gain more political influence vis-à-vis the rival elites (p.56).

Similarly, focusing on the choices and the strategies of what they call the Politically Relevant Elite (PRE) in order to examine the transformation processes in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen during and in the aftermath of the 2011 uprisings, Asseburg and Wimmen (2016) examine to what extent and how the PRE "engage with bottom-up participation"(p.5). The authors argue that the PREs "attempt to use (or even create) mobilized publics to generate evidence of popular legitimacy for themselves and their agendas (or counter and undermine that of rivals) and as a resource in intra-PRE struggles for influence"(p.9). In his analysis of the protest dynamics in Kyrgyzstan, Radnitz (2010) also contends that the elites in authoritarian and hybrid regimes "who are not part of the regime" and remain vulnerable to threats from the power-holders seek to create a support base within the impoverished local communities through clientelist networks. When those elites face a challenge from the regime, they mobilize loyal supporters against the regime in order to protect their interests and assets (4-5).

Regardless of the regime type, an elite structure characterized by disunity or fragmentation among the influential elites might encourage the dissident elites to participate themselves in the mobilization of discontented masses. As those theoretical propositions, albeit somehow implicitly, also suggest, it is not only the dissident elites who participate in mass mobilization; “elites can counter-mobilize as well” in defense of the status quo (Goldstone 2001:151). For example, while the Bolsheviks in Russia provided the workers’ revolts with

29 direction and coherence in 1917, the Parisian bourgeoisie counter-mobilized some workers within the National Guard units in 1848 to defeat the revolutionary workers (ibid: 152).

Drawing on the theoretical propositions discussed above, the first causal mechanism of this study stresses the role of elite structures in shaping the nature of elite-youth linkages. When the political elites are highly fragmented and ideologically polarized, they get involved in the mobilization of youth sectors conceived as societal allies in order to benefit from youth activism in defeating rival elite factions. Elite involvement in youth mobilization creates or facilitates the organized politics of particular youth sectors. But, when the elites are cohesive and able to establish “compromises among themselves” (Waldner 1999:4) on preventing the politicization of social forces, they stay away from ‘partisan linkages’ with youth and seek to moderate youth demands for participation both through concerted coercion and through legal and institutional mechanisms that constrain the channels available to (potential) youth contenders. Finally, in the case of elite hegemony, when the monopoly over political and state power is vulnerable to an electoral transfer of power, the hegemonic elites seek to mobilize pro-government youth as a civil society force loyal to the existing regime, while moderating the demands of oppositional youth for political participation.

The literature on social movements and revolutions under-theorize the process of which the elites (counter-) mobilize social forces to realize their particular interests or political projects. In particular, the political instruments the divided elites employ to generate or facilitate mass mobilization are largely underexplored. Relatedly, the relevant studies do not propose a theoretical framework to investigate how and to what extent the mobilizing publics rely on, maneuver through, or negotiate elite participation in mass movements. Furthermore, the non- coercive mechanisms the elites employ in a political context characterized by cohesive or united elites to prevent (the escalation of ) popular mobilization or to lessen its impacts on the political arena also received little attention from the scholars of contentious politics. This study turns to studies of political incorporation to redress this theoretical lacuna.

1.2.4 Elite Structures and Political Incorporation of Youth: Partisan Incorporation vs. Incorporation as Moderation and Control

Political incorporation of youth is the intervening variable of this study. Drawing on studies that offer varying conceptualizations of political incorporation and on the literatures that identify different mechanisms of political incorporation (the studies on pluralism and corporatism), I adopt the term ‘political incorporation' and distinguish between different variants (or paths) of youth political incorporation that are shaped by the type of prevailing elite structure. This theoretical framework seeks to offer a more robust theoretical examination of the historical trajectory of political elite-youth linkages and in particular of the causal relationship between elite structures and youth (de-)mobilization. This study reveals how different types of elite structures have forged divergent paths of elite-youth linkages manifested through different types of youth incorporation in post-1960 Turkey, which in turn created different outcomes in the patterns of youth political participation.

Since the advent of modernization and the expansion of nation-states in the developing world, political scientists have examined the relationship between the state and social forces and particularly elite efforts at incorporating (potentially) dissident social forces into the political arena. Huntington’s 1968 book titled Political Order in Changing Societies can be considered as among the earlier scholarly attempts to arrive at a scholarly analysis of the problems and prospects of political incorporation in non-Western contexts. Huntington (1968) argued that modernization brought about deleterious political consequences in most of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Social and economic change spurred by modernization, namely urbanization, increases in literacy and education, industrialization and mass media expansion, “extend[ed] political consciousness, multipl[ied] political demands, [and] broaden[ed] political participation” in those countries, leading to rapid mobilization of new groups into politics (p.4). Huntington (1968) posited that since the development of political institutions lagged behind the rate of mobilization, the result was political decay (p.5) or what he called the emergence of “praetorian polities” in most of the third world (p.80). Praetorian polities are the “systems where social forces using their own methods act directly in the political sphere”(ibid). For Huntington, the remedy to praetoranism is “political institutionalization” that refers to “national integration and political assimilation” of social forces into the political sphere (p.397) through “effective

31 political institutions capable of mediating, refining, and moderating group political action”(p.196).

Huntington's preoccupation with political order led him to normatively consider political institutions as a means to restrict political participation and to eventually concentrate more power in the state (Bianchi 2014:9). As a normative assertion, the role Huntington assigned to political institutions sounds problematic, since it implicitly calls for an illiberal democracy and a strong state that would restrict popular demands made upon the power-holders. However, emphasizing the necessity to build and consolidate "effective political institutions," Huntington still provides scholars of state-society relations with a conceptual toolkit for identifying the mechanisms of political incorporation. His discussion of political institutionalization brings into attention regularized channels and organizations installed by the ruling elites to systematically integrate social forces into the political system by non-coercive means.

While Huntington's (1968) analysis emphasizes the unsettling impacts of modernization on political development and more broadly highlights the tensions between new social forces and the ruling elites, Collier and Collier (2002) focus on state-labor relations in Latin America and specifically on different types of labor incorporation and their varied legacies on the evolution of national politics. Collier and Collier (2002) refer to the incorporation of the workers as a new mode of state-labor relations in Latin America that was characterized by a shift from repression to institutionalization and from exclusion to incorporation (p.6). They underline that labor incorporation involved the establishment of regularized legal channels of labor relations by the political elites with the goal of "tak[ing] the labor question out of the streets and away from the police and the army and bring[ing] it into the realm of law by providing mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of labor disputes"(p.7). Thereby, with the inauguration of labor incorporation in Latin America, the state ceased to exist merely as a repressive institution and rather "assumed a role as the mediator of class conflict and arbiter of labor-management disputes"(ibid). Collier and Collier's emphasis on the shift from repression to incorporation is crucial in identifying political incorporation of social forces as a different mechanism of political control that primarily relies on non-coercive regularized channels. However, it would be a fallacy to think of the process of political incorporation as completely detached from state coercion. Instead, past and present forms of political incorporation and labor incorporation in the developing world reveal that the incorporating agent (the state, government or an authoritarian leader) still adopts

32 selective repression to subdue groups that are deemed ‘unfit' for being incorporated into the political arena.

When highlighting the differences among South American political systems during the emergence and consolidation of what he termed bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes, O’Donnell (1979) distinguishes between "excluding and incorporating political systems." According to O’Donnell (1979), "an incorporating political system" aims at politically activating the popular urban sector (p.53) by promoting its capacity to transform its political preferences into political demands (p.29). An incorporated (and an activated) group thus eventually attains "some voice in national politics" (p.53). O'Donnell's understanding of political incorporation is straightforward in the sense that political incorporation is defined as the institutionalized channels that allow popular classes to transfer their preferences into political demands. However, since O'Donnell is primarily concerned with excluding political systems that he considers as the major feature of bureaucratic authoritarian regimes, his definition of political incorporation is inconclusive. It does not highlight why the ruling elites in the first place work to install an incorporating political system and the political conditions conducive to the success of an incorporating system.

Popular sector incorporation is also at the center of Waldner's (1999) analysis of the relationship between state-building and economic development. In his small-N study of Syria, Turkey, Korea, and Taiwan, Waldner (1999) convincingly shows how "the timing of popular incorporation relative to state transformation" shapes the results of elite efforts to achieve sustained economic development (p.2). Drawing upon and building on the usage of the essays in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (1979), Waldner (1999) posits an extended definition of political incorporation:

Political incorporation entails the politicization of excluded social actors through the creation of perceptions that issues of critical importance to their daily lives are implicated in decisions made at the national level, the organization of political conflict around a common set of issues, and the integration of previously excluded social actors into the national political community through the resolution of those issues in a way that reflects the interests of a significant portion of the population (p.25).

This definition emphasizes that the primary feature of political incorporation is to create perceptions among targeted social actors that "issues critical importance to their daily lives are

33 implicated in decisions made at the national level"(p.25). This feature offers a more nuanced theoretical framework to understand the motivations of social actors for subscribing to elite schemes of political incorporation. However, Waldner implicates that political incorporation largely includes material incentives to targeted groups stating that this definition of incorporation does not necessarily entail “the expansion to non-elite actors of the right of institutionalized political inclusion”(ibid).

In the context of state-youth relations, the term youth political incorporation was used by D.H. Kamens in a 1985 article titled “Youth and the State: A Cross-National Analysis of the Changing Status of Adolescence”5. Kamens defines the political incorporation of youth as "the creation of special roles for adolescents that have high legitimacy and involve them in the state organized activities and agencies"(p.9). Kamens (1985) exemplifies state action towards the political incorporation of youth as follows: extended state control over national education; new legislation concerning youth such as the regulation of the right to vote, the legal age of majority and of the legal age for criminal accountability; and formal recognition of youth as an interest group by establishing youth ministries and national youth agencies (7-8). Kamens argues that the political incorporation of youth was a byproduct of modernization and industrialization, but it became a widespread and systematic domain of state action specifically in the post-WWII period when there emerged an "integrated world system" with many new nations becoming part of the global political and economic structures. The integrated world system developed "a uniform world system ideology" that imposed similar goals for all states (Meyer, Ramirez, et al., 1979, cited by Kamens, 1985:6). These goals included economic development, statism6, and also nation-building for the newly-established states (ibid). Kamens posits that the political incorporation of youth systematically unfolded when these new goals imposed on the states by the world system ideology necessitated "to build institutional linkages between critical population groups and the state." Youth were among these critical population groups (p.9). Kamens' discussion implies that young people's saliency for the realization of state goals was due

5 Kamens(1985) acknowledges that he borrowed the term from Ramirez(1974,1975; Ramirez and Rubinson 1979) (p. 9). 6 Kamens(1985) uses the term statism in referring to the extension of state jurisdiction over diverse areas of social and economic life such as education, family, welfare and employment. Thus, statism, in a way, might be understood as the expansion of the welfare state in the post-WWII era across the world.

34 to three reasons: first, economic development necessitated a dynamic workforce. Second, especially in new nations, youth and children were primary targets of the nation-building process. Third, youth historically constituted a dissident force challenging state authority that could jeopardize the status quo and relatedly the realization of economic development and nation-building. Hence, Kamens (1985) concludes that regardless of their levels of socioeconomic development and regime types, the states in the post-WWII period undertook initiatives to politically incorporate youth in the state through new institutional arrangements and new legislation in order to channel youth political agency into the realization of national progress.

Finally, Heydemann (2007) discusses political incorporation in the context of authoritarian regimes. In addressing the puzzle of authoritarian persistence in the Middle East, he attracts attention to the unique strategies adopted by the authoritarian leaders to incorporate peasants, workers, women, and urban middle classes into the political arena (p.24). The incorporation of these social forces, which is part of a governance structure Heydemann (2007) specifically calls a "social pact," refers to the organization of mass politics and state-society relations through institutional arrangements (both formal and informal), public policies, and legitimating discourses (p.25). The strategies of political incorporation or a social pact thus enable the ruling elites to acquire a capacity for conflict resolution, bargaining and coalition management (p.23) in containing popular pressures for political reform. Heydemann's analysis is significant, as it emphasizes that even for the authoritarian regimes that have developed robust coercive apparatuses, it is the process of political incorporation that primarily moderate and restrict conflicts between the state and social forces.

Based on the existing scholarly debates, it is possible to identify the distinctive features of political incorporation: First, political incorporation entails elite attempts to integrate social forces into the political system as legitimate political agents. The primary goal of political incorporation is thus to moderate existing or potential societal demands on the power-holders with the ultimate goal of containing popular dissent. However, the incorporating agent, depending on the timing of incorporation, may also seek to harness the political agency of targeted group(s) for promoting national goals of development or for consolidating political power. The social groups targeted by political incorporation, in turn, hope that this process provides them with an opportunity for recognition and fulfillment of their interests and

35 aspirations (Waldner 1999). Second, political incorporation is different from ad hoc or informal mechanisms of political and social control and instead functions through regularized and more or less institutionalized channels implicated in policy-decisions, government programs or constitutional rules and laws. Third, political incorporation primarily involves non-coercive mechanisms and rests on the institutional capacity of the incorporating agent for its realization. But, it also involves the frequent use of selective repression against groups left outside the scope of political incorporation. In short, existing studies consider political incorporation as elite attempts to restrict the popular demands for radical political participation by creating institutionalized channels for political expression in order to curb the potential of social forces in challenging the ruling elites beyond certain limits.

However, this study also argues that political incorporation may also entail elite attempts to politically activate certain social forces for partisan purposes. In other words, elite factions may seek to integrate hitherto politically passive social forces into the political system to benefit from the support and political agency of these groups to defeat rival elite factions. Political incorporation geared towards partisan goals might lead the mobilizing elites to create new institutions or manipulate existing ones to their own advantages. In this context, I define political incorporation as a set of “institutional arrangements, public policies, and legitimating discourses”(Heydemann 2007:25) forged by the ruling and/or oppositional elites either to moderate and control the demands of social forces for political participation or to (help) politically activate certain groups in the political arena to advance particular elite interests. Therefore, there arises a need to distinguish between different variants of political incorporation.

Collier and Collier (2002), for example, distinguish between state incorporation and party incorporation of labor in Latin America. State incorporation of labor, which unfolded in Brazil and Chile, was initiated by "the legal and bureaucratic apparatus of the state"(p.8). In those countries, labor incorporation took the form of depoliticization and control seeking to de- radicalize the union movement with a new legal framework and alternative union structures with the ultimate goal of replacing class conflict with class collaboration (p.185). Whereas in the cases of party incorporation, labor incorporation was undertaken by a political party or a political movement that later became a party. Even though the incorporating agents still sought to exert control over the political aspirations of the workers, they aimed at "active electoral mobilization of labor support" as well (p.165). In Peru, Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela, the political

36 parties in charge of labor incorporation also concentrated efforts to establish organic links between labor unions and political parties (ibid) in order to sustain the mobilization of labor as a support base.

Drawing on the analysis of Collier and Collier (2002), I argue that it is possible to identify three variants of youth incorporation: partisan incorporation, incorporation as moderation and control, and hybrid incorporation. I define ‘partisan youth incorporation' as elite attempts at politically activating particular sectors of youth conceived as potential societal allies or facilitating the mobilization of already politicized youth sectors in order for the elites to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rival elites, to establish themselves as the authentic representatives of the dissatisfied masses, or to rely on radical youth activism in defeating rival elite factions. Incorporation as moderation and control rather entails elite efforts at moderating youth demands for political participation through formal channels that restrict the scope of youth’s political rights with the ultimate goal of preventing the emergence/recurrence of youth militancy against the state. In particular moments over time, it is also possible to observe that two forms of youth incorporation unfold simultaneously, a process I call hybrid incorporation.

In contrast to Collier and Collier’s (2002) analysis, which contends that it is the identity of the incorporating agent (state versus party) that creates different types of incorporation with varying goals, I propose that the type of the elite structure shapes the path of political incorporation. When the elites are fragmented and polarized and in intense rivalry with each other, they participate themselves in youth mobilization, and they do so by adopting ‘partisan incorporation' of youth. Whereas an elite structure characterized by cohesion, one of the significant features of which is an elite consensus on the prevention of the radicalization of popular forces, creates incorporation as moderation and control towards youth. The cohesive elites, usually following a violent political conflict involving radicalized youth, seek to prevent the emergence/recurrence of youth militancy by restricting the scope of youth political participation. In the case of elite hegemony, the outcome is hybrid incorporation. While the hegemonic ruling elites pursue incorporation as moderation and control in order to govern oppositional youth sectors, they adopt partisan incorporation seeking to mobilize pro- government youth in consolidating political power.

Mechanisms of Youth Incorporation

Scholars of state-society relations have so far identified a variety of institutional arrangements and public policies forged by the state and political elites to incorporate social forces into the political arena. The major mechanisms of political incorporation that are addressed in the existing studies include pluralism, corporatism, and provision of material incentives through clientelist networks or (neo)populist redistribution schemes. This study will argue that these distinct mechanisms of political incorporation that primarily target the popular sectors of workers, peasants, and urban middle classes, also provide a framework to analyze the mechanisms of youth political incorporation.

Pluralism, which dominated the analyses on state-society relations specifically in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s (Skocpol 2010:4), still occupies a prominent space as an interest representation system and more broadly as an approach to regulating organized civil politics in many countries. Pluralism, which historically emerged as a state response to govern the "growing structural differentiation and interest diversity" in modern and modernizing societies (Schmitter1974:97), relies on the existence of “spontaneously formed and fully autonomous” voluntary associations (Kaufman 1977:111), neither created nor subsidized by the state and none of which exercises a monopoly of representation within their sectors (Schmitter 1974:96). Mostly associated with liberal political systems, pluralism rests on the conviction that multiple and competing voluntary associations and interest groups lobby the executives and relevant bureaucracies so that their interests are reflected in policy decisions. Therefore, classical pluralists view the government as an arena receiving “societal inputs” and converting them into policy “outputs” in order to allocate benefits among demand-making groups (Skocpol 2010:4). Two features might then characterize pluralism: First, it rests on the expansion of the freedom of association and the autonomy of civic associations from government interferences. By providing social forces with institutional and legal channels for the articulation of their demands and interests, pluralism aims to moderate popular demands for political participation and economic redistribution. Second, in pluralist systems, the state merely becomes an arena fulfilling the

38 interests of competing demand-making groups7. However, it is significant to highlight how pluralism might operate in some instances contrary to the expectations of classical pluralists. Elites might manipulate or mold pluralist structures to suit their particular objectives by politically empowering their societal allies and weakening their opponents. Pluralist structures might also produce unintended consequences when politically activated sectors rely on pluralist structures to pursue large-scale political transformation.

Bianchi's works on Turkey (1984) and Egypt (1989) offer an alternative analysis of pluralism by highlighting the particular character of pluralist policies in two non-Western contexts. In the case of Turkey, Bianchi (2014) argues that public policy towards associations in the period from 1946 to 1960 took the form of what he calls "debilitating pluralism." Turkey's debilitating pluralism that survived alongside corporatist attempts during the 1960s and 1970s in some sectors like labor, introduced broader freedom of association (p.141), but described the officially permissible activities of associations very narrowly; allowed political parties to penetrate and colonize voluntary associations (p.193); promoted "representational cartels under favored leadership"(p.339); and relied on the selective repression of associations by the government when they developed close relations with the oppositional parties (p.141). Similarly, in Egypt during the 1920s and 1930s, state policy towards associations took the form of "debilitating pluralism" that was characterized by group politics "highly susceptible to repression by the state and manipulation by party patrons"(Bianchi 1989:59). Despite encouraging the multiplicity of voluntary associations, debilitating pluralism largely differs from the classical pluralists' understanding of a pluralist system. It can be characterized as an illiberal variant of pluralism in which associations face constant challenges to their autonomy and enjoy lesser freedoms in their political activities due to frequent restrictions and interferences by the state and political elites.

Drawing upon Bianchi's insights on how the political elites might manipulate pluralist structures to their advantages, this study will show that the Kemalist elites, the right-wing elites,

7 Though it should be noted that statist analyses have long challenged pluralist accounts' society-centered perspective of state-society relations by convincingly demonstrating that policy-making does not merely reflect the demands and interests of social groups and classes (ibid:9). The state instead plays a salient role in policy-making by taking independent policy initiatives that are shaped by its particular goals and autonomous interests (Stepan 2015:14).

39 and the socialist elites who pursued partisan incorporation of youth used the pluralist structures in the 1960s and the 1970s to politically activate the youth sectors they viewed as allies. It will also argue that once in power, the political elites, and the right-wing elites, in particular, resorted to selective repression to weaken oppositional youth groups. Whereas in the post-1980 period, the ruling elites subscribing to incorporation as moderation and control have primarily relied on limited pluralism in the area of youth incorporation. On the one hand, limited pluralism has significantly restricted the scope of youth political rights curbing the formal channels for the political expression of youth. On the other hand, it has more clearly demarcated the ‘threatening' forms of youth participation, which has allowed the state to apply concerted coercion to left- wing, Kurdish and, Islamist youth activists.

Some critiques of pluralism have argued that rather than political incorporation, pluralist policies have functioned in some contexts as "catalysts for disruptive participation and demand- making"(Bianchi 1989:23) politically empowering social forces in unintended degrees and eventually radicalizing them. For example, Stepan (2015) argues that the military regime in Chile replaced the pluralist system of associational politics with exclusionary corporatism (p.55) in order to overcome the polarization of society (p.59). Similarly, in Turkey, the military and the right-wing political elites argued in the late 1960s that the pluralistic system installed by the 1961 Constitution created chaos and anarchy and challenged the authority of the state (Bianchi 2014:115). This study will show that those criticisms led the military-led technocratic government to put restrictions on the exercise of individual liberties and political freedoms through a series of constitutional amendments in 1971 and 1973. Similarly, the military administration in the period from 1980 to 1983 dismantled the pluralist policies towards youth political participation and restructured them in a limited-pluralist fashion. However, the criticisms against pluralism should not obscure how pluralist arrangements might eventually function as an efficient mechanism of political incorporation by eventually increasing the power of the state vis-à-vis civil society. Tocqueville's observations are very relevant in that context. Tocqueville argued that "Freedom of association in political matters is not so dangerous to public tranquillity as is supposed, and…..possibly, after having agitated society for some time, it may strengthen the state in the end."(quoted by Bianchi 1989:206).

The most widely acknowledged alternative to pluralism has been corporatist mechanisms of political incorporation. Studies on Latin American corporatism have largely dominated the

40 literature on corporatism, but corporatist structures have also pervaded in other parts of the developing world; authoritarian modernizers in the Middle East or developmental states in Asia have also subscribed to corporatist policies. In his widely cited definition, Schmitter (1974) describes corporatism as:

A system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organised into a limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized and licenced (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing specific controls on their selection of leaders and articulation of demands and supports.(pp.93-94)

Contrary to pluralism that relies on "spontaneous formation, numerical proliferation, horizontal extension, competitive interaction"(ibid: 97), and associational autonomy, corporative state- group relations are characterized by limited number of non-competitive and state-supervised groups that are subject to "state-imposed constraints on decision-making, leadership, and internal governance"(Collier and Collier 2002:51). However, it should be noted that corporatism is not only about state-imposed constraints, but also about inducements to targeted sectors (ibid: 53). In the case of state-labor relations, for example, Collier and Collier (2002) attract attention to the dilemma the states face concerning their major goals in installing corporatist structures: controlling the labor movement vs. mobilizing labor's political support (p.48). While corporatist constraints on the internal governance of labor unions function to exert control over the agency of the working class, the inducements such as representational monopoly and state subsidies to labor unions intend to mobilize labor's political support (ibid: 52-53) and finally give them a voice in national politics.

The literature on corporatism has also widely distinguished between different types of corporatism. Schmitter's (1974) distinction between societal and state corporatism is informative to analyze different variants of corporatist arrangements. Societal corporatism includes the cooptation and incorporation (p.108) of spontaneously formed and autonomous interest representation associations that penetrate the state (p.103) to rebuild social peace amidst "the slow and almost imperceptible decay of advanced pluralism"(p.106). It is more likely to emerge in postliberal societies with advanced capitalist systems and organized democratic welfare states (p.105).

State corporatism, on the other hand, functions through associations created by and dependent on the state (103) the primary goal of which includes the repression and exclusion of "the autonomous articulation of subordinate class demands"(p.108). In state corporatist systems, "the antiliberal, delayed capitalist, authoritarian and mercantilist state"(p.108) enforces social peace due to the "rapid and highly visible demise of nascent pluralism"(p.106). Statizing corporatism, a term offered by O'Donnell (1977) in describing the state-popular sector relations in Latin American bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes, provides further insights to identify the features of state corporatism. Statizing corporatism refers to the "conquest and subordination by the state of organizations of civil society"(O'Donnell 1977:48) with the ultimate goal of politically excluding the popular sector (p.58) from autonomous interest articulation and demand-making. However, rather than creating new associations for popular sectors, the bureaucratic-authoritarian state connects the existing popular sector associations and especially the trade unions into the state at a subordinate level (p.65) with the goal of their statization (p.48). Therefore, the major goal of the statizing corporatism is the "depoliticization, inertia, and atomization" of the popular sector (p.69) in order to advance new patterns of capital accumulation (p.78).

Even though scholarly analyses of corporatism mostly depict corporatist arrangements as structures linking the state with class-based interest groups and specifically with labor and business, it is significant to consider how corporatism might also function as a significant mechanism of political incorporation towards different societal forces. For example, Heydemann (2007) argues that corporatist structures that organized the state-labor relations in the Middle East also "provided the blueprint" for relations (p.25) between the state and diverse interest groups including peasants, students, women, and various professional associations (p.26). Similarly, Bianchi (1989) shows that the Egyptian state has developed corporatist relations with some religious associations such as Al-Azhar (p.180) and Sufi orders (p.180) towards their effective political control. This study will also refer to corporatizing attempts as part of youth political incorporation in contemporary Turkey. Even though still in the nascent form and lacking a cohesive design, the ruling AKP has also undertaken corporatist attempts towards pious youth by coopting existing religious youth groups into the governing structures and by creating several new youth associations directly sanctioned and subsidized by the government.

Therefore, the AKP has experimented with "a highly unusual mixture of" (Bianchi 2014:143) societal and state corporatist policies.

Although once installed, corporatist arrangements seem to function as the predominant form of political incorporation, scholars of corporatism also emphasize the frequent coexistence of corporatist and pluralist policies. Schmitter (1974) argues that corporatist associations do not completely displace territorial entities, political parties, or social movements. Rather, parties, religious movements, and youth associations are allowed to function in a pluralist system (p.94). Similarly, Stepan (2015) posits that there exist no fully corporate systems. While the state forges corporatist arrangements in some sectors, in other sectors pluralist policies predominate (pp.70- 71). Bianchi's (1989) analysis on Egypt shows that even in the same sector, corporatist structures have persisted alongside pluralist policies. He considers the business community and religious associations in Egypt as "hybrid sectors" that are governed by both corporatist and pluralist policies (p.21). This study will also argue that the right-wing elites, in particular, have subscribed to a hybrid system of youth incorporation in Turkey simultaneously relying on pluralist structures and corporatist initiatives.

Finally, this study also considers particular political discourses by the ruling elites that are accompanied by relevant public policies targeting youth as a mechanism of youth political incorporation. These discourses aim to imbue youth with particular political and cultural orientations in order to harness youth agency for the realization of political projects pursued by the power-holders. However, they also simultaneously seek to reshape youth political subjectivities with the goal of keeping youth away from radical political visions that might lead young people to challenge the ruling elites through contentious action. For example, the military administration between 1960 and 1961 referred to educated youth as the "saviours of the republic"(Alper 2009) and attributed youth the mission of taking an active oppositional role in preventing the reoccurrence of the rise of a non-Kemalist right-wing party to power. Similarly, the military administration between 1980 and 1983 declared its goal as of ‘creating an Atatürkist youth.' Undertaking significant reforms in education, the top military sought to establish hegemony over the political aspirations of youth according to the principles of the newly crafted state ideology of Atatürkism (named after the founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk), which they hoped would free young people from the influence of deviant political ideologies such as Marxism. Following the end of the military rule in 1983, the new Right

Motherland Party, which stayed in power until 1991, adopted a depoliticizing discourse targeting youth. By referring to educated youth as the primary beneficiaries of the emerging neoliberal economy, the government elites worked to spread market rationality and the neoliberal values of hard work, competition, and the achievement of personal enrichment among youth. The goal was to integrate youth into the newly emerging neoliberal economy, but also to direct youth attention away from political activism. Finally, the ruling AKP, especially in the post-2011 period, emphasized the goal of ‘creating a pious generation.' Some government initiatives in the areas of education and social policy aimed to increase the religiosity of young people and stressed conservative values in order to ‘free' young people from the cultural influence of the West.

To conclude, while subscribing to partisan youth incorporation or incorporation as moderation and control, the Turkish elites have alternated between pluralist, limited-pluralist, and corporatizing initiatives and they have also adopted particular political discourses towards youth. The choice of particular incorporation mechanisms thus reflected the character of youth incorporation undertaken by the elites and was ultimately shaped by the type of the prevailing elite structure. Elite fragmentation led the elites to create pluralist structures in the area of youth incorporation and later to manipulate those pluralist structures to their own advantages. Elite cohesion instead encouraged the dominant elites to subscribe to limited- pluralism; limited- pluralism was considered as the most viable mechanism in advancing incorporation as moderation and control. Finally, elite hegemony and perceived threats to this hegemony led the ruling party to simultaneously embrace limited-pluralism and corporatizing initiatives in implementing hybrid youth incorporation.

Different Paths of Youth Incorporation and Repression

This study has so far proposed that elite structures shape the nature of elite-youth linkages either leading the elites to participate themselves in the (counter-)mobilization of youth sectors conceived as societal allies or to refrain from establishing partisan linkages with youth and to moderate youth demands for political participation. It is the process of youth incorporation that intervenes in the different ways the political elites establish linkages with young people. Different paths of youth incorporation, again an outcome of elite structures, provide the elites with relevant political instruments in mobilizing youth or moderating the demands of youth for political participation. However, this study has further argued that even though political

44 incorporation primarily operates through non-coercive institutionalized channels in regulating political participation, it also involves the frequent use of (selective) repression against groups left outside the scope of political incorporation. While the elites who subscribe to partisan incorporation pursue to adopt repression against youth activists allied with elite opponents, elites who adhere to incorporation as moderation and control seek to prevent the emergence/escalation of youth contention against the state and therefore do not hesitate to use repression against contentious youth sectors.

This study defines repression as “state or private action meant to prevent, control, or constrain non-institutional, collective action (e.g., protest), including its initiation”(Earl 2011:263). Even though it considers repression as an essential component of the process of youth incorporation, it argues that the use of repression plays out differently under different types of youth incorporation. When elites are fragmented and subscribe to partisan incorporation, the effective use of repression against youth contenders might come under jeopardy. The reasons are manifold: first, the divided elites usually do not reach compromises on the use of repression against popular contenders, or they disagree over the youth sectors that would be targeted by repression. Since the elites ally with particular youth groups, each elite faction would lobby against the use of repression against its youth allies. Second, if a fragmented elite structure also creates an ideologically divided coercive apparatus with police officials, members of the judiciary, and intelligence agents sympathizing with left-wing or right-wing groups, the coercive capacity of the state for repression also weakens. As the case of Turkey from 1960 to 1980 will demonstrate, the ideologically polarized coercive agents might refrain from coercion against youth groups with which they have an ideological affinity or even organizational ties. Therefore, the process of partisan youth incorporation usually lacks the effective use of repression against youth contenders, which eventually leaves the state impotent vis-à-vis militant youth action.

In contrast, when elites are cohesive or hegemonic, and they subscribe to incorporation as moderation and control, the government more effectively pursues repression against contentious youth sectors. As elite cohesion or hegemony usually creates consensus on the use of repression against contentious sectors, the coercive apparatus, which is not divided along ideological lines, also possesses more capacity to apply concerted repression. Accordingly, the process of incorporation as moderation and control entails effective use of repression against

45 contentious youth sectors, which prevents the emergence or escalation of youth contention against the state.

1.2.5 Elite Structures, Youth Incorporation, and Youth (de-)Mobilization

Divided elites mobilize and counter-mobilize to increase their political influence vis-à-vis the rival elites, to generate popular legitimacy for themselves, and to ultimately gain the upper hand in elite struggles (be it an electoral struggle, a violent conflict or a revolutionary process). From a challenger's perspective, the opportunities and motivations differ. Divisions among the elites signal "resource-poor groups to take the risks of collective action" more easily (Tarrow 1996:56; also see: Lachman 1997:72 and McAdam et al.1996:11), since the government or the regime they target through contentious action is more vulnerable to mass contention when the influential elites hold diverging views over the future trajectory of the political system. The presence of an elite ally in the course of contentious action also generates particular opportunities for mobilized publics (McAdam et al. 1996:10, Lachman 1997:91). The elite allies "can act as a friend in court, as guarantors against brutal repression, or as acceptable negotiators on behalf of [mobilized] constituencies"(Tarrow 1996:55). For example, examining the influence of elite allies, particularly allying political parties within the legislative and executive branches of government, on the levels of student protest activity between 1930 and 1990 in the US (p.230), Van Dyke (2003) finds out that during the periods the Democrats who were sympathetic to student demands and tolerant of student protests were influential in the legislature, student protests in the US became more likely"(p.240).

Conversely, an elite structure characterized by the presence of unified elites, hinders the emergence of popular mobilization or subdues it rapidly and effectively. For example, in the sixteenth century, peasant protests in Eastern Europe remained mostly ineffective, and the landlords managed to re-enserf peasant communities. However, in England and France, where there existed autonomous elites with conflicting interests, the dissident elites helped the peasants to preserve their political freedoms in order not to lose access to tax and tithe revenues (Lachmann 1985, Lachmann 1987, Major 1980 cited by Lachmann 1997:75). Still, it is essential to note that the studies on social movements have paid scant attention to the processes on demobilization (Tarrow 2011:188) and even less to the relationship between elite structures and the lack of or rapid decline of mass mobilization.

Drawing upon the theoretical propositions of the literature on social movements and revolutions, the second causal mechanism of this study stresses how particular types of youth incorporation influences the unfolding of youth participation. To put it differently, while the first causal mechanism hypothesizes about elite involvement in youth (de-)mobilization, the second causal mechanism diverts attention to how young people appropriate, negotiate, or try to challenge elite interferences with youth political participation. It posits that partisan incorporation by fragmented elites provides politicized youth with vast opportunities for militant political action, which lead activist youth to maneuver through challenges of collective action more easily. As a result, the state becomes vulnerable to youth contention and fails to contain it, while youth sustain their mobilization over a long period. In contrast, incorporation as moderation and control significantly shrinks the spaces available for youth to pursue oppositional politics, weakens the mobilizational capacity of activist youth, and creates more challenges for the grassroot-ization of youth mobilization. As a result, while the state effectively prevents the emergence/escalation of youth protests, young people might develop disenchantment even with conventional forms of political participation. Finally, hybrid incorporation prevents spontaneous youth mobilization from growing into organized youth opposition, while creating opportunities for pro-government youth to build organizational capacity efficiently and effectively. The result is the de-mobilization of oppositional youth and growing counter-mobilization by pro- government youth.

1.3 The Argument

This study will argue that different types of elite structures that prevailed in Turkey from 1960 to 2016 structured the course of elite-youth linkages and ultimately played a role in shaping the patterns of youth participation. To start with, elite fragmentation in the 1960s and the 1970s led the Turkish elites to participate themselves in social mobilization and particularly in youth mobilization in order to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rival elites. The elites (Kemalist elites, socialist elites, and right-wing elites) sought to signal the rival elites that they had built significant influence over and support among politicized segments of youth and that they possessed the power to disrupt the political arena in alliance with the youth contenders. In order to get involved in youth mobilization, the elites embraced what I call ‘partisan incorporation' of youth. Partisan incorporation functioned through pluralist policies of youth

47 incorporation; the Turkish elites first installed a pluralist system of youth participation that created opportunities for organized youth politics to flourish and later manipulated pluralist policies to their own advantages in order to benefit youth allies and weaken oppositional youth. Partisan incorporation played a role in the outbreak of socialist youth contention against the state and the emergence of counter-mobilization of right-wing youth in the late 1960s. However, partisan youth incorporation eventually created unintended consequences: it facilitated militant youth behavior and left the state impotent vis-à-vis youth radicalism. Consequently, while activist youth could sustain their mobilization over a long time and pursued radical political change through violent action, the Turkish state failed to contain youth militancy.

Elite cohesion in the period from 1983 to 2002 forged a consensus among the elites on preventing the recurrence of sustained youth contention against the state. Most of the political elites in the post-1980 coup period started their political careers in the 1960s and the 1970s. They witnessed the undesired consequences of partisan youth incorporation characterized by growing youth militancy and youth political violence. Even though the centre-left politicians advocated democratic openings in the area of youth incorporation and managed to repeal some of the laws endorsed by the military administration that restricted youth political participation, the political society as a whole in the post-1980 coup period shared the military's concern for the possible revival of youth contention against the state. Thereby, the political and state elites alike sought to moderate youth demands for participation, they largely refrained from partisan incorporation of youth, and they subscribed to incorporation as moderation and control. While the elites subscribed to limited -pluralist policies and adopted depoliticizing economic discourses to incorporate youth into the political arena, they also effectively resorted to selective repression against ‘troublesome' youth sectors. The outcome was the gradual de-mobilization of previously contentious youth sectors, the effective prevention of the escalation of dissent by newly politicized youth groups (e.g., a new-left student movement and Islamist youth mobilization), and a gradual trend towards political disengagement among youth.

After the recurrence of elite fragmentation following the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) rise to power in 2002, the period from 2010 to 2016 witnessed elite hegemony in the political arena. Since a number of crises at the societal and elite levels created a perception of threat to the elite hegemony and aggravated the ruling AKP's political insecurity (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016), the ruling party sought to mobilize its support base and weaken

48 its opponents in a concerted manner in order to consolidate power. Elite hegemony, conceived as fragile and unstable, forged hybrid youth incorporation, which led the AKP to politically activate pro-government youth and create a militant youth base while seeking to prevent the emergence/escalation of political mobilization by oppositional youth. Therefore, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) turned to rely on a combination of partisan incorporation and incorporation as moderation and control in the post-2010 period. In exercising hybrid youth incorporation, the AKP simultaneously subscribed to limited-pluralism, the discourse of creating a pious generation, and corporatizing initiatives, and it has turned to apply concerted coercion against dissenting youth. The AKP encountered protests in 2013 initiated by secular youth. However, as the effective use of repressive measures against youth protestors quickly prevented the escalation of youth dissent, limited pluralism curbed the potential of oppositional youth to channel their contentious action into organized politics. In contrast, the AKP's partisan incorporation politically empowered pro-government youth and increased their political participation.

Please see below the summary argument:

1960-1980

Elite fragmentation (independent variable)èinvolvement of elites in generating fragmented youth mobilization (first causal mechanism) èpartisan youth incorporation(intervening variable)èyouth increase organizational capacity and have more opportunities for militant action (second causal mechanism)èsustained youth mobilization (dependent variable)

1980-2002

Relative elite cohesion (independent variable) è elites refrain from establishing partisan linkages with youth and instead seek to moderate youth demands for participation (first causal mechanism)èincorporation as moderation and control (intervening variable)è youth lack the capacity to sustain their mobilization and gradually turn to political disengagement (second

49 causal mechanism) è lack of sustained youth mobilization/youth de-mobilization (dependent variable)

2010-2016

Elite hegemony (independent variable) è the ruling party aims to politically activate pro- government youth and weaken oppositional youth politics (first causal mechanism) è hybrid incorporation (intervening variable) è pro-government youth increase mobilizational capacity, while anti-government youth gradually turn away from political activism (second causal mechanism) è youth mobilization and demobilization (dependent variable)

1.4 Methodology: Case Selection, Methods, and Data Collection

This study aims to explain the outcome of youth (de-)mobilization (independent variable) by identifying and testing the causal process that links the type of elite structure (independent variable) to the unfolding of a particular path of youth political incorporation (intervening variable). It is a single-case analysis; it exclusively focuses on the case of Turkey to trace the trajectory of elite-youth linkages and its impact on youth (de-)mobilization in the period from 1960 to 2016. Theoretical generalization or the universal applicability of theoretical propositions is a secondary goal of this study. Instead, it develops new concepts as well as offers pathways through a causal chain that might have relevance in different contexts, but only under certain conditions. Despite the focus on a single case, however, it adopts a comparative-historical approach by analyzing three time periods as different cases in identifying regularities and contrasts over time in the complex political interactions among youth and the political elites. Combining the contextualized comparison of different time periods with the examination of within-case processes, it simultaneously adopts the comparative and process-tracing methods. This study relies on secondary source material and archival research of newspapers, parliamentary proceedings, relevant policy reports by independent organizations, and published memoirs. Also, by utilizing a snowball sampling technique, I carried out 80 semi-structured interviews with veteran youth activists, the youth members of the ruling AKP, and with university students and recent graduates who participated in the Gezi Park protests in 2013.

Interviews were conducted in İstanbul and the capital city of Ankara during 12 months of field research in total (June-December 2013 and October 2014- April 2015).

The research design of this study relies on establishing a historical narrative for each period under analysis to demonstrate the interplay of independent, intervening, and dependent variables through specified causal mechanisms. George and Bennett (2005) define causal mechanisms “as ultimately unobservable physical, social, or psychological processes through which agents with causal capacities operate, but only in specific contexts and conditions, to transfer energy, information, or matter to other entities”(p.400). The causal mechanisms of this study are developed through “pre-existing generalizations” on the relationship between elite behaviour and collective action as well as through “specific observations from within” the case of Turkey (Mahoney 2012:570). Specifically, they seek to explain the empirical puzzle of ‘why the Turkish state encountered youth contention in particular periods, but not in others’ by highlighting how the particular type of elite structure incited the power-holder elites to develop historically specific forms of linkages with young people, which in turn influenced the patterns of youth political participation.

As George and Bennett (2005) note, causal mechanisms “operate only under certain conditions and …. their effects depend on interactions with the other mechanisms that make up these contexts”(p.420). That is, causal mechanisms might be highly context-specific, historically contingent, and not readily applicable to other places and times. Those constraints have led case- study scholars who undertake causal process analyses to distinguish between “necessary vs. sufficient” conditions in shaping the specified outcomes (Hall 2003:392, George and Bennett 2005: 424, also see Waldner 1999). I also formulate the causal mechanisms of this study as necessary, but not as sufficient conditions in crystalizing particular episodes of youth mobilization and demobilization in a given context and time. The causal mechanisms of this study are thus not only context-specific and historically contingent, but also only through interaction with other (unidentified and un-tested) mechanisms carry the potential to shape the patterns of youth political participation.

But, why a single-case analysis and why the case of Turkey? Rather than a concern with “uncovering the frequency”(George and Bennett 2005: 132) with which particular forms of youth incorporation and related outcomes of youth participation arise, this study aims to specify

51 the causal processes through which a particular path of elite-youth linkages shape the trajectory of youth (de-)mobilization in a given context. In particular, building on the theoretical propositions of the social movement theory and the literature on revolutions, it seeks to explore the ‘intervening’ processes that link elite structures to the elite interactions with youth in creating specific patterns of youth participation. In other words, by focusing on a single case, this study prioritizes concept formulation, “more extensive specifications of causal processes”(Hall 2003:398), and more broadly “explanatory richness” over theoretical parsimony and highly valid generalizations (George and Bennett 2005:127).

Due to the limitations of the single-case analysis and the causal process approach, theoretical generalization is a secondary goal of this study. That is, the purpose of achieving "greater explanatory richness" results in "less explanatory power across other types of cases"(George and Bennett 2005:128). Still, this study offers an alternative theoretical framework to explain particular episodes of youth mobilization and demobilization that might be applicable to other contexts under specific conditions. Furthermore, it specifies concepts and variables (youth incorporation, youth de-mobilization); develops new concepts (partisan incorporation and incorporation as moderation and control); and proposes pathways or a typology of youth incorporation (e.g. elite fragmentation leading to partisan incorporation) "at a level of abstraction" that might be universally applicable (Haydu 1998:342).

Seawright and Gerring (2008) contend that “ in the absence of detailed, formal treatments, [case-study] scholars continue to lean primarily on pragmatic considerations such as time, money, expertise, and access"(p.295) in selecting their cases. These considerations combined with the intellectual curiosity to explore the dynamics of state-society relations through the specific case of elite youth linkages in a political context where I grew up, studied political science and witnessed the tumultuous experiences of democratization and de- democratization have largely influenced the process of case selection in this study. But, besides these pragmatic and personally-political considerations, I argue that the case of Turkey also meets the criteria proposed by Gerring (2007) and Seawright and Gerring (2008) for typical and diverse cases by simultaneously achieving a certain degree of representativeness and “useful variations on the dimensions of theoretical interest”(Seawright and Gerring 2008:296). First of all, I consider the case of Turkey as a typical case to assess the role of elite-youth linkages on youth (de-)mobilization, since it meets the criterion of representativeness by “exemplify[ing] a

52 stable, cross-case relationship”(ibid) of elite-youth linkages. In particular, the single case of post- 1960 Turkey offers historical continuity in observing the attempts of the power-holder elites at regulating youth political participation in accordance with their particular interests and political visions and the various responses of young people to those elite interferences. In other words, since youth in Turkey have historically become a critical population group for the elites to harness youth political agency towards the realization of particular political projects, the case of Turkey exemplifies an empirically rich context to observe elite-youth linkages and to specify causal mechanisms that lead to divergent outcomes of youth participation in a refined manner.

Additionally, Turkey stands as a typical case to examine the trajectory of youth participation, because its complex political development provides viable opportunities for generating hypotheses that might be applicable to other countries of the Global South that have gone through similar experiences of democratization and democratic breakdown. Turkey made a peaceful transition to democracy in 1946, but it has also experienced an interrupted democracy due to coups and coup attempts; has witnessed the inability (or the unwillingness) of the Turkish elites to consolidate democracy; and has recently shifted to competitive authoritarianism. The complex political trajectory of the country coupled with the rapid pace of socio-economic development creates a fertile context to undertake an in-depth study of state-society relations that might have relevance in other places and times where the trajectory of political development has gone through similar stages.

Second, I also propose the case of Turkey as a diverse case. Combining a single-case analysis with a comparative-historical approach through the analysis of three periods as different cases, the case of Turkey achieves on its own "maximum variance along relevant dimensions"(Gerring 2007:97). To start with, the research design seeks to realize the variation in the dependent variable, as each period exemplifies different values of the dependent variable, - a strategy Geddes (1990) proposes to avoid selection bias in qualitative research (p.142). In particular, each case displays sustained youth mobilization, youth de-mobilization, and lack of sustained youth mobilization, respectively, making it possible to attain maximum variance in the dependent variable. Additionally, the periods under analysis offer variation in the independent variable. Elite structure in Turkey shifted from fragmentation to cohesion and hegemony. Thereby, each period/case allows observing different types of elite structures and how each particular type creates a certain path of youth incorporation. Finally, case selection that relies on

53 variance in the dependent and independent variables also results in identifying and observing variation in the intervening variable. Each case displays a different type of youth incorporation that ultimately functions to specify the causal mechanisms at play. Simultaneously inheriting the features of typical and diverse cases, the case of Turkey has the potential not only to confirm pre- existing theoretical propositions but also to explore new causal mechanisms on the subject of theoretical interest.

Despite being a single-case analysis, this study adopts a comparative-historical approach by analyzing three time periods as different cases. Haydu (1998) argues that treating periods as separate cases and undertaking the contextualized comparison of periods-turned-cases have "much in common with comparing social institutions….and processes…..in different places"(p.340). This specific form of the comparative method also provides the researcher with accounts "that are descriptively richer and that treat historical details as resources for interpretation rather than as obstacles to causal analysis"(p.346-47). However, time periods as cases also inherit certain limitations. Collier and Mahoney (1996) contend that the focus on a particular time span might not only lead to selection bias but might also generate conclusions that might not be applicable to a different period (cited by Haydu 1998:345). More importantly, a research design that relies on time periods as cases creates "individualizing comparisons," which overemphasizes contrasts between cases and gives lesser attention to "variables and causes common across time"(ibid: 346).

This study also faces those challenges. For example, the period from 1960 to 1980, which constitutes the first case study of this project, presents a historical narrative through a causal process that links elite fragmentation (independent variable) to the unfolding of partisan youth incorporation (intervening variable) in order to explain the outcome of sustained youth mobilization (dependent variable). Even though one might consider this case-study as coherent and having explanatory power on its own in understanding the specified outcome, it is possible to argue that elite fragmentation in another period (and place) might generate different causal mechanisms and yield different outcomes. Elite fragmentation in Turkey from 1960 to 1980 was the product of certain conditions, namely of particular crises at the elite and societal levels triggered by the advent of modernization. However, elite fragmentation that arises out of a different set of political and socioeconomic dynamics might result in different outcomes. Indeed, Turkey witnessed the recurrence of elite fragmentation in the period from 2002 to 2010,

54 characterized by intense power struggles between secularist and Islamist elites. But, unlike the period of elite fragmentation from 1960 to 1980, elite fragmentation in this period neither created partisan youth incorporation nor resulted in sustained youth mobilization. Besides, the comparison of time periods in this study also overemphasizes significant contrasts between cases. Even though the causal process as a whole aims to display coherence and internal validity by stressing continuities across periods concerning the recurrence of elite-youth linkages and of the impact of elite structures in shaping elite-youth linkages, the analysis eventually puts greater emphasis on stark differences across the time periods/cases.

This study combines the comparative-historical approach with the within-case method of process tracing. Process tracing pays attention to "historical sequences and the unfolding of processes over time" within a particular case (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2014:12). In order to accomplish these tasks, the researcher makes use of "histories, archival documents, interview transcripts, and other sources" to explore "whether the causal process a theory hypothesizes or implies in a case is, in fact, evident in the sequence and values of the intervening variables in that case"(George and Bennett 2005: 55). Therefore, one of the primary goals is to explore intervening variable(s) between the independent and dependent variables (Mahoney and Terrie 2009:12; George and Bennett 2005: 576) in the absence of which the causal efficacy of the factors under analysis might raise doubts (Mahoney and Terrie 2009:12). In particular, Waldner (2012) identifies the core idea of process tracing with concatenation:

Concatenation is the process of being linked together, as in a chain or linked series…..In process tracing, one concatenates causally relevant events by enumerating the events constituting a process, identifying the underlying causal mechanisms generating those events, and hence linking constituent events into a robust causal chain that connects one or more independent variables to outcome in question (pp/68-69)

Through this concatenating process, the researcher specifically traces the “actions expected from various types of actors, statements that might reveal their motivation, and the sequences in which actions should occur”(Hall 2003:394). Therefore, the overall purpose is to understand whether “ the multiple actions and statements of the actors” analyzed in the causal process reveal the image of the reality proposed by the theoretical propositions (ibid).

This study makes use of the process tracing method in order to examine in what ways a particular type of elite structure conditions the motivations of the influential elites in establishing linkages with youth and how young people appropriate, negotiate, or challenge elite claims to exert influence over youth agency. The in-depth analysis of this causal process has resulted in the exploration of the intervening variable of this study (political incorporation of youth). Moreover, the comparative process tracing method has enabled me to distinguish between partisan incorporation and incorporation as moderation and control. By tracing the actions and the statements of the elites and particular youth sectors in a historical sequence, this study aims to demonstrate whether the causal chain of the relevant events in each period confirms the image of reality proposed by the theoretical framework.

This study relies on secondary sources on Turkish politics, archival research of newspapers, parliamentary proceedings, relevant policy reports by independent organizations, and published memoirs, and interview transcripts. In establishing the historical narrative on elite structures for each period, I make use of scholarly articles and books on Turkish politics and in particular on the character of elite interactions and the dynamics of state-society relations in post- 1960 Turkey. I benefit from newspaper reports, specifically from the online archives of the daily Cumhuriyet and Milliyet. I searched these newspapers using the keywords “youth rallies”, “campus protests”, “university youth”, and “youth policy”. Through the online archives of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, I researched parliamentary proceedings with the keywords of “youth” and “university students”. I also draw upon the published memoirs of politicians and veteran youth activists as well as on journalistic books that include interviews with leading political elites and veteran youth activists. Finally, I carried out 80 semi-structured in-depth interviews with veteran youth activists, young participants of the 2013 Gezi Park protests and with youth wing members of the ruling AKP. The interviews were conducted in Istanbul and in the capital city of Ankara during 12 months of field research in total (June-December 2013 and October 2014-April 2015).

Regarding the interviews, it is essential to acknowledge that I did not carry out interviews with people who were politically active in the left-wing student movement or as members of various political organizations (both left and right) in the 1960s and the 1970s. The original research design of this study sought to focus on the post-1980 period; the case study that covered the period from 1960 to 1980 became part of the research design at a later stage in order to

56 strengthen the overall analytical narrative. By the time the research design was revised, the field research had been completed, and it did not become possible (and practical) to return the field for another round of interviews. Therefore, the historical narrative presented in the third chapter on the character of elite-youth linkages mostly draws upon scholarly books and articles on youth activism in the period from 1960 to 1980, the published memoirs of veteran youth activists, and the published interviews by Bedri Baykam with people who took active roles in the left-wing student movement in the 1960s and the 1970s. I should emphasize that the lack of interviews with youth activists from the 1960s and the 1970s constitutes one of the weaknesses of research design.

The veteran youth activists I managed to interview for this study went to college in Istanbul in the period from 1983 to 1996 and identified themselves as politically active within the student movement, feminist movement, or the Islamist movement. It is interesting to note that all the interviewees in this category were part of the Istanbul intelligentsia; they earned a living as writers, publishers, journalists, academics, and artists. Those interviews proved crucial in establishing the historical narrative in the fourth chapter that focused on the nature of elite- youth linkages in the 1980s and the 1990s in a context characterized by elite cohesion.

This study also draws upon semi-structured in-depth interviews with university students and recent graduates in Istanbul and the capital city of Ankara who participated in the Gezi Park protests in the summer of 2013. First of all, I should note that the outbreak of the Gezi Protests made an unsettling impact on the research design. Initially, I was seeking to explore the state- created sources of youth political disengagement in post-1980 Turkey. When secular youth took to the streets en masse to protest against the ruling party and the image of contemporary youth as politically apathetic changed overnight, the research design became -more or less- obsolete. The Gezi uprising was remarkable not only because it was instigated by youth, but also because it constituted the largest contentious (and spontaneous) movement in the history of modern Turkey. Eventually, I came to realize that I was lucky enough to be conducting research in an exceptionally historical moment.

In order to recruit research participants in this category, faculty members affiliated with different universities in Istanbul were contacted and asked to spread the recruitment advert among their students. Initial interviews were conducted with students who had responded

57 positively to this recruitment call. The remaining participants were reached through snowballing among the friends of initial interview participants who had expressed their willingness to take part in the research. The participants' ages ranged from 19 -30 years. Most of the participants stated that they came from middle-class families. Males were overrepresented in the sample (there were 25 male and 14 female participants), as were those studying or graduated from social sciences and humanities subjects (26 of the 39). The Ministry of Interior declared that people took to streets in 79 cities (out of 81) across Turkey in June 2013 (Milliyet, June 23rd, 2013). The research sample did not reflect the diversity of participants in terms of location since the research was conducted only in the cities of Istanbul and Ankara. Those attending university in Istanbul were also over-represented; only 5 participants were recruited in the capital city of Ankara. Those interviews constitute an essential part of the analytic narrative in chapter five that examine the nature of ruling party-youth linkages in the period from 2010 to 2016 and in particular the trajectory of incorporation as moderation and control.

Finally, I carried out interviews with the youth wing members and youth supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Istanbul. The initial interviewees in this category were recruited through a formal recruitment request to the headquarters of the AKP Istanbul Youth Wings. The remaining research participants were reached through snowballing. It is important to note that interviewees in this category responded very positively to my recruitment calls and expressed greater willingness in participating in the research. As members or the supporters of the ruling party, they were enthusiastic about sharing their political activities or the reasons behind their strong support for the ruling party with a researcher affiliated with a North American university. The interviews with those research participants were carried out two months after the Gezi Park protests. Since the ruling party successfully consolidated its voter base by representing the protestors as terrorists who tried to precipitate a coup d’etat to overthrow the government, it would not be wrong to note that the research participants conceived of the interviews as a site to communicate their anger about the protests and the protestors and to talk at length about their devotion to the ruling party and specifically to its leader Erdogan. The research participants’ ages ranged from 19 -30 years and males were again overrepresented in the sample (there were 14 male and 6 female participants). The majority of the research participants were university students (15 out of 20), and the rest were professionals. The fifth chapter draws

58 upon the interviews in this category to analyze the character of partisan incorporation by the ruling AKP.

As Clark and Cavatorta (2018) argue, "doing research in the MENA has become more challenging, potentially more dangerous, and certainly less predictable (p.3).” This was the case during my field research. After the Gezi protests, the ruling AKP's turn to authoritarianism took a more subtle character, and the repression of the opposition became more random and less predictable. Conducting field research in such a political context made it more difficult to assess the risks for the research participants as well as for me as the researcher. In order to minimize the risks for the research participants, I did not collect any identifiable information from the research participants, I only asked for verbal consent especially from the high-risk interviewees (the participants of the Gezi Protests), and I kept the identities of the research participants confidential through the use of pseudonyms in field notes and any other material produced in connection to this research.

Finally, when carrying out my field research, I had to navigate through different components of my positionality. I was an outsider coming from Canada, I was an insider returning to my home country where I grew up and studied political science, an insider with a secular outlook, and both an insider and an outsider as an activist in and an observer of the Gezi uprising respectively. These diverse positionalities played distinct roles in my interactions with research participants from different categories. The political and the cultural affinity with the interviewees who were the participants of the Gezi Protests enabled me to build a trust relationship with these participants rapidly. In contrast, despite their willingness to participate in the research, the youth wing members of the ruling AKP revealed more nervousness and were not very comfortable in expressing themselves, as they tended to identify me as an anti- government Turkish citizen.

1.5 Outline of Chapters

This dissertation will proceed as follows: Chapter 2 will offer a historical context focusing on the period from the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 to the first military coup in 1960. It will investigate the nature of elite interactions, the trajectory of political incorporation, and the character of elite-youth linkages in modernizing Turkey. The analysis will aim to shed light on

59 the historical origins of elite structures and divergent paths of youth incorporation and youth political participation in post-1960 Turkey.

Focusing on the period from 1960 to 1980, Chapter 3 will address the question of “why did the Turkish state encounter sustained youth contention in the period from 1960 to 1980 and fail to contain growing youth militancy?” This chapter will first investigate the emergence and consolidation of elite fragmentation in Turkey through a detailed narrative of elite interactions and changing socioeconomic dynamics. It will then analyze the trajectory of elite-youth linkages in the 1960s and the 1970s and will demonstrate how partisan youth incorporation, an outcome of elite fragmentation, shaped the relationship between influential elites and activist youth. It will finally discuss the impacts of partisan youth incorporation and in particular how partisan incorporation contributed in part to youth radicalization.

Chapter 4 will divert attention to the post-1980 coup period and will analyze why the Turkish state, unlike the 1960s and the 1970s, largely remained insusceptible to sustained youth dissent in the period from 1983 to 2002. It will first discuss the 1980 coup, and the large-scale political transformation carried out by the coup coalition. Second, it will analyze the nature of elite interactions in the post-1980 coup era as well as the underlying dynamics of state-society relations that created a cohesive elite structure. Next, it will demonstrate how relative elite cohesion led the elites to stay away from establishing partisan linkages with youth and instead to subscribe to incorporation as moderation and control. After demonstrating the functioning of incorporation as moderation and control, it will analyze the impacts of post-1980 coup incorporation policies on the trajectory of youth political participation.

Chapter 5 will analyze the period from 2010 to 2016 and will address the question of “why and how did the ruling AKP effectively contain oppositional youth politics while promoting pro-government youth mobilization?” It will start by discussing the AKP’s rise to power and analyzing the shift in elite structure from fragmentation to hegemony. Next, it will analyze the sources of youth mobilization during the Gezi Park protests and will highlight how an elite structure characterized by a fragile hegemony culminated in hybrid incorporation towards youth. After the discussion on the operation of hybrid youth incorporation, it will analyze the impacts of ruling party-youth linkages on youth political participation.

Chapter 6 will summarize the major findings and the contributions of this study. It will finally briefly discuss the prospects of democratic youth incorporation.

2 The Historical Context: Elite Transformation, Challenges of Political Incorporation, and Elite-Youth Linkages in Modernizing Turkey (1923-1960)

2.1 Introduction

Focusing on the period from the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 to the first military coup in 1960, this chapter will trace the historical origins of elite interactions, the prospects, and problems of political incorporation, and the trajectory of elite-youth linkages in modernizing Turkey. The historical narrative aims to shed light on the precursors of elite structures and the divergent paths of youth political incorporation in post-1960 Turkey.

This chapter will first contend that the origins of elite fragmentation in Turkey that prevailed from 1960 to 1980 were rooted in the socioeconomic and the political dynamics of the late 1940s and the 1950s. After the War of Independence, an elite structure characterized by the ideological unity of the elites came into existence. As Turkey remained a single-party regime from 1923 to 1946, the governing elites were comprised of the top army officials, the high ranking bureaucrats, and the intellectuals united around the so-called Kemalist principles of nation-building and modernization. When the top down modernization and the protectionist economy advanced by the Kemalist elites faced a deep legitimacy crisis by the early 1940s alienating large segments of society including the business, the peasantry, and the newly emerging working class, elite unity under the single-party Kemalist regime broke down with the emergence of rival elites who managed to establish a strong opposition party (Democrat Party) in 1946. The DP elites made a claim to represent the unsatisfied sectors with a free-market approach to industrial development and with agricultural policies aiming to improve the living standards of the peasants, and they came to power in the 1950 elections. At this point, the Turkish political arena revealed elite disunity characterized by two distinct and well-organized elite factions(the Kemalist bloc vs. the ruling right-wing populist DP) each with their competing visions over the course of economic development, the nature of modernization, and over the role of civil-military bureaucratic elites in the political arena. Elite disunity, which fostered intense rivalry in the electoral arena, destabilized the political arena and eventually culminated in a coup d'etat in 1960.

This chapter will argue that from 1923 to 1960, the Turkish elites navigated between partisan youth incorporation and incorporation as moderation and control, which influenced the course of youth participation and gave rise to three different types of youth mobilization. First, the ideologically united Kemalist elites adopted ‘partisan incorporation' of youth in the period from 1923 to 1946 in order to harness the motivations of youth for nation-building and top-down secularization. Towards this goal, they constructed the social category of youth as a political category (Lüküslü 2009) that was expected to protect the new republican regime from the enemies inside and outside. However, the single-party elites also sought to moderate youth demands for political participation by keeping strict control over organized youth politics. The partisan linkages with youth resulted in the foundation of partisan student associations, which pursued a pro-government line of politics and concentrated efforts to promote Kemalist modernization and nation-building.

Second, when the emergence of the DP challenged the single party Kemalist regime, the Kemalist elites undertook several democratizing reforms as a strategy to soothe the opposition. As part of these democratizing reforms was the introduction of relatively pluralistic structures of political participation that created opportunities, especially for educated youth to self-organize. As a result, student organizations in the 1950s gained further power, prestige, and partial autonomy. However, similar to the single-party elites, the ruling DP also sought to exert greater control over youth politics and adopted "semi-corporatist policies" towards student associations (Alper 2009). Constrained by the policies of the DP, the organized sectors of youth largely refrained from oppositional politics.

Finally, this chapter will contend that intensified elite conflict in the late 1950s led the elites to participate themselves in youth mobilization in order to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rival elites. While the DP failed to mobilize a pro-government youth base, the Kemalist elites orchestrated large-scale student protests that helped precipitate a coup d’etat in May 1960. This first contentious appearance of youth on the political scene marked a fundamental shift in elite-youth linkages eventually paving the ground for sustained youth contention against the state in the following decade.

2.2 From Ideologically United Elites to Elite Disunity

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was followed by an Independence War fought between 1919 and 1923 against Western powers under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The victory in the war ushered in the foundation of a Republic in 1923 within present-day borders of Turkey. The new republican regime (or the so-called Kemalist regime named after the founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal) took the form of a single-party system under the rule of the Republican People's Party (CHP). The monopoly of political power primarily belonged to elites within the military, civilian bureaucracy and the intelligentsia during the single-party regime. First of all, the army enjoyed high prestige in society as the saviours of the country from foreign domination (Ahmad 1993:121). The state discourse also exalted the army as the guardian of the nascent republican regime against enemies within and outside (Gürsoy 2014:257). The guardianship role attributed to the army was reinforced, when the military successfully repressed the internal contenders of pro-Kurdish and pro-Islamist rebels (ibid). Accordingly, the military assumed a significant level of autonomy during the single-party period. The chief of the General Staff was only responsible to the president (ibid: 258); the defense budget constituted 30 percent of the state expenditure between 1923 and 1938; and the authority to prepare the defense budget belonged to the army rather than the ministry of defense (Özdağ 1991:105-108, cited by Gürsoy 2014:258).

Furthermore, even though it is frequently asserted that "Mustafa Kemal wanted to keep the army out of politics" (Hale 2011:191), the Kemalist regime was characterized by “the fusion of the army with the political elite” (Gürsoy 2014:257). While İsmet İnönü, a senior commander during the Independence War, first served as prime minister and later succeeded Mustafa Kemal as president (Hale 2011:193), the percentage of parliamentary deputies with a military background remained high during the single-party regime. In the second and third parliaments (1923-1931), for example, the percentages of deputies with a military background were 20 percent and 19 percent, respectively (Frey 1965:181).

Second, the bureaucrats, whose experience and training in modernization had its roots in the late Ottoman period, assumed significant power and prestige as the carriers of the nation- building and state formation and they were expected to disseminate the Westernizing reforms (Güneş 1961:14, cited by Ülman and Tachau 1965:159). Moreover, like the army officials, they

64 too became part of the ruling elite. Through the second to the fifth parliaments (1923-1935), at least 20 percent of all deputies had bureaucratic backgrounds (Frey 1965:181). Finally, the intelligentsia, specifically the teachers, university professors, and the journalists, also served as the governing elites of the Kemalist regime. They were expected to become the carriers of top- down modernization efforts, and they also constituted a significant part of the parliamentary deputies (ibid).

These governing elites of the Kemalist regime constituted a largely cohesive group committed to Kemalist principles of state formation and nation-building8. Attempting a radical break with the Ottoman past and Turkey's political and cultural integration with the Western world, the Kemalist elites concentrated efforts at top-down modernization. In order to create a political system and a social order "free of religious and dynastic legitimation"(Keyder 1987:86), the new regime abolished both the sultanate and the caliphate (ibid); closed down religious orders; adopted "secular Western codes in place of Islamic law" (Ülman and Tachau 1965: 159) and; even introduced new dress codes that replaced dressing styles associated with Islam. Therefore, Burton and Higley (1987:2001)'s category of "ideologically unified elites" well represents the nature of elite interactions during Turkey's single-party regime. The power-holder elites originated from the ranks of the elites who supported the National Independence War against the foreign powers, the Turkish elites from 1923 to 1946 adhered to Kemalist principles, and they supported the same public policies to advance top-down modernization. But, the Kemalist path of modernization ultimately faced a deepening crisis at the societal level, which precipitated a shift in the elite structure: the Turkish political arena revealed elite disunity in the period from 1946 to 1960.

When the Ottoman Empire was replaced with a nation-state in 1923, Turkey was predominantly an agrarian society; only 16,4 percent of the population lived in the urban centers

8 The so-called Kemalist principles of republicanism, nationalism, populism, secularism, statism and revolutionism/reformism were declared in the Third Congress of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 1931. Those principles as a whole came to be known as Kemalism or Atatürkism named after the founder of the Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Ahmad 1993: 63). Up until recently, Kemalism/Atatürkism was considered as the official state ideology. However, each of the Kemalist principles was interpreted or defined in a different fashion over time in order to suit the political strategies of the governing elites. Still, Kemalism remained as the hegemonic ideology shaping the major debates among the elites over the course of economic development, national identity, and regime type.

65 in 1927 (Karpat 1972:371), and 87,6 percent of the economically active population was employed in the agricultural sector (Bianchi 2014:37). Therefore, in addition to Westernizing reforms, "rapid industrialization became the major focus of development policy" (ibid: 36). In order to boost the process of industrialization, the state became actively involved in the economy during the 1920s. Following "an ambitious campaign of railway construction", the state founded two sugar companies in that period (Keyder 1987: 105) and also invested in the iron and steel industry. Still, only a limited amount of industrialization could be achieved during the early republican years (Szyliowicz 1966: 274). Between 1925 and 1929, manufacturing's share of GNP remained at 10,5 percent (Keyder 1987: 103). The major problem facing rapid industrialization was the lack of a national bourgeoisie; state investments in the economy remained inadequate to foster economic development in the lack of a robust private sector.

Non-Muslim Ottoman subjects dominated the manufacturing sector during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Keyder 1987: 45). The expulsion of the non-Muslim bourgeoisie during and after World War I largely shaped the course of economic development during the republican years. The single-party elites sought to create a national bourgeoisie through concerted state assistance in order to supplement state efforts at rapid industrialization. Specifically, starting with the early 1930s, the Turkish state moved away from free trade (Keyder 1987:103) and relied on a protectionist economy that largely benefited the nascent national bourgeoisie and provided them with the opportunity for rapid accumulation (ibid: 105). As a result, the manufacturing's share of GNP rose from 10,5 percent in 1929 to 16,6 percent in 1935. Therefore, the Kemalist elites relied on the support of the nascent industrialists for regime survival, until the state-created bourgeoisie began to feel disenchanted by the late 1940s with increasing bureaucratic control over the economy (Özbudun 1976:46).

In addition to a bourgeoisie in the making, the single party Kemalist regime (the CHP rule) relied on the support of the already modernized sectors of society. The relatively small- sized urban sectors of public employees, teachers, university professors, and professionals provided their support to the regime “united in the belief that complete modernization was the only road for the new state to follow” (Lewis and Frye 1952:71-72 cited by Szyliowicz 1966:271). However, since the rural areas were largely “detached from the development trends of the new regime”(Herslag 1958:169 cited by Szyliowicz 1966:275-6), local notables continued to exercise political and economic power at the local level (Waldner 1999:55). Therefore, until

66 the land reform debates started in 1945(Özbudun 1976:45), the ruling CHP managed to "coopt substantial number of local notables into its ranks" as well (ibid: 42).

The Kemalist modernizing elites eventually faced a deepening crisis. The societal alienation with the Kemalist regime did not only come from the sectors the Kemalists failed or were unwilling to incorporate, but also from those within the Kemalist coalition. First, as the prominent scholar of Turkish politics, Şerif Mardin (1975) rightly emphasizes, the major fallacy of the Kemalist modernization was the inability to incorporate the rural masses into the political arena (p.25). As the Kemalist modernizers concentrated their efforts to build the symbols of national identity and to achieve rapid economic development (p.24), they largely lost contact with the peasants and missed the opportunity to mobilize them for reconstructing society (p.25). Paying "scant attention to agricultural development" (Robinson 1963:121 cited by Szyliowicz 1966:274-75), the Kemalist elites and the industrial bourgeoisie "joined forces" to exploit the agricultural sector for rapid accumulation (Keyder 1987:107). As Szyliowicz (1966) rightly puts it "they [the peasants] were isolated from the national political arena except for occasional visits from the gendarmerie and the tax collector whom they feared and hated"(p.275). Second, the relative growth of the towns also led the petty producers and traders in agriculture and manufacture, who were largely left out of the Kemalist schemes of economic incorporation, to opt for free market principles (Keyder 1987: 118). These rising groups also began to raise demands for assuming more economic and political power (Szyliowicz 1972:34).

Third, a working class, already in the making, was also left out of the Kemalist coalition- building. Alliance with the national bourgeoisie as well as "the contemporaneous Italian and Soviet examples" of national progress (Keyder 1987:89) led the Kemalist elites by the early 1930s to move away from liberalism and subscribe to a corporatist understanding of state-society relations. The ruling CHP's 1931 Party Congress well revealed such a corporatist mindset. One of the main principles emphasized in the Congress was "to consider the people of the Turkish Republic not as composed of separate classes but divided into members of various occupations". The declared goal of the CHP was to "establish social order and solidarity instead of class struggle" (Keyder 1987:98). The desire to restrict the development of class-based mobilization was put into effect through anti-labor legislation. An amendment to the Penal Code in 1935 "expanded the punishments for strikers" and the Labor Code of 1936 "prevented the legal right for workers and employers to form unions or associations in certain economic sectors" (Mello

2007:212). Consequently, single-party CHP rule paid scant attention to the emerging working- class and avoided both pluralist policies and more democratically-oriented corporatist arrangements that could pave the ground for the labor's political effectiveness. The small size of the working-class in single-party years, combined with its organizational weakness curtailed the growth of workers as an influential social force.

The industrial bourgeoisie that reaped the opportunities of a protectionist economy in the 1930s also began to be disenchanted by the late 1940s with increasing bureaucratic control over the economy (Keyder 1987:118; Özbudun 1976:46). Finally, by the early 1930s, under the influence of Italian fascism, the Kemalist elites considered (political) liberalism as bankrupt (ibid: 98) and took repressive measures to contain (potential) oppositional forces. Despite a number of gestures towards democratization including the transition to a multi-party system and direct vote9 and the endorsement of a liberal Law of Associations in 1946, considerable number of intellectuals also became alienated from the CHP rule due to its authoritarian inclinations. Szyliowicz (1966) articulately sums up the situation in the late 1940s: “Intellectuals wanted democracy, businessmen resented the etatist economic policy, landowners were disturbed by the attempts –however unsuccessful- to induce change in rural areas, and the peasantry felt neglected and abused by a tyrannical administration”(p.276).

The single party regime and an elite structure characterized by ideological unity were challenged, when the Kemalist elites split. Reflecting on growing popular discontent, several deputies from the ruling CHP started to lead opposition against the single-party regime. Under these conditions, the ruling CHP "made a calculated decision to soothe the discontent" (Karpat 1972:350) and introduced free elections and a multi-party system in 1946. The foundation of the Democrat Party in 1946 by four deputies from the CHP became a watershed moment in Turkish politics marking the beginning of elite disunity. Shaped in the broader context of the growing alienation of the masses from the Kemalist single-party regime, elite disunity was characterized by the existence of two distinct types of well-organized elites (the Kemalist coalition consisting of the CHP, military, bureaucracy, and intelligentsia vs. the DP elites consisting of businessmen,

9 From 1923 to 1946, elections existed in Turkey, but they were conducted according to the principle of indirect vote. The citizens first elected representatives in each province. Those representatives then voted for the parties competing in the elections on behalf of the larger electorate.

68 professionals, and some sectors of landlors) and their increasingly competing and diverging views over vital political and economic issues. The DP elites challenged the policies of the Kemalist elites in three major areas: the path of economic development, the nature of modernization, and the status of bureaucratic elites in the political arena.

Since the late 1930s, Celal Bayar, one of the founders of the DP, advocated the abolishment of etatism and a greater role to the private sector in economic development (Göymen 1976, cited by Waldner 1999:57). When Celal Bayar and his followers established the DP, they became ardent supporters of a transition to a market economy in a context where a growing number of businessmen were also becoming dissatisfied with state intervention in the economic sector (Waldner 1999:57). The DP elites also criticized the Westernist and secularist path of modernization undertaken by the Kemalist modernizers. They pointed out that "the rational secular authority [of the Kemalist regime] was not rooted in the traditional system of beliefs"(Karpat 1970:1660) cherished by the larger society. The DP's notion of modernization instead displayed close affinities with the ideas of some intellectuals who advocated "conservative modernization"(Demirel 2002:238).

On the one hand, advocates of conservative modernization emphasized the need to preserve the "authenticity" of the Turkish nation and its values (Taşkın 2007). That authenticity largely referred to the promotion of a religion-based conservatism, albeit a moderate one, that would not necessarily aim to break away from secularism (Akça 2010: 369). Those intellectuals primarily argued that the centrality of science and education was the only notion the Turkish modernization could borrow from the experience of Western modernization (Demirel 2002: 236- 37). On the other hand, the notion of conservative modernization largely equated modernization with economic development. In the understanding of the DP elites, Turkey could only catch up with Western civilization, if economic development benefitted larger segments of society (Taşkın 2007: 85). Finally, the DP elites questioned the status and the privileged position of the bureaucracy in the political arena and identified the bureaucracy "as the permanent power oppressing the people"(Karpat 1970:1659-60). The DP's populist slogan "Enough is enough. The power belongs to the nation” called for national sovereignty against the so-called minority rule of the civil-military elite establishment (Saç 2017:96). It is important to note that those major areas of elite contestation in the late 1940s did not only shape the dynamics of party politics in the

1950s and the 1960s but have continued to shape the nature of political struggles and elite- society linkages in varying degrees up until the present day.

The DP's program, which emphasized free market, agricultural development, and turning Turkey into a "little America", appealed to larger segments of society. But, the DP particularly became popular among the peasantry by promising "to bring services to the peasant, take his daily problems as a legitimate concern of politics, de-bureaucratize Turkey, and liberalize religious practices" (Mardin 1975:29). The 1950 elections brought the DP into power ending twenty-seven years of single party CHP rule as well as the supremacy of the Kemalist civil- military bureaucratic elites in the political arena. With a landslide victory in the 1954 elections (57,5%), the DP sustained its one-party rule for another term. The DP's power rested on its ability in mobilizing a "cross-class coalition" of voters including peasants, workers, the bourgeoisie, petty producers, and large landowners ((Waldner 1999: 53; Akça 2010:369). Until the late 1950s, the DP's economic program produced favorable outcomes for its constituencies. As Keyder (1987) notes, most of the leading industrial bourgeoisie of Turkey "started their business or achieved their significant accumulation in the 1950s" (p.137).

Most importantly, the DP relied on the support of the peasants and successfully integrated them into the political arena. Huntington (1968) describes the 1950 elections in Turkey as the "ruralizing elections". He posits that the two-party competition "facilitated the assimilation of the numerically predominant rural groups into politics"(p.455). After the transition to a multi-party system, political parties found themselves in intense competition for rural votes and politicians visited remote villages and established local party branches in the countryside (Szyliowicz 1962:431). As a result, the peasants came to realize their growing political influence and consider the ballot "as a means of improving their status"(Ülman and Tachau 1965:159). As significant improvement in the highway system with 80 percent increase in national road network and over 250 percent increase in provincial network in the period from 1950 to 1960 (Ministry of Public Works 1963, cited by Ülman and Tachau 1965:154) connected isolated villages to the cities, the proliferation of radios and newspapers contributed to the political "awakening of the peasantry"(ibid). Furthermore, farm mechanization (e.g. the number of tractors increased tenfold in the aftermath of the World War II) boosted agricultural production and increased the affluence and the well-being of the peasantry (ibid: 156).

Despite promising economic outcomes in industrial and agricultural sectors, however, the DP still faced two challenging tasks: First, in a context of intense elite competition in the electoral arena between the DP and the CHP, the ruling party concentrated efforts to sustain its cross-class coalition of voters. Second, it also needed to mediate the demands of increasingly powerful popular sectors on the government. Therefore, the DP undertook popular-sector incorporation (Waldner 1999:53) in the form of material incentives to the peasants and the workers. The ruling party offered peasants above-market prices for their agricultural products (ibid: 62) and also provided them with credits for purchasing agricultural machinery (Keyder 1987:134). In order to favor the workers, the DP constructed low-cost housing, established minimum wage levels, and granted workers pay bonuses and tax exemptions (Waldner 1999:65). The DP's populist incorporation policies, or what Waldner (1999) calls "constituency clientelism", largely consolidated popular sector support to the DP, but they also included the "price" of organizational weakness and passivity in the policy-making process"(ibid:64). For example, the DP allowed the foundation of the labor confederation TURK-İŞ in 1952, but largely curtailed its effectiveness by imposing constraints on its autonomy and influence (ibid: 65).

By the late 1950s, elite disunity culminated in higher levels of elite conflict between the governing elites (the DP government) and the Kemalist bloc (army, bureaucracy, intellectuals, and the CHP). Having lost their political power and social prestige, the civil-military bureaucracy and intellectuals resented the DP government. The Kemalist bloc believed that the DP was undermining the Kemalist reforms and strongly opposed the DP's economic policies and its increasing authoritarianism; and the DP government, alarmed with the possibility of a coup d'etat, pursued repressive measures to counter the oppositional Kemalist elites.

The first manifestation of elite conflict in the late 1950s was the opposition of the civil- military bureaucracy and the intelligentsia against the DP rule due to losing their privileged status in national politics during the DP years. While the proportion of army officials, bureaucrats, and intellectuals in the parliament and high government jobs significantly decreased during the DP rule (Karpat 1970:1661), the businessmen, entrepreneurs and professionals (e.g. lawyers) that acquired elite status primarily through economic power, were in the process of becoming the new governing elites (ibid: 1655; Szyliowicz 1966:278-79). The changes in the social composition of the parliament well exemplified this situation. While in 1939 the deputies with professional and commercial backgrounds constituted 37 percent of the parliament, their

71 proportion in the parliament rose to 62 percent in 1950. The rise of those new groups significantly diminished the traditional elites' monopoly of political power. The army officials, bureaucrats, and intellectuals constituted 47 percent of the deputies in 1939; only 22 percent of the deputies came from military and bureaucratic backgrounds in 1950 (Özbudun 1976:50). The high social prestige enjoyed by the civil-military bureaucracy and intellectuals during the single- party Kemalist regime also considerably weakened during the DP years. The DP elites frequently referred to bureaucracy "as the permanent power oppressing the people"(Karpat 1970:1659-60) and Prime Minister Menderes' "allegedly disdainful attitude towards the army"(Hale 2011:198) led the army officials to believe that the DP government had considered the military as "worthless and despicable"(Karpat 1970:1669). The late 1950s were also characterized by the significant decreases in the salaries of army officials (Gürsoy 2014:259; Harris 1965:170) and of public employees in general (Akça 2010:374) that created further discontent among these groups with the DP rule. Finally, the bitter attitude of the DP government against university professors and journalists (Harris 1965:170) also led intellectuals to develop strong opposition against the DP government. As Prime Minister Menderes degraded university professors calling them "black gowns"(Ağaoğlu 1967:165 cited by Taşkın 2007:111), the ruling party even attempted to close down Ankara University’s prestigious Faculty of Political Science (Taşkın 2007:111), and curtailed press freedoms by a new Press Code in 1954 (Harris 1965:170).

Second, elite conflict was also revealed in the competing visions of the elite factions over the nature of economic and political development. For example, university professors and public intellectuals that gathered around the journal Forum in 1954 and soon reached to an expanding audience offered a social-liberal (Beriş 2005) and democratic interpretation of Kemalism (Bora, 2017:541) The Forum writers criticized the DP’s anti-democratic measures to contain the opposition and advocated a transition to a liberal democratic system, which would entail checks over executive power, an electoral system based on proportional representation, the rule of law, a pluralist system of associational politics and interest representation, and the freedom of expression and association (Beriş 2005:535;Bora 2017:541). The Forum writers also devoted considerable attention to the path Turkey’s economic development should take. Under the influence of Keynesian economic principles (ibid: 537), they advocated replacing the DP’s market-oriented growth strategy with an import-substitution system and state planning, and they emphasized the necessity for a social welfare state (Akça 2010:380). The main opposition party

CHP also came up with alternative visions for the path of economic and political development. The CHP released the “Statement of Primary Goals” in 1959, which called for abolishing the undemocratic laws, practices, and mentality (Bora 2017:574). Similar to the ideas of the Forum writers, the CHP’s Statement advocated a transition to ‘social democracy’ (ibid: 575) that would safeguard civil liberties and political freedoms and would introduce labor rights (Akça 2010:382).

The conflict among the Kemalists and the DP elites further intensified in the late 1950s amidst the rumors that a faction within the army was planning a coup d'etat to overthrow the DP government. There already existed "conspiratorial groups" within the army in 1955 formed by younger officers (Hale 2011:198). Initially, those secret societies sought reform in the military (Harris 1965:171), but after 1957, they started to pronounce a coup against the DP government (ibid: 172). The DP also believed that the CHP was allied with the military and that it would precipitate a coup by mobilizing large-scale street protests against the government (Saç 2017:80- 82). Those beliefs even led some of the DP deputies to suggest that the CHP should be banned from politics (ibid: 82). With the confidence of increasing public support from the urban sectors, the CHP refused to adopt an accommodating language and, instead, led an aggressive opposition against the government (ibid: 83). When the DP established an Inquiry Committee in April 1960 (Karpat 1970:1673) with powers as broad as dissolving the opposition parties, the relations between the DP and the CHP deteriorated significantly.

To conclude, Turkey's National War of Independence from 1919 to 1923 brought into existence an elite structure characterized by the ideological unity of the governing elites. The military elites, the bureaucrats, and the intellectuals that occupied power positions within the single party regime were united in supporting Kemalist principles of nation-building, economic development, and secularization. But, when top-down Kemalist modernization faced a deepening crisis with popular sectors as large as the peasants, industrial bourgeoisie, the workers, and small entrepreneurs becoming increasingly discontented with the single-party regime, the Kemalists elites split. The foundation of the Democrat Party (DP) in 1946 and its rise to power in 1950 created an elite structure characterized by disunity. The two elite factions, the Kemalist bloc, and the DP elites, developed a highly conflictual relationship. As they came to adopt diverging views over the path of political and economic development, permanent power struggles among the rival elites destabilized the political arena and eventually culminated in a coup d'etat in 1960.

2.3 Elite-youth Linkages in Modernizing Turkey: Navigating between Partisan Youth Incorporation and Incorporation as Moderation and Control

The support of the urban sectors and the local notables to the single-party CHP rule was essential for regime survival, but the Kemalist modernizers were aware of the fact that the future of the regime relied on the successful incorporation of urban sectors including youth into the political arena. In order to incorporate youth into new structures of political power, the Kemalist elites sought to harness the motivations of educated youth (the future elites of the country) for nation- building and modernization. Therefore, an elite structure characterized by ideological unity led the Kemalist elites in the period from 1923 to 1946 to establish partisan linkages with youth. As Lüküslü (2009) argues, the Republican elites reinvented the social category of youth as a political category whose purpose would be to protect the new republican regime and to modernize the state and society. In other words, in order to realize partisan youth incorporation, the modernizing role of educated youth, which first crystallized during the Ottoman reform period, was reproduced in the state discourse during the early republican years (Neyzi 2001:416). The Kemalist elites referred to youth citizens as the “guardians of the republican regime”(Neyzi 2001; Lüküslü 2005). The guardianship role attributed to youth was originally mentioned in Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s address to Turkish youth in 1927. The President summoned the youth to maintain the new regime in the following words: Turkish Youth! Your first duty is forever to preserve and to defend the Turkish Independence and the Turkish Republic. This is the very foundation of your existence and your future….. In the future, too, there may be malevolent people at home and abroad who will wish to deprive you of this treasure………those who hold power within the country may be in error, misguided and may even be traitors. Furthermore, they may identify their personal interests with the political designs of the invaders. The country may be impoverished, ruined and exhausted. Youth of Turkey's future! Even in such circumstances, it is your duty to save the Turkish Independence and Republic. The strength you need is already imbedded in your noble blood (quoted and translated by Neyzi 2011:417, emphasis mine).

Similar to the elite attempts in the newly established states of the Global South (Kamens 1985), the Kemalist elites also established a highly centralized national education system that aimed to imbue youth with republican values and render them free of “the shackles of tradition”(Neyzi 2001:416). Educated youth came to represent the ideal image of the new Turkish citizenry (ibid) as modernizing, nationalistic and self-sacrificing subjects. As Neyzi (2001) notes, young people "who entered the public education system and achieved upward mobility" identified most closely with the new regime and provided their unconditional support to it (p.417). However, youth incorporation during the one-party era remained mostly partial and incomplete. The

74 socioeconomic gaps between educated youth and the young people in the rural areas were enormous, and it took decades for rural youth to have access to even primary education (ibid). When the rural youth through the 1950s to 1970s finally made it to the cities as wage earners and university students, the majority of them were more prone to be the sympathizers of right-wing parties and movements that opposed to Kemalist path of modernization.

The elite transformation from ideologically unified elites to disunified elites altered the nature of elite-youth linkages. It would not be wrong to claim that the DP's economic program accelerated the integration of rural youth into the national economy and relatedly their incorporation into the political arena. As the growing wealth and welfare in villages benefitted rural youth, increased geographical mobility fostered with economic development also led many male youth from rural areas to migrate into the big cities as seasonal or full-time wage laborers (Özbay 2015:278; Keyder 1987: 135). The DP also established new universities outside Istanbul, in the four major cities of Anatolia (Akyüz 1999:132 cited by Alper 2009:132). As a result, the number of university students rose from 25,091 in 1950 to over 54,059 in 1960 (Turkish Statistical Institute 2010:75). Despite the growth in the number of university students, educated youth still constituted a very small proportion of the general population and the youth population. However, the university students enjoyed very high prestige in society (Szyliowicz 1972:45) as the future elites of the country (Alper 2009).

Moreover, the transition to a multi-party system and the relaxation of political restrictions on organized politics provided youth with enhanced opportunities for political participation in the 1950s (Szyliowicz 1972:38-39). Specifically, the liberal Law of Associations and the Universities Law (that granted universities almost total autonomy) were both endorsed in 1946 and were still in effect in the 1950s. Those laws established a pluralist policy towards youth's associational politics and fostered growth in students' associational activity. The student associations formed in the period from 1946 to 1950 developed closer relations either with the DP or the CHP (Kabacalı 2007:107), while there also existed several socialist youth associations (Yılmaz 1997:58). When the DP came to power in 1950, government-educated youth linkages navigated between partisan incorporation and incorporation as moderation and control.

The largest and the most effective youth organizations in the 1950s were the Turkish National Federation of Students (TMTF) and the National Turkish Student Union (MTTB). The

MTTB, which was the prominent youth association during the single-party era, but closed down in 1936, was reopened in 1946. The TMTF, “an outgrowth of student organizations developed within each faculty in the late 1940s” (Szyliowicz 1972:36), also grew stronger in the 1950s. Alper (2009) identifies the ruling DP's policy towards these organizations as "semi-corporatist". Although the government provided the MTTB and the TMTF with financial assistance, it mostly respected the organizational autonomy of these organizations and did not interfere with their leadership selection. However, that semi-corporatist status came with a price. The student associations were expected not to engage with partisan activities and to stay "above politics"(p.184). Until the end of the 1950s, both the TMTF and the MTTB abstained from overtly partisan activities and mostly engaged with nationalistic causes such as defending Turkey's position in the Cyprus issue, struggling against communism, and organizing rallies in the memory of Mustafa Kemal (Türkiye Üniversiteliler Postası April 1953:17, cited by Kabacalı 2007:115). It should be noted that those two student associations enjoyed a high degree of prestige in the 1950s. Both the government and oppositional party officials frequently visited their offices (Szyliowicz 1972:40), and their activities were largely covered in the newspapers (Alper 2009:184). However, when the DP government faced a legitimacy crisis in the late 1950s due to worsening economic conditions and its anti-democratic attitude towards the opposition (Szyliowicz 1972: 41), elite-youth linkages became further politicized.

In the context of the intense elite conflict in the late 1950s, political elites turned to participate themselves in social mobilization as well as youth mobilization to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the competing elites. The ruling DP, for example, initiated a civil movement in 1958 under the banner of "Patriotic Front". The Patriotic Front was organized in the form of local branches in large cities as well as in provincial towns. Describing the opposition as the "axis of evil" and as a threat to national unity and political stability, Prime Minister Menderes called the citizens to join the Patriotic Front (Zafer October 13th 1958, cited by Yıldırmaz 2008:181). The primary goal of the DP was to attain a massive following by recruiting as many people as possible to the Patriotic Front branches across the country as a showcase of prevailing popular support to the DP (Emre-Kaya and Avşar 2013:399; Yıldırmaz 2008:190). Every night for long hours, the new members of the Patriotic Front were announced name by name in the radio (Emre-Kaya and Avşar 2013:404), and the pro-government press published the lists of new members every day (Yıldırmaz 2008:189); such precocious action on

76 the part of the government even became disturbing for the loyal DP voters (ibid: 200). In March 1960, the number of the Patriotic Front branches reached to 134 in İstanbul, and the number of members nationwide was allegedly one million (Uyar 2001:45, cited by Yıldırmaz 2008:188). However, the critiques point out that even if the declared membership rate was correct, many people became members in order to have enhanced access to government benefits and public resources. Entrepreneurs seeking credits, the unemployed hunting jobs, and even those having criminal cases became the Patriotic Front members to receive government support (Yıldırmaz 2008:194). As a response to the Patriotic Front movement, the CHP made visits to provincial cities, especially in the Western regions and organized huge rallies during those visits as a showcase for its growing popular support.

In parallel to elite attempts at politicizing their support bases, political elites also concentrated efforts to mobilize university students because university students, albeit small in number, constituted a social force that could be easily activated for political causes. A survey conducted in the academic year 1957-58 among Robert College students in Istanbul and Ankara University students in Ankara reveals university students' high levels of interest in political issues and their willingness to engage in political action. Hyman et al.(1958) found that 45 percent of the students at Ankara University were willing to make sacrifices for the nation's welfare and 46 percent of them considered working for the "enhancement of the nation" as an accomplishment that they would be most proud of (p.283). As discussed previously, student associations were also powerful actors of civil society throughout the 1950s and enjoyed high prestige. In order to harness youth political agency for sustaining its rule, the ruling DP engaged in concerted action to co-opt student associations by manipulating the pluralist structure of student politics to its own advantage. While the DP attempted to fill executive positions of prominent student associations with its youth sympathizers (Kabacalı 2007:118; Alper 2009:191; Szyliowicz 1972:42) and showed tolerance towards political activities organized by pro-DP students, it used selective repression against student leaders and associations who took an oppositional stance towards the government (Yılmaz 1997:83). However, the DP's attempts to co-opt the student associations and to repress oppositional student leaders backfired, as university students along with their professors turned into a contentious force against the government in the spring of 1960. It was the CHP that was directly involved in encouraging the students to take to the streets against the DP government.

2.4 The Beginning of Youth Contention: the 1960 Student Protests

On April 28th 1960, a day after the establishment of the notorious Inquiry Committee by the DP, the students of Istanbul University took to the streets and shouted the slogans “Freedom”, and “Government, resign” (Kabacalı, 2007:123). The student protests spread to the capital city of Ankara the next day (ibid). The students demanded an end to the Democrat Party rule, which they conceived as undemocratic, corrupt and illegitimate. The time had just arrived, educated youth seemed to believe, to realize Mustafa Kemal’s call to Turkish youth: the Republic needed to be reclaimed ‘from enemies within’. That was the first time in republican history that the university students appeared as a contentious force on the political scene. However, those students protests were neither spontaneous nor organized by the prominent student associations (Alper 2009:194). Rather, the CHP elites participated themselves in youth mobilization to further de-legitimize the DP government and to manifest growing public support for the CHP. A few months before the protests the CHP leader İnönü already told a large group of university students visiting him that "In the coming days important duties will be awaiting you. You will be victorious. We trust the youth" (Taylak 1969:274, cited by Szyliowicz 1972:49).

It is widely acknowledged that the CHP’s youth organization played a significant role in orchestrating the student protests in April 1960 (Szyliowicz 1972:49). One of the student protestors, Ahmet Güryüz Ketenci, recalls that he was a member of the CHP, and that he and his friends were taking orders from the CHP’s Youth Wing to initiate and lead the student protests against the government (Interview by Baykam 1999:247-48). Another student protestor, Raif Erdem, also confirms that he was a member of the CHP and CHP’s Youth Wing members had taken active roles in the organization of the protests (interview by Feyzioğlu 2004:27 cited by Alper 2009: 194). Therefore, even though the protests quickly escalated and were attended by a large number of students most of whom probably did not have any organic links with the oppositional party (Alper 2009: 194), it was the CHP that primarily orchestrated those large scale protests against the government. The intense elite conflict led the oppositional party elites to activate youth political agency in order to further weaken the political power of the ruling DP. When the student protests escalated, the government sent tanks and military personnel to help the police repress the protestors. However, the army officers, especially the younger ones, did not interfere with the students' march (Kakizaki 2015:53; Kabacalı 2007). The ruling DP's next move

78 was to close down universities for a month and declare martial law in major cities (Kakizaki 2015:54). However, the military, encouraged by the large-scale student protests, intervened and took over power in May 1960.

2.5 Conclusion

This chapter has analyzed the historical precursors of elite structures and elite-youth linkages in post-1960 Turkey by focusing on the period from the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 to the first military coup in 1960. It has argued that after the War of Independence between 1919 and 1923 against foreign powers, an elite structure dominated by ideologically united elites came into existence in Turkey. As the governing elites of the top military, civilian bureaucracy and intellectuals converged in their devotion to the so-called Kemalist principles of nation-building, economic development, and top-down secularization, a single-party regime under the rule of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) prevailed until 1950. The Kemalist modernizing elites, similar to their counterparts in post-independence/colonization contexts, established partisan linkages with youth in order to harness the motivations of educated youth for modernization and nation- building. Partisan youth incorporation created partisan student associations where university students pursued a pro-government line of politics and sought to advance nation-building and top-down modernization.

When the Kemalist single-party regime faced a legitimacy crisis by the early 1940s due to the disenchantment of various segments of society with the policies of the CHP, an ideologically united elite structure was transformed into elite disunity. A faction within the ruling party managed to establish an opposition party (the Democrat Party) in 1946, and the DP came to power in the first free and fair elections held in 1950. The 1950s manifested elite disunity characterized by the existence of two distinct and powerful elite factions (the Kemalist bloc vs. the right-wing populist DP elites) and by their increasingly divergent views on the path of economic development, the nature of modernization, and on the role of civil-military elites in the political arena. The Kemalist elites had undertaken some democratizing reforms in the late 1940s to soothe the opposition that included the introduction of partially pluralist structures of political participation. In the 1950s, university students, in particular, took advantage of these pluralist structures; student associations gained further power, prestige, and relative autonomy. Therefore, in a political context characterized by elite disunity youth increased their leverage in the political

79 arena, but their political autonomy was still significantly restrained by the semi-corporatist policies of the ruling DP towards the student associations.

This study has finally argued that when elite polarization intensified in the late 1950s, the disunified elite factions participated themselves in the popular mobilization and in particular youth mobilization in order to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rival elites. When the major oppositional party, the CHP, managed to orchestrate large-scale student protests in April 1960, students for the first time in modern Turkey appeared on the political scene as a contentious force. Student protests eventually precipitated a coup d’etat in May 1960 that ousted the ruling DP from power.

3 Elite Fragmentation, Partisan Incorporation, and Youth Mobilization (1960-1980)

3.1 Introduction

By the early 1960s, young people and particularly university students appeared on the political scene in Turkey as an increasingly contentious force. University students first organized within Kemalist student unions and soon became a disruptive force staging protests against the political elites whom they accused of turning away from the Kemalist principles of national progress. Starting with 1965, some factions of university students came under the influence of socialist ideas and emerged as a left-wing contentious force against the state. Politically empowered by the advent of Western student activism in 1968, socialist student activists boycotted classes and occupied university buildings to advance student interests. While socialist students turned more radical and sought an alliance by the workers and the peasants towards a socialist revolution, conservative and nationalist students, activated by the political elites around an anti-communist rhetoric, also grew powerful in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, youth politics turned even more militant. As left-wing and right-wing youth activists pulled in opposite directions to shape the future political trajectory of Turkey, political violence among ideologically opposed youth reached alarming levels by the late 1970s.

This chapter will address the question of “why did the Turkish state encounter sustained youth contention in the period from 1960 to 1980 and fail to contain growing youth militancy?” Existing scholarly works on the sources of youth mobilization in the 1960s and the 1970s highlight youth grievances about the existing social, economic, and political institutions (Szyliowicz 1972); the diffusion effect of anti-imperialist movements (Bora 2017, Atılgan 2017); and the social dislocations of and socioeconomic frustrations among youth in Turkey created by late-comer capitalism (Keyder 1987, Durna 2014). Drawing upon and expanding Alper (2009)’s analysis on the 1968 student movement in Turkey, this study will alternatively focus on the impact of political elite-youth linkages on the trajectory of youth mobilization from 1960 to 1980. It will argue that elite fragmentation significantly shaped the course of elite-youth linkages

81 contributing, in part, to the emergence and perpetuation of rival youth mobilizations. When the Turkish elites became highly fragmented and ideologically polarized, they sought partisan linkages with youth sectors conceived as potential societal allies in order to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rival elites. It will contend that partisan youth incorporation politically activated particular youth sectors or enhanced opportunities for already politicized youth to engage in militant political action. This chapter will conclude that while partisan incorporation eventually enabled the politicized youth to sustain their mobilization over a long period, the Turkish state failed to contain youth contention due to a fragmented and ideologically polarized coercive apparatus.

Following the 1960 coup, the elite structure in Turkey shifted from disunity to fragmentation. While elite disunity manifested two distinct and well-organized elite factions (the Kemalist bloc vs. the ruling right-wing populist DP) , fragmentation that prevailed until the second coup d'etat in 1980 was characterized by the numerical proliferation of influential elites (e.g. new party elites due to the fragmentation in the party system, the emergence of the military as a stronger veto player etc). Furthermore, elite fragmentation revealed ideological polarization among right-wing and left-wing elites on the pattern of economic development and the nature of popular sector incorporation. Finally, fragmentation at the elite level was also characterized by a diffused power configuration. While a single political party could not stay in power more than one term, the civilian elites shared power with the military and the high judiciary, which gained more political leverage with the 1961 Constitution. This chapter will argue that elite fragmentation was the product of elite responses to the multiple crises of representation and incorporation at the societal level. The advent of modernization from the 1950s onwards released new social forces with diverging interests and increasing demands on the political society, some of whom turned to engage in contentious politics significantly challenging the political elites from below. Whereas in the 1970s the crisis of the import-substitution system intensified the labor-capital struggle in Turkey and more generally the redistribution demands by the rising social forces of the urban poor, the salaried sectors, and the small entrepreneurs with provincial backgrounds. By trying in a competitive fashion to represent divergent societal interests and incorporate them, the political elites exacerbated ideological polarization.

This chapter will argue that elite fragmentation led to the emergence of rival elite factions, each of which sought to mobilize their own factions within youth circles through the

82 process of partisan incorporation, The Turkish elites either sought to politically activate particular youth sectors or they facilitated the organized politics of already politicized youth groups. In order to realize partisan incorporation, the elites first introduced pluralist arrangements in the area of youth political participation and later manipulated those pluralist policies to their advantages.

This chapter will further contend that partisan youth incorporation contributed, in part, to the overt radicalization of youth politics. In particular, the process of partisan incorporation provided politicized youth with vast opportunities for militant political action, facilitated youth radicalization, and ultimately empowered youth beyond intended levels. Since elite fragmentation along with partisan incorporation debilitated the coercive capacity of the state due to diverging elite views on the use of repression and to an ideologically divided coercive apparatus, the Turkish state remained ineffective in responding to youth militancy. As a result, the Turkish state became vulnerable to youth contention and failed to contain it, while youth could sustain their mobilization over a long period.

This chapter will first analyze the emergence and the consolidation of elite fragmentation in Turkey. Next, it will trace the trajectory of elite-youth linkages in the period from 1960 to 1980 and will show how elite fragmentation culminated in the process of partisan youth incorporation. Finally, it will discuss the impact of partisan youth incorporation on the trajectory of youth political participation.

In analyzing the unfolding and the major manifestations of elite fragmentation in Turkey, the analysis will mostly draw upon prominent secondary sources on Turkish politics. In tracing the trajectory of elite-youth linkages, this chapter will make use of primary sources, including newspaper reports and the written memoirs of youth activists. It will also rely on secondary sources on youth politics to establish the historical narrative. The first group of secondary sources was published in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Very rich in detail, some of these studies were authored by Turkish scholars who tried to make sense of intense popular mobilization and particularly of youth mobilization in the 1960s through extensive empirical research. Some of these older studies were undertaken by American comparativists based on long periods of field research in order to trace the trajectory of abrupt political change in a

83 modernizing country. This chapter will also rely on retrospective analyses of youth politics published in the late 2000s.

3.2 The Elite Structure in Turkey from 1961 to 1980: The Making and the Intensification of Elite Fragmentation

The type of elite structure is the independent variable of this study. By focusing on the composition of and the interactions among the influential elites, this section analyzes the type of the elite structure in the period from 1961 to 1980. This section will proceed as follows: first, it will discuss the unfolding of the 1960 coup and the political project of the coup coalition. Next, it will analyze the emergence of elite fragmentation in the aftermath of the military regime. After briefly discussing the 1971 military intervention, it will finally highlight the major dynamics of elite fragmentation in the 1970s.

The 1960 Coup and Its Political Project

Elite disunity, characterized by growing tensions and power struggles between the right-wing populist Democrat Party (DP) and the Kemalist bloc (army, bureaucracy, intellectuals, and the CHP), resulted in a military takeover. On May 27th, 1960, the Turkish army undertook a coup and ousted the DP from power. That first military coup since the foundation of the republic in 1923 came into existence outside the army's hierarchical structure (Saç 2017:84); "it was a coup from below"(Ahmad 1993:128) undertaken by middle and lower rank military officials. After the coup, the National Unity Committee (NUC) comprising 38 military officials came to power and ruled the country until the transition to a civilian regime in October 1961. The NUC banned the DP and immediately arrested 4000 DP members (Kakizaki 2015:54). In order to further discredit the DP in the eyes of the public, the military administration executed three DP leaders, including the ex-Prime Minister Menderes just before the elections in 1961. This chapter argues that while the 1960 coup reinforced the conflict between Kemalist elites and the right-wing populists, the 1961 Constitution that was instituted by the 1960 coup coalition increased fragmentation at the party system by instituting proportional representation and facilitating the foundation of new political parties.

There exists widespread consensus that the 1960 coup was undertaken to restore the Kemalist elites’ monopoly of political power vis-à-vis the new governing elites empowered by

84 the DP.(Karpat 1970:1681; Szyyliowicz 1966:284; Harris 1965:176; Bora 2017:172; Kaynar 2010, cited by Saç 2017: 86). In other words, the 1960 coup intended to prevent the recurrence of one-party rule by an anti-Kemalist party and relatedly of the recurrence of elite disunity by politically re-empowering the Kemalist elites. Indeed, several new institutions implanted by the 1961 Constitution immediately restored and even enhanced the power of the Kemalist elites in the political arena. The National Security Council comprising top military officers was introduced as an advisory body to the Council of Ministers; the State Planning Organization provided the Kemalist bureaucrats with renewed power in economic and social policy-making; enhanced autonomy of the universities largely restored the high prestige of the intellectuals (Dede 2017: 841). Furthermore, the military administration immediately increased the salaries of the army officials and founded the Turkish Armed Forces Assistance and Pension Fund (OYAK) in 1961 (Akça 2010:384). The OYAK, which allowed the military to make investments both in the private and public sectors, marked the military as "a direct actor in the economic sphere"(Akça 2016:70).

Most of the officers that took part in the 1960 coup were also eager to undertake social and political reforms before relinquishing power (Harris 1965:174). They believed that large- scale reforms were necessary to advance Turkey's national progress and to prevent the recurrence of the majority party rule of an anti-Kemalist party simultaneously. However, the military officials lacked the ‘intellectual capital' to induce changes for political transformation. The Kemalist intellectuals eagerly and immediately stepped in to fill in this void. Only a day after the coup, a group of law professors from Istanbul University submitted a declaration to the National Unity Committee that emphasized the necessity of the coup in ‘legal terms' and provided the military with a ‘legal document' to legitimize the coup (Akça 2010:387). Those professors soon prepared a detailed draft constitution. A group of professors from Ankara University's prestigious Faculty of Political Sciences, some of whom had been affiliated with the journal Forum, also submitted to the NUC their own draft constitution (Dede 2017:825). Even though a Constituent Assembly was formed in 1961 to finalize the new constitutional provisions, the new Constitution was largely framed based on the drafts submitted by those professors10. The 1961

10 Intellectuals pursued an active role in restructuring the political system after the 1960 coup. As discussed in the previous section, the intellectuals’ growing opposition to the DP government had led them to develop alternative

Constitution finally reflected the desire to realize two primary goals that the framers of the constitution considered most urgent in resolving Turkey's problems: rapid industrial development that is attentive to social justice, and democratization (Tanör 1994 cited by Dede 2017:810). That is, the proposals of the DP-era oppositional elites over the path of economic and political development were put into effect with the new constitution.

The framers of the constitution showed a “renewed concern for accelerated industrialization”(Bianchi 2014:124) and also pursued to prevent the recurrence of populist- clientelist policies in the economic arena (Özcan 2017: 179) that they regarded as an obstacle to full-fledged industrialization. Therefore, they attributed a ‘developmental’ role to the state and pursued increased and concerted state intervention in the economy realized through the transition to import-substituting industrialization (ISI). ISI, which is characterized by concerted state intervention to protect domestic industry by encouraging the industrial bourgeoisie “to produce the very manufactures hitherto imported”(Keyder 1987:151), was an attractive option for the business to further its capital accumulation under the existing structure of the international economy. The pursuit of restoring state planning in the economic sector was also shaped by the broader context of international economy and specifically by the inception of the New Deal in the US (Keyder 1987:143)11 But, it also reflected the common desires of the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy to transfer state power in economic policy-making "from self-serving and corrupt politicians to nationalist planners"(ibid: 146)12.

proposals throughout the 1950s to further Turkey’s political and economic development. When an ample opportunity had arisen after the 1960 coup to restructure the political system and economic policy-making through the endorsement of a new constitution, the intellectuals rushed to put their technocratic proposals into effect. But, it would not be wrong to claim that the intellectuals also pursued their more parochial interest of restoring their leverage in national politics that was seriously distorted by the degrading attitude of the DP elites towards the intellectuals and by the DP’s repressive policies undermining the autonomy of the universities.

11 Etatism was also demanded by the US and the international organizations and was considered as a precondition for providing Turkey with international aid and loans (Keskin 2017:873). 12 In order to realize state intervention in the economy in a concerted manner, the 1961 Constitution introduced the State Planning Organization (DPT). The DPT had constitutional powers as vast as assisting the government in shaping the economic and social policies, preparing short-term and long-term development plans, monitoring the government's performance in implementing the development plans, and providing the private sector with recommendations so that they could realize the goals in the development plans that were associated with the private sector (Keskin 2017:874). As Keyder (1987) argues, the DPT was almost given the role of a "deputy prime minister

The framers of the 1961 Constitution also believed that rapid industrial development should be undertaken in a manner that was attentive to social justice. Therefore, the new Constitution guaranteed social and economic rights such as the state provision of social security, health and primary education and the rights to strike, to organize and join labor unions. As one of the framers of the constitution, İsmet Giritli a professor from Istanbul University, stated, a social welfare state guaranteeing social and economic rights was considered as a necessity, because “the masses in countries where the state remains indifferent to social justice are getting themselves involved in movements of the extreme right, and thereby being swept in the direction of one or the other form of totalitarianism"(Giritli 1962:12). It is thus possible to conclude that the intellectuals framing the constitution considered the provision of social and economic rights as a major mechanism to incorporate popular sectors and urban poor into the political arena and specifically to prevent their mobilization within extreme-right and socialist movements. To put it another way, the emergence of a welfare regime in Turkey was not the outcome of popular demands from below but came into existence through technocratic reformism with the ultimate goal of popular sector incorporation.

The new Constitution also reflected the desire of the Kemalist elites to undertake large- scale democratizing reforms. Having experienced an increasingly authoritarian political context during the one-party DP rule that aimed to restrict channels for oppositional politics, the coup coalition of Kemalist elites (army, bureaucracy, intelligentsia, and the CHP), under the influence of liberal intellectual circles, came to believe that the ‘interrupted’ Kemalist path to political development could be reclaimed through substantive democratization. In other words, despite overthrowing a democratically elected government by an overtly anti-democratic means of a military takeover, the Kemalist elites’ attempts to restructure the political system was paradoxically shaped by a tactical commitment to democratization. At the more practical and strategic level, the Kemalist elites aimed to prevent the recurrence of one-party rule by a political party succeeding the ousted-DP or at least to check its possible majoritarian tendencies through a

in charge of the industrial sector"(p.148). However, over time it failed to assume its constitutional powers and merely became an institution in charge of "allocation of subsidized credits and scarce foreign exchange"(ibid). Still, the DPT held a privileged and prestigious status within the state bureaucracy and functioned to restore the political power of bureaucrats in policy-making.

87 proper system of checks and balances. Therefore, the 1961 Constitution included significant number of democratizing provisions that sought to advance a transition from an electoral- majoritarian democracy to a pluralist democracy. Towards this goal, the new Constitution facilitated the foundation of new political parties, introduced proportional representation in the party system, guaranteed the autonomy of universities, enhanced the scope of individual liberties and political rights including the freedom of expression, the freedom of press and broadcasting, the freedom of assembly and association, and the rights to strike and join labor unions (Soysal 1993). These democratizing provisions marked the 1961 Constitution as the most liberal constitution in the history of modern Turkey.

The next section will demonstrate that the 1960 coup and its political project played a notable role in the shift from elite disunity to elite fragmentation in Turkey. First, the political project of the 1960 coup coalition reinforced the ideological polarization between Kemalist elites and right-wing populists, since right-wing populists, in particular, the Justice Party (the major successor to the military-ousted DP), opposed to rapid industrialization through greater state intervention in the economy, labor incorporation, and to large-scale democratizing reforms. Second, the 1961 Constitution that enhanced the tutelary powers of the military contributed to the emergence of a diffused power structure; the civilian elites had to share power with the military elites. Third, the new constitution also facilitated the numerical proliferation of the influential elites and in particular the fragmentation in the party system, as the 1960 Constitution made the foundation of new parties easier and introduced proportional representation.

Elite fragmentation in the 1960s: Wide diffusion, weak integration, and a diffused power configuration

This section argues that after the military rule, an elite structure characterized by fragmentation came into existence in Turkey. Elite fragmentation manifested three major features in the 1960s: the numerical proliferation of influential political elites (wide diffusion), diverging elite views or ideological polarization on major political and economic issues (weak integration), and the lack of a dominant elite faction (a diffused power configuration).

To start with, the Turkish political arena revealed the proliferation of political parties after the 1960 coup and relatedly greater fragmentation in the party system. The army relinquished power following the general elections in October 1961. Four parties competed in the

88 elections: the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Republican Peasants’ National Party (CKMP), the Justice Party (AP) and the New Turkey Party (YTP). While the Republican Peasants’ National Party (CKMP), a right-wing party, campaigned on a nationalist platform and particularly sought to mobilize the rural population, the New Turkey Party (YTP) and the Justice Party (AP) were both center-right parties and competed in the elections to “gain the allegiance of the former DP electorate” (Szyliowicz 1966:281). In particular, the Justice Party (AP), the major successor to the military-overthrown DP, largely relied on the DP’s “extensive and experienced local organizations”. Its program and election manifesto only slightly differed from the DP as well. The AP emphasized the saliency of the private enterprise; opposed to the land, property, and animal taxes; and offered the “reduction of taxes on small traders” (Dodd 1969:141).

Fragmentation in the party system was not confined to the Right. The 1960s also witnessed the rise of socialist parties that emerged as powerful rivals to the center-left CHP. The major representative of socialist politics in the electoral arena was the Turkish Labor Party (TİP) that was founded in 1961 by a group of labor unionists. The TİP for the first time had run in the 1965 elections and managed to gain fifteen seats in the parliament by polling around three percent13. The TİP advocated a transition to a socialist regime under the ‘democratic' leadership of the working-class (TİP Party Program; cited by Varel 2017:420). However, failing to appeal to the workers, its voter base mostly consisted the intellectuals, university students, and urban middle classes. In other words, the TIP and the CHP competed to gain the allegiance of the same groups in the cities.

Second, elite fragmentation was revealed in the weak integration among the dominant elites characterized by diverging elite views over major political and economic issues. During its

13 The TİP’s appearance on the Turkish political scene paralleled the rise of left-wing politics on a world scale. The 1960s witnessed the left-wing parties’ rise to power in Europe as well as in many third-world countries; the growing political leverage of labor unions across the world; and the peak of the Soviet power (Varel 2017:399). However, as Rasih Nuri İleri, A TİP member, acknowledges, in the case of Turkey, it was the 1960 coup and the 1961 Constitution that played a significant role in the foundation and the electoral success of the TİP (Interview by Baykam 1999:222). As discussed previously, the framers of the 1961 Constitution considered the representation of diverse economic and social interests in the parliament as an effective mechanism to prevent the recurrence of an authoritarian right-wing party rule. It might also be claimed that the coup coalition of the Kemalist elites had sympathy towards socialist parties (unless they assumed political power!) due to their mobilization capacity of the so-called progressive urban sectors. Consequently, the proportional representation instituted by the 1961 Constitution towards a plural parliament gave the TİP an ample opportunity to gain seats in the parliament despite its low vote percentage.

89 one-party rule from 1965 to 1969, the AP primarily challenged the Kemalist bloc by presenting itself as the authentic representative of the larger electorate countering the oligarchy of the Kemalist civil-military bureaucracy. Even though the AP sought “an accommodation with the senior military officials” (Sherwood 1967:62) due to the fear of a coup that could overthrow it from power, it contested the Kemalists by posing criticisms against the 1961 Constitution. The AP argued that the new constitution instituted ‘tutelary institutions’ (a bicameral legislation, Constitutional Court, National Security Council) that significantly curtailed the functioning of the executive power (Bora 2005:559; Demir 2017:515).

In addition to growing tensions between the ruling AP and the Kemalist elites, the second axis of ideological polarization in the 1960s were ideological cleavages within the Kemalist elites. As one faction of the Kemalist elite leaned towards a more left-wing interpretation of Kemalism, the other faction adopted a right-wing stance that was characterized by an increasing discontent with the spread of socialist ideas and the rise of left-wing popular mobilization. However, even each faction, especially the left-wing one, revealed ideological divisions that made consensus among like-minded Kemalists untenable. For example, a group of Kemalist intellectuals started to publish the journal Yön (Direction) in 1961. The Kemalist intellectuals in the 1950s were mostly concerned with a transition to a pluralist democracy that would safeguard individual liberties and political rights. Even though they advocated state intervention in the economic sector, they mostly subscribed to a Keynesian economy and did not pose criticisms against capitalist development. However, the new generation of intellectuals publishing the Yön rather advocated a non-capitalist way of rapid economic development. Specifically, the Yön writers considered Turkey as an underdeveloped country and argued that Turkey’s underdevelopment resulted from the “dependence on and exploitation by the capitalist West ”(Ahmad, 1993:141) as well as from the oppression of the lower classes by the dominant sectors of landowners and bourgeoisie that allied themselves with the capitalist West (Yanık and Bora 2017:276). Those intellectuals offered a socialist path of economic development that would challenge the imperialists and their local collaborators.

The CHP, one of the major components of the Kemalist bloc, also moved to the left of the political spectrum (Bora 2017:579). Before the 1965 elections, the CHP leader İnönü declared that the CHP now identified with a "left of the center" position (ibid: 575). However, it was under the new leadership of Bülent Ecevit that the CHP’s ‘left of center’ program gained

90 more clarity. The coup coalition of Kemalist elites intended to establish a developmentalist coalition including the industrial bourgeoisie and the workers to realize rapid industrialization and to assume political power. Even though Ecevit agreed with the Kemalists on the saliency of such a coalition, he also prioritized peasant incorporation. Ecevit's left of the center program included a tacit criticism of Kemalism by emphasizing the need to refrain from interfering with the traditional lifestyles of the rural masses as well (Bora 2017:576).

Alarmed by the spread of socialist ideas and the rise of popular left-wing mobilization, a group of Kemalist elites, specifically some CHP deputies and senior military officials, instead pursued a right-wing version of Kemalism. A group of deputies from the CHP argued that the CHP's ‘left of center' program was a move towards socialist politics and that it violated the CHP's traditional mission of safeguarding the Kemalist principles (Aydın and Taşkın: 156; Bora 2017:579). They split from the CHP and established a new party in 1967. Similarly, the senior military officers also came to adopt an anti-left position (Tachau and Heper, 1983:23)14. For example, a top general Faruk Güventürk argued in 1965 that communists were indoctrinating the disadvantaged groups within society and that they posed a threat to Kemalist principles and national unity and cohesion (quoted by Bora 2017:294-95). In 1966, the Chief of General Staff Cemal Tural released a memorandum declaring that a book titled The Methods for Combatting Communism (a book published in the US and translated into Turkish) would be part of the curriculum in military schools (Keskin 2017:891).

Finally, a diffused power configuration became one of the major components of elite fragmentation in the 1960s. While none of the parties received the majority of the votes in the 1961 elections to establish a one-party government, four coalition governments (three under the leadership of the CHP, and one under the AP) that came to power in the period from 1961 to 1965 largely remained weak and short-lived due to the increasing polarization among the parties. For example, the first coalition government (a grand coalition of four parties) dissolved shortly due to the AP’s opposition to the endorsement of a new Labor Law that would institutionalize the new constitutional provision of the right to strike (Aydın and Taşkın 2015: 117). Also, the

14 It would not be wrong to claim that the anti-communist zeitgeist of the Cold War period also influenced the senior officers' approach to left-wing politics. During the Cold War period, Turkey was formally allied with the US bloc, and the senior officers came under the increasing influence of anti-communist ideas.

91 civilian elites had to share power with the military elites due to increased tutelary powers of the army that reinforced the diffused power configuration. While the regular meetings of the National Security Council enabled the military to increase its leverage over civilian politics, the political society also faced frequent threats from the military that the military could take over power again. For example, after the 1961 elections, the AP demanded an amnesty for the imprisoned DP politicians (Szyliowicz 1966:281). Those insistent demands led the hardliners within the army to undertake a coup attempt on February 21-22 1962 (Dodd 1969:144). Albeit unsuccessful, this coup attempt reminded the civilian elites that the army had reinforced its status in the political arena as a veto player.

Moreover, amidst the alleged attacks on the 1960 coup during the AP's provincial party congresses, the Chief of the General Staff, Cevdet Sunay, wrote a letter to the parliament in November 1964 stating that "military intervention would be necessary if steps were not taken against those attacking the military and the revolution [the 1960 coup]"(ibid: 168). Despite the military’s interferences with the AP in the early 1960s, the AP, the major successor to the military-ousted DP, polled 52.7 percent in the 1965 general elections and managed to establish a one-party government. The AP also emerged victorious out of the 1969 elections. However, its second term in office was disrupted, when the military intervened in 1971 and removed the AP from power.

To conclude, the 1960s witnessed an elite structure characterized by growing fragmentation. The emergence of new political parties both in the left and the right increased fragmentation in the party system; the Turkish elites remained ideologically polarized over major political and economic issues; and none of the elite factions acquired a dominant power status in the political arena. The next section turns to explain the origins of elite fragmentation in the 1960s.

Explaining elite transformation: The origins of elite fragmentation in the 1960s

But why did the Turkish political arena reveal elite fragmentation in the 1960s? In other words, what were the dynamics that precipitated elite transformation from disunity to fragmentation? This chapter contends that elite fragmentation was the outcome of the emergence of new social forces in the political arena created by the advent of modernization from the 1950s onwards. As the new social forces appeared on the political scene with increasing demands on the political

92 society, the political elites encountered the multiple crises of representation and incorporation. While the elites proliferated and fragmented to represent diverging societal interests, the right- wing and left-wing elites in particular also revealed greater ideological polarization on the nature of popular sector incorporation.

Accelerated modernization in the period from 1950 to 1960, specifically industrialization, access to education, and urbanization along with mass media expansion, fostered unprecedented levels of socio-economic transformation and mobilized the urban sectors into politics. Industry's share in national income increased from 16 percent to 23 percent (Karpat 1972:354); 18 percent of the economically active population was employed in the industrial and service sectors in 1960 (Bianchi 2014:37). Increased employment opportunities in the cities, as well as farm mechanization, displaced large numbers of rural masses from the countryside. While the urban population constituted 18,3 percent of the total population in 1945, 25,2 percent of the population lived in urban centers in 1960 (Karpat 1972: 371). Furthermore, mass media expansion created more interest in political affairs. The total number of newspapers and magazines rose from 336 in 1945 to 1658 in 1960 (Turkish Institute of Statistics, cited by Karpat 1972:371). Finally, access to higher education also showed significant improvement in the 1950s. While the number of high schools and vocational schools increased from 405 in the 1949- 1950 academic year to 693 in 1959-60 (Turkish Statistical Institute 2010:71-73), the number of students enrolled in universities rose from 25,091 to 54,069 (ibid:75).

The 1960s witnessed the deepening of socioeconomic transformation in Turkey. State planning in the economy and the transition to an import-substitution system in the aftermath of the 1960 coup resulted in higher rates of economic growth, particularly in the industrial sector. The industry annually grew at an average of 9,5 percent; the industry's share in the GNP rose to 18 percent (Özcan 2017:190-91). As a substantial private sector emerged by the end of the decade (Ahmad 1993:134 cited by Melo 2007:219), the size of the working-class significantly expanded as well. In 1960 the number of waged workers was 2,4 million; in 1970, waged workers rose to 4,2 million amounting to 28 percent of the total workforce (Çelik 2017:640). As a result, the political elites encountered a large urbanized population including workers, middle classes, entrepreneurs, and a growing number of university students that were raising demands on the political society for political recognition and economic redistribution.

As the political society faced a crisis of representation due to the diversification of societal interests, the emerging insurgency of popular sectors (workers, public employees, and peasants) also created a crisis of political incorporation. In the 1960s Turkey was moving towards a ‘protest society’ or in Huntington-ian terms towards a “praetorian polity”. As the expansion of the working class increased the leverage of the workers in the political arena, the 1961 Constitution, which intended labor incorporation by granting workers the rights to strike and to collective bargaining, provided workers with organizational power to participate in decision-making (Waldner 1999:65). The late 1960s, in particular, witnessed the growing militancy of the workers that were excluded from the AP government's labor incorporation schemes. The Confederation of the Revolutionary Workers' Union (DİSK), which was founded in 1967 and pursued a combative form of unionism, emerged as the principal representative of the excluded workers taking a leading role in “increasing numbers of strikes, workplace occupations, and some of the largest rallies and demonstrations in Turkish history”(Mello 2007:222).15 While only 1,514 workers participated in a strike in 1963, the number of workers that involved in strike action was 12,601 in 1969 and 21,156 in 1970 (Çelik 2017:659). From 1965 to 1971, a large number of civil servants also became unionized and gradually emerged as a contentious force. The most politically active sector of public employees were the teachers that organized the Teachers' Union of Turkey (TÖS) in 1965 (ibid: 647). Finally, even though the peasants lacked strong organizations for staging organized collective action, the late 1960s also witnessed several spontaneous contentious actions by the peasants including land occupations and demonstrations for land reform (Alper 2009:420). The growing insurgency of the popular sectors strengthened socialist youth politics as well. As the socialist students organized rallies and occupations in the campus to further student interests, they also frequently participated in factory occupations and workers' rallies and visited villages where the peasants staged land occupations.

The large-scale socioeconomic transformation thus created constituencies with diverging demands on the political society. The peasants opted for the continuance of price supports in

15 While the membership in pro-government Türk-İş “concentrated in the public sector”, the DİSK recruited members from the private sector and particularly from the expanding sectors of construction and services (Waldner 1999:66).

94 return of votes and demanded land reform; the workers emerged as a more powerful political force with increasing redistribution demands on the business and the government; the new migrants in the cities looked for material incentives and policies of redistribution that would accelerate their integration into the city. While new political parties both on the left and the right emerged to represent those new social forces, the old political elites reformulated their ideological stance in order to appeal to new constituencies. Furthermore, as the right-wing and left-wing elites ideologically polarized on the nature of popular sector incorporation, the military conceived itself as an ‘above-party’ political elite that could safeguard the national interests increasing its interferences with the civilian politics. The military eventually undertook a coup- by-memorandum in 1971 to restore political order and social peace.

The 1971 Coup-by-memorandum and the Intensification of Elite Fragmentation (1971-1980)

Alarmed by the intense fragmentation among the political elites and the inefficiency of the AP government to counter the growing insurgency of popular sectors, the military intervened. On March 12th, 1971, the top generals released an authoritative memorandum, which accused the government and the parliament of nurturing anarchy, fratricide, and economic unrest in the country, and forced the AP government to resign. This section will first discuss in what aspects the 1971 military intervention differed from the 1960 coup. Next, it will analyze the major tenets of elite fragmentation in the aftermath of the military intervention and will particularly emphasize increased fragmentation in the party system, growing ideological polarization among right-wing and left-wing elites, and a more diffused power configuration marked by unstable coalition governments and an ideologically divided bureaucracy.

The military intervention in March 1971 differed from the 1960 coup in several aspects: first of all, unlike the 1960 coup, the military did not directly seize power. Rather, the generals sought an ‘above-party’, technocratic government, which “they could influence with constant prodding and pressure”(Ahmad, 1993:148). An above-party government, under the premiership of Nihat Erim (a right-wing Kemalist deputy from the Republican People’s Party(CHP), was formed on March 26th, 1971. Second, the 1960 coup was the outcome of elite disunity in the political arena. The military that was the prominent actor of the Kemalist bloc overthrew the government in order to enable the Kemalist elites re-gain the monopoly of political power. Even though the 1971 military intervention forced the AP government to resign, it did not primarily

95 target the overthrow of the ruling party. Rather, the military action was triggered by the military’s “exaggerated fear of declining state authority” (Bianchi 2014: 204) due to the rise of popular mobilization and the inefficiency of a fragmented political society in confronting the contentious forces. Therefore, the military that conceived itself as the guardian of public order and state authority undertook the intervention in order to suppress the growing insurgency of popular sectors and youth and to restore state authority through immediate and concerted state action. Finally, the middle- and lower-rank military officials that staged the 1960 coup were mostly identified with the liberal and left-wing currents of Kemalism. In contrast, the top military that undertook the 1971 intervention largely adhered to right-wing Kemalism characterized by a strident anti-communism. That is the reason why the top military officials were primarily alarmed by the rise of left-wing mobilization and intervened in order to weaken left-wing political organizations.

The 1971 military intervention and two-years-long technocratic governments did not debilitate elite fragmentation. Rather, Turkish politics in the period from 1973 to 1980 was characterized by greater fragmentation at the elite level. As in the 1960s, elite fragmentation was primarily characterized by fragmentation in the party system. The first elections after the 1971 coup-by-memorandum, which took place in 1973, revealed more significant fragmentation, especially in the Right. While the CHP entered the parliament as the sole representative of Kemalist and left-wing constituencies, the center-right AP lost votes to two new parties in the right, to Nationalist Action Party and the pro-Islamist National Salvation Party. The CHP emerged as the winner of the 1973 elections with 33,3 percent of the votes (Özbudun and Tachau 1975: 460), but it still lacked the parliamentary majority to assume power. Despite the increase in the votes of centrist parties in the 1977 elections (Özbudun 1981:237), the party system still revealed fragmentation since none of the parties reached the parliamentary majority to establish a one-party government.

Elite fragmentation in the 1970s was also characterized by growing ideological polarization between the political elites. The political parties' divergent views over the nature of economic development and the state-religion relations in the 1970s aggravated polarization among the political elites. However, the major source of cleavage among the political elites was "the pro- and anti-leftist orientations by the parties" (Sayari 1978:50). Despite their programmatic differences, all the right-wing parties shared growing concerns about the

96 proliferation and the increasing power of left-wing organizations, their ‘revolutionary' activities, and their sphere of influence, especially over youth and workers. Therefore, they all integrated a strident anti-socialist/anti-communist worldview into their party ideologies. For example, the AP's 1973 election manifesto attracted attention to the spread of communism across the world and its increasingly negative impacts over Turkey (cited by Demirel 2005:558) and the AP leader Demirel frequently claimed that communism was the greatest enemy of the Turks and the Muslims (Demirel 1979:28-29, cited by Demirel 2005:580). The MHP also formulated its nationalism in strictly anti-communist terms and even formed an armed youth organization to lead a street struggle against left-wing activists. Finally, the pro-Islamist MSP, conceiving of communists as the enemies of Islam, embraced an anti-leftist stance throughout the 1970s as well.

The party leadership concentrated efforts to distinguish the CHP’s program from the extreme left and the CHP leader Ecevit “refused to consolidate the forces on the left through a call for anti-fascist unity”(Keyder 1987:218) . However, the CHP’s now firmer stance of a ‘left- of-center’ program, growing workers support to the CHP (the militant labor confederation DISK officially supported the CHP both in the 1973 and 1977 elections) (Waldner 1999:66) and the party’s increasing popularity among the urban poor led the parties on the Right to depict the CHP as being “in a league with the [revolutionary] Left”(Keyder 1987:218). While the right-wing parties and especially the AP frequently accused the CHP of fostering extreme left-wing sentiments and activities (Sayari 1978:50), the CHP criticized the right-wing coalition governments of “provoking violent incidents, destroying the neutrality of the bureaucracy, [and] dividing people”(Ahmad 1993:166). A “mutual process of de-legitimation”(Sayari 1978:51) among the party leaders lessened “the already limited possibilities for the growth of consensual government-opposition relations”(ibid: 52).

Third, a diffused power configuration also became one of the major characteristics of elite fragmentation in the 1970s. Fragmentation in the party system and intense ideological polarization among the parties ushered in weak and unstable coalition governments. Even though the business circles asked for a grand coalition between the center-right AP and the center-left CHP that would survive over a long period, the party leaders were far from consensus to form a coalition government. The first coalition government established in 1974 after long months of bargaining was between the CHP and the pro-Islamist MSP, -the composition of the government

97 was the first of its kind marking the first coalition agreement between a secular and a pro- Islamist party (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:256). This government survived only eight and a half months due to the disagreements over economic policies and the MSP's defection from one of the articles of the coalition protocol that proposed a general amnesty including the political prisoners associated with left-wing activism (ibid).

After the dissolution of the CHP-MSP government, the AP managed to unite the Right around an anti-communist program and established a right-wing coalition government under the banner National Front (NF) that consisted the AP, MHP, MSP, and the Republican Reliance Party (a right-wing Kemalist party that split from the CHP in 1965) and that lasted until 1977. Even though the CHP emerged as the winner of the 1977 elections, it remained in the opposition, since the AP managed to establish a second National Front government (Sayari 1978:54). However, despite their shared anti-communism and their shared goal of "quarant[ining] the CHP"(Bianchi 2014:222), the NF-governments remained conflict-ridden. The coalition partners were far from a consensus over crucial issues such as Turkey's relations with the European Common Market, the educational policies, Turkey-Greece relations, and legal reforms (Heper 1985:119-121) that led the dissolution of the second NF government only in a year. Consequently, first, a CHP minority government and later an AP minority government ruled the country until the military took over power in September 1980.

Another component of the diffused power configuration in the 1970s was an ideologically divided civil bureaucracy. Since the foundation of the Republic in 1923, the civil bureaucracy was ideologically cohesive in no small extent staffed with Kemalist civil servants. Even though ideological splits emerged within the bureaucracy in the 1960s among right-wing and left-wing Kemalists, the majority of the bureaucracy still associated with and supported the CHP. However, elite polarization in the 1970s significantly altered the composition of the civil bureaucracy and terminated the predominance of the Kemalists within the state bureaucracy contributing to elite fragmentation in the 1970s. In order to maintain the survival of the NF coalition governments, the AP "parcelled out" the state among coalition partners (Ahmad 1993:165); each ministry came "under the complete jurisdiction of a political party"(Heper 1985:114). Consequently, Islamists and extreme nationalists increased their hold over bureaucratic power; the latter attained control over the critical ministries of education, justice, and interior affairs (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:275). The following figures well reveal the degree

"the civil servants were reshuffled in an arbitrary fashion" throughout the 1970s (Heper 1985:114): The AP minority government from December 1979 to May 1980 removed 1223 civil servants from their posts and replaced them with 1367 new appointees (ibid: 115).

To conclude, fragmentation in the party system intensified elite rivalry in the political arena and reinforced ideological polarization among right-wing and left-wing political elites. As the centrist parties (the right-wing AP and the left-wing CHP) frequently engaged in acrimonious political bickering towards each other to make short-term political gains, they remained far from consensus and cooperation in dealing with a worsening economy and increasing political violence. Since the parties, once in power as coalition partners, parcelled out the state infiltrating parts of the bureaucracy with their sympathizers, the bureaucracy and the judiciary became highly politicized and polarized along a left and right-divide as well. Finally, as elite fragmentation prevented the rise of a dominant party in the electoral arena, the ruling parties also continued to share power with the military. As a result, the political arena became fraught with weak and unstable governments, antagonistic exchanges between the elites, and parliamentary stalemate and deadlock.

Explaining the intensification of elite fragmentation in the 1970s

This section contends that the underlying changes in Turkish society triggered by the crisis of the ISI and by the broader impacts of late-comer capitalism deepened socioeconomic cleavages and reinforced elite fragmentation in the 1970s. The import-substituting-industrialization (ISI), which was endorsed in the early 1960s to foster rapid industrialization, continued to function as the major economic policy in the 1970s. The ISI policies “were complemented by extensive and effective government intervention in internal markets, particularly in the form of price, interest rate, and credit controls” (Boratav 1986:125) as well. Since high wages prompted demand for industrial products, the employers did not refrain from offering relatively high wages to the workers (ibid: 128). Moreover, intense elite rivalry in the political arena also led the ruling elites to pursue wage and employment policies in the public sector that were "biased in favour labor" in order to gain or guard "the allegiance of trade unions and workers"(ibid). The ISI, which was based on a delicate balance between the interests of capital and labor, produced good results throughout the 1960s, but in the post-1973 period, the Turkish economy came under crisis

99 dynamics that rendered ISI policies inefficient tools to further capital accumulation and moderate class struggle.

Both external and internal economic dynamics had driven the crisis of the ISI in the second half of the 1970s. On the one hand, "chaotic money markets and rising oil prices", "a shrinking market for peripheral exports" (Keyder 1987:196) and "the European economic downturn, which ended the demand for Turkish labor" (Ahmad 1993:176) precipitated the crisis dynamics in Turkey. On the other hand, elite rivalry, which led the governments to undertake populist redistribution policies towards the popular classes in the form of high wages to the public sector workers and above-market prices to the peasants, also hindered the political actors to "formulate or implement long-term development strategy" (Waldner 1999:204). Under these conditions there emerged various obstacles to maintain "the material conditions of production"; the results were declining profits, declining investment in manufacturing, a slackened economic growth (Keyder 1987:196) and high inflation (Yeldan 2014:41).

The crisis of the ISI further diverged the societal interests that fostered greater fragmentation in the party system. First of all, import-substitution-industrialization and uneven economic growth favoring Western regions (see Bianchi 2014) mostly benefitted metropolitan industrial bourgeoisie and created interest conflict within the bourgeoisie at large (Waldner 1999:69). When the AP had also favored the big business interests during the time it stayed in power, it alienated small business, merchants (Özbudun 1976) and artisans in provincial towns. The pro-Islamist National Salvation Party (MSP) appeared in the electoral arena to appeal to the shopkeepers, small merchants and craftsmen "who were not on decline, but developed discontents since they “did not receive…..their due share of the expanding economic pie” (Sunar and Toprak 1983:438). Second, the AP once successfully incorporated the new migrants in the cities through the provision of material incentives (Keyder 1987:163) and by appealing to their conservative values and traditional lifestyles (ibid: 137). However, while rapid urbanization creating a migration boom from the countryside to the big cities "had provided the AP with much of its electoral strength" in the 1960s, it "appeared to be a particularly important source of its loss of dominance" in the 1970s (Sayari 1978:48). The slow proletarianization of the ex-peasants and the leftist organizations' increasing leverage in the shantytowns seemed to have strengthened the class-voting tendency of the urban poor altering their voting preferences in favor of the now left- populist CHP (Batuman 2013:77). Finally, "those remaining outside of late-comer capitalism,

100 unorganized urban labourers, marginal sector of shantytowns, small town workers" were appealed by the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) (Keyder 1987:221). Campaigning on a “Turkist and anti-communist” platform (Çınar and Arıkan 2002:27), the MHP also appealed to nationalist teachers and public employees and drew much of its support from first-time voters and youth with overtly nationalistic backgrounds (Sayari 1978:54;Özbudun 1981:234).

To conclude this chapter has so far argued that elite disunity, which culminated in a coup d’etat in 1960, was replaced by fragmentation at the elite level in the aftermath of the 1960-61 military regime. The 1970s witnessed an elite structure where fragmentation was further reinforced. Elite fragmentation prevented consensus over vital issues among the elites, significantly shaped the course of elite-society linkages, and created an unstable representative regime. Fragmentation at the elite level resulted in a coup-by-memorandum in 1971 followed by the rule of technocratic governments for two years and eventually culminated in a coup d’etat in 1980. This chapter has further contended that elite fragmentation in Turkey was the outcome of elite responses to the multiple crises of representation and incorporation at the societal level. As the advent of modernization in the 1960s released new social forces with increasing demands on the political society some of which got involved in contentious politics, the crisis of the import- substitution system in the 1970s intensified the labor-business struggle in Turkey and more generally the redistribution demands by the rising social forces of the urban poor, the middle- classes, and the small entrepreneurs with provincial backgrounds. In seeking to represent diverging societal interests and to incorporate radicalizing social forces into the political arena, the political elites proliferated, remained divided and became ideologically polarized.

3.3 Elite-Youth Linkages in Turkey from 1960 to 1980: Elite Fragmentation and Partisan Incorporation of Youth

This section turns to lay out the first causal mechanism and the intervening variable of this study for the period from 1960 to 1980. It will investigate the ways in which elite fragmentation shaped the course of elite-youth linkages by analyzing how the Turkish elites interfered with youth political participation in order to advance their interests and particular political visions. Specifically, in order to discuss the relationship between elite fragmentation and elite-youth linkages, this section will discuss three themes: the major motivations of the Turkish elites to interfere with youth participation, the process of partisan incorporation towards youth, and the

101 instruments of partisan incorporation including a political discourse that aimed to politically empower youth, and pluralist policies in the area of youth participation. It will demonstrate that pluralist policies enabled youth self-organization, the establishment of partisan youth organizations by the elites, and partisan elite attempts to weaken rival youth organizations that created/facilitated Kemalist youth mobilization (1961-1965), socialist youth mobilization (1965- 1971 and 1973-1980), and the counter-mobilization of right-wing youth (1965-1971 and 1973- 1980).

Partisan youth incorporation by the 1960 Coup Coalition of Elites and the Kemalist Youth Mobilization (1961-1965)

The 1960 coup coalition of Kemalist elites (the military, bureaucracy, intelligentsia, and the CHP) expected that after the transition to a civilian regime, the CHP would come to power and realize rapid economic development and a pluralist democratic system by establishing a coalition of ‘urban sectors'. This coalition, which might be termed as ‘developmentalist-progressive' in orientation, included the urban sectors of the industrial bourgeoisie, workers, professionals (e.g lawyers and engineers), teachers, civil servants, and intellectuals (writers, academics, journalists, university students)(Daldal 2004; Akça 2010). On the one hand, those urban sectors were considered as the opponents of populist economic policies largely favoring the peasants and were expected to be appealed by rapid industrial development that was attentive to social justice. On the other hand, the coup coalition of Kemalist elites assumed that those urban sectors were progressive in the sense that they inherited the political will and the capacity in advancing Turkey's democratization ‘from below'. The framers of the 1961 Constitution thus aimed to enhance the political participation of these sectors through a pluralist system of interest representation and associational politics so that a vibrant civil society comprising the organizations of these sectors could play a role in challenging the rule of a potentially authoritarian, conservative, and populist government. Alternatively, as Bianchi puts it (2014), the framers of the Constitution expected that the representation of diverse economic and social interests in the political arena by the organizations of the urban sectors would impose "further checks on majority party power"(p.115). The Kemalist elites attributed a unique role to youth and specifically to university students within this ‘progressive coalition of urban sectors'.

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Since the anti-government student protests in April 1960 were believed to have precipitated the 1960 coup that had overthrown the DP from power (Neyzi 2001:418), the Kemalist elites considered youth as an indispensable part of the ‘progressive coalition of urban sectors’ that they sought to politically activate against the recurrence of a DP-like government. Therefore, conceiving of educated youth as a societal ally in realizing the political transformation of the 1960 coup coalition constituted a major motivation for the Kemalist elites in the period from 1961 to 1965 to interfere with youth participation. Specifically, the Kemalist elites sought to mobilize youth and particularly university students for Kemalist causes in order to benefit from Kemalist youth activism in countering the political elites with an anti-Kemalist political agenda. I argue that it was through the process of partisan youth incorporation that the Kemalist elites participated themselves in youth mobilization. Partisan youth incorporation by Kemalist elites operated through two mechanisms: a political discourse that identified youth as the saviours and the protectors of the secular and democratic regime and pluralist policies of political participation that enhanced the channels young people could relate to politics.

In order to realize partisan youth incorporation, the Kemalist elites primarily adopted an ostentatious discourse that exalted youth’s role in the overthrow of the DP and that emphasized youth’s future role in preventing the recurrence of the majoritarian rule of an anti-Kemalist party. During the demonstrations in Istanbul on June 8th 1960, which were organized to celebrate the ‘27 May Revolution’16, the President of the National Unity Committee (NUC, the executive body of the military administration), Cemal Gürsel, stated that: “Turkish Youth! I admire your enthusiasm and concern about national causes. I ensure you that your courage during the dark times, the blood you sacrificed to save freedom and democracy have not been wasted”. (Cumhuriyet, June 9th, 1960, p.5; Author's translation). President Gürsel also reminded youth that their mission was not over: "It is the duty of every citizen, but especially of the educated youth to work hard towards national progress and to make an effort in order not to return to the old dark days. Your enthusiasm makes me firmly believe that you will be the creator of the glorious and free Turkey"(ibid).

16 The Kemalist elites referred to the 1960 coup as a “revolution” on the grounds that the coup ended the authoritarian rule of the DP and re-instituted and even enhanced individual liberties and political rights (Saç 2017:78).

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In similar lines, İsmet Giritli, a university professor who was a member of the Constitutional Commission for the preparation of a new constitution draft, asked rhetorically in a 1961 article titled “Politics and Youth”: “Who may disclaim the fact that the 27 May Revolution[the 1960 coup] was instigated by educated youth, by the dynamic and progressive force of our society?”(quoted by Lüküslü, 2015:96). In the anniversary of the student protests against the DP government on April 28th, 1961, Alev Coşkun the CHP deputy in the Representatives Assembly (the legislative body of the military administration) similarly acknowledged that "Last year on this day, the police used firearms against the university students who gathered in Beyazıt Square. The youth had organized a rally that day to protest against a government that dragged the country into a disaster, to protest against a dictator. Youth exercised its right to resist under the UN Human Rights Declaration and followed [Mustafa Kemal]Atatürk's call to youth [that invited youth to resist against corrupt and illegitimate politicians]….That protest movement strongly revealed university youth's devotion to human rights, Atatürk's principles, and to democracy."(Turkish Grand National Assembly Proceedings, April 28th, 1961:411, Author's Translation). The discourse of the Kemalist elites aimed to mobilize educated youth for the new political project of reclaiming the Kemalist modernization in a more (social-)democratic manner as well as of preventing the rule of a right-wing populist party.

But, more importantly, the coup coalition of Kemalist elites installed pluralist policies of political participation to put partisan youth incorporation into effect. The new Constitution included many pluralist provisions such as the enhanced freedoms of expression, press, and association and the autonomy granted to universities. By enhancing the channels available to youth and particularly to university students for political participation, the coup coalition of Kemalist elites created favourable conditions for pro-Kemalist youth mobilization.

Partisan youth incorporation undertaken by the Kemalist elites seemed to have produced intended consequences in the early 1960s. Young people and specifically university students emerged as the “most active urban sector” that advocated the 1960 coup and its political project of reclaiming the Kemalist path to political development in a (social-) democratic fashion (Alper 2009:230). Prominent student associations in Istanbul, for example, released declarations presenting the coup as a legitimate action geared towards the ‘struggle for freedom' (Akça 2010: 389), and student associations also led a ‘yes’ campaign before the referendum conducted for the

104 approval of the 1961 Constitution (Dodd 1969:172). A Kemalist-turned-socialist student leader of the 1960s, Harun Karadeniz (2015), also describes youth politics in the early 1960s as pro- 1960 coup and progressive (25). By referring to the character of youth politics as "progressive", Karadeniz (2015) emphasizes the devotion of activist youth to a Kemalist path of national progress and youth's determination to challenge forces within civil and political society aiming to restore a DP-like government that would be anti-Kemalist and un-democratic in character. In other words, some sectors of educated youth started to view themselves as an active social force in safeguarding democracy and freedoms (Alper 2009:212). Karadeniz (2015) also acknowledges that young people became overtly self-confident of their political leverage (p.25). This self-confidence was mostly the product of the Kemalist elites' discourse that portrayed anti- government student protests prior to the coup as a driving motivation for the army to embark upon a coup. Therefore, the youth came to believe that "their activism was enough"(Alper 2009:41) and would be enough in the future for encouraging the army to overthrow a corrupt and anti-democratic government.

Specifically, pluralist policies of political participation facilitated pro-Kemalist youth's self-organization, increased the political leverage of youth organizations and in particular, student associations and provided pro-Kemalist youth with enhanced opportunities to undertake protest politics. Pro-Kemalist university students organized within ‘faculty associations' (e.g., Law Faculty Student Association) in the early 1960s and these faculty associations together made up the ‘student union' at the university level (e.g., Istanbul University Student Union). The Turkish National Students Federation (TMTF) was the umbrella organization that involved eight student unions (Bali 2006:17, cited by Alper 2009:184). Similar to the 1950s, the TMTF along with the National Turkish Students Union (MTTB) continued to exert influence over youth politics. The MTTB was not a federation but had been founded by five autonomous student associations (Bali 2006:19 cited by Alper 2009:185). From 1961 to 1965, the TMTF and the MTTB concentrated efforts to portray the 1960 coup as a revolutionary attempt at advancing national progress, and to struggle against the oppositional forces pursuing to discredit the coup, the Kemalist principles, and the 1961 Constitution. The statements of student associations during the anniversaries of the 1960 anti-government student protests well exemplified those efforts. On April 29th 1962, the TMTF, the MTTB, and the Ankara University Student Union released a joint

105 statement that strongly emphasized the determination of university students to stand against the anti-Kemalist forces:

We are as excited as we were two years ago; we are united more than before….two years ago, the Turkish youth who loves and admires Atatürk by heart, undertook action since our nation had been deprived of its freedoms….If that happens again, if similar conditions persist soon, we would not refrain from taking action….The patriots in this country should not feel worried at all. The spirit of April 29th [the day of student protests in the capital city of Ankara] is still with us. (Ulus April 29th, 1962, quoted by Karadeniz 2015:20-21, Author's Translation)

In 1963, the National Youth Association of Turkey (TMGT), the TMTF, and Ankara University Student Union issued a joint declaration in similar lines:

April 28th and 29th of 1960 marked the victory of Turkish youth against the forces that abused democracy. Therefore, in the name of Turkish youth we are urging you - those opposing the parliamentary regime, attempting to disrupt the Constitutional order and its laws and the principles of Atatürk, those trying to condemn the 27 May [the 1960 coup], the Turkish army and the Turkish youth! Be ready to encounter the strong opposition of the Turkish youth (quoted by Karadeniz 2015:21, Author’s translation)

As Abadan (1963) rightly puts it the declarations of the student associations in the 1950s were "more of an indicative nature, carrying only the purpose to inform public opinion whereas the nature of those published after the revolution [1960 coup] are more dynamic, requesting quick action, containing warnings and sometimes even threats"(p.90, quoted by Szyliowicz 1972:21). Those furious statements turned into disruptive action in 1963 when one of the leaders of the outlawed DP, Celal Bayar (the Turkish President during the DP period) was granted an amnesty and released from prison due to his old age. The amnesty was granted upon the initiative of the Prime Minister İnönü (the CHP leader) as part of his conciliatory attempts to ‘normalize' the relations among the political parties in the parliament and to accelerate the smooth working of democracy. However, the army and many CHP deputies revealed their discontent with the amnesty, as they became anxious by the possibility that the release of Celal Bayar could politically empower the Justice Party (the major successor of the DP) (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:120). The attitude of the Kemalist hardliners on the amnesty issue encouraged the Kemalist students, who were also infuriated by the release of Celal Bayar, to take political action in protest. The student associations first organized a rally in the capital city of Ankara, and they

106 attacked the buildings of the pro-JP press (Alper 2009: 226). The next day they held protests in İstanbul that gathered around 25,000 participants (Karadeniz 2015: 28). Karadeniz (2015) posits that it was the most massive student rally since the anti-government student protests in 1960 (ibid). The representatives from the TMTF and the MTTB made furious speeches during the protest event arguing that "the amnesty was an obvious violation of the new constitution" and they firmly stated that "they would squash the enemies of the 27 May [the 1960 coup]"(Cumhuriyet March 27th, 1963, cited by Alper 2009:227).

To conclude, partisan incorporation by the Kemalist elites that aimed to politically activate youth and particularly university students as a pro-Kemalist force largely produced intended outcomes after the transition to a civilian regime. Most of the university students identified themselves as Kemalist and supported the CHP. The prominent student organizations, which were mostly dominated by the Kemalist students, became the ardent supporters of the 1960 coup and the political transformation the Kemalist elites sought to realize after the transition to a civilian regime. Those associations even did not refrain from taking overtly disruptive action to struggle against the forces within civil and political society, which they considered as the enemies of the 1960 coup and of the Kemalist principles. The Kemalist elites in the meantime also continued their efforts to further reinforce youth incorporation into the political arena. For example, as Ahmet Güryüz Ketenci, a student activist who assumed the presidency of the TMTF in the 1964-65 period, recalls, the student associations enjoyed a significant degree of prestige and political power in the early 1960s. During the official ceremonies organized to celebrate national holidays such as the Victory Day (30 August) or Republic Day (29 October), the leaders of student associations delivered speeches along with the governors and the mayors (interview by Baykam1999: 252-53). However, Kemalist student politics took ‘a left-wing' turn in the post-1965 period, which created serious discontent among some of the factions of the Kemalist bloc. The next sections will discuss the rise of socialist student politics and the counter-mobilization of right-wing youth and the impacts of growing elite fragmentation on these competing youth mobilizations.

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Elite Fragmentation, Partisan Youth Incorporation, Socialist Youth Mobilization and the Counter-mobilization of Right-wing Youth

Pro-Kemalist youth mobilization dominated youth politics in the early 1960s, but the character of youth participation changed dramatically by the mid-1960s. The Turkish state encountered sustained youth contention in the period from 1965 to 1971 led by socialist students. The first contentious appearance of socialist youth on the political scene was the campaign in 1965 by the student unions in Istanbul demanding the nationalization of oil production. On May 27th, 1965, the Istanbulites found the city walls covered with the slogans "Oil Production will be Nationalized", "Down to Imperialism", and "Down to Foreign Companies Exploiting Turkey"(Karadeniz 2015:41). In 1967, a declaration by the prestigious Istanbul Technical University Student Union was an explicit call to organized students to pursue a socialist line of politics:

University youth in Turkey originate from ordinary masses, but if we situate university students within class categories, we may call them petit bourgeoisie. This petit bourgeois status necessitates youth to side with the workers and the peasants…..it is clear that the decline of the exploitative classes, namely the comprador bourgeoisie, the landlords and the moneylenders, will promote the material interests of university students…..That is why youth should side with revolutionary classes and participate in the socialist struggle. We strongly believe that all youth associations should pursue a socialist line of politics. (Istanbul Technical University Student Union Declaration 1967, quoted by Karadeniz 2015:52, Author's Translation).

In the early 1960s, declarations by the student unions and federations emphasized the necessity to further the Kemalist restoration, and they involved furious statements condemning the so- called enemies of the 1960 coup and the 1961 Constitution. The declaration quoted above well reveals the changing political mindset and the political vocabulary of student politics. Organized students now talked about "class", "comprador bourgeoisie", "peasants and workers as revolutionary classes" and they made an open call for university students to participate in "socialist struggle". Similar declarations by other student unions manifested an abrupt shift from Kemalist activism to socialist contention.

In May 1968, student unions in Istanbul co-organized a series of events under the banner "No to NATO" declaring the NATO as an "imperialist organization" and demanding the

108 termination of Turkey's membership in NATO (ibid:62-63). Parallel to student activism in Europe, university students in Turkey boycotted classes and occupied university buildings in June 1968. They demanded "participation in the administration of faculties, additional rights in examinations, equality of opportunity for all students, and the nationalization of private schools which had proliferated in the sixties as the state universities proved incapable of meeting the demand for higher education"(Szyliowicz 1972:62). Even though organized socialist students orchestrated these boycotts and occupations, campus protests soon reached to grassroots. According to Mater (2009), out of 44 faculties in Turkey at that time, students in 18 faculties participated in class boycotts (cited by Atılgan 2017:321). Based on a survey conducted among the students of Hacettepe University in the capital city of Ankara and of Atatürk University in the provincial city of Erzurum, Kışlalı (1974) found out that 39 percent of the research participants participated in a class boycott or an occupation at least once (p.53).

The grassroots activism for university reform was followed by an overtly anti-US protest in July 1968, when student activists rallied against the presence of the 6th Fleet of the US Navy stationed in Istanbul (Alper 2010: 71). Similarly, socialist students organized huge protests upon the arrival of Robert Komer (the new US ambassador to Turkey having a notorious reputation due to his previous post in Vietnam ) in the winter of 1968 (Kabacalı, 2007:202). Student activists in the prestigious Middle East Technical University burned Komer's car in January 1969 during his visit to the campus that almost created a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and the US. As anti-Americanism was becoming a characteristic feature of socialist youth activism, Turkey's educated youth developed a stronger "opposition to existing social, economic, and political institutions"(Szyliowciz 1972:52-53). Based on a survey conducted among the students of Ankara University in the 1964-65 academic year, Ozankaya (1966) found that 61.8 percent of the students (and 74.3 percent of student union executives) agreed with the statement of "socialism leads to a fairer political system and people live more happily under a socialist regime"(p.63). However, the growing insurgency of left-wing youth triggered the counter-mobilization of right- wing youth as well. The AP government successfully activated nationalist and conservative students around an anti-communist stance and relied on their campus and street activism to weaken socialist youth mobilization.

But, why did some sectors of organized students, who were enthusiastic Kemalists a while ago, turn to socialism and become a contentious force? University students' appeal to

109 socialism was driven by the failed promises of the Kemalist political engineering. Just after the 1960 coup, educated youth shared the optimism of liberal intellectuals that the overthrow of the DP and the new constitution safeguarding freedoms would rapidly foster Turkey's national progress and that Turkey would complete its ‘interrupted' move towards being a member of the developed nations. However, the promises of the Kemalist bloc came untrue, and Kemalist youth's optimism soon vanished. While a series of weak coalition governments led by the CHP in the period between 1961 and 1965 created disappointment among Kemalist youth, the AP's rise to power in 1965 deepened youth's disenchantment with the Kemalist political restoration. A Kemalist-turned-socialist student activist, Harun Karadeniz (2015) articulately summed up activist youth’s political mindset in 1965:

The DP’s authoritarian rule had created frustrations among youth. Therefore, after the 1960 coup, “Freedom” and “Development within Freedom” became the primary slogans for youth. Youth enthusiastically supported Kemalist principles and the 1960 coup, since they came to believe that if freedoms prevailed and everyone freely expressed themselves, Turkey would economically flourish as well. After the coup, the freedom of expression actually became the norm. But, the dominant ideas circulating were all about [Mustafa Kemal ] Atatürk and about the necessity of the 1960 coup. Starting with 1963, the Turkish Labor Party (TİP) fuelled new public debates about economic development. There now existed widespread consensus that freedom would not automatically bring forth economic development; Turkey’s economic problems had to be addressed in a different fashion.(p.149) (Author’s Translation).

As Karadeniz acknowledged, the TİP soon fostered new political debates in Turkey by insistently attracting attention to Turkey's economic problems and to imperialism as the root causes of Turkey's underdevelopment (Atılgan 2017:325). The central question capturing educated youth was now "why did Turkey remain as an underdeveloped country, and how could it realize rapid development?"(Ibid: 323). In addition to the TİP, left-Kemalist intellectuals also popularized socialist ideas among university students by focusing on Turkey's economic predicament. Specifically, the ideas circulated in the journal Yön that primarily addressed Turkey’s economic dependence on the West and advocated a non-capitalist and anti-imperialist route to rapid industrial development became highly influential among university students. Ozankaya’s (1966) survey results revealed that that left-wing and socialist magazines including Yön were highly popular among the executive members of the student unions at Ankara

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University; 53 percent of activist students regularly followed such magazines (p.36). Therefore, university students, a politically activated social force by the Kemalist elites, came to believe that the transition to a pluralist democracy failed to create a ‘miracle' in fostering Turkey's national progress. They increasingly turned their attention to socialist ideas and channelled their political energy into advocating a non-capitalist path to economic development, which they came to believe, would rescue Turkey from its economic dependence on the capitalist West.

The diffusion effect of the anti-imperialist movements in the third world and the rise of student activism in the West played a notable role in the emergence of socialist youth contention as well. Socialist students closely followed the Vietnam War, as did their Western counterparts. "The heroic resistance of Vietnam –a small and poor country- against the superpower of the world"(Alper 2009:36) became a source of inspiration for socialist youth (Atılgan 2017:324), as they came to view Vietnam as "the symbolic battleground of the fight against imperialism"(Alper 2009:86). The Cuban Revolution also became one of the major symbols of socialist youth contention in Turkey (Bora 2017:656). Posters of Che Guevara covered the walls of student rooms in the dormitories (Atılgan 2017:324) along with the posters of Mustafa Kemal17. When several socialist groups decided to shift to guerrilla warfare in 1970, they were highly inspired by the Cuban model of guerrilla struggle to realize a socialist regime transition. Last but not the least, it is not possible to disregard the diffusion effect of the '68 movement in Europe on Turkish student politics. Class boycotts and university occupations in June 1968 were largely triggered by the student protests in Europe (Karadeniz 2015:75). Alper (2009) notes that the newspapers frequently covered the student uprisings in Europe that fuelled vibrant debates among the intellectuals and university students on the necessity of contentious action for university reform. The ‘68 movement in the West thus became one of the primary initiators of

17 It is important to note that socialist students did not completely detach from the Kemalist ideology and that they continued to admire the founder of the Republic Mustafa Kemal. Their anti-imperialist stance led the student activists to “identify with the early years of the Republic” (Neyzi 2001:419), since they conceived the War of Independence as a struggle against the imperialist West (Lüküslü 2015:72), and they respected Mustafa Kemal (the leader of the war) as a revolutionary figure. For example, Deniz Gezmiş, one of the prominent student leaders in the 1960s who "was hanged by a military tribunal in 1972" wrote a letter to his father expressing his devotion to Kemalist ideals: "You raised me with Kemalist ideals. I grew up listening to the memory of the War of Independence. Since then, I have hated foreigners. We are the fighters of Turkey's second War of Independence"(Feyzioğlu 1998: 266, quoted and translated by Neyzi 2001:419).

111 the student protests in Turkey politically empowering socialist students to start a similar uprising for making demands on the university administrations (pp.352-53).

Finally, contentious activism by socialist students also grew in parallel to the emerging insurgency of popular sectors (workers, public employees, and peasants); Turkey was moving towards a ‘protest society,' or in Huntington-ian terms towards a "praetorian polity" and left- wing youth contention became a constituting part of this larger process.

However, it is still not possible to fully comprehend the rise of socialist youth contention as well as the counter-mobilization of right-wing youth without addressing the impact of elite fragmentation on elite-youth linkages and relatedly on youth mobilization. It should first be emphasized that partisan incorporation of the Kemalist elites in the period from 1960 to 1965, which sought to activate youth as an organized force against the opponents of the Kemalist restoration, played a salient role in the emergence of youth as a fully contentious force. As Alper (2009) argues, the discourse of the Kemalist elites that referred to youth as the ‘saviours of the country along with the army from an illegitimate government’ and as the ‘guardians of the democratic regime’ had politically empowered university students and had boosted their political self-confidence. University students came to view themselves as the protagonists of political transformation. Moreover, the pluralist policies of political participation strengthened the role of student unions and federations as significant pressure groups. Therefore, when Kemalist students came under the influence of socialist ideas, they were already a ‘politically activated’ social force with robust political confidence and organizational power to influence public opinion and to make particular demands on the political society.

As the elite conflict of varying forms re-surfaced in the political arena in 1965, the elites came to view politically active youth “as important political tools to be used to strengthen their own position”(Szyliowicz 1972:54). Albeit in different forms and degrees, the elite factions, namely the socialist elites, the Kemalist elites, and the right-wing elites, participated themselves in youth mobilization in order to strengthen their power vis-à-vis the competing elites. Accordingly, different elite factions adopted partisan incorporation of youth that referred to the elite attempts at facilitating the organized politics of youth sectors conceived as societal allies. In order to establish these partisan linkages with youth, the elite factions primarily relied on existing pluralist policies of youth participation.

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To start with, the socialist elites played a notable role in the making of socialist youth as an organized and contentious social force. As soon as the Turkish Labor Party (TİP) appeared on the political scene, it "led an energetic campaign" to incorporate university students into its ranks (Szyliowicz 1972:52) that resulted in university students' gradual disengagement from the CHP and their growing sympathy for the TİP (Odabaşı 2017:341-43; Karadeniz 2015: 151). The growing student support for the TİP was manifested in the drastic shift in the voting patterns of university students. In 1961, 64 percent of the students in 18 dormitories voted for the CHP; in 1965 the CHP received only 32 percent of the student vote, while the TİP polled 47 percent among the students (Genç 1971:24 cited by Szyliowicz 1972:53).

In order to establish partisan linkages with socialist youth, the TİP created partisan youth organizations in university campuses by taking advantage of pluralist policies of youth participation. It united the Intellectuals Clubs (student clubs on campuses attended mostly by socialist students) in 1965 under a new umbrella organization named the Intellectuals Clubs Federation (FKF) (Odabaşı 2017). The FKF functioned as the youth branch of the TİP and soon gained a considerable following among socialist students (Alper 2009: 320). The FKF activists took leading roles in the organization of anti-American street protests as well as class boycotts and university occupations in June 1968 (Odabaşı 2017: 347-48).

The (left-)Kemalist elites within the CHP and the high judiciary came to view socialists as a progressive force struggling against the so-called conservative-reactionary forces within political and civil society. Therefore, they also established relatively partisan linkages with socialist youth characterized by the attempts to protect socialist youth from the repressive actions of the government or the attacks of anti-communist mobs. The left-Kemalist elites put partisan incorporation into effect by invoking the pluralist provisions of the constitution. For example, İrfan Öktem, the head of the Constitutional Court, was particularly known with his left-wing stance and took initiatives to legally favour socialist students. His pro-socialist stance in a conflict between socialist and right-wing students was a case in point. On May 29th, 1968, socialist students took to the streets for the commemoration of the anti-government student protests in 1960, and they were challenged by a group of right-wing youth shouting the slogan "down with communism"(Alper 2009:345). In response to the speeches of the government elites condemning socialist demonstrators, İrfan Öktem declared that the demonstration of the socialist

113 students had been legal and the conservative youth who had disrupted a legal activity should be tried (Cumhuriyet May 4th, 1968, cited by Alper 2009: 346).

Similarly, the CHP, the main opposition party in the parliament, played a legitimizing role towards socialist youth politics. The CHP, which embraced ‘a left of center’ political stance starting with 1965, concentrated efforts to cautiously dissociate itself from a socialist line of politics (Bora 2017: 577) defending a ‘third way’- neither capitalist nor socialist- approach to economic development. But, the CHP elites still showed tolerance to contentious actions by socialist youth. As Alper (2009) argues the CHP “on every opportunity attacked the Justice Party for its repressive attitudes towards the left and students and accused of it for trying to install an authoritarian regime by using the communist threat as a pretext”(p.43). In short, as Alper (2009) contends, socialist groups/parties in general and socialist students in particular largely benefitted from the partial protection and relative tolerance by the Kemalist judiciary and the CHP(the major opposition party in the parliament) in advancing their socialist causes.

Even though the ruling right-wing AP refrained from overt repression against socialist youth, it still sought to weaken socialist youth mobilization by adopting partisan incorporation towards pro-government youth. Partisan incorporation by the ruling AP referred to the AP elites’ attempts at counter-mobilizing right-wing youth in order to counter socialist youth activists and to weaken its left-wing elite rivals. When realizing partisan youth incorporation, the AP government manipulated the pluralist policies towards associational youth politics to its own advantage. In particular, it sought to increase the power of right-wing youth within student associations to weaken the organized politics of socialist youth. Since the prominent student associations, namely the Turkish National Federation of Students (TMTF) and the National Turkish Student Union (MTTB) became largely dominated by socialist students, the AP sought to fragment student unions by infiltrating the executive positions with its supporters. In 1965, the pro-government students within those two associations organized ‘unofficial' congresses and managed to be elected as presidents. When left-wing students gathered in the official congresses, they also elected their ‘own' leaders (Alper 2009; Karadeniz 2015).

Consequently, both the TMTF and the MTTB became two-headed; competing groups pursued utterly different lines of politics. Toktamış Ateş, a socialist student activist in the 1960s who assumed the presidency of the Istanbul University Student Union, argues that the AP's

114 concerted action to create two-headed student federations mostly rendered student federations ineffective and curtailed their organizational power in leading a socialist line of politics (Interview by Baykam 1999:38). In 1967, pro-government students totally gained control over the MTTB, and in 1969, the TMTF also came under the influence of the right-wing students (Karadeniz 2015:115). Those two prominent student associations emerged as stalwart allies of the government to weaken socialist youth mobilization.

The AP government also financially supported anti-communist associations and used their organizational power to further weaken socialist student activism. The Association to Combat Communism (KMD), founded in 1962 (Ahmad 1993:142), soon established local branches in major cities with the support of the government. While in 1965 the KMD had 61 branches, in 1968, the number of the KMD branches reached to 141 (Koca 2017:558). The AP deputies approved a bill in the parliament that granted the KMD official financial support by the government paid on an annual basis (ibid). Similar to the MTTB, the KMD also organized talks and conferences targeting youth that called them to combat the spread of communism. But, the KMD activists, along with the MTTB members, also emerged as a street force and orchestrated anti-communist rallies. The slogans and press releases during those rallies were provocative and violent in tone involving threatening messages against the socialists (see Karadeniz 2015).

The Army Steps in to Restore State Authority: The 1971 Coup-by-Memorandum and the Temporary Repression of Youth Mobilization

By 1969, student militancy- both left-wing and right-wing- reached alarming levels. In February 1969, for example, socialist students and labor unions co-organized a massive rally to protest the scheduled visit of the US Sixth Fleet to Istanbul. During the rally, right-wing groups including the nationalist and conservative students, attacked the protestors; the clashes led to the murder of several protestors and left almost 200 people wounded (Szyliowicz 1972:64). In the Spring of 1969, socialist students re-started class boycotts, and campus occupations in Istanbul and the capital city of Ankara and university campuses witnessed violent confrontations among ideologically opposing groups (ibid:64-65).

The Federation of Revolutionary Youth in Turkey(Dev-Genç), which was established in 1969 to seek an alliance with the workers and the peasants towards a socialist revolution, in particular, radicalized socialist youth politics (Lüküslü,2015:131). The Dev-Genç activists

115 visited Anatolian villages in summer and organized ‘consciousness-raising' events in order to explain to the peasants how the landowners and comprador merchants exploited them (Odabaşı 2017:357). They also actively participated in workers' protests and factory occupations (ibid: 358). By the end of 1969, the government had completely lost control over youth contention, as socialist youth politics became further militant. Several factions within the Dev-Genç decided to shift to guerrilla warfare modeled after Latin American guerrilla movements and established armed organizations in the countryside (Alper, 2009: 433). Student guerrillas robbed banks and kidnapped US army officials (Ahmad 1993:147) constituting a growing threat to state authority.

When the socialist youth contention escalated in the late 1960s, the AP government proposed a "Fundamental Rights and Freedoms Law" bill in 1970 in order to combat the student revolutionaries (Bianchi 2014: 205). The bill included repressive measures such as establishing a special police force to be stationed on university campuses, bringing strict identity controls at university entrances and introducing firm controls on activities organized by the students on campuses (Alper 2009: 457). However, fragmentation among the political elites prevented the government from taking such repressive measures against student activists. Even though the army's High Command and the President Sunay supported the government's bill, the CHP severely criticized the proposal and identified the ruling AP as a "reactionary" government intending to increase its authority through more strict controls on student politics (ibid: 458). It was the military that stepped in to contain youth insurgency in 1971 by turning to apply concerted coercion against youth activists during the de facto military rule from 1971 to 1973.

Alarmed by the intense fragmentation among the political elites and the inefficiency of the AP government vis-a-vis the growing insurgency of popular sectors, the military intervened. On March 12th, 1971, the top generals released an authoritative memorandum which accused the government and the parliament of nurturing anarchy, fratricide, and economic unrest in the country and forced the AP government to resign. After the military intervention, the military-led ‘above-party' government immediately declared martial law in eleven cities and initiated a witch- hunt against political activists and particularly against left-wing ones. Martial law commanders arrested approximately 5000 activists (Zürcher, 2002:377), including, journalists, professors, and labor unionists, and the military officials identified as left-wing were purged from the army. The Turkish Labor Party (TİP) and the Federation of Revolutionary Youth in Turkey (Dev-Genç) (Lüküslü, 2014:271) were banned and their executive members were imprisoned; oppositional

116 newspapers were suspended (Ahmad, 1993:151); meetings of labor unions prohibited; and strikes were deemed illegal (Aydın and Taşkın, 2015:229). Not surprisingly, the socialist students became a primary target of military coercion. The brochure titled “How do communists deceive our youth and workers?”, which was co-published by the First Army of the General Staff and the Staff of Martial Order well revealed the top generals’ perception of socialist youth contention:

Youth movements in other countries have recently turned into leftist violence and anarchy. These movements, which initially voiced demands for university reform, over time developed solidarity with Marxist-Leninist organizations. That was also the case with the student movement in Turkey that started in June 1968. The student protests against the university examination system evolved into a militant movement only in a week, aiming a regime change towards communism……It is possible to describe the youth mobilizations in our country as movements instigated by foreign powers[the Soviet Union], underground organizations and veteran leftists, who exploited the 1961 Constitution's libertarian and democratic character. (quoted by Lüküslü, 2014:275, Author's translation)

The military discourse, which once exalted youth as the principal ally of the army in safeguarding the republic and advancing the democratic regime, now referred to youth as a ‘regime-threatening' and dangerous force that needed to be suppressed. When the THKP-C(The Turkish People’s Liberation Front), a youth guerrilla organization, abducted the Israeli Consul Ephraim Elrom on May 7th, 1971, the military-led government and the martial law commanders had the opportunity to adopt more draconian measures against the left, and particularly against revolutionary youth (Ahmad, 1993:151). Hundreds of people, mostly students and young academics, were detained and imprisoned (ibid). Most of the detained activists later recalled that they became victims of torture under custody (Lüküslü, 2014). Finally, the military intervention also resulted in the execution of three revolutionary youths, Deniz, Hüseyin and Yusuf in May 1972. The execution order was decreed by the martial court and was endorsed by the parliament with the votes of the AP and smaller right-wing parties.

The last blow of the military-led government to prevent the escalation of the popular insurgency were the constitutional amendments that were approved in the parliament in September 1971. The previous military rule endorsed Turkey’s most liberal constitution up to date in 1961; enhanced political freedoms through the new Constitution played a decisive role in the rise of left-wing mobilization. The army's High Command in 1971 now considered the 1961

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Constitution as the main culprit in the radicalization of social forces. The 1971 constitutional amendments significantly limited the exercise of political rights and individual freedoms, referring to the urgency to ‘protect the integrity of the State, the nation and the Republic'. As Keyder (1987) rightly argues the military intervention "underlined the limits to the liberties citizens were allowed to enjoy" and "demonstrated that the formal foundations of the civil society in the legal system were retractable"(p.201).

The military intervention in 1971 largely demobilized socialist students through coercive measures and the constitutional amendments sought to prevent the future militancy of students. However, it soon became evident that the military repression failed to contain youth militancy. Left-wing and right-wing youth insurgency further escalated in the period from 1973 to 1980.

Elite Fragmentation and Partisan Incorporation of Youth in the 1970s

The workers turned more contentious, and the larger society also became politicized along a left- right divide, but youth continued to act as the most politically active sector of societal dissent in Turkey throughout the 1970s. By the end of 1973, most of the left-wing youth had been jailed and the prominent youth organizations –both in the left and the right- had been banned by the military-led technocratic governments. However, it soon became evident that the coercive measures had proved incapable to subdue youth contention. Youth re-appeared on the political scene as a contentious force with the revival of the revolutionary left and the stronger appearance of a right-wing nationalist movement. Furthermore, youth politics revealed greater militancy and eventually, violence by the end of the 1970s. This chapter argues that an elite structure characterized by greater fragmentation and polarization among the influential elites significantly shaped the course of elite-youth linkages in the 1970s and contributed, in part, to intensified youth mobilization.

Since most of the prominent youth associations were banned during the de facto military rule between 1971 and 1973, left-wing youth were largely organized within clandestine groups in the second half of the 1970s due to the fear of renewed repression against the left-wing groups. There emerged many different societies on the left, but the major left-wing underground organizations that recruited youth were the Revolutionary Left (Dev-Sol), the Revolutionary Way(Dev-Yol), the Marxist-Leninist Armed Propaganda Union (MLSPB), and the Turkish Worker-Peasant Liberation Army (TİKKO) (Sayari 2010:202). Several legal socialist parties

118 were also established after 1974, but left-wing youth largely remained disinterested in those legal parties, since they no longer believed in the effectiveness of parliamentary politics and considered armed struggle and revolutionary politics as the only paths to a socialist regime transformation (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:278; Durgun 2015:23). Different from the 1960s, however, the left-wing movement revealed greater fragmentation in the 1970s. It was divided among pro-Soviet, Maoist and Trockist factions that were in rivalry with each other to mobilize and recruit youth into their own ranks (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:276). The fragmentation and ideological polarization among left-wing groups were so intense that left-wing groups engaged in clashes with each other to establish control over particular neighborhoods (Zileli 2003).

Right-wing youth also exerted more considerable influence over the political arena throughout the 1970s. The Idealist Clubs, a nationalist youth organization with local branches across the country that was banned in 1971 (Sayari 2010:203), was reestablished in 1974 and became the center of right-wing youth mobilization (Kabacalı 2007:230). The Idealist Clubs embraced a militant form of Turkish nationalism and pursued a pan-Turkist agenda. Identifying the rise of the Left with a political and cultural erosion (Can 2002:664), the Idealists (or the Grey Wolves as they referred to themselves) adopted a strident anti-communist rhetoric and declared their main mission as of combatting the spread of communism. The Idealist Clubs were almost a militia-like organization where the members received armed training (Özbudun 1976:57) to aid the state in its fight against the communists.

Unlike the youth activists in the 1960s who came from urban and middle-class families, most of the left-wing and right-wing youth activists in the 1970s had provincial-town backgrounds and were from lower-class families (Durna 2014:248; Akçam 1977 cited by Mardin 1978:238; Keyder 1987:209). One reason behind the profile change of youth activists was that higher education now became more accessible and more youths with provincial backgrounds attended university (Neyzi 2001:421) who became politicized and joined youth organizations once they arrived in the big cities. The second reason was that university students no longer dominated youth politics in the 1970s (Mardin 1978:231). Left-wing organizations and the right- wing Idealist Clubs recruited activists from high schools and shantytowns in İstanbul and the capital city of Ankara. Moreover, both the extreme Left and the extreme Right penetrated provincial cities and towns across the country and managed to recruit youth from different occupational sectors into their ranks (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:276). It should also be noted that

119 in provincial towns, "political allegiance was linked to ethnic and religious identity". While Alewite youth tended to affiliate with left-wing groups, Sunni youth joined right-wing groups (Neyzi 2001: 422). As Özbudun (1981) argues, "political cleavages tended to politicize and reinforce dormant ethnic (Turkish vs. Kurdish) and sectarian (Sunni vs. Alewite) cleavages" in the 1970s (p.233).

Reflecting on the growing militancy of young people in the 1970s, Keyder (1987) attracts attention to small-town origins of youth militants and argues that youth political extremism was the result of social dislocations created by capitalism’s penetration into the previously underdeveloped regions (p.209). Keyder (1987) also posits that "the educational system, which had grown increasingly dysfunctional over the years contributed substantially to disenchantment leading to political militancy"(p.215). While the university students found out that their university degrees would not even guarantee "a technical slot in public employment" and therefore found solace in radical movements, most of the high school students who could not enroll in university programs also appealed to radical politics (p.216). In similar lines, Durna (2014) argues that the newcomers in the cities, who came to believe that they could not receive their share from the expanding economic wealth and upward mobility, involved in political extremism in order to express their socioeconomic frustrations (p.244)18 However, this study argues, growing engagement of youth with the socialist and nationalist movements in the 1970s also necessitates a political analysis that particularly focuses on the dynamics of elite-youth linkages as much as a cultural and socioeconomic analysis.

18 A number of ‘conspiratorial’ analyses also prevail to explain why the youth were dragged into political violence in the second half of the 1970s. First, it is argued that unidentified forces within or outside the state ignited violence among youth so that “a law and order regime’ established by the military “would be welcomed by the masses as the saviour of the nation”. The military takeover in September 1980 that immediately became successful to restore state authority over the militant youth and was welcomed by the larger society is depicted as the major proof of this hypothesis (Ahmad 1993:??) . Second, according to the generals that undertook the military coup in 1980 the principal cause of the political violence in the late 1970s “was an international conspiracy”. The military documents argue that the extremist groups “had received extensive training, logistical, and financial support from ‘certain neighboring states’ ” primarily including the Soviet Union as well as Bulgaria and Syria (Sayari 2010:206).

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This chapter argues that similar to the 1960s, the left-wing and the right-wing elites in the 1970s conceived of activist youth as political instruments to advance their own interests. Therefore, they continued to exercise partisan youth incorporation that involved elite attempts at facilitating the organized politics of already politicized youth sectors. While the left-Kemalists elites (the CHP elites and high judiciary) continued to establish relatively partisan linkages with socialist youth by facilitating the organized politics of socialist youth through legal activism, the right-wing elites even embraced a more active stance in promoting right-wing youth mobilization by politically and financially strengthening right-wing youth organizations. The Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which became a coalition partner in the National Front governments, in particular, directly participated in the mobilization of right-wing youth in order to increase its bargaining power and political gains vis-à-vis other coalition partners. As in the 1960s, the Idealist Clubs had very close ties and organic relations with the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) (Sayari 2010:203). The MHP leader Türkeş viewed the Idealist Clubs (or the Grey Wolves) as a major tool to exert nationalist control over streets, neighborhoods, and schools and turned the Clubs' spheres of influence into political leverage in parliamentary politics (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:279). The AP also gave support to the MHP's bid of mobilizing right-wing youth by depicting the Grey Wolves as a de facto ally of the government to combat the spread of communism.

The political elites, to realize partisan youth incorporation, created new pluralist arrangements, or manipulated existing pluralist policies in the area of youth political participation to their own advantages. For example, the pluralist amnesty bill by the CHP and the left-Kemalist high judiciary played a notable role in the revival of left-wing youth mobilization. The coalition protocol between the CHP and the pro-Islamist MSP proposed a general amnesty including the release of political prisoners. However, the MSP deputies defected from the coalition agreement and voted against the amnesty bill. When the CHP brought the bill to the Constitutional Court in 1974, the high judiciary approved the general amnesty and 4000 political prisoners, mainly left-wing activists, were immediately released (Heper 1985:114). The pluralist amnesty bill by the left-wing elites created a favourable environment for a renewed phase of socialist youth mobilization, since the activists released from jail ardently and swiftly established new organizations that recruited many youth activists (PCFICM Report, 2012:762; Ünüvar, 2013: 38; Aydın and Taşkın, 2015: 276). Moreover, during the short terms the CHP assumed

121 power in the 1970s, the party leadership largely resisted pressures from the right-wing political parties and the military to adopt tough repressive measures against the ‘troublesome’ left-wing groups19. The CHP elites legitimized their resistance by invoking the pluralist provisions of the constitution, including freedom of expression and freedom of association.

The MHP and the AP facilitated the nationalist youth mobilization by manipulating pluralist policies towards associational politics to their advantage as well. On the one hand, they used the Ministry of Education as an instrument to extend control over high schools and universities, the places, which functioned as the major "recruiting grounds" of youth (Ahmad 1993:166). As the Idealist Clubs faced little barriers at high schools and university campuses in mobilizing youth into their ranks (Bianchi 2014:344), they also "operated with great confidence"(ibid) when confronting left-wing groups due to the ‘tolerance' they received from the government concerning their unlawful actions (Bianchi 2014:118). On the other hand, the National Front governments reiterated the military discourse on left-wing youth, which crystallized by the 1971 coup-by-memorandum and came to view left-wing youth activists as a growing threat to state authority that needed to be suppressed. The pro-government press referred to left-wing youth as ‘anarchists’ threatening national cohesion and damaging public order and justified state violence against left-wing activists as a necessary measure to restore state authority (Durna 2014).

To conclude, elite fragmentation in Turkey from 1960 to 1980 significantly shaped the course of political elite-youth linkages, which in turn played a salient role in the outbreak and the perpetuation of youth mobilization. Elite fragmentation that created intense elite conflict and rivalry incited the political elites to politically activate youth sectors conceived as potential societal allies in order to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rival elites. The political elites, namely the Kemalists, the socialists, and the right-wing elites, thus adopted partisan incorporation of youth referring to the involvement of elites in youth (counter-)mobilization

19 Still, in order to counter the accusations from the right-wing elites that the CHP was allied with the extreme Left, the party elites concentrated efforts to distance the party from socialist groups (Keyder 1987:217). While those efforts precluded any chances to unite the Left against the anti-democratic assaults from the Right (ibid:218), the CHP also did little to incorporate left-wing youth activists into its ranks or at least to canalize youth activism into more legal channels. Therefore, while right-wing youth were under the ‘shelter' of "legal political parties with representation in the parliament and participation in the government", left-wing youth activists lacked organic links with the political and state elites on the Left (ibid: 218).

122 either by actually mobilizing particular youth sectors or facilitating the mobilization of already politicized youth sectors. Partisan youth incorporation largely functioned through pluralist policies of youth incorporation; the political elites first created pluralist structures in the area of youth political participation and later manipulated those pluralist structures to their own advantages. Specifically, the political elites relied on pluralist policies to selectively mobilize youth allies, while attempting to hinder the political activism of youth sectors allied with the rival elites by selective control and repression.

3.4 The Impact of Partisan Youth Incorporation: Youth Militancy and Political Violence in Turkey (1978-1980)

This chapter has argued that partisan youth incorporation, a product of elite fragmentation, played a salient role in the emergence and perpetuation of youth (counter-)mobilization in the period from 1960 to 1980. It further posits that in the late 1970s, partisan incorporation of youth, in part, politically radicalized youth beyond the levels initially intended by the elites. Politicized youth reaped the opportunities opened up by partisan youth incorporation and pursued radical politics to enable political change through violent action. The Turkish state, however, proved unsuccessful in applying concerted repression against youth insurgents and eventually failed to contain youth militancy. Youth political violence thus left the state impotent vis-à-vis youth contenders and created political turmoil that brought the country at the brink of civil war.

Youth politics in Turkey turned more militant in the late 1970s characterized by frequent outbreaks of violence between left-wing and ultra-nationalist groups (the so-called Grey Wolves). Mardin (1978) identifies youth violence directed against ideologically opposing youth as a “blood feud” following “the pattern of attack, retaliation, revenge, and counter- offensive”(p.231). As Sayarı (2010) rightly argues youth clashes in the 1970s created “one of the deadliest episodes of political violence and terrorism in [Turkey’s] modern history expand[ing] rapidly from Istanbul and Ankara to the small provincial towns in Anatolia”(p.198). According to estimates, between 1976 and 1980, 5000 people, mostly youth, were killed during the armed confrontations and thousands of people were seriously injured (the Program of the 44th government 1980, cited by Şafak 2013:123; Sayarı 2010: 198); the rate of political killings had reached an average of twenty per day by the spring of 1980 (Tachau and Heper, 1983:25;

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Ahmad, 1993:175). A veteran youth activist interviewed by Houston (2013) narrates the character of youth political violence in the 1970s in the following words:

There prevailed in those years a culture of violence among youth. We took the risk of getting killed and did not question its consequences. When a friend had been murdered, we got sad, but never gave up. Once you accept that violence might claim your life as well, you feel courageous and you resort to arms without any hesitations. We came to see the other side as enemies; we came to believe that they were inhuman. We even killed people just because they were carrying ultra-nationalist newspapers (Houston 2013:57, Author's Translation).

When resorting to arms against ultra-nationalist youth, the left-wing youth firmly believed that theirs was a ‘legitimate' violence to liberate the society from the fascist forces (Durna 2014:248). For the right-wing youth, the major goal was to save the country from the menace of communism. As Tunalı (2013), a member of the Idealist Clubs in the 1970s, argues, "Communism was spreading rapidly, the communists recruited many people. It was impossible at that moment for the state to contain the communists. We got involved in militant politics to prevent the formation of a Soviet-ally government"(quoted by Akyıldız and Bora 2013:217, Author's Translation). Youth militancy reached to a point in the late 1970s in which both parties made a claim to ‘control' particular neighborhoods, campuses and faculties, closing off these public spaces to the members of the opposing group (Houston, 2013) and rendering the state incompetent to restore state authority in those so-called “liberated zones”(Sayari 2010:210).

The political violence further escalated, when the extremist militants from the left and the right engaged in political assassinations. Those assassinations included members of the parliament, prominent journalists, and university professors (Tachau and Heper, 1983:25). In the spring of 1980, the Deputy Chair of the Nationalist Action Party, a former prime minister and the Chair of the DİSK were killed in politically motivated murders. Political violence reached alarming levels when inter-sectarian cleavages (Sunni-Alevi) began to trigger fatal attacks on Alewite communities. Assaults on the Alewite communities by the Grey Wolves took place in the cities of Malatya, Sivas, Bingöl, and Maraş, where tens of Alewites lost their lives to ultra- nationalist violence, and many others had to migrate to other cities (Ahmad, 1993:172).

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In the 1970s, elite fragmentation created a politicized bureaucracy and specifically a police and a judiciary divided along the right-left axis that prevented the state from containing youth dissent effectively. While the AP allowed its coalition partner MHP "to pack the police and security forces with its ultranationalist sympathizers (Bianchi 2014:344), the social-democrat CHP tried to replace these partisans with its own supporters in the short periods it assumed power (Tachau and Heper, 1983:24). Consequently, the police, for example, was divided into [ideologically opposing] unions that rendered “the enforcement of law unpredictable” (Ahmad 1993:171). The police officers associated with the right-wing union treated ultranationalist youth militants in a more tolerant manner and the officers recruited by the left-wing police union refrained from arresting the left-wing extremists. Divided between nationalists and leftists, the police forces were also “poorly trained and badly equipped” to cope with the escalating violence (Demirel, 2003: 257). Similarly, the judiciary was also fragmented along a right-left divide. Sayari (2010) argues that “judges reportedly gave lenient sentences to the captured terrorists for whom they felt an ideological affinity and passed out heavy sentences to the militants of rival political affiliations”(p. 210). Moreover, as the judicial process also worked very slowly (Demirel, 2003: 257), many arrested militants managed to escape the prisons (Ahmad, 1993: 171). In short, since ideological polarization among the political elites was also “insinuated” into the coercive apparatus (Tachau and Heper 1983:24), the state had largely lost its monopoly on violence (Keyder 1987:218) and remained “impotent and incompetent”(Ahmad 1993:171) to contain youth dissent.

When a fragmented political society rendered the Turkish state incompetent to contain the growing militancy of popular sectors and youth, the military once again took over power in September 1980 and turned to rely on concerted coercion against highly politicized youth. During the three-years long military regime (1980-83), many youth activists were imprisoned, some of them executed, and most of the youth organizations were banned. The next chapter will discuss the underlying dynamics and the consequences of the 1980 coup d’etat for the trajectory of youth politics in the post-1980 period.

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3.5 Conclusion

This chapter has focused on the question of 'why did the Turkish state encounter sustained youth contention in the period from 1960 to 1980, and fail to contain the growing militancy of youth?' In order to address this question, it has traced the trajectory of political elite-youth linkages that refers to elite attempts at regulating youth political participation in accordance with their particular interests and political visions and to the ways young people respond to, negotiate, or challenge elite claims to exert control over youth political agency. It has argued that elite transformation from disunity to fragmentation played a salient role in the emergence and perpetuation of youth mobilization in Turkey in the 1960s and the 1970s significantly shaping the course of elite-youth linkages.

The more the elites became fragmented, the more they participated themselves in the mobilization of youth through the process of partisan incorporation. Partisan incorporation referring to elite attempts at politically activating particular youth sectors or facilitating the organized politics of already mobilized youth groups was put into effect through pluralist policies of political participation and associational politics. The elites first installed pluralist structures in the area of youth participation and later manipulated those pluralist policies to their own advantages. While encouraging and facilitating the mobilization of youth allies by making extensive use of pluralist structures, the elites sought to hinder the politics of oppositional youth sectors.

This chapter has also argued that partisan youth incorporation eventually empowered youth beyond intended levels. In particular, youth sectors, politically activated and sheltered by their elite sponsors, manipulated the process of partisan youth incorporation into their own advantages and pursued radical politics to enable rapid political transformation. Since elite fragmentation along with partisan youth incorporation debilitated the coercive capacity of the state for repression, the Turkish state proved unsuccessful in containing growing youth militancy. As fragmentation at the elite level created diverging elite views on the use, the target, and the scope of repression against youth contenders, it also forged a politicized coercive apparatus (police, surveillance, judiciary) polarized through a left and right divide. While left- wing coercive agents refrained from applying coercive measures against left-wing activists, nationalist and Islamist police and judiciary turned a blind eye to right-wing extremist youth. As

126 a result, this chapter has demonstrated that partisan youth incorporation enabled activist youth to sustain their mobilization over a long time and to pursue radical politics, while it left the Turkish state vulnerable to youth contention.

It was the 1980 coup and the three-years-long military rule that demobilized highly politicized urban youth through concerted coercion. The next chapter will start off analyzing the character of the 1980 coup and its far-reaching consequences on youth de-mobilization in post- 1980 Turkey.

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4 Elite Cohesion, Incorporation as Moderation and Control, and Youth De-mobilization (1980-2002)

4.1 Introduction

When the Turkish military staged another coup in September 1980 to restore state authority vis- à-vis the popular dissidents, the martial order officials employed systematic coercion against the highly politicized urban youth. The military administration executed considerable numbers of militant youth, imprisoned thousands of youth activists and expelled many organized students from universities. By the end of the military rule in 1983, left-wing and right-wing youth rebels had largely been demobilized. After the transition to the civilian regime, left-wing student activists sought to revive the student movement in the second half of the 1980s by establishing student unions. However, not only did emerging student mobilization failed to reach the grassroots, the student leaders also faced restrictions and coopting initiatives by the ruling Motherland Party.

In the 1990s, some sectors of youth re-emerged on the political scene as contentious forces. As a new generation of left-wing university students protested against the tuition hike and demanded a ‘free and democratic university', the Kurdish and Islamist movements that emerged as the major centers of popular contention in the 1990s, also recruited a considerable number of their members from among youth. However, mobilization by those newly politicized youth sectors soon vanished in part due to systematic state repression20. Overall, the post-1980-coup generations of youth have been identified as “apolitical and apathetic”(Neyzi 2001) vis-à-vis previous generations of overtly contentious youth activists with some having also disengaged from non-contentious/conventional forms of political participation (Istanbul Mülkiyeliler Vakfi Sosyal Arastirma Merkezi, 1998).

20 The exception to the lack of sustained youth contention against the state in the post-1980 coup period has been youth mobilization within the Kurdish movement. But, Turkey’s Kurdish problem and youth involvement within the Kurdish movement have deep historical roots and more complex dynamics that are not possible to analyze within the scope of this study.

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This chapter will address the question of “why did the Turkish state, unlike the 1960s and the 1970s, largely remain insusceptible to sustained youth dissent in the period from 1983 to 2002?” The common sense knowledge in Turkey has emphasized the depoliticizing effects of the military coercion against youth activists in the period from 1980 to 1983 and of the transition to a neoliberal economy that promoted individualism and consumerism to explain the trend towards youth de-mobilization in the post-1980 period (see: Neyzi 2001). Lüküslü's 2009 book, one of the rare scholarly analyzes on the sources of youth demobilization, rather focuses on the self- perceptions of youth about Turkish politics. Lüküslü (2009) argues that the post-1980 generation’s political disengagement is most attributable to their conception of (formal) politics as “corrupt” (147), and as “a domain resistant to change” (150). This study alternatively focuses on the trajectory of elite-youth linkages in the post-1980 coup period. It will argue that unlike the elite fragmentation in the pre-1980 period that led the elites to adopt partisan incorporation that forged an incentive structure for youth to engage in radical politics, in the post-1980 period an elite structure characterized by relative cohesion among the dominant elites created a less favorable political context for youth to opt for and sustain oppositional politics.

This chapter will contend that in the post-1980 coup era, the political arena still manifested some degree of fragmentation at the elite level. While broad veto powers granted to the top military, the high judiciary and the president created an unequal distribution of power that fuelled power struggles among the state and political elites, fragmentation in the party system also resurfaced in the 1990s. Unlike the pre-1980 period, however, the dominant elites, namely the top military, high judiciary, centrist parties, and the metropolitan bourgeoisie became cohesive over a number of once-contested political issues: the Turkish elites did not diverge from market-oriented growth; they sought to moderate the demands of urban sectors for political participation; and they turned to rely on coercion to counteract the new radical movements of the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement. I will also argue that elite cohesion in the post- 1980 period was the outcome of underlying changes in Turkish society as well as of elite responses to the challenge of emerging contention both from the old and the newly politicized social forces. First of all, the converging interests of the metropolitan secular bourgeoisie and the Islamist bourgeoisie over the transition to a neoliberal economy and rolling back in labor rights reinforced elite cohesion over market-based growth and the moderation of the demands of urban sectors for participation. Second, the rise of the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist

129 movement united the dominant elites around a secularist and nationalist platform. When accounting for their cohesion over the once contested economic and political issues, the Turkish elites referred to the need of realizing the state interests: market-based economy could promote national development; a limited-pluralist democracy could prevent the erosion of state authority vis-à-vis potentially contentious societal sectors, and concerted repression against the Kurdish insurgents and the Islamists could safeguard national unity and the secular regime, respectively. However, the analysis will demonstrate that relative elite cohesion was more primarily the reflection of particular elite and societal interests.

Elite cohesion in the 1980s and the 1990s largely shaped the micro arena of elite-youth linkages. The dominant Turkish elites largely refrained from participating themselves in youth mobilization and stayed away from partisan incorporation. Instead, they adopted ‘incorporation as moderation and control' referring to the elite attempts at moderating youth demands for political participation with the ultimate goal of preventing the recurrence of sustained youth contention against the state. Incorporation as moderation and control was put into effect through three mechanisms: limited-pluralist legal arrangements that brought significant restrictions on the political rights of youth; a depoliticizing economic discourse that sought youth incorporation by integrating young people into the structures of the neoliberal economy; and growing intolerance towards the organized politics of oppositional youth sectors, namely towards left-wing, Kurdish, and Islamist youth activists. Incorporation as moderation and control thus also entailed the use of concerted coercion against contentious youth sectors. The consensus among the dominant elites on the use of repression against the contentious sectors enabled the coercive apparatus to prevent the escalation of youth protests effectively.

This chapter will further posit that incorporation as moderation and control significantly shrank the spaces available for youth to pursue oppositional politics, weakened the organizational capacity of activist youth, and prevented the grassroot-ization of youth mobilization. Finally, a considerable number of the post-1980 coup generations of youth ultimately alienated from the political arena and developed disenchantment even with conventional forms of political participation.

In analyzing the relationship between elite cohesion and elite-youth linkages in the post- 1980 coup era, this chapter will draw upon secondary sources on Turkish politics, newspaper

130 reports, parliamentary proceedings, and in-depth interviews conducted for this study with research participants who attended university in Turkey in the 1980s and the 1990s. This chapter will proceed as follows: It will first discuss the 1980 coup and the large-scale political transformation carried out by the coup coalition. Second, it will analyze the nature of elite interactions in the post-1980 coup era as well as the underlying dynamics of state-society relations that created a cohesive elite structure (independent variable). Third, it will show how ‘incorporation as moderation and control’ towards youth operated in the period from 1983 and 2002 (first causal mechanism and the intervening variable). Next, it will uncover the impact of incorporation as moderation and control on the trajectory of youth political participation in the post-1980 period (second causal mechanism).

4.2 The Elite Structure in the 1980s and the 1990s: The Making and the Consolidation of Elite Cohesion (1980- 2002)

This section will analyze the type of the elite structure in the period from 1980 to 2002 and specifically elite transformation from fragmentation to relative cohesion. It will first discuss the 1980 coup and its political project. Second, it will focus on the period from 1983 to 1991 and will underline the emerging features of elite cohesion in the aftermath of the transition to a civilian regime. Finally, it will investigate the nature of elite interactions in the 1990s and will discuss how the state elites (military and high judiciary), the centrist parties and the secular economic elites remained relatively cohesive in their approach to political development and incorporation.

The 1980 Coup and Its Political Project

The Council of National Security (CNS) took over power after the 1980 coup and proclaimed martial law. The CNS consisted of the commanders of the land, air, navy, gendarmerie forces, a secretary general, and a president (Karpat 1988:150); the Chief of the General Staff and the leader of the coup Kenan Evren assumed the CNS presidency. The first communiqué of the CNS released in the morning of the military takeover declared the causes of the military intervention in the following words:

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The state and its principal organs had been rendered inoperative, the constitutional structure was full of contradictions, and political parties were intransigent in their attitude and lacked the consensus necessary to deal with the country's problems. As a result of all these factors, secessionist forces had increased their activities, and the life and property of the citizens were no longer secure. The reactionary and other deviationist ideologies flourished instead of Kemalism. Attacks on all aspects of society –schools, the universities, the judiciary, the labor organizations- were driving the country towards secession and civil war. In short, the state was left powerless and made impotent (Milliyet, September 13th, 1980, quoted and translated by Ahmad 1981:5).

The military thus identified the praetorianization of society, the incompetent political elites that failed to contain “secessionist forces”, and the “constitutional structure” endorsed by the previous generation of coup-makers as the primary culprits of the political turmoil and instability in the late 1970s. In order to immediately restore state authority vis-à-vis dissident social forces, the military dictatorship worked to demobilize organized groups through concerted coercion. The CNS immediately closed down labor unions, political organizations, and civic associations. According to the report released in 2012 by the Parliamentary Commission for the "Investigation of Coups and Military Memorandums in Turkey"(PCFICM), 650,000 people were put into custody, and 230,000 people were tried in military courts. In those trials, 98,404 people were charged with being a member of an illegal political organization and 71,000 with treason and attempting to overthrow the regime (p.840). The amended martial law allowed the police and the martial law officers to extend the duration of detentions up to ninety days. The prolonged detention periods led to the most notorious practice of coercion during the military dictatorship: the torture of detainees. Official medical reports confirmed that 171 people lost their lives to extreme torture (Birand et al.,1999 :232). The military dictatorship also established a highly rigid surveillance regime, which flagged approximately one and a half million people as potential suspects, including students, teachers and public employees, based on their alleged political affiliations with illegal organizations and their so-called extremist political views (Radikal, September 11th,2014).

The military coercion targeted activists across all age groups, but it would not be wrong to claim that youth were disproportionally affected by the coercive measures of the military dictatorship. The leaders of the coup determined to demobilize youth rebels, engaged in

132 systematic coercion against organized youth groups. During the three years of the military rule, twenty-six people were executed based on their allegedly violent and regime-threatening political activities. The executed convicts were all youth between the ages of seventeen and thirty. Most of the so-called ‘terrorists", who were detained and/or arrested for being affiliated with illegal organizations, were youth. They were exposed to torture under custody, and most of them received years-long imprisonment. Student activists encountered particular coercive practices as well. Students, who were charged with illegal political activities in university-held disciplinary investigations, were suspended from school (Birand et al., 1999:221). An amendment on the new Law on Higher Education in 1983 further stated that university students who were convicted of an offense against the existence and the continuity of the state as per Turkish Penal Code would be deprived of the right to pursue higher education in Turkey.

Chapter 2 has argued that the coup coalition in 1960 consisted of Kemalist elites of the army, bureaucrats, intellectuals and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) that supported the coup to restore their predominance in the political arena by toppling down the right-wing populist Democrat Party from power. The reasons that precipitated the military takeover in 1980, as well as the path of political transformation pursued by the coup makers, were entirely different. Therefore, the coup coalition in 1980 revealed a very different composition. Similar to the composition of the coalition that brought bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes into existence in Latin America (see O'Donnell 1977), the coup coalition in 1980 consisted of the army, right- wing technocrats and intellectuals, and big business (Bianchi 2014: 399). The following dynamics precipitated the formation of the coup coalition: the army, which historically "perceived itself as the ultimate guardian of the state" (Demirel 2003:274) and the republican regime, legitimized the military takeover on the grounds that "the rising violence and the danger of civil strife" posed threats to the "integrity of the Republican state" and that the democratic system and the civilians had lost their ability to fight against the "disintegration of the state" (ibid). The army also came to believe that as an ‘above-politics' actor, it would become a ‘unifying force' and re-establish national cohesion in a society deeply polarized along a left-right divide (Birand, Bila and Akar 1999:158-59). However, it soon became evident that in addition to putting an end to escalated violence, the military also pursued to increase its leverage in the political arena by undertaking the coup. Unlike the Latin American military interventions that resulted in long years of military rule, the Turkish military returned to barracks after three years,

133 though the new constitution significantly increased the veto powers of the military vis-à-vis the elected elites.

Chapter 2 has argued that the civil bureaucracy was no longer ‘cohesive’ in the 1960s, since the bureaucratic cadres were split – some of whom adhered to a leftist interpretation of Kemalism that emphasized social justice and a non-capitalist path of economic development, while the rest embraced a right-wing interpretation of Kemalism the major premise of which was a strident anti-communism. In the 1970s, the bureaucracy further fragmented when the ultra- nationalists and the Islamists were insinuated into the bureaucracy by the right-wing National Front coalition governments. The generals that undertook the coup came to see the left-Kemalist bureaucrats and intellectuals among the forces that precipitated the degeneration of Kemalism and the possible disintegration of the republican regime (Taşkın 2002: 577;Aydın and Taşkın 2015:342-43). In contrast, the right-wing technocrats and intellectuals advocated to curb the political freedoms and to restore state authority vis-à-vis dissenting forces immediately; to lead a concerted war against the spread of communism; and a major restructuring of the economy. Therefore, the right-wing intellectual and bureaucratic elites were incorporated into the coup coalition in 1980. Those conservative technocrats and intellectuals took leading roles in the framing of the new constitution and those outside the state bureaucracy were appointed to critical bureaucratic positions by the military dictatorship (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:342).

Finally, big business, alarmed by the growing militancy of the labor and believing that politicians could no longer stop the rising violence and fix the economic problems, provided their support to military intervention. For businessmen, a military takeover "would bring political stability (read security of life and property) and help to curb trade union militancy"(Demirel 2003: 271). When the army took over power, the leading businessmen immediately "expressed their gratitude for the Turkish military ...... stating that the army had done the right thing" given the instability and the deadlock in Turkish politics (Eldem 2013: 93). Even though the military dictatorship banned the Association of Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen (TÜSİAD) along with many other civic associations, the TÜSIAD was soon permitted to re-function (Buğra 2003:206). More importantly, the generals made it apparent from the beginning that they would not endorse an economic program with etatist or socialist overtones and would instead embrace a pro-market approach to economic growth (ibid). The military's pro-market stance was a relief for

134 the big business that now pursued a transition to a liberal economy and was no longer willing to ‘tolerate’ the workers’ demands for high wages and secure employment.

The 1980 military takeover thus did not have the "organized support" of any groups within the political society (Evin, 1988:211; Demirel, 2003:265). Since the Republican People's Party’s (CHP) adoption of a ‘left-of-center' stance in 1965, the relations between the military and the CHP had gradually deteriorated (Karpat 1988:149), and their historical alliance had been seriously strained. Even though a tacit rapprochement emerged between the top military and the Justice Party (AP) throughout the 1970s based on their common anti-communist rhetoric, the AP also did not provide its organized support for the 1980 coup. It should be noted, however, that unlike the 1960 coup, the coup makers received the support of the larger society. Regardless of their party affiliations, ordinary people, who were overwhelmed with the extent of bloodshed, seemed "appreciative" that the violence had immediately vanished starting with the first day of the military takeover (Hale, 1994:251).

As part of the significant restructuring of the political arena, the coup coalition worked to prevent the reoccurrence of elite fragmentation. Towards this goal, the coup coalition institutionalized a tutelary democracy with a strengthened executive and a weakened parliament. The new Constitution endorsed in 1982, and the subsequent legislation increased the tutelary powers of the military over the civilian elites21; increased the powers of the president22; and

21 In order to increase the tutelary powers of the military over the civilians, the 1982 Constitution and subsequent legislation included several provisions. First of all, the 1961 Constitution had already given the military a “veto power” (Tachau and Heper, 1983:17) by creating the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC that included the Chief of General Staff and other top-ranking military officials functioned as an advisory body to the government in matters of national security. The 1982 constitution further increased the veto power of the NSC in two ways: First, it increased the number of the military officers in the NSC at the expense of the civilian members (Cizre Sakallioglu, 1997: 158). Second, the constitution stated that “The Council of Ministers shall give priority consideration to the decisions of the National Security Council, transforming the NSC from an advisory body to a highly authoritative actor within the executive. 22 The strengthened presidency became another tutelary feature the coup coalition injected into the political system in order to put further restrictions over the power of the popularly elected elites. The 1982 constitution endowed the president extraordinary legislative and executive powers that contradicted with a truly parliamentary system. The President was granted with broad legislative powers such as returning the laws to the parliament to be reconsidered, appealing to the Constitutional Court for the annulment of laws and calling new parliamentary elections. Among the president's new executive functions were to appoint and dismiss ministers on the proposal of the prime minister and to appoint university administrators. Finally, the new constitution also gave the president extended powers relating to the judiciary such as appointing high-court judges, which was considered a serious violation of judiciary independence (Üskül, 1991; Parla,2002). The strengthened presidency led some observers to conclude that the

135 introduced a ten percent threshold in the elections to prevent the entry of small parties into the parliament and to eventually create a two-party system in which two centrist parties would compete for office (Tachau and Heper 1983:32; Aydın and Taşkın 2015: 338). The framers of the 1982 Constitution also took measures to prevent the re-emergence of a politicized and ideologically polarized bureaucracy by placing significant restrictions on the political rights of civil servants. Members of the high judiciary, prosecutors, military members, and teachers were not allowed to form associations and teachers could neither form labor unions nor become a union member. The public employees, including university faculty, were also not allowed to become political party members.

Second, it soon became evident that one of the major goals of the military takeover was to create the political tranquility and stability that was needed for the transition to a market economy and the proper implementation of the IMF stabilization program23 (Buğra 2003: 206).

military envisaged a presidential or a semi-presidential system (Özbudun and Gençkaya, 2009:21) that would resolve the potential crises stemming from a highly fragmented parliament or fragile coalition governments. Another line of analysis, however, refers to the strengthened presidency as yet another attempt to increase the military's political leverage (Özbudun and Gençkaya, 2009:21). Cizre Sakallıoğlu (1997) argues that the military held a double assumption by extending the power of the president: "In line with the republican tradition, either Turkish presidents would continue to be former generals, or if civilians were elected, they would not be permitted to override the military”(p.158). The leader of the coup General Evren indeed served as the first president following the transition to civilian rule and remained in office until 1989. The coup makers thus seemed to install a strengthened presidency as yet another military-controlled tutelary institution in order to claim further executive and legislative power and to more closely scrutinize the elected elites. 23 From 1977 to 1980, the Turkish economy revealed significant deterioration. Turkey's external debt had reached to $15 billion in 1980 equalling 21.8 percent of its GDP; the inflation had risen to 60 percent in 1979; and the GDP per capita had fallen from $4,025 in 1977 to $3,700 in 1980 (Karataşlı 2015: 402). Under these worsening economic conditions, the last civilian government before the military takeover, the Justice Party (AP) minority government, had to negotiate an austerity and stabilization program with the IMF in January 1980. In return of high amounts of financial support to Turkey (Öniş 2004:118), the IMF-directed stabilization program required the AP government to endorse devaluation, to stop employment in the public sector, and to remove the bureaucratic barriers against exportation (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:310). The IMF program also necessitated to "end state subsidies to the smaller sectors of industry, which were depended on such aid". Overall, the primary aim of the program was "to establish in Turkey a free market economy" that "would export and be competitive on the world market" (Ahmad 1981:7). Prime Minister Demirel appointed Turgut Özal, the then Acting Head of the State Planning Organization, as the Deputy Under-Secretary of the Prime Minister in charge of implementing the austerity and stabilization program (Öniş 2004:116). From January to September 1980, given the conditions of worker militancy, rising violence, and parliamentary stalemate, Özal frequently complained that "the political climate did not exist for the proper implementation of the austerity measures" (Ahmad 1981:7). He had hoped for early elections that would bring the majority rule of the AP to implement the IMF program smoothly. The early elections could not happen; it was the military intervention that created the favorable conditions to take the measures imposed by the IMF program and eventually to enable a smooth transition to a neoliberal economy (ibid).

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The military takeover did not only put an end to the opposition from the parliament against the austerity measures by dissolving the parliament and banning all parties, but the military government also ordered thousands of striking workers back to work (Ahmad 1981:11). Even though the pro-government labor confederation, TÜRK-İŞ, "was allowed to survive," the left- wing DISK was immediately closed down, and its leaders were imprisoned (Tachau and Heper 1983:30).

The military officers that had undertaken a coup in 1960 came under the influence of the left-wing intellectuals and pursued rapid industrialization through concerted state intervention that was attentive to social justice. However, the generals in 1980, allied with the big business, were under the influence of the anti-communist zeitgeist of the Cold War period and appealed to the economic program of the New Right (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:341). In a way, Turkey was following the experience of Chile, where the neoliberal experiment was put into effect following Pinochet's military takeover in 1973. Unlike Pinochet's Chile, the Turkish military did not stay in power for long. However, as the military dictatorship immediately put into effect the IMF stabilization program, it also installed limited pluralism towards labor incorporation that significantly curtailed the workers' rights and helped resolve the capital-labor struggle in Turkey in favor of the capital (Tanör 1991).

Finally, the coup coalition sought to moderate the political demands of urban sectors for political participation by instituting a limited-pluralist path of political incorporation. Limited pluralism was endorsed in the 1982 Constitution by emphasizing the supremacy of the rights of the state over individual liberties and political rights. The article 13 of the 1982 constitution stated, “fundamental rights and freedoms may be restricted…with the aim of safeguarding the indivisible integrity of the state with its territory and nation..…and of safeguarding national security”, as the article 14 prohibited the exercise of rights and freedoms if they endangered “the existence of the Turkish State and Republic” (The Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, 1987:7). The framers of the 1982 Constitution also embraced limited pluralism in regulating interest representation and associational networks. Article 33 of the constitution, for instance, banned the associations "to pursue political aims or engage in political activities", preventing the foundation of rights-based civic associations and political advocacy networks. The constitution and the related laws also banned any organic links and official cooperation among civic associations, labor unions, and political parties.

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Since the coup coalition conceived of the worker militancy as among the major reasons of political turmoil in the late 1970s (The Secretary of the Council of National Security 1981) and a more ‘docile’ labor was required to enable a smooth transition to a market economy, limited pluralism replaced the pluralist policies in the area of labor incorporation as well. The coup coalition preserved "the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively" (Tachau and Heper 1983:30), but the new legislation still considerably restricted the exercise of labor rights. The 1982 constitution stated that "labor unions shall not pursue a political cause, or engage in political activity"(The Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, 1987:24) to prevent the formation of organic linkages between labor confederations and left-wing parties. Due to the ambiguous phrases used to restrict the right to strike such as "being contrary to the detriment of society….and in a manner damaging national wealth"(ibid:25), the right to strike was also rendered vulnerable to arbitrary restrictions. Moreover, the new constitution and the Law on Strike and Lockout for the first time granted the employees the right to a lockout, which was perceived as a last blow to curb the power of organized labor.

In short, the coup coalition headed by the military elites sought a major restructuring of the political system and elite-society linkages. The 1982 Constitution and subsequent legislation endorsed by the military administration included detailed provisions to realize the coup coalition’s political project. Elite cohesion, which came into existence after the transition to a civilian regime in 1983 and prevailed throughout the 1990s, largely revealed the major tenets of the political restructuring undertaken by the 1980 coup coalition.

The Transition to a Civilian Regime and the Making of Elite Cohesion (1983-1991)

The military finally returned to barracks after three years and the general elections were held in 198324 to enable a transition to civilian rule. The new Right Motherland Party (ANAP) under the

24 The first general elections after the 1980 coup were identified as “pseudo-competitive” and “unfair”(Kalaycıoğlu, 2002:42), due to the military administration’s strict restrictions and vetoes on new parties and candidates (Dağı, 2001:17). The new constitution and the new Law on Political Parties banned the politicians of the pre-1980 coup period from politics for ten years and enforced that new parties needed the approval of the Council of National Security to be formed and to join the elections. The Council ruled out that 12 of the newly established parties were not politically eligible to join the elections. Among the parties that were barred were the Great Turkey Party and the Social Democrat Party, which were the obvious successors of, the Justice Party and the Republican People's Party respectively. The Council ultimately allowed three parties to run in the elections: The Nationalist Democracy Party which was led by a retired general Turgut Sunalp; the Populist Party of Necdet Calp which relied on the traditional

138 leadership of Turgut Özal came first in the elections and established a one-party government, receiving 45 percent of the votes. The ANAP government started its second term in office when the party polled 36 percent in the 1987 general elections. The ANAP depicted itself as a "catch- all" party representing the four major ideological currents of the pre-1980 period, namely center- right, center-left, pro-Islamism, and ultra-right (Heper and Keyman 1998:267; Ergüder 1991:160). Emphasizing the need to "soften political conflict" (Göle 1987, cited by Ergüder 1991:156) in the political arena through an ideologically-eclectic outlook, the ANAP’s election campaign in 1983 put greater emphasis on the economy with little promises on the democratization front. In his TV appearances and election rallies, the ANAP leader Özal conveyed the message that the protectionist economy and the import-substitution industrialization (ISI) had no longer produced the effective results for national progress and economic recovery. He promised to realize “a free market economy, privatization and opening up to the world”(Acar, 2002:172) and convincingly depicted his party’s economic program as a panacea to Turkey’s long-standing economic hardships. The ANAP's ideologically eclectic discourse and economy-centered program managed to create a multi-class support base. As the industrial business enthusiastically welcomed the ANAP’s neoliberal economic program and “labeled it as revolutionary”(Kalaycıoğlu, 2002:46), the ANAP also received the support of the small town residents, the urban poor (Arıcanlı and Rodrik 1990:1346), and part of the workers, the shopkeepers, the peasants, and the urban middle-classes.

With the ANAP's electoral victory, the military's game plan went awry, since the top military hoped that the National Democracy Party –the party of ex-generals and political elites close to the military- would replace the military rule. The army officials also looked upon the

Kemalist wing of the CHP and, the center/new-right Motherland Party of Turgut Özal. Özal, who served as the state minister in charge of the economy under the military regime until his resignation in 1982 (Zürcher, 2004:282). The military elites, however, pushed the limits to exert further influence over the elections, holding a clear vision of party politics for the new era. They expected that the Nationalist Democracy Party (MDP) which was already closely identified with the military regime, would receive the majority of the votes and the People’s Party would remain as the ‘loyal’ opposition (Rustow, 1985:7; Bora,2005:589). This expectation led them to openly (and not so legally) support the MDP during the election campaigns (Zürcher, 2004:282). Özal revoked his conversation with the leader of the coup General Evren before the elections during which he got the impression that generals, assured of his party’s electoral failure, permitted his party to run for the elections as a façade manifestation of the military administration's commitment to democracy (Barlas, 1996:29).

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ANAP leader Özal with suspicion due to his connections with a prominent religious community (Jacoby 2005:653); President Evren (the leader of the 1980 coup) and the National Security Council even frequently criticized the ANAP government for promoting Islamic revival in Turkey (Heper 1990:310). As a result, President Evren "returned many laws to the parliament for reconsideration" (Heper 1990:311) and "block[ed] the appointment of" high civil servants whom he identified with a pro-Islamist and ultra-nationalist outlook (ibid: 310). However, the seemingly conflictual nature of relations between the state elites and the ruling party did not overshadow the fact that the ANAP's major policies during its eight-year-long rule and the military's political project were "mutually reinforcing" (Karataşlı 2015: 404). Parallel to the political and the economic transformation the 1980 coup coalition of elites sought to realize, the ANAP’s political discourse and the composition of the party cadres reflected a desire to break away from the pre-1980 dynamics of elite polarization; the ruling party rapidly undertook reforms to realize a transition to a neoliberal economy; and it did not take a progressive stance to repeal legal restrictions on individual liberties, labor rights, and political freedoms. Therefore, after the decades-long elite conflict, the ANAP one-party rule, this chapter argues, paved the ground for the emergence of an elite structure characterized by ‘relative cohesion'. The ruling party, the military, and the economic elites became united in pursuing a political arena free from left-right polarization, market-oriented growth, and the moderation of the urban sectors' demands for political participation through a limited-pluralist pattern of incorporation. The military's enhanced veto powers over civilian politics does not alone explain the congruence of military and civilian political visions. Rather, underlying changes in society brought the ANAP to power and facilitated the emergence of relatively cohesive elites in the political arena.

First of all, the converging interests of the metropolitan bourgeoisie and the emerging bourgeoisie of the small cities became crucial in the transition to market-oriented growth and the pursuit of moderating the demands of popular sectors for redistribution. The metropolitan bourgeoisie had already provided support for the 1980 coup due to their disenchantment with the import-substitution industrialization that had no longer reproduced "the material conditions of production"(Keyder 1987:196). The established bourgeoisie thus encouraged the economic reforms in the period from 1980 to 1988, which enabled "commodity trade liberalization and export promotion along with a price reform aimed at reducing the state's role in economic affairs"(Taymaz and Voyvoda 2012:84). Alarmed by labor militancy in the late 1970s, the

140 metropolitan bourgeoisie also welcomed the rollback of labor rights. The entrepreneurs of small cities with Islamic leanings that had felt excluded from the capital accumulation opportunities of the ISI and had supported the pro-Islamist parties in the 1970s also hoped to encounter a level playing field under a free-market economy. Indeed, it soon became apparent that the neoliberal economy produced efficient results for the capital accumulation of the so-called Islamic bourgeoisie (Yavuz 2009:52 cited by Karataşlı 2015:404); the Islamic bourgeoisie during the ANAP rule "intensified business activities and small and medium-sized enterprises spread to various parts of Anatolia" (Karataşlı 2015:404).

Second, the economic breakdown of the late 1970s had become profoundly unsettling for Turkey's lower and middle classes. While the urban sectors of the workers, public employees, shopkeepers, and the retired were squeezed by inflation that reached to 60% in 1979 (Karataşlı 2015: 402), they also witnessed shortages in major goods due to declining production under a now malfunctioning import-substitution-system. The ANAP’s program that sought to reduce inflation, economically strengthen the lower and middle classes, and to maintain high levels of economic growth and prosperity became highly attractive to urban sectors at large (Ergüder 1991:156). The ANAP leader Özal managed to inject optimism into the urban masses (Öniş 2004:118) by identifying his economic program with "skip[ping] an age" and "catch[ing] up with the modern world"(Ergüder 1991:164). He well succeeded in "popular[izing] capitalism" through policies such as the sale of revenue sharing certificates to the public and high interest rates for the savings (Öniş 2004:118-119). Turkey's lower and middle classes, parts of which had radicalized in the late 1970s around the notions of social justice and economic equality, largely voted for the ANAP and reflected enthusiasm for a transition to a free-market economy, which they hoped would raise their standard of living. The support of the larger electorate for a transition to a market economy did not only keep the ANAP in power for two terms but also helped reinforce the elite cohesion on market-based growth. Some scholars of Turkish politics conceive the ANAP and its leader Özal in particular as an agent of democratization (Rustow, 1985; Yayla, 2005; Zürcher, 2004) vis-à-vis the military elites who were determined to keep the restrictions on political freedoms introduced by the military-endorsed 1982 Constitution and subsequent legislation. It is argued that economic liberalization undertaken by the ANAP governments “gave rise to societal calls for individual rights and freedoms”(Keyman and Kancı, 2014:143), resulting in the “autonomization of civil society”(Göle, 1994) and a shift “to an open

141 and participatory society”(Toprak, 1996:103). The ANAP years indeed witnessed the revival of civil society (Göle, 1994; Toprak, 1996), when a plethora of new social actors as diverse as feminists, Islamists, ecologists, and human rights activists became visible in the public sphere by the mid-1980s (Keyman and Kancı, 2014:144). The parliament’s retreat by 1984 to ratify the military courts’ death sentences (Dağı, 2001:31), and the partial amnesty granted in 1986 which included political prisoners (ibid: 33) might have also provided an opening in the political opportunity structure for the newly politicized groups. But, those democratizing reforms, most of which were undertaken amidst pressures from the European Community (see: Dağı 2001), should not preclude the persistence of political repression against the left-wing groups and the Kurdish insurgents as well as the ANAP governments’ reluctance to undertake constitutional amendments that would repeal military-introduced legal restrictions on political freedoms.

The ruling ANAP shared the concern of the military and the economic elites about the possibility of the revival of left-wing mobilization and the labor insurgency. The urge to respond to the possible crisis of renewed popular dissent thus united the dominant elites throughout the 1980s in sustaining a stable political environment through repression and legal restrictions on political rights so that Turkey's political society [and the state] could "reassert its hegemony over civil society" (Karataşlı 2015:391). The transition to a neoliberal economy, the broader project the ANAP leader Özal "implemented with missionary zeal to transform the Turkish economy and society at large in the mold of …. a genuinely capitalist economy and society" (Öniş 2004:119), also necessitated keeping the legal restraints on democratic rights. Accordingly, the notorious coercive practices of the military regime continued to persist after the transition to the civilian regime. The marathon trials of labor unionists, students, and intellectuals (Ahmad, 1993:190) for instance, were a potent reminder that martial law provisions continued to exert influence over the civilian rule. Until 1986, five cities were still under the martial law order and eight cities in a state of emergency (Amnesty International, 1989: 81). Up until the late 1980s, the public critiques and the international community stressed the persistence of human rights violations in Turkey (see Helsinki Watch, 1986 and Amnesty International, 1989 Reports on Turkey). The 1985 Balfe Report of the European Community’s Political Affairs Committee for example stated that “Turkey’s human rights practice was still far from complying with the most elementary standards” (Dağı 2001:22) and attracted attention to “the practice of torture, death

142 sentences, restrictions on former politicians and trade unions, mass trials, and repression of minority Kurds”(ibid: 22-23).

In addition to the persistence of political repression against the leftists, labor activists, and the Kurdish insurgents, the consensus among the top military and the ruling ANAP on keeping a limited-pluralist path to political incorporation was also revealed in the ANAP governments’ reluctance for democratizing legal reforms. Despite the opposition parties’ increasing pressures especially after 1987 for constitutional amendment, the ANAP took no initiatives to repeal the military-introduced restrictions on the exercise of civil and political rights (Ahmad, 1993;197; Bora, 2005: 598; Aydın and Taşkın, 2015:349).

In short, the dominant elites of the ruling party, the military, and the economic elites were mostly cohesive in the period from 1983 to 1991. As they agreed to perpetuate market-based growth, they also remained united in keeping the limited-pluralist legal arrangements that sought to moderate the demands of urban sectors for political participation and redistribution. The transition to a neoliberal economy and the social dislocations it created also led the power-holder elites to preserve the repressive practices of the military administration in order to prevent the reoccurrence of popular dissent.

Elite Cohesion in the 1990s

The transition to a free-market economy in the 1980s economically strengthened the established bourgeoisie and helped create a new bourgeoisie with provincial and conservative backgrounds, while injecting hope and optimism into Turkey's lower and middle-classes for achieving personal enrichment. However, it became apparent by the late 1980s that the neoliberal experiment in Turkey deepened economic divisions in society that intersected with and perpetuated long- standing cultural divisions (urban-rural, secular-Islamist, and Turkish-Kurdish) (Cizre- Sakallıoğlu and Yeldan 2000:492). As a result, the state and the political society encountered growing societal demands of redistribution and recognition. In particular, the rise of the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement in the 1990s became particularly unsettling for the Turkish elites and significantly destabilized the political arena. Furthermore, the restrictions on political rights and individual freedoms, which were instituted to restore state authority vis-à-vis potentially dissident sectors and to facilitate the transition to a neoliberal economy, were also contested, when a pro-democracy civil society flourished with old and new social forces as

143 diverse as feminists, labor unionists, students, human rights activists, and liberal intellectuals more strongly contesting the political system for democratization. Therefore, when the Pandora’s Box opened up in the 1990s (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:384) that could be characterized by greater influence of different societal actors-both old and new- on the political scene, the Turkish elites encountered multiple crises of representation and incorporation.

In order to respond to the crises of representation, fragmentation in the party system resurfaced in the 1990s with different political parties making claims to represent diverging societal interests of recognition and redistribution. As two center-right and two center-left parties competed in the electoral arena, pro-Islamist, pro-Kurdish, and nationalistic parties also gradually increased their political influence. Since none of the parties received the parliamentary majority to establish a one-party government, Turkey turned back to coalition politics and the coalition governments of various compositions, most of which were unstable and weak, ruled the country throughout the 1990s. However, different from the fragmentation dynamics of the pre- 1980 period, the dominant elites, namely the centrist parties, top military, high judiciary, and the secular-metropolitan economic elites, chose to develop a united stance in responding to the contention by the newly politicized social forces. The Turkish elites identified the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement as the new national security threats that needed to be suppressed; and they agreed to endorse legal reforms, albeit limited, to democratize state-society relations.

In particular, in order to respond to the demands raised by the discontented and dissenting societal sectors, the Turkish elites remained cohesive in adopting a double-faced strategy: on the one hand, in dealing with the radical movements, with the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement, they agreed to rely on coercive measures. On the other hand, in seeking to incorporate the moderately oppositional societal sectors (urban and educated groups and pro- democracy movements), they took a conciliatory approach and relaxed some of the restrictions on political freedoms without necessarily diverging from a limited-pluralist path to political participation. Thereby, this chapter argues that an elite structure characterized by relative cohesion, which first crystallized in the period from 1983 to 1991, persisted throughout the 1990s. Despite fragmentation in the party system, the dominant elites managed to take a united stance on selective repression and selective incorporation.

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First of all, the rise of Islamism united the dominant elites around a secularist agenda and constituted one of the major pillars of elite cohesion in the 1990s. The centrist parties, which had lost part of their electorate to the pro-Islamist Welfare Party (RP) in the 1995 elections, were alarmed by the RP's electoral success. The military, which conceived itself as the guarantor of the secular regime, had already voiced concerns about the revival of Islamism since the transition to a civilian regime in 1983 (see: Kenan Evren's memoirs, 1990). The top military thus referred to the RP as "a party longing for an Islamist state"(Heper and Keyman 1998:270). The secular metropolitan business was also discontented with the rise of Islamism since they "resented the Islamic capital" that emerged as a "competing force" challenging its "established role" in the economic arena (Ulusoy 2007:484). The association of the Istanbul-based secular business TÜSİAD, for example, published a memorandum after the 1995 elections and called for a coalition government among the center-right parties that would prevent the RP's coming to power (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:424). When the RP eventually became the senior partner of a coalition government in 1996, the top military came to firmly believe that “Islamic reactionism had become a threat” (Cizre and Çınar, 2003:309) that needed to be suppressed25.

The top military eventually decided to apply coercive measures to prevent the rise of Islamism, and the civilian elites provided the military with full support. The repression against the Islamists primarily started after the so-called postmodern coup of 1997. At the 28 February, 1997 meeting of the National Security Council, the military members of the Council handed the government a list of 18 measures against "further Islamization of the state and society" (Heper and Keyman, 1998: 270). Among the recommended measures were the tighter control of Islamic brotherhoods and religious foundations, tighter control of Qur'an courses, increased controls on religious radio and TV stations and newspapers, prevention of infiltration of extremist religious individuals to the public sector, and measures to prevent dressing practices that violate the attire law (e.g. headscarves) (Eldem, 2013: 340-41). Public commentators identified the 28 February 1997 NSC meeting as a "post-modern coup", referring to military's active intervention in

25 A number of reports by different state agencies reinforced the perception of threat about the rise of political Islam. The National Intelligence Agency submitted a report to the National Security Council in January 1997, indicating that “a number of religious orders and associations were trying to create ‘alternative state structures’ ”(Milliyet, January 17th, 1997 cited by Heper and Güney, 2000:640). A parallel report by the General Directorate of Security stated that "more than 300 Islamic organizations have been ‘trying to bring back to Turkey an order based on Shari'a' "(ibid).

145 government affairs without directly taking power. Short after the declaration of measures to combat Islamic resurgence, the coalition government in which the pro-Islamist RP took part as a senior partner was forced to resign. Until 2002, several coalition governments including secularist centrist parties and the far-right Nationalist Action Party ruled the country and those governments showed their approval of repression against the Islamists by largely concentrating efforts to implement the military-recommended measures to counteract the rise of Islamism. Finally, the high judiciary also took its part in undermining the influence of Islamism in the political arena. The Constitutional Court dissolved the Welfare Party in 1998 on the grounds that it "worked[ed] against the laicism principle of the nation-state"(Official Gazette, February 22, 1998, cited by Kogacioglu, 2004: 443) 26.

Second, the adoption of military and repressive measures against the rise of the Kurdish insurgency became another manifestation of cohesion among the dominant elites in the 1990s. After the 1992 National Security Policy Document (NSPD), -a document prepared by the Secretary of the National Security Council (a military official) that was expected to turn into government policy (Cizre, 2003:221)- had identified [Kurdish] separatism as the number one security threat to the state (Cizre, 2003:222; Şarlak, 2004:290), the military increased its influence in shaping the state response to Kurdish insurgency27. Military solutions in the form of legal and extrajudicial repression thus became the major mechanisms in dealing with the Kurdish insurgency28. As the centre-right DYP, which was the senior partner of the coalition government

26 The state and the political elites also relied on the support of the secular segments of society when adopting repressive measures against the Islamists. As the secular and educated middle classes feared to lose their privileged socioeconomic status in society amidst the rise of professionals and businesspeople with Islamic leanings, they were also concerned that the growing influence of Islamism could bring forth possible interferences to their secular lifestyles (Aydın and Taşkın 2015:435). Therefore, the secular segments of society largely approved the military- orchestrated repression against the Islamists within political and civil society. 27 . Despite the reactions from certain segments of civil and political society, Turgut Özal, who served as the president from 1990 until his sudden death in 1993, undertook several civil initiatives towards the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue (see Aydın and Taşkın, 2015: 396-397). The DYP-SHP coalition also galvanized the hopes for the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue in its initial years. The Coalition Protocol promised the adoption of democratic mechanisms to deal with Kurdish insurgency (TGNA Proceedings, 1991: https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/hukumetler/KP49.htm). However, after the military had identified Kurdish mobilization as the primary threat to national security, those non-military proposals towards resolution lost their already fragile potential to shape the state’s Kurdish policy. 28 The most paramount form of repression against the Kurdish insurgents were the counterinsurgency operations undertook by the security forces against the PKK in the Kurdish countryside. The Command of Special Forces was

146 between 1991 and 1995 "gained a reputation for being the mainstream party ‘most committed to seeking a military solution to the Kurdish Question'"(Barkey and Fuller 1998:113 cited by Secor 2001:550), the centre-left SHP "regularly voted to extend emergency rule and to maintain military presence in the Kurdish region"(ibid: 551). The center-left DSP also opposed to "any concessions" to the Kurdish insurgents (ibid). Finally, the high judiciary also played its part in elite attempts at repressing the Kurdish mobilization. The Constitutional Court banned the pro- Kurdish political party, People’s Labor Party (PLP), in 1993, accusing it of “desir[ing] to establish a new social order based on race”(Official Gazette, 1993 cited by Kogacioglu, 2004:346).

Finally, while turning to rely on repression against radical movements, political and economic elites sought to politically incorporate moderate oppositional sectors of society, namely the urban and educated electorate in search of more democratization and the pro- democracy civil society actors (feminists, labor unionists, and liberal intellectuals), by relaxing restrictions on civil liberties and political freedoms. As the centrist parties held a common stance in emphasizing the need for democratizing legal reforms, the TÜSİAD, the association of secular metropolitan business also called for democratization through its reports and press releases (Ulusoy 2007:484). Following the repeal of the state monopoly on TV and radio broadcasting in 1993 (Özbudun and Gençkaya, 2009:35), which expanded the freedom of press, the constitutional amendment package, prepared by an interparty-committee and ratified in 1995, included the following provisions: trade unions, associations, foundations and public professional associations were allowed to engage in political activities; the ban on the political cooperation between political parties and civil society associations was repealed(Özbudun,2007:185); and government controls over the activities of the associations

established within the army, while special units were also organized within the police forces and the gendarmerie (Balta-Paker and Akça, 2013:17). By 1995, 300,000 soldiers were stationed in the Kurdish region (Aydın and Taşkın, 2015:395), while 23,000 members of the “Special Teams”(police forces directly accountable to the Ministry of Interior) were also deployed in the fight against the PKK (Özdemir, 1997 cited by Bozaraslan, 2001:48). According to estimates, 35,000 (Güneş, 2007:23) to 37,000 people (Bozaraslan, 2001:45) lost their lives in the war between the state forces and the PKK. While soldiers, village guards (pro-state civilian Kurds that were armed by the state to fight against the PKK) and the PKK members constituted most of the victims, Kurdish civilians (an estimated number of 5000) were also killed in the war (ibid).

147 were relaxed (Özbudun, 2000:64); public employees were given the right to unionize (Özbudun and Gençkaya,2009:39); and political parties were allowed to establish women’s branches as well as organizations in foreign countries (Özbudun, 2009:190).

The constitutional amendments relaxed some of the restrictions on political freedoms, but they still fell short of the initial government proposals as well as of the societal expectations for democratization. First, the amendment package “left most of the serious restrictions on civil [and political] rights intact” (Hale,2014:73), such as the restrictions on the right to strike and major constitutional provisions restraining the freedom of speech and freedom of association. Second, even though some civil society groups including women's associations, non-political civil society organizations, business, and commercial associations received a more tolerant attitude, human rights activists for example "elicit[ed] little sympathy or tolerance from the state"(Kalaycıoğlu, 2002:260). Third, the political elites neither accommodated the political demands of protest movements and advocacy groups nor allowed them to influence the policy- making process (Kalaycıoğlu, 2002: 258). Therefore, despite a united stance to politically incorporate moderately oppositional sectors through legal reforms, the Turkish elites did not necessarily diverge from limited-pluralism in their attempts to govern the political participation demands of the urban sectors.

To conclude, after the 1980 coup, fragmentation at the elite level was replaced by the emergence of relatively cohesive elites. From 1983 to 1991, the dominant elites of the military, the ruling ANAP, and the economic elites developed cohesion over market-oriented growth and the pursuit of moderating the demands of urban sectors for participation. Even though underlying dynamics in society, in particular increasing demands for recognition and redistribution on the political society, led to the reoccurrence of fragmentation in the party system in the 1990s, the Turkish elites remained cohesive on a double-faced strategy of incorporation and repression. While they sought to moderate the demands of pro-democracy forces through democratizing reforms, they agreed to adopt concerted coercion in countering the radical movements of the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement.

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4.3 Elite-youth linkages in the 1980s and the 1990s: Elite Cohesion and Incorporation as Moderation and Control

This section turns to investigate the relationship between elite cohesion and elite-youth linkages for the period between 1980 and 2002. Specifically, it will explore three themes: the motivations of the influential elites in interfering with youth participation, incorporation as moderation and control, and the instruments of limited pluralism and several political discourses targeting youth that were used to realize incorporation as moderation and control. In order to analyze these themes, it will focus on three separate periods: 1980-1983, 1983-1991, and 1991-2002.

Incorporation as moderation and control during the military regime: Limited-pluralism, and creating an Atatürkist youth

Conceiving politicized youth as one of the major “secessionist forces driving the country into civil war” (The first Communiqué of the Council of National Security), the military administration from 1980 to 1983 undertook concerted coercion against organized youth and largely became successful in immediately demobilizing youth activists. However, having learned from the experience of the 1971 intervention that sheer coercion could have proved incapable to prevent the revival of youth militancy, the 1980 coup coalition of elites also relied on formal and institutionalized non-coercive mechanisms, which this study refers to as youth political incorporation, in order to reshape the character of youth political participation and state-youth relations in an intended fashion. A new form of youth incorporation, which I refer to as ‘incorporation as moderation and control’, unfolded during the military regime characterized by legal provisions that sought to moderate youth demands for participation and to prevent the recurrence of youth contention against the state. Parallel to the new scheme of political incorporation towards the urban sectors, the coup makers adopted a limited pluralist approach to youth participation in order to institutionalize incorporation as moderation and control. Limited pluralism entailed significant restrictions on young people’s involvement in conventional politics and also put particular barriers against youth civic engagement and campus-based mobilization. In addition to limited pluralism, however, the 1980 coup coalition of elites also resorted to cultural mechanisms to cultivate a compliant youth. The coup coalition reinvented Kemalism under the new banner of Atatürkism and adopted the discourse of ‘creating an Atatürkist youth’,

149 which they believed would keep youth away from the influence of radical ideologies. Atatürkism was circulated among youth through a series of reforms in education.

The military documents, published before and just after the 1980 coup, include detailed descriptions of ‘anarchy and terror' and reveal the growing concern of the top military about the loss of state authority vis-à-vis the so-called extremist groups. For example, a briefing given to the top military by General Necdet Üruğ, who served as the martial order commander in İstanbul a few months before the 1980 coup, referred to the radical left and particularly leftist youth as the primary perpetrators of violence with the ultimate goal of establishing a proletarian dictatorship (Cited by Arcayürek, 1986:204-205). The briefing included a detailed classification of leftist groups and stated that the violent actions of the leftist militants would likely precipitate a civil war (ibid: 203-204). A book published by the Secretary of the Council of National Security in 1981 argues that the so-called radical left was incited "by foreign powers and the traitors within" and posed a significant threat to national security and state authority (p.215). While the foreign powers referred to the Soviet Union and China, the top military identified the socialist intellectuals, labor leaders, and the left-wing political parties as the "traitors within". The military elites also conceived of the 1961 Constitution as the major culprit behind the emergence of a praetorian society and growing youth militancy. In one of his most notorious speeches, Kenan Evren, the leader of the 1980 coup, declared that “the 1961 Constitution was like an x-large dress for Turkish society. It did not fit in”. Evren’s words implied that political groups and organizations abused the freedoms of the 1961 Constitution since the politicized sectors were not politically mature yet to exercise extended rights and freedoms without becoming politically radicalized. The 1980 coup coalition thus subscribed to incorporation as moderation and control towards politicized urban sectors and youth and largely limited the scope of political rights and freedoms through a new constitution endorsed in 1982 and through subsequent legislation.

First, a series of new laws sought to limit youth’s access to political society. The 1982 Constitution set the minimum voting age at 21 years. Considering Turkey’s youth bulge, the voting age regulation disenfranchised a significant number of youth between the ages of 18 and 21. The constitution and the 1983 Law on Political Parties also banned political parties from establishing youth branches and prohibited students from becoming political party members.

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The new legislation also limited youth civic engagement and in particular sought to restrict university students’ engagement with political associations. The 1983 Law on Labor Unions enforced that students could neither form student unions nor become members of labor unions, as the Law on Higher Education stated that with the exception of public-benefit associations, university students were required to grant the written permission of the university president to become members of civic associations. The article did not specify which civic associations were classified as “public-benefit associations”, but one CNS member mentioned Turkey’s Red Cross as an example of these associations during the CNS discussion on the wording of this article (CNS archives: 1981:102). Students were thus only allowed to be affiliated with ‘apolitical’ civic associations, which were conceived as lacking the potential to become places of political advocacy.

Finally, the coup makers also undertook specific measures to prevent student mobilization in university campuses. The article 4 of the Law on Associations stated that only one student association could be established at each university, while the article 38 emphasized that student associations could only function in areas related to "education, study, and student motivation." The wording of the latter article implied that student associations could not engage in activities, which might have political repercussions. It might be claimed that the coup makers indeed only symbolically allowed the foundation of student associations in campuses since these associations did not only have a minimal space of action, but they were also not granted official representation within the universities' governing councils. The last blow of the military administration to prevent student mobilization were the student disciplinary regulations included in the Law on Higher Education. The article 54 of the Law stated that students who incited or participated in boycotts, occupations, and anarchic or ideological activities would be suspended from school for one week up to two semesters or would be permanently expelled from the university. These disciplinary regulations became the primary tool of the state to deter student activism in the next decades.

The coup coalition installed a new scheme of youth political incorporation through limited-pluralist policies in order to moderate youth demands for political participation and to ultimately contain the potential recurrence of youth dissent. However, the top military and the conservative intellectuals also came to believe that youth political incorporation would be incomplete without reestablishing state control over the political aspirations of youth. They,

151 therefore, adopted the discourse of creating an ‘Atatürkist youth' (named after the founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) to culturally incorporate youth into the newly formulated state ideology of Atatürkism. A series of public programs targeting school children and education reforms sought to culturally reshape youth in an Atatürkist direction.

The coup coalition, which intended to reestablish the hegemony of Kemalism in the political arena, officially declared Atatürkism as the new state ideology. Atatürkism was a more conservative and right-wing re-interpretation of Kemalism that emphasized anti-communism (Altinay and Bora 2002:152), a nationalism based on ethno-cultural citizenship (Üstel 2014), a strong and politically active state (Akyaz 2002:188; Taşkın 2002:573), and an illiberal democracy. As Altinay and Bora contend (2002), Atatürkism had already become part of the political discourse as early as 1971, when the military had coined the term and depicted it as a unifying ideology that would mitigate against political polarization, anarchy, and terror through its emphasis on national unity (p.151).

The coup leaders argued that the major reason young people came under the influence of ‘ foreign and deviant' ideologies (read communism) was the fact that the elders had failed to convey the teachings of Atatürk among youth properly (Milliyet, January 7th 1981, p.7). In May 1981, Kenan Evren, the president of the Council of National Security addressed youth in the city of Sivas and contended that: "You should repeatedly read Atatürk's memoirs until you memorize them all. I am especially calling out to those of you who read Marx, Lenin, and Mao. You should first read the teachings of our founding father Atatürk, who became a role model and an ideational leader to poor nations, to the countries under foreign siege. You should first learn about Atatürk. Later, you will consider reading others"(Milliyet, May 9th, 1981, p.12). In order to culturally re-shape youth in an Atatürkist direction, the military administration tried to rejuvenate the cult of Atatürk among youth and did so in a highly ostensible manner. They asked the school administrations to organize poem, writing and painting competitions that relied on Atatürk- centred themes; they made it mandatory that every classroom had a spot designed with Atatürk's photos and writings; and they reprinted and distributed Atatürk's Address to Youth and his memoirs to every school across the country (Milliyet, January 7th, 1981, p.7). The coup leaders' attempts to rejuvenate the cult of Atatürk became so ambitious that one of the high-ranking martial commanders later recalled in his memoirs that Atatürk-centered activities and

152 propaganda had become “unbearable” for even those who had a deep love for Atatürk (Bölügiray 2002:34).

The redesign of school curriculums became another means to create an Atatürkist youth. Starting with the 1981-82 academic year, the "History of Revolution", a course on the history of Turkey's war of independence under the leadership of Atatürk and of the political reforms during the early republican period, became a required class in secondary and high schools (Akyaz 2002:188) and even in universities. Furthermore, the civics curriculum was restructured in a more statist fashion. Among the themes, the new civics textbooks emphasized were the following: individual liberties and political rights could be restricted to protect the integrity of the state (Üstel 2014:279); and fulfilling the duties for the state presided over the exercise of individual liberties (ibid: 282). The textbooks also included detailed descriptions of internal and external threats the Turkish state and the republican regime had faced (ibid: 295-96). Üstel (2014) argues that the threat discourse in the civics textbooks aimed to cultivate a statist and nationalistic youth that would value national unity, status quo, and political stability (p.295). The Atatürkist cultural engineering towards youth defined the political socialization experiences of three successive generations of youth in Turkey, -those born in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the early 1990s. It was the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party in the 2000s that largely removed Atatürkist themes from the school curriculums and replaced them with overtly Islamist ones.

Incorporation as moderation and control during the ANAP rule: Limited-pluralism and a Depoliticizing Economic Discourse

This chapter has argued that after the transition to civilian rule in 1983, the political arena witnessed an elite structure characterized by cohesion. The military elites, the economic elites, and the one-party ANAP governments were united in reducing elite polarization, enabling a smooth transition to a neoliberal economy, and keeping the military-introduced legal restrictions on political rights intact. The elite cohesion, this chapter argues, also forged a consensus on the Turkish elites' approach to elite-youth linkages. The Turkish elites in the period from 1983 to 1991, namely the top military, the government elites, the bureaucrats in the Higher Education Council, and the university administrations, shared the common desire of moderating youth demands for participation and preventing the recurrence of youth militancy. Therefore,

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‘incorporation as moderation and control,' introduced initially by the 1980 coup coalition, continued to characterize the elite approach to youth political participation. Incorporation as moderation and control functioned in three major ways during the one-party rule of the ANAP: first, feeding the fears of the larger society about the revival of political violence among youth, the ANAP governments did not repeal the legal restrictions on youth political rights and kept up with limited pluralism in the area of youth incorporation. Second, emerging student activism in the late 1980s was discouraged and subdued through legal and repressive mechanisms. Third, the ANAP governments sought to integrate youth into the neoliberal economy through a depoliticizing economic discourse and a number of education reforms. In other words, the economic cooptation of youth was adopted as an instrument of political incorporation; youth who aspired to become a shareholder in the emerging market-economy were expected to stay away from oppositional politics.

Elite cohesion on subscribing to incorporation as moderation and control through a limited-pluralist approach to youth participation led the ANAP governments to keep legal restrictions on youth political participation and to resort to coercion against newly emerging forms of youth activism. In order to legitimize their reluctance in democratizing state-youth relations, the government elites frequently revived the public memory of youth political violence in the pre-1980 coup period. For example, in the monthly broadcast of the program “From Within Our Executive Performance” on the state television TRT, Prime Minister Özal addressed the youth on April 26th, 1987: "As the executive, our mission is to provide you with opportunities. However, we also need to take the necessary measures to protect you from threats. Your brothers, your moms, and dads have a living memory of what happened in the past. Various interest groups and axes of evil had manipulated innocent student movements and led youth into violence. As a result, many civilians lost their lives".(Milliyet, April 27th, 1987, p.7). Addressing the parliament on December 6th, 1988, Hasan Celal Güzel, the Minister of Education and Youth, similarly contended that: “The protests and mobilization attempts at university campuses nowadays are triggered by internal and external provocateurs who wish to distort the peace in the country. We should, for sure, respond to students' socioeconomic needs. However, we should also keep them away from ideologically-motivated politics and outmoded political ideas."(Parliamentary Proceedings, December 6th, 1988: 588). Those speeches sought to feed the fears of the public that the pre-1980 coup anarchy and terror could come back, as the so-called

154 internal and external enemies were allegedly reaping every opportunity to politicize youth and lead them to political violence again. That discourse aimed to legitimize the ruling party’s reluctance to enhance youth political rights.

Even though the opposition parties throughout the 1980s effectively pressured the government to repeal legal restrictions on youth political participation, the ANAP governments outmanoeuvred those efforts and prevented parliamentary action in enhancing youth political rights. In 1984, for example, Cüney Canver, an MP from the Populist Party (renamed as the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) in 1985) proposed a bill for a constitutional amendment to decrease the voting age to 18 (Parliamentary Proceedings, November 27th, 1984:495-96). The ruling ANAP did not support the bill and prevented its endorsement to the parliament. The ANAP government only undertook a limited initiative in 1987 concerning the right to vote. The constitutional amendment package proposed by the government included the proposal to decrease the voting age from twenty-one to twenty. The opposition parties in the parliament referred to the proposal as “window dressing” seeking to present the constitutional amendment package as more attractive in the eyes of the public. They instead proposed that the voting age should be decreased to eighteen. Prime Minister Özal claimed that he also supported the voting age to be eighteen, but the President Evren would veto the constitutional amendment package as a whole, since he opposed regulation in the voting age (Parliamentary Proceedings, May 13th 1987:300-301). The ANAP’s resistance to decrease the voting age to eighteen revealed its tacit alliance with the top military and President Evren to maintain the legal restrictions on youth political participation.

Elite cohesion on concentrating efforts to keep youth politics under control was also revealed in state response to emerging student activism in the second half of the 1980s. Article 4 of the Law on Associations that was endorsed by the military administration allowed the foundation of one student association at each university. Small groups of university students in major cities took action to establish student associations in order to seize this limited legal opportunity for student mobilization. However, in order to exert further controls over the exercise of this already limited right of association, the 1981 Law on the Higher Education, another law endorsed by the military administration, required the students to get the written permission of the university presidents to establish student associations. That requirement became the major obstacle facing activist students. Most of the university presidents, who were

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‘appointed’ by President Evren and were part of the elite coalition determined to keep youth participation under control, arbitrarily restricted students’ freedom of association (Kabacalı, 2007: 238). Cüneyt Canver, an MP from the Social Democratic Populist Party, claimed in 1985 that the university presidents and the Higher Education Council (an institution introduced by the 1982 Constitution to enhance state authority over universities) agreed in principle to prevent students from establishing associations (Parliamentary Proceedings, November 12th, 1985: 311- 12). The students bypassed these arbitrary restrictions by appealing to courts. The first student associations emerged after verdicts, which allowed the foundation of the student associations without the permission of university presidents (Cumhuriyet, ibid). When the first student associations came to life, the ruling elites sought new measures to limit their scope of activities. The civil and military attendees decided in the State of Emergency Coordination Meeting in 1986 that the Ministry of Interior Affairs would closely scrutinize the activities of student associations (Cumhuriyet, February 10th, 1986, p.1). Following this meeting, the police detained the executive members of many student associations and interrogated them about their ‘political’ intentions.

The ANAP government also undertook a limited-pluralist legal initiative to control emerging student mobilization. A bill was proposed in April 1987 for amending the provisions in the Law on the Higher Education concerning the foundation of student associations. The bill reiterated that only one student association could be established in each university and proposed that all the students would become mandatory members of the student associations. It also specified that all the newly founded student associations would be dismantled (Cumhuriyet, April 3rd, 1987, p.13). Yalçın Doğan, a popular journalist, claimed that the bill was the product of a broader consensus among different parts of the state for constraining students’ freedom of association. Doğan (1987) argued that following the recommendation issued by the National Security Council to keep the student associations under control, the chair of the Higher Education Council, İhsan Doğramacı prepared the bill draft (p. 13). If those claims were correct (the National Security meeting notes are not publicly accessible), the ANAP government proposed the bill to comply with the game plan of the top military and the Higher Education Council that aimed to impose restrictions on emerging student activism. The students' response to the bill was immediate and steady. They engaged in protests across the country, opposing the draft law, which, they argued, aimed to establish "coopted” student associations.

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The ANAP government also effectively applied policing and legal coercion to demobilize the student activists who sought to revive the student movement29. For example, when two thousand students marched in downtown İstanbul on April 14th, 1987 to protest the co-opting law draft on student associations (Cumhuriyet, April 15th, 1987,p.1), the police immediately detained many student protestors across the country and started a witch-hunt against the university students suspected of being affiliated with the student movement. Between 1987 and 1989, 2000 students were detained, 260 of them were arrested and 450 lawsuits in total were filed against student activists (ibid, February 14th, 1990, p.11).

This chapter also argues that in addition to maintaining the limited-pluralist legal framework and to applying concerted repression against activist youth, the ANAP governments enhanced the mechanisms of incorporation as moderation and control towards youth through economic means. Parallel to the depoliticizing economic discourse targeting the urban sectors as a whole, the ANAP governments injected optimism into urban youth sectors that they would become the primary beneficiaries of the free-market economy. In other words, the ANAP governments sought to incorporate youth into the political arena by integrating youth into the structures of the neoliberal economy. The government efforts to cultivate market values among youth and relevant policies in the area of education, this chapter claims, ultimately contributed to the elite efforts of moderating youth demands for participation. For example, Prime Minister Özal popularized the rhetoric of “turning the corner” (Neyzi 2001:423) and “enriching yourselves”(Karataşlı 2015:405) among urban youth that referred to the vast opportunities the

29 Elite consensus over the use of state repression against dissenting sectors forged a more robust and cohesive coercive apparatus in the post-1980 period characterized by the expansion of the size, the financial resources, and the discretionary powers of the coercive agents and their relative ideological unity that enabled the Turkish state to prevent the escalation of youth protests rapidly and effectively. For example, the post-1980 era witnessed an increase in the size and power of the police forces. In 1982, the Municipal Community Police units were reorganized as the Riot police, the primary task of which was to "intervene in meetings and demonstrations"(Berksoy et al.2013:6). In 1983, the Riot Police units were deployed in 21 cities with 11,000 officers, while in the mid-1990s they operated in 63 cities with 15,000 officers (Aydın 1997:98 cited by Berksoy 2007:53). The Riot Police, especially in the 1990s, became notorious for its disproportionate use of force against the protestors. The amendments to the Police Duties and Powers Act in 1985 enabled the police “to arrest without warrant whole categories of people, including those who continue to disturb the peace and tranquility of the public”(Helsinki Watch, 1986: 32-33), increasing “the discretionary power of and legal protection mechanisms provided to the police”(Berksoy et al.2013:6). Following the purge of left-wing officials from the police units, the members of Idealist Clubs, the youth organization of the Nationalist Action Party that had operated in the 1970s like a paramilitary force against the left-wing activists, also filled up the police cadres in the post-1980 period (Bora 1994) and played a salient role in policing the left-wing and pro-Kurdish activists.

157 free-market economy offered for personal enrichment as well as to a consumption-based lifestyle. In particular, the promotion of the yuppie (young, urban professionals) ethos, promoting work in the private sector at the managerial positions, became part of that rhetoric and managed to cultivate neoliberal ambitions among urban youth. The popular magazine Bravo heralded in August 1985 that yuppies also emerged in Turkey thanks to the government’s liberal turn in the economy (quoted by Kozanoğlu, 1993:17). The newspaper reports of the era are full of interviews conducted with young people who stated that they aspired to attend a prestigious university and to become top managers in a company after graduation that would lead them to a prosperous future. It is interesting to note that the prestigious universities of the pre-1980 period, which recruited the most brilliant students and prepared them for service to the state, became outmoded in the 1980s. Instead, the universities, where the medium of instruction was English became the most popular among youth, who competed hard to study management, economics or engineering at those universities (Lüküslü, 2009:122). Gone were the days (the 1960s and 1970s) service to the state symbolized high socioeconomic status and prestige in society (ibid:124). As the shrinking state bureaucracy could no longer accommodate the increasing number of university graduates, the declining wages of the public employees led youth to “favor the private sector vis-à-vis the state sector in search of careers” (Ahmad, 1993:210).

The government initiatives, which restructured higher education in order to meet the demands of the private sector, also contributed to youth's integration into the market economy. The number of public schools, where the medium of instruction was English, increased five-fold during the ANAP rule, rising to ninety-nine in 1988 (Cumhuriyet, February 20th, 1988, p.8). The private schools, where different foreign languages were taught also steadily increased during the ANAP years. Referring to "English as the sine qua non for a successful career"(Ahmad, 1993:210) and relatedly for upward mobility, the ANAP governments pushed the popular demand for these schools. Enrollment in those prestigious public and private high schools was also the key to get into the university and particularly to a prestigious university. However, access to privileged high schools and universities became highly competitive throughout the 1980s. The teenagers had to take the nationwide exams held once a year in order to get a place at the institutions of higher education. In 1985 for instance, 125,000 teenagers competed in the exam for English-oriented public and private high schools (Cumhuriyet, March 29th, 1985, p.8), while in 1988 the number of exam-takers rose to 191,000 (ibid, February 20th, 1988,p.8). Only

158 ten percent of those who took the exam ultimately could make it to these prestigious high schools. The competition was also challenging for entry to the university. In 1984 437,000 high school students and graduates took the nationwide university entrance exam (Milliyet, February 28th, 1984, p.6), while the number of exam-takers increased significantly in years, reaching 691,000 in 1989 (ibid, April 4th, 1989, p.3). According to official records, in 1989, only fifteen percent of those who took the university entrance exam could enroll at a university program (Gürüz, 2000:322).

The series of nationwide exams for prestigious high schools and universities led many public commentators to refer to Turkey as an “exam society”, where young people had to exclusively focus on study and to compete with their peers to increase their options in life. Since the school curriculums felt short of preparing students for the highly competitive exams, the students had to attend the private tutoring centers at the weekends in order to score high in the nationwide exams. It is possible to conclude that the government initiatives to incorporate urban youth into the market economy triggered an abrupt and radical shift in the value orientations of better-educated youth. Throughout the 1980s hard work, competition, individualism and the desires for upward mobility and personal enrichment replaced the claims to social justice and equality, which had mobilized the pre-1980 coup generation of educated youth around revolutionary ideals. It is thus possible to argue that the ANAP’s depoliticizing economic discourse that aimed to spread neoliberal values among youth and related policies in the area of education became its authentic contributions to the mechanisms for realizing incorporation as moderation and control towards youth.

Incorporation as moderation and control in the 1990s: Persistence of Limited-pluralism and Non-tolerance towards emerging youth mobilizations

This chapter has posited that fragmentation in the party system resurfaced in the 1990s with the emergence of two center-left and two center-right parties as well as with the growing influence of pro-Islamist, nationalist, and pro-Kurdish parties. However, unlike the 1960s and the 1970s, during which a fragmented party system along with elite polarization in pressing economic and political issues, had led the political elites to participate themselves in youth mobilization in order to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rival elites, the Turkish elites in the 1990s refrained from getting involved in youth mobilization. Rather, a cohesive elite structure

159 characterized by the dominant elites' consensus on the political incorporation of moderately oppositional sectors and the adoption of repression against the rising Kurdish and Islamist movements, also forged a common stance among the elites in their approach to elite-youth linkages. It is also important to note that most of the politicians in the 1990s started their political careers in the 1960s and the 1970s. Having adopted partisan incorporation of youth in the past and experienced its destabilizing outcomes that eventually precipitated a military coup, the political society as a whole also refrained from facilitating the organized politics of youth and instead sought to keep youth away from extreme politicization. Therefore, incorporation as moderation and control that was first installed by the military administration and persisted during the one-party ANAP rule continued to shape the elites' linkages with the youth population in the 1990s.

Incorporation as moderation and control functioned through two mechanisms in the 1990s: First, while lifting the legal restrictions on youth's conventional participation (voting and party membership), the political elites adopted new legislation that imposed some limits on university students' affiliation with political parties in order to prevent the politicization of youth beyond certain limits. Second, emerging youth mobilizations within left-wing, Kurdish, and Islamist movements elicited little tolerance from the state with the permanent goal of keeping the majority of youth away from oppositional politics.

First of all, part of the constitutional amendment package in 1995 that repealed some of the restrictions on political rights and civil liberties were several provisions concerning the political rights of youth. The amendments lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen; allowed university students to become political party members; decreased the age for party membership from twenty-one to eighteen; and permitted political parties to establish youth branches (Özbudun and Gençkaya, 2009:39). Those amendments removed some of the military- implanted constitutional restrictions and bans on youth political participation. In short, while Turkey’s growing number of youth aged between 18 and 21 were finally granted the right to vote and to become political party members, legal barriers to university students’ party membership were also partially lifted. However, it is important to note that the political elites’ approach to youth participation still did not diverge from a limited-pluralist framework that aimed to control youth agency and especially the political agency of educated youth by not allowing the enhancement of youth participation beyond certain limits. While the parliament refrained from

160 repealing the restrictions on university students’ freedom of association, a new article was added to the Law on Higher Education that imposed some limits on university students’ exercise of the right of becoming a political party member. The new article banned campaigning for political parties in the campus. During the parliamentary discussion on the proposed article, a parliamentary deputy from the ANAP defended the bill in the following words:

This legislation is a must. What we experienced before the 1980 coup, the turmoil that resulted from the overt politicization of university students and professors, created devastating consequences. That is why a bill banning to campaign for a political party at the university campuses is well-directed. Science can only flourish in free environments; the countries that are under the strong influences of particular ideologies lag behind scientific development. Thereby, it is important to free universities from ideological influences and political polarization; that is for the best interest of this country. (Parliamentary Proceedings, February 2nd, 1997: 168-170).

While the MP emphasized youth mobilization in the 1960s and the 1970s to justify the new legislation and thus the need to moderate youth demands for political participation, he also underlined that university campuses should become depoliticized spaces. According to parliamentary proceedings, the MP’s speech largely received the support of other parliamentary deputies from different parties.

Second, incorporation as moderation and control was also revealed in the 1990s through a non-tolerant attitude towards emerging forms of political mobilization among youth. Parallel to the rise of the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement and the emergence of a pro- democracy civil society, young people and specifically the university students also reappeared on the political scene in the 1990s. While the Kurdish and Islamist movements recruited a considerable number of their supporters from among youth, a student movement protesting the tuition hike also emerged at the university campuses in the second half of the 1990s. Two research participants recruited for this study who were undergraduate students between 1992 and 1997 at a prestigious university in Istanbul described the campus environment as follows:

We witnessed the impact of political transformation unfolding in the broader political arena on our campus. It was the period of the rise of the Islamist and Kurdish movements as well as the revival of Turkish nationalism. When I entered university, the Left was declining. The student

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movement that emerged in the late 1980s had lost its sphere of influence. The left-wing groups fraught with internal struggles had largely gone underground. We became a new generation of left-wing students the traditional Left failed to make a connection.30

There emerged a movement of the Kurdish university students. However, they did not connect with the larger oppositional groups in the campus. Rather, since the period was the peak of the armed struggle between the PKK and the Turkish army, the Kurdish university students after undergoing an initial period of politicization in big cities were attending the PKK and participating in the armed struggle. I mean most of them dropped out of school and joined the PKK.31

Even though it is not possible to cite any numbers on youth involvement within the Kurdish and Islamist movements, most of the PKK members were youth and the university students were also quite visible within the Islamist movement especially during the protests against the headscarf ban. Furthermore, as the first interviewee quoted above revealed, a new generation of left-wing students, who did not adopt the action strategies and the ideological orientations of traditional left-wing groups, also increased their influence in the university campuses especially with the outbreak of student protests in the second half of the 1990s. In particular, a student movement came into existence led by new-left student groups, when the ruling coalition of DYP-SHP announced a tuition hike of approximately 300 percent in the summer of 1995. The initial student response to the tuition hike was a public petition campaign in that summer, which resulted in the collection of 350,000 signatures to be submitted to the Higher Education Council (İnce, December 24th 2014,bianet.org). When the classes resumed in the Fall of 1995, leftist organizations and autonomous student initiatives sought to mobilize university students over the tuition hike. Those mobilization attempts soon turned into more concerted action to instigate a student movement, when different organizations and initiatives established a common platform under the banner of "Coordination." The new generation of student activists campaigned for free education as well as for the academic and institutional autonomy of public universities, which were severely curtailed by the military-endorsed 1982 Constitution. Ünüvar (2011) argues that the Coordination soon derived considerable support from a large segment of the student

30 Interview by author, October 2014. 31 Interview by author, November 2014.

162 population as well as from the broader public, appropriating a humorous, but also a non- ideological and cause-oriented discourse that exclusively drove attention to the problems of higher education.

In order to keep youth political participation within moderate limits and to prevent larger numbers of university students from engaging with the movements considered as ‘radical', the ruling elites showed an intolerant attitude towards organized youth and took measures to deter youth activism. For example, the Minister of Interior Affairs, Ülkü Güney referred to a rally organized by the student movement activists in the following words:

On March 23rd, 1996, a group of students in the capital city of Ankara organized a rally with the so-called purpose of protesting the increase in tuition fees. The rally was illegal, with no permission received from the local authorities in advance. Individuals affiliated with illegal organizations reaped this opportunity and took part in the rally holding the banners of their organizations and shouting illegal slogans. The rally eventually distorted the public order and blocked the traffic for three hours. (Parliamentary Proceedings, March 27th, 1996: 514).

Parallel to the Minister’s criminalizing discourse towards the student activists, the policing of left-wing students also became an everyday routine in many university campuses. A research participant, who identified himself as left-wing during his undergraduate years and actively engaged with the student movement, talked about the police coercion against the organized students in the 1990s:

The campus police were beating us frequently. They usually told us that “why don’t you take up arms and try to defeat us with arms?”. I mean they tried to provoke us, they wanted to drag us into violence. That is because they perceived our non-violent democratic movement as a threat. We were indeed a threat; we were getting grassroots. They sought to marginalize us by provoking us to adopt violent means.32

Similarly, when eleven student activists opened up a banner in the parliament which read “No Tuition” on February 29th, 1996, the state, already alarmed by the extent of student mobilization, started to engage in concerted action to crack down on the student movement. While the

32 Interview by author, October 2014.

163 protesting students were immediately arrested, some of them were accused of being members of an illegal organization and were confined to several years of imprisonment. Amidst the criminalization of the students who opened up the banner in the parliament, the state intention to repress the student movement was also revealed in the unbridled police violence during the student demonstrations. In a parliament debate on police violence against the students a representative from the Democratic Left Party stated that many students were injured by the police intervention during a student march in the capital city of Ankara on March 23rd, 1996; 270 of the protestors were detained, and 26 of them were jailed following a court order (Parliamentary Proceedings, June 11th, 1996:475).

Not only student activists but also young people who sympathized with leftist ideas encountered concerted state repression in the 1990s. For example, on December 26th, 1995, the police detained eleven youth (most of them teenagers) in the city of Manisa upon allegations of being a member of a so-called leftist-terrorist organization. The families soon found out that their children became victims of sexual harassment and torture under custody. The so-called ‘Manisa Youth Affair’ attracted considerable public attention and fuelled extensive debates about practices of torture by the police and the security personnel, leading to a huge public campaign for the release of the Manisa youth. The Manisa youth denied all accusations, most of which were founded upon controversial evidence or testimonies under torture, but the judge accepted the prosecutor’s indictment and decided that the youth be tried in the notorious State Security Courts33 (İnce, 23 December 2014, bianet.org).

33 The State Security Courts, initially established in 1973 and dissolved by a Constitutional Court mandate in 1976, were reintroduced in the 1982 Constitution and became one of the effective coercive actors in countering particular forms of popular dissent. The Constitution described them as "special courts established to deal with offences against the indivisible integrity of the State with its territory and nation, the free democratic order, or against the Republic……and offences directly involving the internal and external security of the State"(Turkish Constitution article 143, 1982 cited by Joseph R. Crowley Program 1997:2134). In other words, the jurisdiction of the State Security Courts included "political offenses and serious criminal offenses deemed threatening to the State" and their independence was also seriously disputed due to "the participation of a military judge on every State Security Court (ibid:2131). The State Security courts became pivotal to apply concerted legal coercion against contentious sectors and in particular against pro-Kurdish activists and the radical Left. Finally, the Anti-Terror Law introduced in 1991 to effectively counter the Kurdish insurgency also significantly improved the coercive capacity of the Turkish state. While the vague definition of ‘terrorist activities' in the Law that increased the discretionary powers of the police and the judiciary in approaching to the cases of terrorism allowed the state to apply the law in countering oppositional activists not affiliated with the Kurdish movement, the Anti-Terror Law also "placed important restrictions" on individual rights and freedoms (Berksoy et al. 2013: 7).

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Finally, Islamist youth also encountered concerted action by the state that aimed at ‘secularizing’ youth conceived as sympathizing with Islamist ideas or affiliated with Islamist organizations. The memorandum submitted by the National Security Council to the government on February 28th, 1997 (the so-called post-modern coup), which listed the measures to combat religious reactionism, indeed emphasized youth as the primary target group to ‘be freed' from the influence of political Islam. The memorandum stressed the need to fill the minds of young generations with the love of Atatürk, and with patriotism; to increase awareness among youth for raising Turkish society to the level of contemporary civilization; and to protect youth from the influence of various quarters (quoted by Eldem, 2013:340). The major (and the most controversial) instrument of the top down secularization became the headscarf ban imposed upon veiled university students34. The headscarf constituting a ‘political symbol’ (a symbol allegedly used by the Islamists in search of an Islamist regime) became the major motto of the secularist establishment (military, centrist parties, the Higher Education Council) and was also hyped by the mainstream media as the significant manifestation of Islamic resurgence in Turkey (Navaro- Yashin, 2002). The headscarf issue thus fed the fears of secular publics about the extent of the so-called ‘Islamist threat' and led the university administrations to seek repressive mechanisms against veiled students.

Veiled students in the 1990s were asked to remove their headscarves if they wished to register, enter the campus, and write the exams. The ‘persuasion rooms', where university faculty "tried to dissuade the students from wearing any form of hijab"(Öktem, 2011:107) constituted one of the most notorious practices of university administrations in enforcing the headscarf ban.

34 Turkey's ‘headscarf issue' indeed dated back to mid-1980s. In 1984, a veiled student in the city of Bursa was suspended from the university, as she had refused to unveil at the campus. As the headscarf debates had intensified, the then President Evren authoritatively declared in 1987 that female students could not enter university campuses with their heads veiled. The Higher Education Council reiterated Evren's statement five days later, issuing a decision that enforced the headscarf ban in universities (Aydın and Taşkın,2015:418). Following the decision of the Council, the headscarf issue became a major area of political contestation in Turkey. The ruling MP in alliance with the TPP, both of which wanted to appeal to the pious segments of the society, amended the dress code article of the Law on Higher Education in 1988, allowing female students to wear headscarves in universities. However, only a year after, the Constitutional Court interfered and declared that wearing headscarves within public institutions violated the Constitution. From 1989 to 1997, some universities imposed the headscarf ban, but most of them avoided the ban, allowing female students to enter the campus with their heads covered (Özipek,2008). Following the so-called postmodern coup of February 28th, 1997, however, among the military-imposed measures to defeat the rise of political Islam was the enforcement of the ban on the headscarf in all public institutions including university campuses (Çınar, 2008).

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A research participant, who attended university in the late 1990s as a headscarved student, recalled the difficulties she had experienced in the campus:

Those were the years the 28th February process [the so-called post-modern coup to combat Islamic resurgence] made a huge impact. I remember that the university administration did not accept photos for registration that included a headscarf. In the winter term, they placed gendarmerie at the campus doors to deter the entry of veiled students. We could still wear our headscarves outdoors, but we were not allowed to enter university buildings without unveiling our heads. In my second year at school, the bans became harsher. Since I did not unveil, I went through a disciplinary investigation and received a warning. 35

In the late 1990s, female students who refused to remove their headscarves had gone through disciplinary investigations, some of them were temporally or permanently suspended from school and some left the school in protest (also see reports by Mazlum-Der, http://istanbul.mazlumder.org/tr/; and Akder, http://www.ak-der.org/tr-TR/anasayfa.aspx). The headscarf ban was even enforced in Prayer and Preacher High Schools, where, in the past female students were allowed to sit in class with their heads veiled (see Mazlum-Der, 2000). The headscarf ban left a traumatic imprint in the memories of veiled women and pious segments of society and also constituted one of the major axes of societal polarization among secularist and Islamist publics in the following years (Aydın and Taşkın, 2015:418).36

35 Interview by author, January 2015. 36 A number of educational reforms became another state instrument to enable secularization among youth. First, the extension of compulsory education from five to eight years in 1997, a policy-decision that could be identified as progressive in another context, was also shaped by the urge to reinforce secularization of pious youth. The proposal to extend the duration of compulsory education was included among the recommended measures to the government at the 28 February 1997 NSC Meeting (the so-called post-modern coup) to counteract religious reactionism. Many critiques agree that the recommendation primarily aimed to “scrap the middle school section of the religious Prayer and Preacher Schools” (Heper and Keyman,1998:270). Even though these schools had been operating under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, the military elites came to believe that "the values and attitudes inculcated in students at these schools could easily turn them into proponents of political Islam"(Heper and Güney,2000: 640). Consequently, pious youth who wished to take a religion-intensive education by attending the Prayer and Preacher Schools were in a sense constructed as "potential threats" to the secular regime. Second, the Higher Education Council endorsed a new university admissions system in 1998, which made it quite difficult for the graduates of the Prayer and Preacher Schools to enroll in academic programs outside the field of theology. In other words, the graduates of the Prayer Schools, until the repeal of the regulation in 2009(NTV, June 20th, 2009), were de facto excluded from studying social sciences, law, engineering, and medicine. Those who wished to enroll in university programs other than theology thus had almost no choice, but to prefer ‘secular' high schools.

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To conclude, having learned from the experience of the 1971 military intervention, the 1980 coup coalition came to understand that sheer coercion proved insufficient to demobilize youth activists and to deter the recurrence of youth contention against the state. Therefore, the coup makers adopted non-coercive and institutionalized channels, which this study refers to as ‘incorporation as moderation and control', to moderate youth demands for participation and to exert greater control over the political aspirations of youth. Incorporation as moderation and control was realized through limited-pluralist polices in the area of youth participation and through the discourse of creating an Atatürkist youth. An elite structure characterized by relative cohesion that came into the existence in the 1980s and persisted through the 1990s also led the dominant elites to refrain from mobilizing youth for partisan purposes. The elite consensus on moderating the demands of youth for participation led the Turkish elites to adopt incorporation as moderation and control. Incorporation as moderation and control was put into effect in the 1980s and the 1990s by preserving the limited-pluralist framework in youth participation, showing little tolerance to emerging youth activisms, and by a depoliticizing economic discourse.

4.4 The Impact of Incorporation as Moderation and Control: Youth Demobilization in the 1980s and 1990s

This chapter further contends that incorporation as moderation and control significantly restricted the spaces available for youth to pursue oppositional politics, weakened the organizational capacity of activist youth, and prevented the grassroot-ization of youth mobilization. As a result, considerable number of the post-1980 coup generations of youth alienated from the political arena and developed disenchantment even with conventional forms of political participation. For example, a research participant, Müge Iplikçi, a writer and journalist, who was an undergraduate student between 1984 and 1988 at the prestigious Istanbul University, described her relation to political activism as follows:

I was not political. Indeed, being political frightened me. I was really scared. If I could learn to do politics before the coup, I could also become a militant. However, having witnessed the repression against youth after the coup, I was afraid.37

37 Interview by author, October 2014

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Iplikçi’s narrative reveals that military coercion against organized youth groups largely deterred youth from involving in oppositional politics. Legal restrictions on youth political participation also played a salient role in restricting the channels youth could politically express themselves. Similarly, a research participant, who attended university in Istanbul between the years 1992 and 1997, also described in detail how the elite attempts to moderate youth demands for political participation with the ultimate goal of preventing youth contention against the state, shaped young people’s relation to politics and political participation in the 1980s and the 1990s:

The 1980 coup, which resulted in the imprisonment and even the execution of organized youth, largely disconnected youth with the left-wing movement. The regulations of the Higher Education Council played a salient role to prevent the politicization of university youth as well. That is why when our generation initiated a student movement in the second half of the 1990s; we adopted the slogan of “free and democratic university”. The universities were being governed like high schools; all the university presidents acted like high school principals……In fact, after the coup, university students largely remained politically quiescent for a long time. It was in 1988-89 that university students for the first time after the coup engaged in organized politics by attempting to revive the student movement. The student politicization only happened within student clubs, student clubs like music clubs that looked like apolitical but included students with political goals. However, en masse mobilization did not come into existence. 38

The research participant’s narrative reveals how state repression on the one hand and the legal restrictions on the political rights of youth, on the other hand, created an abrupt transformation in educated youth's relation to oppositional politics and in particular to the left-wing movement. Even though, as the interviewee also attracted attention, by 1985, university campuses witnessed the revival of student activism (and again in the late 1990s), emerging youth mobilizations soon vanished amidst systematic coercion against activist youth. As a result, oppositional youth movements, unlike the 1960s and the 1970s, largely failed to achieve en masse mobilization. However, incorporation as moderation and control also culminated in a broader trend of youth disengagement from politics and political participation. One of the first and most comprehensive quantitative study on Turkish youth's political and cultural orientations conducted by Konrad

38 Interview by author, November 2014.

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Adenauer Foundation in 1998 and titled “Turkish Youth 98: The Silent Mass under Analysis” well manifests the degree of youth withdrawal from politics and a feeling of political exclusion among youth. According to the survey results, in 1998, only 3,7 percent of youth were the members of political parties and only 2,5 percent were affiliated with a civic association (p.114). While more than 50 percent of youth believed that none of the political parties paid attention to youth problems (p.114), most of the research participants stated that young people in Turkey were excluded from the political decision-making processes (p.139). It is also important to note that more than 50 percent of the research participants believed that young people in Turkey were politically pacified (p.139).

4.5 Conclusion

This chapter has raised the question of “why did the Turkish state, unlike the 1960s and the 1970s, remain largely insusceptible to sustained youth dissent in the period from 1983 to 2002?" In order to address this question it has traced the trajectory of elite-youth linkages and it has offered two causal mechanisms to explain the outcome of the lack of sustained youth contention against the state in the 1980s and the 1990s: first, it has explored how the relatively cohesive elite structure that persisted in the post-1980 coup era shaped the dominant elites' approach to youth participation and relatedly the path of youth incorporation they adopted. Second, it has discussed the impact of elite interferences with youth politics on the trajectory of youth political participation in the 1980s and the 1990s. It has argued that relative elite cohesion in the post- 1980 coup era led the Turkish elites to refrain from involving themselves in youth mobilization and instead to moderate the demands of youth for political participation. In order to exert control over youth political agency, the Turkish elites subscribed to incorporation as moderation and control, which prevented the escalation of contentious youth politics and eventually alienated youth from the political arena.

In tandem with the political discourse adopted by the 1980 coup coalition, the Turkish elites in the 1980s and the 1990s frequently emphasized the need to sustain order, stability and societal peace and not to return to the pre-1980 context of anarchy and terror (Mert 2002:65, Yalman 2002:41 cited by Berksoy 2007:47). Furthermore, new socioeconomic and cultural dynamics that generated crises at the level of state-society relations aggravated the threat perceptions of the Turkish elites and reinforced their united stance in sustaining the economic

169 and political order. While the transition to a neoliberal economy significantly changed the dynamics of capital-labor relations to the dismay of the labor, the market-led economy that became prone to crises starting with the late 1980s, created unease for the salaried sectors as a whole. The economic tensions reinforced long-standing cultural divisions as well. As the Kurdish insurgency escalated by the early 1990s, the rising counter-elites of the Islamists increased their sphere of influence over the political and civil society. In order to overcome the emerging and potential crises at the level of state-society relations, the dominant Turkish elites of the top military, high judiciary, centrist parties, and the metropolitan secular bourgeoisie became and remained relatively cohesive in three major areas: First, they did not diverge from market- oriented growth. Second, they sought to moderate the demands of urban sectors for participation through limited-pluralist legal arrangements. Third, they agreed to rely on repressive measures to counteract the rising radical movements of the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement.

This chapter has contended that relative elite cohesion considerably shaped the micro arena of elite-youth linkages. Preferring not to involve in youth mobilization, the Turkish elites adopted ‘incorporation as moderation and control' which entailed elite attempts at moderating youth demands for participation with the ultimate goal of preventing the recurrence of sustained youth contention against the state. Incorporation as moderation and control, which was first instituted by the 1980 coup coalition, persisted in the aftermath of military rule and was put into effect by three mechanisms: the Turkish elites largely preserved the limited-pluralist legal arrangements that put significant restrictions on the political rights of youth; they adopted a depoliticizing economic discourse seeking to cultivate neoliberal values among youth and to integrate youth into the structures of the neoliberal economy; and they showed an intolerant attitude towards the newly politicized youth sectors. This chapter has also posited that incorporation as moderation and control significantly curtailed the channels for oppositional youth politics, limited the organizational capacity of youth and effectively prevented the grassroot-ization of youth mobilization. Eventually, the post-1980 coup generations of youth in Turkey did not only refrain from contentious politics: a considerable number of young people even disengaged from conventional forms of political participation.

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5 Elite Hegemony, Hybrid Incorporation, and Youth (de- )Mobilization in the late AKP Period (2010-2016)

5.1 Introduction

In the post-2010 period, particular sectors of youth re-emerged on the political scene in Turkey as a contentious force. As Kurdish and left-wing students staged campus protests and organized academic events that were critical of the government policies, youth activists engaging with the feminist, LGBTQI, and environmental movements also became more visible in the public sphere. The image of contemporary youth as ‘politically apathetic’ more dramatically changed, when well-educated and secular youth took to the streets en masse during the 2013 Gezi Park protests to stand against the increasingly authoritarian and paternalistic rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). However, youth participants of the Gezi Park protests returned ‘home’ after two weeks of street politics amidst police violence and detentions and this spontaneous youth mobilization has not so far turned into a more organized form of oppositional youth politics. Anti-government youth in general largely disengaged from politics and remained politically quiescent in the aftermath of the Gezi Resistance. But, youth sectors in support of the ruling AKP became further politicized in the post-2013 period as party activists and members of pro-government non-governmental organizations. These youth sectors staged pro-government street protests and organized various academic and social events that promoted the ruling party’s policies and ideology.

This chapter will address the question of ‘why and how did the ruling AKP encounter youth contention and largely manage to contain it, while promoting pro-government youth mobilization?’ In order to address this question, this chapter will trace the trajectory of ruling party-youth linkages specifically focusing on the period from 2010 to 2016. It will argue that an elite structure characterized by “hegemony” that came into existence in the post-2010 period significantly shaped the pattern of ruling party-youth linkages, which in turn played a salient role in structuring youth (de-)mobilization. Elite hegemony led the ruling party to moderate the demands of oppositional youth for political participation and to get involved in the (counter- )mobilization of pro-government youth through the process of hybrid incorporation.

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The rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power in 2002, the leadership of which were associated with Islamist politics in the 1990s, became a watershed movement in Turkish politics. The AKP rule initially revived elite fragmentation in the Turkish political arena characterized by growing tensions and power struggles between the secularist elites (military, high judiciary, presidency and the CHP) and the AKP. The secularist elites claimed that the AKP kept a “secret agenda to replace the secular regime with an Islamist one” (Kuru, 2006:136) and turned to rely on highly undemocratic strategies to remove the AKP from power. The AKP emerged victorious out of its power struggles with the secularist bloc, which created an elite structure characterized by “hegemony”. By elite hegemony, I refer to a concentrated power configuration, wide differentiation and mixed integration among the influential elites in the period from 2010 to 2016. Specifically, hegemony at the elite level was characterized by the AKP’s consolidation of its one-party rule in the post-2010 period and its increasing control over key state institutions and national policy-making. The AKP successfully curbed the tutelary powers of the secularist military and the high judiciary and it also infiltrated state bureaucracy with party loyalists (a concentrated power configuration). However, while the electoral arena manifested elite diversity with competing and ideologically distinct political parties (wide differentiation), interactions at the elite level revealed contradicting dynamics. The leaders of the major political parties held diverging views over major political and economic issues, but the ruling party elites, bureaucratic elites and economic elites largely remained cohesive (mixed integration).

It is important to note that a number of crises at the elite and societal levels increased the existential security of the AKP and led the AKP elites to conceive of their hegemony as fragile. The threats to its power from the secularist elites during its first two terms in office had already concerned the AKP elites about the trajectory of the AKP’s one-party rule. In the post-2010 period, another crisis at the elite level, specifically the split within the ruling elite marked by the breakdown of the de facto alliance between the AKP and the religious Gülen movement, further increased the ruling AKP’s perception of threats to its one-party rule. Furthermore, popular mobilization during the Gezi Park protests in 2013, led the AKP to feel more insecure in power due to the possibility of overthrow by a popular uprising. The response of the ruling party to these crises at the elite and societal levels was to turn to authoritarianism in its relations with the rival elites and the anti-government sectors of society. In order to maintain its hegemony in the

172 political arena, the ruling AKP created a competitive authoritarian regime characterized by the continued existence of competitive elections, but by increasing restrictions on the exercise of individual liberties and political rights (Esen and Gumuscu 2016). The AKP’s authoritarian turn significantly debilitated the capacity of the oppositional elites and the broader societal opposition to exert influence over the political processes.

This chapter will argue that since elite hegemony was not fully consolidated in the period from 2010 to 2016, the AKP elites, in order to maintain their monopoly over political and state power, established two types of linkages with social forces and youth. On the one hand, as part of its broader attempts at weakening the societal opposition, the ruling AKP sought to restrict the channels through which oppositional youth sectors could relate to politics. On the other hand, in tandem with its goal of mobilizing its support base, the AKP pursued to politically activate youth sectors that were supportive of the AKP rule.

This chapter will argue that it is the changing dynamics of elite politics that shaped in part the trajectory of youth politics in post-2010 Turkey. During a period of intense elite polarization, the ruling AKP strategically opted for democratizing reforms, which provided the civil society at large with more opportunities for mobilization and organization, in order to weaken the political legitimacy of secularist tutelary elites. However, when the AKP established political hegemony in the post-2010 period, albeit a fragile one, it re-shaped its linkages with youth that ultimately presented threats, obstacles, and opportunities to youth mobilization. When the AKP perceived threats to its emerging hegemony in the political arena, it adopted hybrid incorporation towards youth. On the one hand, as part of its broader attempts at weakening the societal opposition, the ruling AKP sought to foster political disengagement among oppositional youth (incorporation as moderation and control). On the other hand, it pursued to politically activate youth sectors with conservative backgrounds in order to benefit from youth activism in consolidating its hegemony (partisan incorporation).The ruling party manipulated pluralist policies in the area of youth participation to its own advantage, adopted the discourse of and related public policies for “creating a pious youth” and also undertook a number of corporatizing initiatives to realize hybrid youth incorporation.

This chapter will further contend that incorporation as moderation and control enabled the ruling AKP to prevent the escalation of oppositional youth mobilization and it eventually

173 fostered political disengagement among anti-government youth. In contrast, partisan incorporation integrated considerable number of youth with conservative backgrounds into the political arena and opened up new spaces and channels that facilitated the political activism of pro-government youth.

To explain the outcome of youth (de-)mobilizations in the post-2010 period in Turkey, this chapter will first discuss the AKP’s rise to power and analyze the shift in elite structure from fragmentation to hegemony (independent variable). Second, it will discuss the sources of youth mobilization during the Gezi Park protests and will highlight how an elite structure characterized by (fragile) hegemony shaped the course of ruling party-youth linkages that resulted in hybrid incorporation (first causal mechanism and intervening variable). Finally, it will analyze the impact of hybrid incorporation on the trajectory of youth political participation in the period from 2010 to 2016. (second causal mechanism).

In analyzing the emergence of an elite structure characterized by hegemony, this study will rely on secondary sources on Turkish politics as well as on reports by national and international agencies on the contemporary political conditions in Turkey. In order to investigate the sources of youth mobilization against the government during the 2013 Gezi Park protests and the functioning of incorporation as moderation and control, it will draw upon in-depth interviews conducted for this study with young people who participated in the Gezi Park protests. The interviews were conducted with university students and recent graduates in İstanbul and the capital city of Ankara in two rounds: June 2013-January 2014 and October 2015-March 2016. When analyzing the trajectory of counter-mobilization by pro-government youth and the process of partisan incorporation, this study will rely on in-depth interviews conducted with the AKP youth wing members in İstanbul from August 2013 to December 2013.

5.2 The Elite Structure in the AKP Period: From Fragmentation to Fragile Hegemony

By focusing on the composition of and the interactions among the influential elites, this section will analyze the type of the elite structure in the period from 2002 to 2016. This section will proceed as follows: first, it will discuss the AKP’s rise to power and the revival of elite fragmentation in the political arena characterized by intense conflict between the ruling Islamist elites and the secularist bloc. Second, it will analyze the elite transformation from fragmentation

174 to hegemony. Lastly, it will discuss the crises at the elite and societal levels that aggravated the ruling AKP’s threat perceptions to its hegemony. It will finally investigate how the AKP turned to authoritarianism and created a hybrid regime in order to sustain its political hegemony.

The rise of the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power in 2002 restored elite fragmentation in the Turkish political arena characterized by growing tensions between the secularist elites (military, high judiciary, presidency and the CHP) and the AKP that fuelled significant political crises. The secularist elites accused the ruling AKP of attempting to replace the secular regime with an Islamist one and adopted controversial strategies to remove the AKP from power. To counteract the secularist elites, the AKP represented itself as a moderate-Islamist party pursuing to curb the tutelary powers of the secularist civil-military bureaucracy and to democratize state-society relations.

The so-called 28 February process, which started with the National Security Council’s directives to the government on February 28th 1997 to prevent the rise of political Islam, included repressive measures to fight against the political and public manifestations of Islamic resurgence. As discussed in the previous chapter, the adoption of repression against the Islamist movement became one of the major features of cohesion among the secularist elites of the military, high judiciary, and centrist parties. Among the measures the secularist bloc adopted to counteract the rise of Islamist elites, was the ban of the pro-Islamist Welfare Party (RP) by the Constitutional Court in 1998 on the basis of its anti-secular activities that allegedly threatened the secular foundations of the regime. The Welfare cadres already established the Virtue Party in December 1997 to resume their political activities. However, unlike the RP’s electoral victory in 1995, the Virtue Party (FP) came only third in the 1999 elections, garnering 15 per cent of the votes. The party’s declining electoral support crystallized the intra-party divisions between traditionalist and reformist cadres who came to have diverging views on the future political stance and the strategies of the party. The reformists led by Tayyip Erdogan, criticized the old- aged traditionalists’ assertive and uncompromising attitude towards the secular establishment and proposed a more moderate and compromising politics to increase the party’s electoral support and to gain acceptance as a legitimate actor in the political arena. The party cadres eventually split, when the traditionalists established the Felicity Party (SP) in 2001 and the reformists the Justice and Development Party (AKP) the same year. While the SP was sharply defeated in the 2002 elections garnering only 2 percent of the votes, the AKP came first in the

175 elections with 34 percent and established a one-party government. In the 2002 elections, two centre-right parties, ANAP and DYP and the nationalist MHP stayed out of the parliament; only the centre-left CHP managed to gain seats in the parliament. The AKP guaranteed a second term in office, when the party increased its vote in the 2007 elections polling 46,5 percent.

The declining public legitimacy of the secularist elites (military, high judiciary, centrist parties) played a pivotal role in the rise of the pro-Islamist AKP to power. First of all, public dissatisfaction with the centrist parties grew stronger and worked to the AKP’s advantage. The AKP elites used the acronym Ak Parti, meaning “uncontaminated” and “pure” in Turkish, to distinguish their party from the centrist parties that “involved in widespread corruption” in the last decade (Yavuz, 2006:1). In addition, the devastating economic crisis in 2001, which led many people to lose their jobs, savings and businesses overnight, also enabled the AKP to “enhance its power”(Tepe, 2006:108) vis-à-vis the secularist centrist parties that proved incapable throughout the 1990s to solve the economic problems. The AKP, a brand new party offering economic growth and (neo-)populist redistribution schemes, managed to create hope among both impoverished groups and the rising middle classes with conservative backgrounds. Second, the secularist elites’ hardliner stance in counteracting the public and political manifestations of the Islamist movement reinforced the long-standing social cleavages between the secular and religious publics and further politicized the Islamist identity. The sense of “having been excluded and discriminated against by the secularist centre”(Hale and Özbudun, 2010:33) led the conservative masses to conceive of the AKP as a political force that would represent their cultural, social, and economic aspirations. The AKP’s promises during the election campaigns that effectively and concisely emphasized the political and economic problems created by the secularist elites contributed to its rising popularity. The AKP promised to end corruption, to remove restrictions on the exercise of individual liberties and political rights (the most pronounced restriction was the headscarf ban), and to fight against poverty. Furthermore, to override the possible interferences of the military and to appeal to the secular ‘centre-right’ constituency, the AKP adopted a pro-democracy and a pro-EU stance to distinguish itself from the earlier Islamist parties, which further enabled the party to establish a broad support base.

Tuğal (2009) argues that the AKP realized a “passive revolution” by absorbing the radical Islamist challenge against the market economy and the secular regime. In other words, it

176 managed to incorporate the radical Islamists and their followers into a platform that included neoliberalism, (partial) secularization and stronger linkages with the West. This passive revolution thus enabled the AKP to simultaneously appeal to the rising Islamist bourgeoisie and the established secular bourgeoisie and to converge their interests that played a significant role in its rise to power and consolidation of its one-party rule in the successive elections. The economic and political support of the so-called Islamist bourgeoisie, economic entrepreneurs with provincial and conservative backgrounds, which enhanced their economic activities after the transition to a market economy, became pivotal in the AKP’s electoral success (Yavuz 2006; Öniş 2006:207). In the late 1990s, the measures to counteract Islamic resurgence negatively influenced Muslim businessmen as they were excluded from government bids. The past pro- Islamist parties’ convoluted and impractical economic promises also conflicted with the Muslim bourgeoisie’s pursuit of integration with the international business community (Tuğal, 2009:8). The AKP thus emerged as a more viable alternative for the rising Muslim bourgeoisie to advance their interests. Similarly, the established big business, which developed “tense relationships” with the pro-Islamist parties in the past (Öniş 2006:220) and became part of the secularist bloc in the 1990s due to their discontent with the growing influence of the Islamist economic elites, also seemed appreciative of the AKP’s economic program. The TÜSİAD, the business association of the Istanbul-based established bourgeoisie, highlighted in its periodic reports “the overall improvement in the macroeconomic performance of the Turkish economy and praise[d] the government’s commitment to fiscal discipline as a key ingredient of stability”(ibid:221). Also, the established business appreciated the “pro-active stance” of the ruling AKP for pursuing full membership to the European Union (ibid).

The previous chapter has argued that despite fragmentation in the party system, the dominant elites remained cohesive throughout the 1990s in their approach to major political issues. The AKP’s rise to power, however, revived elite fragmentation in the political arena in the 2000s characterized by intense power struggles between the ruling party elites and the secularist bloc. Even though the AKP leadership declared that they had dissociated from their Islamist past, moderated their political stance, and that the AKP would function as a centre-right party rather than a pro-Islamist one, the coalition of secularist elites (top military, high judiciary, presidency, and the CHP), frequently claimed that the AKP “preserv[ed] a secret agenda to replace the secular state with an Islamic one”(Kuru, 2006:136). Between 2002 and 2010, Turkey

177 thus witnessed a crisis-driven political arena where the secularist elites used a plethora of strategies to challenge the AKP rule and the AKP, through democratizing reforms, aimed to curtail the political influence of the secularist bloc and in particular of the military. Those power struggles reduced politics into the secular-religious divide and prevented cooperation and consensus on pressing problems to take place in the political arena.

Following the AKP’s rise to power, the secularist elites (top military, presidency, high judiciary and the CHP) adopted relatively undemocratic means in counteracting the AKP rule. For example, the AKP’s rise to power led the secularists to view the presidency as the most crucial civilian actor that could curtail the political power of the AKP. A.Necdet Sezer, who served as president between 2000 and 2007, mostly fulfilled the expectations of the secularists as a true contender of the AKP. Known for his strong secularist views, Sezer vetoed down many bills proposed by the AKP.

When Sezer’s term came to an end in 2007, the secularist elites pressured the AKP to propose a candidate with a non-Islamist background. But, the AKP named the then Foreign Minister Gül, known with his Islamist past, as its presidential candidate. In the first round of the presidential balloting on April 27 2007, the secularist opposition party CHP boycotted the presidential elections and applied to the Constitutional Court in order to annul the first round of presidential elections (Baran 2008: 62). On the same day that the CHP applied to the Constitutional Court, the military published a highly authoritative memorandum on its website. The memorandum, which led some observers to identify as an “e-coup”, reiterated that the military stood as the “absolute defender of secularism” (ibid) and “hinted that it might act against the government, if it continued to keep Abdullah Gül’s name as the candidate for president”(Radikal, 2007 cited by Çınar, 2008:160). As a counter move, the AKP proposed a constitutional amendment to elect the president by popular vote. The amendment was approved by a referendum in October 2007 with 68,9 percent of the votes. In the meantime, Gül was elected to presidency in August 2007, when the parties, which entered the parliament after the 2007 general elections took side with the AKP to terminate the crisis over presidential elections (Hale and Özbudun, 2010:65).

Furthermore, having lost the struggle over the presidency, the secularist elites took an even more aggressive stance in order to permanently terminate ‘the problem of the AKP’ by

178 initiating a closure case against the ruling party. The Chief Public Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation started an investigation against the AKP in March 2008, claiming that the AKP “had become a focus of anti-constitutional activities intended to undermine the secular character of the Turkish Republic”(Hale and Özbudun, 2010:74). The majority of the court members voted in favour of the AKP’s ban, but the qualified majority required by the Constitution to dissolve a political party was not obtained. However, the Court still concluded that the AKP had engaged in anti-secular activities and decided to deprive the party of state funding (ibid: 75).

The AKP’s major strategy to counteract the secularist elites was to start a democratization process and to ardently seek membership to the EU. The constitutional amendments of July 2003, which significantly curtailed the tutelary powers of the military, became the AKP’s major challenge to the military-led secular establishment. Among the amendments were repealing the National Security Council’s (NSC) executive powers, increasing the number of civilian members within the NSC, allowing greater parliamentary scrutiny of the military budget, and cutting the NSC’s budget by 60 per cent (Cizre, 2008:137-38). The AKP projected those constitutional amendments not as an open challenge to the military, but as a precondition that needed to be fulfilled towards the EU membership (Çınar 2008:122). Also, the AKP endorsed a series of constitutional and legal amendments in its first two terms in office, which significantly improved the scope of civil and political rights; the amendment packages brought about notable improvements in the fields of freedom of expression, freedom of press, freedom of association and freedom of assembly (Hale and Özbudun, 2010: 58-59). The legal reforms of impressive scope resulted in the European Council’s decision in December 2004 to open accession negotiations with Turkey39.

39 Some scholars of Turkish politics argue that the AKP’s bid for democratization and for EU-membership in its early years in power functioned as a strategy of self-preservation vis-à-vis the secularist elites. In other words, the democratizing reforms provided the AKP with a secure shield against the secularists’ constant efforts to discredit and to delegitimize the AKP rule (Dağı,2006;Tepe,2006;Aydın and Taşkın,2015). Since the secularist elites historically pursued Turkey’s membership to the EU, they lacked the legitimate grounds to oppose the democratizing reforms. Therefore, the EU’s decision to start membership negotiations with Turkey gave the AKP the upper hand in its power struggles with the secularist elites. But, it would still be a fallacy to consider the AKP’s earlier bid for democratization as a purely strategist move. The AKP cadres in early 2000s were a grand coalition that included centre-right elites, liberals and even social democrats alongside the Islamists, some of whom showed a genuine commitment to democratization and were determined to pursue democratic means in order to prevent the reoccurrence of conflicts and tensions at the political and societal levels. Furthermore, the democratizing reforms also led the AKP to broaden its popular support base. The larger public showed enthusiasm to the start of the EU membership negotiations; the liberals and left-wing intellectuals appreciated the democratizing reforms of

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Between 2002 and 2010, the ruling AKP thus found itself in a struggle of ‘self- preservation’ vis-à-vis the interferences of secularist elites with its one-party rule and the AKP finally emerged victorious out of its struggle against the secularist bloc. The post-2010 period, this study argues, witnessed an elite transformation from fragmentation to hegemony. Elite hegemony in the period from 2010 to 2016 was characterized by a concentrated power configuration, wide differentiation, and mixed integration among the influential elites. A concentrated power configuration refers to the success of the ruling AKP in maintaining a “dominant party regime”(Esen And Gümüşçü 2016:1584). From 2002 to 2015, the AKP won nine elections in total including four general elections, three local elections, and two referendums. A concentrated power configuration was also marked by the AKP’s ability to curb the tutelary power of the secularist military. The tutelary powers of the military over civilian politics significantly contributed to elite fragmentation in the past by creating an uneven distribution of power among the military and civilian elites came to a halt in the post-2010 period. As discussed earlier, the 2003 constitutional amendments had already become a serious blow to the top military’s “executive and monitoring functions”(Bardakçı 2013:413). The ruling AKP took further action in the post-2010 period to pacify the military in order to assume executive power more independently. As the ruling party obtained more power over military promotions, it also repealed legislation "provid[ing] protection against trial for members of the National Security Council”(ibid: 421). Furthermore, the AKP sought to delegitimize military interventions by criminalizing military officials allegedly engaged in coup plots against the AKP government (Esen and Gümüşçü 2016:1584). In the period from 2008 to 2011, legal investigations brought “retired and on-duty high-ranking military personnel”, most of whom were known for their strong secularist views, before the courts upon “allegations of conspiring to overthrow the elected AKP government”(ibid: 1585). In short, by significantly curtailing the role of the military as a veto player, the AKP took crucial action to maintain hegemony in the political arena.

impressive scope; and the Kurdish minority conceived of the democratization process as a progressive step towards the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue. Therefore, as Bashirov and Lancaster (2018) succinctly put it “it is improbable to determine whether the party’s actions [its pro-democracy and pro-EU stance] were genuine and strategic” at that time (p.1224).

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Differentiation refers to the process in which the influential elites become diverse and socially heterogeneous. Wide differentiation became another component of elite hegemony in the post-2010 period. Despite the AKP’s electoral predominance and its authoritarian turn in its relations with rival elite factions (that will be discussed later), the electoral arena in particular revealed considerable diversity and remained very competitive. Three major parties including the secular and centre-left CHP, the nationalistic National Movement Party (MHP), and the pro- Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) together reached a following of forty-nine per cent in the elections held between 2011 and 2016. The economic elites remained divided and culturally heteregeneous as well. Even though the AKP coopted both the Islamist and the secular bourgeois elements under its neoliberal economic program, the two camps remained competitive and the secular business implicitly acknowledged that it might be open to support alternative political formations by raising criticisms against the AKP’s particular economic policies and its authoritarian turn.

Finally, the dimension of integration refers to the structure and character of elite interactions. Elite hegemony in the post-2010 period was characterized by mixed integration. While party elites held considerably diverging views over major political and economic issues displaying weak integration, the ruling party elites, the economic elites, and the bureaucratic elites manifested relatively strong integration remaining cohesive over vital issues.

An elite structure characterized by hegemony came into existence in the post-2010 period, but a number of new crises at the elite and societal levels reinforced the ruling AKP’s threat perceptions to its hegemony. First of all, the split within the ruling elite, that is the breakdown of the de facto alliance between the AKP and the Gülen movement, created a huge crisis for the ruling party. The Gülen movement, led by the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen who has been living in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999, became one of the most influential Islamist movements both in Turkey and across the world. The Gülen movement effectively diffused into Turkish civil society, establishing charity-support networks, schools and universities, various civil society associations, and business organizations. The movement also trained its own intellectuals and founded its own media conglomerates (Seufert, 2014 cited by Kaya, 2015:52). The Gülenists attained worldwide influence, as the movement established hundreds of schools in the Central Asian, African and North American countries (Taşpınar, 2014:53). However, despite the movement’s alleged commitment to stay ‘out of politics’, the

181 critiques have noted that the movement made considerable efforts since the 1970s to infiltrate state bureaucracy with its own followers. The secularists indeed long attracted attention to the growing influence of the Gülenists within key state institutions. They claimed that the Gülen movement had pursued “a secret agenda” of capturing state power, encouraging the graduates of Gülen schools to seek employment in the public sector especially within military and judiciary (Taşpınar, 2014:53).

After the AKP had come to power in 2002, the AKP and the Gülenists formed an alliance or a “tacit coalition”(Salt, 2015:130). The two actors then shared a common enemy. Both groups pursued to undermine the power of the secular establishment, which saw both the AKP and the Gülen movement as existential threats to the secular regime (Taşpınar, 2014:53). The AKP relied on the Gülenists within the state bureaucracy in its power struggle with the secularist elites and generously supported Gülenists’ appointment to key state institutions. The Gülen followers within the state particularly helped the AKP to reduce the power of the military over civilian politics (ibid:54). The trials, which imprisoned hundreds of secularist military officers for attempting a coup against the AKP government, were instigated by the pro-Gülen prosecutors. Emerging evidence suggest that as the Gülen followers captured the critical posts within the army after the purge of the secularist officers, the 2010 constitutional amendments enabled the Gülenists to infiltrate high judiciary as well. However, as the Gülen movement further increased its influence inside the military, judiciary and the police, the alliance started to shatter and finally broke down.

The first clash between the AKP and the Gülen movement erupted in early 2012. A pro- Gülen prosecutor summoned the Chief of the National Intelligence Agency in order to question him about the covert negotiations with the imprisoned PKK leader Öcalan (Taşpınar, 2014:54- 55). The observers claimed that the Gülen movement, known with its nationalist-statist stance, became disturbed with the ongoing peace negotiations between the government and the Kurdish insurgents and aimed to block the process. The Prime Minister Erdoğan declared that the investigation was an attack targeting him (Taşpınar, 2014:54) and that the intelligence chief could not be questioned. The clash took another level, when the government declared its intention to close down all university entrance-exam preparatory schools. The Gülenist schools were apparently the major target behind that move, as the Gülen movement owned 30 per cent of these schools (Salt, 2015:130) that functioned “as a major source of recruitment and revenue” for

182 the movement (Taşpınar, 2014:55). Finally, the overriding tensions between the ruling party and the Gülen movement culminated in a major crisis in 2013. Pro-Gülen prosecutors launched a corruption probe in December 2013 that involved four ministers and the members of Erdoğan’s family. The government identified the corruption charges as a sinister plot. Erdoğan and the top AKP officials referred to the Gülenists as “spies”, “agents” and “traitors”, accusing them of establishing a “parallel state” within the state (Özbudun, 2015:48). The breakdown of the alliance created a huge crisis for the ruling party, but also reinforced its determination to monopolize high rank offices in key state institutions. Many Gülenists from the judiciary and the police were purged (Akkoyunlu and Öktem, 2016: 512); pro-government figures were appointed to these critical posts.

Finally, crisis at the societal level, in particular growing ‘opposition from below’ by the anti-government constituencies, challenged the ruling party’s political hegemony. In the post- 2010 period, oppositional groups as diverse as environmentalists, feminists, workers, Kurdish activists, and university students took contentious action to protest against the ruling AKP’s public policies and its authoritarian turn in state-society relations. Those protests eventually culminated in a large-scale social movement in the summer of 2013. On 31 May 2013, thousands of Istanbulites took to the streets and occupied Istanbul’s Gezi Park. The protests were ignited by arbitrary police violence against an initial group of peaceful environmental activists who were resisting the demolition of the Gezi Park as part of an urban transformation project. The impromptu mobilization of Istanbulites soon spread to other cities and sparked a mass uprising against the AKP government. During the two-weeks-long uprising, anti-government segments of society expressed their accumulated discontents with the policies of the AKP through a number of contentious acts ranging from the occupation of Gezi Park and street protests, banging pots and pans to online protests. Most of the participants and spectators of the Gezi uprising emphasized that the uniqueness of the protest movement was a result of the collective presence of different groups who had remained polarized over many political issues prior to the uprising. Turks and Kurds, Alawites and Sunnis, lower and upper-middle classes, LGBTQs and football fans, leftists and Kemalists all shared the same protest spaces and instigated a collective resistance against the government. As Bashirov and Lancaster (2018) articulately put it “occurring in the midst of ongoing revolutions in the Middle East, Gezi [protests] reminded AKP of the fragile nature of its grip on Turkish society and

183 politics”(p.1220). The AKP leadership and in particular the then Prime Minister Erdoğan came to believe (or chose to believe) that the protest movement was an attempt of “a secularist social revolution”(ibid) during which the secular segments of society aimed to overthrow the government in alliance with the Turkish military. Far from taking into account the democratic and peaceful nature of the Gezi protests as well as a range of popular demands not necessarily secularist in character, this belief led the AKP leadership to stigmatize the resistance movement in the eyes of its voter base.

In short, a number of crises at the elite and societal levels reinforced the “existential insecurity” of the ruling AKP (Bashirow and Lancaster 2016:1220; Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016), -the perceived threats to its power emanating from the possibility of being overthrown by a coup or popular contention (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016:509). In order to sustain and consolidate its hegemony, the AKP took an authoritarian turn in its relations with the rival elite factions and with the anti-government sectors of society. In other words, the AKP elites came to believe that “the strategic benefits of moderation [or a genuine commitment to democracy] far outweighed its costs” (Bashirow and Lancaster 2016:1224) and that the safest route to stay in power was to seek monopoly over state institutions and to restrict the scope of individual liberties and political rights. The AKP’s authoritarian turn was manifested in several ways: first, the AKP largely abused its privilege of holding the parliamentary majority and usually left no space for meaningful debate and deliberation in endorsing crucial legislation in the parliament. The ruling party passed numerous omnibus bills in late night emergency sessions, preventing or ignoring the input from the opposition (Karakoyunlu and Öktem, 2016:514). Furthermore, the AKP majority usually rejected critical motions from the opposition parties immediately, most of the time regardless of their content and urgency (see for instance Hürriyet Daily News, May 14th 2014).

Second, similar to the ruling Motherland Party (ANAP) in the 1980s, the AKP, in order to become a catch-all party, recruited party elites with diverse political and social backgrounds; that is, the AKP cadres during its first two terms in office were a grand coalition of Islamist, secular, liberal, and even centre-left figures. However, starting with 2008, the non-Islamist cadres as well as senior party elites (potential rivals to the party leader Erdoğan) were largely purged from party (Bashirov and Lanchaster 2018:1218). That culminated in a “deinstitutionalization process” within the party during which the party leader “Erdoğan gained

184 complete control” (ibid: 1211) over the “party lists, candidate selection and overall strategic direction of the party”(ibid: 1218). Those developments became a serious blow to intra-party democracy and largely removed check and balances in the party governance as well as in the national policy-making creating strong integration within the cadres of the ruling party.

Third, the post-2010 period also witnessed the “fusion of the state and the party”(Esen and Gümüşçü 2016:1587). “Politicized state institutions”(ibid) became an important feature of the late AKP period characterized by the growing infiltration of key institutions with party loyalists. The replacement of party loyalists within key bureaucratic positions became evident especially during the elections times. For example, provincial governors (an unelected post in Turkey) who should constitutionally have assumed a politically neutral position, “distributed goods to voters on behalf of the AKP government, campaigned for the government informally and promoted the ruling party during official functions” (Taraf May 20th 2015, cited by Esen and Gümüşçü 2016:1587). Similarly, many public employees were reported to have removed the campaign posters of the opposition parties, and the police frequently hindered the opposition parties and candidates from exercising their legal right of political propaganda (ibid: 1588).

Fourth, the judiciary also came under the increasing control of the ruling party; the pursuit of creating a dependent judiciary considerably reduced the power of judiciary in exerting limits on arbitrary state authority. The extending power of the executive over the judiciary initially fuelled political debates, when the 2010 constitutional amendment package introduced critical changes concerning the high judiciary. The amended articles significantly changed the composition of and assignment to the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK). The changes concerning the HSYK were crucial, since the body held the power to appoint and dismiss judges and prosecutors. While the AKP advocated the amendment as a move to turn the HSYK from a body monopolized by secularist judges and prosecutors into a more pluralist one, the critiques argued that the changes aimed to bring the HSYK under the control of the government (Özdikmenli and Ovalı, 2014:20). The ruling party enacted another law in February 2014 to gain more control over the composition of the HSYK. While the new law largely brought key bodies within the HSYK under the control of the Minister of Justice (Özbudun, 2014:164), it also allowed the government to appoint pro-government judges and prosecutors to key judicial posts (Özbudun, 2015:47). The new HSYK elections, which were held in October 2014, became a milestone in particular in exerting greater executive control over the judiciary.

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The HSYK was infiltrated by pro-government judicial members, when the pro-government candidates came victorious out of the elections. The new composition of the Council allowed the ruling party to gain almost full control over the judicial promotions and appointments (ibid: 51).

Most importantly, the AKP created a hybrid regime characterized by significant restrictions on the exercise of individual liberties and political rights and by concerted government coercion against dissenting groups. First, democratic reforms concerning human rights and political freedoms, which underwent “a period of relative stagnation” between 2007 and 2011 (Öniş, 2015:23), were replaced by the endorsement of undemocratic laws in the post- 2011 period. A number of amended laws and new legislation annulled the improvements realized in the previous period. These included new restrictions on labour rights, the freedom of expression, the protection of privacy and the freedom of assembly. Second, the ruling party also showed a “deep intolerance” towards oppositional groups within society (Öniş, 2015:25) and systematically engaged in the violations of the freedom of expression, arbitrary limitations on the freedom of assembly and the excessive use of police force against protestors. Press censorship became another manifestation of the process of democratic retreat; the government put various pressures on journalists in order to prevent the dissemination of critical views. Many journalists faced detentions, prosecutions and imprisonment “on the grounds of journalistic activities in violation of the penal code and anti-terror law”(Sözeri, 2014:396). The Committee to Protect Journalists’ prison census revealed that in 2014 Turkey was among the top ten countries in the world that had the highest number of jailed journalists (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2014).

To conclude, the political arena witnessed elite transformation from fragmentation to hegemony in the post-2010 period. Elite hegemony was characterized by the ruling AKP’s consolidation of one-party rule and the demise of the military as a veto player in civilian politics (a concentrated power configuration). It also refers to the diversity of elite factions in the electoral arena and in the economic sphere (wide differentiation). Finally, the elite structure marked by the AKP’s hegemony also entailed diverse forms of interactions among the influential elites. While the party elites held considerably diverging views over major political and economic issues, the ruling elite coalition of the AKP, economic elites, and high bureaucrats revealed relatively strong integration. However, a number of crises at the elite and societal levels increased the ruling AKP’s threat perceptions to its hegemony. In order to sustain its political hegemony, the AKP turned to rely on increasingly undemocratic measures to weaken its elite

186 rivals and the societal opposition. The AKP’s authoritarian turn significantly shaped its linkages with youth, which is the major theme of the next section.

5.3 Elite-youth linkages in the post-2010 period: Elite Hegemony and Hybrid Incorporation

This section turns to lay out the first causal mechanism and the intervening variable of this study for the period from 2010 to 2016. It will investigate the ways in which elite hegemony shaped the course of ruling party-youth linkages by analyzing how the AKP leadership interfered with youth political participation in order to advance their interests and particular political visions. Specifically, in order to discuss the relationship between elite hegemony and ruling party-youth linkages, this section will discuss the following themes: the AKP’s interferences with the politics of oppositional youth sectors, the mobilization of secular youth against the ruling AKP during the Gezi Protests, the process of hybrid incorporation towards youth, and the instruments of youth incorporation including selective repression, limited pluralism, corporatizing initiatives, and the discourse and the related public policies of creating a pious generation.

Incorporation as moderation and control and Youth mobilization in the Gezi Park Protests

In the period from 2010 to 2013, incorporation as moderation and control was primarily manifested through selective repression against youth activists who involved in anti-government protests with serious violations on young people’s freedom of expression, assembly, and association. For example, as the Amnesty International (2013) articulately put it “students have been a special target of Turkish authorities in their broad crackdown on dissent”. Specifically, Kurdish-activist students and organized leftist students faced concerted state repression in the post-2010 period (Tahincioğlu&Göktaş, 2013). The major mechanism of state repression became the imprisonment of activist students. One of the symbolic cases of jailed students emerged in 2010, when three university students held a banner that read “We want free education, we are gonna get it!” at an AKP meeting. Reminiscent of the legal coercion the student protestors who had launched a similar protest back in 1996 encountered, the students were immediately arrested. When they were finally brought to court after ten months, they were charged with being members of a left-wing terrorist organization. Two of the students were sentenced to eight and a half years in prison (Radikal, June 7th 2012).

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The number of jailed students reached to unprecedented levels especially in the period between 2010 and 2012. According to the Ministry of Justice, as of early 2012 2824 students were jailed (Bianet, August 10th 2012). In those two years, the students were most of the time kept in jail without any legal charges. In other words, the courts imprisoned students before they were proven guilty, a practice that functioned as a specific coercive strategy to deter youth from oppositional politics (Bianet, September 8th 2012). When the charges were finally dropped, they mostly relied on the Anti-Terror Law and accused the student activists of working or propagandizing for terrorist organizations. A report by Solidarity with Imprisoned Students Initiative (TÖDİ) states that the imprisoned Kurdish-activist students, most of whom were the youth wing members of the legal pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, were accused of recruiting militants for the terrorist organizations of the KCK and the PKK (TÖDİ, 2012:11). Most of the imprisoned leftist students were the members of legal socialist associations and parties, but they similarly faced charges of being affiliated with illegal terrorist organizations (Aygün, 2011 cited by Tahincioğlu and Göktaş,2013:94-95). Yet some of the students were arrested simply for chanting slogans and revolutionary songs in campus and they were also prosecuted for propagandizing for terrorist organizations (TÖDİ, 2012:10). The absurdity of evidence revealed the politicized character of legal charges against the activist students. In one case, the prosecutor put forth Habermas’ book Civil Disobedience found in the suspect’s apartment as evidence of his affiliation with a terrorist organization (Tahincioğlu&Göktaş, 2013:107).

Kurdish-activist and leftist students also went through disciplinary investigations administered by the universities. The statistics are revealing: While the number of students who went through disciplinary investigations was 2601 in 2000 (Molu et al., 2013:1), the Minister of Education’s statistics revealed that the number of students facing investigations significantly increased in the post-2010 period. 6001 students and 5871 students were subject to disciplinary investigations in 2010 and 2011, respectively (Tahincioğlu and Göktaş, 2013:136). In most cases the charges directed against students included attending rallies and protests, putting up posters and banners, alleged affiliations with terrorist organizations, demanding the right to education in Kurdish, and propagandizing for illegal organizations (ibid: 137). In their detailed research on disciplinary investigations, Molu et al.(2013) found that attending Labour Day rallies and Newroz celebrations and organizing panels on human rights violations by the state were also

188 among the causes to start disciplinary investigations against students (p.86). The majority of the disciplinary investigations resulted in harsh punishments: According to the Higher Education Council (2012), a total of 4602 students were suspended from attending classes for two weeks up to two semesters and 55 students were permanently expelled from university between 2010 and 2011 (cited by Molu et al., 2013:185). Consequently, as disciplinary investigations seriously undermined activist students’ freedom of expression and association, the punishments also restricted the right to education or permanently terminated it (ibid: 2).

Young people attending in- and off-campus anti-government protests also became the target of state repression in the post-2010 period. As the government elites condemned and criminalized protesting youth, the police used unbridled force to disperse the youth protestors. In some cases, the protestors faced criminal charges as well. The coercion against youth protestors first came to public attention, when the student protestors at the prestigious Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara encountered extensive police violence. On December 19th 2012, several hundred METU students protested the Prime Minister Erdoğan’s visit to the campus, carrying banners and chanting slogans. 3000 police officers and over 100 armoured vehicles immediately intervened in the protest and fifty students were seriously injured at the end of the day by the police’s gas canisters and tear gas (Amnesty International, December 21st 2012). A day after the police intervention in the campus, the police raided students’ apartments and detained eleven students. The students were accused of being members of illegal organizations (Tahincioğlu and Göktaş, 2013:149). The Prime Minister Erdoğan’s response to the METU protests triggered further criticisms. Disregarding the protesting students’ political agency, he chose to blame the METU professors: “What a shame!” said Erdoğan. “Shame on the professors who raised those students. Instructors first have to teach their students how to be respectful…”(Amnesty International, ibid). Following Erdoğan’s statement, the presidents of forty universities published statements in support of Erdoğan and accused the METU administration of not taking the necessary measures to prevent the protests (Tahincioğlu and Göktaş, 2013:151).

Earlier government repression against youth activists seemed to backfire, however, when young people became the forerunners of the Gezi Park protests in the summer of 2013. The 2013 Gezi Park protests, known to be the largest protest movement in modern Turkey, marked the stronger re-emergence of youth on the political scene. The protests were ignited by arbitrary

189 police violence against an initial group of peaceful environmental activists who were resisting the demolition of the Gezi Park as part of an urban transformation project. The impromptu mobilization of Istanbulites soon spread to other cities and according to the official statistics more than three million people across Turkey attended the protests (CnnTurk, November 25th 2013). Even though people from different age groups and political convictions took part in the protest movement, the majority of the participants were youth; sixty four percent of the Gezi participants were between the ages of 19 and 30 (Ercan Bilgiç and Kafkaslı, 2013:13). Also, a public survey conducted in the Gezi Park in the first week of the uprising showed that students were the major group in the uprising. They constituted 37 per cent of all participants in the Gezi Park (KONDA, 2013). Organized youth, in particular young feminists, LGBTQI activists and football fans, also became effective in “shap[ing] the content and form” of the uprising through “their organization styles, ways of cooperation and protest skills” (Yılmaz and Gümüş, 2015:188). The interviews conducted for this study with the young participants of the Gezi Park protests revealed that most of the youth participants identified with a secular identity and voted for secular oppositional parties. Youth mobilization came as a surprise to many spectators, since the current generation of well-educated youth were often identified with political disengagement and apathy vis-à-vis previous generations of student rebels who were the protagonists of resistance movements (both on and off campus) against the state. Massive youth involvement in the protests created unease for the ruling AKP and significantly shaped its linkages with the oppositional youth.

As growing number of scholars tried to make sense of the Gezi protests, there has emerged a burgeoning literature on the subject. The existing works cover a range of themes focusing on such questions as the popular grievances that engulfed mass mobilization, the different repertoires of collective action used during the uprising, the political diversity of protest participants, the impact of the Gezi protests on Turkey’s democratization trajectory, the ‘class’ component of the protests, the formation of collective identity through the uprising and finally the possible impact of the Gezi uprising on Turkish politics and on the trajectory of the AKP’s political hegemony (see for example: David and Toktamış(eds),2015; Özkırımlı(ed),2014; Gürcan and Peker,2015; Örs and Turan,2015; Göle,2013; Uncu,2106; Tuğal,2013). However, even though most of the analyses have emphasized that the Gezi was primarily a ‘youth-led

190 revolt’, the particular sources of youth involvement in the uprising and its impacts on the ruling party’s linkages with youth have been understudied.

This study argues that well-educated and secular youth took to the streets in the summer of 2013 to express their discontent with the ruling party’s increasing monopoly over state power and with restrictions on individual freedoms and political rights. Youth involvement in the Gezi Park protests thus reflected youth demands for democracy, rule of law and individual liberties. However, ‘subjective-level’ factors (perceptions and emotions) also played a salient role in engineering youth street politics. A sense of political exclusion and threat perceptions to secular identity were translated into collective action, when unbridled police violence against the initial group of peaceful activists at the Gezi Park sparked an outrage among well-educated and secular youth.

During the heydays of the Gezi protests, “it is not only about a few trees” became the motto of both the ruling party and the protest participants. Whilst the ruling party claimed that the protestors had no interest in preserving a green area and that they were instead attempting a coup to overthrow the government, the protestors also adopted the motto to express their real motivation to taking part in the uprising. The Gezi protestors emphasized that they cared about preserving the Gezi Park as a green space, but their resistance more broadly reflected their ‘accumulated’ discontents with the policies of the ruling AKP. Young people, who participated in this study unanimously stated that ‘cumulative effects of years long disillusionment with the policies of the ruling party’ reached to a point that that they ‘could not take it anymore’. Elif, an economics student at a public university in İstanbul, described her urge to take to the streets with the metaphor of a ‘broken marriage’:

I am thinking like..I was telling this to a friend recently. It [the outbreak of the Gezi protests] was like the breakdown of a long marriage. I mean it is like, you keep silent for a long time and do not confront your spouse, but then a minor incidence leads you into a total outrage against him. I think that was the case. (Elif, female, 22, Economics, undergraduate)40

40 Elif, interview with the author, Istanbul, June 2013.

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Using the metaphor of a problematic marriage that went through long periods of unexpressed resentments, Elif wanted to attract attention to the accumulated discontents of the anti- government constituencies with the policies of the ruling party. The Gezi uprising thus gave the anti-government publics an opportunity to express their long-term disillusionment with the ruling party and became the manifestation of popular will to contend the ruling party’s governance style.

When research participants were asked to specify their political grievances that created a sense of ‘enough is enough’, they primarily highlighted the increasing authoritarianism of the ruling party that was manifested through the concentration of political power in the executive and increasingly in the leadership of Erdoğan. Umut, a political science student, elaborated on that theme in the following words:

Actually, I took to the streets to stand against oppression, injustices and against an increasingly authoritarian government………..I mean just one person, even not the government, became too strong that the political system was transformed almost into a dictatorship. This one person established control over media, incited the police against the public and divided the populace. That is, whatever he pursues to do, happens immediately. If that is the case, it means this one person has become excessively powerful. In such a political environment, it is hard to claim that democracy still prevails…..In Turkey, no longer there exists separation of powers. To conclude, I involved in the Gezi protests to stand against injustices, oppression and monopoly over political power. (Umut, male, 22, Political Science&International Relations, undergraduate)41

Umut’s narrative emphasized the prevailing features of elite politics in Turkey, which this study refers to as “elite hegemony”. Umut described the political system in Turkey as a ‘dictatorship’ under Erdoğan’s personal rule and he mourned for the erosion of democratic governance. For Umut, his involvement in the Gezi protests provided a space to express his disillusionment with the political injustices driven by the process of de-democratization. In similar lines, Fırat a law student, attracted attention to the ruling party’s growing control over the judiciary and accordingly to the erosion of the rule of law:

41 Umut, interview with the author, Istanbul, June 2013.

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It reached to a point that they[the government] use law to intimidate people. This is an important feature. I mean, at school the professors teach us that law exists for the public’s peace; it functions to provide people with welfare. It has been so, since the Roman times……but nowadays what we witness in Turkey is that law is used to intimidate people. For example, a mayor e-mails his employees and threatens them to start a disciplinary investigation on their behalf if they do not attend the reception that was organized to meet the Prime Minister. I have never heard a country where law has become a repressive tool…..Unfortunately, law is now used not to provide people with a peaceful environment, but rather to repress people. (Fırat, male, 24, Law, undergraduate)42

Legal coercion became a widespread mechanism in the governance of popular dissent in the post-2010 period. It refers to a range of legal practices that stand in contradiction to established legal norms and practices such as investigations based on dubious or manufactured evidence, long periods of pre-trial detentions and particularly, identification of various forms of political activism with terror-related crimes. Those legal practices have led many observers to claim that the rule of law and an independent judiciary have been significantly weakened in Turkey. Fırat articulately stressed that such practices reconstructed law as a tool of intimidation. He expressed his frustration about the growing distance between what he had been taught at law school about the practice of law and the actual legal processes in Turkey. Similarly, in the words of Agop, the Gezi protestors broadly stood against the demise of democratic governance in Turkey and pursued to reclaim their democratic rights:

Repressive authority is at odds with democracy. I mean you may not be conservative and democratic at the same time. If we consider democracy in Western terms, it is about progress, it is essentially geared towards progress. In a democratic country, people can freely express themselves, the public debates create new ideas, and those new ideas are openly discussed and developed further. That is what democracy entails in Western terms. However, the government failed to create such a free environment for political expression and public debate, it moved towards authoritarianism. It [the Gezi uprising] was a resistance against that. That is what my

42 Fırat, interview with the author, Istanbul, June 2013.

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observations tell me. (Agop, male, 22, Comparative literature (major) and International Relations (minor), undergraduate)43

The AKP defined the party’s ideology as “conservative democracy” in its first term in office. In the words of Akdoğan (2006), one of the party representatives who coined the term, conservative democracy broadly referred to “a culture of reconciliation”, “democratic pluralism”, “limited form of political power” and, the “rule of law”(p.50). The notion of conservative democracy functioned to reinforce the AKP’s efforts to distinguish itself from the pro-Islamist parties of the past and aimed to reflect the ruling party’s bid for a pro-democracy stance. Agop implied that the adoption of conservative democracy as the party’s ideology inherited contradictions, as in his understanding conservatism and democracy were at odds with each other. Agop also attracted attention to the AKP’s shift from democratic premises to authoritarianism and argued that the AKP’s extensive reliance on coercive-repressive forms of state power became one of the major factors that sparked popular resistance. For Agop, the protestors raised demands for a free environment of political expression and public debate.

The narratives of research participants revealed that ‘subjective-level’ factors also played a salient role in engineering youth street politics. One of these subjective-level factors was the sense of political exclusion among well-educated and secular youth that was fuelled by the AKP’s polarizing discourse and its exclusionist policies. The ruling party attempted to build an antagonism between the AKP’s popular base and anti-government segments of society (Moudouras, 2016;Yabancı, 2016;Türk, 2015) with the ultimate goal of keeping its support base ‘politically mobilized’ vis-à-vis (potentially) anti-government segments of society . Building such antagonism was largely realized through Erdoğan’s divisive rhetoric that relied on a distinction of ‘us versus them’. ‘Them’, referring to all groups critical of Erdoğan and the AKP rule, were constructed as an ‘enemy within’ that pursued to undermine the emerging power of ‘us’(the majority of the electorate from provincial and conservative backgrounds that voted for the AKP). However, in addition to this divisive rhetoric, the AKP also undertook a range of policies to economically and socially empower its support base vis-à-vis anti-government constituencies. The observers have claimed that the AKP favoured its own support base in the

43 Agop, interview with the author, Istanbul, November 2013.

194 distribution of state resources through clientelist and nepotistic networks of resource allocation. For example, Selma, an undergraduate in mining engineering, expressed her frustration about Erdoğan’s polarizing rhetoric in the following words:

The Prime Minister is creating huge divisions among people,- among those who support the AKP vs. those who do not. During the Gezi resistance, he verbally expressed this as well. It was like “we govern for the 50 per cent of the populace who voted for us, we do not care for the rest. (Selma, female, 26, mining engineering, undergraduate).44

Selma specifically referred to Erdoğan’s infamous words during the Gezi protests, which included the implicit threat of pushing his voter base to the streets as a street force to suppress the Gezi protestors. He told the press that he was struggling hard to keep “[his] fifty per cent” at home (Hürriyet Daily News, June 9th 2013). The anti-government publics interpreted his words as a proof that the Prime Minister served for the fifty per cent of the population and considered the rest of the voters as ‘dangerous and undeserving citizens’. Erdoğan’s declaration thus reinforced the sense of political exclusion among youth who did not vote for the AKP. In similar lines, Cansu argued that the ruling party’s polarizing discourse aimed at politically marginalizing the voters who did not vote for the AKP and discredited their grievances and political demands:

They[the government] divided the populace. Those who vote for them, the conservative and pious segments of society, have become the “good citizens”, while we have been identified as “terrorists”. When we try to express ourselves, nobody listens to us. We pose articulate critiques and propose rational solutions to prevailing problems, but the Prime Minister’s discourse always gets more credit most probably due to his effective communication skills that successfully mobilize masses. His constituency is always more respected and the media also functions to depreciate the anti-government segments……My point is, the Prime Minister ignores the fact that he represents the whole populace, not only those who vote for his party…….. He treats us not as citizens, but rather as if we are refugees. (Cansu, female, 23, Political Science&International Relations, undergraduate). 45

44 Selma, interview with the author, Ankara, December 2013. 45 Cansu, interview with the author, Istanbul, March 2015.

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Cansu felt like a “refugee” under the rule of the AKP. Her sense of political marginalization was on the one hand driven by the ruling party’s turning a deaf ear to public discontents as well as to rational proposals for better governance. On the other hand, Cansu felt politically marginalized due to the ruling party’s polarizing rhetoric. Similar to the frustration expressed by a number of research participants, she had hard times witnessing that Erdoğan identified the Gezi protestors as “terrorists”. The majority of the research participants shared Cansu’s sense of political exclusion. They argued that they were treated as ‘undeserving and unequal’ citizens of the nation under the rule of the AKP. For the research participants, while the ruling party denied the democratic rights of anti-government constituencies, it constructed pious segments of society as the proper citizens and the genuine nation. Emre, a law student, pointed out which social groups were particularly treated as ‘unequal citizens’:

The Sunni Muslims who vote for the AKP and lead conservative lives in line with the vision of the government constitute the proper citizenry. It is all about your lifestyle, how you live, or what type of relationships you pursue. I do not think Kurds, Armenians, Jews or homosexuals feel safe in this country. They do not feel like equal citizens vis-a-vis the AKP voters. (Emre, male, 23, Law, undergraduate).46

Emre implied that secular identity became a marker that excluded one from the community of ‘proper citizens’. The ruling party’s religio-conservative discourse empowered pious segments of society who now represented the desired citizenry. However, Emre also emphasized that the discrimination particular groups encountered under the current regime was even more acute. As the ruling party’s increasingly nationalist discourse constructed the Kurds, Armenians and the Jews as undesired communities, its religio-conservative line of politics constructed LGBTQIs as a specific threat to public order.

Employment of the AKP supporters in the public sector became one way the AKP aimed to establish and maintain elite hegemony. Nepotist character of public employment has always been widespread in Turkey, but the AKP’s long years in power caused this practice to become more subtle and systematic. Critiques have thus pointed out that support and sympathy for the ruling party have more frequently presided over meritocracy in the appointment of public

46 Emre, interview with the author, Istanbul, March 2015.

196 employees in the last decade. When Selin was elaborating on her urge to get involve in the Gezi protests, she talked in detail about the government’s provision of its supporters with privileged access to economic and social status and she elaborated on the theme with reference to the employment patterns in her department at the university:

For example, in sociology departments at universities, they are employing their own men. [In our department], PhDs who have degrees in theology get tenure tracks. Those people have almost occupied the department. They[the government] open positions specific to them. I mean a lot of people are waiting for faculty positions, but these people [pro-government PhDs] are employed through top down directives. A friend who is taking an elective course from one of these professors was telling me recently that those professors are making provocative statements in class. One professor said that “in this department, the education is exclusively focused on issues of gender. It is all about gender. We are gonna change that. This department needs a more contemporary curriculum”. They can make such statements in a vey self-confident manner. This drives me crazy. Many qualified candidates wait out there to get faculty positions, but these people get tenure tracks through top down[government] directives. That means the ruling party is replacing its own supporters in public employment. It creates its own cadres at universities….. I am curious what kind of education I will be exposed to at university. I mean they will probably teach Islamic morals in class, they already do. These incidents concern me in terms of my employment opportunities. If I decide to pursue an academic career, it will be very difficult to cope with these [clientelist] networks. I feel like there will always be conflicts between us and them. Of course you never know. Maybe the government will change soon and the things will unfold in a completely different direction. (Female, 22, Sociology, undergraduate). 47

One research participant, who recently completed his undergraduate degree and was in the job market, also expressed his tensions with prevailing nepotism in public employment:

Today the government seems to have established total control over every sphere. I really doubt whether I can get a job in the public sector as someone not close to the ruling party. I am not sure what type of barriers I will encounter. People frequently tell me that I should also join the ruling party in order to get employed. I try to resist those recommendations, but from time to time I also tend to think if I should follow their advice. But then, that would be completely

47 Selin, interview with the author, Istanbul, March 2015.

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opposite to my views. Indeed, many of my friends go through the same tensions”. (Hasan, male,22, Political Science&International Relations, recent graduate)48

Similar to the concerns of the majority of the research participants who pursued careers in the public sector, Hasan also felt discouraged and hopeless about his chances for public employment. He even considered becoming a member of the AKP in order to have access to positions in state bureaucracy, but later abandoned the idea as it contradicted with his political ideals and ethical beliefs.

Finally, the narratives of the research participants also showed that youth’s threat perceptions to their secular identity became another ‘subjective-level’ factor that engineered youth’s involvement in the Gezi protests. The AKP largely avoided issues related to the public role of Islam in its first years in office (Tepe, 2006:109). Only after the AKP had undermined the veto powers of the secularist judiciary and the top military, it took a more assertive stance in pursuing a religio-conservative line of politics. The post-2010 period thus witnessed the AKP’s interferences with secular ways of life referring to a number of Islamist discourses and policies most of which concerned issues of “gender, sexuality, reproduction and family” (Kurtuluş- Korkman, 2016:112). Well-educated and secular youth attended the Gezi protests partly because they perceived the AKP’s culturally conservative discourses and policies as a threat to the realization of their secular lifestyles. The majority of the research participants unanimously mentioned for example the government restrictions on the consumption of alcohol and the bill draft to restrict the right of abortion in specifying government interferences with lifestyles. Fulya, an MA student in industrial engineering, stated:

It all started with the alcohol regulations. I don’t think I lead a desperate life, but I started to feel like my life might gradually get worse. When they imposed bans on alcohol consumption and restricted my freedoms through these bans, exploded my urge to resist. I think youth in particular were outraged because of that [alcohol bans]. (Fulya, female, 23, Industrial engineering, master’s)49

48 Hasan, interview with the author, Istanbul, June 2013. 49 Fulya, interview with the author, Istanbul, November 2013.

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The AKP passed a new law in May 2013, just a few days before the outbreak of the Gezi uprising, which regulated the sale and consumption of alcohol. The new law limited the sale of alcohol to the hours between 6 am and 10 pm and also banned the advertisements of alcoholic drinks in the media and the internet (Seçkinelgin, 2016:271). While the ruling party advocated the law as a measure to protect public health, the secular publics came to perceive the new alcohol regulations as an attack against alcohol drinkers. It is possible to argue that the disillusionment of secular publics with the alcohol law was largely due to the identification of alcohol consumption in Turkey as a strict marker of secular identity. As Fulya’s above narrative also revealed, restrictions on the consumption of alcohol created a huge disappointment for her and led her to believe that her “life might gradually get worse”. Fulya perceived new alcohol regulations as a threat to the realization of the lifestyle she wanted to lead and she attended the Gezi protests to express her discontent. For Fulya, her peers were also primarily disturbed by alcohol regulations and it was that disturbance that triggered youth’s involvement in the protests. In similar lines, Pelin who stated that she enjoyed hanging out at pubs and night clubs, stated:

Restrictions on alcohol are totally nonsense. How come can they restrict the sale of alcohol after 10pm? You may not interfere with my alcohol. Drunk driving is prohibited, and that is fine. But people have already been conscious about its dangers. Nobody would drive after they consumed alcohol. I mean the prevention of drunk driving is not a valid reason. I don’t think that is the real reason, anyway. I think they have another agenda.(Pelin, female,23, Sociology, undergraduate).50

Pelin found it unacceptable that the government banned the sale of alcohol after 10 pm. She perceived the new regulations as a subtle manifestation of government interferences with secular ways of life. Pelin implied that the government pursued a hidden agenda of reorganizing public life with Islamist morals through the new alcohol regulations. The government’s perceived agenda created a sense of threat to her secular identity.

In addition to the alcohol law, the research participants, particularly the female ones, also mentioned the government’s recent attempt to restrict the right of abortion as a manifestation of government interferences with lifestyles. Elif, aged 22, expressed her unease with the abortion debate in the following words:

50 Pelin, interview with the author, Istanbul, July 2013.

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Especially the draft bill on the right of abortion[disturbed me]. It is ridiculous. To me, equality is about the personal freedoms. If no harm to society, everybody should be free to act as she wishes. That is it…..You shouldn’t restrict anyone. Human rights should be taken into consideration. (Elif, female, 22, Economics, undergraduate) 51

In a controversial speech on reproduction, Erdoğan declared in May 2012 that “every abortion is an Uludere”, comparing abortion with the massacre of thirty-four Kurdish civilians in 2011 by a military strike in the border town of Uludere (Negron-Gonzales, 2016:205),. Erdoğan’s provocative words were followed by official statements that the ruling party was working on a draft bill to restrict the right of abortion. A strong campaign by feminist organizations led the government to drop the bill (ibid), but de facto limitations were put on the right of abortion. Since the start of the ‘abortion debate’ in 2012, many women have reported that practitioners in public hospitals refrained from conducting abortions without posing any legitimate reasons (Tahaoğlu, 2015, cited by Kurtuluş-Korkman, 2016:115). For Elif, the right of abortion was a human rights issue and the government attempts to restrict the right of abortion constituted a violation of personal freedoms. Elif emphasized that among the ruling party’s controversial policies in the last few years, the proposed regulations on the right of abortion was particularly disturbing to her. Pelin, a sociology student, expressed her frustration about the abortion debate even in a stronger manner:

Because I am a woman, I find the debates on abortion disgusting. That is sickening. It shouldn’t be that simple. How come does a government uphold the right to interfere in bedrooms? That is totally nonsense. It is ridiculous. (Pelin, female,23, Sociology, undergraduate)52

Pelin used strong adjectives like ‘disgusting’ and ‘sickening’ to reveal her outrage sparked by the government’s attempt to restrict the right of abortion. For Pelin, issues of reproduction belonged to the private sphere where the government had no right to interfere.

The restrictions on the consumption of alcohol and the abortion debate primarily contributed to the research participants’ threat perceptions to their secular identities. However,

51 Elif, interview with the author, Istanbul, June 2013. 52 Pelin, interview with the author, Istanbul, July 2013.

200 the narratives of the research participants revealed that Erdoğan’s culturally conservative speeches on reproduction, gender equality and female dress codes also played a salient role in shaping youth’s threat perceptions to secular lifestyles. Meriç, a PhD student in psychology, narrated how Erdoğan’s paternalist and culturally conservative discourse frustrated her:

We encounter someone who doesn’t recognize privacy as a right. He condemns unmarried couples living together, interferes in my bedroom and with my vagina, he tells me how many kids I should give birth to. He is messing with everything. You never get used to it. Every time he talks like that, I get more pissed off. I never manage to ignore what he says. Those interferences have accummulated and people can’t take it anymore. (Meriç, female,30, Psychology,PhD)53

Meriç’s narrative gave reference to Erdoğan’s controversial speeches on sexuality, reproduction and gender relations. Since 2008 for instance, Erdoğan has repeatedly told women to have at least three children (Kaya, 2015:60).54 Erdoğan also declared that he did not believe in gender equality and used condemning words about the feminists (Hürriyet Daily News, November 24th 2014). In another controversial speech in November 2013, he claimed that mixed-gender student housing was against the society’s values and that the government was in preparation to pass legal regulations that would ban mixed-gender student housing (Hürriyet Daily News, November 7th 2013). While Meriç was outraged by Erdoğan’s remarks on sexuality and reproduction, she later stated that she specifically felt ‘threatened’ with his words on mixed- gender student housing. Meriç’s roommate was male. In similar lines, Yusuf, an undergraduate studying law at a public university in Istanbul, reminded Erdoğan’s condemning words against women wearing non-Islamic attire:

Prior to the Gezi uprising, the Prime Minister made condemning declarations on women who wear mini-skirts. That has also made a huge impact. That declaration manifested the prevailing interferences with the preferred lifestyles. People showed their reaction to those types of

53 Meriç, interview with the author, Ankara, December 2013. 54 Erdoğan’s ‘at least three kids’ imperative has occupied public debates for many years. While feminists have claimed that Erdoğan’s interferences with reproduction have primarily pursued to keep women out of employment, anti-government publics at large have identified his imperative as an interference with the area of personal choice. Youth participants of the Gezi protests mocked Erdoğan’s ‘three-kids-imperative’ with the slogan “Tayyip[Erdoğan], do you want three more kids like us?”.

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discourses. It [the Gezi uprising] was not about the trees. The AKP argues that it wasn’t about the trees and the protestors had different goals. I agree with that. It had nothing to do with the trees. People demanded that there be no interferences with lifestyles, and personal preferences. They asked for democracy and they pursued freedom. It[Gezi] was the expression of such demands.(Yusuf, male, 22, Law, undergraduate). 55

For Yusuf, Erdoğan’s attack against young women with mini-skirts particularly outraged secular youth and created a sense of ‘enough is enough’, leading them to take to the streets. That is why Yusuf argued that the Gezi uprising was not driven by environmental concerns, but rather with the frustration about government interferences with secular lifestyles.

In short, well-educated and secular youth mobilized against the ruling party to express their accumulated discontents with the AKP’s monopoly over state power, the loss of judicial independence, and with the restrictions on individual liberties and political freedoms. In addition, a sense of political exclusion and threat perceptions to their secular lifestyles, also led young people to take contentious action against the government. The Gezi protestors, however, encountered violent police intervention. Unbridled police force against the protestors disproportionately affected youth, as they were at the forefront of the rallies. All the eight victims, who were shot to death by the police’s gas canisters during the protests, were youngsters. Some of the youth protestors, the majority of whom were affiliated with left-wing associations and parties, also faced criminal charges of violating the Law on the Freedom of Association (Kolektifler, January 21st 2014). When the police violence and detentions reached its peak in the third week of the Gezi protests, most of the youth protestors returned home and terminated the occupation of the Gezi Park.

Grassroots youth mobilization during the Gezi Park protests further led the ruling party to weaken the capacity of youth as an oppositional force. Therefore, after violently putting down the Gezi protests, the AKP more systematically pursued to foster political disengagement among oppositional youth. In order to realize this goal, the ruling party deepened the process of incorporation as moderation and control by systematically transforming the pluralist structures of political participation into limited-pluralist ones. Limited pluralism was first manifested

55 Yusuf, interview with the author, Istanbul, March 2015.

202 through the endorsement of new laws that brought significant restrictions on the freedom of expression and assembly. For example, the amendments made to the Internet Law in February 2014 constituted one of the major setbacks in the freedom of expression as well as in the protection of privacy (see for instance: European Commission, 2015:43). The amended law provided the Telecommunications Administration with the power to scrutinize Internet coverage, to track the records of user activities, and to block websites without a court decision (Özdikmenli and Ovalı, 2014:23;Esen and Gümüşçü, 2016:1592). Only a month after the new Internet Law was endorsed, the government banned Twitter and Youtube for several weeks (Human Rights Watch, 2015) and those social media hubs became accessible again only when the Constitutional Court annulled the government’s ban. The government also blocked access to 103,625 websites that allegedly contained illegal content (Engelli Web, cited by Esen&Gümüşçü, 2016:1592) and Twitter also announced that in the first half of 2015, three quarters of requests made to Twitter for removal of tweets and blocking of accounts were made by the Turkish government (Human Rights Watch, 2016). The legal restrictions on the use of social media in particular and Internet in general became a serious blow to young people’s freedom of expression who more extensively used the social media and Internet coverage to launch criticisms against the ruling party.

Second, the 2015 Internal Security Package, an omnibus law that introduced amendments to several laws including the Law on the Duties and Powers of the Police, the Law on Meetings and Demonstrations and to the Anti-Terror Law, imposed serious restrictions on the freedom of expression and freedom of assembly as well (Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, January 27th 2015). The package expanded the powers of the police officers such as granting them the right to stop and search individuals on the basis of “reasonable doubt”, to remove persons from demonstrations and marches (ibid) and to use firearms against protestors (Esen and Gümüşçü, 2016:1594). The new provisions privileged security over freedom and provided the ruling party with more legal provisions to “restrict freedoms [and] suppress social opposition” (Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, ibid).

To conclude, the image of contemporary youth as politically apathetic changed dramatically, when secular youth became the forerunners of the Gezi Protests in the summer of 2013. The research participants recruited for this study narrated that they participated in the uprising to protest against the ruling AKP’s authoritarian turn and its interferences with secular

203 lifestyles. This section has argued that popular mobilization in the Gezi protests increased the threat perceptions of the ruling AKP to its political hegemony. The ruling party that had already adopted incorporation as moderation and control in the post-2010 period deepened the process of exerting control over the political agency of oppositional youth. Incorporation as moderation and control operated through limited pluralism that entailed legal restrictions on political participation and through growing intolerance against dissenting youth sectors.

Partisan Incorporation

While threat perceptions to elite hegemony led the ruling AKP to moderate the demands of (potentially) oppositional youth for political participation and to adopt concerted coercion against dissenting youth sectors, they also fostered the ruling party to counter-mobilize its youth supporters in order to benefit from the pro-government activism of youth in countering its elite rivals and the broader societal opposition. Unlike its linkages with oppositional youth, the AKP thus adopted ‘partisan incorporation’ towards the young segments of its voter base. To realize partisan youth incorporation, the AKP adopted the discourse and related public policies of ‘creating a pious generation’, manipulated the pluralist structures in the area of youth participation to its own advantage and also undertook a number of corporatizing initiatives.

First of all, the ruling AKP, with the goal of extending hegemony over the political and cultural aspirations of youth, adopted the discourse of ‘creating a pious generation’. The discourse, which was first expressed as early as January 2012 by the AKP leader Erdoğan in a party meeting (Lüküslü 2016:640), pursued to strengthen religious and conservative values among pro-government youth. The discourse of ‘creating a pious generation’ was put into effect by a number of new policies in the areas of education and youth social policy. For example, the ruling party restructured the education system in a way that allowed the reopening of the middle school section of the Imam-Hatip Schools (religious Prayer and Preacher Schools) that were closed down in the late 1990s based on the secularist directives of the National Security Council in 1997. The ruling party also increased the number of those schools at the expense of secular public schools. While the number of vocational high schools and general high schools increased by 23 percent and 57 percent respectively by 2013, the Imam-Hatip High Schools increased by 73 percent (Education Reform Initiative, 2013:24). In some neighbourhoods, new Imam-Hatip Schools were created by turning secular public schools into İmam-Hatips. Also, while mandatory

204 religious courses have still been an area of controversy, introduction of optional religious courses in the middle school fueled further concerns about the Islamisation of national education. One of the reserach participants, Yusuf (a law student) for example argued that the ruling party’s education reforms discriminated against those who pursued secular education:

……it concerns me that the number of Imam Hatip schools are increasing at the expense of secular schools…………..They also changed the registration procedures in high schools. Some students have to attend Imam Hatip schools, when the closest school in their neighbourhood is an Imam-Hatip school. I believe that those education policies are religiously oriented. For example, they now introduced elective religious courses in secondary schools. They focus on teachings of Qur’an and of Prophet Muhammad. But those courses are not elective in practice. I mean the students are usually forced to select those courses; they become mandatory. I do believe that a religiously oriented policy exists56.

‘The discourse of ‘creating a pious generation’ was also implemented through a number of social policies specific to youth. The Ministry of Youth and Sports for example reorganized a number of its youth projects in a religio-conservative direction. The Ministry transformed its mixed- gender summer camps into gender-segregated camps (Lüküslü, 2016:641). Similarly, mixed- gender college dormitories were turned into gender-segregated ones (Radikal, August 12th 2013). The AKP’s interferences with mixed-gender youth spaces peaked, when Erdoğan claimed in November 2013 that mixed-gender student housing was against the society’s values. He also declared that the government was in preparation to pass legal regulations that would ban mixed- gender student housing (Hürriyet Daily News, November 7th 2013). The government ultimately did not endorse any regulations, but Erdoğan’s attack on student housing led the police a few days later to raid mixed-gender student apartments in Istanbul without legal authorization (ibid, November 8th 2013).

As discussed in the previous chapter, the secularist elites in the 1980s and the 1990s adopted the discourse of ‘creating an Atatürkist youth’ that aimed to imbue youth with Kemalist and secularist values. The ruling AKP also attempted at the cultural engineering of youth, but in an opposite direction. It systematically sought to exert hegemony over the cultural and political

56 Yusuf, interview with the author, Istanbul, March 2015.

205 aspirations of youth by promoting religious education and conservative lifestyles among youth. The secularist discourses targeting youth, part and parcel of youth incorporation in the past, eventually backlashed, when increasing number of youth in the late 1990s resisted against the headscarf ban and sympathized with the rising Islamist movement. The Islamist interferences may similarly increase the threat perceptions of youth to their individual liberties and precipitate a value change among youth in the unintended direction.

Second, recruitment of youth as youth wing members became one of the major channels the AKP leadership used to (counter-)mobilize youth. According to the AKP Youth Wings’ official website the ruling party had a total of 2 million members between the ages 18 and 30 in 2015 and In Istanbul alone the AKP recruited 400,000 youth members. Compared to the number of young wing members of the main oppositional party, that is a total of 135,000 (Haberturk, November 25th 2011), the AKP proved highly successful in recruiting youth as party members. Interviews conducted for this study with the youth members of the AKP revealed that the ruling party undertook considerable efforts in the university campuses and local districts to mobilize youth as party activists. One research participant, an executive member in the University Branch of the Istanbul AKP Youth Wings, for example talked about their recruitment efforts in detail:

We seek to get youth more engaged with politics, we try to show youth that politics is not a bad thing. For example, we organize panels, seminars, and training conferences in the university campuses. We also organize fundraising campaigns for Arikan and Somalia for example, where the Muslim populations face a variety of difficulties. We try to get youth more interested and informed about national and international politics. In addition to these, we also help university students how to find scholarships to study abroad……But, our recruitment efforts also take different forms in different campuses..I mean, politically, every campus in Istanbul have a different past and a different student profile, we try to take these differences into consideration. In my own campus, for example, our major channel to recruit youth as party members is to first get them affiliated with a student club. In my university, everyone knows that the student club named the Youth Vision is close to the AKP, everyone knows that this student club is run by the AKP youth wing members. Since everyone knows about this student club, only those interested

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in working for the AKP becomes a member of this club. (Mehmet, male, 22, Management, undergraduate)57

As Mehmet’s narrative reveals, the ruling party used a variety of mechanisms to recruit university students as party members. From academic organizations to events that focus on the basic problems of university students (how to find a scholarship), the AKP concentrated efforts to attract as many supporters as possible. While the ruling party restricted the activities of oppositional parties as well as anti-government youth in the university campuses, the AKP youth wing members encountered a highly favourable context and were provided with large resources for youth mobilization. Muhammed, for example, a law student in Istanbul, explained his decision to become a party member with reference to his feeling of being flattered with the party officials’ close contact with him:

The AKP organized a series of politics seminars, I attended those seminars. After the program, they [the party officials] contacted me in person and asked me if I might be interested to join the university branch of the youth wings. I mean, they really showed interest in me, they treated me like a brother, they tried to help me with many things. I was really flattered. I mean, I take a single step towards the party, but they almost run to me..This is how I got attached to the party. (Muhammed, male, 21, Law, undergraduate)58

In addition to recruitment efforts in the university campuses, the ruling party also concentrated efforts to mobilize less educated youth in local districts as party activists. One research participant, an executive member of the AKP youth wings in a district known to be one of the AKP’s strongholds, described the party’s attempts to reach out youth in the following words:

We go everywhere youth hang out. To internet cafes, play station saloons, coffee shops, and parks. We go to NGOs, and to foundations, and we do house visits….In our district, there are 130,000 young people between the ages of 18 and 30. We managed to recruit 21,750 of them as party members. (Hüseyin, male, 29, executive member in Ümraniye AKP Youth Wings)59.

57 Mehmet, Interview with author, Istanbul, August 2013. 58 Muhammed, interview with author, Istanbul, October 2013. 59 Hüseyin, interview with author, Istanbul, September 2013.

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Considering the low level of party membership among young people in Turkey, the AKP’s success in reaching considerable number of youth in local districts was remarkable.

The ruling AKP also adopted a number of informal corporatizing initiatives as part of its partisan incorporation efforts towards youth. For example, the AKP sought to undermine the autonomy of the student councils in the university campuses and to render them as corporatist institutions by infiltrating the executive positions within the councils with the AKP youth wing members. Even though the student councils have little power in the governing councils of the universities (Orhaner 2008), the council members still have the chance to build a strong network in campuses, interacting with the broader student population on a frequent basis. The councils also hold a budget to organize social and cultural events in campuses that allow them to exert influence over campus life. That is why the ruling party viewed the student councils as key institutions to extend its cultural and political hegemony in universities. Newspaper reports and the AKP’s websites reveal that university branches of the AKP youth wings led campaigns during council elections in order to infiltrate student councils with pro-government students (OdaTv, October 27th 2014;AKP, September 5th 2014). The AKP’s state-corporatizing initiatives towards the student councils turned into a public debate, when the president of the National Student Council defended unbridled use of police violence in 2012 against protesting students in the Middle East Technical University. It was later found out that the council president was recruited as a high-rank bureaucrat to the Ministry of Health (Evrensel, December 29th 2012). An interviewee, who was an undergraduate student in an Istanbul university that had a long tradition of left-wing student activism, observed for instance that the executive members of the student council in her university were all affiliated with the AKP and they prioritized activities that were in line with the AKP’s political and cultural vision.

In addition to student councils, the ruling AKP also established corporatist linkages with a number of non-governmental organizations and foundations that specifically worked in the area of youth and also sought to recruit youth as volunteers. The Turkey Youth Foundation (TÜGVA), established in 2014, is a case in point. The TUGVA website states that the foundation was established “to contribute to the young generations of this country by supporting their social, physical, mental, psychological and spiritual development, and teach them how to be productive, progressive, innovative and valuable for this country”(www.en.tugva.org). The TUGVA undertakes a variety of activities ranging from political and cultural seminars, summer camps,

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Arabic courses, cinema and theatre workshops to sports events. It also provides accommodation for university students in its dormitories across Turkey and offers scholarships and bursaries to university students with financial need. Sharing ideological affinities with the ruling party by engaging in activities related to Islamist themes and Ottoman heritage, the TUGVA soon reached to 51,000 youth volunteers, reached out over 480,000 youth through its activities and established branches in all the cities of Turkey (Evrensel, October 22nd 2018). The critiques have argued that the ruling party sponsored the activities of the TUGVA, provided the foundation with state- owned lands for its headquarters and dormitories and the Ministry of Education encouraged university and high school students to benefit from the services of the foundation (Cumhuriyet August 18th 2018; Cumhuriyet July 28th 2018). TUGVA, with its increasing capacity to reach out considerable number of youth, emerged as a quasi-corporatist institution in the area of youth policy and functioned to reinforce the ruling party’s attempts of youth (counter-)mobilization.

To conclude, elite hegemony and threat perceptions to this hegemony led the ruling party elites to develop two distinct types of linkages with youth resulting in hybrid youth incorporation. On the one hand, the AKP adopted ‘incorporation as moderation and control’ towards (potentially) oppositional youth in order to weaken the capacity of anti-government youth for contentious action and organized oppositional politics. On the other hand, the ruling AKP involved in partisan incorporation to (counter-)mobilize pro-government youth as a civil society force in confronting its elite rivals and the broader societal opposition. As the AKP adopted the discourse of ‘creating a pious generation’ and manipulated pluralist arrangements in the area of youth participation to (counter-)mobilize youth, it also undertook a number of corporatizing initiatives. While incorporation as moderation and control alongside concerted repression significantly restricted the channels for youth political expression and participation, partisan incorporation selectively empowered pro-government youth and enhanced the channels for their political participation. These themes will be discussed in the next section.

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5.4 The Impact of Hybrid Incorporation: The De-Mobilization of Anti-Government Youth and the Emerging Activism of Pro-Government Youth

This section turns to analyze how the process of hybrid incorporation influenced contemporary youth’s relation to politics and political activism. It will contend that incorporation as moderation and control did not only enable the AKP to prevent the escalation of youth protests rapidly and effectively, it also fostered a growing disenchantment among anti-government youth with political activism. In contrast, as partisan incorporation of pro-government youth integrated considerable number of youth into the political arena as party members and NGO volunteers, it also facilitated militant action among youth with conservative backgrounds who came to initiate street protests in order to strengthen the political hegemony of the ruling AKP.

The research participants recruited for this study, university students in İstanbul who entered university in the post-2010 period and identified themselves as anti-government, frequently shared their everyday observations and experiences of growing government intolerance towards oppositional youth politics. For the research participants, the ruling party’s frequent violations of the exercise of youth’s political rights, constituted a strong motivation for young people to stay out of organized politics. As one research participant (Mehmet) narrated:

Recently there was that protest at the campus. The Special Police Forces were waiting at the entrance to intervene. The political folks stayed inside the campus to clash with the police. The apolitical students were running away. I was like in a limbo, I didn’t know what to do. I was curious about what was happening, but then I was also scared……. Don’t take me wrong. I am not criticizing folks who clashed with the police. But I don’t think that would take them anywhere. You encounter a force that is way too stronger than you and it wants to destroy you. You never know what might happen to you, if they[the police] get you alone. [If something happens to you], your family will get upset.”(Male, 26, History, undergraduate, emphasis mine).60

Mehmet pursued a bachelor degree in history at a public university in Istanbul, which was known with a long tradition of contentious student activism. The campus, where Mehmet took most of

60 Mehmet, interview with author, Istanbul,March 2013.

210 his classes, frequently witnessed student demonstrations led by left-wing groups. Mehmet left his vocational education to study history at that prestigious university. He stated that he got amused during his first months at school by the politically active campus environment. However, Mehmet realized after a while that campus protests were not considered as a legitimate channel for political expression. He witnessed that protesting students frequently encountered police violence. He thus came to believe that attending a campus protest included high risks. The unbridled police force against the students could injure the protestors and could even jeopardize their lives. Similarly, Selin, a sociology student, also talked about police violence against street protestors and how it impacted her relation to politics:

But I mean it [the police violence] is scary, it freaks you out. I was talking to a friend recently. Imagine that the police chases after me. I need to run away. But then I can’t run fast. Probably the police immediately catch me and detain me………………..I don’t think I have enough courage to experience such an encounter with the police or security forces. Especially, as a woman, I freak out.”(Female, 22, Sociology, undergraduate). 61

In addition to police interventions against student demonstrations, the mere police presence at the campus also daily reminded young people to stay away from actions that were deemed politically undesirable. One research participant (Serkan) described the police presence at the campus and its impacts as follows:

Serkan: It is also all about the system..For example, the police…There are many police officers at our campus all the time. Sometimes I find myself thinking if that is a Police Faculty or a civil university. The police are inside the campus, but they also wander outside, they even hang out at coffee shops. These are all question marks..

Researcher: What do you think are the impacts of that? I mean the police presence?

Serkan: Repression. In this country there are more police than [political] ideas. That is a problem. Fascism is not only about gas rooms or torture. The repression of ideas is also fascism.

61 Selin, interview with author, Istanbul,July 2013.

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I am opposed to a fascist environment at university campuses. I mean, I refer to state fascism here. ”(Male, 21, Political Science&International Relations, undergraduate).62

Serkan implied that even if the police just ‘wandered around’, the police gaze fuelled a sense of insecurity and fear among the students. He preferred to use a strong word, fascism, when talking about the police presence at the campus. The police presence as fascism referred to the growing repression at university campuses spurred by the increasingly intolerant attitude of university administrations against dissenting students. Yet, the police presence was not the only mechanism the university administrations adopted to deter oppositional student politics. Yusuf, a law student who was the student council representative at his campus, pointed that the university administration did not permit panels and conferences to take place in the campus that included oppositional figures as speakers. He stated “I can’t imagine for example that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu [the leader of the main opposition party] will be able to deliver a talk in this campus”63. The repressive campus environment thus ultimately constituted a barrier to youth participation. Well- educated and secular youth felt restricted to politically express themselves and they longed for a free and politically accommodating campus environment.

The research participants also mentioned legal investigations as a strong deterrent to political participation. One interviewee (Baran), who was of Kurdish origin and sympathetic to the pro-Kurdish party, emphasized that he never considered becoming a member of the pro- Kurdish party (the HDP). He explained his reluctance with reference to the Anti-Terror Law:

There are many factors involved in my decision[of not joining the party]. First of all, that is because you need to sacrifice a lot of time and energy. But also, that is because, when you join the party, the state immediately knows about it. At that point, they might imprison you on the basis of the Anti-Terror Law. They ruin your life. I have friends who went through such a process. It is that fear that pushes me away. (Male,22, Computer engineering, undergraduate).64

62 Serkan, interview with the author, Istanbul, December 2013. 63 Yusuf, interview with the author, Istanbul, March 2015. 64 Baran, interview with the author, Istanbul, December 2013.

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The Kurdish-activist students became a special target of the ruling party in countering youth dissent. They faced concerted government coercion in the post-2010 period (Tahincioğlu and Göktaş,2013) specifically in the form of imprisonment. According to the report released by the Solidarity with Imprisoned Students Initiative (2012), the majority of the imprisoned Kurdish students were the youth wing members of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (p.10). The jailed Kurdish students faced charges of terrorist propaganda on the basis of the Anti-Terror Law (ibid:11). Baran witnessed close friends going into jail due to their affiliations with the pro- Kurdish party. His fear was thus well-grounded; the legal costs of engagement with Kurdish politics led him to abstain from working for the pro-Kurdish party. As Baran concluded towards the end of the interview: “Youth are free under the current political regime, as long as they don’t get politicized”.

The research participants also believed that the government developed particular surveillance mechanisms to identify anti-government youth and that these surveillance mechanisms functioned as a powerful tool to exert control over youth political agency. For example, Emre a law student, mentioned the possibility of getting blacklisted by the government to make sense of educated youth’s disinterest in political activism:

They[youth] don’t show interest to politics, because you know, they freak out. Polarization, rapid political change and the state’s surveillance scare them. Let’s think about my fellow law students. A law student is expected to be brave and self-confident in defending freedoms, justice and equality. However, law students are among the most fearful………they scare of getting blacklisted……….That is why they remain silent [politically inactive] (Male, 23, Law, undergraduate).65

Similarly, Barış, a mechanical engineering student, also talked about his short experience of affiliating with a political organization with reference to state surveillance. Barış idenfied himself as an Atatürkist. When he first entered university, he wanted to be politically active and he started to attend the meetings of the Club for Atatürkist Thought. Those clubs have been organized at universities since the 1990s and they emerged as the campus branches of the Association for Atatürkist Thought (A prominent Kemalist NGO that was established in 1989

65 Emre, interview with the author, Istanbul, March 2015.

213 with the goal of counteracting Islamic resurgence). Barış narrated that he became disappointed with the lack of qualified political discussion at the club. However, he also mentioned that he had made efforts to attract close friends to the club. One of his friends told Barış that he did not want to risk ‘getting blacklisted’ by affiliating with a Kemalist association. Barış’s friend believed that the state surveillance could classify him as a Kemalist and that could be risky given an anti- Kemalist government was in power. Barış also left the student club after a while.66

In contrast, as partisan incorporation of pro-government youth enabled the ruling party to mobilize considerable number of youth with conservative backgrounds into party politics and pro-government civic activism, it also facilitated the militant action of pro-government youth. The interviews with the AKP youth wing members revealed that the AKP leadership managed to counter-mobilize youth as a political force ready to confront anti-government mobilization in the future. The narratives of the youth wings members manifested that young members of the AKP developed a strong attachment to and identification with the party leader Erdoğan. During the interviews, most of the research participants specifically emphasized that they would do their best to prevent the overthrow of the AKP and of Erdoğan from power:

The Gezi Park protests reminded us that we, as youth wing members, should be more alert. We need to reach out more youth, we need to tell them about the party….But, well, I really don’t know. These people [participants of the protests] would never change their minds. Whatever services the government brings to them, they are just concerned with their lifestyles. They just don’t get it…They mobilized to preserve a green space. But, we all know that it was never about a few trees. They had such a huge hatred [against the AKP] that they wanted to overthrow the government. Taking to the streets was the only way for these people to oust the government from power…But, we will never surrender. If needed, we will die for this cause. I am telling you honestly. Everyone should know about it. We respect these people (the opposition), but we will not surrender..We will die if needed in order to prevent any harms to Tayyip Erdoğan. (Kadir, male, 27, university graduate)67

66 Barış, interview with the author, Istanbul, July 2013. 67 Kadir, interview with author, Istanbul, August 2013.

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We will never give up on Erdoğan. I mean, we will never allow anyone to get Erdoğan out of power through illegal means. Let me be clear. We will never resort to violence, but we will also do our best to prevent an electoral defeat of Erdoğan. They try to overthrow Erdoğan from power through illegal means. We will never let this happen as well. We are very determined. Even if they hang me in the end, I will do anything needed to prevent the illegal overthrow of Erdoğan from power….The Gezi protests were an attempt to overthrow Erdoğan from power. The protests targeted Erdoğan, but I felt like they also targeted me as a person (Hüseyin, male, 29, executive member in Ümraniye AKP Youth Wings)68.

I believe the foreign powers sponsored the [Gezi] protests. The West sponsored the protests and hoped that we, as the AKP youth, would also take to the streets that would result in civil conflict. That is what they planned to do. Koç, Eczacıbaşı, and Boyner families [the established secular bourgeoisie] also sponsored the protests and the CHP [the Republican People’s Party, the main opposition party] also involved in the mobilization of the protestors. They all actively supported the protests. The goal was a coup d’etat; they wanted to overthrow the AKP from power. That was the real objective…..They [the secularist elites] have lost their prestige and power. They lost their power everywhere, the media, the judiciary and all politics, they lost their power. Now they want to return to good old days and that is why they want to overthrow the AKP from power (Yasin, male, 26, executive member in Ümraniye AKP Youth Wings)69

Parallel to the AKP elites’ depiction of the Gezi Park protests, the youth wing members of the AKP conceived of the protests as an attempt of a secularist social revolution to overthrow the AKP from power. It is also considerable that the AKP youth spoke furiously about the protestors and acknowledged their willingness to undertake efforts in preventing similar protests to take place in the future. A number of demonstrations and protests by the AKP youth wing members in the post-Gezi period are cases in point.

A few months after the Gezi protests, in December 2013, a group of young people affiliated with the ruling party’s (AKP) youth wings, gathered at the airport in the city of Trabzon to meet Prime Minister Erdoğan who came to the city for a visit. The youngsters all wore the kefen, a white cloth the bodies of Muslims are wrapped before burial. They held a

68 Hüseyin, interview with author, Istanbul, September 2013. 69 Yasin, interview with author, Istanbul, September 2013.

215 banner that read: “We are in kefens; we are with you till the death”(Türk, 2014:289). Those were the days the Prime Minister Erdoğan and other government spokespersons continued to demonize young people who attended the Gezi protestors, accusing them of attempting a coup to overthrow the government. The youth wing members put on the kefen as a gesture to show their unconditional support to the AKP leader Erdoğan. Similarly, on September 6th 2015, a group of 200 young people, most of them the AKP youth wing members, raided the headquarters of daily Hürriyet with stones and sticks. They staged the violent protest in response to the newspaper’s coverage of President Erdoğan’s words on a terrorist attack (Hürriyet Daily News, September 7th 2015). Abdurrahim Boynukalın, a young deputy from the AKP, who headed the angry youth, delivered a speech towards the end of the protest. Boynukalın asserted that: “Doğan media [the media conglomerate daily Hürriyet is part of], the pro-Kurdish party, the PKK and the Gülenist terrorist organization, I am telling you, you will be all gone when Erdoğan finally becomes the President [referring to a possible transition to a presidential system] (BBC Türkçe, September 7th 2015). While protests by anti-government youth encountered unbridled police violence and detentions, the demonstrations headed by the AKP youth wing members, even if they were violent, were tolerated and protest participants faced no restrictions.

To conclude, the process of hybrid incorporation significantly shaped the trajectory of youth political participation in the post-2010 period. Incorporation as moderation and control led anti-government youth to refrain from being affiliated with oppositional parties or political organizations due to the growing intolerance of the ruling party towards oppositional youth politics. In contrast, partisan incorporation directed towards conservative youth enhanced the spaces and channels available for pro-government activism, incorporated considerable number of youth into party politics and NGO activism, and also facilitated the militancy of pro-government youth who came to initiate street protests in order to counter the societal opposition.

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5.5 Conclusion

This chapter has focused on the question of ‘why and how did the ruling AKP encounter youth contention and largely manage to contain it, while promoting pro-government youth mobilization?’ In order to address this question, this chapter has traced the trajectory of ruling party-youth linkages specifically focusing on the period from 2010 to 2016. It has argued that the Turkish political arena witnessed a shift in the elite structure from fragmentation to hegemony in the post-2010 period. Elite hegemony, characterized by the AKP’s dominant party regime, its increasing monopoly over key state institutions as well as by the unfolding of a hybrid regime in Turkey, significantly shaped the course of ruling party-youth linkages.

First, since the AKP began to feel insecure in power and perceived threats to its hegemony due to the ongoing crises at the elite and societal levels, it developed two distinct types of linkages with youth put into effect through hybrid incorporation. On the one hand, as part of their broader attempts to weaken the societal opposition, the ruling elites sought to restrict the channels through which the anti-government youth could engage in political activism. The AKP thus adopted incorporation as moderation and control, marked by its attempts at moderating the demands of (potentially) oppositional youth for political participation and exerting greater control over the political aspirations of anti-government youth. Incorporation as moderation and control was put into effect through limited-pluralism and growing intolerance towards dissenting youth sectors. Limited-pluralism entailed new legislation that restricted the exercise of youth political rights, while the growing intolerance of the ruling party towards oppositional youth politics culminated in concerted coercion against activist youth. On the other hand, in tandem with the ruling party’s pursuit of politicizing its voter base, the AKP aimed to politically activate pro-government sectors of youth with the goal of turning its youth supporters into an active social force ready to counteract its elite rivals and the societal opponents. The AKP elites, to realize this objective, adopted ‘partisan incorporation’ of youth that referred to the AKP’s involvement in the (counter-)mobilization of pro-government youth. Partisan incorporation was put into effect by the discourse of creating a pious youth, by manipulating the pluralist policies in the area of youth participation, and by a number of corporatizing initiatives.

Second, this chapter has analyzed the impact of hybrid incorporation on the political trajectory of youth political participation. It has contended that well-educated and secular youth

217 mobilized against the ruling party in the summer of 2013 in protest against the AKP’s increasing authoritarianism. Youth mobilization was also shaped by the feelings of political exclusion and threat perceptions to secular lifestyles. But, the AKP successfully managed to prevent the escalation of youth protests through concerted repression. Also, the process of incorporation as moderation and control largely restricted the channels and spaces for organized politics of oppositional youth. Therefore, as grassroots youth mobilization during the Gezi Park protests did not turn into a more organized form of youth politics, anti-government youth largely disappeared from the political scene in the post-2013 period. The youth supporters of the AKP, on the other hand, experienced a highly favourable context for engaging with pro-government politics due to the process of partisan incorporation. The post-2010 period thus witnessed growing number of youth staging pro-government protests and organizing academic and social events in support of the ruling party as party activists and/or members of pro-government NGOs.

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6 Conclusion

Youth political activism in the Global South has been a contested issue in public and academic debates. Youth have acted as a significant political force in the Global South. They have mobilized against the established system posing challenges of varying degrees to state authority and regime stability. However, young people have sometimes counter-mobilized against the societal opposition in defense of the status quo. When the power-holder elites in the Global South have sought to harness youth agency for particular political causes, they have referred to youth as “builders of the future” (Bayat and Herrera 2010:3). During the times of youth insurgency though, the political elites have identified youth as "disruptive agents"(ibid) and troublemakers. Similarly, while some scholars have referred to youth in the Global South as one of the major political forces that generate political instability (Huntington 1968) or as the primary perpetrators of political violence in the post-Cold War era (Kaplan 2000), others have depicted activist youths as progressive forces “shift[ing] the nature of politics”(Austin 2011:81) and as the forerunners of “freedom, dignity and justice” (Murphy 2012:20). Focusing on the trajectory of youth politics in post-1960 Turkey, this study has aimed to move beyond the dichotomous representations of youth agency in the Global South. It has instead offered an analytical framework that sheds light on the complex dynamics of youth mobilization and demobilization through a comparative-historical analysis of elite-youth relations.

From 1960 to 1980, young people in Turkey disrupted the political arena through radical politics in order to enable broader political change. Both left-wing and right-wing youth (university students in particular) challenged state authority and regime stability by engaging in increasingly contentious and violent political action. In the post-1980 period, however, youth mobilizations became ephemeral, did not reach the grassroots, or were effectively suppressed by the coercive apparatus. Recent research reveals that young people in Turkey show little interest in politics and have low levels of political participation (Yılmaz and Oy 2014; Erdoğan and Uyan 2016). This dissertation has focused on the puzzle of “Why did the Turkish state encounter sustained youth contention and fail to contain it in the 1960s and the 1970s, while it has proved more capable of preventing the emergence and/or escalation of youth dissent in the post-1980 period?” In order to address this puzzle, specifically to explain the outcomes of youth

219 mobilization and demobilization, it has comparatively traced the trajectory of what I call ‘political elite-youth linkages’. Elite-youth linkages refer to the attempts of influential political elites at regulating youth political participation in order to realize particular political objectives and to the ways young people benefit from, outmaneuver, or navigate through elite claims to exert control over youth political agency. Drawing upon the studies of political elites, the literatures on social movements and revolutions, and the studies on political incorporation, this dissertation has argued that the type of the elite structure, namely the nature of political interactions and distribution of power among the influential elites, has shaped the course of elite- youth linkages in post-1960 Turkey leading the political elites to adopt different forms of youth incorporation. Different paths of youth incorporation in turn played a significant role in the unfolding of youth mobilization and de-mobilization.

Specifically, I have contended that the more fragmented the Turkish elites in the period from 1960 to 1980, the more they turned to participate themselves in youth mobilization via the process of partisan incorporation. Elite fragmentation eventually facilitated militant youth behavior, restricted the coercive capacity of the Turkish state to counter youth contention, and created youth mobilization that was sustained over a long time. The more cohesive the Turkish elites in the period from 1983 to 2002, the more they turned away from mobilizing youth sectors and the more they subscribed to incorporation as moderation and control. Elite cohesion hindered the capacity of activist youth for mobilization and even triggered youth political disengagement. Finally, the more the ruling party elites have come closer to achieve elite hegemony in the post- 2010 period, the more they adopted hybrid incorporation to secure incumbency and sustain political hegemony. Elite hegemony weakened oppositional youth politics and politically empowered pro-government youth.

Undertaking a single-case study of elite-youth linkages in post-1960 Turkey, this study has still adopted a comparative-historical approach by analyzing three time periods as different cases (1960-1980, 1980-2002, and 2010-2016). However, it has also combined the contextualized comparison of different time periods with the examination of within-case studies. Therefore, this study has simultaneously relied on comparative and process-tracing methods in order to analyze secondary sources and archival materials of newspapers, parliamentary proceedings, and relevant policy reports by independent organizations, and published memoirs. It has also drawn upon 80 semi-structured interviews with veteran youth activists, the youth

220 members of the ruling AKP, and with university students and recent graduates who participated in the Gezi Park protests in 2013. Interviews were conducted in İstanbul and the capital city of Ankara during 12 months of field research in total (June-December 2013 and October 2014- April 2015).

First of all, Chapter 2 has investigated the period from the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 to the first military coup in 1960 to offer a historical narrative that sheds light on the precursors of elite structures and the divergent paths of elite-youth linkages in post-1960 Turkey. It has argued that the causes of elite fragmentation and partisan youth incorporation in Turkey that prevailed in the period from 1960 to 1980 were rooted in the socioeconomic and political dynamics of the single-party period and the first decade of the multi-party democracy. After the War of Independence (1919-1923) against the foreign powers, an ideologically united elite structure came into existence in Turkey. As a single party regime unfolded in the period from 1923 to 1946 under the rule of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the so-called Kemalist elites of the top military, the high ranking bureaucrats and the intellectuals remained ideologically cohesive around the path of nation-building, economic development, and secularization. Similar to their counterparts in other post-independence/colonization contexts, the ideologically unified modernizing elites established partisan linkages with youth. Partisan incorporation of youth aimed to harness youth agency for nation-building and top-down secularization. The single-party elites constructed the social category of youth as a political category (Lüküslü 2009) that was expected to protect the new republican and secularized regime from the enemies inside and outside. However, the single-party elites also sought to moderate youth demands for political participation by keeping strict control over organized youth politics. Youth incorporation during the single-party regime created partisan student organizations, which pursued a pro-regime line of politics and concentrated efforts to promote Kemalist modernization and nation-building.

Chapter 2 also contended that the single-party regime faced a deepening legitimacy crisis by the early 1940s due to the disenchantments of the peasantry, newly emerging national bourgeoisie and working class as a result of the top down secularization and a protectionist economy. When the ruling CHP made a transition to a multiparty regime in 1946 to soothe the opposition, a strong opposition party, the Democrat Party (DP), that was comprised of the CHP elites critical of the single party policies, was founded. Amidst the victory of the DP in the 1950

221 elections, the elite structure in Turkey shifted from ideological unity to elite disunity characterized by two distinct and well-organized elite factions (the Kemalist bloc vs. the ruling right-wing populist DP). Each elite faction held competing visions over the course of economic development, the nature of modernization, and over the role of civil-military bureaucratic elites in the political arena. The single-party elites had already undertaken several democratizing reforms in the period from 1946 to 1950 to secure incumbency. In the 1950s, this opening in political opportunities provided educated youth with enhanced channels for self-organization. However, since elite disunity fostered immense rivalry among the competing elites, the ruling DP sought to exert greater control over (potentially oppositional) youth politics and adopted “semi-corporatist policies” towards student associations (Alper 2009). Constrained by the policies of the DP, the organized sectors of youth in the 1950s continued to stay away from oppositional politics.

Chapter 2 finally focused on the repercussions of intensified elite rivalry in the late 1950s on the trajectory of elite-youth linkages and youth mobilization. It has argued that the disunified elite factions (the Kemalist elites and the DP elites) participated themselves in popular mobilization and in particular youth mobilization in order to increase their bargaining power vis- à-vis the rival elites. While the DP failed to mobilize a pro-government youth base, the Kemalist elites orchestrated large-scale student protests that helped precipitate a coup d’etat in May 1960. This first contentious appearance of youth on the political scene marked a fundamental shift in elite-youth linkages. As educated youth gained political confidence and acquired a greater sense of political efficacy that ultimately led them to sustain contentious politics in the next two decades, the political elites came to comprehend the saliency of youth mobilization in realizing their particular political objectives.

Chapter 3 has focused on the question of "why did the Turkish state encounter sustained youth contention in the period from 1960 to 1980 and fail to contain the growing militancy of youth?" In order to address this question, it has traced the trajectory of elite-youth linkages in order to demonstrate in a causal chain how a shift from elite disunity to fragmentation enabled youth to sustain their mobilization over a long period, while significantly restricting the coercive capacity of the Turkish state to repress youth rebels. Specifically, I have first argued that in the aftermath of the 1960 coup, the political arena revealed elite fragmentation until the second coup d'etat in 1980 that was characterized by the numerical proliferation of influential elites, intense

222 ideological polarization among right-wing and left-wing elites, and a diffused power configuration. Elite fragmentation unfolded as the outcome of elite responses to the multiple crises of representation and incorporation. As the advent of modernization from the 1950s onwards released new social forces with diverging interests some of which engaged in contentious politics and challenged the political establishment from below, the 1970s also witnessed the crisis of the import-substitution system and relatedly the intensification of labor- capital struggle in Turkey. The Turkish elites became fragmented and ideologically polarized in their competition for representing and incorporating new social forces into the political arena.

Elite factions in a fragmented elite structure participated themselves in youth mobilization from 1960 to 1980 through the process of partisan incorporation in order to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rival elites. Partisan incorporation included elite attempts at politically activating youth sectors conceived as societal allies or facilitating the mobilization of already politicized youth sectors. By subscribing to partisan incorporation, the elites aimed to signal the rival elites that they could disrupt the political arena through elite sponsored-radical youth action. In order to realize partisan youth incorporation, the Turkish elites first introduced pluralist arrangements in the area of youth participation and then manipulated pluralist arrangements to their own advantages to favour youth allies and disadvantage youth opponents.

Chapter 3 has concluded that the process of partisan incorporation provided politicized youth with immense opportunities for contentious action by facilitating youth mobilization and ultimately empowering youth beyond intended levels. Since elite fragmentation debilitated the coercive capacity of the state due to diverging elite views on the use of repression and to an ideologically divided coercive apparatus, the Turkish state remained ineffective in responding to youth militancy. As a result, the Turkish state became vulnerable to youth contention and failed to contain it, while youth could sustain their mobilization over a long period.

Chapter 4 has focused on the question of “why did the Turkish state, unlike the 1960s and the 1970s, remain largely insusceptible to sustained youth dissent in the period from 1983 to 2002?” The academic and public commentators in Turkey have emphasized the depoliticizing effects of coercion against youth activists during the three-years long military rule (1980-83) and of the transition to a neoliberal economy that has promoted individualism and consumerism to explain the sources of youth demobilization in post-1980 Turkey. This study has alternatively

223 emphasized the changing nature of linkages between political elites and youth. It has contended that elite transformation in the aftermath of the military rule from fragmentation to relative cohesion resulted in youth demobilization by restricting the channels for youth participation and increasing the capacity of the Turkish state for effective coercion.

First, chapter 4 has demonstrated that even though the political arena continued to reveal some degree of fragmentation at the elite level characterized by a diffused power configuration and fragmentation in the party system, unlike the pre-1980 period, the dominant Turkish elites including the top military, high judiciary, centrist parties, and the metropolitan bourgeoisie became cohesive over a number of once-contested political issues. Specifically, in order to respond to the crises at the level of state-society relations, namely the unsettling impacts of neoliberal transformation that aggravated the economic marginalization of urban poor and the escalation of long-standing cultural divisions into contentious politics through the rise of Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement, the influential elites united around three major policy- choices: First, they did not diverge from market-oriented growth. Second, they sought to moderate the demands of urban sectors for participation through limited-pluralist legal arrangements. Third, they agreed to rely on repressive measures to counteract the Kurdish insurgency and the Islamist movement.

Chapter 4 has further contended that unlike the 1960s and the 1970s, the relatively cohesive elites in the period from 1983 to 2002, did not seek to establish overtly partisan linkages with youth. Instead, they subscribed to ‘incorporation as moderation and control’ that was characterized by the elite attempts at moderating youth demands for political participation with the ultimate goal of preventing the emergence/recurrence of sustained youth contention against the state. Incorporation as moderation and control was put into effect through three instruments: limited-pluralist legal arrangements that brought significant restrictions on the political rights of youth; a depoliticizing economic discourse that sought youth incorporation by integrating young people into the structures of the neoliberal economy; and growing intolerance towards the organized politics of oppositional youth sectors, namely towards left-wing, Kurdish, and Islamist youth activists. In order to prevent the escalation of protests by newly politicized youth sectors, incorporation as moderation and control also entailed the use of concerted coercion against the contentious youth groups. Since the dominant elites developed a consensus

224 on the use of repression against the so-called radical social forces, the Turkish state increased its coercive capacity and effectively and rapidly suppressed contentious youth movements.

In chapter 4, I have concluded that incorporation as moderation and control significantly shrank the spaces available for youth to pursue oppositional politics, weakened the mobilizational capacity of activist youth, and prevented the grassroot-ization of youth mobilization. As a result, a considerable number of the post-1980 coup generations of youth ultimately became alienated from and disenchanted with the political arena, even with conventional forms of political participation.

Finally, in chapter 5, this study has focused on the period from 2010 to 2016 and addressed the question of "why and how did the ruling AKP effectively contain oppositional youth politics while promoting pro-government youth's (counter-)mobilization?". In order to address this question, chapter 5 has specifically investigated the nature of ruling AKP-youth relations. It has argued that the shift in the elite structure from fragmentation (2002-2010) to hegemony drastically changed the ways the ruling AKP related to the popular sectors and youth that resulted in the fading of oppositional youth politics and the political empowerment of conservative youth by simultaneously restricting the channels for oppositional youth politics and enhancing the opportunities for pro-government youth mobilization.

Chapter 5 has first demonstrated that when the ruling AKP emerged victorious out of the power struggles with the secularist bloc in 2010, an elite structure characterized by ‘hegemony’ came into existence in Turkey. Specifically, hegemony at the elite level was characterized by the AKP's consolidation of its one-party rule in the post-2010 period and its increasing control over key state institutions and national policy-making. The AKP successfully curbed the tutelary powers of the secularist military and the high judiciary, and it also infiltrated state bureaucracy with party loyalists (a concentrated power configuration). However, because the electoral arena also manifested elite diversity with competing and ideologically distinct political parties (wide differentiation), interactions at the elite level revealed contradicting dynamics. The leaders of the major political parties held diverging views over major political and economic issues, but the ruling party elites, bureaucratic elites and economic elites largely remained cohesive (mixed integration). I have argued that a number of crises at the elite and societal levels (e.g. nondemocratic attempts of the secularist elites to overthrow the AKP government, the breakdown of

225 the alliance between the AKP and the Gulen movement, the Gezi Park protests in 2013) increased the existential security of the AKP and led the party elites to conceive of their political hegemony as fragile. In response to these crises, the ruling AKP created a competitive authoritarian regime characterized by the continued existence of competitive elections, but also by increasing restrictions on the exercise of individual liberties and political rights (Esen and Gumuscu 2016). The AKP's authoritarian turn significantly debilitated the capacity of the oppositional elites and the broader societal opposition to exert influence over the political processes.

Chapter 5 has next argued that since elite hegemony was not fully consolidated in the period from 2010 to 2016, the AKP elites, in order to maintain their monopoly over political and state power, established two types of linkages with social forces and youth. On the one hand, as part of its broader attempts at weakening the societal opposition, the ruling AKP sought to restrict the channels through which oppositional youth sectors could relate to politics. On the other hand, in tandem with its goal of mobilizing its support base, the AKP pursued to politically activate youth sectors that were supportive of the AKP rule. Therefore, the ruling party subscribed to what I call ‘hybrid youth incorporation’ characterized by the coexistence of partisan incorporation and incorporation as moderation and control. Incorporation as moderation and control towards oppositional youth was put into effect through limited-pluralist legal arrangements and concerted coercion against dissenting youth sectors. In contrast, the AKP adopted ‘partisan incorporation’ towards pro-government youth that entailed the goal of (counter-)mobilizing pro-government youth in order to politically empower youth as a civil society force in confronting the AKP’s elite rivals and the societal opponents. The ruling party manipulated pluralist policies in the area of youth participation to its own advantage, adopted the discourse of and related public policies for “creating a pious youth” and also undertook a number of corporatizing initiatives to realize partisan youth incorporation.

Chapter 5 has concluded that incorporation as moderation and control enabled the ruling AKP to prevent the escalation of oppositional youth mobilizations and also to foster political disengagement among anti-government youth sectors. However, partisan incorporation towards pro-government youth integrated a considerable number of youth with conservative backgrounds into the political arena and generated new spaces and opportunities for the sustained civil society activism of pro-government youth. It remains to be seen whether the AKP intends to or will be

226 able to create a more radical youth base that might act as a street force against potential anti- government protestors.

This study has made several contributions to the literature on social movements, studies of political incorporation, and to the new elite paradigm proposed by Burton, Field, and Higley. First of all, the scholars of state-society relations in the Global South have investigated the complex relationships between the state/political elites and the social forces as diverse as workers, peasants, ethnic and religious minorities, and immigrants. However, despite being a critical population group as agents of nation-building, regime transformation, and policy changes, youth have ceased to exist as a central category in those studies. By attempting to explore the trajectory of elite-youth linkages in a historically comparative fashion, this study does not only sheds light on the underexplored theme of elite attempts of youth political incorporation, but also contributes to the scholarly debates on the variance in elite strategies of political control and domination as well as on the variance of popular responses to elite attempts at shaping the nature of state-society relations.

Second, while most of the social movement analyses exclude youth as a unit of analysis (Bayat 2010:28), this study has treated youth as a central category when investigating the underlying dynamics of social mobilization. Additionally, the studies on social movements and revolutions have paid scant attention to the process of demobilization. By undertaking an in- depth analysis of youth demobilization in post-1980 Turkey, this study has aimed to fill in this theoretical lacuna. It has demonstrated that in addition to coercive measures, the power-holder elites adopt legal and institutional mechanisms to systematically moderate the demands of youth for political participation, - a process I have called ‘incorporation as moderation and control’.

Third, social movement theory has also under-theorized in what ways the elites participate themselves in social mobilization. Through the process-tracing method, this study has conceptualized the process of political incorporation and has demonstrated that the elites adopt the incorporating instruments of pluralist policies, corporatist initiatives, and particular discourses in order to mobilize social forces for partisan causes. Also, this study has conceptualized two types of political incorporation. By distinguishing between partisan incorporation and incorporation as moderation and control, it has sought to demonstrate that the

227 incorporating agents pursue different objectives and target different sectors when they carry out particular projects of political incorporation.

Finally, this dissertation has expanded the new elite paradigm proposed by Burton, Field, and Higley. First of all, contrary to Burton, Field, and Higley's assumption that identify elite structures as highly persistent, it has argued that elites structures are more temporal, elastic, and prone to middle-term change and most importantly they do not necessarily follow a linear- progressive path from disunity to consensual unity. Second, in order to identify different types of elite structures, this study has proposed the dimension of ‘the nature of power configurations within the state.' Finally, it has proposed two alternative subtypes of elite structures in order to better grasp the complexity of power distribution between and political interactions among the influential elites in a polity. It has contended that in addition to ideologically unified, disunified, fragmented, and consensually united elites, the subcategories of ‘cohesive elites’ and ‘hegemonic elites’ enhance our understanding of different types of elite structures.

By focusing on the micro-arena of political elite-youth linkages, this study has also undertaken the arduous task of ‘unpacking the post-1960 Turkish state' in order to offer a more nuanced analytical framework for understanding the transformations in state-society relations. That is, by employing the term "elite structure," it has disaggregated the Turkish state into various factions (military elites, party elites, high-ranking bureaucrats, intellectuals, and economic elites) and has highlighted the changing nature of power configurations between and political interactions among the state elites. Scholars of state-society relations in Turkey have (explicitly or implicitly) referred to the Turkish state as a ‘strong state' with ideological unity, autonomous interests, and a high coercive capacity possessing the ability to shape its society in the desired fashion (see for example: Heper 1985; Keyder 1987; Buğra 1996; Öniş 1997; Üstel 2014). However, these studies have treated the Turkish state as a unified and static entity and have paid less attention to how changes in the elite structures have shaped the relationship of the Turkish state with various social forces. This study has instead sought to document the transformation of the Turkish state by tracing the shift in elite structures from ideological unity to disunity and from fragmentation to relative cohesion, to hegemony. It has contended that these transformations have re-framed the priorities and the interests of the Turkish state in its relations with the social forces and in particular with young people.

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This study has demonstrated that the Turkish elites alternated between partisan youth incorporation and incorporation as moderation and control in structuring their political relations with youth, but they did not subscribe to a more democratic form of youth incorporation. It has argued that partisan youth incorporation resulted in overt youth radicalization and ultimately culminated in democratic breakdowns. Overt youth radicalization along with worker militancy provided the military with incentives to undertake a coup in 1960, a coup-by memorandum in 1971, and another coup in 1980. In contrast, incorporation as moderation and control restricted youth political rights and fostered youth disengagement even from conventional forms of political participation that reinforced Turkey's limited democracy in the post-1980 period. But, as a concluding question, are there any possibilities for a democratic form of youth incorporation in Turkey and the broader Global South? Also, what might be some repercussions of democratic youth incorporation for democratic transition and consolidation?

It is possible to tentatively conceptualize democratic youth incorporation as elite attempts at enhancing the channels for youth political participation without discriminating against particular youth sectors and in order to integrate young people into the established system as equal citizens and with more political power. Democratic youth incorporation might function through pluralist and democratic-corporatist arrangements in the area of youth participation and include such features as progressive legislation on youth participation, new institutional structures to aggregate the political demands of youth and to resolve conflicts between the government and organized youth (e.g. student unions with bargaining power, local youth councils), and financial support to youth civil society organizations. Democratic youth incorporation might also entail a high degree of government tolerance towards youth protests and youth self-organizing. Based on the findings of this study, this dissertation tentatively concludes that one of the preconditions for democratic youth incorporation in Turkey and the Global South is a “consensual” elite structure (Burton and Higley 2001) where the influential political elites demonstrate a strong consensus and commitment for democratic procedures and in particular for the enhancement of youth political participation. Especially in countries with youth bulges, democratic youth incorporation might carry the potential to accelerate democratic transitions and democratic consolidation by politically empowering youth citizens and providing them with opportunities to influence political processes.

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