University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting

POLITICAL TRUST IN TURKEY: A STUDY OF THE DETERMINANTS OF PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD INSTITUTIONS

TAHIR ENES GEDIK

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2018

To my family

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to start by thanking my dissertation advisor Alin M. Ceobanu for his support, encouragement and patience over the years, which made it possible for me to design, manage and complete this dissertation project. To him I owe great intellectual debt. During the past five years, he has been an ideal mentor and supervisor, combining and balancing intellectual freedom and critical involvement in my research through his advice, wisdom and knowledge.

During this research, I also had the great pleasure and privilege of working with my dissertation committee of Aida A. Hozic, Charles Gattone and Tamir Sorek. I would like to express my great appreciation to them for reading this dissertation at various stages of development, sharing their knowledge and insights on the topic and countries analyzed, and passing on their passion and energy to strive for more rigor. It was their thought-provoking questions, useful comments and thorough reviews, which improved this study significantly.

I am very indebted to many friends and colleagues who have supported me throughout my academic journey at UF. I would especially like to thank Ozcan Tunalilar,

Tolga Tezcan, Onur Muftugil, Sara Moore, Cristina Ramos, Johanna Espin and John

Blasing. Finally, this dissertation would not have come to fruition without the endless support of my family, and my wife, Sevcan Gugumcu.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

LIST OF TABLES ...... 8

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 10

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... 12

ABSTRACT ...... 13

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 15

Political Trust in the World of Troubled Democracies ...... 15 Turkey: The Question of Exceptionalism and Polarization ...... 19 Outline of the Study ...... 22

2 EXCEPTION, RELIGION AND DIFFERENCE: EXPLAINING POLITICAL TRUST IN MUSLIM MAJORITY COUNTRIES AND TURKEY ...... 26

Political Trust as Institutional Confidence ...... 29 Determinants of Political Trust ...... 30 Political Trust and Religion: A Neglected Factor? ...... 32 Turkish Exceptionalism: Islam and Secularization ...... 35 Data and Methods ...... 38 Dependent Variables ...... 39 Independent Variables ...... 41 Analytic Strategy ...... 43 Results ...... 44 Concluding Remarks...... 47

3 POLITICAL TRUST AND PARTISAN POLARIZATION IN TURKEY ...... 66

Research on Political Trust in Turkey ...... 66 Polarization and Political Trust ...... 70 Polarization in Turkey ...... 73 Data and Methods ...... 76 Data ...... 76 Dependent Variables ...... 76 Independent Variables ...... 79 Analysis and Results...... 81 Trust in Army ...... 81 Trust in Courts (Justice System) ...... 82

Trust in Police ...... 83 Trust in Government ...... 84 Trust in Parliament ...... 85 Trust in Civil Service ...... 86 Trust in Political Parties ...... 87 Concluding Remarks...... 88

4 TRENDS IN POLITICAL TRUST IN TURKEY: 1990-2017 ...... 101

Trends in Political Trust in the United States and Western Europe ...... 102 Data and Methods ...... 106 Data ...... 106 Analytic Strategy ...... 107 Analysis and Results...... 108 World Values Survey ...... 108 Eurobarometer ...... 113 Discussion and Concluding Remarks ...... 116

5 TURKISH POLITICAL HISTORY: RETHINKING POLITICAL TRUST ...... 134

Emergence of the Bureaucracy: Reform Movement Before and After the Tanzimat ...... 134 The Constitutional Period and the Hamidian Era ...... 142 Young Turk Revolution and the CUP ...... 144 The Ideology of the CUP and Late Ottoman Mentality ...... 146 The Republican Period: A New Beginning? ...... 149 Multiparty Period: Democratization or Authoritarian Persistence ...... 153 Discussion: Rethinking Culture and Political Trust ...... 157

6 CONCLUSION ...... 162

Introduction ...... 162 Summary of Findings ...... 163 Limitations and Future Directions ...... 169

APPENDIX

A QUESTION WORDING AND RESPONSE CATEGORIES ...... 172

B CODING AND DESCRIPTION OF VARIABLES ...... 173

C LOCALLY WEIGHTED SCATTERPLOT SMOOTHING ...... 176

D OPTIMIZATION PLOTS ...... 178

E TRENDS IN POLITICAL TRUST WITH SELECTED EVENTS ...... 180

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 183

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 200

LIST OF TABLES

Table page

2-1 Measurement Invariance Results (MGCFA) ...... 50

2-2 Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Army across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) ...... 51

2-3 Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Courts across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) ...... 53

2-4 Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Police across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) ...... 55

2-5 Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Civil Service across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) ...... 57

2-6 Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Government across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) ...... 59

2-7 Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Parliament across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) ...... 61

2-8 Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Political Parties across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) ...... 63

2-9 Logistic Regression Analysis of Political Trust in Turkey using Individual Religiosity Measures and Other Predictors (Average Marginal Effects) ...... 65

3-1 Goodness-of-fit Statistics for Single-Factor and Two-Factor Models ...... 90

3-2 Percentage of respondents who would vote… ...... 90

3-3 Ordinal Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Army, Courts and Police in Turkey (WVS 2007 & 2011) ...... 91

3-4 Ordinal Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Government, Parliament, Civil Service and Political Parties in Turkey (WVS 2007 & 2011) ...... 92

4-1 Trust in Institutions: Means and Percentages (Turkey: WVS/EVS 1990-2011) 125

4-2 Independent Sample T-test Results for Trust in Institutions (WVS/EVS: 1990- 2011) ...... 126

4-3 Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Institutions Using Year and Other Variables (Turkey: WVS 1990-2011) ...... 127

A-1 Response categories of confidence/trust in institutions ...... 172

B-1 Coding and Frequencies (Turkey: WVS 2007 & WVS 2011) ...... 173

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

3-1 Single Factor Solution for Trust Items ...... 93

3-2 Two-Factor Solution for Trust Items ...... 93

3-3 Trust in Army by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011 ...... 94

3-4 Trust in Courts by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011...... 95

3-5 Trust in Police by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011 ...... 96

3-6 Trust in Government by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011 ...... 97

3-7 Trust in Parliament by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011 ...... 98

3-8 Trust in Civil Service by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011 ...... 99

3-9 Trust in Political Parties by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011 ...... 100

4-1 Mean levels of Trust in Institutions (Turkey: WVS/EVS 1990-2011) ...... 128

4-2 Predicted Probabilities for Trust in Army, Police, and Courts over Years (Turkey: WVS 1990/2011) ...... 129

4-3 Predicted Probabilities for Trust in Government, Parliament, Civil Service and Parties over Years (Turkey: WVS 1990/2011) ...... 130

4-4 Trust in Institutions (Turkey: EB 2004-2017) ...... 131

4-5 Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoother (Loess) for Trust in Institutions, Span=0.7 (Turkey: EB 2004-2017) ...... 132

4-6 World Bank Indicators: GDP per capita, GDP growth, and Inflation ...... 133

C-1 Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoother (Loess) for Trust in Institutions (Span=0.5) ...... 176

C-2 Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoother (Loess) for Trust in Institutions (Span=0.9) ...... 177

D-1 Optimization Results: Trust in Government (Turkey: EB 2004-2017) ...... 178

D-2 Optimization Results: Trust in Parliament (Turkey: EB 2004-2017) ...... 179

E-1 Trends in Political Trust with Elections and Referendums (Turkey: EB 2004- 2017) ...... 180

E-2 Trends in Political Trust with Other Events (Turkey: EB 2004-2017) ...... 181

E-3 Trends in Political Trust, Combined (Turkey: EB 2004-2017) ...... 182

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CUP Committee of Union and Progress - İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti

DP Democratic Party - Demokrat Parti

DSP Democratic Society Party - Demokratik Toplum Partisi

EB Eurobarometer

EVS European Values Survey

JDP Justice and Development Party - Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi

JP Justice Party - Adalet Partisi

NMP Nationalist Movement Party - Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi

NSP National Salvation Party - Milli Selamet Partisi

PDP Peace and Democracy Party - Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi

RPP Republican People’s Party - Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi

WVS World Values Survey

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

POLITICAL TRUST IN TURKEY: A STUDY OF THE DETERMINANTS OF PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD INSTITUTIONS

Tahir Enes Gedik

May 2018

Chair: Alin M. Ceobanu Major: Sociology

This dissertation investigates the dynamics of political trust in Turkey. Three major research questions ground the empirical analysis of this study: (1) Is Turkey an exception among Muslim majority countries, regarding political trust? (2) Is political trust in Turkey polarized along party lines? (3) What are some determinants of the trends in political trust in Turkey?

Individual-level analyses are conducted using the European Values Study, World

Values Survey and Eurobarometer data sets. First, the findings suggest that Turkey is not an exception among Muslim majority countries, with respect to political trust.

Moreover, it is found that the countries used in the analysis are different from each other to such an extent that comparing political trust using individual level measures of religiosity is not a fruitful endeavor. Second, party preference is a strong predictor of political trust in Turkey, but the results do not indicate polarization along party lines, at least not for all parties and institutions in the analysis. Third, the results indicate that trends in political trust are shaped by important social and political events at the time, such as economic crisis, scandals, military memoranda, and coup attempts. The analyses also show that examining institutions separately provides further insights

about political trust in Turkey. The empirical analyses are followed by a chapter focusing on the history of Turkish politics. Considering this historical background, this study recommends a new way of thinking political trust, one that goes beyond its object- oriented and evaluative conceptualizations. Finally, this dissertation demonstrates that prevalent theoretical approaches in the literature have explanatory power outside the contexts they have been developed. However, other context-specific factors should be taken into account to improve the quality of research on political trust.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Political Trust in the World of Troubled Democracies

Political trust has been an object of academic and public debate for a long time. It was considered as an invaluable source for democracies which strive to preserve the stability of their regimes and to secure their legitimacy. As a reservoir of favorable attitudes, political trust makes possible for the governments to overcome difficulties such as economic crises. Moreover, high levels of political trust strengthen the position of authorities when they try to initiate controversial policy changes (Van Der Meer and

Zmerli 2017).

Despite the convictions about its importance, the research literature on political trust might leave newcomers frustrated. It is true that there is a “map” for those who start studying political trust and want to orient themselves to the extant literature. First, this map indicates that the starting point was early studies on political culture and system theories in the 1960s (Almond and Verba 1963; Easton 1965). Following these studies, research on political trust adopted an object-oriented approach seeking to distinguish between different levels of government and institutions (Norris 1999a, 2011).

It also shows that the discussions revolved around a strand of literature focusing on the crisis of democracy in the United States and Western Europe. The decline of political trust was interpreted as an indicator of this crisis, especially in the United

States. Whereas some argued that the decline is systematic leading to a legitimacy crisis or democratic deficit (Dalton 2004), others claimed that it reflects changing value orientations of individuals (Inglehart 1997). Especially, the studies on Western Europe show that the argument of systematic decline in political trust is not warranted in every

country. Over time a more balanced perspective became prevalent among scholars who proposed that political trust can coexist with dissatisfaction with the political system

(Norris 2011).

Finally, these debates on decline led to many theoretical explanations on the determinants of political trust, and they found their way into the map. Roughly, they are categorized into cultural and performance approaches (Mishler and Rose 2005). The former emphasized the socialization of individuals, the cooperation among them, and the social capital they accumulated. What is expected is a spillover effect from civil society to political sphere where individuals think their problems will be addressed within the limits of the present political order (Bäck and Kestilä 2008). Performance approaches, on the other hand, emphasized the impact of economic performance, the performance of political systems regarding the policy implementations, procedural fairness, and the role of corruption (Hetherington 1998). Although this approach relies more on macro-level predictors, individuals' perception of the performance is equally important (Seyd 2015). Far from being a coherent theoretical whole, these approaches provide researchers an inventory of measures and predictors to analyze political trust.

At this point, the gray areas in the map become visible.

First, unlike the causes of political trust, its consequences received little attention in the literature (Marien and Hooghe 2011). For some, it is one of those soft variables, a thin concept, which is unlikely to have any hard consequence (Hooghe and Zmerli

2013). It is more like a canary in the coal mine (Van Der Meer and Zmerli 2017); it reflects the problems but does not cause them. Others return to the crisis argument and claim that low levels of trust would have a negative impact on stability. On the opposite

and positive side, high levels of trust would lead to the smooth functioning of the system and, as I mentioned at the beginning, could become a reservoir of support for difficult times (Hooghe and Zmerli 2013). Despite these arguments and insights, the literature on the consequences of political trust remains underdeveloped compared to determinants of political trust. It is partly because of the data limitations such as the lack of longitudinal data, but also because of the overall orientation in the literature towards stability, and its relation to the political trust.

Second, the literature on political trust led some conceptual ambiguities. Political trust has been characterized as object-oriented, relational, and situational (Van Der

Meer and Zmerli 2017). The latter two characteristics have remained somewhat unexamined. The conceptual ambiguities found their way into operationalization of political trust as well. For instance, the measures of political trust used in the studies on the United States reflect both trust and trustworthiness which prompt criticism from other scholars (Catterberg and Moreno 2005; Mishler and Rose 1997).

Finally, the emphasis on the stability of the regime left a normative concern persistent in the literature over decades. This concern was not simply about the stability of any political regime, but democratic stability. It is criticized as an ideological move, justifying a specific model of democracy, namely the one prevalent in the Western world

(Welch 1993:27–29). The consequence is that some regions were neglected in the literature. Although this situation has changed in the 1990s thanks to the efforts of social and political scientists studying Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Latin America (Rose and Mishler 2013; Wong, Wan, and Hsiao 2011; Zmerli and Castillo 2015), some regions such as Africa and the Middle East remained understudied in the political trust

literature. Again, one reason might be the lack of data sources. But beyond that, the neglect is the result of an implicit assumption that it does not make sense to talk about political trust in these areas where polities do not conform to the standards of Western democracies. It is possible to argue that political trust has a different meaning in these regions but implying that it does not have any meaning is an oversimplification.

Recently, there has been increased attention to a trend all over the world, which signals the return of the debates on the democratic crisis. In two separate articles, Foa

& Mounk (2016, 2017) argue that a democratic deconsolidation is taking place and it

"may turn out to be just as serious in the heartland of liberal democracy as they have been in its periphery" (Foa and Mounk 2017:13). The economic insecurities, regional problems, tensions around immigration, and refugee issues are interpreted as possible causes for the rise of populist parties and the strong leaders. In an interview, dated

2016, late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman answered the question, "Is democracy under threat?":

We could describe what is going on at the moment as a crisis of democracy, the collapse of trust: the belief that our leaders are not just corrupt or stupid, but inept. . . .Our democratic institutions were not designed for dealing with situations of interdependence. The current crisis of democracy is a crisis of democratic institutions.1

We might expect that scholars studying political trust would be much more cautious about the arguments of crisis after decades of debates. But these renewed interest reveals that neglecting non-Western contexts is misleading considering the problems in "the heartland of liberal democracy." Thus, the insights from other regions

1 https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/19/inenglish/1453208692_424660.html

would enrich our understanding of political trust. Turkey is a promising case in this respect.

Turkey: The Question of Exceptionalism and Polarization

Turkey is considered as one of the oldest and most stable democracies among

Muslim majority countries. However, its democratic experience is far from being unproblematic and it seems to move two steps forward and one step back. For example, there are almost periodic coups and military memorandums (1960 coup d’état,

1971 military memorandum, 1980 coup d’état, 1997 military memorandum, 2007 E- memorandum, 2016 coup d’état attempt), but also there is a will to return to the democracy. Arguably, it is this persistence that earns Turkey its reputation as a "model" country until recently.

In his speech in 2004 NATO Summit in Istanbul, George W. Bush, then President of the United States, praised Turkey:

Your country, with 150 years of democratic and social reform, stands as a model to others, and as Europe's bridge to the wider world. Your success is vital to a future of progress and peace in Europe and in the broader Middle East. . . .Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had a vision of Turkey as a strong nation among other European nations. That dream can be realized by this generation of Turks.2

He expressed a general sentiment at the time and both experts and pundits share similar ideas about Turkey being a model. Yet, the years between 2013 and 2018 have witnessed "unprecedented" transformations in Turkish politics initiated by a number of significant social and political events. In 2013, the corruption cases of

December 17 shook the country and led charges against four ministries, including the

2 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/29/eu.nato1

ministry of interior. The following June witnessed the largest protest movement with the highest participation (over a million protesters) in country’s history that lasted over a month in major cities. Between 2014 and 2017, people were asked to cast a vote five times: One municipal-level election, one presidential referendum (first one in the country’s history), two national elections and one constitutional referendum. Meanwhile, the cases against the Sledgehammer operation (an alleged secularist military coup plan) were dropped, the peace process on Kurdish issue collapsed, and Turkey increased its involvement in Syria by launching two military operations. Finally, the prospect of changing the constitution and introducing a new presidential system was pushed by the government but stopped by an event which has not been expected by the public and major political actors. On July 15, 2016, a coup attempt initiated by a segment of armed forces had failed. It was resisted by people who took on the streets to stop the coup leading to the death of over 200 civilians. In 2017, a constitutional referendum was held in Turkey which initiated the move from the parliamentary to presidential system.

Following these events, it is not uncommon to see news and magazine articles published periodically, discussing how Turkey embarked upon an authoritarian path.

Frequently, these pieces argue about the end, breakdown, or collapse of democracy in

Turkey. My conviction is that this way of looking at the recent developments in Turkey is not very promising to understand Turkish politics or its democracy.

I take my insight from an article published by Mishler and Rose (2001a). In this article, they argue for a realist approach to regime support which is "less concerned with the extent to which citizens subscribe to democracy in the abstract and more concerned

with the extent to which citizens embrace or reject their current regime, whether democratic or undemocratic, established or incomplete" (Mishler and Rose 2001a:315).

Thus, my argument is that an analysis of political trust as individuals’ orientation towards political system and its institutions would be better suited for the task of understanding Turkish politics and it is less likely to be guided by a normative concern about democracy, its “breakdown”, and possible remedies (i.e., "how to democratize").3

Studying political trust means also studying political culture if by political trust one does not mean purely rational evaluation of institutional performance. Individuals' trust in political institutions would not be influenced only by their personal experience, but also by their cultural circumstances inherited from the past. Two theoretical approaches came to fore in Turkey when political culture is taken into account.

The first one is the exceptionalism thesis. Although there are different ways to approach exceptionalism, most of the arguments boil down to a single point that Turkey with its state tradition and the experience of modernization, secularization, and nationalism has a distinct position among other Muslim majority countries. A popular understanding of this position suggests that, just like it is located between Europe and

Asia geographically, it is also located between West and East culturally. This position creates a peculiar constellation of political forces in the country and an oscillation of power between competing political actors. It is open to question whether this exceptionalism has any relevance in understanding individuals' trust in institutions. If

3 An example would illustrate my point. In one of his books on legitimacy, Barker (1990) discusses a common criticism of Weber's conception of legitimacy as amoral. He argues that "[t]o criticize Weber for not providing a normative theory of legitimacy is not to criticize what he did do, but to wish that he had done something else" (Barker 1990:25). They are different enterprises with different purposes.

exceptionalism truly exists, one might expect to find different orientations towards the political institutions in Turkey compared to other Muslim majority countries. As a result, it remains an empirical question whether Turkey is any different from other Muslim majority countries regarding political trust.

Another approach, and related to the first one, emphasized the social and political cleavages in Turkish politics. This approach, which relies on the old center- periphery distinction (Shils 1975) , follows that there are fault lines in Turkish politics which shape individuals' orientation towards politics. Moreover, these fault lines translate into polarized positions regarding ethnicity, religiosity, socio-economic characteristics, and especially party preferences in Turkey. Again, it is an empirical question whether polarization, if it exists, has any effect on individuals' political trust

(i.e., polarized political trust) and to what extent.

Outline of the Study

Taking into account these approaches prevalent in the studies on Turkey as well as other theoretical insights from the political trust literature, I will analyze dynamics of political trust in Turkey to improve our understanding of Turkish politics and to contribute new findings to the field of political trust.

The next chapter focuses on the exceptionalism thesis and how it relates to the political trust in Turkey. Using cross-national survey data (World Values Survey, 2010-

2014), I compare Turkey and selected Muslim majority and European countries to see whether the exceptionalism is a meaningful argument in the context of political trust research. Moreover, I also compare Muslim majority and European countries to see whether there is a systematic difference concerning the explanatory variables. It has been commonly assumed that different political experiences between these countries

led to different political orientations, and the conventional theoretical explanations might not work in the Muslim majority countries (Kamrava 1999). Especially, I pay attention to the role of individual religiosity because religion has been neglected in political trust literature, although it has been taken as an important factor in related research areas, such as the research on support for democracy in Muslim majority countries. Religion comes into the picture, when the exceptionalism argument is formulated, as a cultural force shaping individuals' orientations. By this comparative analysis, I show that exceptionalism arguments (Turkish or Muslim) are inadequate in understanding dynamics of political trust.

The third chapter takes a closer look at Turkey and the relationship between polarization, party preference, and political trust. Polarization is a recurrent theme in political studies in Turkey. It has been argued that the politics in the country is marked by social cleavages (for example, secularist-religious, Turk-Kurd, Alevi-Sunni, urban- rural). Moreover, the argument of polarization has become more prevalent in recent years, because of the increasing political tension between ruling and opposition parties, ethnic conflict, and regional struggles.

Following the literature on partisan polarization and political trust, party preference is identified as the most relevant determinant for an analysis of political trust in Turkey and to see whether it is polarized or not. Using the World Values Survey

(WVS) data for Turkey in 2007 and 2011, the analysis in Chapter 3 shows that party preference is one of the most reliable predictors of political trust, but the results should be carefully interpreted when it comes to its polarizing effect on political trust. During the period of analysis, the effect of party preference varies between parties and institutions.

The analysis also shows that, regarding trust levels, there is a difference between institutions of order (army, courts, police) and other institutions (government, parliament, civil service, political parties).

The fourth chapter focuses on Turkey using a different methodological approach.

Unlike the cross-sectional analysis of the Chapter 2 and 3, it takes the task of analyzing political trust in Turkey over time. Constructing cross-sectional pooled time series, using both the WVS (1990-2011) and Eurobarometer (EB) data (2004-2017), the chapter shows how social and political events influence the trends in political trust in Turkey.

Because of the way time-series are constructed, the analysis remains rather exploratory. Still, it identifies four main periods of upward or downward trends, and the results show the possible impact of economic crisis, political scandals, elections, military memorandum, anti-government protests, and coup attempt on levels of trust in institutions.

The fifth chapter returns to Turkish political history. Through a selective reading of this history, it aims to identify certain characteristics of the political culture in Turkey.

It shows how modernization and bureaucratization processes emerged in the Late

Ottoman period as powerful driving forces. The development of the bureaucracy led to struggles between different actors finding their way into the centers of power while pushing others out of it. Despite the narrative of the later Republican historiography, which presented the Republican period as a rupture from the past and the dawn of a new era, the social and political dynamics of the Late Ottoman period kept shaping politics of this new period. The “indeterminate richness” (Kasaba 1997) inherited from the Ottoman society were posing problems for the new Republican regime, striving to

become a modern and secular nation-state, as the ethnic and religious elements that were pushed aside were returning. As the country experienced democratic transition, economic transformation, urbanization, and internal migration, new questions about identity were asked, more forcefully in the 1980s. The chapter discusses how culture should be understood in the light of these new questions as well as old concerns, fears, and anxieties. In the end, it suggests rethinking political trust in a way, which shifts the focus from its object-oriented character to the act of trust itself.

CHAPTER 2 EXCEPTION, RELIGION AND DIFFERENCE: EXPLAINING POLITICAL TRUST IN MUSLIM MAJORITY COUNTRIES AND TURKEY

In this chapter, I analyze political trust comparatively in selected Muslim majority countries, European countries, and Turkey. While looking for the systematic differences between these countries and Turkey regarding the determinants of political trust, I take into account religion as a factor which draws less attention in the literature on political trust. Through this analysis, I aim to see whether the arguments about the exceptionalism of Muslim majority countries in general and Turkey, in particular, are meaningful in the context of political trust research.

When Ernest Gellner (1997) asked “Why Turkey is the exception within the exception?”, he repeated two well-known arguments on Turkey and other Muslim majority countries. The first argument refers to the distinctness of socio-political organization of Muslim majority countries, which separates them from the rest of the world in decisive ways. This argument has been used to explain the resilience of authoritarian systems in these countries while there is an opposite trend in other parts of the world. In other words, exceptionalism refers to the barriers to democracy: inequality, corruption, conflict, repression, and finally religion (Lakoff 2004).

The second argument follows this characterization of the Muslim majority countries to establish the difference made by Turkey. Going back to the modernization approach of 1950s, Turkey is considered as an impressive example of modernization among Muslim majority countries. Specifically, Turkey is compared to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as they were part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries, and distinguished from them with its style of modernity, state formation, pattern of nationalism, and finally with its separation of state and religion (laïcisme). In

other words, it does not suffer from the barriers to democracy in the same way as other

Muslim majority countries. And although not there yet, it is on its way to become a western-style liberal democracy (Lerner 1958).

The political history of Turkey is rife with examples that cast doubt to the perspective of being close to a Western liberal democracy or on the way to becoming one.1 And any criticism of the modernization approach also applies to the explanations of Turkish modernization derived from it. Nevertheless, in more refined forms and if not as an exceptionalism, the difference of Turkey has shaped scholars’ comparative understanding, especially on the relationship between the state and religion.

The arguments of exceptionalism have strong implications for individuals’ orientations to the political system. One of the basic assumptions of the political culture research is the congruence between political values, orientations, and attitudes on the one hand, and the political system on the other (Patrick 1984). This assumption makes possible to argue about the specifically cultural barriers to democracy in Muslim majority countries. As the label Muslim indicates, religion represents the focus of this research strand as the major cultural force. Special attention has been paid to the question concerning the compatibility of Islam and democracy. A considerable amount of literature has been published on the support for democracy and Islam to address this question and challenged the conventional arguments on the incompatibility between the two (Ciftci 2010, 2013; Collins and Owen 2012; Jamal 2006; Jamal and Tessler 2008;

Tessler 2002; Tessler and Gao 2008).

1 For example: 1960 coup d’état, 1971 military memorandum, 1980 coup d’état, 1997 military memorandum, 2007 E-memorandum, 2016 coup d’état attempt.

Despite its value for understanding the individuals’ political orientations, the literature on support for democracy in Muslim majority countries would not capture the support for the regime or political institutions in those countries (Mishler and Rose

2001a). Yet, if exceptionalism refers to the persistence of authoritarian systems, the support for political institutions should be analyzed carefully. The middle-range indicator of support, political trust, would be better suited for such an inquiry. Since it is concerned with the political institutions, it is not as abstract as the support for regime principles and values, and not as specific as the support for everyday actors and policies (Van Der Meer and Zmerli 2017).

The literature on political trust has examined the origins, causes and consequences of political trust comparatively in different contexts, but mostly for democracies in Europe and North America. However, Muslim majority countries were not studied systematically. Little is known about the political trust in these countries, and few existing comparative studies do not shed much light on (e.g., Hutchison and

Johnson 2017; Kong 2014). Thus, the first aim of this chapter is to test the prevalent theories on the determinants of political trust in selected Muslim majority countries.

Specifically, I will examine whether individuals’ orientations are different enough to limit the explanatory power and scope of these theories and warrant the claim of exceptionalism in terms of political trust.

The second and the primary aim of this chapter is to examine political trust in

Turkey in comparison to selected Muslim majority countries. If Gellner was right to assume that Turkey is an exception within an exception, because of its experience of modernization and secularization, one might expect that individual political orientations

would differ from those in other Muslim majority countries. Yet, such an argument should be tested empirically, as Turkish politics have been shaped by the cleavages resulted from the same modernization and secularization experience which complicates the democratization process in the country.

Political Trust as Institutional Confidence

Political trust has been defined as the individuals’ orientation towards the political system or parts of it (Hetherington 1998; Mishler and Rose 2001b; Uslaner 2015b). This short and well-known definition does not invoke conceptual clarity. There are disputes about the meaning, status, and impact of political trust in the literature (Hooghe and

Zmerli 2013). These disputes partly stem from the semantic confusion surrounding the concept of trust which makes it hard to distinguish from similar concepts, such as mutuality, empathy, reciprocity, civility, respect, solidarity, and fraternity (Newton 2007).

Such a confusion can be avoided for political trust by recognizing that it is derived from the concept of political support.

Political support refers to “an attitude by which a person orients himself

[politically] to an object either favorably or unfavorably, positively or negatively” (Easton,

1975: 436). The distinction between specific and diffuse support leads to further differentiation of the objects of political support and inspired a growing empirical literature (Booth and Seligson 2009; Dalton 2004; Muller and Jukam 1977; Weatherford

1987). Norris elaborates on this distinction by proposing a continuum from most diffuse levels, such as national identities and approval of core regime principles to most specific level, approval of the office holders (Norris 2011). Confidence in institutions located in the middle of this continuum. Confidence in institutions is neither as abstract as the regime principles and values, nor as specific as the support for incumbent office

holders. Therefore, it has the advantage of capturing the individuals’ assessment of the political system without dissolving into abstract considerations of regime values or specific performance evaluations of the incumbents. Following this literature, political trust will be used as synonymous to confidence in institutions throughout this study.

Determinants of Political Trust

Explaining the causes and consequences of political trust has become an attractive research theme for social and political scientists following the discussions on the crisis of democracy and the decline of legitimacy in Western Europe and the United

States (Dalton 2004; Dogan 1997, 2005). The decline of institutional confidence is interpreted as a major indicator of this crisis, while two main approaches, the cultural and institutional approaches, offered competing accounts to explain determinants of political trust.

The cultural approach hypothesizes political trust as exogenous to political system. In other words, trust originates outside the political system and is shaped by the cultural norms and expectations. Thus, political trust is learned through socialization and determined by general social dispositions (Almond and Verba 1963; Inglehart 1999;

Putnam 1993; Sztompka 1996). Specifically, proponents of this approach argue that there is a positive relationship between social and political trust. As part of this approach, the social capital theory explains that there are spill-over and spill-up processes. High levels of social capital and a mature civic culture (where high levels of participation, respect for democratic values and civil rights are observed) imply high levels of trust which extend (spill-over) to the community through civic engagement and voluntary associations; these trust dispositions further extend to the political sphere leading to higher levels of trust for political institutions (spill-up). Another strand of

cultural approach analyzes the impact of postmaterialist values on political trust. These values emphasize self-expression, quality of life, and individual autonomy over material needs and interests. It has been argued that individuals with postmaterialist values would be more critical towards authority and less trustful towards political institutions

(Catterberg and Moreno 2005; Inglehart 1997).

Unlike the cultural approach which locates trust in civil society and political culture, institutional approach recognizes political trust as endogenous to the political system. In this sense, trust is based on rational considerations on the performance of the political institutions. If these institutions perform well, then there will be higher levels of trust (Brennan 1998; Cleary and Stokes 2006; Hetherington and Rudolph 2015;

Mishler and Rose 2005).

In addition to these two approaches, micro-political characteristics are considered important to explain political trust. From this perspective, political trust is also considered as endogenous to political sphere, so individuals’ political interest, ideological orientations, and partisan preferences are hypothesized as predictors of political trust (Anderson and Singer 2008; Carlin 2011; Kestilä-Kekkonen and Söderlund

2016; Wilkes 2015).

These theoretical approaches explaining the determinants of political trust were developed by scholars who work mainly on Western Europe and the United States. One conventional argument is that individuals in other parts of the world, especially in those regions where authoritarian political systems prevail, might have “unreliable evaluations of democracy and democratic institutions” (Ben-Nun Bloom and Arikan, 2012: 383).

Thus, the explanatory capacity of cultural and institutional theories, as well as micro-

political variables is questionable. However, this argument has been challenged by the scholars working on different regions (Askvik 2010; Chen 2017; Hutchison and Johnson

2017; Stoyan et al. 2016; Suh, Chang, and Lim 2012; Wong et al. 2011). Hutchinson and Johnson (2017), for instance, argue the opposite in their study on political trust in

Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East: “At the individual level, the attitudes and characteristics expected to positively or negatively affect political trust coincide with the majority of previous literature based in European and North American contexts”

(Hutchison and Johnson, 2017: 481).

The warnings about the unreliability of measures should be taken seriously.

However, I argue that individuals would still be able to evaluate political institutions, even though the results of the analysis might not lend themselves to interpretations like those for the western context. So, one of the objectives of this study is to take these approaches into account in the empirical analysis, and to provide alternative interpretations if necessary. The other one is to consider another explanatory factor, religious orientation, which is present in some analyses on political trust in Western

Europe and the United States without much theoretical and/or empirical interest.

Political Trust and Religion: A Neglected Factor?

As I argue in the previous section, religion is not emphasized in the political trust literature as an important explanatory factor. It is omitted completely from the analysis in many prominent studies, or included as a sociocultural background variable, usually operationalized as church attendance, without much theorizing (Damico, Conway, and

Damico 2000; Mishler and Rose 2005; Newton and Zmerli 2011). This omission can be explained by the context-specific development of the theories, disciplinary orientation of the scholars, and research tradition informing the study of political trust. There is an

underlying assumption in this research strand about the declining influence of religion in public life (Kettell, 2012: 99). The relevance of this assumption is highly questionable for the analyses outside the Western context. As Philpott succinctly put, “defying the erstwhile dominance of the secularization thesis among western intellectuals, religion has waxed in its political influence over the past generation in every region of the globe except perhaps Western Europe” (Philpott, 2007: 505).

Despite the criticisms for ignoring the political influence of religion, a completely different picture emerges when one considers the political research on Muslim majority countries. The question concerning the Muslim exceptionalism and the compatibility between Islam and democracy has inspired many political studies, and it is still one of the most controversial topics.

On the one hand, some scholars argue that there is an essential and inherent incompatibility between Islamic political traditions and democratic norms and values as they have emerged in the Western Europe. This view found a striking expression in

Samuel P. Huntington’s famous (or rather, infamous) “Clash of Civilizations” thesis:

“The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power” (Huntington, 1996: 217). On the other hand, other authors have criticized the idea of incompatibility with equal sharpness.

Edward Said’s well-known criticism of orientalism is one example. Referring specifically to Huntington’s thesis, he rejects the idea of the clash between West and Islam. He argues that the idea of clash of civilizations homogenizes the plurality of cultures and leads to the personification of “enormous entities” which do not exist (Said 2001).

Although there is a strong normative dimension in this debate, the empirical studies on the relationship between religion and political attitudes in Muslim majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa present a more nuanced picture (Ciftci

2013; Gu and Bomhoff 2012; Jamal 2006; Meyer, Tope, and Price 2008; Tessler 2002;

Tessler and Gao 2008). Despite persistent authoritarianism in these countries, individual-level studies show that there exists public support for democracy. However, the question is not only about compatibility vs. incompatibility, but also about what is meant and understood by democracy. Addressing this question, Jamal and Tessler argue that individual religiosity does not diminish support for democracy, but individuals understand it as an instrument, i.e., an instrument for better governance (Jamal and

Tessler, 2008: 108). Reaching a similar conclusion, Yuchtman-Ya’ar and Alkalay argue that there is a preference for democratic government, approval of democracy’s performance, and support for the electoral principle in both Muslim and Western societies, but “a Muslim context is less conducive than a Western one to the legitimization of secular leadership, giving priority to democratic values, civic political action, and gender equality” (Yuchtman-Ya’ar and Alkalay, 2010: 128). In other words, when individuals support democracy, it is not necessarily a liberal one.

The literature on Islam and support for democracy provides insights to understand individual political attitudes in Muslim majority countries. However, their relevance to understand the relationship between the religion and the political trust is rather limited. At best, political trust (as institutional confidence) is included in the analysis as a predictor, but it was not analyzed as an outcome in relation to the religion in this context. Does individuals’ religiosity shape their attitudes toward political

institutions? Or, just like in the case of western countries, is it not a steady predictor of political trust? Although I expect that individual religiosity influences political trust, I’ll refrain from hypothesizing about the strength or the direction of this relationship, because of this gap in the literature.

Turkish Exceptionalism: Islam and Secularization

Turkish exceptionalism refers to the peculiarity of Turkish experience on several social and political issues. Mardin (2005), who adapts this term from the work of Lipset, argued about exceptionalism with respect to the distinct relationship between politics and religion in Turkey. From another perspective, Angrist discussed the party system and regime formation in Turkey which set it apart from other countries in the Middle

East (Angrist 2004). Yet, in his deviant case analysis, Kazancigil characterized Turkey with “high stateness” vis-à-vis other Muslim societies (Kazancigil 1994).

Thus, the arguments on exceptionality make sense in comparison to set of cases. When the term “Turkish exceptionalism” is coined or when Turkey is considered an “exception within an exception” (Gellner 1997), Turkey has been generally considered as an exception among other Muslim majority countries, especially those in the Middle East and North Africa. Second, it is the development of distinct Ottoman-

Turkish statecraft that set Turkey apart from these countries. There is a danger of cultural essentialism, but what is meant by these scholars is the emergence of a logic that was in constant change and could be observed in the historical institutional developments.

Both Kazancigil (1994) and Mardin (2005) argue that the origins of this statecraft can be found in the Ottoman Empire’s overcoming of the Islamic monism, i.e., the fusion of spiritual and temporal authority. This led to the emergence of an early and strong

form of bureaucracy, which makes possible escaping the “Ibn-Khaldunian fatality [the cycle of tribal competition and destruction], at least for quite a time” (Gellner, 1984: 76).

In fact, even in decline, this bureaucracy shows ingenuity and organizational capacity in dealing with political challenges (Barkey 1994).

The bureaucratic elite continued its influence in shaping the Ottoman politics and pioneered the reform movements in the 18th and 19th centuries. For the successive generations of the reformers (Tanzimat reformers in 1830-1840, Young Ottomans in

1860-1870, Young Turks in 1900-1910, and the Kemalists of 1920s), the main objective was, first, to strengthen the state in the face of rising challenges of the European powers, and then to save it from collapse. And when the collapse was inevitable after the World War I, they embarked on a modern nation-state (the Republic of Turkey) building project, which is again characterized by the idea of a strong and central, bureaucratic authority.

One outcome of this nation-state building project is secularization. Religion is identified by state elites as one of the major causes of the “backwardness” of society:

“Socialized to the ideas of Enlightenment, positivism and progress, they were committed to drive religion out of the public arena and relegate it to the sphere of individual conscience” (Kazancigil, 1994: 232). In terms of the political participation, this means that social actors identified with religion would be driven out of the political center to the periphery. Thus, it is not only the secularization, but also the style of secularization that matters (see Chapter 5).

Despite this push for secularization, conventional arguments of religion vs. secularism, which imply a clear-cut distinction between the two, might be inadequate for

two reasons. First, notwithstanding their convictions, state elites did not completely abandon religion. The establishment of the ministry of the religious affairs shows that there was an interest in controlling the religion and promoting a version of Islam.

Moreover, Islam functions as an identifier in the new Republic’s dealing with the minorities, as in the case of population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Second, when the multiparty system was introduced in the mid-1940s, actors from the periphery had a chance to find inroads to the political center. As the electoral victories of the right- wing parties in the following decades showed, these actors gradually opened a space for themselves in the center and its institutions. The 16-year rule of the current ruling party (Justice and Development Party, JDP from now on), which has an Islamic orientation, is the culmination point of the success of these actors in this respect.

Following this brief historical account of statecraft and its institutional development, I propose two hypotheses on the relationship between religion and institutional confidence in Turkey. Although I mentioned its drawbacks, the idea of religion vs. secularism is well-entrenched in Turkish politics. Therefore, my first hypothesis is that there is a negative relationship between religious orientations and trust in the army, the justice system, and civil service since these institutions are identified with the secular state elites. The second hypothesis is that, for other institutions (such as government and parliament), I expect a positive relationship between religious orientations and institutional trust, because in my analysis, I use data from 2011, the height of the JDP rule.

Whether its secularization experience, in addition to other cultural and institutional factor, would set Turkey apart from other Muslim majority countries remains to be seen after the empirical analysis.

Data and Methods

In this study, I will use the data from the 6th Wave of the World Values Survey

(WVS) conducted between 2010-2014 in 51 countries. WVS project was initiated in

1981 and became the largest non-commercial, cross-national, time series investigation of human beliefs and values.2 Sixth and the most recent wave at the time of writing is selected for the analysis because it has the highest number countries overall (51) and highest number of Muslim majority countries (20). However, in addition to Turkey, thirteen of these Muslim majority countries are selected for the analysis.3 Most of the

Muslim majority countries (8) are from the MENA, however, there are also four Post-

Soviet Muslim Majority countries (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan) and two Muslim majority countries outside MENA (Malaysia and Pakistan). Other Muslim majority countries are not included in the analysis because of missing outcome and explanatory variables.4

For comparative purposes, four democracies are selected from Europe:

Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden shared a Protestant heritage (with an emphasis on secularization), whereas Spain

2 http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp

3 Algeria, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen.

4 These countries include: Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, and Qatar. Palestine is excluded from the analysis because of the questions concerning the reliability and validity of institutional trust measures.

belongs to Catholic Europe according to Inglehart and Welzel (2005). These countries provide a benchmark in the interpretation of the results.

Despite high percentage of missing values in some models, no imputation method is used in the analysis. The reason is that models using imputed and non- imputed data are quite similar, and in some cases identical.5

Dependent Variables

Political trust (confidence in institutions): In WVS 6th Wave, respondents were asked about their confidence in several institutions including armed forces, police, courts, civil service (bureaucracy), political parties, parliament, and government. They answered this battery of questions using a 4-point response scale (1 “A great deal”, 2

“Quite a lot”, 3 “Not very much”, 4 “None at all”). One common operationalization strategy in the literature is to construct an additive index using these confidence items

(Marien 2013; Schneider 2016). However, in many studies, this method is practiced deficiently. Scholars simply report exploratory factor analysis or principal component analysis results along Cronbach’s alpha statistics without much consideration for their applicability. Instead, confirmatory factor analysis should have been used since there is a testable hypothesis on the underlying factor(s) accounting for the variation between these items. This omission is more problematic in multilevel and cross-national comparative analysis because this research method assumes invariance of measures across countries (Davidov et al. 2014).

5 In addition to this similarity, imputation is also avoided on methodological grounds. Without proper domain knowledge, which is the case in this analysis, imputation method might cause more problems than it solves. It complicates estimation process and the interpretation of the results.

In this analysis, I estimate multi-group confirmatory factor (MGCFA) models for measurement invariance (Coromina and Davidov 2013; Milfont and Fischer 2010). The results in Table 2-1 show that there is no measurement invariance for the confidence items which justify constructing an additive index for each country.6 Thus, I will take the confidence items separately to estimate models.

The preferable modeling strategy would be ordinal logistic regression because the outcome variables are ordinal with four response categories. However, ordinal logistic regression models rely on parallel regression assumption. Unfortunately, the models in this analysis violate this assumption. One option is to keep using the ordinal logistic regression method, but this is not preferable in this analysis because in each model a different set of explanatory variables violate parallel regression assumption.

Another option is to move less parsimonious methods such as multinomial logistic regression or generalized ordinal logistic regression (Williams 2016). However, using these methods would require estimating marginal effects for each outcome category. In other words, there will be four coefficients for each explanatory variable making the interpretation of results very difficult, if not impossible. As a compromise between parsimony and comparability, I prefer to estimate binary logistic regression models. I recode the outcome variables into binary categories (0 “Don’t trust”, 1 “Trust”,) and estimate the models for each outcome and for each country.

6 I estimated measurement invariance for three country groups: all countries, Muslim majority countries, and MENA countries. Thus, in the second model, I exclude European countries, because these are most likely to be distinct from the rest. And in the third model, I exclude Post-Soviet Muslim majority countries, Malaysia and Pakistan, because of the distinct historical background and geographical distance. In all three model specifications, fit indices indicate that there is no invariance.

Independent Variables

Individual religiosity:7 Three measures are used for individual religious orientation: subjective religiosity, religious attendance, and role of religious authorities.

The first measure is based on a question asking respondents, independent of their attendance of religious services, whether they religious or not (1 “A religious person” 2 “Not a religious person” 3 “An atheist”). The responses are recoded into a binary variable (1 “A religious person” 2 “Other”), because in most Muslim majority countries, the third response category has a small number of observations.

Second measure is based on a question asking individuals the frequency of their religious attendance. Response categories include 1 “More than once a week”, 2 “Once a week”, 3 “Once a month”, 4 “Only on special holy days, 5 “Once a year”, 6 “Less often”, 7 “Never, practically never.” The variable is not properly ordered because of the categories 4,5 and 6. I collapsed these three categories into a single category, and following Kakizaki (2012), the variable is recoded so that as the scores increase frequency of participation increases as well (0 “Never”, 1 “Less often”, 2 “Monthly”, 3

“Weekly”, 4 “More than once a week”).

In WVS, respondents are asked about the essential characteristics of democracies. One such question asked them whether they agree or do not agree with the statement: “Religious authorities ultimately interpret the laws.” A 10-point response scale (1 “Not an essential characteristic”, 10 “An essential characteristic”) is used to answer this question. Higher scores in this measure imply the support for the public

7 Religious denomination of respondents is not included to ensure comparability of models. The reason is that in some countries, there is no variation in this measure.

presence and legal influence of religion. Unlike the previous two measures, this last measure has an explicit political dimension.

These three measures capture different dimensions of religious orientation.

Correlations and others tests of associations show that they are not highly correlated in

Muslim majority countries. The same cannot be said for European countries in the analysis; the correlation between these measures are considerably higher. Despite this, variance inflation factor shows that multicollinearity is not a problem for any model.

Social trust: Two separate measures of social trust are used in the analysis: particular social trust and general social trust (Newton and Zmerli 2011). Whereas the former is defined as the "thick" social trust, referring to the trust on a personal basis, the latter is defined as the "thin" social trust, referring to generalized others. In addition to conventional question of interpersonal trust,8 in the 6th Wave of WVS, trust in various groups are asked separately. These groups include your family, neighborhood, people you know personally, people you meet for the first time, people of another religion, and people of another nationality (1 “Trust completely”, 2 “Trust somewhat”, 3 “Do not trust very much”, 4 “Do not trust at all”). Based on the exploratory factor analysis results, two items are used to construct indicators for each measure of social trust: trust in neighborhood and people you know personally for particular social trust, and trust in people of another religion and people of another nationality for general social trust. The other two items, trust in family and trust in people you meet for the first time, do not

8 “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?”

consistently load to these factors across countries. Especially, trust in family does not have much variation as most respondents “trust completely” their families.

Performance: There is a limited number of measures to operationalize performance on individual level in WVS 6th Wave. A widely used subjective measure, satisfaction with the financial situation of the household (1 “Completely dissatisfied” 10

“Completely satisfied”) is included to this end.

Other variables: Two additional predictors are present in the analysis: political interest as an individual-level political variable and postmaterialism as an indicator of the value differences in a society. Political interest is reverse coded, so higher values indicate more interest (1 “Not at all interested” 2 “Not very interested” 3 “Somewhat interested” 4 “Very interested”).

Postmaterialism is measured by several items asking individuals to make choices about the future goals of their country. The 6-point index constructed in this way ranges from 0 “Materialist” to 5 “Post-materialist.”9

Controls: In addition to these variables, age, gender, income scale (self- reported), and education are used as sociodemographic controls. The coding information of these variables can be found in Appendix B, Table B-1.

Analytic Strategy

As discussed above, creating a political trust index is problematic, because of the lack of invariance of the latent construct across countries. Thus, separate logistic

9 This variable is readily available in WVS data. It was coded using six items based on three questions. The questions ask individuals from a list of social and political goals which one is most important (first and second choices). In one question, for example, these goals include maintaining order in nation, giving people more to say in important government decisions, fighting rising prices, and protecting freedom of speech. Based on the first and second choices of respondents, it sums up the total number of items implying postmaterialist value orientation (Inglehart 1997:415–17).

regression models are estimated for each country and institution. Apart from the sheer number of models, there is a difficulty in interpreting the logistic regression results for cross-country comparisons. Despite same model is estimated across countries, the coefficients would be affected by unobserved heterogeneity (e.g., omitted variables), even in case that it is unrelated to variables in the model (Allison 1999; Mood 2010).

Moreover, comparing models using traditional fit tests is not meaningful as they are not nested, and the use of pseudo-R2 measures is not recommended (Hosmer et al., 2013;

Long and Freese 2014). Following Mood’s (2010) suggestion, average marginal effects

(AMEs) are reported instead of odds-ratios in the tables, as they are comparable across models. In this way, the overreliance on the interpretation of p-values could be avoided.

Nevertheless, p-values are still used as a tool for interpretation in this analysis.10

Results

Tables 2-2 to 2-8 present the results of logistic regression models for political trust items across countries. A quick look will reveal important differences but also similarities across countries. For instance, in contrast to previous studies, the only indicator of performance, financial satisfaction, does not predict well trust in institutions.

Even if it becomes statistically significant in some models, its effect size is not substantial. Another similarity can be observed for postmaterialism index. Irrespective of where they live (with few exceptions), individuals with postmaterialist values are less likely to trust in institutions. The sign of the effect is usually negative whether it is statistically significant or not.

10 Limitations of p-values have been noted in the literature (see Gelman and Hill 2006). However, I argue that as long as these limitations are recognized, p-values can be used to interpret the analyses with caution.

The effects of particular and general social trust vary in considerable ways across countries and institutions. Particular social trust has a significant and positive effect on trust in institutions in most of the models, and it is one of the best predictors of political trust. However, the same cannot be said for general social trust. In accordance with the literature, it has a positive relationship with political trust in European countries, and in some models (i.e., trust in government and parliament) its effect size is higher than particular social trust. Here, Spain is an exception. In fact, in most of the models for

Spain, the explanatory variables do not predict well. This shows that pooled data analysis using European countries might result in misleading generalizations about these countries because there is a considerable variation among European countries too. In the case of Muslim majority countries, general social trust is not significant in more than half of the models and its effect size is smaller compared to European countries. Moreover, the direction of relationship is changing from one model to another without a clear pattern.

Political interest deserves attention as it has been consistently used as an individual-level micro-political variable in the literature. It illustrates the difference between European and Muslim majority countries in the analysis. In Germany,

Netherlands and Sweden, political interest is always positively related to political trust

(Spain is an exception). And when it comes to the trust in government, parliament, and political parties, it is one of the best predictors of trust. This result supports the claim that since political trust is endogenous to political system, it can be best explained by other political variables in these countries. However, it should be noted that for army, courts and police, political interest is not usually significant in European countries.

Moreover, the explanatory variables are generally working better for trust in government, parliament, and political parties in the case of Germany, Netherlands, and

Sweden.

For Muslim majority countries, the effect of political interest varies more from one model to another. Although, in many models, political interest is statistically significant, this is not consistent across models; its direction changes from one country to another. For example, there is a negative relationship between political interest and trust in army in Turkey, whereas the opposite is the case for Tunisia.

Finally, measures of individual religiosity also vary to a considerable extent across countries and institutions. However, it is important to note that even in some models for European countries, these measures are associated with the trust in institutions. Generally, the effect sizes are smaller compared to Muslim majority countries, but they are not absent. Especially, the model results for Germany show that at least one of these measures is significant with a positive effect (the exception is trust in civil service in Germany). In the case of Muslim majority countries, there is no discernible pattern either. The effect sizes and the direction of relationships vary in each country and across models. In this respect, the measures of individual religiosity are less consistent compared to social trust measures.

In the case of Turkey, compared to other Muslim majority countries, predictors of individual religiosity are working better especially for trust in courts, government, parliament, and police (Table 2-9). For these institutions, all three indicators of religiosity are significant with a positive relationship. Moreover, for Turkey, all effects of individual religiosity are positive, whether statistically significant or not. Finally, the subjective

religiosity variable is one of the strongest predictors of trust in institutions in Turkey. Not only it has a significant and positive relationship to political trust in all models, but its effect size is always higher compared to other two variables of individual religiosity.

Nevertheless, the interpretation of other variables and the similarities between Turkey and other Muslim majority countries with respect to some measures of individual religiosity do not warrant the argument of exceptionalism.

Regarding two hypotheses on the relationship between the individual religiosity and political trust, the second one is supported by this analysis. Religious people are more likely to trust in government, parliament, police and the political parties. The first hypothesis is not supported by this analysis in the case of Turkey. Religious people are still more likely to trust in the army, courts, and civil service. In other words, religious people are more likely to trust in all institutions in the analysis. As discussed in the previous section, an explanation for this positive relationship is that, despite the strong emphasis secularization, religion was still in the purview of political center in Turkey and religious actors found ways to the center. So, rather than being a challenge to the political system, individual religiosity might have contributed to the general sense of the confidence in institutions.

Concluding Remarks

This chapter set out to analyze political trust in selected Muslim and European countries comparatively, specifically to investigate the general claim of Muslim and

Turkish exceptionalism. Special attention has been paid to religion and its relation to political trust.

The results of this investigation show that, in terms of political trust, the exceptionalism argument is not well supported. The findings suggest that, in general,

there is a difference between European and Muslim majority countries, but this difference does not warrant the claim of exceptionalism. The findings also show that most of the variables identified in the literature as determinants of political trust have explanatory power in Muslim majority countries too. The variation between European and Muslim majority countries becomes apparent when the consistency of measures is taken into consideration. However, Muslim majority countries are not only different from

European countries, but also from each other. This makes difficult to take them as a single group. Thus, the theoretical implication for the debate on Muslim exceptionalism is that such an exceptionalism, if it exists at all, does not explain the differences between countries when it comes to individuals’ trust orientations towards institutions.

Likewise, Turkey is different from other Muslim majority countries, but not to the extent that being an exception. Nor, its difference from these countries indicates similarity to European cases in the analysis. As I discussed in the previous section, three measures of individual religiosity, especially subjective religiosity, are stronger predictors of political trust in Turkey compared to other countries, but there is no noticeable pattern of difference for other explanatory variables. The support for the hypotheses on the relationship between religiosity and political trust, however, suggests that further studies are needed to identify context-specific characteristics to better judge the differences between countries.

Two limitations of the analysis should be acknowledged. First, to keep models comparable, some important predictors are not included in the analysis, such as party preference and ethnic identity. In the case of party preference, the only way to include it for comparative purposes is to create an incumbent vs. non-incumbent preference

variable. This, however, would ignore differences between parties in a country (I will return to this argument in the next chapter). In the case of ethnic identity, the data have limitations. For some countries in the analysis, ethnic identity question was not asked or has no variation at all (for example, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Spain, Turkey, Tunisia). And for others, the ethnic identity variable has a small number of observations for minorities

(for example, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen). Second, this analysis does not take the advantage of contextual variables, because of its analytic strategy.

Notwithstanding these limitations, this analysis makes several contributions to the current literature. First, it is one of the few comparative studies on political trust in

Muslim majority countries. It shows that there are differences between countries, but these differences are not supporting the idea of Muslim or Turkish exceptionalism.

Second, instead of using indices of political trust, it takes countries and institutions separately. Thanks to this strategy, diversity of the countries is revealed. It also avoids the limitations of the analyses using pooled data and explicitly focusing on p-values, which suffer from “everything is statistically significant” condition. Finally, prevalent theoretical approaches have been proven useful in explaining political trust in Muslim majority countries, but they did not perform as consistent as in the case of Germany,

Netherlands and Sweden, especially, for trust in government, parliament and political parties. There is a need for theoretical revision to improve our understanding of political trust, but this could be only possible by further comparative and country-specific studies.

The literature will immensely benefit from such studies if our aim is to extend the depth and breadth of the prevalent theories.

Table 2-1. Measurement Invariance Results (MGCFA) Model Specification 휒2 df RMSEA CFI All Countries Configural invariance 9843.5 266 0.175 0.854 Metric invariance 12998.9 374 0.169 0.808 Scalar invariance 26114.9 482 0.212 0.610 Strict invariance 32284.3 500 0.232 0.517

All Muslim Majority Countries Configural invariance 8142.6 210 0.183 0.844 Metric invariance 10331.7 294 0.174 0.803 Scalar invariance 21609.9 378 0.223 0.583 Strict invariance 27266.6 392 0.246 0.472

MENA Countries Configural invariance 5580.8 154 0.182 0.826 Metric invariance 7091.2 214 0.174 0.779 Scalar invariance 14148.1 274 0.218 0.555 Strict invariance 16308.1 284 0.230 0.486

Table 2-2. Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Army across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) Algeria Iraq Jordan Lebanon Libya Malaysia Pakistan Tunisia Turkey Yemen Particular social 0.12* 0.16* 0.05* 0.06* 0.08* 0.10* 0.07* 0.09* 0.08* 0.11* trust General social 0.01 0.07* -0.03* 0.00 -0.03 -0.05* 0.03 0.00 0.06* -0.02 trust Financial -0.01 0.01 -0.00 0.01 0.02* 0.01* 0.02* 0.01 0.00 0.01 satisfaction Postmaterialism -0.03 0.00 -0.02* 0.02 -0.03 -0.00 -0.01 -0.05* -0.04* -0.09* index Political interest 0.05* 0.10* 0.01 0.01 -0.02 0.06* -0.00 0.04* -0.09* 0.04* Religious -0.02 -0.01 0.01 0.03* -0.01 0.02* -0.00 0.02* 0.01 0.02 attendance Role of religious -0.02* -0.00 -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.02* 0.00 -0.01 0.01* 0.01 authorities Subjective 0.17* 0.10* -0.02 0.10* 0.02 -0.02 0.00 -0.05 0.07* -0.10 religiosity Age -0.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00* -0.00 Sex (1=male) 0.02 -0.07 -0.02 -0.02 0.14* -0.00 0.08* -0.14* -0.04 -0.18* Education level -0.01 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 -0.02* -0.00 0.01* -0.00 0.01 -0.03* Scale of income 0.02 0.02 -0.00 0.01 -0.00 -0.01 -0.01 -0.02* -0.01 -0.00 N 692 967 1097 862 1386 1279 1069 838 1334 616 * p < 0.05

Table 2-2. Continued Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Germany Netherlands Spain Sweden Particular social -0.06* 0.08* 0.04* 0.01 0.07* 0.06* -0.02 0.03 trust General social 0.03* 0.11* 0.00 -0.01 0.04 0.06* 0.02 0.04 trust Financial 0.03* -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.02 0.03* -0.00 satisfaction Postmaterialism 0.01 -0.01 -0.02 -0.01 -0.09* -0.05* 0.00 -0.06* index Political interest 0.09* 0.04* 0.04* 0.02* 0.02 0.01 -0.00 0.04* Religious -0.01 0.01 -0.02* -0.00 0.03* 0.05* 0.04 0.01 attendance Role of religious 0.01* -0.01* 0.01* -0.00 -0.01 -0.01 -0.00 0.02* authorities Subjective 0.10* -0.00 0.08 -0.02 0.01 0.06 0.21* 0.03 religiosity Age 0.00 0.00 0.00* 0.00 -0.00 -0.00* 0.00* -0.00 Sex (1=male) 0.05 -0.02 -0.02 0.02 -0.00 0.05 -0.03 -0.01 Education level 0.01 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 -0.01* -0.00 -0.01 -0.03* Scale of income -0.04* -0.01* 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.03* N 930 1500 1375 1066 1648 1142 806 938 * p < 0.05

Table 2-3. Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Courts across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) Algeria Iraq Jordan Lebanon Libya Malaysia Pakistan Tunisia Turkey Yemen Particular social 0.05* 0.06* 0.06* 0.08* 0.09* 0.07* 0.03 0.02 0.11* 0.09* trust General social 0.01 0.00 -0.04* 0.03 -0.02 -0.05* 0.06* 0.01 0.02 -0.04 trust Financial 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.03* 0.01* 0.02* 0.01 0.01 0.01* 0.01 satisfaction Postmaterialism -0.00 -0.01 -0.03* 0.03 -0.01 -0.03* -0.00 -0.07* -0.05* -0.02 index Political interest 0.00 0.05* -0.03* 0.03 -0.01 0.05* 0.02 0.09* -0.10* 0.01 Religious 0.02 -0.02 0.04* 0.01 -0.01 0.01 -0.08* 0.01 0.03* -0.01 attendance Role of religious -0.03* 0.02* -0.00 -0.01 0.01* -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.01* 0.01* authorities Subjective -0.03 -0.15* -0.05 0.06 -0.08* -0.01 0.14 0.08 0.12* -0.09 religiosity Age 0.00 -0.00* -0.00* 0.00 -0.00 -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00* -0.00 Sex (1=male) -0.06 -0.00 -0.10* 0.01 0.13* -0.07* 0.03 -0.13* -0.03 -0.06 Education level -0.00 0.02* -0.01 0.00 -0.02* -0.01* -0.00 -0.00 -0.00 -0.03* Scale of income 0.04* 0.02* -0.01 -0.01 -0.00 0.02* 0.00 -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 N 647 939 1092 853 1370 1279 1061 827 1329 601 * p < 0.05

Table 2-3. Continued Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Germany Netherlands Spain Sweden Particular social -0.04 0.09* 0.10* 0.08* 0.06* 0.02 0.10* 0.07* trust General social 0.04* 0.05* -0.02 -0.04* 0.06* 0.11* -0.02 0.07* trust Financial 0.03* -0.02* 0.01* -0.00 0.01 0.03* 0.02 0.01 satisfaction Postmaterialism 0.02 -0.02 0.02 -0.00 -0.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 index Political interest 0.09* 0.02 -0.04* 0.03* 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.02 Religious 0.02 0.03 -0.03* 0.02 0.04* 0.00 0.04* 0.03 attendance Role of religious -0.01 0.01* -0.01 0.00 -0.01 0.00 0.01 0.01 authorities Subjective 0.05 0.09* 0.16* 0.04 0.02 -0.00 -0.01 -0.04 religiosity Age -0.00 0.00 0.00 -0.00 -0.00* -0.00 -0.00 -0.00 Sex (1=male) 0.02 -0.02 0.06* 0.02 -0.02 0.04 -0.03 -0.04 Education level 0.01 0.01 0.00 -0.01 -0.00 0.03* -0.01 0.00 Scale of income -0.06* 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 -0.00 0.02* N 930 1500 1376 1036 1646 1195 808 937 * p < 0.05

Table 2-4. Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Police across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) Algeria Iraq Jordan Lebanon Libya Malaysia Pakistan Tunisia Turkey Yemen Particular social 0.14* 0.16* 0.04* 0.02 0.10* 0.14* -0.01 0.07* 0.11* 0.09* trust General social 0.00 0.08* -0.03* -0.00 -0.03 -0.07* 0.05* 0.01 0.02 -0.05 trust Financial -0.01 0.02 0.01 0.03* 0.01 0.02* 0.01 0.00 0.02* 0.01 satisfaction Postmaterialism -0.03 0.02 -0.05* 0.02 -0.01 -0.02* -0.02 -0.08* -0.04* -0.06* index Political interest 0.03 0.09* -0.01 0.04* 0.01 0.05* 0.03 0.06* -0.08* 0.01 Religious -0.01 -0.01 0.01 0.01 -0.00 0.02 0.02* 0.01 0.04* -0.01 attendance Role of religious -0.03* 0.00 -0.00 -0.01* 0.01 0.01* 0.00 -0.00 0.02* 0.01 authorities Subjective 0.07 0.12* -0.05 0.02 -0.01 0.02 0.00 -0.07 0.14* -0.01 religiosity Age -0.00 -0.00* -0.00 0.00 0.00 -0.00 -0.00 0.00 0.00* -0.00 Sex (1=male) -0.02 -0.03 -0.08* -0.04 0.08* -0.08* -0.08* -0.15* -0.06* -0.14 Education level -0.01 -0.00 -0.01 -0.01 -0.03* -0.02* 0.00 -0.01 0.00 -0.01 Scale of income 0.02* 0.02 -0.02* -0.00 0.01 0.02* 0.01 -0.02* -0.01 -0.01 N 695 965 1096 855 1386 1279 1063 838 1345 606 * p < 0.05

Table 2-4. Continued Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Germany Netherlands Spain Sweden Particular social -0.01 0.12* 0.08* 0.08* 0.07* 0.10* 0.09* 0.08* trust General social 0.05* 0.03 0.01 -0.05* 0.03* 0.08* 0.04 0.07* trust Financial 0.03* -0.02* 0.01 -0.01 0.01* 0.03* 0.01 0.01* satisfaction Postmaterialism -0.01 -0.01 0.02 -0.01 -0.02* -0.02 -0.02 -0.01 index Political interest 0.10* 0.01 -0.04* 0.02 0.03* 0.01 0.01 -0.00 Religious -0.01 0.04* -0.02 0.03* 0.03* -0.01 0.01 0.01 attendance Role of religious 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.01 -0.01* 0.01 0.01 0.01 authorities Subjective 0.05 0.05 0.08 0.04* 0.02 0.04 0.03 -0.04 religiosity Age 0.00 0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.00* 0.00* 0.00 Sex (1=male) 0.06 -0.04 0.04 0.05* -0.04* -0.01 -0.05 -0.04 Education level 0.01 0.01 0.01 -0.01 -0.00 0.00 0.00 -0.01 Scale of income -0.05* 0.00 0.01* 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.01 N 930 1500 1376 1071 1661 1198 811 952 * p < 0.05

Table 2-5. Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Civil Service across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) Algeria Iraq Jordan Lebanon Libya Malaysia Pakistan Tunisia Turkey Yemen Particular social 0.10* -0.03 0.06* 0.02 0.09* 0.12* 0.02 0.12* 0.14* 0.02 trust General social -0.03 0.05* 0.00 0.07* 0.00 0.02 0.13* 0.03 0.04* 0.02 trust Financial 0.01 0.02* 0.01 0.02* -0.00 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.02* 0.02* satisfaction Postmaterialism 0.01 0.03* 0.02 0.07* 0.01 -0.00 -0.01 0.01 -0.04* 0.01 index Political interest 0.02 0.06* 0.00 0.03 -0.00 0.03 -0.01 0.03 -0.03* 0.04* Religious -0.01 0.00 -0.01 -0.00 -0.01 -0.00 -0.02 -0.02* 0.01 0.00 attendance Role of religious -0.03* 0.01 -0.01 -0.00 0.01* 0.01* 0.01 -0.00 0.01* 0.01* authorities Subjective 0.00 -0.07* -0.02 0.05 -0.05 -0.06* -0.13 0.16* 0.13* 0.05 religiosity Age 0.00 -0.00 -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00* 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 Sex (1=male) -0.04 -0.07 0.00 0.03 0.06* -0.03 -0.01 -0.04 -0.00 -0.08 Education level -0.01 0.00 -0.01 -0.02* -0.02* 0.00 0.01 -0.01 -0.00 0.00 Scale of income 0.03* 0.02 -0.00 0.00 -0.01 0.00 -0.00 -0.00 -0.01 -0.00 N 636 944 1065 861 1354 1279 1055 787 1321 594 * p < 0.05

Table 2-5. Continued Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Germany Netherlands Spain Sweden Particular social 0.06* 0.09* 0.08* 0.04* 0.07* 0.08* 0.10* 0.11* trust General social 0.01 0.03* 0.02 -0.02 0.09* 0.09* 0.06* 0.11* trust Financial 0.02* -0.02* 0.01* -0.00 0.01 0.04* 0.01 -0.00 satisfaction Postmaterialism 0.02 -0.04* -0.00 -0.01 -0.06* 0.00 -0.02 0.03* index Political interest 0.13* -0.00 -0.01 0.02* 0.04* 0.03 -0.00 0.07* Religious 0.03 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.02 0.01 -0.02 0.02 attendance Role of religious -0.00 0.01 -0.00 0.00 -0.01 0.02* 0.02* 0.01 authorities Subjective 0.00 0.02 0.12* -0.02 -0.00 -0.05 0.04 0.02 Religiosity Age 0.00 -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00* -0.00 0.00* 0.00 Sex (1=male) 0.02 -0.04 0.02 0.01 -0.03 0.05 -0.09* 0.04 Education level 0.02 -0.00 0.00 -0.01 -0.00 0.03* 0.00 0.00 Scale of income -0.02* -0.00 0.01 0.00 0.01 -0.00 -0.02 0.02 N 930 1500 1376 1059 1650 1181 804 814 * p < 0.05

Table 2-6. Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Government across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) Algeria Iraq Jordan Lebanon Libya Malaysia Pakistan Tunisia Turkey Yemen Particular social 0.11* 0.04 0.07* 0.03 0.07* 0.10* 0.07* -0.04* 0.03 0.15* trust General social -0.04 0.04* -0.04* 0.01 0.00 -0.03 0.09* 0.01 0.06* -0.08* trust Financial 0.02* 0.02* 0.01 0.00 0.02* 0.01* 0.01 0.01* 0.01 0.01 satisfaction Postmaterialism 0.01 -0.01 -0.02 0.10* -0.02 -0.03* 0.03* -0.03* -0.02 -0.03 index Political interest 0.02 0.11* -0.06* 0.05* 0.02* 0.05* 0.02 0.05* -0.00 0.04* Religious 0.02 -0.01 0.02 0.02 -0.01 0.01 -0.00 0.03* 0.06* -0.03 attendance Role of religious -0.03* -0.01* -0.01 -0.01 0.01* 0.01* -0.01 0.01* 0.01* 0.01* authorities Subjective -0.01 0.20* -0.02 -0.01 -0.01 0.02 -0.26 -0.07 0.19* -0.01 religiosity Age -0.00 -0.00 -0.00 -0.00* 0.00 -0.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 -0.00* Sex (1=male) -0.05 -0.08 -0.00 -0.03 0.03 -0.06* -0.02 -0.07* -0.04 -0.03 Education level -0.02* -0.01 -0.02* -0.01 -0.02* -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.03* -0.02* Scale of income 0.02 0.01 -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.02* -0.00 -0.01 0.01 N 641 954 1083 736 1372 1278 1061 825 1332 623 * p < 0.05

Table 2-6. Continued Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Germany Netherlands Spain Sweden Particular social -0.02 0.12* 0.05* 0.02* 0.06* 0.04 0.04 0.07* trust General social -0.01 0.04* 0.06* -0.01* 0.09* 0.07* 0.01 0.07* trust Financial 0.02* -0.01 0.01* -0.00 0.01 0.07* 0.02* 0.02* satisfaction Postmaterialism 0.02 -0.04* 0.01 -0.00 -0.08* -0.02 -0.01 -0.07* index Political interest 0.08* 0.03 -0.03* 0.02* 0.04* 0.05* 0.00 0.05* Religious 0.03 0.03* -0.02* 0.00 0.05* 0.02 -0.01 0.00 attendance Role of religious 0.00 -0.00 -0.00 -0.00 0.01* 0.02* -0.01 -0.00 authorities Subjective -0.02 0.04 0.17* -0.00 0.04 -0.01 -0.02 0.06 religiosity Age 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.00* 0.00 Sex (1=male) 0.03 -0.03 0.03 0.02 0.00 -0.00 -0.04 -0.02 Education level 0.01 0.00 0.01 -0.00 0.01* 0.03* -0.00 0.02* Scale of income -0.01 -0.00 0.01 0.00 0.02* 0.01 -0.03* 0.05* N 930 1500 1374 1071 1649 1193 808 944 * p < 0.05

Table 2-7. Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Parliament across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) Algeria Iraq Jordan Lebanon Libya Malaysia Pakistan Tunisia Turkey Yemen Particular social 0.02 0.02 0.05* 0.05* 0.04* 0.11* 0.03 0.02 0.03 0.03 trust General social 0.02 0.05* -0.00 0.02 0.01 -0.04 0.10* -0.01 0.08* -0.03 trust Financial 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.03* 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.00 satisfaction Postmaterialism 0.01 0.01 -0.03* 0.05* -0.01 -0.03* 0.00 -0.03* -0.02 -0.02 index Political interest 0.04* 0.03 -0.00 0.04* 0.01 0.09* 0.04* 0.02* -0.02 0.01 Religious 0.01 0.03* 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.00 -0.00 0.01 0.06* 0.01 attendance Role of religious -0.03* 0.00 0.01 -0.01 -0.00 0.01 0.01* 0.01* 0.02* 0.00 authorities Subjective -0.13* -0.03 -0.01 0.06 -0.00 -0.02 -0.24 0.04 0.13* -0.16* religiosity Age 0.00 -0.00 -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.00 Sex (1=male) -0.06 -0.12* 0.00 0.02 -0.02 -0.05* 0.01 0.01 -0.04 -0.08 Education level -0.01 -0.00 -0.01 -0.01 -0.02* -0.01 -0.01 0.00 -0.02* -0.01 Scale of income 0.01 0.03* -0.00 0.00 0.01* 0.02* 0.00 -0.01* -0.01 -0.01 N 598 921 1037 842 1317 1279 1060 811 1320 590 * p < 0.05

Table 2-7. Continued Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Germany Netherlands Spain Sweden Particular social -0.06* 0.11* 0.11* 0.02* 0.08* 0.05 0.07* 0.09* trust General social 0.04* 0.03 0.02 -0.00 0.07* 0.09* -0.02 0.12* trust Financial 0.04* -0.02* 0.01 -0.01 0.01 0.05* 0.01 0.02* satisfaction Postmaterialism 0.01 -0.04* 0.01 -0.01* -0.05* -0.01 0.01 -0.00 index Political interest 0.12* 0.02 -0.01 0.02* 0.07* 0.07* 0.01 0.08* Religious 0.05* 0.03* -0.02 -0.00 0.03* 0.03* -0.00 0.00 attendance Role of religious 0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.00 authorities Subjective 0.03 0.04 0.12* 0.01 0.08* -0.01 0.00 0.02 religiosity Age 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.00* 0.00 Sex (1=male) -0.04 -0.03 0.02 0.02 0.06* -0.00 -0.05 -0.02 Education level 0.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.01 0.04* 0.01 0.02* Scale of income -0.06* 0.01 0.01 0.00 -0.00 -0.01 -0.01 0.01 N 930 1500 1372 996 1638 1176 796 939 * p < 0.05

Table 2-8. Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Political Parties across Selected Muslim Majority and European Countries (Average Marginal Effects) Algeria Iraq Jordan Lebanon Libya Malaysia Pakistan Tunisia Turkey Yemen Particular social 0.00 0.01 0.03 0.01 0.02 0.14* 0.05* 0.01 -0.01 -0.01 trust General social 0.06* 0.02 0.04* 0.04* -0.00 -0.04 0.04* 0.00 0.12* -0.00 trust Financial 0.01 0.03* 0.01 0.02* 0.00 0.02* 0.01 -0.00 0.01 0.02* satisfaction Postmaterialism 0.02 0.01 -0.01 0.07* 0.00 -0.02* 0.02 -0.01 -0.01 -0.00 index Political interest 0.04* 0.08* 0.03* 0.09* 0.02* 0.11* 0.05* 0.01 0.02 0.07* Religious -0.00 -0.01 0.01 0.03* 0.00 0.01 0.02 0.00 0.00 0.01 attendance Role of religious -0.02* -0.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.01 0.00 0.01* 0.00 authorities Subjective 0.04 0.01 -0.02 -0.05 -0.01 0.02 -0.32 -0.01 0.16* -0.09* religiosity Age 0.00 -0.00* -0.00 -0.00 -0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 Sex (1=male) -0.02 -0.04 -0.04 0.00 -0.03 -0.04 -0.00 -0.01 0.08* -0.10 Education level -0.02* 0.00 -0.01* -0.01 -0.01* -0.01* 0.01 -0.00 -0.01* 0.00 Scale of income -0.01 -0.00 -0.01 -0.01 0.00 0.02* 0.01 -0.00 -0.00 -0.02* N 612 947 950 852 1342 1278 1058 814 1328 605 * p < 0.05

Table 2-8. Continued Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Germany Netherlands Spain Sweden Particular social 0.04* 0.12* 0.14* 0.09* 0.08* 0.04 0.08* 0.11* trust General social 0.04* 0.02 0.05* -0.03 0.04* 0.06* -0.02 0.08* trust Financial 0.02* -0.02* 0.01* -0.01 0.00 0.03* 0.02* -0.00 satisfaction Postmaterialism -0.01 -0.02 0.01 -0.01 -0.05* -0.03* -0.02 -0.02 index Political interest 0.13* 0.03* 0.00 0.05* 0.08* 0.07* 0.03 0.12* Religious 0.04 0.01 -0.01 -0.01 0.03* 0.01 -0.00 0.03 attendance Role of religious 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.02* 0.01 0.01 0.02* authorities Subjective 0.06 0.05 0.19* 0.06* -0.01 0.02 -0.02 0.04 religiosity Age 0.00* 0.00 0.00 -0.00 -0.00 -0.00* 0.00 -0.00 Sex (1=male) -0.04 -0.02 0.00 0.05* 0.01 -0.04 -0.02 -0.04 Education level -0.00 -0.00 0.01 -0.02* -0.02* 0.02* -0.01 0.02* Scale of income 0.00 0.01 0.02* 0.00 0.02* -0.01 -0.00 0.03* N 930 1500 1375 983 1645 1194 807 937 * p < 0.05

Table 2-9. Logistic Regression Analysis of Political Trust in Turkey using Individual Religiosity Measures and Other Predictors (Average Marginal Effects) Army Courts Police Civil Government Parliament Political Service Parties Particular social 0.08* 0.11* 0.11* 0.14* 0.03 0.03 -0.01 trust General social 0.06* 0.02 0.02 0.04* 0.06* 0.08* 0.12* trust Financial 0.00 0.01* 0.02* 0.02* 0.01 0.01 0.01 satisfaction Postmaterialism -0.04* -0.05* -0.04* -0.04* -0.02 -0.02 -0.01 index Political interest -0.09* -0.10* -0.08* -0.03* -0.00 -0.02 0.02 Religious 0.01 0.03* 0.04* 0.01 0.06* 0.06* 0.00 attendance Role of religious 0.01* 0.01* 0.02* 0.01* 0.01* 0.02* 0.01* authorities Subjective 0.07* 0.12* 0.14* 0.13* 0.19* 0.13* 0.16* Religiosity Age 0.00* 0.00* 0.00* 0.00 -0.00 -0.00 0.00 Sex (1=male) -0.04 -0.03 -0.06* -0.00 -0.04 -0.04 0.08* Education level 0.01 -0.00 0.00 -0.00 -0.03* -0.02* -0.01* Scale of income -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.00 N 1334 1329 1345 1321 1332 1320 1328 * p < 0.05

CHAPTER 3 POLITICAL TRUST AND PARTISAN POLARIZATION IN TURKEY

In this chapter I will analyze political trust in Turkey in relation to partisan polarization. Although it is not a novel issue in Turkey, recent studies have claimed that polarization became profound in 2000s (Atikcan and Öge 2012; Kalaycioglu 2012; Kiris

2011; Tepe 2013). Following the literature on polarized political trust (Hetherington

2015; Hetherington and Rudolph 2015), I will analyze political trust in Turkey in relation to party preferences to shed light on its dynamics in a new way.

First, I will provide a brief overview of the studies on political trust in Turkey. This section will be followed by a discussion on polarization and how it relates to political trust in the United States. Although there are debates on polarization in different contexts, the U.S. case is the most relevant one both methodologically and theoretically

(Kaya and Sunar 2015); the hypothesis of polarized political trust has been put to the test in the U.S. Third, I will discuss polarization in Turkey, which would inform the empirical analysis in the following section. I will conclude the chapter by suggesting that the polarized political trust has limited applicability in Turkey, and that the analysis in the next chapter should focus on the changes in political trust over time.

Research on Political Trust in Turkey

Turkey was included in a number of cross-national studies on trust, specifically social trust (Delhey, Newton, and Welzel 2011; Newton 2001; Sasaki 2012). As the aim of these analyses was to test hypotheses on trust using a large sample of countries,

Turkey did not appear as an interesting case. At most, it was characterized as a low- trust country (Rothstein and Uslaner 2005).

When it comes to studies on political trust, which included Turkey, there is even less interest (Catterberg and Moreno 2005; Marien 2011). A notable exception is the edited volume by Pippa Norris (Norris 1999a) in which Turkey was characterized as either a troubled democracy struggling for stability, or an ascendant authoritarian regime with widespread abuse of human rights and civil liberties (Klingemann 1999; McAllister

1999; Norris 1999b). Although citizens preferred democratic regime, they were not satisfied with its performance, which is explained by the dramatic experience of regime changes because of the coups. Compared to other countries, Turkey has high levels of confidence for democratic institutions comparable to those of Norway or Iceland, and this similarity render problematic a simple categorization of countries along the levels of institutional confidence. Apart from these observations, two general statements are of interest. First, the explanation of Left being less trustful in Turkey was explained by the lack of identification with the governing party/parties rather than ideological difference between Left and Right as such (McAllister 1999). Second, high levels of confidence in political institutions in Turkey is bolstered by the periodic involvement of religious elements (McAllister 1999). None of these arguments were developed any further.

The number of studies specifically focusing on social and political trust in Turkey is not high either. With respect to social/interpersonal trust, these studies provide support for the argument that Turkey is a low-trust country. Focusing on the rise of conservatism in the 1990s, Carkoglu and Kalaycioglu argue that since we observe low levels of social capital in the country, “feelings of interpersonal trust are a scarce resource in Turkey” (Carkoglu & Kalaycioglu, 2009: 118). Grigoriadis (2009) made a

similar observations and considered general mistrust as an indicator of lack of liberal consensus.

The articles on political trust focus on its causes and consequences and follow the cultural and institutional approaches (Akgün 2001; Aydin and Cenker 2011; Aydın

Çakır and Şekercioğlu 2016; Eser 2013; Kakizaki 2012). They generally compare different groups (based on ethnicity, religious identity, party preference) and their levels of confidence in institutions. The way they operationalized the concept of political trust

(as institutional confidence) also varies from one article to another.1

The common denominator of these articles is their emphasis on a single point: economic and political performance indicators take primacy in explaining political trust, thus institutional approach is favored in these analyses. When we look at the studies individually, other explanatory factors can be found. For instance, Aydin and Cenker argue that in addition to performance, party-based explanations are also relevant, which is worth noting, since “this type of support can be labeled as too specific, because it would undo both the influence of deep-rooted social and cultural properties and citizens’ performance-based evaluations” (Aydin & Cenker, 2011: 234). In the same article, they also found subjective religiosity as a significant predictor of confidence in government.

Yet, this finding was not supported by Kakizaki; he argues that “religious factors, which the existing literature on Turkish politics tends to emphasize as the most important issue in shaping political competition and affecting citizens by dividing public opinion into two

1 For example, Kakizaki (2012) selected parliament, government and civil service for his analysis. Aydin and Cenker (2011) focused on government, whereas Aydin Cakir and Sekercioglu (2016) on the judiciary (e.g., courts). Yet in another study, Karakoc (2013) constructed an index using three institutions, parliament, judiciary and police, and also analyzed trust in political parties separately.

opposing camps (the secularist versus the Islamic), is found to be unimportant for political confidence” (Kakizaki, 2012: 86). Ethnic identity is another important predictor of political trust and discussed by Eser in his analysis using a sample of University students, and by Karakoc using the sample from European Social Survey (Eser 2013;

Karakoç 2013).

Generally, these analyses remain limited because they do not provide an overall assessment of the concept of political trust and its institutional components. And because of their limited numbers, these studies could not provide together a coherent picture on the dynamics of political trust in Turkey. The only study that strives for this accomplishment is published in Turkish on December 2015 (Can 2015). Based on his dissertation project, Can (2015) argues that the book takes a “snapshot of trust” in

Turkey. However, the study suffers from questionable data collection procedures and lack of inferential analysis for the theoretical approaches. The sample is collected from four cities in Turkey based on the results of local elections in 2014 and proportioned according to the size of the voters in each city. There is not enough information about how respondents are selected in each city. Thus, it seems that convenient sampling is used. It is very hard to make inferences about population from samples collected by nonprobability sampling methods such as convenient sampling (Groves et al. 2009; de

Leeuw, Hox, and Dillman 2008). This also explains why Can’s analysis is limited to descriptive methods.

In addition to the methodological considerations, these studies would benefit from a general theme which would coordinate the findings better. Considering the social and political phenomena they refer, such as religion, ethnicity, and party preference,

while explaining political trust, they analyze the fault lines and deep social cleavages in

Turkish politics, which lead to conflicting opinions on institutions. I will discuss in the following section that polarization might become such a theme to analyze political trust in a new way.

Polarization and Political Trust

Polarization can be defined as the simultaneous presence of opposing tendencies. In their seminal study, DiMaggio, Evans and Bryson (1996) conceptualize polarization in four different dimensions: dispersion, bimodality, constraint, and consolidation. Among them, however, it is bimodality which captures public perception of polarization in the United States. It has been argued that individuals’ opinions, attitudes, and values are polarized to such an extent that they form two camps with distinct cultural and moral visions. The narrative of polarization is embraced and then marketed by media and political pundits alike. Some political elites did not miss the chance. For example, Pat Buchanan in his 1992 Republican National Convention

Speech declared that there is a religious and cultural war for the soul of America2

(Fiorina and Abrams 2008).

Despite heightened attention to the polarization debate, political scientists had a rather cautious approach to the issue by highlighting the distinction between elite and mass polarization. In the case of the former (elite polarization), there is a consensus in the literature that the elites are indeed polarized (Hetherington 2001). However, scholars challenged the claim that polarization has occurred in mass public as well.

2 http://buchanan.org/blog/1992-republican-national-convention-speech- 148?doing_wp_cron=1478487975.2316689491271972656250

Referring to the four dimensions mentioned above, DiMaggio et al. (1996). did not find any support for the polarization of public opinion since 1970s, except for one topic, abortion. In their review of the literature on political polarization, Fiorina and Abrams

(2008) reached a similar conclusion. Focusing on different types of evidence, such as sociocultural characteristics, world views, political positions and preferences, they argue that there is little or no indication of mass polarization. What has occurred, instead, is party sorting, i.e., increasing correlation between policy views and party identification, but this change shouldn’t be exaggerated (Fiorina and Abrams 2008).

Although these findings imply lack of mass polarization and have been widely acclaimed and supported by other studies (Evans 2003; Fischer and Mattson 2009), there are some criticisms on methodological and theoretical grounds. For example,

Abramowitz and Saunders (2008) criticized Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope (2006) for their claim that polarization is almost entirely an elite phenomenon and for their neglect of partisan positions. They claim that party sorting has reached to such a level that it has a polarizing effect and “the high level of ideological polarization evident among political elites in the United States reflects real divisions within the American electorate”

(Abramowitz and Saunders 2008:554). Baldassari and Gelman (2008) explained this disagreement on mass polarization as a consequence of the ways scholars approach polarization. When they focus on the population as a whole or on different socioeconomic groups, they find little evidence of polarization. However, when they focus on partisan affiliations, they find evidence for mass polarization (Baldassarri and

Gelman 2008:415).

With respect to this final point, Marc Hetherington’s work (Hetherington 2015;

Hetherington and Rudolph 2015) offers a novel way to look at mass polarization in relation to political trust. Like Abramowitz and Saunders (2008), he emphasized the importance of partisan affiliations, but also admit that scholars found little evidence of mass polarization. The reason is not that polarization is a media-driven myth, but the scholars were looking at wrong places: it is political trust where polarization manifests itself (Hetherington and Rudolph 2015).

The idea that political trust is influenced by polarization requires clarification on the meaning of these concepts. First, Hetherington and Rudolph explain that by polarization they mean affective polarization which “ought to be rooted in how people feel rather than in how they think or where they stand” (Hetherington and Rudolph

2015:26). Second, they argue that political trust is shaped by different factors, such as performance, probity, and polarization, and can function as a heuristic, in other words, a mental shortcut that enables people to make decisions more efficiently. Just like polarization, political trust is more about feelings in this sense; it is “a barometer of citizens’ feelings toward government” (Hetherington and Rudolph 2015:35). Because polarization is manifested in and shapes political trust, Hetherington argues that a new phenomenon, polarized political trust is witnessed in 2000s (Hetherington 2015).

I argue that this idea of polarized political trust is promising to understand political trust in Turkey as well. As I will discuss in the following section, polarization arguments become prominent in the analysis on Turkish politics, especially after the JDP came into power in 2002.

Polarization in Turkey

Students of Turkish politics are not unfamiliar with the topic of polarization.

Politics in Turkey is rife with social and political tensions leading to various fault lines and social cleavages. Whereas some trace their emergence to the foundation of the republic in 1923, others trace these tensions back to Tanzimat (literally means reorganization) period (1839) and even early 19th century (which will be discussed in

Chapter 5). Scholars argue that these cleavages, such as secularist- religious/conservative, left-right, Kurd-Turk, Alevi-Sunni, have always shaped the political arena in a polarized manner (Kaya and Sunar 2015; Toros 2017:298).

Moreover, it is assumed that these dichotomies overlap and lead to a heightened sense of polarization: educated, high-income, urban and secular vs. less-educated, low- income, rural, and religious/conservative.

Although this characterization of Turkish politics seems rather retrospective, the polarization argument can be found in earlier studies as well. For example, in his seminal work on center-periphery relations and Mardin (1973:187) regarded this

“polarity” as one of the extremely important structural components of Turkish politics.

Similarly, Heper’s analysis of the conflict between state/bureaucratic elite (occupying locus of state) and political elite (new political cadres challenging center) during the early 1950s implies elite polarization (Heper 1985). So, unlike scholars of U.S. politics who argue that polarization is a relatively recent phenomenon to be worried about, scholars of Turkish politics always acknowledge a certain degree of elite and also mass polarization. Nevertheless, the rise of Islamist parties in 1990s and the electoral victories of the JDP in 2000s ignite a new interest in polarization in Turkey (Baran 2008;

Kalaycioglu 2012; Kaya and Sunar 2015; Keyman 2014; Kiris 2011; Tepe 2013).

The focus of these new studies is party identities and partisan polarization.

However, as I mentioned, these partisan differences are thought to represent other social and cultural fault lines. Thus, they are perceived as all-encompassing. Analyzing

International Social Survey Programme data collected before 2010 Constitutional

Referendum, Kalaycioglu argues that the Turkish political system is operating “under deep divisions over cultural fault lines and an intense kulturkampf”3 (Kalaycioglu

2012:19).

Two surveys conducted five years apart by the research company KONDA

(2010) and Erdogan (Erdogan 2016) support the idea that polarization becomes intense in Turkey. KONDA study by Agirdir (2010) reports both social and political polarization, although the latter is much more severe. For example, while 89% of JDP supporters agree that the constitutional amendments are necessary for democracy, only 14% of

Republican People’s Party (RPP)4 supporters agree with that. Although they are on opposite sides in most of the questions, supporters of other parties may surpass JDP and RPP supporters in terms of highest or lowest level of agreement depending on the question. For example, those most afraid of the establishment of Sharia are RPP supporters (73%) whereas those least afraid are Felicity Party (another religiously oriented party) supporters (11%) followed by JDP supporters (25%). Erdogan’s study

(2016) on polarization also shows that not only that party preferences and other identities overlap, but also political differences translate into social distance. Focusing

3 Kulturkampf means culture war in German. Here, Kalaycioglu alludes to the struggle between Prussian State and Roman Catholic Church in the 19th century.

4 Republican People’s Party: a secular, Kemalist, and social-democratic party. It has been the main opposition party during JDP rule.

on four political parties (JDP, RPP, NMP5, and Peoples’ Democratic Party6), Erdogan shows that 76% of respondents do not want supporters of parties they found distant7 as neighbors. When it comes to hot issues, the difference between parties collapse into a dichotomy between ruling party and opposition parties. For example, the support for presidential system is %66.3 among JDP supporters, whereas it ranges from %4.9 to

%14.6 for the supporters of other three parties.

All these studies advance the claim that polarization is profound in Turkey especially since the 2000s. This claim is so entrenched that, to my knowledge, there is only one study which questions increasing polarization in Turkey. Using World Values

Survey and European Values Survey data between 1990 and 2011, and focusing on family and sexuality, gender roles, democracy, and social justice, Kaya and Sunar

(2015) argue that there is no evidence for increasing polarization during this period.

Rather, they found rising conservatism. Unlike the studies cited before, they used the advantage of analyzing the data over time. So, one might argue that while there are deep cleavages in Turkey, they are not getting deeper over time. Without additional studies, however, it is hard to pass judgment on this argument.

Following the debate on polarization, I expect to find evidence for polarized political trust in Turkey for the period covered by the data (WVS 2007 & 2011). Because the literature emphasizes partisan preferences, it deserves special attention in the

5 Nationalist Movement Party (or Nationalist Action Party): far-right political party.

6 Left-wing, pro-minority, pro-Kurdish party. Do not confuse with Peace and Democracy Party.

7 For the supporters of each party, composition of distant parties differs.

analysis. I expect party preference to be a strong explanatory factor of political trust, because it captures a diverse range of social and cultural fault lines.

Data and Methods

Data

Like the previous chapter, I will use World Values Survey Data (WVS) in this chapter. In addition to 6th and the last wave (2011, N=1605), 5th wave (2007, N=1324) will be analyzed to check the robustness of the models. Moreover, the data in these two waves were collected after JDP came into power. So, they would be more suitable to analyze the relationship between political trust and partisan polarization. Another wave

(2009) from European Values Survey (EVS) could have been used as well, because it has same questions with identical forms. However, half of the sample is missing for the voting question which is used as the proxy of party preference.8 Although sample size is relatively large in this survey (N=2384), and after dropping missing values, the distribution of remaining respondents for voting question resembles population to a certain extent, I will only use this survey for descriptive purposes.

Dependent Variables

Since the analysis in this chapter is not comparative unlike Chapter 2, I am less concerned with the measurement invariance and calculation of marginal effects. So, it is possible to reconsider the conventional operationalization strategy used in single- country analyses, index construction. To construct indices, scholars have utilized certain modeling techniques, such as principal components analysis (McLaren 2012),

8 Although high level of missingness is quite unusual for such a variable, no information can be found in the documentation. One possible reason might be that it is a follow-up question. The question is asked conditional on the answer to “if there were to be a general election tomorrow, would you vote?”

exploratory factor analysis (Norris 2011), and even Mokken scale analysis (Zmerli and

Newton 2013).9 Even though these techniques accomplish different tasks, based on these analyses, scholars argue that there is a single factor (latent variable) which accounts for the relationship among institutional confidence items. Thus, they proceed to construct additive indices of political trust using these items.

Although exploratory studies are valuable, confirmatory analyses are needed to test single factor solutions in a rigorous manner. But there are not only methodological reasons to conduct confirmatory factor analysis. In the case of Turkey, it is a questionable assumption that there is a single factor underlying observed indicators of confidence. For example, Tessler and Altinoglu (2004) distinguish between Confidence in the Political System and Confidence in Institutions of Order. Whereas the former includes confidence in government, parliament, political parties and civil service, the latter includes confidence in army, legal system, and police. So, I will test for both single-factor and two-factor solution using WVS 2007, 2011 and EVS 2009 data. The figures 3-1 and 3-2 show the models. All six models fit with significant loadings. Table 3-

1. shows the goodness-of-fit statistics which are used to assess the model fit.

These statistics clearly indicate that two-factor solutions improve over single factor solutions in each survey. The results also support Tessler and Altinoglu’s grouping of confidence items as institutions of political system and institutions of order.

Despite their improvement, two-factor solutions fall short to meet the standards for some of these measures. For instance, no two-factor model has RMSEA 0.05 (or

9 In fact, scholars seem to confuse principal components analysis (PCA) and factor analysis using principal-component factoring method. When they used the term PCA, usually they refer to factor analysis with principal component factoring method. Two methods give similar results, but they are not the same.

below) which is considered ideal. Based on the interpretation of other statistics, it is possible to argue that the model fit is good enough to continue the analysis using indices.10

I prefer to refrain from this strategy for two reasons. First, as I describe in

Chapter 2, confidence items are ordinal. It is common to treat them as interval as I did in the confirmatory factor analyses, but this might lead misleading results. Second, apart from the ease of estimation and interpretation, use of indices might cause loss of information. Thus, I will follow the strategy of Chapter 2 and analyze each institutional confidence items individually. Unlike the second chapter, I will keep them in their ordinal scale (1 “None at all” 2 “Not very much” 3 “Quite a lot” 4 “A great deal”)11 and estimate ordered logistic regression models in the subsequent analyses.

I need to address an issue about the use of institutional confidence items to analyze the relationship between political trust and polarization. These measures are different from those used by Hetherington in his analysis on polarized political trust. Like some others studying the U.S. (Anderson and LoTempio 2002; Miller and Listhaug

1990; Poznyak et al. 2014; Uslaner 2015a), he relied on National Election Survey items which specifically aim at measuring trust in government, not confidence in institutions.

10 These models could be specified better. For example, one can argue that because of the relationship between government and parliament, a covariance between the two should be included in the model. Although this makes sense, there is no theoretical guidance on this matter and testing models one after another with new specifications would take us from a confirmatory to exploratory framework.

11 It should be noted that the same response categories are used for social/interpersonal trust questions and institutional confidence questions in Turkey. As a result, the response categories are different in English and Turkish questionnaires for confidence items, but the labels used in the data file are same. The is no explanation as to why this decision was made in online resources or the codebook. I provide both versions to give a better idea about the difference in Appendix A. I prefer to keep using the labels in the data for consistency throughout the study, but I will remind the different wording in the analysis when necessary. There is no indication that this different use has led to misleading results in the literature.

Since they have this specific focus, it is possible to argue that they are better suited to the analysis of polarization. The use of these measures is criticized, however, as they conflate trust and trustworthiness (Mishler and Rose 1997). Moreover, I expect that polarization will be observed not only for confidence in government. Although to a lesser extent, confidence in other institutions, such as army, might be polarized as well considering their political role in Turkey. In the end, this is an empirical question to be answered in the following analysis.

Independent Variables

Independent variables of the previous chapter are used as controls in this chapter. There are two important changes. First, the main independent variable is party preference which I explain below. Second, I will include a single measure for individual religiosity: religious attendance. The reason behind this decision is to preserve model parsimony. I suspect that including three measures of individual religiosity will reduce the effect of the main independent variable which is supposed to capture religious individuals’ party preference. Among the three measures of individual religiosity in the previous chapter, religious attendance is a better candidate as a behavioral indicator.

I should note that the following analyses would have greatly benefit from a measure of ethnic identity. Unfortunately, respondents were not asked about their ethnic identity in the data from Turkey.12 In the absence of an ethnic identity measure, I expect to capture the effect of ethnicity in the party preference variable to some extent, because one of the parties in each survey is identified as pro-Kurdish. These parties

12 A possible proxy, language at home, could be used, but for instance, it indicates that less than 7% of the sample in 2011 is non-Turkish which implies underrepresentation. I

attract more support from Kurdish population. Nevertheless, the sample size for this group is still very small and one should be careful about the representativeness of this small sample.

Party preference: I will use the question asking individuals which party they would vote in the national election13 as an indicator of party preference. The variable is recoded to have six categories: four parties which found representation in the Grand

National Assembly during the periods of data collection (JDP, RPP, NMP, DSP14 or

PDP15) as well as “other” and “No Vote”. Although included in the analysis for proper model specification, I will not interpret results for those who would not vote or vote for

“other” parties. Table 3-2 shows the voting intention for each year.

In the political trust literature, individuals’ voting preferences are used to test winners-losers hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, individuals who vote for the party in the government are more likely to trust it. Thus, supporting the incumbent has a positive effect on political trust. This hypothesis is supported in the case of Turkey by

Aydin and Cenker (2011). In their analysis, they recode voting variable into a binary measure: intention of voting for incumbent and other. It could be argued that such an operationalization would capture the partisan polarization better (Uslaner 2015b).

However, I find this strategy problematic. Putting potential voters who would support a

13 In the English questionnaire and the codebook for Turkey in 2007 and 2011, the question is “if there were a national election tomorrow, for which party would you vote?”. However, in 2011, the Turkish questionnaire shows that the question is “for which party did you vote?”. Thus, the proxy for party preference is “voting intention” in 2007 and “voting preference” in 2011, and the term “voter” refers to “prospective voters” in 2007. For the consistency, the proxy is referred as “voting intention”, but the term “voter” is used. There is no indication that this wording difference changes the results of the analysis.

14 Democratic Society Party: Pro-Kurdish, social democratic party

15 Peace and Democracy Party: Successor of Democratic Society Party

Turkish nationalist party with those supporting a pro-Kurdish party in the same group would lead to misleading results. Thus, I will include the intention of voting as a proxy for party preference and as a categorical independent variable by taking JDP as the reference category and without collapsing other parties into non-incumbent category.

Analysis and Results

In this section, I will analyze confidence in army, courts (justice system), police, government, parliament, civil service and political parties, and interpret the results briefly under subsections. An overall assessment of the analysis will be provided in the discussion section.

Trust in Army

As one of the institutions of order, army has a strong presence in Turkish politics.

Turkey has witnessed two coup d’états (1960, 1980), two military memorandums (1971-

1997), one E-memorandum (2007), and a failed coup d’état attempt (2016). So, it should not be unexpected to observe strong and conflicting opinions about army across groups. In terms of the party preference, however, figure 3-3 present a different picture.

Three parties, the JDP, RPP, and NMP, are quite similar in terms of the distribution of confidence in army. More than 80% of voters of these parties say that they have some degree of trust in army (quite a lot/great deal or trust completely/trust somewhat).16 Although there is a decline in 2011 for “a great deal” category, the shift seems to happen towards “quite a lot” category. Pro-Kurdish party voters show the least support for army.

16 See Footnote 11.

These plots indicate that the differences between the JDP, RPP, and NMP based on model results might be small when trust in army is considered, however, this is not the case. Table 3-3. shows the ordered logistic regression results in 2007 and 2011 for trust in army.

Both table 3-3 and table 3-4 present results as odds-ratios, because logits

(standard coefficients) are not directly interpretable. One way to interpret odds-ratios is to think them as percentage changes in odds (Long and Freese 2014):

percentage change in odds=100{exp(δβk)-1}

For example, being a RPP voter increase the odds of trust in army by 154% compared to a JDP voter in 2007. The increase is 84% for the NMP voters. However, a statistically significant effect is not observed in 2011 for the RPP and NMP voters. Being a pro-Kurdish party voter decreases the odds of trust significantly in both 2007 and

2011, 94% and 80% respectively.

These results indicate that trust in army might capture the ethnic cleavage between Turks and Kurds in Turkey. As it becomes clear in the analysis of other items, institutional confidence seems to capture this cleavage every time. However, a similar interpretation does not hold for other parties. Although the differences are significant in

2007, they seem to vanish in 2011. The bar graphs presented in figure 3-3 already show that for the voters of the JDP, RPP, and NMP, army is the most trusted institution.

Trust in Courts (Justice System)

Judiciary in Turkey is another institution of order which has a strong political influence although not to the extent of army. Specifically, party closure cases in Turkey brought forth its political presence as the guardian of the secular regime.

The distribution of confidence in court/ justice system by party is not as clear-cut as that of army. Although the JDP, RPP, and NMP voters show high levels of trust, justice system does not enjoy the levels of trust in the army. However, voters of pro-

Kurdish parties have higher levels of confidence in the justice system compared to army. Still, they have the lowest confidence compared to the voters of other parties.

Results in Table 3-3 show that just like in the case of army, being a pro-Kurdish party voter decrease the odds of trust compared to a JDP voter by 84% in 2007 and

75% in 2011. Another finding is that voters of the RPP and NMP have lower odds of trust in courts/justice system compared to the JDP voters, whereas the opposite is the case for army. Although odds ratios indicate lower odds of trust, they are not statistically significant in 2007. However, in 2011 being a RPP voter would decrease odds of trust in courts by 44% compared to a JDP voter, holding other variables constant. This might be a consequence of the restructuring of judiciary during the JDP rule, so trust in courts/justice system might function as a proxy for the support (or opposition) of legal reforms of the government during this period.

Trust in Police

The bar plots indicate that of the three institutions of order, courts and police resemble each other in terms of the levels of confidence they enjoy. Like the courts/justice system, confidence in police is high (except for the DTP and PDP voters), but not as high as confidence in army. Neither confidence in police nor confidence in courts show the concentration of responses on the highest response category as in the case of army in 2007 and 2009. One explanation for this difference is that unlike army, individuals have a much more frequent contact with police and courts. So, they will have more opportunity to evaluate these institutions and form a critical opinion. Despite this

explanation, the distribution of the confidence in army started to resemble that of courts and police in 2011.

Returning to the analysis of confidence in police, the results of the ordered logistic regressions are presented in the last two columns of Table 3-3. As expected, being a voter of a pro-Kurdish party reduces the odds of confidence in police compared to a JDP voter by 93% in 2007 and 74% in 2011, holding other variables constant.

Although not to the same extent, voters of the RPP have lower odds of trust, 33% in

2011. While not statistically significant, the MNP voters are more likely to trust in police than a JDP voter. The odds of trust in police for the NMP voters compared to the JDP voters are not statistically significant in 2007 and 2011.

Trust in Government

Following the idea of polarized political trust, I expect that polarization will be observed in trust in government more than any other institution. However, bar plots presented in figure 3-6 cast doubt on this argument.

There is no question that the RPP, NMP, and DSP/PDP voters have lower levels of trust compared to the JDP voters. But is this what partisan polarization looks like? For example, in both 2007 and 2011, approximately 40% of the RPP voters say that they trust the government. 40% is quite high considering that the RPP was (and still is) the main opposition party at the time. The regression results in Table 3-4. will illustrate my point.

Unlike the previous models, the effect of partisan preference is strong and consistent across models comparing the JDP and other parties. Although the DSP/PDP has the lowest odds-ratio as before (91% and 82% decrease), effect sizes for other parties get smaller and closer to each other. For example, being a RPP voter decreases

the odds of confidence in government by 80% and 71% compared to the JDP voter, holding other variables constant. The odds of trust in government is 78% smaller in

2007 and 62% smaller in 2011 for NMP voters compared to JDP voters, holding other variables constant.

However, effect sizes increase from 2007 to 2011. Although a direct comparison of model coefficients is problematic (Mood 2010), this reduction of the difference between the JDP and non-JDP voters and raises some questions. For example, is this an indicator of increasing support for the JDP during that time? Surviving closure cases in 2008 and having successive electoral victories on local and national level, has the

JDP strengthened its position and extended its legitimacy beyond its voter base?

Considering the limitation of the cross-sectional analysis, one should be careful about interpreting model results excessively. Such questions can be properly tackled by analyses focusing on changes over time.

Trust in Parliament

During the time of data collection (and since then), the JDP has ruled as a majority government. Thus, I expect that levels of trust in parliament will resemble levels of trust in government.

Like trust in government, partisan preference is a stronger predictor of trust in parliament compared to other measures. A RPP or NMP voter in 2007 would have lower odds of trust in parliament (55% and 54% decrease, respectively) compared to a

JDP voter. In 2011, the odds of trust in parliament are 62% smaller for the RPP voters and 53% smaller for the NMP voters compared to JDP voters. The bar charts indicate higher level of trust in parliament for the voters of opposition parties compared to trust in

government, which can be explained by the representation of their political views in the parliament.

Trust in Civil Service

Traditionally, the civil service (or in general, bureaucracy) played an important role in spreading the values of the republican regime. When the tensions between state elites and political elites emphasized, by the state elites these bureaucratic cadres are meant (Ozbudun 1981). However, in their analysis, Tessler and Altinoglu grouped civil service not with the institutions of order, but with the institutions of political system. My factor analysis results confirm that this is the correct specification. The reason is that, although JDP faced resistance from bureaucracy in the early years of its rule, it gradually overcomes this resistance, and extends its influence over the segments of bureaucracy.

The historical context might provide one explanation as to why the confidence levels of civil service are in between institutions of order and institutions of political system. They are not as high as confidence in army, but in three parties, the JDP, RPP,

NMP, more than half of the respondents say that they trust the civil service.

Although the civil service enjoys higher levels of confidence from different parties, ordered logistic regression results show that support for these parties, such as the RPP and NMP, reduces odds of trust in civil service. However, the effects are not as strong as in the case of confidence in government and not consistent between waves.

For example, being a RPP voter does not change odds of trust in 2007, whereas it reduces the odds by 45% in 2011. For the NMP voters the reserve is the case. In 2007, being a NMP voter reduces the odds of trust by 41%, but it does not make significant difference in 2011. Once more, the DSP/PDP voters have lowest odds ratios. The odds

of trust in civil service are 69% smaller in 2007 and 57% smaller in 2011 for pro-Kurdish parties compared to the JDP voters, holding all other variables constant.

Trust in Political Parties

Of all the institutions considered so far, political parties are the least trusted institutions in Turkey. The trust levels are low for the voters of each party, even the JDP.

Although for other institutions, confidence of the JDP voters never fall below 50%, in the case of political parties, it never raises above 50%.

The ordered logistic regressions show that because of these lower levels of confidence, party preference is not a strong predictor compared to the previous models.

For example, being a NMP voter does not change odds of trust in parties in 2007 or

2011. It does not make a difference for the RPP voters in 2007, but it reduces odds of trust in political parties in 2011 by 34% compared to the JDP voters, not as high as in the case of confidence in government. Although it is not possible to test this claim using survey data, respondents seem to think about other parties and not the one they support. If that is not the case, it is hard to explain low levels of trust in political parties, but high levels of trust in government for the JDP voters.

Some general observations can be provided on other predictors of institutional confidence. Usually the effect sizes and directions are similar between 2007 and 2011 models, although significant results come up more frequently for the models using 2011 data. Almost in all models, particular social trust is a statistically significant variable with a positive effect. However, the same is not the case for general social trust. This result suggests that there is a trust orientation which extends from a thick, personal level to the institutions, without extending to generalized others. For variables such as postmaterialism, political interest, and religious attendance, results show the effects in

the expected direction. So, when statistically significant, higher levels of political interest and postmaterialism decrease the odds of trust in institutions, whereas the opposite is the case of religious attendance.

Concluding Remarks

Three general conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of political trust and party preference. First, party preference, which is measured using voting intention as a proxy, is a strong and significant explanatory variable of confidence in institutions.

Nevertheless, the direction and strength of the effects change from model to model, and from party to party. Attention should be paid to these changes, because they illustrate how individuals perceive institutions based on their party preference. For example, the

RPP voters tend to have very high odds of trust in army 2007 (154%) which dropped to

12% in 2011 (although not statistically significant). It is important to note that the voters of pro-Kurdish parties show the lowest levels of trust for all institutions and, despite the small size of this subsample, models show stronger effects on confidence for them.

Although it is not a proxy, preference of these parties might have captured the ethnic divide in Turkey.

Second, the distinction between the institutions of order (army, courts, police) and the institutions of political system (government, parliament, civil service, political parties) is meaningful. The former enjoys higher levels of trust compared to the latter.

Moreover, party preference is a better predictor of confidence in the institutions of political system, especially in the case of government and parliament. This implies that confidence in the institutions of order is less guided by party preferences. Again, the exception is voters of pro-Kurdish parties.

Finally, the analysis remains inconclusive about the argument of polarized political trust. Although the effect of partisan preference is strong, the percentage distributions of institutional confidence items by parties show that there is a considerable trust in government and parliament even by the voters of opposition parties during the period covered by the data (2007 & 2011). In this respect, Kaya and

Sunar’s (2015) claim that there is no polarization, but rising conservatism deserves serious consideration.

Despite its scope, this analysis shows the limits of cross-sectional approach.

Specifically, the difference between the model results in 2007 and 2011 implies that confidence items are sensitive to the controversial political developments of the day.

Thus, a better understanding of the political trust in Turkey requires an analysis focusing on the changes over time. In this way, the analysis would be extended to the pre-JDP period. Although there are no panel data for political trust in Turkey and the available data are limited to the 1990s and 2000s, I will compensate this limitation by using measures from different survey series and analyze political trust over time in the next chapter.

Table 3-1. Goodness-of-fit Statistics for Single-Factor and Two-Factor Models Models 2 df RMSEA CFI TLI SRMR AIC

WVS 2007 Single-factor 373.119 14 0.145 0.887 0.830 0.066 20395.104 Two-factor 133.185 13 0.087 0.962 0.939 0.040 20157.169

EVS 2009 Single-factor 800.291 14 0.169 0.811 0.717 0.082 34558.325 Two-factor 461.261 13 0.132 0.892 0.826 0.065 34221.295

WVS 2011 Single-factor 603.670 14 0.169 0.861 0.791 0.075 24586.354 Two-factor 215.541 13 0.103 0.952 0.923 0.047 24200.225

Table 3-2. Percentage of respondents who would vote… Parties 2007 2009 2011 Justice and Development Party (JDP) 43.16 57.94 47.93 Republican People’s Party (RPP) 15.31 20.86 29.17 National Movement Party (NMP) 8.42 7.69 9.08 Democratic Society Party (DSP) or Peace and Democracy 6.60 6.93 4.73 Party (PDP) No Vote 17.03 - 7.16 Other 9.47 6.59 1.92 N 1045 1,184 1354

Table 3-3. Ordinal Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Army, Courts and Police in Turkey (WVS 2007 & 2011) Army Courts Police

2007 2011 2007 2011 2007 2011

Ref: JDP RPP 2.54* 1.12 0.69 0.56* 0.72 0.67* NMP 1.84* 1.32 0.69 0.74 1.18 1.49 DSP 0.06* - 0.16* - 0.07* - PDP - 0.20* - 0.25* - 0.26* No Vote 0.86 1.12 0.49* 0.80 0.43* 1.01 Other 1.25 0.73 1.04 0.58 0.64 0.73

Particular social trust 1.96* 1.48* 1.66* 1.91* 1.74* 1.95* General social trust 0.64* 1.29* 0.77* 1.10 0.78* 0.98 Financial satisfaction 1.05 1.03 1.02 0.99 1.02 1.09* Postmaterialism index 0.77* 0.79* 0.98 0.74* 0.99 0.73* Political interest 1.02 0.72* 0.99 0.65* 0.94 0.72* Religious attendance 1.11 1.12* 1.13* 1.13* 1.14* 1.24* Age 1.01 1.02* 1.00 1.01 1.00 1.01* Sex 0.89 0.79 0.75* 0.77* 0.74* 0.70* Education 0.96* 1.02 0.90* 1.03 0.88* 0.99 Scale of income 0.89* 0.95 0.97 0.99 0.94* 0.94

N 921 1158 915 1149 920 1165 * p < 0.05

Table 3-4. Ordinal Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Government, Parliament, Civil Service and Political Parties in Turkey (WVS 2007 & 2011) Government Parliament Civil Service Political Parties

2007 2011 2007 2011 2007 2011 2007 2011

Ref: JDP RPP 0.20* 0.29* 0.45* 0.38* 0.83 0.55* 0.98 0.66* NMP 0.22* 0.38* 0.44* 0.47* 0.59* 0.72 0.85 0.77 DSP 0.09* - 0.16* - 0.31* - 0.34* - PDP - 0.18* - 0.34* - 0.43* - 0.52* No Vote 0.17* 0.43* 0.26* 0.44* 0.50* 0.67 0.42* 0.77 Other 0.18* 0.25* 0.40* 0.19* 0.56* 0.71 0.48* 0.46*

Particular social trust 1.78* 1.28* 1.49* 1.23* 1.43* 1.96* 1.32* 0.90 General social trust 0.67* 1.27* 0.87 1.48* 1.17 1.24* 1.14 1.97* Financial satisfaction 1.11* 1.00 1.10* 1.04 1.09* 1.07* 1.08* 1.04 Postmaterialism index 0.89* 0.83* 0.94 0.88* 0.99 0.82* 1.01 0.95 Political interest 0.96 1.02 0.94 0.90 0.94 0.84* 1.08 1.11 Religious attendance 1.18* 1.29* 1.06 1.30* 1.10 1.09 1.08 1.10 Age 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.01 1.00 1.00 Sex 0.74 0.74* 1.08 0.70* 0.76 0.89 0.93 1.16 Education 0.87* 0.92* 0.88* 0.95 0.90* 1.01 0.89* 0.94* Scale of income 0.94 0.98 1.01 0.98 0.97 0.95 0.98 1.01

N 921 1154 912 1140 914 1138 918 1149 * p < 0.05

Figure 3-1. Single Factor Solution for Trust Items

Figure 3-2. Two-Factor Solution for Trust Items

Figure 3-3. Trust in Army by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011

Figure 3-4. Trust in Courts by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011.

Figure 3-5. Trust in Police by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011

Figure 3-6. Trust in Government by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011

Figure 3-7. Trust in Parliament by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011

Figure 3-8. Trust in Civil Service by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011

Figure 3-9. Trust in Political Parties by Political Parties in 2007, 2009 and 2011

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CHAPTER 4 TRENDS IN POLITICAL TRUST IN TURKEY: 1990-2017

Majority of the studies in the literature on political trust are cross-sectional studies. In other words, most empirical research has focused on a single country or multiple countries at a specific point in time.1 Although few compared to cross-sectional analyses, there are few notable studies utilizing longitudinal evidence on political trust, but these studies mainly focus on the countries in the Western Europe and the United

States, because the longest and richest time-series data are available in these countries

(Keele 2007; Norris 2011).

In this chapter, I will address this gap in the case of Turkey.2 An analysis focusing on the changes over time would offer new insights on political trust in Turkey. Covering almost three decades, different data sources would enable us to assess the changes in the trends in political trust in Turkey. I argue that the changes in these trends are far from accidental and influenced by the political events of the period. Conventional theoretical approaches, which are discussed in the previous chapters, would be enriched by such an analysis on the trends of political trust in Turkey.

In the following section, I provide a brief review of the empirical studies using longitudinal evidence on political trust, mostly from Western Europe and the United

States. This review will be followed by the analysis of political trust in Turkey covering the period of 1990-2017. I will use data from different survey sources which prove challenging yet rewarding in terms of the insights. Finally, I will provide a discussion of

1 My analyses in the previous chapters are no exception in this respect.

2 Apart from descriptive accounts (e.g., Esmer 2012), to my knowledge, it is also the first one in Turkey.

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the results. While keeping in mind the prevalent theoretical approaches from Chapters 2 and 3, this discussion would show the value of understanding the context and the changes over time in the analysis of political trust.

Trends in Political Trust in the United States and Western Europe

The studies on the trends in political trust over time are few (and mostly descriptive) compared to cross-sectional and comparative studies, but they are no less important (Bovens and Wille 2008; Klingemann and Fuchs 2002; Norris 1999a, 2011).

In fact, one might argue that these few studies motivated the vast literature on the crisis of political support, decline in legitimacy, or erosion of confidence in Western Europe and the United States. The exchange between Miller and Citrin (1974; 1974a) in the

1970s is just an early example illustrating the relevance of studying changes in political trust (as trust in government) over time. Analyzing the National Election Survey data between 1964 and 1970, Miller interpreted the decline in trust as an indicator of the decline in diffuse support for the regime, and hence an indicator of the crisis of legitimacy. However, Citrin interpreted the same trend as a decline in the specific support, in other words, trust in incumbents (Citrin 1974; Miller 1974a, 1974b). The decline has little consequence for the system as a whole, because these incumbents can be replaced easily by the elections.

Not only the meaning of decline in political trust, but also whether it really exists or not, has been a hot topic of debate and disagreement among scholars. On the one hand, there are those who argue that such a systematic decline has been indeed taking place (Dalton 2004; Dogan 1997, 2005). This line of inquiry is inspired by the idea of a cultural shift in the Western world, where disaffected and critical citizens have become more vocal about their distrust in authority over time. However, whether this decline is

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detrimental to the democratic system itself is questioned even by the proponents of this argument. Dogan argues that

One of the most significant findings of research on legitimacy and trust conducted during the recent decades in Western pluralist democracies is the visibility of a large part of the citizenry that expresses limited or no confidence in some institutions and does not trust the leaders of these institutions, but does not contest the legitimacy of the political system itself (Dogan 2005:48).

On the other hand, there are others who challenged the idea of a systematic decline itself, especially in Europe. The five-volume series, Beliefs in Government

(1995), challenged this idea directly. Of special interest are the chapters on trust in politicians, confidence in political and private institutions, and support for the democratic system in the first volume (Klingemann and Fuchs 2002). Using available data at the time, none of these studies have found widespread decline in political trust over time, rather they emphasized fluctuations in trends and cross-national differences. Following his analysis on trust in politicians, Listhaug argued that the empirical trends in Norway,

Sweden, Denmark and Netherlands do not support the gloomy predictions on decline

(Listhaug 2002:294). Meanwhile, the idea of decline is much more prevalent in the

United States, as the studies in the following decades show that the level of trust in government has never returned to the levels in 1950s and early 1960s (Keele 2007).

However, the fluctuations in trends are also evident in the U.S. and preclude any argument on the linear decline of trust.

Pippa Norris has paid special attention to the arguments of decline and their criticism in her book, Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited (2011). She discussed trends in institutional confidence specifically in two chapters. Emphasizing the depth, breadth, and timing of changes, she asked “what has declined, where, and

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when?” (Norris 2011:61). Seeking to answer these questions, she analyzed the United

States and selected countries from Western Europe3 using (pooled) time-series survey data derived from the American National Election Survey, General Social Survey, World

Values Survey (WVS), and Eurobarometer (EB). The results of her analysis lend support to the skeptical view on the decline in trust: First, fluctuations are more common compared to uniform downward trends. Second, there are persistent contrasts among established democracies in Western Europe. And third, there are also differences in trust levels between different institutions within each country. Later, she extended her analysis to a few countries4 outside the Western context. Again, the analysis does not support the argument that there is a systematic erosion of institutional confidence for the countries in comparison. According to Norris, trendless fluctuations with dynamic ups and downs call for performance and event-based explanations within countries, such as “the government’s success or failure in handling the economy, the outbreak of a major parliamentary scandal, the end of an unpopular war, the rise of new parties, polarization of party politics, or an election throwing the governing party out of office”

(Norris 2011:62). As my analysis will show, some of these explanations are relevant in the case of Turkey.

Norris is not the only scholar emphasizing the impact of events. I already discussed Hetherington’s arguments on the relationship between polarization and

3 Although Norris (2011) argued for Western European countries, her sample includes countries available in the EB data: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, East Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and West Germany.

4 At the time of her analysis, five waves of WVS (1981-2007) were available and she chose those countries available in all waves: Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea (in addition to Spain, Finland, Germany, Japan, Sweden, UK and the US). Turkey did not participate in the first wave of WVS and hence is not included.

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political trust in Chapter 3. In his book with Rudolph, Hetherington (2015) explored another explanation for the changes in political trust in the United States: Priming.

Priming occurs when the trust judgments are shaped by the criteria individuals use at the time they pass the judgment. As salience of certain issues for individuals change over time, so does the criterion of trust judgment.

This might occur in two ways. First, Hetherington and Rudolph (2015) describe a conditioning effect. For example, they expect that “the public’s assessment of economic importance ought to condition the effect of economic performance on political trust”

(Hetherington and Rudolph 2015:53). According to Hetherington and Rudolph (2015), this happened during G.W.H Bush’s presidency. When the public attention shifted from foreign affairs, to economic performance, his approval rates started to decline. Second, and beyond this conditioning effect, “certain national importance judgments exert a direct impact on political trust” (Hetherington and Rudolph 2015:53). It is this direct impact of events that is particularly relevant for my inquiry. The example Hetherington and Rudolph (2015) have in mind is an international crisis. Greater concern about foreign politics in times of crisis will increase political trust, because the perception of threat becomes more prevalent. It might cause a rally ‘round the flag effect. Because they are thinking regarding the public opinion in the United States, Hetherington and

Rudolph (2015) gave the example of crisis in the context of foreign politics. I would like to argue that the idea of crisis (and the perception of threat) might have relevance for politics in Turkey too. Not only international issues, but also domestic problems, could become salient through the lens of crisis. This is more probable if domestic and foreign

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problems are connected in the dominant political discourse as emanating from a single source to threaten the well-being of the country.5

Despite these theoretical insights, my inquiry will remain exploratory. The main reason is that I do not have the data sources available to construct longer time-series and use sophisticated methods. Additionally, I do not have much theoretical guidance beyond these insights, so I have to focus more on trends and timing of events. This might make the inquiry more speculative, which is an undesirable aspect for some scholars, but inevitable because it requires venturing into rather uncharted territory.

Data and Methods

Data

I will use three different data sources in my analyses. The first two are World

Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Survey (EVS) which were described in the

Chapters 2 and 3. Data from Turkey were collected in five waves of the WVS (1990,

1996, 2001, 2007 and 2011) and two waves of the EVS (2001 and 2009). Although they were conducted by different groups, the surveys are harmonized, and data files can be integrated easily. I will use this integrated data file for descriptive plots and bivariate analyses.

The third data source is represented by Eurobarometer public opinion surveys

(EB) which have been collected on behalf of the European Commission since 1973. The data from Turkey have been collected since 2004 twice a year (in Spring and Autumn

5 In a recent article, Cinar (2017:2) argues that “[T]he AKP has portrayed itself and its constituents as the one and only ‘native and national’ (yerli ve milli) political force. It has categorized all the rest of the political classes and their constituents as ‘non-native’ by virtue of the allegedly ‘alien’ Western paradigms they upheld. These non-natives, in the AKP’s civilizational discourse, essentially represented the Islamophobic, Eurocentric, Orientalist, elitist and tutelary threats to the ‘independence and democracy’ that the AKP claimed to vanguard.”

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waves of EB). Therefore, it covers the period of 2004 (Autumn) – 2017 (Spring).

Although WVS/EVS data cover a longer period, it is the EB surveys that are most frequent and hence provide more time points for the analysis. These three surveys will be used to construct time-series.

The use of these data sources poses two challenges about the operationalization of confidence/trust items. First, although the questions are quite similar, the list of institutions that were asked about might differ. For example, trust in civil service is asked only in the WVS/EVS. And trust in army, justice system, police, and parties were not asked in every wave of the EB. Still, trust in six institutions (army, justice system, police, government, parliament, and parties) were asked frequent enough in these surveys to construct time-series.

The second challenge is that different response categories are used in the

EVS/WVS and EB. A brief description of questions and response categories can be found in Table A-1. It is open to discussion, for example, how one could compare binary response categories of EB with the 4-point response scale of WVS/EVS. As a result, I prefer to focus on changes (declines and increases) as much as the actual numeric differences.

Analytic Strategy

I will start the analysis using the WVS/EVS data since they covers the period of

1990-2011 and provide the earliest publicly available data on political trust in Turkey.

Descriptive accounts will be followed not only by bivariate analyses, but also multivariate models which will provide a deeper understanding of changes over time.

After this analysis, I will use the EB data which have the highest number of time points, but also most recent information on trends in political trust in Turkey. However, the data

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limitations prevent me from using sophisticated time-series models, such as threshold regression models which could estimate a date for a threshold of change in the data.

Using OLS regression model, like Norris (2011), is not ideal either because it would not properly capture the fluctuations in the times-series. A different modeling strategy, using a form of local-polynomial regression, will enable me to fit a line flexible enough to represent the data, which is sparse, and identify general trends in fluctuations.6 Each analysis will be followed by a brief interpretation of results. However, the overall assessment will be left to the discussion section.

Analysis and Results

World Values Survey

Table 4-1 presents two types of descriptive statistics on trust in selected institutions in Turkey. The first six rows of the table show mean levels for each institution over years. The trust items are recoded so that higher values indicate higher levels of trust. Since they are derived from a 4-point response scale, means over the value of 2 reflect some degree of trust and below 2 some degree of distrust. The last six rows show the percentage of those respondents who say that they “trust somewhat” or

“trust completely” a specified institution. Although, they are not of interest now, these

6 “What is local estimation? With local estimation, the statistical dependency between two variables is described not with a single parameter such as a mean or a β coefficient, but with a series of local estimates. For local estimators, an estimate such as a mean or regression is estimated between Y and X for some restricted range of X and Y. This local estimate of the dependency between X and Y is repeated across the range of X and Y. This series of local estimates is then aggregated with a line drawing to summarize the relationship between the two variables. This resulting nonparametric estimate, which may be linear or quadratic, does not impose a particular functional form on the relationship between X and Y. Due to the local nature of the estimation process, nonparametric regression provides very flexible fits between X and Y” (Keele 2008:9).

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percentage scores provide a better comparative basis because the response categories in the EB data are binary.

A quick look at the table supports earlier observations from the Chapters 2 and 3.

Institutions of order (army, courts/justice system, and police) have higher levels of trust over years compared to other institutions. Especially the army, even after the decline in

2011, has enjoyed the highest levels of trust. At the opposite end, trust in political parties is the lowest over the years. Moreover, it is the only institution which ever has a mean value below 2.

A visual representation of this information will give a better idea about the changes over time. Figure 4-1 shows mean levels of trust in institutions. Looking at this figure, one can argue that trust scores are relatively stable in the first three time-points

(1990-2001) compared to the last three points (2007-2011). There are declines in mean trust levels as in the case of parliament and increases as in the case of police. But, except for the army and political parties, the mean scores fall between 2 and 3. During this period, mean trust scores for the army are over 3, and for political parties below 2.7

Still, one can observe a decline in mean scores from 1996 to 2001.

This decline is followed by an increase in mean trust scores for all institutions except the civil service. For government, parliament, and courts/justice system, these are the largest changes observed over the years in terms of mean difference. In 2009, this increasing trend continued for the army, courts/justice system, and police, and it is reversed for government, parliament, and political parties. In 2011, the reverse happened for the army, courts/justice system, and police as the mean scores decline for

7 This last point might not be true for trust in political parties, because there is no information before 1996.

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these institutions during this period. From 2009 to 2011, trust in government and political parties increased, whereas trust in parliament kept declining. Because these time points are closer to each other, the fluctuations are more noticeable.

Summary statistics and visual inspection are helpful to have a better grasp on the data. But before interpreting these changes and discussing the possible factors leading to them, a more systematic approach is necessary. To this end, I run a series of t-tests

(independent and with unequal variance) comparing mean levels of trust for each institution between 1990 and 2011. Table 4-2 presents these test results.

The results support my previous observations based on the descriptive statistics, but also provide additional information. For example, as I argued before, there is a general decline in mean levels of trust between 1996 and 2001, but this trend had started in 1990 for government and parliament. Similarly, there is a statistically significant increase in mean levels of trust from 2001 to 2007 for all institutions except civil service. A way to quantify the strength of this increase is to use Cohen’s d as a measure of effect size (Table 4-2).8 The results also show that this increase is stronger for government, parliament, and justice system. Although an increase is observed for mean trust in the army and police during this period, its magnitude is way smaller compared to these three institutions. The analysis also shows that the fluctuations from

2007 to 2009 and 2009 to 2011 are statistically significant and follows the pattern I explained before.9

8 As a rule of thumb, cohen’s d scores 0.2, 0.5, 0.8 correspond to small, medium, and large effect sizes (Wilcox 2012:380).

9 The use t-tests for analyzing trust measures might be criticized because the items are ordinal, and some of them are highly skewed. Although the results are not reported (available on request), I run a non-

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Finally, I would like to move from bivariate to multivariate framework. I will regress trust measures on time while controlling for the effects of covariates based on the models from Chapters 2 and 3. I use pooled data from five waves of WVS10 to estimate binary logistic regression11 models for each institution. In addition to having time period as a categorical predictor and the main variable of interest, there are two modifications in the models. First, I included a single social trust measure instead of two separate predictors for particular and general social trust. The reason is that the questions used to construct these variables are not available in the first three waves.

So, a general interpersonal trust question12 is included in the analysis. Second, to increase the comparability across models, party preference is recoded into a binary incumbent voting variable.13 Although this is not a perfect solution, considering the changes in the electoral landscape in Turkey after 2002, it is suitable for an over-time analysis. The results of these regression models are presented in table 4-3.

Once again, the results support my previous observations about the changes over time in trust levels across institutions, even after controlling for the effects of the other covariates. For the time predictor, the reference category is taken as 2001,

parametric equivalent of t-test, Wilcoxon (Mann-Whitney) rank sum test. The results of both t-tests and Wilcoxon rank sum tests agree.

10 I do not prefer to use EVS data. First, one year (2001) in both WVS and EVS overlap, so including it will add only one more time point, EVS 2009. Second, EVS 2009 data do not have financial satisfaction variable and it has lots of missing values (over 30%) for voting preference variable.

11 The preference for binary logistic regression models is based on interpretability. Estimating ordinal logistic regression models would lead to have predicted probabilities for four outcomes which make the figures difficult to present and interpret.

12 “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?”

13 A discussion on the use of this measure can be found in Chapter 3.

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because the previous descriptive and bivariate analyses reveal that the largest changes in trust levels occur before and after 2001 for most of the institutions. Since odds ratios are presented in Table 4-3, one way to interpret the results are looking at the values above and below 1. For example, compared to 2001, the odds of trust in army in 1990 is

1.45 times higher. And the odds of trust in army decrease by a factor of 0.71 from 2001 to 2007. Again, these interpretations assume that all other covariates are held constant.

A more intuitive way to present the results is to plot predicted probabilities for each time period across institutions.

Figures 4-2 and 4-3 show these predicted probabilities (not odds ratios) for each institution over time. It is quite clear that the changes in the predicted probabilities follow the trend in the previous analyses. The difference is that including covariates reduces the total effect of years, but the trends are still visible. For example, one can observe the decline in the probability of trust in the army over time. Whereas the predicted probability of trust in government and parliament increased from 2001 to 2007.

Predicted probability of trust in political parties is lowest over the years as expected with a slight but not statistically significant increase.

Based on these analyses, I would like to argue that there are two periods of decline and increase for institutional trust, although the effects and directions are different across institutions. First, from 1996 to 2001, there is an overall decline in trust for almost all institutions (the exception is police). For some of them, such as government and parliament, this declining trend started in 1990. Second, there is an increase in political trust from 2001 to 2007. This increase is much more pronounced for trust in government, parliament, and justice system, whereas it is very small (and not

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significant) for the army.14 It is hard to interpret the changes covering the period from

2007 to 2011. If one adds the data for 2009 to the analysis, it looks like a fluctuation with directions reversed from on year to another. But if one focuses on the changes from 2007 to 2011, it is easy to see an overall decline for trust in army, justice system, government, and parliament.15 The following analyses using the EB data will shed more light on the trends in political trust during this period.

Eurobarometer

Eurobarometer data cover the period from 2004 to 2017 and provide most recent information about the trust in institutions. Unlike the WVS/EVS data, however, the trust questions have binary response categories, so the percentage of respondents who tend to trust in the army, justice system, police, government, parliament, and political parties are presented in Figure 4-4.

The figure shows that my previous observation about the army as the most trusted institution and political parties as the least trusted institutions still holds. One limitation of the data is that the trust question was not asked consistently for each institution over the years. For example, from 2011 until 2014, there is no data on trust in the army, justice system, and police. Nevertheless, the question of trust in government and parliament was asked in each wave. This explains why the trends appear more linear for army, and justice system and police and wiggly for government and parliament.

14 In fact, results of the regression analysis show that there is statistically significant decline when controls are included.

15 Although there is an increase from 2007 to 2011 for trust in police and civil service, the decline is evident from 2009 to 2011 for these institutions.

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Despite fluctuations and sparse data for trust in the army, police, justice system, a quick visual inspection reveals a downward trend for trust in army, police, justice system, government and parliament until 2014. Just like in the case of the WVS/EVS data, trust in political parties does not show any clear trend, at least not until the last time points. The figure shows a sharp decline from 2007 to 2008 for trust in government and parliament which is followed by a downward trend with fluctuations and more variation. Trust for these two institutions saw the lowest level in autumn 2013. After that point, an upward trend started, not only for government and parliament, but for other institutions as well.

A more systematic approach can be used to see trends in data. One can fit a line to these data points over time, but that is unlikely to capture the changes in downward trend during the period of 2007-2011 and then the upward trend in the last 4 years.

Thus, I will use nearest-neighbor local-polynomial regression.16

Basically, local-polynomial regression extends kernel estimation17 to a polynomial fit and uses weighted least-squares to fit the equation (Fox 2016:532):

2 p Yi=A+B1(xi-x0)+B2(xi-x0) +…+Bp(xi-x0) +Ei

16 Another way to address this modeling problem is to frame it as an optimization problem in two steps by using splines. First, splines can be constructed using knots at specified time points. Then, regression models will be fit to different regions based on these knots. Second, the results of this initial estimation can be supplied to an optimization routine which uses nonlinear least squares estimation to identify optimal knots (or time points). This process can be repeated for any number of knots. The results of this optimization routine for 2, 3, and 4 knots are presented in figures D-1 and D-2 for trust in government and parliament in Appendix D. The results are quite similar for 2, 3 and 4 knots, even though the BIC scores suggest that using 3 knots provide best fit.

17 “Local polynomial regression extends the kernel estimation to a polynomial fit at the focal value 푥0, using the local kernel weights, wi=K[(xi-x0)/h]. The resulting WLS regression fits the equation [see the n 2 text] to minimize the weighted residual sum of squares, ∑i=1 wi Ei . The fitted value at the focal 푥0 is just ^ Y |x0. This procedure is repeated for representative focal values of X, or at the observations xi” (Fox 2016:534).

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We can also use fixed bandwidth to include a fixed proportion (span) of nearest neighbors to the focal value.18 Fox (2016) argues that an effective approach for selecting a span is guided by trial and error, and a good starting point for span is 0.5. I will follow this recommendation and fit the models using different spans.19

The figure 4-5 (Span=0.7) shows a downward trend starting from 2004, at least for trust in government and parliament. A sharp decline for these institutions, however, occurred in 2007. The decline in trust levels continued from 2008 to 2014 at a slower rate. And from 2014 to 2017, an upward trend can be observed. These trends hold for all institutions except political parties. The difference is the timing of decline. For example, figure 4-5 shows that the decline starts earlier for trust in government and parliament compared to trust in the army, police, and justice system. However, this difference could be explained by the higher number of data points available for these two institutions.

Despite the subjectivity of loess specification, the results suggest two general trends in institutional trust for the period covered in the EB data. The first one of these trends supports my previous interpretations based on the WVS/EVS data. First, there is a decline in the period of 2007-2013, with a drop in the levels of trust government and parliament from 2007 to 2008. Second, starting at the end of 2013, there is an upward

18 This method is also called lowess (locally weighted scatterplot smoother), and sometimes loess. The acronyms used interchangeably (Faraway 2016), but they might not be identical. For example, Loess is a later generalization of lowess with more features available in R implementation (Kabacoff 2015). However, beyond this difference, they are equivalent, and I use loess implementation in R.

19 The loess fits in figures are similar. Thus, I present only the figure with span=0.7 in the chapter. Other figures with the span 0.5 and 0.9 can be found in Appendix C.

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until 2017 in all institutions. In the next section, I will explore possible performance, but mostly event-based explanations of the changes in these trends.

Discussion and Concluding Remarks

In my previous analyses, I identify four periods where changes in the trends in institutional trust have been observed. In this section, I will explain why these changes have taken place by focusing on the events that are politically relevant in each period.

The first period covers from the years 1996 to 2001. During this period, there is an overall decline in trust in institutions. As I mentioned before, for government and parliament, this decline in trust levels started in 1990. Whereas for the army and civil service, for instance, there is no such decline, from 1990 to 1996. During these years, the ethnic conflict in Turkey exacerbated as the frequency and intensity of armed conflicts increased in southeastern region of the country between Turkish Armed Forces and Kurdish separatist organization PKK. Between 1993 and 2002, nine coalition, minority, or caretaker governments were established and collapsed.20 None of them survived longer than three years, frequent government changes led to the association of coalition governments with political instability. Figure 4-1 also shows the ruling periods of these governments. Center parties both from left and right formed coalition governments during this period, but it is questionable whether this represents a genuine practice of consensus building, considering that they were “transformed into purely

20 Nov. 1991- Jun. 1993: DYP (center-right, True Path Party)-SHP(center-left, Social Democratic Populist Part); Jun. 1993- Oct. 1995: DYP-CHP(center-left, Republican People’s Party)/SHP; Oct 5, 1995- Oct. 30, 1995: DYP (minority gov.); Oct. 1995- Mar. 1996: DYP-CHP (caretaker gov.); Mar. 1996- Jun. 1996: DYP-ANAP(center-right, Motherland Party); Jun. 1996-Jun 1997: DYP-RP(religious-conservative, Welfare Party); Jun. 1997- Jun. 1999: ANAP-DSP(center-left, Democratic Left Party)-DTP(center-right, Democrat Turkey Party); Jan. 1999-May. 1999: DSP (minority gov.); May 1999-Nov.2002: DSP, ANAP, MHP (far-right, Nationalist Movement Party).

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patronage distribution machines with overtly corrupt practices” (Carkoglu 2007:257).

According to Carkoglu (2007), the military regime, which was established after the 1980 coup d’état, was responsible for this transformation by weakening political stances and

“favoring colorless political machines.” What he termed as the collapse of the center of the Turkish political space led to the strengthening of once-marginal parties, such as the conservative-Islamic Welfare Party. However, this was an unintended consequence for the military. The 1990s witnessed the increased involvement of army with politics to stop the Welfare Party, which formed a coalition government with the center-right True

Path party in 1996 and was regarded as a threat to the secular order of the state by the bureaucratic-military elites. The 1997 military memorandum (known as 28 February in

Turkey) led to the end of this coalition government. One year later in 1998, the Welfare party was banned by the constitutional court for violating the laicism principle of the

Republic.

Scandals such as the Susurluk Scandal (known also as Susurluk accident21) in

1996 which led to the accusations about the close relationship between government, military, and organized crime, or the Turkbank scandal22 in 1998 which led to the resignation of the prime minister and his cabinet, have also contributed to the atmosphere of political instability. On top of these political developments, Turkish

21 “The Susurluk political scandal took place in November 1996. A car accident near the town of Susurluk in western Turkey revealed that a high-ranking security official, an important Kurdish tribal chief and DYP parliamentary deputy, and a well-known right-wing militant who was involved in a number of assassinations were all in the same car” (Sayari and Esmer 2002:90).

22 "During the process of the privatization of Türkbank, which had been controlled by the treasury after the 1994 economic crisis, Çakıcı [one of the leadings mobs of the Turkish underworld] made arrangements with businessmen (Erol Evcil and, later, Korkmaz Yigit) to threaten those who took part in the public tender…Upon the parliament’s vote of no confidence in November 1998, Prime Minister Yilmaz and the Minister responsible for the Treasury, Gunes Taner, who were found at fault in the corruption scandal resigned from office” (Soyler 2015:147–48).

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economy, which has suffered from high inflation rates and budget deficit throughout the

1990s, experienced a major financial crisis in 200123. Figure 4-6 shows the selected economic indicators from the World Bank, which are used in the political trust literature

(Johnson 2005; van der Meer and Hakhverdian 2017; Rose and Mishler 2013; Zmerli and Castillo 2015). Low GDP per capita and high inflation rates (going over 100% in

1994) indicate the weak economic performance of the country in the 1990s. So, retrospectively speaking, what happened in 2002 general election is not unexpected.

The second period covers the years between 2001 and 2007. The single most important political event of this period is the 2002 general election in Turkey. The results of this election completely changed the electoral landscape of the country. Only two parties, the JDP and RPP, would be able to pass 10% election threshold24 and enter the parliament. Political parties, which dominated political landscape in the previous decade, were left outside the parliament. Only one of them, the National Movement

Party, would be able to return in 2007. With this election, the 15-year-long majoritarian rule of the JDP has also started. During this second period, trust levels increase for almost all institutions 25, although this increase was more pronounced for parliament and government, and miniscule for the army and police. One reason is that there is a general sense of improvement in terms of economic and political performance of the

23 The crisis in 2001 was preceded by another one in 1994. Although not as significant as the 2001 crisis regarding its political consequences, it shows the fragility of the Turkish economy at the time.

24 Although it has 34% of the votes, JDP won 66% of the seats in the parliament, similarly RPP won 32% of the seats, despite having 19% of the votes. The reason is that no other party can pass the national election threshold of 10%. This led to the discussions about the representativeness of the parliament at the time.

25 There is no data for the civil service in 2001.

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country. Figure 4-6 shows that during this period, GDP per capita increased approximately from $3000 to $10000. Inflation rates started declining and fell below

10% in 2006. Full EU membership negotiations started in 2005, and the government enjoys a positive foreign image. Turkey was considered as a model for other Muslim- majority countries, especially in the Middle East.26 The period is not without tensions especially between different state actors (the army, justice system, president) and the government, but this did not prevent the JDP from solidifying its rule in the 2007 general election by gaining 47% of the votes. Keyman (2010:316) argues that there are four strategic principles that led to the JDP’s domination of the political landscape in Turkey: market-oriented and reform-based politics, acting as a “center-right” party, proactive foreign policy, and philanthropic neoliberalism. By market-oriented politics, Keyman

(2010)mainly refers to the integration of Anatolia to the global economy which in return will give rise to the emergence of a new middle class and new elite. The reform-oriented politics refers to the democratic initiatives that aim to address the Kurdish question,

Alevi question, and non-Muslim minority question. Acting as a center-right party is related to an argument I mentioned before: the collapse of the center of the Turkish political space. After this collapse, the JDP emerged as the strongest candidate to occupy the center by presenting itself as a conservative-democrat party. Keyman and

Gumuscu (2014:40) argue that the JDP fortified this claim “by attempting to articulate

26 The idea of Turkey as a model for other Muslim majority countries was promoted in the West, especially by the U.S. (Eligur 2010). However, it is questionable whether this model was ever attractive for the Arab audience (Haddad, Bsheer, and Abu-Rish 2012). White (2013:189–90) argues that “[t]he Muslimhood model posits that Islam is a personal attribute that may be carried into the public arena, for instance, in the form of personal ethics, but does not define what a person does there…. Young modern Muslims seeking justice and material well-being would be more likely to find their mirror image in Turkey’s Muslimhood model, not a politically amorphous ‘Turkish model.’”

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liberal market values with community/tradition-based norms.” The proactive foreign policy indicates a shift in the Turkish foreign policy during the JDP rule. Turkey under the JDP strives to use its soft power27 in the region according to Keyman (2010). Using this soft power, Turkey would improve its relations with its neighbors and address regional problems better. Finally, philanthropic neoliberalism refers to a balance point against “the thick version of the free market fundamentalism” (Keyman 2010:316). While promoting market-oriented politics and integrating traditional segments of the society further to the global economy, the JDP also favored, to a certain degree, the distribution of wealth and extension of services.

Using these operational and strategic principles, Keyman (2010) argues, the JDP was able to respond to challenges brought by the globalization and neoliberalism. From a different political and academic perspective, Tugal also emphasized the role neoliberalism in shaping the JDP’s economic policies and how the JDP successfully brought Islamists into the fold of it, through a process of passive revolution which is

“indeed a viable, even if unstable, route to a market economy” (Tugal 2009:4). These developments might explain increasing trust in government and parliament, but not, for example, the justice system. What happens, I argue, was some kind of spill-over effect, a general tendency for a positive evaluation of institutions.

The third period covers the years between 2007 and 2013. Although loess results show that the declining trend started somewhere around 2004 for government and

27 Nye (2004:40) defined soft power as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.”

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parliament, this is not the case for the army, police, and justice system.28 Moreover, the years 2004-2007 in the EB data do not show much variation in trust levels compared to the years between 2008 and 2014. The main question is why there is such a decline in trust in all institutions (except for political parties), especially government and parliament during this period.29 There is a number of events that dominate the political landscape during this period. In 2008, the JDP faced with a party closure trial. The closure request failed, but the trial increased tension between the secular elites and the JDP. Starting in

2008, this period also witnessed highly controversial trial series (Ergenekon in 2008 and

Balyoz in 2010) against military officers, journalists, and lawmakers who were accused of plotting against the government. These trials might be partly responsible for the decline in trust in the army and the justice system during this period as captured by the figures. Finally, the constitutional referendum in 2010 introduced reforms especially on the judiciary which challenged its authority.

So, first, the honeymoon effect following the election in 2002 ended. Second, not despite, but because of the JDP’s electoral success, political tensions increased in the country, although they did not develop into a crisis of governance characteristic of the

1990s30, at least until 2013. In 2013, two major events took place. First, the Gezi

28 My optimization analysis implies three trends, but I think that the appearance of the first trend is the result of the sharp drop (20 percentage points) in trust in government and parliament from 2007 to 2008.

29 I would like to remind the issue of missing data points for the army, police, and justice system in the EB data. So, I rather refrain from making strong claims about these institutions.

30 It should be noted that, except a period of decline in 2009 due to the Great Recession, GDP per capita kept increasing between 2007 and 2013. GDP growth rate, which plummeted following the Recession, bounced back to positive rates. And Inflation remained stable around 10%.

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protests31 posed one of the most serious challenges to government during its decade long rule. Second, the corruption probes in December 17-23 revealed the conflict within the ruling bloc in the country. As a result, the EB data for the Autumn 2013 show the lowest level of trust in government and parliament in the time-series.

The fourth period (2014-2017) showed a rather unexpected upward trend following these developments. To illustrate this point, I would like to return to the figure representing the EB data. In addition to trend lines, I add vertical lines for selected events (see Figure E-1- E-3 in Appendix E). Figure E-1 shows the elections and referendums, Figure E-2 shows other politically relevant events (such as the trials and the coup attempt), and Figure E-3 brings them together.

These figures show that in the last three years in Turkey political tensions increased and conflicts exacerbated. For example, the two and a half year-long peace

(or solution) process with Kurds collapsed in 2015. The economic performance of the country came under criticism as the growth rates declined. The government was criticized for its foreign policy, especially in the case of Syria. One local election, one presidential election, two general elections, and finally, a constitutional referendum took place in these three years. But, most importantly, a coup attempt took place in July

2016 which failed, but left the country in a tenuous political atmosphere. This has been followed by a state of emergency which is still in effect and which has led to laying off thousands of public officials.

31 A wave of protests which lasted more than a month in Turkey. Started as a small protest against the demolition of a park (Gezi Park) in Taksim, Istanbul, it quickly evolved into anti-government protests in several cities, which attracted a heavy-handed response of the police.

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From a conventional perspective, one might expect that these political developments might lead to a decline in trust in institutions. However, it seems that the opposite trend has happened. In fact, the EB data show that after its lowest point in

Autumn 2013, the percentage of individuals who tend to trust in government and parliament has increased, although this is not a linear increase. Still when one compares trust in government in 2017 with Autumn 2013, the difference is 25 percentage points. I would like to argue that this increase is a result of the frequency and intensity of the events inviting individuals repeatedly to make a political decision or cueing them about the political situation. Here, I would like to remind Hetherington and

Rudolph’s (2015) argument about the crisis and rally ‘round the flag effect. A general perception of crisis, a threat to the very existence of the state, might lead more people to express trust in institutions. Nevertheless, this claim should be warranted by further studies using more rigorous analytical methods.

In this chapter, I interpreted the changes in trust in institutions over time. My interpretation focused on four periods that I identified in the analyses. The trends in institutional trust during these periods were shaped by the political events of the time.

Thus, I would like to argue that the event-based explanations should be taken into account in any analysis of political trust, even though they are rather exploratory and speculative. Their omission will limit the understanding of political orientations of individuals towards the system. Although, this argument appears straightforward, it might not be welcomed in the literature. As Hetherington and Rudolph (2015) succinctly put:

Explaining change usually requires us to turn to things that change over time, but, of course, opinions that change over time are objects of concern

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for survey analysts because change is thought to indicate that an opinion is peripheral, not central, to people’s political belief systems. As we have tried to make it clear, though, attitude instability, if generated by context dependency rather than the absence of meaningful beliefs, can provide great analytical leverage in trying to explain what causes political change (Hetherington and Rudolph 2015:102).

While agreeing with Hetherington and Rudolph, I would also like to add that context dependency should be thought beyond short time frames. In other words, what happened in Turkey between 1990 and 2017, and why they happened in that way, can be fully understood only after a historical analysis. For example, if the idea of crisis is shaping individuals’ orientations, that idea is not formed simply based on recent events; it could also be the result of a propensity/disposition ingrained deeply in the political culture of the country. In Chapter 5, I will explore this political culture and its relation to political trust in Turkey. I will provide a historical reading which will revise the concept of political trust in the Turkish context at the end.

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Table 4-1. Trust in Institutions: Means and Percentages (Turkey: WVS/EVS 1990-2011)

Year Army Police Justice system Government Parliament Civil Service Political Parties

Means

1990 3.48 2.78 2.81 2.44 2.67 2.56 -

1996 3.59 2.84 2.86 2.3 2.35 2.68 1.93

2001 3.4 2.86 2.57 2.28 2.17 2.55 1.87

2007 3.46 2.97 3.03 2.74 2.65 2.5 2.13

2009 3.51 3.23 3.13 2.48 2.63 2.79 1.97

2011 3.09 3 2.85 2.65 2.56 2.61 2.2

Percentages (% Trust)

1990 91% 63% 64% 49% 58% 50% -

1996 94% 69% 68% 47% 49% 67% 28%

2001 86% 69% 57% 45% 42% 60% 28%

2007 86% 72% 75% 63% 60% 55% 33%

2009 90% 82% 81% 53% 58% 67% 31%

2011 75% 74% 68% 58% 55% 59% 35%

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Table 4-2. Independent Sample T-test Results for Trust in Institutions (WVS/EVS: 1990-2011) 1990 1996 2001 2007 2009 2011 Means Means Cohen’s Means Cohen’s Means Cohen’s Means Cohen’s Means Cohen’s d d d d d

Army 3.48 3.59* -0.16 3.40* 0.23 3.46 -0.07* 3.51 -0.06 3.09* 0.48 Police 2.78 2.84 -0.06 2.86 -0.02 2.97 -0.1* 3.23* -0.27 3.00* 0.24 Justice System 2.81 2.86 -0.05 2.57* 0.28 3.03 -0.45* 3.13* -0.11 2.85* 0.29 Government 2.44 2.30* 0.13 2.28 0.02 2.74 -0.43* 2.48* 0.24 2.65* -0.16 Parliament 2.67 2.35* 0.31 2.17* 0.16 2.65 -0.46* 2.63 0.02 2.56 0.07 Civil Service 2.56 2.68* -0.14 2.55* 0.15 2.50 0.05 2.79* -0.32 2.61* 0.19 Political Parties - 1.93 -0.16 1.87* 0.06 2.13 -0.28* 1.97* 0.17 2.20* -0.25 * Indicates that the difference in means from the previous year is statistically significant at p ≤ 0.05. Welch approximation is used because the variances between groups are unequal.

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Table 4-3. Logistic Regression Analysis of Trust in Institutions Using Year and Other Variables (Turkey: WVS 1990-2011) Army Police Justice Government Parliament Civil Service Political System+ Parties

(Ref=2001) (Ref=1990) 1990 1.45* 0.59* - 1.12 1.52* 0.54* - 1996 1.96* 0.93 1.34* 1.06 1.15 1.28* 1.11 2001 ------2007 0.71* 0.89 1.56* 1.73* 1.55* 0.61* 1.14 2011 0.35* 1.22* 1.29* 1.47* 1.37* 0.80* 1.30

Interpersonal 1.19 1.18 1.14 1.13 1.21* 1.08 1.35* Trust Financial 1.06* 1.06* 1.08* 1.08* 1.07* 1.06* 1.05* Satisfaction Incumbent Vote 1.49* 1.84* 1.45* 3.19* 1.94* 1.40* 1.53* Religious 1.19* 1.30* 1.19* 1.18* 1.16* 1.07* 1.08* Attendance Sex 0.62* 0.54* 0.61* 0.67* 0.74* 0.73* 1.01 Age 1.02* 1.00 1.01* 1.00 1.00 1.01* 1.00 Education 0.98 0.86* 0.92* 0.87* 0.90* 0.95* 0.92*

N 6930 6936 4181 6836 6844 6857 6092 +Since there is no observation for trust in justice system in 2001, reference category is taken as year 1990. *p < 0.05

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Figure 4-1. Mean levels of Trust in Institutions (Turkey: WVS/EVS 1990-2011)

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Figure 4-2. Predicted Probabilities for Trust in Army, Police, and Courts over Years (Turkey: WVS 1990/2011)

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Figure 4-3. Predicted Probabilities for Trust in Government, Parliament, Civil Service and Parties over Years (Turkey: WVS 1990/2011)

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Figure 4-4. Trust in Institutions (Turkey: EB 2004-2017)

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Figure 4-5. Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoother (Loess) for Trust in Institutions, Span=0.7 (Turkey: EB 2004-2017)

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Figure 4-6. World Bank Indicators: GDP per capita, GDP growth, and Inflation

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CHAPTER 5 TURKISH POLITICAL HISTORY: RETHINKING POLITICAL TRUST

In this chapter, I will focus on the political history of Turkey. First, I will trace the historical trajectory of the emergence and consolidation of the bureaucracy, and the conflicts around it. In this way, I aim to explain the important factors shaping the political culture of Turkey during the Republican period and later. I will also discuss the ideological formations which are essential to understanding how the political actors located themselves in these conflicts.

Second, I will turn to the Republican period, which represents continuity and rupture at the same time. On the one hand, it works on the “amorphous” material handed over by the late Ottoman modernization experience. On other hand, it transforms it into something new with added significance. This does not mean that the old uncertainties disappeared completely, but rather they coexist with new certainties and turn into new alignments.

Finally, I will return to a discussion on culture and political trust in Turkey and recommend rethinking these concepts in the light of an alternative approach to culture.

This approach, which would utilize such an historical inquiry, would help us to enrich the concept of political trust beyond the confines of the current literature.

Emergence of the Bureaucracy: Reform Movement Before and After the Tanzimat1

Starting from the Late Ottoman period is not an arbitrary decision and there are two reasons behind it. First, following the Tanzimat period, the modernization process

1 Tanzimat (Reform) Period: “Proclaimed with the Imperial Rescript of Gülhane of 1839, which introduced the revolutionary (from the Ottoman perspective) principle of equality of the Muslim and non-Muslim subjects of the state and created new rules and new institutions.” (Heper and Criss 2009:292)

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took a new course which led to the reorganization of the state and its institutions through centralization. Despite all the limitations, this change entailed a restructuring of the state-society relations. Second, the Tanzimat period is marked by an uncertainty both in terms of the possible consequences of modernization and the future route that the Empire would take. It is tempting to make a retrospective reading and look for the certainties of the modern politics in this period, but it may lead ignoring what Kasaba

(1997:18) called “indeterminate richness of the Ottoman Turkish modernization.”

Various political currents and ideologies in the Ottoman-Turkish modernization might not be as distinct and in opposition to each other as their proponents at the time tend to think. In fact, I would later argue that the overlap between different ideological currents over time made easier the identification of the common points of concern for political aims. This overlap and the emergence of common points of concern happened despite the characteristics of Ottoman polity and the peripheral dynamics of decline. Focusing solely on these characteristics, however, would not be enough. Equally important were the events at the time, especially the wars and population movements which partly were a consequence of these wars.

The question of why the decline of the Empire happened is widely discussed in the literature. The disintegration of the timar,2 crisis in the tax system, peripheral forces challenging the authority of the center, influence of the European capitalism, military defeats, national separatism are listed among the causes of decline. There is no question that the decline has been a topic of interest for the intellectuals of the time, but

2 “Under the traditional system, the sipahis (cavalrymen) had the land in fief (timar), collecting the tithe (ösür) for the state and for their own salaries.” (Karpat 2001:92)

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an equally important question is about the past before the decline of the Empire. Mardin

(2000) noted the interest of Young Ottomans (of the Tanzimat Era) on the Ottoman past. They were looking for the remedies of the decline and made “ample use of historical situations to build up their arguments” (Mardin 2000:133). The past referred here is the past of the Empire in its zenith. An Empire characterized by the distinction between askeri (a ruling class) and reaya (Muslim and non-Muslim subjects). Non-

Muslim Reaya was divided into millets (religious communities) which were administered by their own leaders. Exempt from the taxation unlike the reaya, the askeri divided further into groups to which the Sultan delegated power: military-administrative establishment (seyfiye), Islamic religious establishment (ilmiye), and scribal services,

“men of pen” (kalemiye). This social formation is based on a land system called timar which ensures the taxation of land, production of goods, and safety of the Empire. And the ideal representation of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, and the balance between different groups in the ruling class, was the “circle of justice”:

No power without troops,

No troops without money,

No money without prosperity,

No prosperity without justice and good administration. (Darling 2013:2)

It is questionable whether this ideal has been realized or if realized for an extended period of time in the Ottoman history. Nevertheless, the Empire of the 15th and

16th Centuries remains a glorious reference point, resurfaced from time to time in the

19th and 20th centuries. However, for the reformers of the late 18th Century and 19th

Century (including the Tanzimat and Constitutional periods), it became rather irrelevant.

In fact, it is the conviction of the newly emerging bureaucracy during the 19th Century

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(which reached its culmination point with the Tanzimat) that, not a return to an idealized past, but a restructuring of the state and society through reforms following the West was the only option to stop the decline. Moreover, the rise of the bureaucracy (traditionally, kalemiye) happened at the expense of other ruling groups mentioned above, challenging the traditional idea of balance between them.

This challenge was met with resistance to the military reforms from the janissaries and led to the depiction of them later as an anti-reformist and reactionary segment of the military. The 18th century witnessed janissary revolts which ended up with the deposing or death of sultans and grand viziers. Despite their characterization as a reactionary force to the much-needed reform of the Empire, “in revolting, the janissaries expressed social grievances but also the disgust [of the poorer classes] with the luxurious life led by the Ottoman officials and especially with the Western forms that this luxury had taken” (Mardin 2000:139). Thus, it is not surprising that the grand viziers were the target. They were not only modernizing agents in the Empire, but also their official residence (Sublime Porte) became the center of government (Heper and

Berkman 2009). The proliferation of the chanceries and the offices was interpreted as an indicator of the extension of the power of the Porte. As in the case of janissaries, the extension of functions performed by the new offices happened at the expense of another ruling group, the religious establishment (ilmiye, or later known as ulema).

Considering the turmoil of the late 18th century and the conflicts between ruling groups in the society, it is safe to argue that at the beginning of the 19th century, it was uncertain whether the reformist impulse in the Empire would survive (Findley 2012). So, it was not the inevitable march of the progress and modernization, but the contingent

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historical circumstances which led to, first the reassertion of the central authority, and then the dominance of the bureaucracy. The reign of Mahmud II (1809-1839)3 saw a number of developments in this direction; two of them are of particular importance.

The first one was the suppression of ayans (local notables). These notables acquired provincial autonomy vis-a-vis the center in the 17th century as the power of the center dwindled. Although there is a recognition of ayans’ status by the central government, “this incipient tendency toward local autonomy conflicted with the absolute authority exercised by the central government and its vital interest in controlling fiscal resources” (Karpat 1974:92). The conflict between ayans and the center was temporarily solved in 1808 with the Sened-i Ittifak (Pledge or Pact of Alliance). Called

“Ottoman Magna Carta”, the pact recognized the property and inheritance rights of ayans and their local autonomy. However, this pact which is favorable for ayans was short-lived. Far from being a Magna Carta, it was a temporary compromise for the center (it was signed the year Mahmud II took the throne) which in the following decade subdued ayans at least in Anatolia and near Balkans. This was followed by the abolishing of the timar system, and the revenue collection was entrusted to civil servants appointed by the center (Heper and Berkman 2009). So, while the recentralization had been occurring, the civil bureaucracy assumed further functions and extended its reach.

The second one was the abolition of the janissary corps. There were attempts to build a new army formed on the European model in 18th century which failed as a result

3 The 30th Ottoman sultan (1809–1839). “He paved the way for the Tanzimat (Reform) period. Mahmut II came to the throne during a very turbulent period in Ottoman history.”(Heper and Criss 2009:199)

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of the janissary resistance and the military defeats. Lessons learned in this century were put into use in the 19th century. A new army (Sekban) which is first constituted as a unit of the janissary corps, later used against them. The new military was also essential in the subjugation of ayans as explained above. With the destruction of the janissary corps, “the main institutional obstacle of the military reconstruction” was eliminated

(Hale 1994:18). The confrontation between bureaucracy and ulema did not have the same level of intensity as in the case of the janissaries. Rather, two processes were observed. First, there was an internal divide in ulema, between lower and higher positions, and the latter was integrated to the center. Second, the offices staffed by the civil bureaucracy increased whereas those staffed by the ulema remained constant which gradually reduced the functions fulfilled by the ulema (Mardin 2000).

Following the changes and reforms, Gulhane-i Hatt-i Humayun (The Imperial

Edict of Gulhane) or Tanzimat Fermani (Decree of Reorganization or Reform) in 1839 came out as a rather natural outcome from a modernization perspective.4 This was a unilateral declaration:

[A] royal statement of intentions spoke of the need to eliminate inequality and create justice for all subjects, Muslim or non-Muslim, rich or poor. It promised a host of specific measures to eliminate corruption, abolish tax farming, and regularize the conscription of all males. In return for equal responsibilities, it promised equal rights (Quataert 2005:66).

In this sense, it seems to represent a shift from the centuries old millet system to the pro-citizenship in a modern sense. However, the Tanzimat script and reform era initiated by it occurred in a society which is characterized by the status as the predominant form of the distribution of power, absence of civil society, and dichotomous

4 Another edict (Islahat Fermani) in 1856 reaffirms the Edict of 1839.

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cultural divisions (Mardin 2006). Especially the first aspect which refers to the patrimonialism in the Empire, was not challenged. In fact, the patrimonial principle which

“transforms all problems of law and adjudication into problems of administration” persists (Bendix 1960:365). Ozbudun and Genckaya (2009:7) argue that “no effective legal mechanisms was established to ensure the enforcement of [Tanzimat] provisions.”

Taking a step further, Mardin (2000) implied that the clause of the Imperial Edict, which promises the protection of life, property, and honor of then citizens, meant certain citizens, namely Ottoman bureaucrats. As a result, the Tanzimat era consolidated the hegemony of the civil bureaucracy.

This consolidation, however, did not come immediately. There were structural weaknesses which were limiting the extent of reforms. Lack of human resources, in terms of educated officials for the bureaucracy, and lack of economic resources, as a result of the integration of the Empire into the economic world system and limited fiscal control capacity, were two of those weaknesses. However, there were three other problems which were more prevalent especially for the future political developments in the Empire. The first one was the mimetic quality of the reforms. While the Tanzimat bureaucrats were fast in the creation of new organizations, they were rather negligent about control and monitoring. Findley interpreted this situation as an inherent difficulty of the reforms which, nevertheless, “give the innovative policies of the Tanzimat an imitative and insubstantial quality” (Findley 2012:158). Second, despite the reforms towards a rational-legal order, the Tanzimat bureaucrats continued to act in accordance to patrimonialism, nepotism, and favoritism. Although there is nothing novel about the patrimonial political behavior, “the more steps were taken toward erection of a rational-

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legal order, the more absurd and reprehensible behavior incompatible with such and order inevitably seemed” (Findley 2012:164). Finally, there was the problem of legitimation. Just like the previous one, this problem was a consequence of the discrepancy between the ideals of the reforms and the actual conditions in which they were realized. Of the three sources of traditional legitimacy – religious-legal traditions, customs, and the will of the sovereign – the Tanzimat reforms inevitably relied more on the last one, because the modern and secular orientation of the reforms made them less compatible with the other two (Findley 2012:166). Despite the allusions to the idea of modern (Ottoman) citizenship in the Imperial Edict, the Tanzimat bureaucrats were not ready to consider popular sovereignty as the basis of legitimacy This exposed both their vulnerability vis-a-vis the sultan and the de facto nature of their rule.

These three problems became rallying points against the Tanzimat statesmen. A new generation of bureaucrats and intellectuals, known as Young Ottomans, became the leading critics of the Tanzimat civil bureaucracy. In one sense, their existence shows the relative success of the Tanzimat reforms. They were highly educated and had better knowledge of Europe compared to the old Ottomans of the Tanzimat.

Moreover, they were much more familiar with new literary genres and media, such as popular journalism and theater. They criticized the patrimonialism and nepotism of the civil bureaucracy, which also blocked the advancement of young and aspiring bureaucrats among the Young Ottomans. They were critical of the imitative quality of the Westernist efforts. Most importantly, they were influenced by the European forms of liberalism, constitutionalism, and parliamentarism. Although small and diverse, Young

Ottomans turned into an effective group and found allies in the ulema, who suffered loss

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of status because of the secularization of the state apparatus, judiciary, and education, and in the military, which was pushed aside by the civil bureaucracy during the

Tanzimat period (Mardin 2000). As a result, their efforts bore fruit in 1876, and the first constitutional period of the Ottoman Empire began.5

The Constitutional Period and the Hamidian Era

The constitutional period, however, lasted less than two years. In reality, the constitution was far from what could be expected from a modern constitution. Berkes argued that it “was devoid of the provisions which in the modern state, are necessary to ensure constitutional rule” (Berkes 1998:247). For example, it did not introduce a separation of the legislative, executive and judicial powers. And far from limiting his power, it gave constitutional legitimacy to the ruler. In fact, using his “constitutional powers”, Abdulhamid II suspended the constitution in 1878.

Abdulhamid II ruled the Empire for over 30 years in the second half of the 19th century and first decade of the 20th century. He is still one of the most controversial figures of Late Ottoman period, subject to much polemical appropriation. He was despised as an “oriental despot” or lauded as the last great sultan and the defender of

Islam. However, a balanced approach should recognize both his authoritarian ruling style and modernizing impulse. The early years of his rule were marked by one important event: Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Although Ottomans were losing territory to Russia throughout the 19th Century, the War of 1877-78 led to massive losses in the Balkans and eastern Anatolia, to the independence of Serbia, Montenegro,

5 The negotiation and signing of the constitution was a difficult process and the concessions made to the sultan reduced its effectiveness.

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and Romania, and the autonomy of Bulgaria. The 1877-78 War resulted in instilling in the Empire a more Muslim character, because of the population movement from the

Balkans to Anatolia. Moreover, it led to a suspicious and distrustful attitude towards

Europe and the adoption of Islamic unification policy against it (referred as Pan-

Islamism).6

This last ideological shift put Abdulhamid away from the position adopted by the

Tanzimat bureaucracy or liberal constitutionalists. Whereas the latter were persecuted gradually, the former were subject to administrative restructuring. He extended the authority of the palace over the Porte and enhanced the bureaucratic structure of the palace itself. Despite challenging the Tanzimat establishment and its hierarchy,

Abdulhamit was a follower of the Tanzimat reforms. Most importantly, he kept extending the modern education system. Here, the peculiar character of his Islamic policies became more visible. While appreciating the ideological role of religion and its relevance in building a national identity and cementing loyalty, “he chose not to try to direct the new educational changes through the religious hierarchy” (Fortna 2008:51).

The strengthening of the palace bureaucracy and the continuation of the modern reforms renders the characterization of this period as “oriental despotism” problematic.

According to Hanioglu, what happened was rather a shift from bureaucratic absolutism to the neo-patrimonial autocracy (Hanioglu 2012:21), which is “a form of organisation in

6 “On the one hand, [Pan-Islamism] was a positive strategy aimed at the majority of his imperial subjects as it sought to take advantage of the new demographic situation and to strengthen the cohesiveness of the empire’s Islamic base. On the other hand, it was also a negative or threatening policy intended to remind the European powers, France and Great Britain in particular, that the Ottoman sultan–caliph held considerable sway over many millions of their overseas imperial subjects” (Fortna 2008:48). Deringil argues that these policies were not “hopelessly anachronistic applications of traditional patterns,” but their reception varied in the Ottoman Empire (Deringil 1991:355)

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which relationships of a broadly patrimonial type pervade a political and administrative system which is formally constructed on rational-legal lines” (Clapham 2004:48).

As in the case of the Tanzimat Era, the long Hamidian period bred its opposition.

A new generation of bureaucrats and intellectuals, (this time Young Turks), not less diverse than Young Ottomans (and some were Young Ottomans), led the Revolution of

1908.

Young Turk Revolution and the CUP

“Young Turks” is an umbrella term, rather than the name of an organized group.

According to Hanioglu, what brought them together was a common enemy, but not a common agenda (Hanioglu 2008:145). The development of a common agenda (or at least a common strategy) started with the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress

(CUP) which was established in 1889 by some medical students from the Royal Medical

Academy7 and became major organization of the Young Turks. The committee consisted of diverse collection of groups and experienced various changes until 1902.

The Congress of Ottoman Liberals in 1902, held to unite the opposition, ended up with a split between liberal wing favoring private initiative and decentralization and the centrist/statist and Turkist/nationalist factions. Another important change, decisive for the future political action of the CUP, was the merger with the Ottoman Freedom

Society, which was established by a group of Ottoman officers as a secret association.

After this merger and with the increasing activity of the CUP in the Ottoman military, armed insurrection and the push for the re-installment of the constitution became a realistic option.

7 Ironically, none of the founding members was of Turkish ethnicity.

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In 1908, CUP overthrew the Hamidian regime8 and started the second constitutional period. Within a few months, the elections were held in a relatively free atmosphere. The CUP won the majority in the first parliament, but it also faced a credible opposition, especially from the representatives of the various national groups and liberals. The ensuing political struggles revealed the fragility of the parliamentary experience. While the CUP resorted to electoral manipulation and suppression of opposition, the opposition resorted to force which led to the 1912 putsch. The putsch effectively put the CUP into opposition for a brief period until January 1913. The Balkan crisis of 1912 gave the CUP a chance to regain the power. Just like the 1877-78 War,

The First Balkan War was a humiliating defeat and resulted in the loss of nearly all

European territories of the Empire. In the 1913 Coup d’état, the CUP acceded to power and established its rule until the surrender and dissolution of the Empire at the end of the World War I.

The outcome of the 1908 revolution might be viewed as disappointing by those who expected an unprecedented change in a democratic direction. According to

Hanioglu (2008), it was still unprecedented as a revolution, but for different reasons. Its heroes were conservatives who focused on the survival of the Empire and restored the constitutional sultanate of 1876 but suspended it in practice. Most importantly, however, it was followed by a regime which set a precedent for the Republic: one-party rule

(Hanioglu 2008:150–51). Under this regime, the CUP gradually took over bureaucracy

8 They did not depose Abdulhamid II immediately. This happened in 1909, after “an improbable combination of old regime supporters, Islamists, liberals, and non-Turkish nationalists, exploiting tensions in the armed forces provoked by CUP-led purges of the sultan’s army, came together in support of a military uprising in the capital” (Hanioglu 2008:154).

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and asserted its direct control. After 1913, it bypassed the legislature by means of cabinet using temporary laws. And finally, “it restored to prominence a power broker not heard of in the Ottoman politics for almost eighty years: the army” (Hanioglu 2008:164).

The army did not only represent an instrument of power for the CUP, it had a special role in shaping the idea of a new Ottoman society which had resembled less and less the one which actually existed.

The Ideology of the CUP and Late Ottoman Mentality

In 1904, Yusuf Akcura, a Tatar-Turkish intellectual, published an article titled

“Three Types of Policy” (Uc Tarz-i Siyaset)9 . In this article, Akcura compared three political options for the Empire at the time: Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism (or

Turkish nationalism) (Akcura 1995). The novelty of the article was that, for the first time,

Turkism was put forward as a real political option. It was adapted by the CUP gradually

(because of the multiethnic character of the CUP), especially under the influence of members from the Caucasus and Balkans who were more exposed to the nationalism.

In addition to the nascent Turkish nationalism, Islam was still considered an important social force by the Young Turks. For example, in the above-mentioned article,

Akcura was quick to dismiss Ottomanism as impractical, but the same cannot be said for Islam. Another prominent intellectual of the Young Turks, Ziya Gokalp expressed the goal of the new nationalism as “to become Turkish, Muslim, and modern.” Yet, for the

CUP, the appeal of Islam comes from its usefulness especially in presenting their ideas to the people. A popular saying among Young Turks illustrate this point: “Science is the

9 It was translated as three types of policy or simply three policies, but I think a better (and maybe more literal) translation would be three styles of politics.

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religion of the elite, whereas religion is the science of the masses” (Hanioglu 1995:201).

This saying also shows two other components of the Young Turk ideology: their high regard for science and elitism.

What Young Turks understood from science was closely associated (if not equated) to positivism and materialism. Considering the period that they encountered with the Western science, this is not unexpected. What is worth noting, however, is that they adopted a rather vulgar version of materialism.10 The elitism of the CUP was also motivated by a “scientific” approach, that of Gustave Le Bon’s crowd psychology which is characterized by a distrust towards masses and their role in political life (Hanioglu

1995). The elitism of CUP coexisted with an awareness about the symbolic power of the people, the masses (Hanioglu 2008:165). Later, this tension would turn into a discrepancy between “the people” and “the nation.”

While the intellectual characteristics and political thought of the Young Turks foreshadow the future ideological developments in the Republic, what Tanil Bora (2017) called mental structures were equally important. He loosely defined these structures as forms of thinking and perception, which are more durable than ideologies, and which represent prejudices, concerns, and obsessions (Bora 2017). They are also part of the

Ottoman heritage, inherited in various combinations by different political actors during the Republican period. In Bora’s discussion, a number of examples for these forms of thinking and perception can be found.

10 Hanioglu (2005) discussed the influence of Post-Feuerbachian German materialism on Ottoman intellectuals in detail in “Blueprints for a future society: late Ottoman materialists on science, religion, and art.”

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First, there is a disposition towards adaptation/translation. By adaptation/translation, I mean a deliberate effort to search and find equivalences for the newly encountered Western thought in the existing Ottoman language. An example of this practice can be found in the writings of Namik Kemal, a Young Ottoman intellectual.

His intention was to show that there are Islamic equivalents of liberal notions, which were forgotten because the Empire was diverged from the right path. Thus, what is sought after by translation was a revitalization of the Islamic source. However, the unintended consequence was a shift in the meaning or a condensation of the meanings.

One famous example is the double entendre millet which refers to the religious community, but gradually acquired the meaning of nation. Second, starting with the

Tanzimat period, the Ottoman intellectuals were eager to bring together contradictory ideas from different schools of thoughts. They followed intellectual trends of the day with a flirtatious attitude without actual commitment. The consequence of this eclecticism was arbitrary and incidental readings or improvised thinking. Bora (2017) argues that the problem about this incoherence is preceded by an epistemological void and mental chaos. Encyclopedism, which is closely related to eclecticism, did not help to ameliorate this problem, and rather, contributed to the mental chaos. It represented a genuine interest towards the knowledge of the world but remained superficial and shallow with its overemphasis on the practicality. A laconic expression of this encyclopedic orientation was found in a Tanzimat intellectual’s, Ahmet Mithad Efendi’s, advice to his son: learn one thing perfectly or learn everything partially. He claimed that the latter was more acceptable and useful for the needs of the Empire at that time (Bora 2017). Again, this reveals their rather pragmatic attitude towards knowledge. Finally, the concern

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about the survival of the Empire and alarmism left its mark on the political thought of the time. As I discussed before, the reform movement which started with the aim of restoring the Empire to its former glory in the 18th century, quickly became concerned with its survival as a result of the economic problems, wars, and national separatism.

For the ruling cadres throughout the 19th century, “saving the Empire” remained a constant goal. Alarmism was also related to this concern for saving the State, especially in the last years of the Empire, since the feeling of being besieged by the enemies

(internal or external) became more prevalent among the Young Turks. Beyond this immediate concern, alarmism also refers to a concern about being late, i.e., being late for reforms and modernity. This opens a space for anxious modernization, pessimism, but also romanticism (Bora 2017).

The Republican Period: A New Beginning?

In 1914, what was known at the time as the Great War started in Europe.

Although not immediately, the Ottoman Empire became a part of it in alliance with the

Central Powers. The goals of the CUP leaders were to reassert the authority over the autonomous regions of the Empire, make some territorial gains, especially in the

Balkans, and break the control of the European powers over the affairs of the Empire.

None of these goals were realized. The Central Powers lost the war and the Ottoman government surrendered in 1918. Ironically, the worst fears of the generations of the

Ottoman bureaucrats and intellectuals, who spent great energy “to save the Empire”, came true. In its last 50 years, 85 percent of the territories and 75 percent of the population of the Empire were lost (Zarakol 2011:141). By the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, the Empire was left with a residual country in the central Anatolia.

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The period following the surrender is known as the Years of National Resistance

(1919-1922). Those who received official education in Turkey learned that under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal and his comrades, the whole country fought for the national independence and the establishment of the modern Republic of Turkey. There is no question that the resistance was formed for the independence and made great sacrifices to defeat the invasion forces, but it is questionable that those who participated in the struggle have similar visions for the future of the country.

Zürcher (1999) argues that the characterization of this period by the Turkish historiography as a period of national struggle aiming at the establishment of Turkish state is misleading. Focusing on the Erzurum Congress (1919) held by the Society for the Defense of the National Rights of the Eastern Provinces, he shows that the organizers take Muslims as their constituency (Zürcher 1999). There were explicit references to both “Turks and Kurds,” moreover, the society “portrays itself as the guardian of the Islamic Caliphate and the Ottoman Sultanate” (Zürcher 1999:85). His conclusion was that the resistance movement, far from representing a “national” character as claimed later, was a “cocktail of political, territorial, and religious elements”

(Zürcher 1999:90).11

This motley of elements was the major concern for the new regime established in

1923. As a result, a number of drastic and politically risky reforms were implemented.

First, one year after the Republic, the caliphate was abolished. It was already reduced to a religious office after the abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate in 1922, but its existence

11 Zürcher (1999) used the term “Muslim nationalism” to define the dominant political identity at the time. Years later, Jenny White would use the same term to characterize dominant political identity in contemporary Turkey (White 2013).

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presented a rather ambiguous situation for the new regime striving to become secular.

The concern was that it could become a potential gravitational center for the opposition.

The abolition of the Caliphate was followed by other secular and modern reforms.

These reforms and political decisions were met with resistance which found its most forceful expression in the Sheikh Sait rebellion in the Southeastern region of the country. Although the rebellion had a religious character, there was also a nationalist dimension. It was a reaction not only to the abolition of the Caliphate, but also to the prohibition of the public use of Kurdish (Zürcher 2004:170). The rebellion was stopped, and the National Assembly passed the Law on the Maintenance of Order in 1925, which enabled the government to ban any organization considered against the public order for two years.

The following decade witnessed the consolidation of the one-party rule in the country, a situation which has been previously encountered during the CUP era.

Zürcher describes how elections become rather ceremonial in these years:

The slates of candidates for parliamentary seats were drawn up by the chairman of the party, the executive chairman and the secretary-general and then ratified by the party congress and there was no way in which citizens, even if they were active party members, could stand for parliament on their own initiative (Zürcher 2004:177).

What characterized the reforms of this period was not only secularism and nationalism, but also secular nationalism. As discussed above, the first targets of the secularization reforms were religious institutions. In addition to the caliphate, the office of Şeyḫülislām which governed religious affairs of Muslims in the Ottoman Empire was

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abolished and replaced by the Directorate for Religious Affairs in 1924.12 At the same, education was secularized by the Law on the Unification of Education, and the traditional religious education institutions, medreses, were abolished and replaced by schools of preachers. Other secular reforms targeted not only the institutions but the daily religious life. For example, in 1925, religious shrines, dervish convents, and religious orders were banned. In addition to these secularizing reforms, there were other reforms, not necessarily targeting the religion but still affecting the daily life of people.

The adoption of Western clock, calendar, numerals, weights and measures were among those. The most drastic reform in this respect was the adoption of the Latin Alphabet in

1928, which was interpreted by Zürcher as an ideological attempt to cut off the society from its Ottoman past (Zürcher 2004:189).13 Later efforts to “purify” the language from the Arab and Persian influence supported this interpretation. However, the language reform led to some extreme, pseudo-scientific enterprises such as “Sun-Language

Theory” (1935). It claimed that all languages originated from a proto-Turkic language from Central Asia. In a similar fashion, “Turkish historical thesis” (1932) proposed that the Turks were the descendants of the Aryan in Central Asia. They had to migrate because of the shortage of natural resources and created civilizations around the World.

Both theories represented a deliberate attempt to distance the national identity from its

Islamic and Ottoman past.

In his discussion of these reforms, Zürcher (2004) argues that not the ones targeting the high offices of Islam, but rather those targeting the popular religion (e.g.,

12 The office of Şeyḫülislām was already excluded from the cabinet and its powers were curtailed by the Young Turk reforms (Zürcher 2005:15).

13 Still, he recognized that there were some rational arguments for the change.

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closing of the shrines or replacing the Arabic prayer call, ezan, with a Turkish one), generated greater resentment among people. Moreover, unlike the offices (for example,

Şeyḫülislām), the elements of the popular religion did not disappear, but went underground. The unintended consequence was the further politicization of Islam

(Zürcher 2004:192). Zürcher (2004) also questioned the observations of early commentators of the Republic, who had an impression of huge changes in the society.

He claimed that the changes had a visible impact on the population of the cities and provincial towns, but, for the majority of the population who lived in the villages, they hardly made any difference.

Multiparty Period: Democratization or Authoritarian Persistence

The rule of the Democratic (or Democrat) Party (DP) which started in 1950 represented a turning point for Turkish politics. The landslide victory of the DP led to an overwhelming majority in the Parliament. Although it faced a more adamant opposition over time, the DP repeated its success in the next two general elections (in 1954 and

1957). Despite the euphoria surrounding the change to the multiparty system, it reveals also the troubles of the democracy in Turkey (Zürcher 2004).

It is true that in this period, free-market liberalism (in contrast to the statism of the previous government) combined with the foreign aid led to development and modernization program, especially in agriculture. The impressive economic progress in the first years, however, withered away as the limitations of the quick and short-term growth program became apparent. In terms of religious freedoms, the DP relaxed the restrictions, but this process already started in the last years of the RPP government.

The DP brought back the Arabic ezan, allowed the sale of religious literature and accepted the existence of autonomous religious organizations. These changes,

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however, do not indicate that the DP was straying away from secularism. Compared to the strong secular reforms of the one-party period, it only represented a more lenient orientation towards religion. Nevertheless, this was enough to galvanize the army, which stood away from politics during the one-party rule, to act against what it considered a reactionary threat towards the regime.

Finally, during the last years of its rule, the DP experienced an authoritarian turn.

The relationship between the RPP and DP deteriorated rapidly, as the latter decided to form a committee to investigate the activities of the opposition, “which were described as subversive and designed to instigate a military revolt” (Ahmad 2003:114). Before the committee released its report, in May 1960, the army took over government buildings and arrested the DP deputies. It was difficult, Ahmad argued, to understand the DP’s preoccupation with the opposition during these years, “in the light of the overwhelming majority they enjoyed” (Ahmad 1977:37). Heper, however, argued that given the state tradition represented by the bureaucratic intelligentsia, the electoral majority did not count much. That is why they strived to challenge the basis of legitimacy, and over- emphasized the “national will” (Heper 1985:107).

The period between 1960-80 is sometimes referred as the “Second Republic” because of the new constitution drafted in 1961. The new constitution introduced some substantial changes to the political life in Turkey. On the one hand, it was considered as a “liberal” constitution because it tolerated a wider range of political activities and provided more checks and balances. On the other hand, it established two institutions which became notorious in the following decades because of their influence on the civilian politics: an independent constitutional court which could invalidate laws as

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unconstitutional and a National Security Council, which consisted of Chief of Staff,

President and selected ministers. Originally established as an advisory council, it became more influential over policy decisions. Finally, the constitution established a bicameral system, in addition to the assembly, a senate was created. This bicameral system with oversight from other institutions aimed to prevent the power monopoly of a single political party, and it was successful to this end. For example, these changes effectively limited the ability of the majority government of the Justice Party (heir of the

DP) in 1965, compared to its predecessor.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a number of smaller political parties emerged in addition to the JP and RPP (which was not banned unlike the DP after the 1960 coup).

These parties, located both on the left and the right, showed that different political options became attractive to people as the country experienced rapid social change through urbanization, industrialization, and migration. These changes also influenced the center parties. For example, the RPP moved “left-of-center” emphasizing social justice and social security, whereas the JP adopted a more pronounced anti-communist stance.

In the 1970s, the country started to experience grave political problems. On the one hand, successive governments were unable to implement policy changes and turned out to be incompetent in dealing with the economic problems related to the import substitution policy and oil crises of 1973-74. On the other hand, political violence reached new levels as youth groups both on the left and right engaged in armed conflict and assassinations. Kurdish separatism was added to the list of problems. This myriad of problems provided enough pretext for a military coup in 1980.

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Ideological alignments became more prevalent in Turkey during the 1960s and

1970s, and religion as an ideological reference point seems absent in this brief description. This is not the case. For the first time in the 1970s, an Islamic political party, the National Salvation Party (NSP), was granted seats in the Parliament. Zürcher

(2004:247) argues that “to the surprise of many observers…there was no return to the strict secularist, or even anti-Islamic, policies of the years before 1945.” So, the relatively liberal period might have opened space for the (re)emergence of Islamic political actors as well. But an intellectual development, which had barely any impact on popular level in the 1970s, acquired far greater importance in the 1980s and 1990: the

Turkish-Islamic synthesis.

The Turkish-Islamic synthesis is a brainchild of a small organization named “the

Hearth of Intellectuals,” established in 1970. The main concern of these ultra-nationalist intellectuals was the fragmentation of the right as a result of the rapid social and political changes in country. Such a fragmentation, according to them, would make the political actors on the right vulnerable to the threat of communism. Addressing this perceived threat, the Hearth proposed a synthesis that would bridge over the ideological gap in the right. The synthesis simply claimed that nationalism and Islam are not incompatible, on the contrary they were viewed inseparable. There is nothing novel in this idea as I discussed before; the novelty comes from how it was formulated and adopted by the military as the de facto official ideology (Bora and Can 2000; Eligur 2010; Jenkins

2008). In other words, the Turkish-Islamic synthesis represents the integration of Islam into the official ideology. In this way, the synthesis regurgitate some old concerns and obsessions, such as the concern about the future existence/well-being of country (Bora

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and Can 2000:163). It also repeated the distinction between civilization and culture: the former refers to the science and technology of the West which should be acquired earnestly, and the latter to the “national culture” which should be protected against foreign influences. A shift from secular nationalism to Turkish-Islamic synthesis might seem contradictory, but the common ideological elements between the two (emphasis on state authority, skepticism towards democracy, suspicion about the elements outside the national culture, and an ethnic conception of citizenship) made it possible (Bora and

Can 2000). Eventually, the synthesis was adopted by the civilian governments following the coup and became an opportunity structure for the Islamic political parties (Eligur

2010). Thus, the post-coup period in the 1980s witnessed the return of the weakened center political parties as well as the once marginal Islamic political parties (Carkoglu

2008).

Discussion: Rethinking Culture and Political Trust

This historical overview illustrates why there is a constant focus on the polarization and social cleavages in the Turkish politics. From the very beginning, the modernization experience of, first the Empire and then the Republic, was presented as driven by the conflict between various groups striving to shift the locus of the state. My analyses in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 provide partial support for such an approach to the

Turkish politics.

This approach also fits well into the traditional political culture research as the latter strives to explain the congruence/incongruence between the political system and political culture. Thus, the integration of some social groups to the center of power while others were excluded is of special interest. However, the analysis of congruence/incongruence in the political culture literature was displaced by a focus on

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(democratic) stability/instability (Patrick 1984). The problem with this perspective is that certain cultural traits inherently regarded conducive to democracy, hence it led to the specific normative claims about the polity under analysis. Then, the question becomes how to avoid polarization and how to bridge the social cleavages for a “healthy” democracy.

Social anthropologist Jenny White’s interpretation of the Turkish national culture provides a different perspective, especially on the divide between religion and secularism:

Turkey’s tense confrontations…might not be examples of secularism versus religion…, but might be better described as struggles over blasphemy of the sacred, with secularists and the pious fighting over the designation of what is sacred, what is intrinsic to tradition and inviolable, and what lies outside the boundaries of identity sacralized by tradition (White 2013:5).

The main question is, then, about the boundaries of the national identity: how they are drawn and what does it mean to be a member of the nation. The complication is “the return of the repressed:”

[S]ocial and cultural divisions have become increasingly apparent in Turkish life. This has been in large part a consequence of the massive migration, during the 1980s, from the east and south-east to the large cities. The Anatolian people - village people, religious people, Kurdish people - have invaded the life-space of the secular and westernized middle classes. The return of the repressed (Robins 1996:75).

My point is that when repressed returns, it is not the same. As in the case of the

Turkish-Islamic synthesis, it may inspire a new ideological configuration which was later sponsored by the state. However, it might lead to ideologically incoherent, seemingly contradictory practices.14 According to White (2013:16), these contradictory practices

14 “[I]t is not uncommon for people to claim simultaneously liberal (liberal) and conservative (muhafazakar). In other words, they believe in a general framework of individual liberties and yet live (and

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are the consequence of the negotiation between “individual liberties that allow innovation” and “a collective logic that demands that [individuals] demonstrate group loyalty and adherence to community values.” Thus, the collective “cultural logic” influences the range of possible answers to the question of identity, and individuals have to adjust their strategies accordingly. However, there is a limitation in this explanation about how cultural logic works. I argue that the emphasis on community values (as shared values) hides a dimension of culture. This dimension of culture is captured by Laitin in his exchange with Wildavsky on political culture (Laitin and

Wildavsky 1988). He asks “[o]nce we accept that within a culture there are diverse strands of opinion and conflicting values, what can be deduced from the notion of people ‘sharing’ a culture?” (Laitin and Wildavsky 1988:589). Laitin’s answer was

“points of concern.” It refers to what people worry about, their uncertainties, but also their fears and anxieties. In the case of Turkey, there are several examples of these points of concern. One of them is already mentioned by White: the meaning of being a member of the nation. There is a constant effort for defining and redefining the boundaries of the nation. The historical overview in the previous sections provides other examples: the anxiety of modernization (and being too late for it), the concern about losing cultural identity while striving to attain the level of contemporary civilization

(“muasır medeniyet seviyesi”), and finally the fears about the future well-being of the state, which is surrounded by the enemies within and without. These shared concerns

demand that others live) according to a collectivist logic that denies certain rights. This is true for well- meaning secularists who believe veiling oppresses women, and therefore support the ban that keeps covered women from attending universities, as for pious Muslims who try to ban alcohol consumption ‘for the good of society’” (White 2013:17).

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and fears make talking about political culture more meaningful considering the diversity of groups and proliferation of identities. And this is also why Turkish sociologist Ferhat

Kentel told White (2013:18) that “Turkish national culture…is like a balloon with lots of bulges. When you inflate it, the bulges disappear.”

As understood in the literature, political trust cannot be related to this concept of culture immediately. As the evaluative orientation towards the political objects (in other words, object-oriented), it necessarily fell outside the framework suggested by this discussion. This does not mean that the previous research on political trust was misleading or in vain, rather it means that the potential of political trust as a concept was not fully realized. Beyond its thin definition, political trust can be enriched with a different theoretical approach.

I argue that Möllering’s approach to the concept of trust is a candidate for this task. His model is based on three terms that capture what trust is: expectation, interpretation, and suspension. According to Möllering, “trust can be imagined as the mental process of leaping – enabled by suspension – across the gorge of the unknowable from the land of interpretation into the land of expectation.” (Möllering

2001:412). Land of interpretation refers here to “good reasons,” in other words, the bases of trust. When one asks in research what predicts trust, the answers are about these good reasons. Möllering argues that this is the most widely explored area in the literature. The destination, favorable expectations, refers to the output of the trust process which could become input to other actions (such as cooperation, social capital)

(Möllering 2001:415).

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So, his main contribution to the analysis of trust is suspension, the leap of faith.

He argues that good reasons will not directly lead to trust: “[Trust] stands for a process in which we reach a point where our interpretations are accepted and our awareness of the unknown, unknowable, and unresolved is suspended.” (Möllering 2001:414). My argument is that in the case of the political trust, this area of the unknown is larger compared to interpersonal trust. Unlike interpersonal trust, in which the sides of trust relationship have knowledge about each other, political trust is one-sided and asymmetric (Möllering 2013).

Thus, the modes of identification, the concerns, fears, and obsessions become more important as a push to make the leap. Although inevitably speculative, this might explain, for example, the situation of very low levels of social trust, but relatively high levels of political trust in Turkey. The modes of identification (e.g., nation and religion) that came to dominate the majority (beyond their particular allegiance, level of religiosity) over decades might be a factor. Following Kentel’s metaphor, during times of crisis, the culture would be “inflated” and led to the revival of the old concerns, for instance, about the future well-being of the state and the differences disappear between groups might disappear, at least to a certain extent.15 This inflation might cause a rally

‘round the flag effect which was discussed in Chapter 4. Even when certain “good reasons” were absent, this might keep trust levels high enough and prevent an all- encompassing trust deficit from happening.

15 The analysis in Chapter 3 indicates that this is less likely for the supporters of the Pro-Kurdish parties; there is a deeper problem of identification with the Turkish national culture.

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CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION

Introduction

Trust is a public good; it is fragile and hard to establish once it is lost. It involves a certain degree of uncertainty. It does not make sense to talk about trust in the case of complete knowledge or complete ignorance; trust operates in the gray area between them. It is a social lubricant, enabling smooth functioning in the social world. It is relational; so, it is directed to others, or more specifically, it involves expectations about others. Moreover, most of the time, these expectations are formed about an object. As it operates in the area between knowledge and expectations, it has a temporal dimension and requires a leap of faith about future outcomes.

This dissertation focuses on one form of trust, namely political trust. Political trust has been considered as a middle-range indicator of support located between the diffuse support (e.g., support for regime principles) and specific support (e.g., support for everyday political actors). Thus, political trust captures individuals’ orientations towards the political system and its parts (i.e., institutions) without dissolving into abstract principles and incumbent evaluations. In reality, however, it is much more difficult to make these distinctions. Nevertheless, it is a secondary issue for scholars studying political trust.

The literature on political trust has been dominated by studies focusing on the determinants and correlates of political trust. What explains political trust has become such a salient analytical concern, because of the argument that the Western world is experiencing a crisis of institutional confidence. Thus, the literature has emerged in a very context-specific way by focusing on Western Europe and the United States. This situation has changed in the 2000s. The literature has extended to Eastern European,

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East Asian, and Latin American countries. Although there are some valuable studies on political trust in Turkey, it remains a relatively understudied topic.

This dissertation aims to contribute to the literature on political trust in Turkey. In each chapter, I analyze political trust from a different perspective and with a different analytical strategy. First, I examine political trust in Turkey and selected Muslim majority and European countries, comparatively. I also take into account a factor, individual religiosity, which has been neglected in the political trust literature. Second, I analyze the relationship between political trust and party preference to see whether it is meaningful to argue about polarized political trust in Turkey along party lines. Third, I explore trends in political trust in Turkey to identify the periods of upward and downward trends as well as to evaluate the impact of important political events on these trends.

Finally, I provide a reading of Turkish political history to understand political-cultural elements shaping political trust orientations in Turkey and to suggest a new way to think about the concept of political trust.

Summary of Findings

Chapter 2 is motivated by two objectives. First, it takes up the exceptionalism argument which claims that Turkey is distinct from other Muslim majority countries and

Muslim majority countries are distinct from other countries (mainly liberal democracies).

The first distinction is based on the Turkish experience of modernization and secularization, which leads to a relatively successful implementation of democratic institutions, whereas the second distinction is based on the resilience of authoritarianism in the Muslim majority countries and failure of democratic institution building. By being an exception of exception, Turkey is presented as a case of success although not without problems. Using cross-national survey data, the analysis in this

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chapter explores whether such exceptionalism, if it exists at all, manifests itself in individuals' political trust orientations. Comparing Turkey with the selected Muslim majority and European countries, the analysis examines whether factors explaining political trust are different across countries and institutions. Second, the analysis includes religion as an explanatory factor which is neglected in the political trust literature. Individual religiosity is widely used in studies focusing on support for democracy in Muslim majority countries but does not attract much scholarly attention in the research on political trust. Nevertheless, religion comes into the picture, when the exceptionalism argument is formulated, as a cultural force shaping individuals' orientations.

The results in Chapter 2 show that the exceptionalism argument is not supported by the analysis. Regarding the factors and how they explain political trust across countries, it is not meaningful to group countries into categories such as "Muslim majority." The analysis results support Hutchinson and Johnson's (2017) finding that "at the individual level, the attitudes and characteristics expected to positively or negatively affect political trust coincide with the majority of previous literature based in European and North American contexts."

Individual religiosity is also correlated with political trust, but its strength and direction vary from one country to another. It is possible to argue that individual religiosity is a better predictor of political trust in Muslim majority countries compared to

European countries, but this does not indicate any systematic difference. In fact, Muslim majority countries are different from each other as much as they are different from the

European countries.

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In the case of Turkey, exceptionalism argument, or being "an exception within an exception," is also not supported. Regarding measures of individual religiosity, these measures perform consistently well in Turkey. The analysis shows that religious people are more likely to trust all institutions in Turkey. However, the performance of the measures of individual religiosity is not enough to single out Turkey as an exceptional case. First, for some measures of individual religiosity, there are Muslim majority countries having similar results to Turkey. And second, concerning the factors derived from cultural, performance-based or micro-level political approaches, Turkey is not distinct from other countries.

Generally speaking, the analysis shows that taking countries and institutions separately would reveal the diversity among them. Instead of index construction and data pooling, which are not appropriate in this context, such an approach prevents hasty generalizations and calls for attention to the context-specific characteristics in future studies. Following this analysis, I proceed to examine political trust in Turkey from a different perspective.

In Chapter 3, the relationship between political trust and party preference is analyzed. What inspired the analysis in this chapter is a research strand in the U.S. which argues that mass polarization manifests itself in political trust. Unlike previous studies which found little evidence for mass polarization, studies following this strand shows that it is possible to talk about polarized political trust, especially along party lines.

Historically, polarization is a persistent theme in Turkey, as several dichotomies

(e.g., religious-secular, Turk-Kurd, Alevi-Sunni, urban-rural) dominate politics in the

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country. Considering recent studies on party identities and partisan polarization in

Turkey, especially in recent years under the JDP rule, I expect to find evidence for a substantial effect of party preference on political trust, and for a manifestation of partisan polarization in political trust.

The results show that party preference is a strong predictor of political trust in

Turkey. However, its effect varies from one institution to another based on the parties in comparison. For example, being a RPP or NMP voter in 2011 does not significantly increase odds of trust in army compared to a JDP voter. However, the opposite is the case for trust in government or parliament; voters of RPP and NMP are less likely to trust in these institutions compared to a JDtionP voter in 2011. One important finding here is that voters of pro-Kurdish parties consistently have smaller odds of trust in all institutions. Thus, they stand apart from the voters of other parties.

The results also show that the army, courts/justice system, and police enjoy higher levels of trust, and party preference (except for the voters of the pro-Kurdish parties) is less likely to have an effect on trust in these institutions. Party preference has a negative effect on trust in government and parliament consistently for the voters of opposition parties (the RPP, NMP, DPS/PDP) compared to the voters of the ruling party

(the JDP). Still, it is possible to find those who trust in government and parliament among the ranks of these opposition parties.

These results indicate that the hypothesis of polarized political trust along party lines is not supported in Turkey, at least for the period covered in the data. One might argue that the country has experienced widespread polarization in recent years and it has become a stronger factor explaining political trust. This argument might be true, but

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even its proponents should acknowledge that the effect of party preference varies from one political party to another and it is not same for all institutions.

Chapter 4 focuses on trends in political trust in Turkey. Unlike the previous two chapters and the majority of the studies in political trust literature, the analysis explores changes in trust levels over time by constructing pooled time-series data. While identifying upward and downward trends, it evaluates the possible impact of important political events of the time, such as elections, military memorandums, scandals, and economic crises.

Findings from this analysis reveal that political trust declined between 1996-2001.

The low economic performance, scandals, military memorandum, and rising violent ethnic conflict are possible explanations of the decline during this period. The first period is followed by a period of upward trend in political trust, starting with the 2002 elections which pushed dominant political parties of the previous period out of political arena. The JDP government enjoys widespread support which led to electoral success and increasing vote share in 2007 elections. The improved economic and political performance is reflected in the trust levels as all institutions experience an upward trend.

However, in 2007, a period of decline started. Although it did not develop into a crisis characteristic of the late 1990s, political tensions increased in the country. The lowest point in political trust was observed in the second half of 2013. However, the downward trend reversed after this point. It is a curious situation considering that the political atmosphere in the country has not improved during this period: government was criticized because of its economic and foreign policy. One local election, one

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presidential election, two general elections, and finally, a constitutional referendum kept political tensions high. Finally, and most importantly, a coup attempt took place in July

2016 and failed, but left the country in a tenuous political atmosphere. One possible explanation for this increase is the rally ‘round the flag effect. The high frequency of the political events observed during this period might cause a perception of crisis, a threat to the very existence of the state, which, in return, lead more people to express trust in institutions.

Chapter 5 embarks on a different inquiry compared to previous chapters. Unlike these chapters which analyze data to test models or explore trends, it provides a historical reading of Turkish politics. Through this reading, it aims to reveal some characteristics of political culture in Turkey which shape political trust. Based on this reading, it is possible to see two interrelated processes at work: the modernizing impulse and the emergence of bureaucracy. These processes show that far from being a triumphant march of reason, or an inevitable consequence of historical progress, the late Ottoman modernization is full of struggles between different actors finding their way into the centers of power while pushing others out of it. The transition to the Republican regime and the secular nation-state was presented by later historiography as the natural outcome of this modernization process whereas the history shows us an indeterminate richness. This indeterminate richness kept posing problems for the new Republican regime as the (ethnic and religious) elements that were pushed aside were returning (In reality, some of them did not leave at all. For instance, religion was still around in a different form under the control of the state). As the country experienced democratic transition, economic transformation, urbanization, and internal migration, "the repressed

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returned." However, the Freudian metaphor ("return of the repressed") was not used to its full extent. When the repressed returns, it is not "the same." It interacts with what is already present, for example, new forms of nationalism, and revives old fears, obsessions, concerns. The concern about "the future well-being of the state" is a primary example.

Following this historical reading, Chapter 5 suggests rethinking political trust in a new way to fully grasp the relevance of these fears, obsessions, and concerns to understand the dynamics of political trust. Rather than thinking political trust as an object-oriented evaluation, it recommends turning to the act of trust itself, which is now understood as a leap from the land of interpretations to the land expectations. In the case of the political trust, which is one-sided and has a wide gap between two lands

(interpretations and expectations), the concerns become important as a push for the leap, even if some good reasons, such as high economic performance, are absent.

Limitations and Future Directions

This dissertation contributes to the growing area of research on political trust, and to an increased understanding of dynamics and determinants of political trust in

Turkey. However, it is not without limitations. Some of these limitations were inherited from the literature mostly on methodological grounds. For example, the measures of political trust capture the presence/absence of trust, but not active distrust or mistrust which is equally important. Another example is the absence of an analysis of the consequences of political trust in Turkey. Lack of longitudinal survey data makes such an inquiry difficult, if not impossible.

There are two other limitations specific to this study. First, it does not utilize contextual variables (for example, GDP per capita, Corruption Perception Index) in the

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empirical analyses in Chapter 2 and 3. Models are estimated for each country and institution separately for methodological (e.g., construction of indices is not feasible) and theoretical reasons (e.g., separate models reveal diversity which is neglected in the previous studies). However, these modeling decisions preclude the use of country-level factors. Second, the analysis cannot include some individual-level factors deemed important in the literature, because of data limitations. For example, no question on ethnicity was asked in the WVS data for Turkey in 2007 and 2011. Proxy measures, such as language at home, are not helpful either because they underrepresent ethnic minorities.

The dissertation recommends two general directions for future research, each with several suggestions. The first direction concerns the theory of political trust.

Theoretical approaches are relatively successful in explaining determinants of political trust, but they are not very helpful about the consequences of political trust. Beyond the lack of longitudinal data, this discrepancy is related to an overarching interest in the stability of the political systems. It has been assumed that political trust has an impact on political stability, but after decades of research, this assumption is questionable.

More attention should be paid to the consequences of political trust, especially in different contexts. Not only consequences but determinants and status of political trust might vary between countries. Thus, context-specific explanations should be encouraged in this field as well. Regarding theory, political trust literature should also establish better connections with the wider literature on trust. Adapting Stephen Welch's

(2013) argument for political culture to political trust, opening disciplinary exchange will improve the theory and help to accommodate the broad implications of the concept of

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trust. Since there is already an interest in the relationship between social and political trust, this step would not be unfamiliar. Theories of political trust should also clarify the relationship between political trust and legitimacy. Although the relationship between the two is a lurking issue in the literature, few studies are addressing it directly. Further inquiry about their relationship would also improve our understanding of the possible consequences of political trust.

The second direction concerns methodology. Survey data analysis dominates research practice in the field. One reason is that political trust as an area of study emerges following the behavioral revolution in the social and political sciences in the

1960s. However, it can utilize other methods. Ethnographies or in-depth interviews would improve our understanding of the political trust evaluations. They can also extend the research to hard-to-reach populations, especially to minorities which are not well represented in the surveys. Other quantitative techniques, such as experiments and simulations, would provide further insights into the dynamics of political trust. Even in the case of survey data analysis, new modeling techniques and estimation methods would help to improve model specifications and to become more thoughtful about analytical decisions.

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APPENDIX A QUESTION WORDING AND RESPONSE CATEGORIES

Table A-1. Response categories of confidence/trust in institutions Survey Series Question Type Categories

WVS/EVS Institutional Confidence: For each one, 4-point 1 “A great deal” could you tell me how much confidence 2 “Quite a lot” you have in them: is it a great deal of 3 “Not very much” confidence, quite a lot of confidence, 4 “None at all” not very much confidence or none at all?

WVS/EVS Social Trust: I’d like to ask you how 4-point 1 “Trust completely” much you trust people from various 2 “Trust somewhat” groups. Could you tell me for each 3 “Do not trust very much” whether you trust people from this 4 “Do not trust at all” group completely, somewhat, not very much or not at all?

WVS/EVS(TR)* Institutional Confidence in Turkey: How 4-point 1 “Trust completely” much do you trust in institutions that I 2 “Trust somewhat” am going to ask about? Please answer 3 “Do not trust very much” using trust completely, trust somewhat, 4 “Do not trust at all” do not trust very much, or do not trust at all.

EB I would like to ask you a question about 2-point 1 “Tend to trust” how much trust you have in certain (binary) 2 “Tend not to trust” institutions. For each of the following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it.

*My translation

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APPENDIX B CODING AND DESCRIPTION OF VARIABLES

Table B-1. Coding and Frequencies (Turkey: WVS 2007 & WVS 2011)

Label Values Value Labels missing Freq. % missing Freq. %

Trust: Army 1 None at all 18 (1.34%) 74 5.57 35 158 10.06 2 Not very much 110 8.28 (2.18%) 238 15.16 3 Quite a lot 269 20.26 481 30.64 4 A great deal 875 65.89 693 44.14

Trust: Police 1 None at all 23 (1.71%) 145 10.96 21 168 10.61 2 Not very much 230 17.38 (1.31%) 246 15.53 3 Quite a lot 469 35.45 585 36.93 4 A great deal 479 36.21 585 36.93

Trust: Courts/Justice system 1 None at all 31 (2.30%) 113 8.59 47 181 11.62 2 Not very much 216 16.43 (2.93%) 311 19.96 3 Quite a lot 509 38.71 620 39.79 4 A great deal 477 36.27 446 28.63

Trust: Government 1 None at all 42 (3.12%) 205 15.72 41 257 16.43 2 Not very much 281 21.55 (2.55%) 401 25.64 3 Quite a lot 467 35.81 537 34.34 4 A great deal 351 26.92 369 23.59

Trust: Political parties 1 None at all 54 (4.01%) 341 26.39 52 354 22.79 2 Not very much 525 40.63 (3.24%) 656 42.24 3 Quite a lot 344 26.63 422 27.17 4 A great deal 82 6.35 121 7.79

Trust: Parliament 1 None at all 68 (5.05%) 204 15.96 62 235 15.23 2 Not very much 307 24.02 (3.86%) 466 30.20 3 Quite a lot 493 38.58 585 37.91 4 A great deal 274 21.44 257 16.66

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Table B-1. Continued

Label Values Value Labels missing Freq. % missing Freq. %

Trust: Civil service 1 None at all 57 (4.23%) 206 15.98 64 185 12.01 2 Not very much 368 28.55 (3.99%) 445 28.88 3 Quite a lot 581 45.07 690 44.78 4 A great deal 134 10.40 221 14.34

Voting (WVS-2007 & 2011) 1 JDP 301 (22.36%) 451 43.16 251 649 47.93 2 RPP 160 15.31 (15.64%) 395 29.17 3 NMP 88 8.42 123 9.08 4 DSP 69 6.60 0 0.00 5 PDP 0 0.00 64 4.73 6 No Vote 178 17.03 97 7.16 7 Other 99 9.47 26 1.92

Particular social trust 29 (2.15%) 18 (1.12%)

General social trust 91 (6.76%) 69 (4.30%)

Financial satisfaction 5 (0.37%) 21 (1.31%)

Postmaterialism index 0-5 43 (3.19%) 80 (4.98%)

Political interest 1 Not at all interested 3 (0.22%) 444 32.99 14 266 16.57 2 Not very interested 374 27.79 (0.87%) 495 30.84 3 Somewhat interested 409 30.39 685 42.68 4 Very interested 116 8.62 145 9.03

Religious attendance 0 Never 25 (1.86%) 431 32.63 25 426 26.96 1 Less often 411 31.11 (1.56%) 607 38.42 2 Monthly 26 1.97 63 3.99 3 Weekly 269 20.36 293 18.54 4 More than once a week 184 13.93 191 12.09

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Table B-1. Continued

Label Values Value Labels missing Freq. % missing Freq. %

Age 0 (0.00%) 0 (0.00%)

Sex 0 female 0 (0.00%) 670 49.78 0 (0.00%) 825 51.40 1 male 676 50.22 780 48.60

Education level 1 -Not applicable; No formal 0 (0.00%) 109 8.10 0 (0.00%) 91 5.67 2 education 51 3.79 63 3.93 3 -Inadequately completed 484 35.96 446 27.79 4 elementary 35 2.60 45 2.80 5 -Completed (compulsory) 97 7.21 136 8.47 6 elementary 45 3.34 45 2.80 7 -Incomplete secondary school: 361 26.82 468 29.16 8 -Complete secondary school: 14 1.04 74 4.61 9 -Incomplete secondary: 150 11.14 237 14.77 university- -Complete secondary: university- -Some university without -University with degree/Higher education

Scale of income 1-10 27 (2.01%) 34 (2.12)

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APPENDIX C LOCALLY WEIGHTED SCATTERPLOT SMOOTHING

Figure C-1. Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoother (Loess) for Trust in Institutions (Span=0.5)

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Figure C-2. Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoother (Loess) for Trust in Institutions (Span=0.9)

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APPENDIX D OPTIMIZATION PLOTS

Figure D-1. Optimization Results: Trust in Government (Turkey: EB 2004-2017)

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Figure D-2. Optimization Results: Trust in Parliament (Turkey: EB 2004-2017)

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APPENDIX E TRENDS IN POLITICAL TRUST WITH SELECTED EVENTS

Figure E-1. Trends in Political Trust with Elections and Referendums (Turkey: EB 2004-2017)

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Figure E-2. Trends in Political Trust with Other Events (Turkey: EB 2004-2017)

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Figure E-3. Trends in Political Trust, Combined (Turkey: EB 2004-2017)

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Tahir Enes Gedik’s research interests include political sociology, historical sociology, and sociological theory. He holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology (Middle

East Technical University, 2009) and a master’s degree in sociology (Middle East

Technical University, 2012). His dissertation work focuses on the political trust in

Turkey. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Florida in the spring of

2018.

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