This is the story of how Turkey went from liberal to illiberal democracy, adapted and generously quoted from Murat Somer's article, "Turkey: The Slippery Slope from Reformist to Revolutionary Polarization and Democratic Breakdown"
1. Polarized politics elevates the partisan fighters on the right, and marginalizes the compromisers.
First, polarizing politics and discourse empowered opportunistic and revanchist actors within the AKP while weakening more coolheaded actors with a stronger commitment to democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, and compromise. Hence, political actors who could support de-polarization and genuine democratization lost leverage within the AKP bloc.
2. Post-truth politics destroys common ground for democracy; Spiraling polarization elevates more authoritarian leaders.
Second, polarization supported post-truth politics, undermining any existing common ground for democracy. The AKP’s rhetoric vilified the opposition, “old elites,” and the existing political system, often by exaggerating and distorting the truth, if not by fabricating outright lies. These discursive developments crowded out views within the pro-AKP partisan discourse that were relatively more grounded in truth, while justifying more and more authoritarian policies. The polarizing discourse seems to have reached a critical mass (Somer 2001) and gained a self-propagating momentum, perhaps even spiraling out of the control of party leaders—at least of moderate leaders who would have resisted the pernicious kind of polarization.
3. A captive partisan constituency overlooks and supported the breakdown of democratic institutions, and even supports corruption and outright law-breaking by their side.
Hence, third, all these factors increasingly nurtured a captive and partisan constituency. This constituency became increasingly willing to support, overlook, and, at times, demand not only the reformation but also the capturing and revo- lutionary dismantling of existing democratic institutions and divisions of powers. Captive audiences became increasingly ready to condone growing corruption, violations of the rule of law, and opportunistic grabbing of power and wealth by the party and its clients.
4. Polarization infects media, business, and civil society, destroying their potential as bridge-building institutions.
This third mechanism triggered the fourth one, which can be called the “dwin- dling channels of bridge-making.” Relatively nonpartisan agencies and institu- tions that harbored actors with mixed or noncommitted orientations and thus had the potential to contribute to bridge-building and de-polarization—such as those in the media, business, and civil society—were wiped out. Their ownership and control shifted to progovernment partisan actors as pro-opposition institutions were radicalized. Hence, polarizing-cum-transformative politics became more effective and forceful alongside the creation of crony capitalism, a partisan wel- fare state, and progovernment civil society and media, which became the financi- ers, justification, and mouthpieces of such politics (Yoruk 2012; Aytaç 2014; Kaya 2014; Gürakar 2016; Yes ̧il 2016).
5. Vilification of state institutions becomes counter-productive, so blame shifts to potential de-polarizers
Fifth, as the AKP increasingly captured the state, the vilification of state insti- tutions became a self-defeating strategy. To continue the politics of polarization and maintain their support base, pro-AKP actors had to shift the blame onto other internal and external targets, which included many potential agents of de-polarization.
6. Right-wing actors attack an independent judiciary, destroying its ability to provide "horizontal accountability"
Sixth, all these policies—and the reactions of the state institutions—meant that progovernment actors increasingly began to perceive the institutions of horizontal accountability, such as an independent judiciary, as a barrier to their goals. This suggests an extension of the argument by Slater (2013) and Slater and Arugay (2018), who see divided societal preferences— favoring either horizontal (elite- institutional) or vertical (i.e., popular) accountability—as a cause of polarization. Rather than, or in addition to, being a source of polarization, aversion to horizontal accountability can develop as a product of polarization. Indeed, while all right- wing Turkish political actors had prioritized popular support over institutional accountability, the more the AKP relied on polarizing-cum-transformative politics, the more it grew hostile toward any autonomous institution enforcing horizontal accountability (Özbudun 2014).
7. Polarization drives support for cult of personalized leadership, and elevates executive presidency to supreme power.
Seventh, polarization encouraged the personalization of politics and the demand for an executive presidential system within the AKP. By definition, polarization simplifies politics to a choice between “either-or” options (McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018). with growing polarization, these choices increasingly resemble path-dependent and identity-based attachments, as in fanhood and tribalism, rather than interest- or value-based choices, as in ideological loyalty and preference for a political program.
By its very nature, I would argue, presidentialism—and executive presidentialism—is likely to emerge as the institutional form that represents and organizes a severely polarized polity, because it has a similar logic. Presidentialism and the personalization of politics, too, simplify politics in the form of either-or choices between the personas of a few strong leaders. Hence, it seems to be no coincidence that, as political choices in Turkey became increasingly simplified to a choice of supporting one bloc or the other, they increasingly took the form of either trusting or distrusting President erdog ̆an. In this way, the AKP as a party and other contenders for power within the party were overshadowed by erdog ̆an’s personalized power (Lancaster 2014). Hence, there may be a causal relation between the synchronous rises of polarization and presidentialism—or rather “one strong man rules” (Stepan 2009; Svolik 2014; Diamond 2015).
8. The left opposition gets stuck. Seeking compromise legitimates the AKP's authoritarian style, but fighting back harder just escalates hostility from the AKP.
Eighth, these developments equally affected the opposition, which found itself between a rock and a hard place. It has oscillated between two strategies since the political confrontation in 2007. Trying to follow a strategy of opposing polarization and seeking compromise—for example, by toning down the anti- Islamist, or, later, anti-erdog ̆ an rhetoric—often served to legitimize AKP authori- tarianism and underhanded political tactics that defied democratic norms. But trying to develop its own polarizing-cum-transformative politics to bring down the government often ended up hardening the AKP camp even further.
For example, when attempting to prevent the executive presidential system the AKP had proposed, whenever the opposition focused on the system’s institu- tional flaws and authoritarian loopholes, they persuaded their own voters but failed to dent the progovernment voters’ personalized trust in erdog ̆an. when they tried to chip away at the trust between erdog ̆an and his supporters by tar- geting his personality and alleged corruption, they again ended up strengthening the progovernment bloc, which closed ranks to protect their leader, and they subjected themselves to the criticism that they were focusing on personality and not proposing alternative policies.
9. Political and bureaucratic elites attempt extra-constitutional strategies to restrain the AKP, but that just escalates polarization further.
Ninth, similar to cases such as Thailand and the Philippines (Slater and Arugay 2018), the political and bureaucratic elites contributed to the development of pernicious polarization when they tried to remove or discipline the AKP by using strategies that stretched constitutional boundaries—even when these were aimed at punishing the AKP’s own transgressions. The opposition also missed opportu- nities to reform democratic institutions based on cooperation with the AKP at critical junctures.
10. "Opposition parties failed to reinvent themselves as prochange actors" to make themselves more electorally competitive
Tenth, forced into a pro-status-quo position to obstruct the AKP’s polarizing- cum-transformative politics, opposition parties failed to reinvent themselves as prochange actors with new discourses, programs, and organizational forms (Somer 2007 and 2014b; Kumbaracıbas ̧ı 2009; Ayan Musil 2014). with the oppo- sition now including those who were non-Islamist center-right, doing so could have reestablished the electoral balance of power with the AKP, compelling the latter to act more democratically (LeBas 2011; Somer 2017).
Once the "downward spiral of authoritarian politics and democratic erosion" accelerated, it became hard to reverse. "Pernicious polarization" could have been avoided had the opposition made different choices.
In the end, these mechanisms locked the AKP, its rivals, and potential bridge- makers in a downward spiral of authoritarian politics and democratic erosion. The more polarizing politics proved effective, the more it took control of politics, required more of itself, and weakened democracy.
Until 2014 or so, pernicious polarization was likely preventable. One historical- institutional, one political-economic and organizational, and one agentic facilitat- ing factor seem to have undermined this possibility. Polarization built on the mutually exclusive Islamist and secularist narratives of the formative rift (Somer 2010a). These could be compared with ethnic and national “foundational myths,” which enhance pernicious consequences when they become the basis of polariza- tion (LeBas and Munemo, this volume). Polarizing-cum-transformative politics generated powerful stakeholders in the media, business, and “GONGO society,” i.e., NGOs sponsored or at times directly organized by the government or the governing party, that had political-economic interests in the continuation of polar- ized politics. Opposition actors performed poorly in uniting and renewing them- selves, due to limitations of power politics and ideology, personal shortcomings of self-restraint and talent, insufficient comprehension of the dynamics of polarizing- cum-transformative politics and, thus, an inability to develop novel strategies to control and redirect these dynamics for the purposes of democratic revival.