Understanding the Post-Failed Coup Turkey: From State of Emergency to Permanent State of Exception
Institut Français d'Etudes Anatoliennes (Fransız Anadolu Araştırmaları Enstitüsü - IFEA)
Tarih : 05-05-2017 18:00 - 05-05-2017 21:00
Alper Kaliber (Kemerburgaz U.)
Understanding the Post-Failed Coup Turkey: From State of Emergency to Permanent State of Exception
Dans le cadre du séminaire « Sociologie politique de la Turquie contemporaine »
Conference will be delivered in English
Understanding the Post-Failed Coup Turkey: From State of Emergency to Permanent State of Exception
Dans le cadre du séminaire « Sociologie politique de la Turquie contemporaine »
Conference will be delivered in English
Register to the conference: Registration link
IFEA (Institut Français d'Études Anatoliennes)
Nuri Ziya sokak 10 PK 54, 34433 Istanbul
This
conference argues that Turkey is about to fall into the ‘emergency
trap’ where the state of emergency has turned out to be a permanent
‘state of exception’ institutionalized through excessively securitized
practices of the Turkish statecraft. Following Agamben, the state of
exception (SoE) may be defined as a paradigm of government where the
laws and norms of democratic regime are suspended by state elites
demanding not to be held responsible as they break these laws and norms
when facing a crisis. With the recently approved constitutional
amendments granting considerable executive and legislative powers to
presidency, the SoE is about to institutionalize as the dominant
paradigm of rule in contemporary Turkish politics. These constitutional
amendments grant the president the authority to issue decrees having
force of law in a wide range of issues, to declare the state of
emergency, to dissolve the parliament and recognise a broad authority
over the judiciary.
While in European cases SoE has been
applied as temporary suspension of the laws in force and has not led to a
radical reorganization of the juridical and political order, in Turkey
it is instrumentalized by the Turkish ruling elite to replace the
parliamentary system with the presidential one. This shift is justified
through an excessively securitized discourse where Turkey is waging its
second war of independence against diverse terrorist organizations
supported by the Western states. Evidence from the Turkish case reveals
that there exists an intimate relationship between securitization and
the ‘state of exception’. It also shows that the demand for
exceptionalism is voiced by the ruling elite as well as other
securitizing actors including pro-government media outlets, social media
commentators and trolls allegedly linked to the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP) government.