World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

· NOT_DEFINED date: TUE 20, 11.30 am-1.30pm

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Istanbul Bilgi University (Turkey)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Nihal Incioglu

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: The 2000’s have witnessed significant changes in the Turkish political life. In this session we will mainly concentrate on the process of decentralization and the rise of local politics which are mainly an outcome of two major developments. The first one is the rise of Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power in central government, as a party whose victory is partially based on the performance of its leaders in local politics. The second one is the EU negotiation process, which is accelerated after 2004. This process also led to the important reforms in local governance. The papers in this session will discuss the effects of legal-institutional arrangements on local politics, and focus on the emerging conflicts in the process of implementation. The panel will have an interdisciplinary approach, as the panelists of this session are coming from different disciplines. Panelists have expertise in the area, moreover three of them are working on a research project on the capacity and willingness of the locally elected political actors in local democracy and the effects of these new reforms on their attitudes. This multidisciplinary research will cover mayors of the greater cities, municipal councillors of the greater cities as well as the provincial councillors in Turkey. The papers will not cover the major results of this specific research since it will not be completed until the Congress. However, the panelists may present some of the preliminary findings during the session.

Chair: Ayhan Aktar (Istanbul Bilgi University)

Paper presenter: Nihal Incioglu (Istanbul Bilgi University), “Turkish experience in decentralization and democratization”
The aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between decentralization and democratization in Turkey. Since its establishment in 1923 Turkish Republic has been a unitary state characterized by administrative centralization. The decentralizing reforms realized in the 1980’s have hardly contributed democratization at the local level, since the main concern was to increase efficiency in the provision of urban services rather than meeting the demands for participation and self-governance of distinct groups. The outcome of the reforms in 1980’s was the rise of local politics and persistence of clientelistic style of politics. The process of decentralization gained a new momentum in 2000’s under Justice and Development Party governments (AKP), a party with Islamist roots, whose founders were already in power in many municipalities and active in local politics. However, the EU process accelerated after 2004 seems to have contributed more to decentralization and democratization at the local level. The legal arrangements regarding different levels of local administration realized in 2005 envisaged the further transfer of power to the local level and the establishment of institutions and mechanisms for the participation of the residents. However, a brief look at the practices reveals the fact that these mechanisms hardly function due to the powers of the mayors. While the Kurdish nationalism stands as an obstacle to further decentralization, a recent trend is the recentralization of some functions and resources by the AKP government which may lead to the reproduction of central-local conflict.

Paper presenter: Sema Erder (Bahçe'ehir University), “Populism in local politics”
Historically Turkey has a centralized state tradition. Thus, during the Republican period the politics at national level was always dynamic, powerful and influential as compared to local politics. However, after rapid urbanization, to meet the urgent needs of new urbanites started to gain importance for the political parties in ‘the electoral democracy’ of Turkey. Thus, since 1960’s populist policies started to play an important role in the urban politics, such as informal labor market, informal housing areas and nowadays non-systematic distribution of social aid to urban poor. This paper will focus on how urbanization has created a medium for populist policies, and how these populist policies were influential on the rise of local politics in Turkey?

Paper presenter: Ay’e Güner (Marmara University), “Fiscal decentralization: yet to be completed”
Starting from 2002 Turkey has initiated several public administration reforms. In this context the archaic laws of local governments were renewed according to current conditions and in an effort to comply with the European Charter of Local Self Government which Turkey has signed and approved in 1992. The main feature of these laws was the devolution of an enlarged group of responsibilities besides classical local services. The transfer of expenditure responsibilities written under broad headings, such as ‘health’, ‘environment’, ‘social services and aid’, is bound to cause problems of coordination and overlapping between local governments and the branches of central government agencies. But, moreover, except for a change recently made in the transfer system, the revenue structure of local governments remains the same. This paper will examine the basic characteristics of the revenue structure of Turkish local governments, giving a notion of problems concerned with fiscal decentralization.

Paper presenter: Ali E’ref Turan (Marmara University (adjunct), Yönelim Research), “New trends in local elections”
In this paper the rise of local politics will be discussed from the perspective of changing trends in local elections. Until 1980’s local elections had minor importance for the voters, since local administrations were weak and financially dependent on the central government. In 1980’s Turkey met first decentralization reforms which envisage transfer of power and financial resources to the local level where municipalities became significant actors in local politics. Since then local elections started to gain importance and participation rates have increased. The outcomes of the local elections of 1990’s were divergent from the outcomes of proceeding / simultaneous national elections. The success of Welfare Party in local politics and municipalities in 1990’s, among other reasons, carried a part of its cadres in a new one which is Justice and Development Party, to power at the national level in 2002. This was a striking phenomenon which presented a different pattern in Turkish political life. This pattern was followed by the rise of ethnic politics, especially among Kurdish voters. The paper will expose the patterns by analyzing the electoral data since 1980’s.