From neoliberal populism to neoliberal authoritarianism: The case of Turkey 2002-2017

Beginning from the 1980s, Turkey's neoliberal transformation with economic restructuring programs caused the disappearance of formal guarantees, hence ushered in flexibility in the employment structure of the labor regime and created a precarious society. Again, with the 1980s, the dissolution of the organized power of labor through deprivation of legal benefits and suppression ended in the impoverishment of society due to the ongoing privatization and marketization policies. In this context, the sustainability of neoliberalism has been contingent upon the maintenance of an invisible contradiction between dependent social forces and hegemonic classes. As a corollary, connecting society into the ideological, political and economic transformation through hegemony has emerged as a major problem. The sustainability problem of neoliberalism in this aspect has paved the way to the empowering of such parties as the AKP. They have made populist distribution policies a program of the "hegemonic project" instead of rights-based social policy practices, thus casting the veil of populism over the contradictions of the accumulation regime. Populism has taken an important place in the ideological and political connection of dependent classes to the hegemonic project with economic factors as well as non-economic factors. On the other hand, the fact that populism itself is a controversial concept also requires an answer to the question what populism is. In this study, certain approaches to populism are also laid out and discussed on the basis of the 2002-2017 AKP administration in Turkey, populist policies and populism's relationship with neoliberalism. Populism here is considered together with Bob Jessop's concept of "two-nations hegemonic project" and Poulantzas's concept of "authoritarian statism". We will further try to explain the period pointed out by the concepts of two-nations hegemonic project and authoritarian statism.