DOI: 10.11648/j.hss.20261405.16 ISSN: 2330-8184

Networks of Power and Political Order in Contemporary Turkey

Shaul Gabbay
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The transformation of Turkish politics during more than two decades of Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule has generated a substantial literature on democratic backsliding, presidentialism, populism, clientelism, political Islam, and competitive authoritarianism. These perspectives have considerably advanced understanding of Turkey's changing political order, but they tend to privilege either formal institutions or regime-level characteristics. This article develops a complementary relational explanation. It argues that political power in contemporary Turkey is produced through the interaction of formal institutions with networks connecting political parties, state bureaucracies, municipalities, businesses, religious communities, civil society organizations, families, local intermediaries, and individual citizens. Formal institutions establish authoritative positions and control important resources, but networks shape access to those positions and influence how resources, information, opportunities, protection, and political influence circulate. Drawing on the literature on embeddedness, social capital, brokerage, clientelism, business-state relations, local government, digital surveillance, religious organization, and Kurdish politics, the article traces the historical foundations of relational politics in Turkey and examines their transformation during the AKP era. It develops the concepts of social liability and network revaluation to explain why connections that provide resources under one configuration of political power may generate dependency, exclusion, suspicion, or exposure when that configuration changes. The Turkish case demonstrates that political transformation involves more than institutional change. It entails the construction, displacement, fragmentation, and revaluation of networks. Contemporary Turkey is therefore best understood as a networked political order in which formal authority and relational power are mutually constitutive.

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