Turkey’s Decline into (Civil) War Economy: From Neoliberal Populism to Corporate Nationalism

In this story of rise and (impending) fall, the quandary to be explored is how Erdoğan’s Gramscian “passive revolution” has turned into a Schmittian “sovereign dictatorship.” This conjunctural intervention highlights how Erdoğan’s vision of “corporate sovereignty,” circumscribed by the structural limitations imposed on it by international finance and the global geopolitical matrix, navigated the sequences unleashed by the two revolutionary insurrections, the Arab Spring and the Kurdish movement for self-governance. Whether or not Erdoğan wins the June 2018 elections, he has exhausted his course as his sovereignty is based on a paranoid political narrative that is bound to implode. If he peacefully concedes power, the new parliament will have the immense responsibility of reconstructing all the institutions of the social formation.