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Trustees Instead of Elected Mayors: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Removal of Kurdish Mayors in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2021

Serhat Tutkal Open the ORCID record for Serhat Tutkal [Opens in a new window]
Serhat Tutkal*
Affiliation:
Center for Social Studies, National University of Colombia
*
Email: stutkal@unal.edu.co
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Abstract

This article examines the Turkish State’s recent practice of removing pro-Kurdish mayors and appointing trustees in their place without holding new elections. By comparing previous cases of removals of pro-Kurdish mayors to post-2016 practices, it argues that the discursive shift in legitimizing recent anti-democratic governmental practices should be read in relation to authoritarian neoliberalism in Turkey. To this end, it analyzes a Twitter account dedicated to promoting public services of trustee-ran municipalities (oluyor.net) and 89 YouTube videos that feature the trustees themselves. By demonstrating the ways in which the trustees themselves promote their work in Kurdish-populated cities, it underlines the dangers of authoritarian neoliberalism in subordinating democratic mechanisms to economic development and providing better public services. However, by studying the results of the following 2019 local elections in these 89 trustee-appointed municipalities, this article shows that the local people mostly continue supporting democratic mechanisms by electing pro-Kurdish candidates even in unfair electoral conditions.

Keywords

ethnic politicspolitical partieslocal governmentauthoritarian neoliberalismTurkey

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Nationalities Papers , Volume 50 , Issue 6 , November 2022 , pp. 1164 - 1186
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© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Nationalities

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