Democracy and the Demise of National Developmentalism: Turkey in Perspective

I understand democracy to refer not only to the procedures for effecting the choice of a government, but also to the existence of civil rights, encoded in a legal framework of some durability. In this sense most of the transitions to democracy of the last decade appear incomplete. In a social context characterized by the domination of a strong state, the absence of established civil rights implies the reversibility of political arrangements such as procedural democracy. Only the entrenchment of civil rights and the construction of an inviolable private sphere would constitute a sufficient basis for the consolidation of political rights — and of a public sphere founded on these. Barrington Moore’s (1966) well-known maxim of ‘no bourgeois no democracy’ is appropriate to this discussion. While national developmentalism ruled in peripheral countries, especially when it was built upon the legacy of a strong state, as it was in the case of Turkey, neither the bourgeoisie, nor any other social group was in a position to struggle strongly for civil rights. Consequently, they could not defend democracy either. Now, with the collapse of national developmentalism, the bourgeoisie enjoy the potential for emancipating themselves from state tutelage, and, in the process, they have an interest in establishing a framework of civil rights. This possibility is the most encouraging sign for the consolidation of democracy on a strong foundation.