Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 

About: Southeast European and Black Sea Studies is an academic journal published by Routledge. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & European union. It has an ISSN identifier of 1468-3857. Over the lifetime, 816 publications have been published receiving 8619 citations. The journal is also known as: Southeast European and Black Sea studies & Southeast European and Black Sea Studies,.

Understanding Turkey’s democratic breakdown: old vs. new and indigenous vs. global authoritarianism

Abstract: Turkey’s ‘authoritarian turn’ in recent years indicates a democratic breakdown that can best be analysed by analytically distinguishing between two simultaneous developments. The first is the repro...

The EU’s political conditionality in the Western Balkans: towards a more pragmatic approach

Abstract: The article discusses the nature of the EU’s political conditionality in the Western Balkans, and the effort of the EU to manage the diversity of bilateral agreements in a small space with a mixed record of compliance. The Western Balkan region reveals special trends in the EU’s handling of the strategy of political conditionality, and some creeping contradictions and dangers are beginning to reveal the changing nature and the limits of conditionality. More specifically, the EU (a) is adding further, yet necessary, political conditions and criteria to weaker or more reluctant partners and emphasizes the ‘journey’ rather than the outcome of accession, affecting the credibility of the strategy; (b) is blending together normative, functional and realpolitik claims in the choice of its conditions, affecting the clarity of its intentions; (c) is pursuing, in some cases, a rigorous assessment of compliance and, in other cases, a more adaptable and pragmatic assessment, affecting the consistency of the process. ...

Turkey’s Diyanet under AKP rule: from protector to imposer of state ideology?

Abstract: This article focuses on the complex relations between Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (the Diyanet) and the AKP in the last decade. It claims that the Diyanet, under AKP rule, has been transformed into a pliable state apparatus geared towards implementing the political ideology of the ruling cadre. In exploring this recent transformation, it analyses the ways in which this institution’s role has become synchronized with the ruling party’s discourses and actions, by giving examples from recent discussions on gender, social media, political economy and relations with other social groups.

Existential insecurity and the making of a weak authoritarian regime in Turkey

Abstract: This paper seeks to explain Turkey’s rapid de-democratization from the conceptual perspective of existential insecurity, which accounts for the unwillingness of incumbents to share or relinquish power. The Kemalist era, the multi-party period and the early AKP era have all shown elements of the radicalizing effects of political insecurity and the weak institutions which stem from them. The concurrence of a revisionist Islamist project and geopolitical and ideological crises in Turkey’s overlapping neighbourhoods, however, have driven existential angst and insecurity among the incumbents to novel proportions. Under the conditions of this aggravated insecurity, the consolidation of a stable authoritarian regime appears unlikely, reducing the possible scenarios for Turkey’s immediate future to a weak and contested authoritarian arrangement or further escalation of conflict and instability.

The ambiguities of democratic autonomy: the Kurdish movement in Turkey and Rojava

Abstract: This paper traces the ideology of democratic autonomy, as developed by PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan from the libertarian and anarchist writings of Murray Bookchin, as an alternative to the authoritarian and centralist nation state, not only in the Kurdish-inhabited provinces, but in Turkey at large. It explores, first, the ideological underpinnings and second, the practical implementation of democratic autonomy both in south-eastern Turkey and in north-eastern Syria, or Rojava. Divergences between the two, I will argue, are not merely the result of contradictions between ideology and practice, or of the PKK’s enduring Leninist vanguardism, but also arise because the ideology itself remains ambiguous or implicit on the questions of party organization and the legitimacy of armed resistance. These ambiguities help to account for the apparent tension between grassroots anarchism and Leninist centralism in democratic autonomy, not only in practice but also in theory.