(Un)Democratic change and use of social sanctions for domestic politics: Council of Europe monitoring in Turkey

Abstract

Monitoring is the formal instrument through which the Council of Europe imposes social sanctions on its member countries by publicly exposing their wrongdoings. As a soft governance tool, monitoring is argued to have a limited impact on state policies. Yet, in Turkey, Council of Europe monitoring worked to promote pro-democratic change and then backfired through the escalation of authoritarian practices. This article shows that being subjected to Council of Europe monitoring can lead to democratic change if and when its sanctioning requirements fit the political agenda of the incumbents and empower them against domestic opponents. In the case of misfit, the political costs of aligning with the Regional Organisations’ sanctions increase for governments at home. Yet, as the Turkish case indicates, the outcome has not been inertia but rather the reverse as the government used the Council of Europe’s social sanctions to legitimise its undemocratic measures until it regained power in internal political struggles.

Regional sanctions and the struggle for democracy: Introduction to the special issue

“…We do so by acknowledging and critically scrutinising the diversity of regional approaches to democracy protection through sanctions. Six articles focus on specific ROs: ROs in the Americas (Palestini, 2020), the AU (Hellquist, 2020), the European Union (EU) (Closa, 2020), the CoE (Soyaltin-Colella, 2020), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Schembera, 2020), and LAS (Debre, 2020). A seventh contribution (Whitehead, 2020) has a comparative and cross-regional perspective.…”

“…Likewise, the CoE has, since its creation in 1949, allowed for suspension of membership rights in cases of violations of core values. On this basis, the CoE for instance suspended Greece in 1967 and Turkey in 1981 from the Parliamentary Assembly (Soyaltin-Colella, 2020; Whitehead, 1986). ROs in the Americas, such as OAS, MERCOSUR, the Andean Community (CAN), and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) (Palestini, 2020) have integrated sanctions into primary legislation through additional protocols.…”

Welcoming immigrants in Istanbul: Gendering faith-based and professionalised hospitality

“…Turkey has a long history of accession negotiations with the EU. However, especially during the last decade, there has been a reluctance to implement EU reforms and an increase in undemocratic measures (Soyaltin-Colella, 2020: 6). Additionally, the increasing tensions emerging from the EU’s reluctance to accept Turkey’s membership have led Turkey to adopt a more diplomatic approach to non-Western foreign policy (Donelli and Gonzalez-Levaggi, 2016).…”

Calling in "Sick": COVID-19, Opportunism, Pretext, and Subnational Democracy

“…3 Such "naming and shaming" can be especially common in non-crisis situations as a response to human rights abuses (Hafner-Burton 2008;Terman and Voeten 2018), though it can also apply across other domains (Friman 2015). This can include antidemocratic reforms (Sedelmeier 2017;Soyaltin-Colella 2020). This use of an adversary's distraction to pursue goals that they might otherwise object to is related to, but distinct from, a domestic government using diversionary foreign policy to distract its citizens from its own performance (for discussion of diversionary foreign policy, see Smith 1996;Pickering and Kisangani 2005).…”