Revisiting the Boundaries between the ‘Norm’ and ‘Exception’ in Contemporary State Theory: Insights from the Turkish Case
Sebnem Oguz is Associate Professor of Political Science at Baskent University, Ankara. She received her PhD degree in Political Science from York University, Canada. Her dissertation is entitled “Globalization and the Contradictions of State Restructuring in Turkey”. Her research interests include state theory, political economy, Marxism, political regimes and Turkish politics. She is the author of “Rethinking Globalization as Internationalization of Capital: Implications for Understanding State Restructuring" (Science and Society, 2015), and co-author of “From Gezi Resistance to Soma Massacre: Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle in Turkey” (Socialist Register, 2015), “Rethinking Anti-Neoliberal Strategies through the Perspective of Value Theory: Insights from the Turkish Case” (Science and Society, 2007), and “Rescaling as a Class Relationship and Process: The Case of Public Procurement Law in Turkey” (Political Geography, 2006). Currently she is working on the authoritarian transformation of political regimes from a comparative perspective. She is a member of the editorial collective of Socialist Register and Praksis. From July to September 2018, she will be a EUME Fellow of the DAAD.
Revisiting the Boundaries between the ‘Norm’ and ‘Exception’ in Contemporary State Theory: Insights from the Turkish Case
The recent turn towards authoritarian state practices in many liberal-democratic countries has arisen a new interest in theories of authoritarian transformation. The rise of police violence, the decline in the accountability of governments and the use of exceptional state powers due to factors such as the post 9/11 security concerns have led scholars to reconceptualise the boundaries between ordinary and exceptional law. The anti-terrorist struggle initiated with the U.S. The Patriot Act in 2001 and replicated in many other countries, as well as the prolonged state emergency declared in countries such as France, has brought the question of the boundaries between the ‘norm’ and ‘exception’ forcefully back to the agenda of contemporary state theory. This research revisits these debates through a comparison of liberal, Schmittian and Marxian approaches. It is argued that Nicos Poulantzas’s differentiation between ordinary and exceptional state forms still serves as a useful starting point in this regard. This argument will be substantiated through an examination of the Turkish case, with an analytical focus on the prolonged state of emergency declared after the failed coup d’état on 15 July 2016.
