More on the Turkish Elections

My second piece of the group blog Notes On Liberty, on the elections in Turkey

Notes On Liberty

This is a sequel to my recent post Turkish Elections: Some Hope, so is best read after reading its predecessor.

In the last post, I covered the National Assembly elections on the 24th June. The first round of the presidential elections will take place on the same day and there will be a run-off between the two main candidates on the 8th July, if no candidate gets more than 50% on the first round.

As by far the strongest personality in Turkish politics over the last 15 years, Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan was no doubt expecting to win in the first round easily. He did so in 2014 when he was first elected to the presidency at a time when the president’s powers were much smaller. The two largest opposition parties of the time (CHP and MHP) put up a joint presidential candidate little known to the public and who…

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Me on Foucault and 2 Types of Neoliberalism in a Turkish Journal

‘Foucault on Two Types of Neoliberalism: ORDO Liberalism and Anarcholiberalism, along with European Historical Roots’ (in English) in Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, latest issue. See linked pdf, my article starts page 187. It represents early work for a project on Foucault and liberty (also nodding towards work on philosophy of Europe).

Abstract

Michel Foucault is well known for writing on Neoliberalism, but the richness of his approach should be better understood, along with its place in his work as a whole. Foucault does not refer to Neoliberalism as one thing, but as divided into two types: Ordoliberalism and anarcholiberalism. That is between a more institutional version allowing for some state direction and a more anti-statist version. This overlaps with a distinction between Europe and the United States. It also connects with Foucault’s interests in the relation between the roles of Germany and France in European history with regard to state sovereignty and law. The interaction of France and Germany has produced various conflicting and coalescing ideas of liberty and the state up to the way Neoliberal ideas have circulated. In the context of Foucault’s own development, his investigations into Neoliberalism build on work on Enlightenment liberalism, bringing in Phenomenological anti-naturalism as a way of understanding the difference. It also builds on work on the development of political economy from its earliest texts to the work of Marx. The discussion of earlier political economy emphasises its place in a philosophy of history and humanism, which is recontextualised in Foucault’s work on Neoliberalism. Foucault’s work on the inevitability of blindness and subjectivity in epistemology, along with the role of subjectivity in ethics, also develops through the encounter with Neoliberalism.

Leaving the EU imposing double burden on UK citizens abroad

Brexit Britain. UK nationals living outside the UK in the EU are applying for citizenship abroad to retain rights they lose after Brexit. Some of these countries forbid dual citizenship so UK citizens are renouncing UK citizen ship. The Home Office takes the opportunity to raise fees for renouncing citizenship, though evidently its revenue is already increasing because of charges for renouncing citizenship. Didn’t Brexiteers tell us Brexit would reduce state bureaucracy? See this item in the Independent.

Turkish Elections: Some Hope

I’m back blogging at the group blog Notes On Liberty, I hope to blog more at NOL and here over the summer.

Notes On Liberty

What with being rather exhausted by an accumulation of projects in recent months, I have been extremely absent from Notes On Liberty. Teaching is over for the summer and I hope to make up for lost ground across a few areas, but first I must address the current situation in Turkey.

There will be early elections on 24th June for the National Assembly and the Presidency. If no candidates win an overall majority for the presidency, there will be a run off between the two leading candidates on 8th July. The National Assembly is elected through proportional representation (d’Hondt system, if you’re interested in the details). The elections were scheduled for November next year, so they are very early. The reason offered by the government is the need to complete the transition to a strongly presidential system in view of supposed administrative uncertainty interfering with government until the last…

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