Understanding Turkey’s Political Transformation: Mechanisms, Actors, and Perceptions

This Thematic Issue (TI) explores Turkey's gradual yet steady shift under the rule of Justice and Development Party (AKP thereafter) to autocratization. The TI has two objectives. Inspired by Szen's (2020: 232) call to "clarify mechanisms of autocratization and democratic collapse", it, first and foremost, attempts to qualify the country's political transformation, beyond its strikingly obvious characteristics such as the personalization of power and the increasingly blurred boundaries between the party and the state.