Do protest bans make police repression more acceptable? Experimental evidence on the effects of legal repression from Turkey

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In explaining whether protest repression incites or suppresses mobilization, research on the repression–dissent nexus has underlined the importance of how the public views protests or their repression. This literature, however, generally does not differentiate between various forms of protest repression, examining primarily police violence; nor does it account for possible interactions between these various forms of repression. In this paper, emphasizing the varied and multilayered nature of repression, we posit that legal forms of repression can legitimize police repression in the eyes of the public. Using a 2 × 3 vignette survey experiment in Turkey, we find that the declaration of a protest ban prior to a protest increases public approval of subsequent police repression and more forceful forms of repression. This effect varies by protest issue, gender, and individuals' predisposition to comply with state decisions. Contrary to our expectations, however, it does not vary by the partisan identity of respondents. Using original data from an authoritarian context, this article contributes to the literature on the interplay between protest repression and public opinion by showing that legal repression operates not only through deterrence but also by generating public support for subsequent police repression.