Kızılkaya / Fıkıh Usulünde Sahabe Fetvasının Kaynaklık Değeri Cilt / Volume: • Sayı /Issue: • 2012

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Köroğlu / Political Liberalism in Turkish Politics in the 1990s
national identity, national solidarity, and developed policies on those topics in social 
platforms. Many of those concepts were brought up in the society level, rather than 
the State level. Some of these social groups that supported one or more of these topics 
gained power within time and were given some rights by the governments and started 
influencing state policies (Çaha, 1998, p. 26-27). The main dynamics of civil society was 
formed by those groups in 1980s of Turkey (Mardin, 2008; Erdoğan, 2005, p. 667-689; 
Tuncel, 2005, p. 709-739).
Turkish politics in the 1990s went through a transformation. Neoliberal policies and 
civil society policies in 1980s had a significant impact on this change and transforma-
tion. It is possible to summarize the outcomes of neo-liberalism and civil society poli-
cies which occupied the public agenda through the 1990s as such: The first impact was 
on developments and changes in economy in compliance with the neoliberal policies 
in the 1990s (Cizre Sakallıoğlu & Yeldan, 2000, p. 493; Ahmad, 2009, p. 244). As a result 
of these neo-liberal policies, great changes have emerged concerning market equi-
librium and its aspects related with social relations. With 1980s, irregularity prevailed 
in the market dynamics and this situation speeds up evolution toward the economy 
of mafia and corruption and causes an increase in illegal activities. Thus, the state has 
been transformed into a means of depredation and common wealth a meta of dep-
redation (Özkazanç, 2005, p. 642). Secondly, the ‘Kurdish, ‘Alavi’ and ‘Political Islam’ 
issues, which were based on identity and culture, were raised as a result of the current 
circumstances. Thirdly, discussions and analyses of state-society and individuals which 
were triggered and developed by civil society debates became popular. Lastly there 
was a fragmentation of policy in parallel to the transformation of the Turkish political 
system (Kalaycıoğlu, 1996, p. 57; Kahraman, 2010, p. 225-231). Indeed these four issues 
have included the basic codes of understanding political and social developments in 
Turkey in the 1990s. Meanwhile, some other formations, acting on a number of liberal 
codes have appeared. It is possible to take these formations on two levels. One level 
has become a party, New Democracy Movement (NDM) and the other has taken a 
part in the Turkish political life, named the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP). Besides these 
parties which were established by Turkish capitalists, respectively Cem Boyner and 
Besim Tibuk, there were some other modes of thought in parallel such as the “Second 
Republicans” and “Association for Liberal Thinking” (ALT). These groups are important 
in order to understand the liberal revival in early 1990s. 
The “Second Republicans” took to liberalism in an effort to have more democratization. 
In addition, they criticized the republic’s old authoritarian administration because it 
neglected the position of individuals against the state (Altan, 1997, p. 88). In this aspect, 
this group had a close connection with NDM in terms of thinking. ALT advocated total 
liberalization as the “New Right”. Pioneers of the corporate world also appeared in the 
same period. Although there was no exact organic tie-in between LDP and ALT, they 

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Human and Society
were close in terms of their ideas and both were established in almost the same years. 
Both parties basically took the mantle of liberalism against the problems of the official 
ideology during this period. When it comes to “Second Republicans”, they predicted 
a liberal state and society model based on pluralism and individualism against the 
central, bureaucratic state. According to the “Second Republicans”, who have defined 
the state as purified of ideologies, impartial and a tool serving the society, establishing 
democracy can be done through a serving state rather than Sultan State and an econ-
omy which is controlled by society instead of the state. “Second Republicans” wanted 
to add more democratic and multi-cultural objectives to the Özal neo-liberalism and 
also shared neoliberal policies on the economic stage. 
The ideas of “Second Republicans” had compliance with the NDM’s ideas which was 
established by Cem Boyner. NDM combined liberal economic policies and liberal polit-
ical principles rather than Özal’s singularly financial principles, similar to the “Second 
Republicans”. NDM drew attention to the three basic issues at that time and they 
pointed out that the sources of the problems come from the relationship between the 
state and the individual. According to NDM these three issues were: the economic cri-
ses, the Kurdish issue and the conflict between Islamism and Secularism and the solu-
tion to these problems could be handled with reference to the norms international 
law in relation between state and individual (YDH, 1994b). On the issue of freedoms, 
NDM voiced the same ideas as Özal. According to NDM, the most important of these 
freedoms is freedom of speech, the freedom of religion and conscience. The third and 
last is the freedom of enterprise (YDH/PEK, 1994, p.11-12). NDM took these freedoms 
as the basic principles of political liberalism, not only as financial freedoms. Thus NDM 
indicated that society can only be developed by relying on these three basic freedoms. 
In this regard, secularism and the Kurds were the subjects which were put on the 
agenda frequently by the NDM (YDH Bildirisi, 1993, p.181-191).
The other organization to defend liberal values in the 1990’s Turkey was the 
Association of Liberal Thinking (ALT) which had many important functions. ALT’s 
liberal thoughts could be differentiated from “Second Republicans” in some aspects. 
The liberal thought which was advocated by the Association was fundamentally clas-
sical liberalism (Özipek, 2005, p. 620). Thus its understanding of liberalism was inte-
grated with philosophical, political and economical thoughts. In this respect ALT also 
criticized Özal’s one-way function liberalism. Because of dealing with liberalism as an 
ethical and philosophical system LDT was slightly alienated from the issues of Turkey 
(Yayla, 1996, p. 11-12).
At that time, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which was founded in 1994 advocated 
the principles of classical liberalism. Besim Tibuk, the leader of LDP emphasized none 
of the parties in Turkish politics defend liberal values, i.e libertarian philosophy, and 
he also asserted that all the political movements have the same statist mentality. 

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