Poet and Islamist ideologue, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek. Wikicommons/ Berildeman. Some rights reserved.Sultanism is on the rise. Beyond Turkey, the election of Trump in the US, the resilience of Putinism in Russia, all point out the emergence of highly personalized regimes of a certain type. What distinguishes sultanism from other forms of authoritarian regimes is its unrestrained personal rule beyond ideological constrains and rational legal forms, leading to the gradual removal of checks and balances in the system. Even though sultanism is traditionally more common under authoritarian regimes, features of neo-sultanism can nowadays also exist in so-called `democratic and societies of transition’.
Max Weber developed the concept of sultanism primarily based on unbounded personal discretion. Weber understood sultanism as an oriental form of despotism, deriving the term from the Ottoman state. But his study of the Ottoman Empire as a sultanistic regime appears to have been less meticulous than his inquiries into China, and India. In fact, the Ottoman state was a highly sophisticated construct, with its separate palace, military, and religious hierarchies, and its millet system for management of non-Muslim religious communities. In this sense reducing the entire Ottoman system and history to mere unrestrained personal rule could be seriously misleading, not least because there were serious attempts and movements to limit the powers of the Sultan from 1876 onwards.
The kind of sultanism we are currently witnessing reflects a more universal form: all sultanisms have some common features but some are more pronounced. Not long ago Chehabi and Linz argued that sultanism arises when traditional domination develops an administration and a military force which are purely personal instruments, primarily based on the discretion of the ruler. They accept that the term can be interpreted as having an `Orientalist’ subtext with Islamic connotations. What I would like to call ‘neo-sultanism’, on the other hand derives its legitimacy from popular support leading to elected dictatorships. These are not necessarily hereditary regimes but may portray strong features of patrimonialism.
