Religiosity and Negative Voting towards Islamist Parties in Turkey (original) (raw)
Starting from 1990s, Islamist Parties in Turkey have gained a wide range support from voters. The individual characteristics of the electorate supporting these parties have been analyzed by some researchers but there has been little done to empirically demonstrate the individual characteristics of the electorate who uphold negative attitudes towards those parties. This paper aims to close the gap in the literature by addressing the question „Are the individual level religiosity and secularity important determinants of electorate‟s negative attitudes for Islamist parties?‟ In doing so, this paper applies the famous cleavage theory of Lipset and Rokkan to the Turkish context and focuses particularly on the secular versus religious cleavage. By using the World Values Survey Dataset, this study statistically analyses the negative voting of the Turkish electorate towards four Islamist political parties; the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Felicity Party (SP), the Virtue Party (FP), the Welfare Party (RP). The analyses of this study present some empirical evidence of the arguments that individual level secularity and religiosity play a very important role in determining negative attitudes of people towards Islamist parties.
Sign up for access to the world's latest research.
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
This document is currently being converted. Please check back in a few minutes.