Persistence in regional voting patterns in Turkey during a period of major political realignment (original) (raw)

Regional Vote Shares of Turkey’s Main Parties During the 1999-2009 Period

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Based on the 3-way and 5-way groupings of Turkey's 81 provinces obtained in Akarca and Başlevent (2011), we report the regional vote shares of the main parties in the Turkish party system in each nationwide election held between 1999 and 2009. The vote shares reveal that conservative right-wing parties receive a plurality of votes in all regions of the 3-way partition, but they receive significant challenge from left-wing and Turkish-nationalist parties in the west and the Kurdishnationalist parties in the east. In addition to these patterns, the 5-way partition brings out also shifts in the relative strength of the parties within each main division.

Centre-Periphery Divide as a Key to Understand Electoral Choices in Istanbul

Based on a survey conducted in 2008 in two districts of Istanbul, this paper will argue that social cleavages are still a crucial factor in determining party alignment in Turkey. Despite the fact that society went through a rapid process of modernization and markedly improved its economic conditions in the last three decades, the great majority of voters’ choices appear to be mainly along two different cleavages: the religious and the regional one. In spite of the deep social and political transformation of Turkish society, these fractures among voters appear to be still determinant in the biggest urban area, which should represent the vanguard in the process of ‘Modernization.’

A spatial analysis of Turkish party preferences

The paper focuses on party preferences of Turkish voters within the spatial model of voting that proved to be a successful explanatory framework in various other countries. The analysis is based on spatial theory of electoral competition and its statistical implementation using survey data. The paper aims at depicting the cognitive organization of voters' attitudes about issues and evaluations of political parties that compete for their vote. The spatial map derived from a survey of urban settlers show that the dominant ideological dimension sets secularists vs. pro-Islamists as expected from the center-periphery framework often used in Turkish electoral analyses. The second dimension reflects the impact of recent conflict involving the Kurdish minority on rising nationalist sentiments. Given a general depiction of the Turkish political space, we examine the impact of various demographic characteristics as well as issue evaluations on individuals' ideal positions in the space. Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 369e392 www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud 370 A. Ç arkog˘lu, M.J. Hinich / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 369e392

An Essential Center–Periphery Electoral Cleavage and the Turkish Party System

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2013

For nearly forty years, scholars have utilized the metanarrative of a center–periphery cleavage first proposed by Şerif Mardin to explain a variety of phenomena in Turkish politics and society. When used to interpret electoral cleavages in the multiparty period, however, a center–periphery cleavage cannot effectively explain electoral outcomes. Focusing on the initial stage of multiparty competition, when the cleavage is often said to have been most salient, this article explores the empirical evidence to show that the concept as commonly employed has actually confounded an effective understanding of electoral behavior in Turkey. Rather than demonstrating a clear electoral division between the elites of the social center and the masses during this period, the article reveals two distinct cross-cutting patron-client strategies used by elite-dominated parties to cater to the rural population. The significant patterns of change in Turkey's electoral outcomes over time further illus...

Social and economic determinants of electoral behavior in Turkey

Review of Economic and Political Science, 2024

Purpose-In this study the authors aim to comprehensively investigate the determinants of voting behavior in Turkey, with a specific focus on the dynamics of the center-periphery debate. Mainly, the authors focus on regional voting patterns during the period that is dominated by the Justice and Development Party (JDP/AKP) in the elections. The authors apply the random effects generalized least squares (GLS) methodology, and analyze electoral data covering four pivotal parliamentary elections (2007, 2011, 2015 and 2018) across all 81 provinces (NUTS III regions). The authors individually examine voting dynamics of the four major parties in parliament: the JDP/AKP, the Republican People's Party (RPP/CHP), the Nationalist Movement Party (NMP/ MHP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP/HDP). The authors contribute to a comprehensive understanding of how socioeconomic cleavages, economic performance, party alignment and social dynamics shape voter preferences in the Turkish context, thereby addressing gaps in the existing literature. Design/methodology/approach-This research employs an ecological study of Turkish NUTS III subregions, covering national elections from 2007 to 2018. The authors utilize the random effects GLS method to account for heteroscedasticity and time effects. The inclusion of the June and November 2015 elections enables a comprehensive analysis of the evolving dynamics in Turkish voting behavior. The results remain robust when applying pooled OLS and fixed effect OLS techniques for control. Findings-The study's findings reveal that economic performance, specifically economic growth, plays a pivotal role in the sustained dominance of the JDP/AKP party. Voters closely associate JDP preference with economic growth, resulting in higher voting shares during periods of economic prosperity. Along with economic growth; share of agriculture in regions' GDP, female illiteracy rate, old population rate, net domestic migration, terrorism and party alignment are also influential factors in the Turkish case. Furthermore, differences among sociocultural groups, and East-West dichotomy seem to be important factors that reveal the impact of social cleavages to understand electoral choice in Turkey.

Turkish Studies Spatial analysis of contemporary Turkish elections: a comprehensive approach Ilhan Can Ozen & Kerem Ozan Kalkan

This study offers a comprehensive approach to spatial analysis of parliamentary elections in Turkey since 2002. Using advanced spatial models, we find that electoral competitiveness and concentration mostly stabilized in the Western subprovinces whereas they are still in flux in the Eastern and Southern regions. There is an increasing level of geographically dependent concentration and competitiveness in recent elections, particularly in the 2015 elections (June and November). Our analyses also show that while the ruling AKP party has become the party of all regions, its competitors (CHP, MHP, and HDP) exhibit a narrowing geographical appeal.

Micro Evidence on Inter-Party Vote Movements in Turkey: Who Voted for AKP in 2002?

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Using data drawn from a survey conducted shortly after the 2002 elections, we investigate the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) election victory from the perspective of inter-party vote movements. Our aim is not only to identify the parties from which the AKP votes originated, but also the segments of these parties' voter bases the party appealed to in particular. Descriptive statistics suggest that almost all of the voters who had voted for the pro-Islamist party in 1999, about half of those who supported the center-right and the ultra-nationalist parties, and one-fifth to two fifth of the supporters of the center-left parties were captured by the AKP. Given that the actual vote share of the party was 34.3 percent, we interpret these figures as evidence of further voter realignment after the election. Our econometric work reveals that confidence in the economic performance of the party was a leading factor in the election outcome. For the voters attracted from the left-of-center parties, ideological factors also played an important role, whereas in the case of voters transferred from the far-right pro-Islamist and ultra-nationalist parties, it was the demographic factors. For the voters coming from the center-right, both sets of variables were important.

Trends in Party System Indicators for the July 2007 Turkish Elections

Turkish Studies, 9(2): 213-231, 2008

The stellar success of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has led to the interpretation of the 2002 and 2007 elections as sharp deviations from past political trends. Through an analysis of national and regional-level party system indicators in the post-1980 period, the authors find that the success of the AKP should rather be seen as the continuation of trends that started in the early 1990s. Throughout the 1990s, the pro-Islamist and nationalist bloc had already established a strong base in Central Anatolia, and the success of the AKP is due to its expansion of this voter base to Western regions and some of the predominantly Kurdish provinces in the southeast.

Local Determinants of an Emerging Electoral Hegemony: the Case of Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey

Democratization, 2016

“Party hegemony” is a macro-level characteristic of party systems, which is a product of persistent and overwhelming electoral victories that leads to domination of the parliamentary system by a single party. Party hegemony can only emerge through a collection of individual-level (albeit aggregated), lower-level structural, and macro-level institutional factors. This article intends to shed light on hegemonic party systems by incorporating all of these aspects. It analyses the case of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey as a hegemonic party in the making. Based on individual-level survey data as well as an original province-level dataset, the article examines the role of ideology, pork barrel politics, economic voting, demographics, and political institutions in AKP’s rising hegemony. The replicable nature of the dataset enables further testing of these findings in comparable cases for generalizability.

Inter-party vote movements in Turkey: The sources of AKP votes in 2007

2009

Using data drawn from a nationwide voter-tendencies survey conducted shortly before the July 2007 parliamentary election in Turkey, inter-party vote movements during the 2002-2007 period are investigated with the Justice and Development Party (AKP) as the focal point. A descriptive analysis relying on two and four-way partitions of the dataset reveals that, in comparison to the relatively small group of 'deserters' from the party, the 'newcomers' to the AKP are younger, mostly female, more satisfied with the performance of the economy, and more likely to be pro-EU membership. The data also shows that AKP supporters are less educated and less concerned with the threats to secularism than the rest of the voters. The key finding of the econometric work is that economic evaluationsespecially retrospective ones-have a strong association with the party choice in the 2007 elections.