The historical roots of right-wing populism in Turkey: a spatial examination of the DP, ANAP, and AKP governments

ABSTRACT

This article aims to explore the continuities and changes in Turkish political history by examining three predominant, populist right-wing political parties in Turkish multi-party politics: Democrat Party (DP), Motherland Party (ANAP), and Justice and Development Party (AKP). The article utilizes correlative and spatial analyzes to juxtapose these three cases to find out path dependencies and critical junctures in Turkish political history. The commonalities in these cases are the clear linkages of incumbent party support with the nature of party competition, initial mobilization of the masses in the earlier tenures of these political parties, and high spatial correlation in electoral outcomes. However, there are also differences among the DP, ANAP, and AKP governments correlatively and spatially. The article intends to contribute to the existing literature on Turkish politics, especially through the lenses of party politics and democratization.

KEYWORDS:

• Turkish politics
• populism
• party politics
• democratization
• Justice and Development Party

Acknowledgments

Earlier version of this paper has been presented at the 7^th Annual Empirical Studies in Political Analysis (ESPA) Workshop, Turkish Political Science Association’s (SITD) 1^st National Political Science Conference, and Turkish Social Sciences Association’s (TSBD) 17^th National Social Sciences Congress. In these meetings, I have benefitted immensely from the feedback I have received from several prominent scholars. I would like to thank Ayşe Ayata, Reşat Bayer, Ali Çarkoğlu, Alper Ecevit, Ezgi Elçi, Özge Kemahlıoğlu, Fuat Keyman, Mert Moral, Zeki Sarıgil, Özgehan Şenyuva, Efe Tokdemir, Emre Toros, and Alper Yağcı for their illuminating comments and suggestions. As always, all responsibility for errors lies with the author himself.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Founded in 1958, the Fatherland Front was intended to mobilize right-wing, religious and nationalist voters under the banner of the DP. Adnan Menderes openly urged the citizens to become a member of the Front. The state radio was also extensively used to propagate for the Fatherland Front, by which the new members of the Front were announced on a regular, daily basis. These further led to the polarization of the society in the late 1950s (Zürcher 2007; Turan 2015).

2. There are two notes here that are worth mentioning for the sake of clarity. First, there were two national elections in the year 2015. Yet, the results of the earlier June 2015 election were reversed with the November 2015 election as no parties could form a government after the former. Hence, this article takes into consideration the results of the latter one (November election) as it was the effective election. Second, Turkey had both presidential and parliamentary elections in the year 2018. To offer comparability with the previous data, this article utilizes data for the parliamentary elections of 2018.

3. Both spatial error and spatial lag models are run for electoral support for the DP, ANAP, and the AKP models. Best model fit (based on higher R2 & log likelihood and lower AIC & SC scores) is considered when comparing spatial lag vs. spatial error models.

4. While there is dearth of official data that show the ethnic and religious distribution of localities, including those for the Alevis in Turkey, there are certain overlaps in the maps of Turkey’s Alevi population and Alevi villages in some illustrations of the Alevi foundations and federations including the Alevi Bektaşi Federation and Alevi Foundations Federation. The said localities in the article are also among the localities with the highest concentration of Alevi population.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported by Middle East Technical University Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit under grant number #[AGEP-401-2022-10963].

Notes on contributors

Kursat Cinar

Kursat Cinar is an Associate Professor at Middle East Technical University, Department of Political Science and Public Administration. Dr. Cinar earned his PhD in Political Science from the Ohio State University. His research interests center on party politics, democratization, political institutions, development, and gender politics. Dr. Cinar’s books titled The Decline of Democracy in Turkey: A Comparative Study of Hegemonic Party Rule (2019) and Women’s Empowerment in Turkey and Beyond (Ed.) (2020) have been published by Routledge Press. He has also published in several respected journals including Democratization, Political Studies, Gender, Work & Organization, Political Science Quarterly, Social Politics, Politics and Gender, South European Society & Politics, Turkish Studies, Contemporary Politics, The Social Science Journal, Social Indicators Research, Mediterranean Politics, and Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. Dr. Cinar is a Fulbright and EU Marie Curie Alumnus and the recipient of the 2019 Science Academy of Turkey Distinguished Young Scientist of the Year, the 2013 Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award, and the 2021 Mustafa Parlar Scientific Research Excellence Award. Dr. Cinar is also an Associate Editor of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.