Abstract

ABSTRACT Competition for the Kurdish vote has been important in contemporary Turkish politics. Focusing on the non-contributory health insurance program in the early period of AKP rule, this article shows that this competition also affected the distribution of benefits. Kurdish citizens’ likelihood of holding a Green Card increased with the competitiveness of the district between the AKP and Kurdish-oriented parties. The number of Green Cards and social spending were also higher when a Kurdish-oriented party posed an electoral challenge. These findings reveal the electoral calculation behind AKP’s strategy of favoring Kurdish voters as well as the importance of political organization for the minority group’s access to benefits.

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