Liberalism, democracy and the Turkish centre‐right: the identity crisis of the true path party

Abstract

In recent years there has been a sharp deflation of the left in political societies throughout the world. Accompanying this global trend has been the general acceptance of the primary tenets of neo-liberalism,' namely: political centrism; pragmatism; moderation; depoliticization; social and economic reforms that roll back the 'social' state; and the establishment of market capitalism. Neoliberal ideas provided the impetus for the quality of political democracy and economic liberalization in post-1980 Turkey. This context allowed the centre-right political parties2 to adopt the agenda of neo-liberalism and to obtain historical electoral results on behalf of the Turkish Right. The new postmilitary era relied on the 'taming of the right'3 into the new rationale of the market-oriented model. In theory, this required a fundamental alteration in representative politics and in political parties traditionally dependent on stateadministered patronage. It was also to involve a laborious transformation process in the political identity of centre-right parties, reorganizing political representation based on 'ideas' rather than on state largesse. This article will examine the identity struggle of the True Path Party (TPP), the senior party of the present coalition government as well as the current dominant party of both the Turkish Right and the electoral arena in general, since its birth in 1983. The implications of this analysis go beyond a dramatic account of the TPP trying to recapture the lost leadership of the Turkish Right which once belonged to its predecessor, the Justice Party (JP), which had been a key party during the three military intervention periods of 1960 (the JP was formed after the military relinquished direct rule in 1961), 1971 and 1980. In an era of international and domestic consensus on neo-liberalism, examining the TPP's identity struggle in the post-1980 period creates a better understanding of three important current problems in Turkey's experiment with democracy. First of all, this struggle highlights the dynamics and contradictions which the shift to economic liberalism has produced in the character of the Turkish centre-right. Given the historical strength of Turkish centre-right parties as independent actors, the TPP's commitment to liberalization has been impeded