Abstract
Using province-level data from five nationwide elections held during the past decade, we examine the main voting patterns in Turkey. By means of cluster analysis, we classify the 81 provinces according to vote shares of the major parties and independent candidates, and repeat this exercise for each election held between 1999 and 2009. We find that three-way and five-way partitions of the country adequately capture the main political cleavages in Turkey. Although the conservative right-wing parties receive a plurality of votes in all regions of the three-way partition, they receive significant challenge from left-wing and Turkish nationalist parties in the west and from the Kurdish nationalist parties in the east. In addition to these patterns, the five-way partition brings out shifts in the relative strength of the parties within each main division. Our results also show that, despite the major political realignment that occurred during the period under examination, the groupings of provinces remain mainly unchanged. Therefore, we construct ‘composite clusters’ by classifying provinces in the group in which they appear the majority of the time. The distinct socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the composite clusters suggest that differences in social and economic structures lie at the root of differing regional political tendencies and their persistence.
Highlights
Turkey went through an unprecedented political transformation between 1999 and 2009
The party’s disavowal of its Islamist roots, its embrace of political and economic reforms necessary for Turkey’s accession to the European Union, the non-corrupt and populist image of its mayors at the local level, and the likelihood of its forming a singleparty government, all appealed to the electorate which deserted the right-wing among these were the Motherland Party (ANAP), DYP and MHP.2
The purpose of our study was to explore the regional differences in voting patterns in Turkey, and present these differences along with some of the socio-economic characteristics on which they may be built
Summary
Turkey went through an unprecedented political transformation between 1999 and 2009. After experiencing rampant corruption, poor economic performance, and constant infighting under various coalition governments during the preceding decade, voters in the November 2002 election ousted all of the parties which had entered the parliament in 1999. The party’s disavowal of its Islamist roots, its embrace of political and economic reforms necessary for Turkey’s accession to the European Union, the non-corrupt and populist image of its mayors at the local level, and the likelihood of its forming a singleparty government, all appealed to the electorate which deserted the right-wing ANAP, DYP and MHP.2 This support did not come at the expense of the traditional pro-Islamist voter base which transformed like the rest of the society. A massive shift in votes occurred between 1999 and 2009, which was far more than what could be attributed to the usual depreciation in the political capital of ruling parties or voter dissatisfaction with poor economic performance What occurred during this period would be better described as a realignment of the electorate, in that a large number of voters changed the party which they identified as representing their interests and ideological leanings.. In an attempt to observe whether political outcomes are related to other characteristics of society, the current study briefly examines whether the ‘political’ clusters obtained are useful representations of underlying social and economic disparities
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