Center-periphery cleavage in Modern Turkey
https://doi.org/10.31249/poln/2024.01.07
Abstract
Turkey’s political development witnessed the alternation of democratization and autocratization phases rooted in definite stable trends, the interpretation of which from different angles has been the subject of various research. The theoretical framework of center-periphery cleavages of E. Shills, S. Mardin, S.M. Lipset and S. Rokkan is applied to the analysis of the Turkish party system. The article examines the evolution of the Turkish party system in the context of the manifestation of the cleavages at each stage (urban-rural, center-periphery, secularismreligion), and identifies periods of dominance of the center-periphery (territorial) or ideological (functional) conflicts. Then the factors sustaining the center-periphercleavage are studied, including high levels of religiosity, socio-economic disproportions between regions, territorialization (as opposed to nationalization) of the party system, and ethnic conflict. The article reveals that the successes of the Justice and Development Party and R. Erdogan are the result of the rational choice answer of the political elite of the center to the needs of the periphery, including through the instrumentalization of religion, populism and charisma.
The analysis of the 2023 elections identifies three geographic clusters (center, periphery, deep periphery based on social and geographic distance from the center) and confirms the persistence of the center-periphery cleavage in Turkey while the analysis of variance of voting for the three main parties demonstrates the significance of the geographical factor. The article comes to the conclusion that despite the centripetal orientations of the ruling party and the president, center-periphery cleavage continues to determine the configuration of the Turkish party system, and the centre-periphery framework is still valid for explaining the electoral behavior.
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