How incumbents create uneven patterns of competition during autocratization: the AKP case of Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article explains the survival of the AKP in Turkey’s late stage of autocratization (2017-present) through its strategy of shifting the primary drivers of competition from individual parties to pre-electoral alliances. Confronted with a decline in popular support in 2015 June elections, the article argues that the AKP created uneven patterns of competition via the system of pre-electoral alliances so that it could institutionalize a ‘Rikerian offense’ on the salient Turkish-Kurdish cleavage and establish an authoritarian power-sharing mechanism with its former challenger, the Turkish nationalist MHP. To illustrate the shift toward uneven patterns of electoral competition via such incumbent strategies, the article conducts a two-part analysis: It first examines the landscape of competition among parties (2002-2015) and second, evaluates competition among both parties and alliances (2018-2023) at the national and district levels in Turkey.

KEYWORDS:

• Autocratization
• pre-electoral alliances
• political parties
• elections
• party competition
• the AKP
• Turkey

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Most scholars of Turkey have used Sartori’s concept of a ‘predominant party system’ to refer to the AKP’s rise as a dominant party in the Turkish party system. According to this definition, a predominant party system means ‘a power configuration in which one party governs alone, without being subjected to alternation, as long as it continues to win, electorally, an absolute majority’.

2. Some noteworthy works in this field are Gumuscu (2013), Ayan Musil (2015), Arslantaş et al. (2020) Çarkoğlu and Aksen (2019), Jacovou (2022), Ozen and Kalkan (2017), Gidengil and Karakoç (2014), Yıldırım (2020), Baykan (2018), Çınar (2019), Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu (2021).

3. On the concept of executive aggrandizement, see Bermeo (2016).

4. For ‘authoritarian power-sharing’, see Magaloni (2008) and Boix and Svolik (2013). For ‘Rikerian Offense’, see Greene (2008).

5. The formula used to calculate ENEP is where n is the number of parties with at least one vote and p_i² is the square of each party’s proportion of all votes. ENPP is calculated with the same formula, but this time n represents the number of seats and pi2 represents the square of each party’s proportion of all seats.

6. Similar formulas are applied to calculate ENEC and ENPC, where n is the total number of both pre-electoral alliances and parties that are not included in an alliance. Each of them (the alliance or the party) must have at least one vote/seat; p_i² is the square of each party’s or alliance’s proportion of all votes/seats.

7. See Moral (2021) for the more specific changes introduced in the law.

8. While the YRP joined the Republican Alliance as an individual party, the HÜDA-PAR was represented in the lists of the AKP.

9. See Rudaw, ‘Erdogan rival ups nationalist rhetoric, avoids Kurds,’ 20 May 2023, https://www.rudaw.net/english/analysis/20052023, accessed 10 September 2023.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pelin Ayan Musil

Pelin Ayan Musil (PhD Bilkent University, 2010) is a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague. Her research interests are parties and party systems, regime change and social movements with a focus on the politics of contemporary Turkey. She has published in such journals as South European Society and Politics, Government and Opposition, Democratization, International Political Science Review, Social Movement Studies, Mediterranean Politics, Civil Wars, Turkish Studies, Middle East Law and Governance among others. She is the author of Authoritarian Party Structures and Democratic Political Setting in Turkey (Palgrave, 2011), Transformation of Islamist and Kurdish Parties in Turkey: Consequences for Regime Change (Palgrave, 2022) and the co-editor of Party Politics in Turkey: A Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2018).