Political orientations, ideological self-categorizations, party preferences, and moral foundations of young Turkish voters

ABSTRACT

Political ideology is often characterized along a liberal–conservative continuum in the United States and the left–right continuum in Europe. However, no study has examined what this characterization means to young Turkish voters or whether it predicts their approach to morality. In Study 1, we investigated in two separate samples the relation between young Turkish participants’ responses to the one-item left-to-right political orientation question and their self-reported political ideologies (conservative, socialist, etc.). In Study 2, we investigated the relation of moral dimensions as defined by Moral Foundations Theory to political party affiliation and political ideology. Results revealed that CHP, MHP, and AKP voters display a typical right-wing profile distinct from HDP voters. Findings regarding political ideology measures were consistent with party affiliations. Taken together, the findings reveal the distinctive nature of young Turkish people’s political orientations while supporting the predictive power of the one-item political orientation question.

KEYWORDS:

• Political psychology
• Moral Foundations Theory
• Turkish politics
• left–right distinction
• political party preferences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Onurcan Yılmaz is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Psychology at Istanbul University. His research interests include political psychology, moral psychology, and cognitive science of religion.

S. Adil Sarıbay holds a Ph.D. (2008) in Social-Personality Psychology from New York University. His research areas include political psychology, person perception, interpersonal cognition, and intergroup relations.

Hasan G. Bahçekapılı holds a Ph.D. (1998) from Yale University. His research interests include cognitive science of religion, moral cognition, and evolutionary approaches to cooperative decision-making.

Mehmet Harma received his Ph.D. degree from Middle East Technical University (2014). His research interests include social cognition, multivariate statistics, and interpersonal relationships.

Notes

1. Rokeach, Beliefs, Attitudes and Values; Jost, “The End of the End;” and Tedin, “Political Ideology and the Vote.”

2. For previous attempts to investigate either empirically or theoretically the structure of Turkish politics in the political science literature, see Aydogan and Slapin, “Left–right Reversed;” Başlevent, Kirmanoğlu, and Şenatalar, “Voter Profiles and Fragmentation;” Başlevent, Kirmanoğlu, and Şenatalar, “Party Preferences and Economic Voting;” Capelos and Chrona, “Islamist and Nationalistic Attachments;” Çarkoğlu and Melvin, “A Spatial Analysis of Turkish Party;” Çarkoğlu, “The Turkish Party System in Transition;” Çarkoğlu, “The Nature of the Left-right;” Erisen, “The Political Psychology of Turkish;” Kalaycıoğlu, “Turkish Party System;” Kalaycıoğlu, “Attitudinal Orientation to Party Organizations;” and Sevencan, “Ideological Self-placement.”

3. Haidt, Righteous Mind.

4. Mardin, “Centre–periphery Relations;” see also note 2 above.

5. See Kongar, Türkiye’nin Toplumsal Yapısı, for a similar argument.

6. Öniş, “Conservative Globalists Versus Defensive Nationalists.”

7. Öniş, “Conservative Globalism at the Crossroads;” see also Ayata and Ayşe, “The Centre-left Parties.”

8. Arikan, “Values, Religiosity and Support for Redistribution.”

9. Özbudun, “Changes and Continuities.”

10. Özbudun, “Changes and Continuities.”

11. Dalmış and İmamoğlu, “Yetişkinlerin ve Üniversite Öğrencilerinin.”

12. Obviously, any typology is a simplification of the real world and ignores much of the variation within the types that it proposes. Therefore, it is a truism that not just leftists but also conservative and liberal groups are heterogeneous. What we intend to state by this sentence (and similar statements that we use throughout this paper) is that the heterogeneity that we believe exists in the type ‘leftist’ might be too important to ignore and might therefore come at the cost of insight (i.e. explanatory power). As political psychological researchers, our task is to arrive at a typology that presents the best balance of simplification and insight.

13. Berzeg, Liberalizm ve Türkiye.

14. Olcaysoy and Sarıbay, “The Relationship between Resistance to Change.”

15. Jost et al., “Political Conservatism.”

16. Küçüker, “Gençlerin siyasal ve kültürel tutumları.”

17. Arikan and Şekercioğlu, “Türkiye’de Muhafazakarlaşma;” Cesur et al., “Politik ve Dini Yönelimin Değerlerle;” Yılmaz, “Politik ve Dini Yönelimin Kürtlere Yönelik;” Schwartz and Bilsky, “Toward a Universal Psychological Structure;” and Jost and Banaji, “The Role of Stereotyping in System Justification;” but also see Arikan “Values, Religiosity and Support for Redistribution.”

18. Graham et al., “Mapping the Moral Domain” and Haidt, “The New Synthesis.”

19. Because the moral foundations are based on evolved intuitions, the theory argues that these foundations should be universally applicable. However, it does not claim that this is the final list of foundations and admits that there could be other foundations that deserve to be added to the list or that operate in some cultures but not as much in others (see note 18 above).

20. Graham, Haidt, and Nosek, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different.”

21. Ibid.

22. TUİK, “Profile of Voters in the Most.”

23. See note 1 for a discussion for American politics and note 6 for a discussion for Turkish politics.

24. Graham et al., “Mapping the Moral Domain;” and Haidt, “The New Synthesis.”

25. Yılmaz et al., “Validation of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire.”

26. Graham, Haidt, and Nosek, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different.”

27. Kim, Kang, and Yun, “Moral Intuitions and Political Orientation;” Bobbio, Alessio, and Mauro, “Moral Foundation Questionnaire;” Bowman, “German Translation of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire;” for a discussion of low fit criteria of the scale see Davies, Sibley, and Liu, “Confirmatory Factor Analysis;” see also Graham et al., “Mapping the Moral Domain” and Nilsson and Erlandsson, “The Moral Foundations Taxonomy.”

28. Graham, Haidt, and Nosek, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different.”

29. Öniş, “Conservative Globalists Versus Defensive Nationalists;” Öniş, “Conservative Globalism at the Crossroads;” and Arikan, “Values, Religiosity and Support for Redistribution.”

30. For a detailed discussion see also Yılmaz and Sarıbay, “Differentiation of the Political Ideologies and Conservatism in Turkey.”

31. Haidt, Righteous Mind.

32. Graham et al., “Mapping the Moral Domain” and Haidt, “The New Synthesis.”

33. Olcaysoy and Sarıbay, “The Relationship between Resistance to Change.”

34. Haidt, Righteous Mind.

35. Öniş, “Conservative Globalists Versus Defensive Nationalists;” Öniş, “Conservative Globalism at the Crossroads;” and Aydoğan “Left–right Reversed.”

36. For a detailed discussion of the state of social democracy in and outside Turkey see Öniş, “Conservative Globalism at the Crossroads.”

37. Graham et al., “Mapping the Moral Domain” and Haidt, “The New Synthesis.”

38. Özbudun, “Changes and Continuities.”

39. Graham, Haidt, and Nosek, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different.”

40. See Öniş, “Conservative Globalists Versus Defensive Nationalists” and Arikan, “Values, Religiosity and Support for Redistribution.”

41. Olcaysoy and Sarıbay, “The Relationship between Resistance to Change” and Sevencan “Ideological Self-placement.”

42. Knight, “Liberalism and Conservatism;” Duckitt, “A Dual Process Cognitive-motivational Theory of Ideology;” Feldman and Johnston, “Understanding the Determinants of Political Ideology;” and Jost, Federico, and Napier, “Political Ideology.”

43. See Dirilen-Gümüş and Sümer, “A Comparison of Human Values;” Çelebi, Verkuyten, and Smyrnioti, “Support for Kurdish Language Rights;” Tepe et al., “Moral Decision-making;” Yilmaz and Saribay, “An Attempt to Clarify the Link;” and Yilmaz et al., “Validation of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire” for examples of the papers that have done related work with similar student (or convenience) samples in Turkey.

44. See Yilmaz and Bahçekapılı, “Without God, Everything is Permitted” and Yilmaz et al., “Analytic Thinking, Religion, and Prejudice.”