https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8172-8102
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ABSTRACT
This article examines the coordination of opposition parties in Turkey between the 2014 presidential and the 2019 local elections. To explain opposition coordination from secular, Turkish nationalist, pro-Kurdish, and Islamist parties, the article points out a rising democracy-authoritarianism cleavage. As Turkey became one of the most pronounced cases of democratic backsliding worldwide, this political cleavage gradually overshadowed historically rooted social cleavages and incentivized the opposition parties to coordinate in the name of fighting for democracy. The article shows that in seven electoral contests, the opposition parties coordinated in the form of nominating joint candidates, encouraging strategic voting, running a unified campaign, helping presidential candidates collect signatures, promising to support each other in the runoff, pledging to form a transitional government, transferring deputies to be on the ballot, nominating members of the smaller opposition parties under a larger party's list, not competing in certain districts against each other, and establishing an official alliance. Thanks to their extensive menu of coordination, the opposition parties challenged the ruling party's predominance, undermined its parliamentary majorities, and won local elections in key cities. The article's causal argument and findings have implications for opposition coordination in authoritarian regimes.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. We are also thankful to Sabri Sayarı, Karabekir Akkoyunlu, Michael Wuthrich, Yunus Sözen, Berk Esen, and Elvin Ong for their comments on various stages of this research. Finally, we would like to acknowledge Vincent Grube's research assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
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61 The survey was conducted by KONDA with a nationally representative sample of 2581 respondents.
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64 Selahattin Demirtaş (@hdpdemirtas), June 18, 2019.
65 Selahattin Demirtaş (@hdpdemirtas), July 8, 2020.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Orçun Selçuk
Orçun Selçuk is a visiting assistant professor at Luther College. Selçuk holds a Political Science Ph.D. from Florida International University. His research interests include populism, personalization, opposition parties, polarization, and democratization. Building on his dissertation, Selçuk is currently working on a book manuscript that analyses polarizing populism in Turkey, Venezuela, and Ecuador.
Dilara Hekimci
Dilara Hekimci is a political science Ph.D. student and a graduate teaching assistant at Florida International University. In addition to her studies in the United States, she received her Ph.D. from Bahçeşehir University in Turkey. Her research interests are political parties, populism, and de-democratization in developing countries. She is currently writing her dissertation on the opposition parties’ strategies to counter populism in Turkey and Hungary.