The AKP’s Appeal to the Kurdish Vote in Turkey: Exploring the Role of an Outsider Party Identity

Abstract

In the early 2000s, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to power by contesting the electoral dominance of pro-Kurdish parties in the Kurdish-majority provinces of Turkey. The existing literature has accounted for the AKP's popularity among the Kurdish population by providing three distinct perspectives: economic performance, the use of ‘Islam as cement,’ and pledges to safeguard the ethnic rights of the Kurds as a ruling party. This article introduces a more encompassing perspective in understanding the AKP’s popularity among the Kurdish population. It argues that these three issues were encapsulated in the AKP’s outsider identity based on its stance against the injustices committed by the Turkish state. In doing so, the article offers a two-dimensional definition of outsider parties, one dimension based on exclusion from state ideology, the other based on the party’s own discourse. The broader implication of this study is that outsider parties, as part of their power-seeking strategy, can mobilize groups with different political goals by creating a bonding effect among them against a repressive state ideology.