Parties and the Party System in Turkey

Abstract

Abstract Turkey made a transition to competitive party politics in the mid-20th century. However, after decades of multi-party experience, Turkey’s political regime is far from meeting liberal democratic standards. Under the rule of Erdoğan’s AKP, Turkey is today classified as a hybrid regime that is more authoritarian than ever. This chapter problematizes the complex relationships between the military, parties, and society as the source of Turkey’s perpetual democratic problems. It argues that, until the rise of the AKP, Turkey’s democratic deficiency was the result of a system of ‘double tutelage’ over society consisting of military–bureaucratic and civilian legs based on political parties tightly controlled by elites sitting atop powerful patronage networks. While the role of the military gradually declined with the AKP’s rise in the 2000s, this surprisingly did not contribute to democratic consolidation. Rather, the country descended into a spiral of further autocratization. Without a counterbalance, the authoritarian potential of the parties of Turkey blossomed, especially through the transformation of the AKP into a nationwide clientelistic machine. Thus, Turkey’s parties and their linkages with state and society seem more part of a sophisticated authoritarian control mechanism over society than instruments serving democratic politics. However, the parties are still powerful organizations able to keep a meaningful game of competitive politics alive, despite the lack of a liberal institutional framework. Therefore, more than stiff party competition, democratization in Turkey requires the empowerment of non-partisan political institutions in the service of democratic consolidation.