Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the sources of AKP’s electoral hegemony with respect to the four transformational processes which have started at different points after the establishment of the republic and continue to the present in Turkey. We also analyze the ways in which AKP’s hegemony shaped these processes as well as corresponding social cleavages. We suggest that this experience and the electoral success of the AKP are related to the recent transformation of Turkish modernity, whose multidimensional and multiplex impacts and ramifications have been making Turkey a much more “complex society.” Our main assertion is that the AKP’s rise to power in 2002 and its eventual hegemony have been closely intertwined with Turkey’s transformation processes and have resulted from its ability to effectively govern these processes. The AKP, in that respect, has realized the risks and potential attached to transformation and preferred to engage with transformation as an opportunity for growth and empowerment rather than resisting and reacting to it. As such the AKP has actively engaged with globalization and Europeanization to overcome the challenges of bifurcated modernization manifested in the center-periphery cleavage and to consolidate its position in the left-right cleavage. The fact that the AKP effectively engaged with processes of modernization, Europeanization, and globalization to establish its hegemony does not mean that the party could effectively govern the process of democratization.
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Notes
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It should be noted that this expanding economic power in the periphery did not only perform in economic production but also supported the emergence of a new Islamic media and press houses, educational institutions, and thus a new Islamic intelligentsia. For further details, see Hakan Yavuz, “Opportunity Spaces, Identity, and Islamic Meaning in Turkey,” in Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Q. Wiktorowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 270–288; Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2009).
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For a detailed and comprehensive account of these elections, see Ali Carkoglu, “New Electoral Victory for the ‘Pro-Islamists’ or the ‘New-Centre Right’?,” South European Society and Politics, 12 (4) (2007): 501–519.
Rabia Karakaya Polat, “The 2007 Parliamentary Elections in Turkey: Between Securitization and Desecuritization,” Parliamentary Affairs, 62 (1) (2009): 129–148.
Similar developments have occurred in March 2004 and March 2009 municipality elections. In both elections, despite the decline of its votes to 38.8 percent in March 2009 from 42 percent in 2004, the AKP won most of the provincial or greater city mayorships. For a detailed and comprehensive account of these elections, see Ali Carkoglu, “Turkey’s Local Elections of 2009,” Insight Turkey, 11 (2) (2009): 1–18.
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Sebnem Gumuscu, “The Emerging Predominant Party System in Turkey,” Government and Opposition, 48 (2) (April 2013): 223–244.
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© 2014 E. Fuat Keyman and Sebnem Gumuscu
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Keyman, E.F., Gumuscu, S. (2014). Constructing Hegemony: The AKP Rule. In: Democracy, Identity, and Foreign Policy in Turkey. Islam and Nationalism Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137277121_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137277121_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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