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AN ESSENTIAL CENTER–PERIPHERY ELECTORAL CLEAVAGE AND THE TURKISH PARTY SYSTEM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2013

F. Michael Wuthrich
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Abstract

For nearly forty years, scholars have utilized the metanarrative of a center–periphery cleavage first proposed by Şerif Mardin to explain a variety of phenomena in Turkish politics and society. When used to interpret electoral cleavages in the multiparty period, however, a center–periphery cleavage cannot effectively explain electoral outcomes. Focusing on the initial stage of multiparty competition, when the cleavage is often said to have been most salient, this article explores the empirical evidence to show that the concept as commonly employed has actually confounded an effective understanding of electoral behavior in Turkey. Rather than demonstrating a clear electoral division between the elites of the social center and the masses during this period, the article reveals two distinct cross-cutting patron-client strategies used by elite-dominated parties to cater to the rural population. The significant patterns of change in Turkey's electoral outcomes over time further illustrate the need to focus on how political parties and elites accumulate votes—that is, on their vote targeting strategies—rather than rely on static sociopolitical cleavages.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 751 - 773
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in Washington, D.C. The author thanks Metin Heper, Ergun Özbudun, and Sabri Sayarı for their insightful feedback on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also grateful to the four anonymous readers of IJMES for their beneficial suggestions.

1 Mardin, Şerif, “Center–Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?,” Daedalus 102 (1973): 185Google Scholar. It was reprinted with a few additional comments in 1975. Mardin, Şerif, “Center–Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?,” in Political Participation in Turkey: Historical Background and Present Problems, ed. Akarlı, Engin and Ben-Dor, Gabriel (Istanbul: Bosphorus University Press, 1975), 7–32Google Scholar. Subsequent citations are to the original Daedalus version.

2 For examples, see Atıkcan, Ece and Öge, Kerem, “Referendum Campaigns in Polarized Societies: The Case of Turkey,” Turkish Studies 13 (2012): 452CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Demiralp, Seda, “The Odd Tango of the Islamic Right and Kurdish Left in Turkey: A Peripheral Alliance to Redesign the Centre?,” Middle Eastern Studies 48 (2012): 287–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Çarkoğlu, Ali, “Economic Evaluations vs. Ideology: Diagnosing the Sources of Electoral Change in Turkey, 2002–2011,” Electoral Studies 31 (2012): 513–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Mardin, “Center–Periphery Relations,” 184–86.

4 Çarkoğlu, Ali, “Voting Behavior,” in The Handbook of Modern Turkey, ed. Heper, Metin and Sayarı, Sabri (London: Routledge, 2012), 162Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., 167.

6 For a secularist–Islamist definition, see Çarkoğlu, Ali and Toprak, Binnaz, Değişen Türkiye'de Din, Toplum ve Siyaset (Istanbul: TESEV yayınları, 2006), 12–13Google Scholar; for a modernist–traditionalist definition, see Turan, İlter, “Unstable Stability: Turkish Politics at the Crossroads?,” International Affairs 82 (2007): 322Google Scholar.

7 For other recent scholarship that frames Turkish electoral politics through reference to Mardin's “center–periphery” cleavage, see Demiralp, “The Odd Tango of the Islamic Right and Kurdish Left in Turkey,” 287–302; and Çarkoğlu, “Economic Evaluations vs. Ideology,” 513–21.

8 Shils, “Centre and Periphery,” in The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi on His Seventieth Birthday, 11 March 1961 (New York: Free Press, 1961), 117–30Google Scholar. The article was reprinted in Shils, Edward, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975)Google Scholar. The page numbers in this article refer to the latter source. Lipset, Seymour and Rokkan, Stein, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignment: An Introduction,” in Party Systems and Voter Alignment: Cross-National Perspectives, ed. Lipset and Rokkan (New York: Free Press, 1967), 1–64Google Scholar.

9 Mardin, “Center–Periphery Relations,” 187.

10 Neither of the works referenced by Mardin addresses Turkey in particular, though both propose a comparative theoretical concept that could potentially illuminate any particular case.

11 Shils, “Center and Periphery,” 5, 14.

12 The well-documented complexity of the relation between Kemalists and the existing religious institution based on the Hanafi interpretation of Sunni Islam can be seen in this light. Although secularism was undoubtedly a chief value for the Kemalists, their secular nationalist project was ultimately framed within a particular Islamic identity. As Sunni Islam was an embedded value of the social system, the founders of the republic could only alter the arrangement of the hierarchy of the center and the institution and structure of its elites, seeking to place the religious elites lower in the hierarchy. But the religiously oriented values present in the center meant that they could only seek to ensure greater control over this institution; they could not eliminate or replace the values derived from this area of society, but rather appropriated them in establishing a unifying national identity. See Atasoy, Yıldız, Islam's Marriage with Neo-Liberalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Karaveli, Halil, “An Unfulfilled Promise of Enlightenment: Kemalism and Its Liberal Critics,” Turkish Studies 11 (2010): 97–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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14 Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures,” 10.

15 Ibid., 14.

16 “Territorial” refers to the dimension specified by the authors; the primary pole of focus is that of center and periphery. Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures,” 12.

17 Mardin, “Center–Periphery Relations,” 172–73.

18 For a good example of this literature, see Luebbert, Gregory, Comparative Democracy (New York: Columbia University, 1984), 57Google Scholar.

19 Mardin, Şerif, “Ideology and Religion in the Turkish Revolution,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (1971): 206–207Google Scholar; Mardin, Şerif, “The Just and the Unjust,” Daedalus 120 (1991): 114–15, 123–24Google Scholar.

20 Mardin, “Center–Periphery Relations,” 185.

21 Essential cleavages are also polarizing cleavages. When Lipset and Rokkan, for example, discuss a cleavage that is electorally prioritized, they clearly explain it as an explicit, in-group/out-group oppositional divide. See Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures,” 13–14.

22 In a center–periphery social cleavage, the primary issue sparking opposition is necessarily centralization. Therefore, it is significant that we are talking about local or provincial notables—that is, what makes them notable is distinct from that which is national, and their authority thus implicitly challenges the authority of the center.

23 Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures,” 14.

24 Not all cleavages may be salient to the behavior of the party system, but to the extent that they are strong or “essential” to such behavior, volatility is correspondingly low and voting behavior can be predicted by the logic of the cleavage. When change occurs or volatility becomes the order of the day, the cleavage would be seen as “cross-cut” by other forces or cleavages and other explanations of the party system would be prioritized. See Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures,” 50–56; and Mair, Peter, Party System Change (Oxford: Oxford University, 1997), 3–16, 45–75Google Scholar.

25 Mardin, “Center–Periphery Relations,” 182; Szyliowicz, Joseph, “Elites and Modernization in Turkey,” in Political Elites and Political Development in the Middle East, ed. Tachau, Frank (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1975), 34Google Scholar; Frey, Frederick, “Patterns of Elite Politics in Turkey,” in Political Elites in the Middle East, ed. Lenczowski, George (Washington, D.C: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1975), 57Google Scholar. This pattern has been maintained through 2007. See Sayarı, Sabri and Hasanov, Alim, “The 2007 Elections and Parliamentary Elites in Turkey: The Emergence of a New Political Class?,” Turkish Studies 9 (2008): 352–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See also Frey, “Patterns of Elite Politics,” 57.

27 In fact, the increased role for lawyers as political elites was clearly beginning even prior to multiparty competition. See Frey, The Turkish Political Elite (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1965), 181Google Scholar.

28 See Roos, Leslie and Roos, Noralou, Managers of Modernization (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 34–52, 84–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sayarı and Hasanov, “The 2007 Parliamentary Elections,” 355–56.

29 See Kalaycioglu, Ersin, “Elections and Party Preferences in Turkey: Changes and Continuities in the 1990s,” Comparative Political Studies 27 (1994): 403CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carkoglu, Ali, “The Turkish Party System in Transition: Party Performance and Agenda Change,” Political Studies 66 (1998): 555Google Scholar; and Mardin, “Center–Periphery Relations,” 185.

30 Frey, The Turkish Political Elite, 381; idem, “Patterns of Elite Politics,” 60–61.

31 Tachau, Frank, “Turkish Political Parties and Elections: Half a Century of Multiparty Democracy,” Turkish Studies 1 (2000): 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Richard D. Robinson, “Turkish Elections, 1950,” Institute of Current World Affairs, http://www.icwa.org/articles/RDR-52.pdf (accessed 2 May 2009).

33 Kalaycioglu, Ersin, Turkish Dynamics: Bridge across Troubled Lands (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Karpat, for example, notes that in 1947 the CHP “chose to narrow the differences between itself and other parties” and thus lost its “originality.” Karpat, Kemal, Turkey's Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), 401Google Scholar. On the discourse of the initial period, including reference to speeches and programs, see F. Michael Wuthrich, “Paradigms and Dynamic Change in the Turkish Party System” (PhD diss., Bilkent University, 2011), 209–31.

35 Wuthrich, “Paradigms and Dynamic Change,” 213–16.

36 Ibid., 216–20.

37 Sunar, İlkay and Toprak, Binnaz, “Islam in Politics: The Case of Turkey,” Government and Opposition 18 (1983): 428CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karpat, Kemal, “The Turkish Elections of 1957,” The Western Political Quarterly 14 (1961): 444CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Robinson, Richard D., The First Turkish Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 40–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 For examples, see Makal, Mahmut, A Village in Anatolia (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1965), 99–104Google Scholar; and Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society (New York: Free Press, 1958), 137Google Scholar.

40 Robinson, The First Turkish Republic, 42; Stirling, Paul, Turkish Village (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965), 282Google Scholar. Though a great number of ethnographies and studies from the period attest to this, works following Mardin's piece—many of which are referenced above—appear to be unaware of these earlier works and simply assume that a national center–periphery cleavage was operating among the peasants at the local level.

41 Frey, The Turkish Political Elite, 191; Özbudun, Ergun, Social Change and Political Participation in Turkey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 1976)Google Scholar.

42 By “distant,” I do not primarily refer to geography, but rather to access to the possibilities of authority and elite status as determined by central system values.

43 See Tachau, Frank, “An Overview of Electoral Behavior,” in Politics, Parties and Elections in Turkey, ed. Sayarı, Sabri and Esmer, Yılmaz (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reiner, 2002), 47Google Scholar.

44 Özbudun, Social Change, 111; Karpat, Kemal, “Society, Economics, and Politics in Contemporary Turkey,” World Politics 17 (1964): 51–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Eisenstadt, S. N. and Roniger, Luis, Patrons, Clients and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1984), 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 See Güneş-Ayata, Ayşe, “Roots and Trends of Clientelism in Turkey,” in Democracy, Clientelism, and Civil Society, ed. Roniger, Luis and Güneş-Ayata, Ayşe (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 50–52Google Scholar.

46 See Eberhard, Wolfram, “Landlords in a Democracy: The Adaptability of a Traditional Elite,” in The Developing Nations: What Path to Modernization?, ed. Tachau, Frank (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1972), 125–36Google Scholar.

47 This strategy resembled a practice employed by the CHP beginning in the 1930s to solicit feedback from locals in the provinces. See Metinsoy, Murat, “Fragile Hegemony, Flexible Authoritarianism, and Governing from Below: Politicians’ Reports in Early Republican Turkey,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011): 705Google Scholar.

48 Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society, 31; see also Szyliowicz, Joseph, Political Change in Rural Turkey—Erdemli (The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton & Co., 1966), 136–37Google Scholar.

49 Güneş-Ayata, “Roots and Trends of Clientelism,” 52–54.

50 Sabri Sayarı, “Some Notes on the Beginnings of Mass Political Participation,” in Akarlı and Ben-Dor, Political Participation in Turkey, 126–31; see also Scott, James C., “Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change,” American Political Science Review 63 (1969): 1142–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Heper, Metin and Keyman, Fuat, “Double-Faced State: Political Patronage and the Consolidation of Democracy in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 34 (1999): 261–62Google Scholar.

51 Özbudun, Social Change, 49; Eisenstadt and Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends, 86.

52 For an account, see Leder, Arnold, Catalysts of Change: Marxist versus Muslim in a Turkish Community (Austin, Tex.: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1976), 5–24Google Scholar.

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54 Szyliowicz, Joseph, “The Political Dynamics of Rural Turkey,” Middle East Journal 16 (1962): 432Google Scholar; Sayarı, “Some Notes,” 124; Özbudun, Social Change, 180–81.

55 Szyliowicz, “Political Dynamics,” 432; Leder, Catalysts of Change, 16–19.

56 Leder, Catalysts of Change, 1.

57 See Özbudun, Ergun and Tachau, Frank, “Social Change and Electoral Behavior in Turkey: Toward a ‘Critical Realignment’?” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975): 460–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sayarı, Sabri, “The Turkish Party System in Transition,” Government and Opposition 13 (1978): 39–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Ergüder, Üstün and Hofferbert, Richard, “The 1983 General Elections in Turkey: Continuity or Change in Voting Patterns,” in State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 80s, ed. Heper, Metin and Evin, Ahmet (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 91–94Google Scholar; see also Wuthrich, “Paradigms and Dynamic Change.”

59 The “center-left” is primarily a combination of the SHP/CHP and the DSP. As there is less fragmentation on this side, it seems logical to search for the possible political center–periphery cleavage by focusing on this set of parties.

60 I am not implying that Mardin asserted a geographical manifestation of the cleavage, but rather that the East–West divide has often been understood as a rough proxy of the possible cleavage due to the isolated and relatively underdeveloped nature of the eastern provinces.

61 By this I am referring to the suggestion of Bardi and Mair that one polity may have regions with such significant distinctions in party system behavior that they could be seen as separate party systems. Such an assertion of multiple concurrent party systems within one nation based on vertical divisions (ethnicity, religion, etc.) would indicate that the dynamics of electoral context and the behavior of parties and the electorate are better explained by regional considerations than by national-level factors. Bardi, Luciano and Mair, Peter, “The Parameters of Party Systems,” Party Politics 14 (2008): 154–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Tezcür, Güneş Murat, “Trends and Characteristics of the Turkish Party System in Light of the 2011 Elections,” Turkish Studies 13 (2012): 117–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Çarkoğlu, Ali, “The Geography of the April 1999 Turkish Elections,” Turkish Studies 1 (2000): 149–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; West II, Jefferson, “Regional Cleavages in Turkish Politics: An Electoral Geography of the 1999 and 2002 National Elections,” Political Geography 24 (2005): 499–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wuthrich, “Paradigms and Dynamic Change.”

63 Kalaycıoğlu, Ersin, “Elections and Party Preferences in Turkey: Changes and Continuities in the 1990s,” Comparative Political Studies 27 (1994): 420–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 For recent examples, see Çarkoğlu and Toprak, Değişen Türkiye'de Din, 84; Çarkoğlu, Ali and Hinich, Melvin, “A Spatial Analysis of Turkish Party Preferences,” Electoral Studies 25 (2006): 369–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kalaycıoğlu, Ersin, “Attitudinal Orientations to Party Organizations in Turkey in the 2000s,” Turkish Studies 9 (2008): 297–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Çarkoğlu and Toprak, Değişen Türkiye'de Din, 92; Heper, Metin, “Does Secularism Face a Serious Threat in Turkey?,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29 (2009): 416CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Toprak, Binnaz, “Islam and Democracy in Turkey,” Turkish Studies 6 (2005): 170–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 For recent studies showing economic factors as a stronger determinant of voting behavior than religiosity, though the latter is prioritized, see Kalaycıoğlu, Ersin, “Kulturkampf in Turkey: The Constitutional Referendum in 12 September 2010,” South European Society and Politics 17 (2012): 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Çarkoğlu, “Economic Evaluations vs. Ideology,” 513–21; and Kalaycıoğlu, “Attitudinal Orientations,” 297–316.

67 For a seminal example, see Sani, Giacomo and Sartori, Giovanni, “Polarization, Fragmentation and Competition in Western Democracies,” in Western European Party Systems: Continuity and Change, ed. Daalder, Hans and Mair, Peter (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1983), 315, 318Google Scholar.

68 For examples that highlight religious (along with other) cleavages, see Somer, Murat, “Moderate Islam and Secularist Opposition in Turkey: Implications for the World, Muslims, and Secular Democracy,” Third World Quarterly 28 (2007): 1271–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Secor, Anna, “Ideologies in Crisis: Political Cleavages and Electoral Politics in Turkey in the 1990s,” Political Geography 20 (2001): 539–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and West, “Regional Cleavages in Turkish Politics” 499–523.

69 See Kalaycıoğlu, “Kulturkampf in Turkey,” 1–22; Çarkoğlu, “Economic Evaluations vs. Ideology,” 513–21; and Kalaycıoğlu, “Attitudinal Orientations,” 297–316.

70 Öniş, Ziya, “Conservative Globalists versus Defensive Nationalists: Political Parties and Paradoxes of Europeanization in Turkey,” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 9 (2007): 247–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Öniş, Ziya, “Conservative Globalism at the Crossroads: The Justice and Development Party and the Thorny Path to Democratic Consolidation in Turkey,” Mediterranean Politics 14 (2009): 21–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Öniş, Ziya, “The Triumph of Conservative Globalism: The Political Economy of the AKP Era,” Turkish Politics 13 (2012): 135–52Google Scholar.

71 This is merely illustrative of what much of the literature has been persuasively arguing, that primary considerations in voting choice in Turkey are sociotropic and pragmatic. For examples of scholarly evidence supporting what visibly appears to be occurring, see Akarca, Ali and Tansel, Aysit, “Economic Performance and Political Outcomes: An Analysis of the Turkish Parliamentary and Local Election Results between 1950 and 2004,” Public Choice 129 (2006): 77–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Başlevent, Cem, Kirmanoğlu, Hasan, and Şenatalar, Burhan, “Party Preferences and Economic Voting in Turkey (Now that the Crisis Is Over),” Party Politics 15 (2009): 377–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.