The Justice and Development Party in Turkey: Populism, Personalism, Organization
Cambridge University Press, 12/6/2018
EAN 9781108480871, ISBN10: 110848087X
Hardcover, 412 pages, 23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Turkish politics were remarkably reshaped in the early 2000s following the decline of the Islamist National View and the electoral breakthrough of the new Justice and Development Party (JDP) headed by ErdoÄŸan. Beside its Islamist credentials, ErdoÄŸan's JDP consistently and convincingly presented itself as the 'populist' defender of the downtrodden sectors of Turkish society. However, with ErdoÄŸan's rise as the popularly elected president in 2014, Turkey's already fragile democratic system was driven in a more authoritarian direction. Shifting the focus away from structural factors, this book analyzes the political appeal and organisation of the JDP that granted them such unprecedented electoral resilience. With critical but accessible theoretical discussions, Toygar Sinan Baykan locates the JDP within the wider literature of populism, Islamist party politics, party organisations and authoritarianism. Over fifty in-depth interviews also help to relate the intimate story of Turkey's socio-cultural divides and the JDP's intraparty organisational dynamics, thereby offering a fresh account of Turkish politics.
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
agency matters
2. The transformation of the Turkish party system
selective pluralism and the rise of the JDP
3. The high-low divide in Turkish politics and the populist appeal of the JDP
4. The JDP and ErdoÄŸan
non-charismatic personalism
5. The JDP strategies
moving beyond the basics of Turkish party politics
6. The JDP organization
a personalistic mass party
7. Elite recruitment in the JDP
'you do not want these kinds of people in the parliament'
8. 'The new regime'
the role of agency in the rise of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey
9. Conclusions
findings, implications, future research
Appendix 1. Brief information on the political parties in Turkey
Appendix 2. The high-low (or anti-populism/populism) and left-right divides in Turkey.