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Results of the Parliamentary Elections in Turkey, 12 June 2011
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The parliamentary elections in Turkey were held on 12 June 2011. The elections marked an important turning point as the Justice and Development Party (AKP) became the winner for the third time and with a higher vote, 49.9 per cent. The Republican People's Party (CHP) and the ethnically oriented Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), increased their votes...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... total of 52,806,322 Turkish citizens voted in the 2011 general elections, representing a very high turnout of 83.1 per cent. As seen in Table 1, the most remarkable result of these elections was that the ruling AKP, with 49.9 per cent, managed to increase its vote from its second term of rule by 3.3 per cent. However, its share of the seats in Parliament decreased from 341 in 2007 to 327 in 2011. ...
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Citations
... 31 Since the change in its leadership and administrative cadres in 2010, there has been a shift in CHP's rhetoric and its party programme towards economic issues and away from secularism. 32 This change in the party's discourse can be seen in its 2015 election mani- festo, which was heavily focused on economic issues such as unemployment and poverty. To resolve Turkey's economic problems, CHP proposed a two-tier economic programme. ...
The 2015 parliamentary elections in Turkey marked an important turning point as the outcome ended the 12 years of single-party government by the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Apart from the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), two other opposition parties, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), gained more votes than in the previous election. Significantly, by gaining 13.1 per cent of the vote, HDP managed to cross the 10 per cent electoral threshold. Since no party obtained enough parliamentary seats to establish a single-party government, the parties that are represented in the parliament had to form a coalition government which could have moderated Turkey’s enduring social polarization. However, since none of the parties was able to establish a government, the president called for the early elections on 1 November 2015.
This chapter addresses how it was possible for the AKP and the HDP, during the elections that they extraordinarily succeeded, to frame the state elite as despotic when the state relatively had all the power to shut these parties down like it did earlier. It asks what kind of discursive opportunity structures enabled these parties deliver such public statements without any fear and attract a variety of constituencies with no or limited state interference. It presents the Europeanization context of Turkey in the 2000s as a discursive opportunity structure that empowered the AKP to publicly confront the repressive acts of a military-bureaucratic state. The post-Gezi context in 2013 was, on the other hand, a discursive opportunity structure that empowered the HDP to challenge the authoritarian policies of the AKP government which had started controlling the state bureaucracy on its own.
To consolidate a predominant party system, an incumbent party will attempt to anchor voting behavior to social cleavages, a strategy called cleavage enclosure. However, does this strategy actually work? In Turkey, the incumbent AKP government has focused its campaigning on conservatives and nationalists. The analysis of the 2018 post-election survey reveals that the cleavage enclosure worked for conservatives but not for nationalists. Of the incumbent supporters in the previous election, conservatives replicated their support, whereas nationalists were less likely to support the incumbent than other identity holders. Nationalists tend to punish but not reward the incumbent party for its economic performance.
Between 2007 and 2011 the number of registered voters in Turkey increased by more than ten million, partially due to population increase but mainly due to a change in the voter registration system. Together with nearly three million DP and GP supporters who deserted their parties, the new voters constituted about a quarter of the electorate who participated in the 2011 election. Through descriptive statistics at national, regional and provincial levels, the geographical, demographic, socio-economic and political characteristics of these voters are explored. Then through systems of party vote equations, estimated separately for different regions of the country, how they voted is investigated. The BDP was the main beneficiary of the rise in the registered voters, which were disproportionately located in the Central-east and South-east. This occurred at the expense of the ruling AKP. The DP and GP votes, which were concentrated in the western and central parts of the country, and the new voters in these regions moved mainly to the AKP and CHP. In central provinces, the MHP captured a slice of the new voters and former DP supporters too, but it lost a portion of its own supporters to the CHP in the West.
The article has several theses. First we propose that there is a new method of constitution-making today, the two-stage, post-sovereign one perfected in South Africa. Second, we admit the path-dependent nature, and difficult pre-conditions, of this method. Third, we maintain that even when the full method is unlikely in a given context, its legitimating principles nevertheless can play a role through international dissemination. We explore that possibility in the context of the projected comprehensive reform of Turkey, and the constitutional revolution in Egypt. It is our belief that in these contexts one can learn both from successes of the new method and also from its failures typified by the Hungarian case that we briefly present. We are unfortunately not optimistic about the success of the new method especially where actors maintain their strong belief in the constituent power of the popular sovereign. This is likely to be the case in revolutions, but can happen in reform or even during the last state of the post-sovereign method itself.
