Political polarization in Turkey

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Bimodal distribution. Political polarization in Turkey is bimodal. Bimodal.png
Bimodal distribution. Political polarization in Turkey is bimodal.

Political polarization is the bimodal distribution, meaning that two obvious peaks of opinion in the political sense. It can be observed through people's choices, sociopolitical approaches, [1] and even where they live. [2] In the last years, political polarization has caused many political results in the governments and the law-making organs. However it may not be classified as a "negative" aspect, and it can be used by politicians to examine the social and economic parts to develop in a country. [3] Citizens would be more prone to do skeptical analysis on the subjects, and gain more meaning in their lives. [4] Mexico, Turkey, India, South Africa, Brazil and Venezuela are amongst the countries that have the highest polarization. [3]

Contents

History

Turkey is different than the other western countries as the multi-party system in politics was actually imposed from the above rather than the citizens really wanting and establishing it with their own initiations. This is the basis of polarization in Turkey. [5]

The political parties in the Turkish governmental system started with the Second Constitutional Era during the Ottoman Empire when in 1908, the constitution was released and the response from the country was establishing opposing and supporting organizations and parties. [5] Turkey has always been a country of many different ideologies. There have been periods of time people defined themselves according to their political views. [6] There are different classifications of ideologies in the Turkish system. Most common two of these classifications are based on religion and ethnicity. The debate in religion is between the Sunni Islam (define themselves as right) and secularism (define themselves as left). [6]

In democracies, the NGO's make the connection between the government and the citizens. However, in Turkey as the NGO's are not that effective the political parties have tried to lead this, and thus politics have become more of a conflict zone among the politicians. [5] It is safe to say that polarization has transformed many aspects of the country from media to social relations. [7] Political polarization is more than just a political concept; it affects and is affected by many factors, such as coalition governments, multi-party legislatures, great wage gap, multiethnic societies, and a low level of trust. [3]

In 1946, twenty six years after the founding of the parliament, the multi-party elections started in Turkey, and since then the politics have been one of the main subjects of focus. [8]

1950s–2001

Logo of Democrat Party (DP), founded in 1946 and had been in power in Turkey for 10 years between 1950-1960. Demokrat Parti (1946) logo.svg
Logo of Democrat Party (DP), founded in 1946 and had been in power in Turkey for 10 years between 1950-1960.

Polarization in the modern Turkey is believed to date back to the Democrat Party (DP) which started a populist approach that socio-economic status is more important for politics than the cultural revolutionaries, in which it resulted in getting more democratic but also started a populist era. CHP was the "government's party", and DP was the "government of the party". [5]

In 1960's there was a change in the population; there was migrations, urbanization, and industrialization. The time between 1961 and 1965 is referred as a period when there was no polarization or bias but only small ideological differences. However when CHP was not successful in either 1965 or 1969 elections, to get in more supported position in politics, they stated that they were a center left party. This started a more scientifically termed political polarization as referred to today: it is right vs. left rather than the older definition traditionalist vs. modernist. When in 1969 elections the government's decision was that small parties could not enter the legislature, it meant that there would be no opposition which caused more tension. [5]

Since the 1970s, the fragmentation has been a part of electoral politics. [6] In 1969–1970 the student protest begun, followed by 12 March 1971 when the army arrested the anarchist students. After 12 March, the extreme left and right newspapers were closed. But with the 1974 Act of Indemnity, the leftist organizations remerged. [5]

In the 1990s the coalition governments and fight for power government had created fragmentations. [6]

2001–Gezi Protests

The main belief is that there was no sharp boundaries between groups before the 2002 elections, [6] and that, after the election that elected then-Prime Minister Erdoğan the elections became much more competitive compared to the past. [8] In 2015 the Comparative Study of Electoral System based on the Dalton Index classified Turkey as one of the 38 countries that are most polarized. [7] Another example that supports this is the World Values Survey that suggests in 1990, 40 percent of citizens identified as "centre", while in 2007 this number dropped to 13 percent; and the "extreme" end citizens increased from 12 percent to 24 percent. [6]

It is explained as Erdoğan became more authoritative after being elected for the third term, and independent of Erdoğan's behavior, some ideologies in Turkey feel ‘not represented’ due to the high polarization that has prevented other ideologies from entering the assembly as much as needed. [6] While the pro-Erdoğan group of society sees this time period as a period of democratization and development; the anti-Erdoğan group believes that it is democratic breakdown and authoritarian. [7] [9]

In both 2014 and 2018 elections, both the support and the fierce opposition to Erdoğan was observably high that Erdoğan won 2014 elections with 51.8% and 2018 elections with 52.6%. [7]

Impact of Gezi Park Protests

Gezi Park protests Gezi Park protests.jpg
Gezi Park protests

There have been episodes leading to a bimodal polarity in Turkey, and Gezi Park protests classify as one. [7] Gezi Parkı protests are actually a milestone seen as the time people started to observe the polarization and political situation. [10] The participants were from many different generations and ideologies, and most were opposed to the authoritarian approach of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and demanded real democracy. [7] Yet, surprisingly, a survey conducted on the protestors had shown that 70 percent of the participants did not identify themselves as ‘close to any party’, and 37 percent are expecting a new political party. Though Gezi Parkı protests were started due to environmental reasons, they became a political opinion and stood up. [6]

Post-Gezi–Present

The effect of polarization on social relations can be best observed by the 2016 survey result that 74% of people would not approve their children play with a children who has parents of different opinions about elections and who to vote for. [7]

In the 2017 Referendum, the bimodal polarity was seen in the Twitter hashtags. [11]

In the 31 March 2019 election, there were two alignments formed. One of them was the Nation Alignment which included CHP, Good Party and Felicity Party. The other side was the Public Alignment which included MHP and AK Party. However HDP announced that they were not a part of both alignments. [11]

Media

Social media

Gezi Park protests can also be shown as the period of time when the social media became very effective in the polarization, most probably as it demonstrated the opinions of people through numbers and statistics. The week when the Gezi Park protests first started, there were 3,600,000 activists in 80 provinces (out of 81) of Turkey. Twitter users in Turkey increased from 1.8 million to 9.5 million within the first five days of the start of the protests, and 13 million tweets were shared with the hashtag #direngeziparki (#resistgezipark). [12]

The aim of using social media was to go beyond what people called the "penguin media" (mainstream media corporations such as CNN Türk that aired documentaries of penguins instead of discussing the ongoing protests at the time), and create the media content on their own. Some tweets examined the examples of polarization through obvious comparisons as such "the right side" and "the left side", however the point where the "us vs. them" sayings were started to use is when the Prime minister at the time used to word "çapulcu" (Turkish for "looter") to label the protestors. Even if at the time this word was only used for the Gezi supporters, now it is in the Turkish contemporary political vocabulary. [12]

With the neutral hashtags on Twitter such as #Gezi and #GeziPark, there were also non-neutral Gezi supportive hashtags (#direngezi (#resistgezi), #geziyiunutma (#dontforgetgezi)), and also non-neutral Gezi-opposite hashtags, and all of them are still tweeted about (2019 research shows). Even if the Gezi movement had no leader, today the ruling party classifies the Gezi supporters with the CHP supporters, and other minorities. [12]

Gezi is known as a "Twitter revolution", similar to that of the Umbrella Movement of Hong Kong. Even if Twitter was the primary social media platform, Facebook was the platform involved in discussions, and YouTube was the address of many videos. [12]

In the 2017 Referendum, the two poles were obviously observed with the government supporters tweeting #devam (#continue), and the opponents tweeting #tamam (#enough). [11]

Media

Media in Turkey have been owned by different groups which are capital groups that have close relations with the state. The media streaming in Turkey has been classified under three groups recently, which are mainstream media that are close to the government, the international media (such as the BBC, and Deutsche Welle), and the opposition media (such as Sözcü, and BirGün). [13]

In 2018, Reporters Without Borders decided that Turkey is 157th amongst the 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index. [13]

Civic media and other initiatives

Even if the 140journos project started before the Gezi Park protests, it gained momentum with the protest. It was based on the idea that the government sometimes demonizes the social media platform. [14] It is a citizen journalism platform, where people report, and there is no partisanship. [15] [14] It is a neutral platform, the use of provocateur language is forbidden -as the vocabulary used in the Turkish language might be partisan with very small differences, and all of the news are verified before published. [16] [14] The identification is that it is not an impartial organization however it is a multi-partial platform. It is now found on many different technology platforms such as Ekşi Sözlük, Twitter, Periscope, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. [16]

There are different initiatives that aim to go beyond political polarization in Turkey, such as Oy ve Ötesi (Vote and Beyond), which is a neutral initiative that can be found on Twitter and Facebook. They had 30,000 volunteers that have monitored 95% of the polling stations in local elections in Istanbul in March 2014. [17] Their goal is to create transparent elections through being unbiased and equidistant to all sides of the elections. [18]

Coronavirus effects

The 2020 Coronavirus pandemic has affected Turkey like many other countries. The most polarization was obvious in the fundraising held by different municipalities that are connected to different political parties. The donations became a way of showing support to a part rather than just focusing on public health. [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Justice and Development Party (Turkey)</span> Conservative political party in Turkey

The Justice and Development Party, abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. Third-party sources often refer to the party as national conservative, social conservative and espousing neo-Ottomanism. The party is generally regarded as being right-wing on the political spectrum, although some sources have described it as far-right since 2011. It is one of the two major parties of contemporary Turkey along with the Republican People's Party (CHP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Republican People's Party</span> Social-democratic political party in Turkey

The Republican People's Party is a Kemalist and social democratic political party in Turkey. It is the oldest political party in Turkey, founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president and founder of the modern Turkish Republic. The party is also cited as the founding party of modern Turkey. Its logo consists of the Six Arrows, which represent the foundational principles of Kemalism: republicanism, reformism, laicism (Laïcité/Secularism), populism, nationalism, and statism. It is currently the second largest party in Grand National Assembly with 130 MPs, behind the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Democratic Left Party (Turkey)</span> Political party in Turkey

The Democratic Left Party is a Turkish political party, founded on 14 November 1985 by Rahşan Ecevit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multi-party period of the Republic of Turkey</span> Period in the Republic of Turkey in which multiple parties are allowed (1945-present)

The multi-party period of the Republic of Turkey started in 1945.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2007 Turkish general election</span>

General elections were held in Turkey on 22 July 2007 to elect 550 members to the Grand National Assembly. Originally scheduled for November, the elections were brought forward after parliament failed to elect a new president to replace Ahmet Necdet Sezer. The result was a resounding victory for the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP), which won 46.6% of the vote and 341 seats. The party's leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was consequently re-elected as Prime Minister of Turkey. The opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) came second with 20.9% of the vote and took 112 seats. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which had failed to surpass the 10% election threshold in the 2002 election, re-entered parliament with 14.3% of the vote and 71 MPs. The election was fought mostly on Turkey's debate over laïcité that had been perceived to be under threat from the AKP's nomination of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, an Islamist politician, for the Presidency. Developments in Iraq, secular and religious concerns, the intervention of the military in political issues, European Union membership negotiations, the United States and the Muslim world were other main issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gezi Park protests</span> Protests in Turkey

A wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Turkey began on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan. Subsequently, supporting protests and strikes took place across Turkey, protesting against a wide range of concerns at the core of which were issues of freedom of the press, of expression and of assembly, as well as the AKP government's alleged erosion of Turkey's secularism. With no centralised leadership beyond the small assembly that organised the original environmental protest, the protests have been compared to the Occupy movement and the May 1968 events. Social media played a key part in the protests, not least because much of the Turkish media downplayed the protests, particularly in the early stages. Three and a half million people are estimated to have taken an active part in almost 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey connected with the original Gezi Park protest. Twenty-two people were killed and more than 8,000 were injured, many critically.

Halk TV is a Turkish nationwide TV channel established in 2005. It is known for its relationship with the Republican People's Party, although the previous links were cut off in 2011 under a new CHP leader. The Gezi Park protests brought Halk TV into the spotlight as one of the few Turkish television channels to broadcast live coverage of the events. Because of this, the Turkish TV regulator RTÜK imposed a fine on Halk TV for "harming the physical, moral and mental development of children and young people".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chapulling</span> Turkish neologism

Chapulling is a neologism originating in the Gezi Park protests, coined from Prime Minister Erdoğan's use of the term çapulcu to describe the protesters. Çapulcu was rapidly reappropriated by the protesters, both in its original form and as the anglicized chapuller and additionally verbified chapulling, given the meaning of "fighting for your rights". Chapulling has been used in Turkish both in its anglicized form and in the hybrid word form çapuling.

The following is a timeline of the Gezi Park protests in Turkey of citizens and supporters against actions and plans of the government of Turkey. The timeline is segmented into days.

The 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey saw massive amounts of censorship and disinformation by the mainstream media, especially by those supporting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). A poll done by Istanbul Bilgi University in the first week of the protests showed that 84% of the demonstrators cited the lack of media coverage as a reason to join the protests, higher than the 56% of protesters who referred to the destruction of Gezi Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">June 2015 Turkish general election</span>

General elections were held in Turkey on 7 June 2015 to elect 550 members to the Grand National Assembly. This was the 24th general election in the history of the Turkish Republic, electing the country's 25th Parliament. The result was the first hung parliament since the 1999 general elections. Unsuccessful attempts to form a coalition government resulted in a snap general election being called for November 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2014 Turkish local elections</span> Municipal elections in Turkey

Local elections were held in Turkey on 30 March 2014, with some repeated on 1 June 2014. Metropolitan and district mayors as well as their municipal council members in cities, and muhtars and "elderly councils" in rural areas were elected. In light of the controversy around the elections, it was viewed as a referendum on the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. About 50 million people were eligible to vote.

The Justice and Development Party Vice President announced that their candidate for 2014 Turkish presidential election was going to be the Prime Minister and the party leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan accepted the nomination and ran a 40-day campaign which ended in victory. Erdoğan was elected the 12th President of Turkey and was sworn in on August 28, 2014.

Conservative democracy is a label coined by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Turkey to describe Islamic democracy. Forming as a modernist breakaway party from former Islamist movements, the AKP's conservative democratic ideology has been described as a departure from or moderation of Islamic democracy and the endorsement of more secular and democratic values. The electoral success and the neo-Ottoman foreign policy of the AKP that aims to broaden Turkey's regional influence has led to the party's conservative democratic ideals to be mirrored in other countries, such as by the Justice and Development Party in Morocco and the Ennahda Movement in Tunisia.

In the run-up to, during and after the Turkish general election of June 2015, numerous accusations of electoral fraud and violence were made by opposition parties. Electoral fraud in Turkey has usually been most extensive during local elections, where individual votes have significantly larger impact in determining local administrations. Although the 2014 presidential election saw little evidence of electoral misconduct, issues regarding voter records as well as extensive media bias have been controversial issues that have remained largely unaddressed. In both the local and presidential elections in 2014, several voters reported that ballot papers had been sent to addresses that are wrong or do not exist as well as voters that have been dead for a substantial amount of time.

140journos, is an Istanbul-based Turkish media publisher that produces and publishes visual stories, documentaries and qualified research. It was founded by Engin Önder who became disenchanted with the state of Turkish media on January 19, 2012. Önder, who started a grassroots citizen journalism movement, was later chosen as “the man transforming journalism in Turkey” by TIME Magazine in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metin Feyzioğlu</span> Turkish politician and lawyer

Metin Feyzioğlu is a Turkish lawyer and a professor of criminal law who served as the 8th president of the Turkish Bars Association between May 2013 and December 2021. He is the grandson of Turhan Feyzioğlu, a former CHP politician and deputy prime minister.

AK Trolls are Internet propaganda anonymous political commentators and trolls on the internet, as well as recruited TÜGVA. Internet trolls being people aged 20–25. The youth wing of the Justice and Development Party is presumed responsible for heading the web brigade. In 2020 Twitter Safety suspended and archived 7,340 accounts pushing Justice and Development Party (AKP) which consists of fake and compromised accounts that are tied to the group which pushed pro-AKP narratives that aim to increase domestic support for Turkish intervention in Syria as well as narratives critical of opposition parties CHP, IYI Party and HDP.

The Nation Alliance, abbreviated as NATION, was an electoral and political alliance in Turkey, made up of six opposition parties to contest the 2023 Turkish general election against its main rival, the People's Alliance. Originally established prior to the country's 2018 general election, the alliance had consisted of four opposition parties across the political spectrum, which had found common ground on withstanding Turkey's newly established presidential system. The alliance dissolved in 1 June 2023 following its narrow defeat in the 2023 elections, after the Good Party's announcement that they were no longer a part of it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Premiership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan</span>

The premiership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began on March 14, 2003, when the first Cabinet headed by Erdoğan was sworn in by the Turkish Parliament.

References

  1. ↑ Fiorina, Morris P.; Abrams, Samuel J. (20 May 2008). "Political Polarization in the American Public". Annual Review of Political Science. 11 (1): 563–588. doi: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.053106.153836 . ISSN   1094-2939.
  2. ↑ Çınar, Candan; Çizmeci, Füsun; Köksal, Almula (2006). "The New Address of Social Polarization in Istanbul: Gated Communities" (PDF). 42nd ISoCaRP Congress.
  3. 1 2 3 Akdede, Sacit Hadi; Keyi̇fli̇, Nazlı (August 2020). "Politik Kutuplaşma ve Gelirin Kişisel Dağılımı". Journal of Management & Economics. 27 (2): 337–351. doi: 10.18657/yonveek.646569 .
  4. ↑ Inc, Gallup (5 December 2019). "The Impact of Increased Political Polarization". Gallup.com. Retrieved 3 November 2020.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Altıntaş, Hakan (2003). "Türk Siyasal Sisteminde Siyasal Partiler ve Kentleşmenin Kutuplaşma Sürecine Etkileri". Akdeniz İ.İ.B.F. Dergisi.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Yardımcı‐Geyi̇kçi̇, Şebnem (October 2014). "Gezi Park Protests in Turkey: A Party Politics View". Political Quarterly. 85 (4): 445–453. doi:10.1111/1467-923X.12112.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Somer, Murat (1 January 2019). "Turkey: The Slippery Slope from Reformist to Revolutionary Polarization and Democratic Breakdown". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 681 (1): 42–61. doi: 10.1177/0002716218818056 . S2CID   149543304.
  8. 1 2 Laebens, Melis G.; Öztürk, Aykut (14 June 2020). "Partisanship and Autocratization: Polarization, Power Asymmetry, and Partisan Social Identities in Turkey". Comparative Political Studies. 54 (2): 245–279. doi:10.1177/0010414020926199. S2CID   229716318.
  9. ↑ Aydın-Düzgit, Senem; Balta, Evren (May 2019). "When elites polarize over polarization: Framing the polarization debate in Turkey". New Perspectives on Turkey. 60: 153–176. doi:10.1017/npt.2018.15. S2CID   197755827.
  10. ↑ Doğu, Burak (2020). "Turkey's news media landscape in Twitter: Mapping interconnections among diversity". Sage. 21 (5).
  11. 1 2 3 Kutlu, Mucahid; Darwish, Kareem; Bayrak, Cansin; Rashed, Ammar; Elsayed, Tamer (23 September 2019). "Embedding-based Qualitative Analysis of Polarization in Turkey". arXiv: 1909.10213 [cs.SI].
  12. 1 2 3 4 Ozduzen, Ozge; McGarry, Aidan (28 April 2020). "Digital Traces of 'Twitter Revolutions': Resistance, Polarization, and Surveillance via Contested Images and Texts of Occupy Gezi". International Journal of Communication. 14: 21.
  13. 1 2 Dogu, Burak; Mat, Hazim Onur (2019). "Who Sets the Agenda? Polarization and Issue Ownership in Turkey's Political Twittersphere". International Journal of Communication: 229+.
  14. 1 2 3 "A Changing Media Landscape in Turkey: The 140Journos Project". Journal of International Affairs. 68 (1, Fall-Winter 2014): 203–208.
  15. ↑ Istanbul, Piotr Zalewski /. "Meet the Man Transforming Journalism in Turkey". TIME.com. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
  16. 1 2 ""Biz tarafsız değil, çok taraflıyız" – Pazar Haberleri". 5 January 2017. Archived from the original on 5 January 2017. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
  17. ↑ EL_News (8 April 2016). "Social Media Use and Political Activism in Turkey: 140journos, the Post of Others, and Vote and…". Medium. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
  18. ↑ GÜRCANLI, Zeynep. "İşte Oy ve Ötesi hakkında bilinmeyenler". www.hurriyet.com.tr (in Turkish). Retrieved 8 November 2020.
  19. ↑ Erdoğan, Emre (April 2020). "The Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Polarization in Turkey". GMF.
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