Continuity and Change in Turkish Politics

This book features leading scholars examining the dynamics of Turkish politics through alternative themes, including political economy and behavior. It provides a comprehensive understanding of continuity and change within Turkey's political system, utilizing rigorous empirical work and data. This book delves into the complexities of Turkish politics, the political economy of democratic backsliding, economic voting trends, political competition and change, populism, ideology, candidate nomination, and the impact of the international political economy on Turkey. While doing so, it focuses on the 2023 elections in Turkey. The chapters in this edited volume analyze these themes, offering fresh insights into systemic party competition, voting behavior, and the political economy of Turkey. This timely publication promises to be an essential resource for understanding recent shifts in Turkish politics and will benefit students, researchers and scholars interested in Politics, Political Economy, and Turkish Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

Mustafa Aydin is Professor of International Relations at Kadir Has University (Istanbul), the President of the International Relations Council of Turkey, and the Coordinator of the Global Academy. He is a member of the European Leadership Network, the Greek Turkish Forum, and the European Academy of Art and Sciences. His areas of interest include international politics, foreign policy analysis, geopolitics of Eurasia, and Turkish politics and foreign policy. Kerem Yildirim is currently an assistant professor of political science at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. He received his PhD from Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 2016. He previously taught at Kadir Has and Sabanci Universities in Istanbul. He was a postdoctoral associate in 2019- 2021 at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. His research interests include party- voter linkages, accountability, party competition, and political communication. His publications appeared in journals such as Political Communication, Political Behavior, Democratization, International Journal of Press/ Politics, Turkish Studies, South European Society and Politics, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. He worked on issues such as varieties of political linkages, clientelism, political competition, and Turkish politics.

Introduction 1. Elections and partisanship: analyzing the results of the 2023 general elections in Turkey 2. The 2023 Turkish election: a tale of two campaigns and the duel of populisms 3. How incumbents create uneven patterns of competition during autocratization: the AKP case of Turkey 4. Right-wing populism in Turkey and the 2023 elections 5. Difficult choices: choosing the candidate of the nation alliance in the 2023 Turkish presidential election 6. Ideological linkages and party competition in the 2023 Turkish general elections 7. Economic voting in the 2023 Turkish general election 8. Governance crises and resilience of authoritarian populism: 2023 Turkish elections from the perspective of Hirschman's 'exit, voice, and loyalty' 9. Erosion of economic institutions in the age of democratic backsliding: an analysis of the Turkish case 10. Politics of household indebtedness in Turkey