Turkey has been one of only two countries in the Middle East with a functioning multiparty system and relatively free and fair elections, and which has lasted for over six decades without substantial coercion and electoral manipulation, except for the brief intervals of military intervention. However, comprehensive case research on the elections in Turkey has been at a standstill since the 1970s. Wuthrich's book on the parliamentary elections in Turkey remedies this gap in two primary ways: It utilizes a wholistic approach rather than focusing on selected periods or specific political parties; and, it takes the analysis of the Turkish elections out of their local context and moves to a comparative framework by relying on concepts and terms that can travel from consolidated to defective democracies.
The book, undertaken as Wuthrich's doctoral dissertation, builds on a critique of the lack of systematic analysis of empirical evidence and the tendency of explaining electoral behavior as a function of fixed cleavages and structures in Turkish Studies. In its stead, the author proposes a systematic inductive method, which focuses on the “dimensions of competition” and “domains of identification,” the former acquiring priority over the latter in terms of its explanatory power (14). In this way, he analyzes the cleavages “contingent” to each period—instead of tracing the same cleavage across periods—and aims to incorporate party strategies and voter responses into a dynamic web of interaction. As a result of this methodological preference, each chapter outlines the trends and patterns specific to the period under scrutiny; and the continuities and intermittences are discussed in the concluding section.
Wuthrich's critical assessment of the existing approach to studying Turkish elections comprises the most successful aspect of the book. He vigorously contradicts the utilization of the three major politicized cleavages—namely, left–right, center–periphery and secular–Islamist—as static patterns that have dominated electoral competition. Accordingly, left–right placement is contextual and defined and re-defined in each period. Religiosity/religion is a secondary factor (one as a domain of identification not a dimension of competition); it was rarely referred by the political elite, and campaigns built on religion led to a loss of votes whenever it was (44, 46, 62, 219). The “distance” between the center and the periphery cannot be valid for long, as the republican elite also originated from the periphery and the distance was not based on birthright (59, 63, 64). Besides, the geographical distribution of the votes of the Republican People's Party (RPP/CHP) shows that it had the electoral support of the most excluded groups—the Kurds and the Alevis—until 1965 (67). These criticisms targeting the empirical validity of the cleavages enable him to place the left–right as a domain of identification for the 1970s, and analyze religion again as a domain of identification, refuting any observable evidence for the influence of the center–periphery cleavage on voting behavior.
The book divides the history of multiparty competition into five periods in accordance with the transformation of the patterns of party and voter behavior. During the first period, which lasted from the first democratic elections until the end of the 1960s, the most important aspects of electoral politics were the deliberate avoidance of issues related to religion by all parties (117), and a heavy reliance on patron–client networks to increase votes (126). In this chapter, Wuthrich also provides empirical evidence for his refusal of the center-periphery cleavage by indicating that the CHP and its major opposition Democrat Party (DP) attracted votes from different parts of the periphery rather than aligning on opposite ends of the cleavage (129). The second period, from the late 1960s to the military intervention in 1980, was marked by the geographical realignment of the electorate. The earlier strongholds of the CHP shifted their support towards other parties, while the CHP began to draw support from the urban and industrial zones, and especially from the Marmara region (141). This realignment overlapped with the “re-imaging” of the CHP to the left-of-center, and the subsequent re-imaging of its competitors further to the right. This eventually led to an increase in the level of fragmentation and polarization within the party system. The way the author interprets the consequences of the 1960 military intervention is worth noting. Along with opening up a space for the socialist left with the new libertarian constitution and the electoral reform, Wuthrich draws attention to the establishment of the State Planning Organization in terms of its role in disrupting the conventional patron–client networks (148).
The next period, which began with the first limited-civilian elections after the 1980 coup and lasted until the mid-1990s, forms a striking contrast in which the parties avoided any kind of self-placement within the left–right spectrum and focused on the importance of service (hizmet) in their campaigns (181). Hence the fourth period, from the mid-1990s to the 2007 election, emerged as the golden age of the hizmet discourse. Wuthrich's observations for this period are remarkable. He challenges one of the major dictums on Islamism in Turkey and instead claims that material concerns formed the backbone of the strategies for parties with an Islamist pedigree. In this context, Islamism emerged as a domain of identification only after the “governing power took effect” and the Islamist Welfare Party “addressed economic issues in such a way that it translated into religious gain” (201, 207), not the other way around. Ironically, while the Welfare Party's campaign relied on the material concerns of the voters; its contenders focused on the vanguard of secularism as a counter strategy (210).
The book was published before the 2015 elections; hence the analysis of the last five years is incomplete, but still insightful. The author emphasizes that since 2011, there has been an emerging trend in which the CHP increasingly de-emphasizes secular nationalist concerns, while the AKP began relying more and more on the Muslim nationalist rhetoric (246). Ergo, Wuthirch concludes that the AKP would not be able to retain its comfortable parliamentary majority in the 2015 elections unless it were to resort to extensive electoral fraud (253).
The book concludes with Wuthrich's overall assessment of the dynamics of the Turkish elections. In this context, Wuthrich argues that economic and material concerns dominate voter choices, and the fact that the parties have relied heavily on populist policy promises confirms that the parties are also informed about this prioritization (258, 259). The role of cultural elements and religion, as well as election campaigns, have secondary importance, with the former limited to the domains of identification, and the latter as shaping the party-to-party interaction (260). The author also claims that given the high level of volatility, the vote of new, young voters and the urban poor that has been the deciding factor in election outcomes (264). He also correctly captures the tendency among Turkish parties, regardless of their ideological leanings, to project an image of national inclusiveness, which he dubbed as the nation party value (80), and which resulted in their transformation into catch-all parties over the last two decades.
The book in its comprehensive analysis of the Turkish elections contributes both with its methodology and the findings. The author's observations on the place of religion within electoral competition and his criticisms of the extant use of cleavages to explain voter behavior are worth noting. However, his dynamic approach also provides too much fluidity to the analysis and compromises its parsimony.
