Unusual return to the usual: An analysis of recent Turkish elections

The highly impressive electoral showing of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) from 2002 to 2011 raises questions as to whether this marks a complete historical departure.  Ali T Akarca argues that the recent pattern of electoral returns, while extraordinary in itself, really marks a return to the picture of electoral behaviour in the 1950s and 1960s before it was disrupted by coups and party closures.

IN each of the Turkish elections held between 2002 and 2011, an outcome not seen for half a century has been observed. Ironically, through these unusual elections a political picture quite similar to the one prevailing in the 1950s and 1960s, and disturbed by military coups and party closures, has emerged.  

Let's first point out many firsts that were realised in the elections mentioned.  In 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power, one year after its founding, in an election which ousted all of the political parties which entered the parliament in the previous election.  In 2004, the AKP became the second party to raise its votes in a local administration election relative to the previous parliamentary election.  In fact, if the 1977 local election, which was held only a few months after a parliamentary one, is set aside, 2004 was the first time this has happened since 1963, when local elections began being held simultaneously.  Then in 2007, by raising its vote share after ruling one legislative term, the AKP matched the record established by the Democrat Party (DP) in 1954.  Although the party's vote share declined in 2009, in the 12 June 2011 election, it broke one and renewed another DP record.  The AKP became the first party to be elected to a third consecutive term since 1957, and the first party ever to continue raising its vote share after remaining in power two successive terms.  In addition, it became the first party to reach a 50% vote share since 1965.  At the end of 2012, having ruled more than 10 consecutive years, the party will take over the title of longest-serving incumbent from the DP. 

The fact that all of the above have been experienced only once in about half a century, and were spread over several elections, indicates that they cannot be explained only by routine variables or a particular factor specific to one election.  Furthermore, their concentration in about a decade of time now, and when they first occurred, suggests the existence of similar equilibriums.    

In a study published in the May 2011 issue of Iktisat Isletme ve Finans, building on my earlier work (with Aysit Tansel) in the October 2006 issue of Public Choice, I had identified the main determinants of Turkish election outcomes. The historical patterns observed in Turkish voter behaviour, and the findings of studies on other countries, rather than poll data, formed the basis of that study.  Inviting the reader who is interested in the technical details of econometric methods and data used in that research to refer to the articles mentioned, I intend to discuss only its findings here.

Alignment

Voters align themselves with a party that they identify as representing their interests and ideology.  Consequently, holding other factors constant, they tend to choose the same party they voted for in the previous election.  Vote swings from one election to another occur as the result of the following five competing forces.  The first four of these are usual and their effects are temporary.  The last one however is quite unusual and has permanent effects. 

Strategic voting  

A portion of the electorate vote for a party other than their first choice. In other words, they vote strategically. They behave this way mainly due to two reasons: to check the power of the incumbent party and to avoid wasting their vote by voting for a party which is not likely to surpass the national threshold necessary to gain representation. 

In elections such as midterm congressional elections in the US, European Parliamentary elections in European Union countries, and elections for local administrations in Turkey, supporters of the incumbent party get a chance to check the power of the central government and, if needed, send it a signal, without toppling it. Consequently, incumbent parties tend to do poorly in these types of elections. 

The existence of threshold regulations in parliamentary general elections, such as the minimum 10% nationwide vote share requirement to gain representation in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, contributes to this effect as well. Some of the small party supporters who vote strategically for one of the major parties in domestic parliamentary elections in order not to waste their vote, return to their first choices in elections where no such handicaps apply, such as local administration elections in Turkey.  On the other hand, in a parliamentary election, with the control of government at stake, the incumbent party experiences fewer deserters.  Furthermore, the party attracts supporters from its smaller ideological cousins as well, who fear wasting their votes if they vote for their first choices. 

In a local election, an incumbent party loses about 18% of the support it obtained in the previous parliamentary election, due to strategic voting.  Thus, contrary to common belief, incumbent parties enter a local election at a disadvantage rather than an advantage.  In parliamentary elections which follow a local administration election, on the other hand, such as the one held on 12 June 2011, the said loss falls to around 6%. In such cases, besides capturing some supporters of the smaller parties, the incumbent party gets back most of its supporters who deserted it in the previous election.

Cost of ruling

For a ruling party it is almost impossible not to make some unpopular decisions, compromises and mistakes, and not to shelve some promises.  These disappoint its supporters and cause loss of votes.  This type of loss is estimated to be about 5-6% per year of the party's support. 

Incumbency advantage

Being in power yields about 7% of the vote through things like easier access to the media, name recognition, ability to indulge in transfer activities such as providing services, subsidies and patronage, and picking locations of government investment and public work projects.   

The economy

The voters reward incumbents for a good economic performance, and punish them for a bad one. 

The return from a percentage rise in the per capita real GDP is roughly 0.7% of the vote.  The impact of inflation however is about a sixth of that.  A percentage drop in the inflation rate brings in only 0.12% of the vote.  In evaluating the government's economic performance, the voters take into account only the year before the election.  It should be noted that the focus of voters on the near past and growth, provides an incentive to the politicians to create political business cycles. 

Another point worth noting is the fact that incumbency advantage usually does not compensate for the adverse effects of strategic voting and cost of ruling. Thus the economy plays a pivotal role in the fortunes of the incumbent party.  Unless the economic performance is unusually good, it is almost impossible for the party in power to raise its vote share.  That is why it has rarely occurred, and when it did (in 1954, 2007 and 2011) it was because, besides the usual factors, a political realignment was at play too.  When the latter was absent, the incumbent party was able to remain in power, despite declining votes, only if its initial vote share was high enough.  This was the case in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s. If a party came to power with a relatively low vote share, as was the case in the 1970s and 1990s, the life of the government was at most one term.

Political realignment

It is not possible to fully understand recent political developments in Turkey without first understanding the political realignment which has taken place in earnest since 2002 but which in hindsight appears to have begun, on a smaller scale, even earlier.  We had mentioned above that voters align themselves with parties which they believe represent their interests and worldview. Although it occurs quite rarely, when the needs and outlook of voters change but their parties fail to adapt, or when their parties change in a manner that deviates from their interests and beliefs, voters shift their allegiances to other parties. 

That is what happened in Turkey during the last decade.  After experiencing rampant corruption, constant infighting, and four economic crises under various coalition governments during the preceding decade, in the November 2002 election, voters ousted all of the parties which had entered the parliament in 1999.  Major incompetence and rampant corruption exposed by the two major earthquakes in 1999, implicating both the government and the opposition parties, may have acted as the straw that broke the camel's back. 

The parties ousted from the Turkish parliament in 2002 were the who's who of Turkish politics.  Among them were the Motherland Party (ANAP), which held the premiership during 1983-1991 and 1997-1999, the True Path Party (DYP) and the Democratic Left Party (DSP), which led governments during 1991-1996 and 1999-2002, respectively, and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which was part of the ruling coalition between 1999 and 2002 together with the DSP and the ANAP.  In 2002, none of them was able to surpass the 10% nationwide vote share threshold required to be represented in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. The Constitutional Court had already banned the Virtue Party (FP) in 2001.  The predecessor of this party, the Welfare Party (RP), held the premiership during 1996-1997. The combined vote share of the parties mentioned was 81% in 1999 but only 24% in 2002. Only 11% of the legislators elected in 1999 made it to the 2002 parliament. 

The AKP, which emerged from the ashes of the banned FP, captured the lion's share of the voters who deserted their former parties. The party's disavowal of its Islamist roots, embrace of political and economic reforms necessary for Turkey's accession to the European Union (EU), the non-corrupt and populist image of its mayors at the local level, its message of hope, and the likelihood of it forming a single-party government, all appealed to the electorate which deserted the right-wing ANAP, DYP and MHP. The Felicity Party (SP), the other party rooted in the FP, toed the old party line and received only a couple of percent of the votes.  

The shift of votes from the ANAP and DYP (now renamed the Democrat Party but which, to avoid confusion with the DP of 1946-1960, will henceforth be labelled DP2) towards the AKP continued after 2002.  In the ongoing power struggle between elected officials and the bureaucratic and military establishment, since the beginning of the republic, these two parties came from a tradition of siding with the former. When their new leaderships relinquished this position, and continued taking stands in this regard that were not popular with their remaining supporters, they continued to lose their base to the AKP.  The way the AKP conducted itself in power, facilitated this vote transfer as well. The party risked its very existence by challenging the military and the judiciary to expand the power of the elected relative to the appointed. Despite the Islamist background of many of its leaders, the party ruled essentially as a moderate, centre-right, conservative democrat party would: committed to democracy, a free market economy and Turkey's EU membership. 

This dispelled some of the lingering scepticism concerning the genuineness of the party leaders' transformation, and led more of the liberal-minded voters to support it.  Interestingly, the party was able to do all that without alienating much of its traditional base. Over the last two decades that base, while holding on to its basic conservative values, got increasingly richer, better informed, more entrepreneurial, more modernised, more urbanised, and more integrated with other parts of Turkey and the rest of the world.  These occurred largely as a result of the introduction of the Internet, ending of the state monopoly on television and radio, major improvements in the highway and telecommunication systems, and the market-oriented reforms instituted in the 1980s by Turgut Ozal, the prime minister then.  The leadership which formed the AKP recognised this evolution in the society better than any of the other parties, and transformed.  We can say that the AKP captured the supporters of the ANAP and DYP because these parties changed, and the supporters of the FP because this party's successor, the SP, failed to change. 

In short, a mass shift in votes has occurred between 1999 and 2011, which was far more than what could be attributed to the usual factors of strategic voting, cost of ruling, or voter response to economic conditions.  At the end of this process, of the parties which got left out of the parliament in 2002, only the MHP was able to engineer a comeback.  By 2011, the rest and the Young Party (GP), which emerged in 2002, disappeared either literally or for all practical purposes.  Their combined vote share declined from 63% in 1999 to 23% in 2002 and to 2% in 2011. 

2009 vs. 2011 elections

Now let's analyse the 12 June election, in light of the above findings, by contrasting it to the 2009 election.  In other words, let's look at the 2011 election from a short-run perspective. What happened between 2009 and 2011 to cause a party which lost 8% of the vote two years ago to gain 11% this time? 

First of all, the fact that the 2009 election was for local administrations, and the one on 12 June was for parliament, is important. The AKP vote loss due to strategic voting was 8.4 percentage points in the previous election but only 2.4 this election. The incumbency advantage was the same and the cost of ruling almost the same (4.6 percentage points in 2009 and 4.8 percentage points in 2011) between the two elections. 

The main difference between the two cases was the economy. Per capita real GDP, which fell 5.7% during the year before the 2009 election, grew about 7.2% during the year before the last one. The return to the incumbent from the recent economic performance is estimated to be 5% of the vote.  This may have to be revised upward if the growth rate for the second quarter of 2011 turns out to be higher than expected.  If the 2009 economic conditions were prevailing now, the AKP would have been penalised by the voters about 4 percentage points rather than being rewarded 5 percentage points. 

On the realignment front, the remaining votes of the ANAP and DP2, and a few points of other small party votes appear to have shifted to the AKP.

Return to the usual

To sort out what went on and where we are now, let's look at the 2011 election from a long-run perspective.  A realignment similar to the one described above took place during the transition to multi-party democracy after 1946. The picture which emerged at the end of that process was not that different from the one we face now.  The only difference is that now a Kurdish-nationalist party is added to the right-conservative, left-statist, and Turkish-nationalist parties. 

The largest of these, the right-conservative movement, gets the support of about half of the Turkish electorate under normal conditions.  However, due to interruptions from outside the political system, such as military coups and threats, and party closures by the judiciary, it got fragmented frequently. Each time it pulled itself together, but each time this required a longer time. The DP surpassed the 50% vote share in 1950 and 1954 and came very close to it in 1957. After it was toppled by the military coup on 27 May 1960 and its leader was executed, its votes split in the 1961 election.

However, in the very next parliamentary election held in 1965, the Justice Party (AP) - the party which emerged as the successor to the DP - exceeded the 50% vote share once more, and received a little less than 50% in 1969.  Following the military intervention of 12 March 1971, the right-wing votes got split again and before they could be consolidated, another military coup on 12 September 1980 fragmented them even more.  Because the left party was closed too in the latter episode, that wing got split as well. 

Although the right-wing ANAP received 45% of the vote in 1983, after the ban on other parties and political leaders was lifted in 1987, the fragmentation which resulted was even greater than the ones experienced before.  Several other interruptions by the military which fell short of takeovers, dubbed postmodern coups or e-coups by the media, contributed to the fragmentation as well.  It took until 2011 for right-conservative voters to gather around a single party.

In short, looking from a shorter-term perspective, we can say that a lot of unusual outcomes were experienced during the recent elections, but looking from a longer-run perspective, we can see that through these, the Turkish political scene has returned, half a century later, to what was usual.            

Ali T Akarca is a Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Chicago in the US.

*Third World Resurgence No. 251/252, July/August 2011, pp 58-61