Turkey's Electoral Geography: Trends, Behaviors, and Identities

Abstract

This chapter analyzes Turkish parliamentary elections by using a relatively new indicator for measuring the degree of political party nationalization. Employing this measurement, the chapter analyzes the votes received by all parties in Turkey in each district for the period between 1950 and 2015, and subsequently calculate the levels of party nationalization and party system nationalization. The analysis demonstrates that party system nationalization in Turkey had dropped from 0,905 in 1954 to 0,791 by June 2015 and 0,804 in the November 2015 elections. Similarly, the nationalization scores of the mainstream political parties have decreased as well.