RULING PARTIES IN TURKISH PARTY SYSTEM: AN ANALYSIS BETWEEN 14 MAY 1950 AND 14 MAY 2023

Year 2025, Volume: 26 Issue: 3, 604 - 628, 28.09.2025

Niran Cansever

https://doi.org/10.53443/anadoluibfd.1676170

Abstract

Turkish party system follows a line extending from the Democrat Party to the Justice and Development Party in terms of the ruling parties in the multiparty era. With the transition to multi-party life in Türkiye after the Second World War, four different political parties formed governments by winning many of the elections alone. These parties and the periods in which they were in government are the DP in the 1950s, the AP from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, the ANAP from 1983 until 1991, and the AK Party since the 2002 elections. This study aims to compare these four major parties, which are on the right of the political spectrum in the Turkish party system and are the sole ruling parties, and to reveal and evaluate their similarities and differences by focusing on the historical background especially those that differentiate them from the CHP. In this article, another purpose is trying to establish a predecessor–successor relationship among these parties in the framework of theory of the political parties. In this study, qualitative comparative analysis method was used. The defining, positioning, and comparing these parties based on qualitative research techniques draws us a distinctive and complementary picture of Turkish politics, with possible important contributions to the field of comparative party politics. Thus, extending from the 1950s to 2023, presenting one of the specific characteristics of Turkish political life. As a result of the study, three rules were put forward to explain the rule of the peripheral turnover between the ruling right parties and the main opposition party in Turkish political system and the role of the formation of the government.

Keywords

Republican People’s Party , Democrat Party , Justice Party , Motherland Party , Justice and Development Party

Ethical Statement

Ethics committee approval is not required for this research.

Supporting Institution

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Project Number

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Thanks

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