Islamist and Nationalistic Attachments as Determinants of Political Preferences in Turkey

Abstract

In this article we examine the mechanism by which the political opinions of Turkish citizens can be explained on the basis of attachments to Islam and the Turkish nation. Using insights from political psychology we review the dynamic role of these considerations as determinants of political judgements. We explore studies that question the appropriateness of a unidimensional scale of Islamism vs. Secularism in explaining citizens’ political placements, and we argue that the two ideologies can influence concurrently the way citizens think about politics. We use data from our survey of 107 Turkish citizens conducted in 2009 to examine whether attachments to Islam and the nation function as co-determinants of public attitudes. We focus on the political orientations of supporters of the Republican People’s Party Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP . We expect that Kemalist nationalism but not Islamist attachments dominate the considerations of these voters in line with their party’s positions. We uncover significant evidence of Islamist considerations in their evaluation of political issues indicating that Islamist and nationalistic considerations co-shape citizens’ attitudes.

Keywords

• Political ideology, political behaviour, attitudinal orientation, Kemalist Secular Nationalism, Islamism, Religiosity.

References

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3. Ibid. For the corresponding findings please see p. 33 and figure in p. 42.
4. Ibid. Interestingly they point out that “After being told that that the terms ‘Islamists’ and ‘Secularists’ were often used in Turkey and that ‘0’ means ‘secular’ and ‘10’ means ‘Islamist’ on a scale of 0-10, 20.3% of the respondents defined themselves as ‘secular’, 48.5% as ‘Islamist’ and 23.4% placed themselves in the centre of these two extremes. However as shown by the answers given to some of our questions, the wing that we can describe as ‘secular’ consists of almost 30% of the people, which enables us distinguish between the secularists and the Islamists” (pp. 32- 33).
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20. According to the 2002, 2007 and 2011 general elections the AKP had a strong victory in the whole country. The province of Ankara received a large share of the AKP vote. In 2002 AKP received 38.11 % (820,260) of the vote share in Ankara, while the CHP only