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Insight Turkey > Issues | Inside Turkey's Elections - Fall 2015 / Volume 17, Number 4

Inside Turkey's Elections



Editor's Notes


Editor's Note | Fall 2015
2015 was the year of elections in Turkey with two parliamentary elections and months-long election campaigns that dominated the political agenda of the country. The parliamentary elections of June 7 brought an end to the AK Party’s 12-year long era of parliamentary majority and single-party government in Turkey. Nevertheless, the endeavors to form a coalition government could not be concluded successfully and another election appeared on the horizon. The country was ruled by an AK Party-led interim government and the elections were repeated five months later on November 1. While close in time, the two elections were quite distant with regard to the political contexts in which they were carried out, and in their respective results. The November elections witnessed a comeback for the AK Party, which increased its votes by over 9 points with the addition of five million new votes in the ballot box. 


Commentaries


Civil-Military Relations in the Arab-Majority World: The Impacts on Democratization and Political Violence
How did unbalanced civil-military relations affect democratization and political violence trends...

The Refugee Crisis and Islamophobia
In the face of Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since WWII, many right wing and centrist...

Islamophobia in Europe: The Radical Right and the Mainstream
The surge of Islamophobia in Europe has been linked with the growing popularity and...

The Reasons Behind the AK Party’s November 1st Victory
In June 2015, Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) lost its parliamentary...

HDP Torn Between Violence and Politics
Although the Kurdish political movement has been participating in elections since 1991, never...


Articles


Election Storm in Turkey: What do the Results of June and November 2015 Elections Tell Us?
This article analyzes the two general elections in 2015 that followed the local and presidential...

Putting Turkey’s June and November 2015 Election Outcomes in Perspective
The results of Turkey’s June and November 2015 parliamentary elections are put in perspective in...

Identity Dynamics of the June and November 2015 Elections of Turkey: Kurds, Alevis and Conservative Nationalists
Identity politics was one of the major dynamics in shaping the results of both the June 7 and...

The Economic Context of Turkey’s June and November 2015 Elections
This article argues that the economic context of June 7th and November 1st general elections...

External Voting: Mapping Motivations of Emigrants and Concerns of Host Countries
The paper explores the understanding of external voting in the context of the 2014 Turkish...

Turkey under the AK Party Rule: From Dominant Party Politics to Dominant Party System?
The Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) more than 13 years rule has ushered in a debate as...

The CHP in the June and November 2015 Elections: An Evaluation on Political Impasse
The electoral will reflected at the ballot box on November 1 confirmed the hegemony of the AK...


Review Article


A New Historiography on the Ottoman Arab and Eastern Provinces
Beginning in the early 1980s, a number of works were published on the Arab provinces. These works criticized nationalistic approaches that treated the Ottomans similarly to Western colonial powers and blamed them for much of the violence that took place in the 19th and 20th century. The main accomplishment of these writings was the reintegration of the Ottoman past into the history of the modern Middle East. Nationalist historiography of Middle Eastern countries places the end of the Ottoman period with the arrival of Napoleon in Egypt in 1798. According to this historiography, the local elites played a dominant role in the modern period, as founders of the modern Middle East nations such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Tunus, and Algeria, operating solely within a local “proto-nationalist” environment with no indication of influence from other events taking place within the Ottoman Empire as a whole.


Book Reviews


The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom
In five chapters Smith looks into the standard story of the development of religious freedom in...

NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects
NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are proliferating dramatically in number (3.3 million in...

When Greeks and Turks Meet: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Relationship since 1923
When Greeks and Turks Meet, a collection of essays compiled under the editorship of Vally Lytra,...

The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims: The State’s Role in Minority Integration
As Jonathan Laurence observes in the preface to The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims, calling...

State Formation and Identity in the Middle East and North Africa
Christie and Masad analyze the role of State Formation and Identity in the Middle East and North...

Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and International Relations: The Case of Italy
Elisabetta Brighi’s book Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and International Relations: The Case...

Foreigners, Minorities and Integration: The Muslim Immigrant Experience in Britain and Germany
In Foreigners, Minorities and Integration: The Muslim immigrant experience in Britain and...

Lineages of Revolt Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East
The Arab spring has wakened enormous interest in the political economy of the Middle East with...

Islam and the Foundations of Political Power
Ali Abdel Razeks short treatise al-Islam wa-‘usul al-hukm, originally published in Egypt, in...


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