İbrahim Dalmış

Generally speaking, two traditions – right-wing politics and the Left – have dominated Turkish politics over the years. This study aims to analyze historic election results in order to determine roughly how much popular support each political movement enjoys in the country. Starting from transition to multi-party system in Turkey, one can see the emergence of several ideologies, groups and political parties that appeal to various social classes. Although military interventions caused a rupture in the democratization of the country, there has been a lively political environment with dynamic party politics and elections. During the span of Turkish democracy, a number parties were established and closed. This article examines the trajectory of elections and party perfomances with a special emphasis on ideology and electoral base of the parties.

This article investigates the perception and the reaction of Turkish people to Israel’s war in Gaza. For this purpose, we utilized a survey involving 1,393 respondents. First, we documented that there is widespread support for Palestinians from both sides of the political spectrum, Second, 94 percent of people do not believe that Israel’s public statements about protecting civilians are true. Third, an overwhelming percentage of people also joined the economic boycott by not buying Israeli products. Although young voters are less likely to support the Palestinian cause, this relationship disappears once voting preferences are taken into account. This implies that voting preferences matter for understanding the support for Palestinian cause. Compared to those who do not vote or vote for parties with a small base, AK Party and MHP voters are relatively more likely to support and CHP and HDP voters are relatively less likely to support the Palestinian cause. Overall, these results show that there is a strong pro-Palestine sentiment in Türkiye, and companies that have business ties with Israel are going to be hurt economically by the ongoing war due to consumer boycotts.