Elections and Turkish Democracy
Editor's Notes
Editor's Note | Spring 2014
Fair and transparent elections provide an opportunity for citizens to continue or discontinue with the incumbent administrations and political parties. Elections are also moments for the renewal of confidence or expressing popular discontent with the ruling political authority. In modern democracies, it is only through elections and political participation that governments change and political transition takes place. Therefore, established democracies and countries, which aspire for democratic representation, invest in elections and political participation as the main sources of legitimacy. It is on the basis of such legitimacy that political parties and governments can effectively function in modern nation-states. It is primarily for this reason that whenever there is discontent and search for alternative political representation, elections provide the opposition groups and parties with the opportunity to challenge the ruling political parties and governments.
Commentaries
Generally speaking, two traditions – right-wing politics and the Left – have dominated Turkish...
One of the fiercest electoral battles fought in the Turkish political history, the March 30, 2014...
The December 17th process was started allegedly by a political move by the Gülen movement, which,...
Just after the end of the Soviet Union and the emergence of three independent states in the South...
Iraq held parliamentary elections in April, the country’s first vote since the withdrawal of U.S....
Hezbollah’s longstanding ties with the House of Assad lie at the core of its domestic and...
As the Arab Spring unfolds, a new power configuration is emerging in the Middle East. Turkey is...
Articles
Like all long political years, the year 2014 did not begin on January 1st; rather, 2014...
One Down, Two More to Go: Electoral Trends in the Aftermath of the March 2014 Municipality Elections
The March 2014 local elections in Turkey did not drastically alter electoral balances in Turkey....
The context of and the meaning conferred upon the local elections led it to be fought in a...
Ahead of the 2014 local elections, the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP),...
The civil war in Syria continues to devastate social and political structures, precipitating...
Over the past months, the crisis in Crimea presented the world with a case study on how rapidly...
As the third largest economy in the world, Japan cannot be overlooked in any analysis of Asia’s...
Book Reviews
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is presumably the most problematic and persistent theme in...
Relations between Europe and Russia in the post-Cold War era constitute a fascinating area of...
Studies on the Europeans who lived in the Ottoman Empire have been mostly conducted through the...
You cannot judge a book by its cover – or even its title. Now and then, a work comes along that...
As one of the major components of the Islamic state, Islamic law has drawn considerable attention...
In this book, Erdağ Göknar, the award-winning translator of Orhan Pamuk’s novel, My Name Is Red,...
The demise of empires left a powerful and perplexing legacy for successor states in the Middle...
A decade after 9/11, the Arab revolts gave a second impetus to scholarly interest in the Middle...
In her comparative study, Ghoncheh Tazmini investigates the Russian revolution of 1917 and the...
In her comparative study, Ghoncheh Tazmini investigates the Russian revolution of 1917 and the...