Political Parties, and Elections in Turkey

INTRODUCTION

The first parliament in Ottoman/Turkish history convened in 1876, though, admittedly, this was an extremely short-lived experiment. There was a second attempt in 1908, but that, too, lasted for only a brief period. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey established itself as a constitutional parliamentary system in 1923. In the eight decades that followed the opening of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the number of years during which the country was governed without a parliament was less than five—not an easily dismissible track record for a new republic with limited economic resources and a long history of autocratic rule.

With respect to universal suffrage, Turkey was ahead of many contemporary consolidated democracies. For instance, Turkish women were granted the right to vote in 1930. Only four years later, their right to stand for election was recognized, while French women had to wait for ten, Belgian women for fourteen, Greek women for eighteen, and Canadian women for twenty-six more years to gain unrestricted access to electoral politics. Indeed, it was the 1970s when women’s suffrage became a reality in Switzerland and Portugal. Neither were there any poll taxes, literacy tests, or similar restrictions on universal suffrage in Turkey.

The first multiparty elections in republican Turkey were held in 1946, though there is general agreement that these were not completely free and fair. However, only four years later, the government changed hands peacefully and democratically through popular election. Thus, at the turn of the twenty-first century, Turkey could celebrate a half-century of free elections. To the casual observer, this, in itself, may not seem very significant in the post-Soviet era. But we might recall that as recently as the late 1980s, “in a world of over 160 states, there are only about 30 democracies where the government stands a real chance of being replaced through the ballot box” (Harrop and Miller 1987, 7)...