Party types after the 1980 coup in Turkey: A comparison of competing typologies

Abstract

Many political parties have taken place in Turkish political life before and throughout the history of the Republic. In the literature, political party typologies have been tried to be created, there are various studies, but there is no theory of parties, so these studies did not lead us to a theory. Turkey has a unique political history within its geography. This study aims to analyse the political party formations in Turkey after the 1980 coup. The party models generated in the literature are criticaly analyse and three following comhrehensive model generated by Gunther&Diamond, Krouwel and Rahat are selected as tools to analyse party formations after the 1980 coup in Turkey. Wish to aim to restructer totaly the political landscape of Turkey by adopting, the law on political parties adopted by the leadership of the coup stipulated rather strict rules for political participation cut off the links of political parties with the civil society imposed a ten percent electoral threshold and arbitrary controls for party membership. In so during generated a distinction between parties that have rather strong links with civil society but not allowed the participated in elections and the parties that work allowed the participated did not have strong linkages and legitimacy in the civil society. The thesis aims to analyse the structures of different parties using the criteria formulated in the social political science literature and tries to monitor the evolution of political party structures in an empirical context. So as to facilitate the discussion the distinctive features associated with each party model is used to classify party formations after the 1980 coup. This comparative historical analysis suggest that inspite of partial concurrencies, it is not so easy to fit a party in any category as viable. Although there are some similarities, the parties are not in harmony with the ideal types. The formations can not be needly classified under the party models existing party literature.