Competitiveness of Elections in Turkey – the Case of Pro-Kurdish Party

Abstract

Turkey has had quite a long tradition of regular, competitive polls and multi-party democracy dating back to 1946. However, over the last decade, with the consolidation of Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) grip on power, there has been a growing concern about the integrity of elections in this state. In subsequent elections, the ruling party has resorted to a plethora of means inhibiting their competitiveness. The aim of the paper is to analyze to which extent the fairness of elections in Turkey refers to the candidates representing minorities in this country, with a focus on the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP). The following questions will be posed: Do election laws and their implementation give candidates of pro-Kurdish parties a chance to compete equally with biggest parties, first of all AKP, in parliamentary, presidential and local elections? Did the political reforms improve the situation in this context? How do the observed authoritarian tendencies in Turkey in this decade influence the possibilities of equal participation of candidates of the pro-Kurdish parties in elections? What is the impact of the relationship between the government and pro-Kurdish political forces on these possibilities? The answer to these questions helps to verify two main hypotheses – H1: The limited chances of candidates of pro-Kurdish parties to compete with the AKP candidates are a result of presence of increasing number of electoral malpractices that could be identified in this state; H2: The development of these electoral malpractices goes hand in hand with the rise of authoritarian tendencies in the AKP era – unfavorable for the position of minorities and with the increasingly negative attitude of the Turkish government towards the pro-Kurdish political forces.