How can we evaluate the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP) governments’ records on women since 2002? The existing frameworks almost exclusively focus on the “politics of recognition” that includes discussions on Islamic culture, Muslim women’s identity and headscarf, etc. This project aims to move beyond this focus on Islam as the primary conceptual framework to understand Islamist governments’ policies toward women as it—wrongly—assumes that Islam is the main determining factor behind gender relations in Muslim-dominated societies. Instead, by taking a political economy perspective, this research starts from the premise that examining women’s economic and social conditions—rather than cultural identity—in any society gives a better understanding about women’s conditions. However, the study does also pay attention to the question of identity as it is used by the governments to justify their policies often promoted as “authentic” and “Islamic”. This research specifically examines the AKP governments’ policies in the areas of employment, education and health since 2002. The study is based on field research conducted in Ankara, Turkey during the summers of 2013 and 2014 by utilizing government documents, statistics, archives and interviews. The study argues that the common focus on the identity politics is unable to understand the AKP policies towards women as the policies are based on a blend of neoliberalism and Islamic conservatism, which operate at three levels: 1) the neoliberal policies of globalism with an emphasis on “flexible market conditions” and private enterprise; 2) the laws, regulations and policies at the national level that reinforce the patriarchal gender relations and constrain women’s public roles; and 3) the religion-based charity organizations that operate locally and promote “volunteerism” (rather than formal employment), Islamic education, and the provision of healthcare while at the same time providing social support to women in gender segregated settings. Unexpectedly, one finds neoliberalism and Islamic conservatism reinforcing and complementing--rather than contradicting--one another.

A growing literature on patronage and clientelism theorizes the ways in which parties social spending to either induce or reward support among voters. Most studies in this vein base their analyzes on the distribution of a single type of benefit (i.e., government jobs, health care, material assistance, food aid, etc.). A recent critique, however, suggests that, by focusing on a single type of reward, most studies in this literature arrive at biased conclusions, because party patronage and clientelist outreach strategies vary across distinct sectors and types of benefits (Kramon and Posner 2013). In this paper, we aim to assess the validity of this critique by examining patterns of public spending on distinct social services and infrastructure investment at the provincial level in Turkey since the late 1990s. In particular, we focus on education, health, and infrastructure such as roads, sanitation, and electrification. At the same time, we hypothesize that the dynamics of clientelism may vary by region – and not merely by social sector or type of benefit – because parties (including the dominant AKP in Turkey) are not equally well entrenched in all parts of a given national territory and therefore may modify their patterns of social spending and investment accordingly. Our data are derived from both publicly available databases and reports housed at Turkish government ministries. We combine these data with data on Turkish local election results – vote shares and election outcomes for each party – from the 81 provinces in Turkey from the late 1990s to the present, which enables us to trace patterns of social spending and investment over multiple electoral cycles in these various sectors. We complement our econometric results with illustrative case studies from a sub-section of provinces to better illustrate the mechanisms we uncover in the statistical analyses. This paper not only promises to make valuable contributions to the general social science literature on patronage and clientelism but also brings also builds on the growing cross-disciplinary literature on the politics of social spending in Turkey.

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze political party as an organization. Forms of identity formation, socialization process, and social networks which are built in the party or owned beforehand are important to analyze political party as an organization. Recent developments of party sociology and organizational theory have encouraged us to consider parties not as “black boxes” but as “open organizations” to provide a more dynamic analysis of internal party structure and of the actual everyday operation of party organizations “on the ground”. In order to achieve this goal the paper will first expand the level of analysis to local youth organization and secondly it suggests to go beyond “formal party organization” to include inner life of the party. Party organizations which constitute the modern democratic political life are mostly studied as part of the balance of power in changing socio-political structure of a given country instead of organization itself. Organizations are set up to achieve specific aims. Modern organization, as Weber stated, are structured in formal rules, hierarchy of offices and regularized duties. However there are always informal, unseen networks or life behind this formal organizational setting. Parties as hierarchical organizations tend to be bureaucratic in nature. Although legal structure of the country impose a similar organizational structure on political parties, each party has its own “inner life” different from its legal aim and organizational structure. The “inner life” of the party contains different forms of conflicts, reconciliation and cooptation process. People don’t randomly become a party member, they choose to participate political parties. In the selection of the political party, embedded networks might be an important channel to reach the party. Once become a party member, new networks which are built in the party, new status which are earned in the party, latent status such as age, gender, social background, and power structure in the party become important in the reproduction of the party. The focus of this paper will be the youth organizations of two main parties (the Justice and Development Party and the Republican People’s Party), which shape the political life in Turkey and represent two different political stands. It is mainly based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Istanbul and Ankara and depth, semi-structured interviews with parties’ youth and rank-and file in national headquarters. Our purpose is to to explain the socialization process and the role of the party organization in this process.