Representation of ethnic interests has important implications for democratization, minority rights, and conflict resolution. A conventional argument posits that democratization and increased representation will ease ethnic conflict. Kurdish political parties have been active and ethnic representation channels remained open in Turkey since 1990s. This presents a puzzling case, because ethnic violence has not eased despite increased political representation in the Kurdish conflict. To provide an answer to this puzzle, the study asks two related questions: Does ethnic representation reduce violent conflict? How does prolonged ethnic conflict affect ethnic representation? Thorough analysis of parliamentary questions, parliamentary texts, newspaper coverage, and background characteristics of members of Turkish Grand National Assembly during different episodes of ethnic conflict in Turkey, the authors explore how descriptive and substantive ethnic representation interacts with the violent conflict during the 1983-2011 period. The authors provide an empirical assessment of these rich data to test several hypotheses about the two-way relationships between ethnic violence and representation. The preliminary results show interesting synergies between different modes of representation (descriptive and substantive) and ethnic conflict. First, descriptive representation does not necessarily increase or decrease ethnic violence to the extent that the data reveals a weak association between the number of Kurdish representatives and the trends of conflict. The content analysis of parliamentary questions, speeches, and newspaper coverage, however, shows that when Kurdish representatives engage in substantive representation by pursing social and economic demands of their constituency in the parliament, ethnic violence becomes less prevalent.

Turkey has witnessed unprecedented levels of political polarization over the past two decades. The deep ideological schisms among the governing elites and other political groups have not only obstructed the democratic process in the country, but also impacted women's access to political power. Women continue to face numerous challenges toward achieving gender parity in the political arena, both in national and local legislatures. Despite the fact that Turkey has been one of the pioneering countries in granting women their political rights since the 1930s– before many European countries– women's share in the Grand National Assembly never exceeded 4.9%. It wasn't till the 2007 elections when women were able to secure about 9% of the seats and 14.4% in 2011. Women currently hold less than 15% of seats in the Grand National Assembly compared to 18% following the June 2015 elections. Women's political representation has been also marginal on the local level. Despite the government's decentralization policies since the 1980s to ensure the social inclusion of marginalized groups and redistribution (Yaras 2014), women continued to play a minor role in Turkish local politics. Following the 2014 local elections, women were able to secure 2.7% of the mayoral positions, 10.7% of municipal councils and 4.8% of the provincial councils compared to 0.9%, 4.2% and 3.26% respectively in 2009. Although these most recent figures represent a major leap compared to previous elections, this can be partially attributed to the fact that the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) has enforced the 40% party quota for female representation. In addition, BDP has enforced a system of co-leadership and extended the co-chair system to all levels of local governments. Yet, women's presence in local politics is still feeble even when compared to many non-democratic regimes across MENA (e.g. Algeria, Jordan and Morocco). This paper aims to explore women’s participation in electoral politics in Turkey in order to better understand the dynamics of women's representation on the ballot and in elective office. Our study analyzes elections across different levels of government– national, provincial, municipal, and town– in both legislative and executive offices using an original dataset on all Turkish candidates for elections in 2009, 2011, 2014, and 2015. The paper will provide the first comprehensive time-series analysis of gender representation in Turkish politics and government. This paper will also examine variations in female candidate supply and success across parties, regions, offices, and levels of government.

In this paper, we seek to answer the important question of why some MPs seem to have room to maneuver around leadership and why others don’t. Utilizing a unique dataset of ideal point estimates on roll call votes in the TBMM, we’ve found is that there is far more variation within party MPs than one would initially suspect given the extant literature - particularly in the AKP. Despite the lack of intra-party democracy, a personalistic and unaccountable leadership, centralized nomination process, and opaque campaign finance structures - all thanks to the party law - it is clear that discipline in roll calls is not as strong as popularly assumed in the three largest party groups. In fact, our ideal point estimates show greater variation amongst MPs in the TBMM than MCs in the US Congress. We do not believe this is strictly a function of ideology. The first dimension of our scaling is very clearly defined by whether or not the party is in government. However, there is significant overlap. While ideology is likely a secondary or tertiary factor, the ideal points we estimate depart from other measurements of ideology based on expert surveys, party manifestos, and ideological scaling of voters, particularly in terms of ordering parties on a continuum. This suggests that the answer to our question lies in largely other attributes of MPs. Our analysis focuses primarily with the AKP, since they display the greatest variation. Within that party we see subtle variation between regions. We also see that many of the AKP “deviations” have independent means of political support which the MP could conceivably transfer to an independent candidacy or another party. These factors allow certain “free spirits” to circumvent the coercive mechanisms parties possess under Turkish law and political norms.

Current scholarship on Turkish politics has focused on the worrying trends regarding the developing dominant party system and polarization. Though social polarization is clearly evident in society and among the political elite, exemplified by the inability to form a coalition government after the June 2015 national election, has such tensions manifested themselves in election priorities of the major political parties? This study will examine the language of the campaign manifestos of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), and the Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP), to see if priorities and language in manifestos change across elections as polarization has increased. Literature on Turkey has previously observed that successful parties in Turkey have tended to mobilize voters by pragmatic appeals to sociotropic or egotropic concerns. By analyzing party strategic priorities in elections across time, we will be able to see how and if polarization changes campaign focus among the political elite. This might help us to tease out the extent to which polarized campaign speech-making by the political elites is a “heat of the moment” issue or part of more calculated considerations.