Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been the leading figure in Turkish politics for over two decades. Drawing on a new study, Murat Somer and Toygar Sinan Baykan explain how a series of socioeconomic changes and party organisational responses laid the foundations for his rise to power.

Turkey’s general election in May last year produced another victory for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). Against the background of an economic crisis and the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, this outcome was deeply disappointing for the opposition, who had been optimistic after joining forces against Erdoğan by coordinating their candidates and campaign strategies before the election.

Erdoğan has now been the leading figure in Turkish politics for over 20 years. This raises the question of why the AKP has been able to dominate for so long. It should also prompt us to examine the process of “autocratisation” that has been taking place in Turkey during Erdoğan’s period in power. In a recent study based on field work conducted between 2018-2022 on the party organisations of four Turkish political parties – the AKP, CHP, İYİ and HDP – we aim to shed some light on these issues.

The politics of notables

Turkish politics has long been characterised by clientelism and personalism. Especially in the countryside and small towns, Turkish political parties have traditionally relied on “local notables” – families with cultural, political, social or commercial status and networks – to act as a link between the state and local interests. However, this system began to gradually dissolve as Turkish society became more urbanised and educated from the 1960s onwards.

One consequence of this was the rise of new industrial, commercial and professional classes. These “new notables” often came from humble and conservative backgrounds and enjoyed growing wealth and status, but without family-inherited patronage networks or social and political capital. Meanwhile Turkey’s traditional local notables started to lose ground but still managed to maintain most of their influence over social hierarchies and party politics.

At the same time, the rise of a new capitalist-consumerist urban culture in Turkey from the 1980s on led to both heightened expectations of improving living standards among the poor and an increase in structural poverty. Under these circumstances, the “politics of notables” fell short of addressing the needs of urban constituencies. The classical patronage model started to crumble.

The 1990s subsequently saw the rise of mass parties with profound ideological linkages with their supporters. These included parties linked to Islamic and Kurdish social movements, which proved more capable of appealing to – and in local governments addressing – poor constituencies’ aspirations.

All of this had major implications for Turkey’s political regime. Up until the 1990s, the politics of notables had resulted in a fragmented political class, in contrast to the relatively more united class of military-bureaucratic elites. This resulted in a military-bureaucratic establishment overseeing an electoral democracy built on fiercely competitive multiparty politics.

But by the 2000s, urbanisation and the growth of capitalist-consumerism had reached a point of no return. Turkey was ready for a form of change that required institutional adaptation and a new model of organisation for political parties. The major institutional adaptation to these socioeconomic transformations was the foundation of the AKP, which built itself predominantly on the cadres and vestiges of the Islamist mass party model that had already started in the 1990s to develop vital survival networks for the poor in cities like Istanbul.

The national machine

The AKP is in effect a “national machine”. It evolved as a new type of mass party that depended on its loyal functionaries instead of local notables. These loyal functionaries, as we observed in our field work, have usually come from among the ranks of people with less privileged backgrounds or new notables who have been lifted up by the AKP into political as well as social and economic prominence.

Meanwhile, the mainstream parties (including the left-wing CHP) have remained wedded to the “politics of notables”. They continue to depend on powerful local figures to cultivate the support of voters through patronage, founded on jealously controlled personal and local resources.

The AKP’s “national machine politics” has proven to be highly stable and successful in this context. Turkey now features a peculiar kind of “competitive clientelism”. This has had two interrelated consequences, both of which have fostered autocratisation.

First, it has given the AKP electoral dominance, founded on a strategy that combines systematic mass clientelism with sociocultural populism. Second, this dominance, which is bolstered by the AKP’s highly robust organisation and a more unified class of “new men” given power by the party, has undermined the power of Turkey’s military-bureaucratic elites.

While the decline of the military’s power over Turkish society and the mobilisation of new social forces could by themselves have been viewed as promising developments from a democratic perspective, it is now clear that a new form of authoritarianism is taking its place. The trends that began in the 1960s have culminated in the emergence of a radically personalised and clientelistic party in the shape of the AKP, with party functionaries who owe their social status and political power to the party’s leader.

Turkey at a crossroads

The AKP’s rise has reflected both continuity and change within the Turkish political system. The party is new in the sense that it depends on a new class of political elites, mostly created by the AKP itself. Yet the AKP has not transcended the clientelism and personalism of the past – instead, it has created novel versions of these approaches.

Indeed, the AKP has brought clientelism to a new level by centralising it and creating a large constituency reliant on the powerful “survival networks” of the party and impervious to appeals by other parties. It has also constructed a powerful national machine that enables its leader, Erdoğan, to maintain a firm grasp not only on the Turkish military but on institutional veto players such as the judiciary as well as any dissenting voices within his own party.

Finally, while competitive Turkish politics is still alive in Turkey, it is currently at a crossroads. If the AKP further tightens its grip over Turkish politics and resources for clientelistic distribution – for which upcoming local elections in March will be crucial – in the coming years and if opposition parties fail to reform their own party organisations, Turkey may well be pushed in the direction of autocracy for the foreseeable future.

For more information, see the authors’ accompanying article in the European Journal of Turkish Studies

Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: idiltoffolo / Shutterstock.com