Notable Networks: Elite Recruitment, Organizational Cohesiveness, and Islamist Electoral Success in Turkey

Politics & Society2015, Vol. 43(3) 385 –413

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Notable Networks: Elite Recruitment, Organizational Cohesiveness, and Islamist Electoral Success in Turkey

Feryaz OcakliSkidmore College

AbstractHow do Islamists get non-Islamists to vote for them? The existing literature suggests that what drives support for Islamist parties are macro-social transformations, Islamic culture, or Islamist party moderation. These approaches do not explain the variation in Islamist electoral performance. Why do Islamists win elections in some but not in other, very similar, contexts? This article identifies the important role of local elite recruitment and organizational cohesiveness in Islamist electoral performance. It applies the subnational comparative method to demonstrate the causal mechanisms linking local party organizations to Islamist electoral success. Empirical evidence is drawn from in-depth studies of the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) local branches in three closely-matched pairs of cities in Turkey. The findings bridge the literatures on political Islam and party politics with a new theory of Islamist electoral strategy and performance.

KeywordsIslamist parties, AKP, electoral strategy, party-voter linkages, Turkey, local elites

Corresponding Author:Feryaz Ocakli, Government Department, Skidmore College, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, USA. Email: [email protected]

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386 Politics & Society 43(3)

How do identity-based political parties build support beyond core, in-group support-ers? How do they move from the fringes to the center of the political spectrum and build diverse coalitions? In the western Turkish city of Ödemiş, the Islamist Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP, “Justice and Development Party”) made unprecedented gains in the 2000s. It won local and national elections in an area long considered a secularist stronghold. At the same time, the AKP consistently lost elections in the neighboring city of Salihli. Why were the Islamists able to break the dominance of the secularist parties in Ödemiş, but not in Salihli, where they faced nearly identical conditions?

This article explores how Islamist parties expand their support base to include non-Islamists, and win elections. This question is critical to the study of democratization in Muslim-majority states, political parties, and electoral contestation.1 Existing explana-tions based on Islamist party moderation, Islamic culture, the role of the devout bour-geoisie, and the plight of the urban poor do not account for the puzzling variation in Islamist electoral success. This paper identifies the important role of local-level party strategy and organization in building links between parties and potential voters. It argues that the strategic recruitment of local elites and the cohesiveness of local party organizations help to provide a more complete explanation of why Islamist parties succeed (and fail) at the polls. Strategic local elite incorporation and organizational cohesiveness enable parties to become embedded in the social networks of potential voters while maintaining a sense of identity, common purpose, and bureaucratic effi-cacy. At the same time, parties seeking to enlarge their support base face a trade-off between expanding their party organizations and preserving internal cohesiveness. Striking a balance between pragmatism and cohesion is key to building out-group sup-port and succeeding at the polls.

The article applies the subnational comparative method to isolate the causal mecha-nisms linking local party organizations to Islamist electoral success. Empirical evi-dence is drawn from in-depth studies of the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) local branches in three closely matched pairs of cities in Turkey, where existing theo-ries would predict similar performance by the Islamists. Gebze and Çorlu, Ödemiş and Salihli, and Bingöl and Muş share numerous demographic, ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional similarities. However, they differ significantly in the AKP's electoral outcomes. According to existing theories, the AKP should have won in Çorlu. Islamists often thrive in cities where rapid urbanization leads to the growth of rural-migrant enclaves and shantytowns. However, the AKP lost every election it contested in the city. The Islamists should have lost in Ödemiş, located in the secularist heartland of Western Anatolia, where Islamist parties had never won a single election in the past. The AKP defied the odds and won local and national elections. In Kurdish-majority Eastern Anatolia, the AKP scored impressive electoral victories in Bingöl but not in Muş. This article traces the causes of these variations and examines the conditions under which Islamists are likely to broaden their support base and win elections.

The local politics of Middle Eastern states have been remarkably underexplored, leading us to overlook potentially important explanatory variables. By addressing the question of Islamist electoral strategy at the micro level and examining both the



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positive and negative outcomes, this article contributes to our understanding of how parties that move from the fringes to the center of the political spectrum attract new constituencies.2 It contributes to the emerging scholarship that bridges the literatures on political Islam and party politics.3

The next section assesses the existing approaches to Islamist politics. The article then offers a theoretical framework for explaining Islamist electoral success with ref-erence to electoral strategies of local party organizations. It unpacks the tension between elite incorporation and organizational cohesiveness, disaggregates the con-cept of cohesion, and examines the conditions under which party organizations may use elite incorporation as an effective electoral strategy. The subsequent sections lay out the research design, methods, and evidence for the proposed theory, which is then supported by three paired comparisons.

Explaining Islamist Party Support

Theories of Islamist politics explain the rise of Islamist parties with reference to Islamic culture, ideology, and social transformations in Muslim-majority states. Islamist parties rely primarily on religious identity claims to differentiate themselves from their secularist counterparts. Taking them at their word, earlier theories empha-sized the uniqueness of Islamic culture to explain the growing popularity of Islamist movements. The civilizational approach held that Islamist movements appeal to Muslims because they represent a backlash against the global domination of the West.4 However, reducing the support for Islamist parties to the collective cognitive disso-nance of a Huntingtonian civilization carries obvious essentialist undertones. This per-spective portrays Muslims as one-dimensional, whose politics is driven primarily by their religious affiliation. It also overpredicts the support Islamists actually receive.5 In order to account for the concrete relationships between Islamist parties and their sup-porters, the national and civilizational narratives of Islamic revival must be disaggregated.

Others have emphasized the role of ideology for the appeal of Islamist movements. When Islamist parties join electoral competition, they tend to adopt accommodative political programs. The “inclusion-moderation hypothesis” holds that radical parties will change their behavior when they are included in the political process.6 The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is a prominent case of a radical Islamist movement that transformed into a pragmatic and ideologically flexible organization, before it was banned by the military in 2013.7 The moderation of the Islamic Action Front in Jordan and the National Outlook movement in Turkey has also been linked to political partici-pation.8 While these studies show why some Islamist movements abandon anti-sys-temic behaviors and beliefs to work within the existing institutions, they assume, rather than problematize, the link between moderation and electoral performance. The mechanisms through which moderation helps improve Islamists' performance at the polls still need to be examined. This article suggests that it is not moderation per se that drives Islamist electoral success, but the strategic local-level links parties form with voters.




As opposed to culture and ideology, some scholars have focused on large-scale social transformations in Muslim-majority states to explain why Islamist movements have thrived. The social dislocation theory holds that it was the inability of secular-nationalist regimes to satisfy the economic and social expectations of the Muslim masses that generated the support behind Islamist parties.9 Islamists gained popularity among the marginalized groups when the Arab Socialist, Baathist, and Kemalist regimes failed to respond to the forces of globalization.10 The urban poor, who share a common sense of social dislocation, became receptive to Islamist parties because the Islamists promote justice and social equality.11 The Islamists have absorbed the tradi-tional constituencies of socialist parties—the marginalized urban poor and workers—when they replaced the left as the champions of social justice.12 Others have argued that the religiously conservative bourgeoisie is central to Islamist electoral success.13 The devout capitalists not only support Islamist movements, but they also cause them to moderate.14 The growth of Islamist parties has indeed coincided with large-scale socioeconomic transformations in the Global South, including in the Muslim-majority states. However, these theories do not explain why macro-social transformations should lead voters to support Islamists in particular. Furthermore, the support for Islamist parties cuts across urban and rural, as well as developed and underdeveloped, areas. Islamists have consistently won elections in some rural regions that are lacking in socially dislocated urban migrants or a bourgeoisie, devout or otherwise. They have also lost elections in some migrant cities with thriving industrial economies.

The economic and sociological explanations of the growth of Islamist parties, as well as those based on culture and ideology, are missing the politics in political Islam. They do not take into account how Islamist parties are organized, what electoral strate-gies they adopt, and how they interact and form relationships with voters. This article positions party organizations and party-voter linkages at the center of analysis. It con-tends that the impact of macro-social transformations, culture, and ideology on elec-toral competition are mediated by party organization and strategy, without which our explanations remain partial. The AKP, as well as other identity-based parties, such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and the Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI) in Chile, have adopted a strategy of reaching out to society and forming electoral alliances in order to broaden their support base. The AKP has explicitly sought to appeal to center-right voters through a strategy of incorporating local elites and penetrating social networks with community outreach programs. However, political strategies to win over new voters are complex and entail trade-offs. A significant trade-off occurs when building new alliances with non-core voters endangers the cohesiveness of party organizations. The tension between the pragmatic expansion of party cadres and their cohesion punishes parties that expand too much, by encouraging fragmentation and compromising discipline, as well as those that expand too little, by preventing them from permeating new segments of the society. The next section discusses this argument in more detail, disaggregates the concepts of elite incorporation and organizational cohesiveness, and elaborates on the trade-off between expansion and cohesion.



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The Logic of Islamist Electoral Success

Under what conditions do Islamist parties gain support from non-core constituencies and exceed the vote share of their competitors in local and national elections?15 Under what conditions do they fail to do so and lose elections? This article provides an agen-tial account that focuses on the behavior of Islamist political actors on the ground to explain the process of party-voter linkage formation. It argues that Islamist parties are electorally successful when they strategically incorporate local elites and, at the same time, their local party organizations are cohesive. If either of these conditions is absent, then the Islamists will not build support beyond in-group voters and will fail elector-ally (see Figure 1).

This is not the only route to electoral success for Islamist parties, but it is an impor-tant and heretofore overlooked causal path. Not all Islamist parties try to appeal to non-core voters—some seek to solidify their core constituency.16 The AKP's own pre-decessors in Turkey, the Refah Partisi (RP, “Welfare Party”) and the Fazilet Partisi (FP, “Virtue Party”), aimed to transform ordinary Muslims by educating them in the virtues of Islamic governance. Islamist activists reframed secular political matters according to Islamic norms and symbols, and built communities around customs and traditions inspired by Islam.17 This approach differed markedly from the pragmatic inclusiveness of the AKP, which moderated its convictions, ceased its efforts to win over ideological converts, and pursued the support of center-right voters without re-educating them.

The argument's scope includes political parties that moderate their platform and target centrist voters. Among them are the Renaissance Party (Ennahda) in Tunisia, after it rejoined the political process in 2011, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, before it was banned in 2013. The proposed explanation may also apply to other identity- based parties which move from the margins to the center of the political system. The Hindu-nationalist BJP in India and the pro-Pinochet UDI in Chile are far right-wing parties that sought to win elections by attracting the votes of non-core constituencies. The mechanisms identified below explain how parties that move to the center of the political spectrum may build linkages to out-group voters. Figure 2 summarizes the causal mechanisms that link the two independent variables to the outcome of interest— electoral success.

XOrganizational

Cohesiveness

Electoral Success

Strategic Elite

Incorporation

Figure 1. The Role of Strategic Elite Incorporation and Organizational Cohesiveness in Electoral Success.




Strategic Local Elite Incorporation

“Strategic elite incorporation” refers to the selective recruitment of high-status indi-viduals who are embedded in a party's non-core constituency. Incorporating new elites signals the party's commitment to representing the political identities and policy pref-erences of out-group voters. It also allows the party to gain access to the social net-works of non-core constituencies, which increases the availability of information about and more effective engagement with these groups.

Local elites are often defined as local power brokers18 or political actors situated at the intersection of the state and traditional society.19 Since high status stems from a variety of sources other than political influence, this article defines local elites more broadly as individuals who occupy central positions in social networks. They tend to be relatively affluent, well known, and embedded in the local community. The social bases of elites vary widely according to local context, and affect the types of constitu-encies the elites can deliver to political parties. Some are land owners, merchants, or businessmen well known in local economic networks. Some are experienced local politicians who built a reputation as a public figure. Others manage civil society orga-nizations and are recognized as community leaders. Recruiting local elites from diverse backgrounds, who represent a variety of social groups, makes it possible for the party to cultivate new links to non-core constituency.

Non-core voters are those who are mildly opposed to the party. For example, the BJP's core constituency in India includes economic and caste elites, most notably the Brahmins. Its non-core constituency consists of the lower classes whose members may be convinced to vote for the Hindu-nationalists under the right circumstances.20 Similarly, the core constituency of Islamist parties includes devout Muslims linked to

Effective Local

Community

Penetration

Avoiding

Factionalism

Electoral

Success

Brokerage

Community

Outreach

Party

Discipline

Strategic Elite

Incorporation

Organizational

Cohesiveness

Inclusive

Image

Signaling of

Moderation

Figure 2. Causal Mechanisms.



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networks of mosques, charity foundations, and other formal and informal groups in the Islamic sector.21 Their non-core constituency consists of socially conservative center-right voters. They may be convinced to support the Islamists, but not for ideo-logical reasons. Recruiting local elites who are embedded in the social networks of center-right voters enables Islamist parties to establish new ties to this vote-rich constituency.

Local elites also have incentives to join identity-based parties that are moving toward the political center. Certainly, parties that are well organized may have better opportunities to recruit local elites. However, party organization is not the only factor that determines the extent and quality of elite recruitment. Local elites have a variety of motives to join Islamist parties, such as ideology, acquiring a position in the party hierarchy, nomination to elected office, local patronage, favorable access to the state bureaucracy, and expanding their business connections. Some local elites join Islamist parties because they are part of the Islamic core constituency—devout Muslims in the Islamic sector who believe that religion should play a more prominent role in gover-nance. The devout bourgeoisie and the leaders of Islamic foundations and charities fall into this category. Others are motivated by more instrumental reasons. Some non-Islamist local elites join Islamist parties for the opportunity to acquire high-ranking positions in the party organization, and to receive tickets for elected office. Parties need not be cohesive to recruit local elites—elites have incentives to join parties that are moving toward the political center precisely because the process requires restruc-turing the party organization. These parties want to integrate new recruits to influential positions in their local organizations, and to nominate them to elected office. While well-organized parties may be better at reaching out to local elites, the promise of reshuffling those organizations is what draws the elites in.

Local elites also seek to gain favorable access to state resources through party membership. This often takes the form of local patronage, whereby the local elites receive municipal contracts and business opportunities in return for their loyalty to the party. Patronage also works in more subtle ways. Membership in a successful party helps the local elites to establish private ties to the municipal bureaucracy as well as the provincial administration of the central state. These bureaucracies administer pub-lic investments, monitor compliance to licensing and zoning requirements, and pro-cess permits and claims, often with a backlog. Preferential access to these organizations helps the local elites to avoid long waiting times and overcome bureaucratic resistance to economic investments that violate regulations. In developing democracies where state-citizen relations rely to a certain extent on particularistic ties, personal connec-tions to politicians in the local and central government are valuable resources. Finally, in addition to direct access to state officials, Islamist parties also offer local elites opportunities to expand their business connections. Local businessmen who join Islamist parties may expect to enlarge their commercial networks by linking up with the devout bourgeoisie.

Strategic elite incorporation is measured by mapping the movement of local elites across party lines. The variable is coded positive when the local party organization recruits a large number of well-connected, high-status individuals as compared to its




competitors. It is coded negative when the party fails to recruit local elites, or if the recruited elites are fewer in number and less connected to the local social networks as compared to the local elites in competing parties. The coding procedure requires in-depth knowledge of the case: close familiarity with the field of local elites and the dynamics of political competition in the specific city being analyzed. It may be repli-cated by examining the distribution of local elites across political parties before and after the party under investigation initiates elite recruitment.

How does the strategic incorporation of local elites facilitate electoral victories? Here, we have to bear in mind that local party politics is a competitive enterprise, where multiple parties contend for the votes of overlapping constituencies. A party that is transitioning from a relatively unpopular “fringe” of the political spectrum to the center can be thought of as a revisionist party—one that is unhappy with the status quo. It wants to acquire the support of voters who are already captured by rivals. Incorporating well-known and influential people who hold central positions in local social networks enables such a party to reposition itself concretely in the center of the political spectrum, to establish personal contact with voters who were previously out of its reach, and to drain the ability of its rivals to reciprocate in kind.

The first causal mechanism that connects local elite incorporation to electoral suc-cess is signaling. The inclusion-moderation hypothesis rests on the observation that when Islamist parties join elections they moderate their behavior, and that through moderation they attract a broader pool of voters. While the first part of the argument is well supported in existing research, the second part requires a significant leap. How does moderation lead to more votes? Ideological moderation is a background condi-tion that is insufficient by itself for electoral success. It needs to be substantiated on the ground for the party's transformation to be credible. The recruitment of centrist local elites who had no prior association with Islamist movements achieves this task by sending a believable signal to non-Islamist voters. It enables the Islamists to show a new face to the voters by reconfiguring the party's cadres in the image of the centrist constituency.

Staffing the local party organization with centrist elites helps bring in new votes through the reputation effect. The businessmen, merchants, civil society leaders, and clan elites stake their own reputations and endorse the party by joining it. They person-ally appear in public functions as the party's representatives—in political rallies, offi-cial parades, business association meetings, dinners and picnics organized by migrant associations, and charity drives. They represent their party organization by attending weddings, circumcision ceremonies, funerals, and mourning ceremonies. They orga-nize and participate in election campaigns, which include appearing on the local media, visiting civil society organizations, drinking tea with hundreds of shopkeepers, and addressing the clientele of tens of coffeehouses in the evenings. Joining a political party is hard work, and the local elites that do so become very publicly associated with it. The Islamists benefit from this publicity by redefining what it means to vote for their party. The elites help signal the party's inclusiveness and moderation to the local community.



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The second causal mechanism is brokerage. Parties rely on local intermediaries not only to persuade, but also to mobilize the voters. As high-status individuals, elites provide the party with privileged access to local social networks and establish direct ties to non-core voters. The businessmen who join the party endorse it publicly and organize events that bring the business community and the party officials together, often through business associations. These events include joint dinners, symposia, vis-its to the capital to meet with politicians, and award ceremonies. The relations between business elites and local party organizations often go beyond lobbying. Business elites tend to be better educated and connected than others in the local community, which helps them acquire leading positions in the party organization as well as in business associations.

Merchants represent the more traditional local capital. They enable the party to reach into the commercial life of the city bazaar, or the çarşı (shopping district). The merchants are in constant contact with the local community, which make them valu-able intermediaries between parties and voters. Recruiting centrist merchants enables Islamist parties to reach into all sections of the public, including the middle classes in the city center, which tend to fall outside of the Islamist core constituency. Recruiting both businessmen and merchants enable the Islamists to establish direct links to differ-ent social classes. However, the interests of the traditional merchants and businessmen are often at odds, which poses a challenge to party cohesion, as described in the next section.

Civil society elites, particularly the leaders of Hometown Associations (HTAs), assist the party in engaging more closely with migrant communities. Formed by migrants from the same town in a host city who assemble for social purposes, HTAs are born out of the tendency of migrants from rural areas to settle in enclaves. They attend to the social needs of the migrant community, as well as help newcomers find jobs; HTA leaders are central to the social networks of the migrant neighborhoods. By recruiting and nominating them to local political office, the Islamists signal their com-mitment to the migrant group's interests and, at the same time, acquire a valuable intermediary in the shantytowns. The HTA leaders advocate for social services and clientelist benefits, such as jobs, for their constituencies while promoting the party in their community.

Clan elites, or leaders of extended family networks associated with clan structures, help the party directly by endorsing and promoting it among their relatives. This is a crucial mechanism of building out-group support in regions where clans hold social significance. All parties compete over clan heavyweights since incorporating them successfully affords a party significant advantage over its rivals. The comparative case studies below expand on the role of clan-based and other local elites in party-voter linkages in Turkey.

The competitive nature of local politics means that local elite recruitment resem-bles a zero-sum game between parties. One party’s gain can be another party's loss in terms of influence. When Islamists “poach” local elites from the center-right parties, the center-right parties lose valuable human capital, which hampers their voter out-reach efforts. Furthermore, the center-right parties find themselves competing against




their former colleagues who joined the Islamists. This makes it harder for them to marginalize the Islamists by characterizing them as fringe or radical groups.

Effective penetration of local communities requires not only the recruitment of local elites, but also the implementation of well-organized community outreach pro-grams. Islamists have cultivated a reputation for organizing at the grassroots. A supe-rior local game is essential to their electoral success. The next section examines party cohesiveness, which is the basis of organizing the grassroots.

Organizational Cohesiveness

“Organizational cohesiveness” refers to the ability of a political party to behave as a united actor in the local community. Parties seek to achieve political goals, such as getting their members elected and influencing public policy, with limited human and material resources. Cohesiveness refers to the robustness of the party organization. Cohesive party organizations are like well-oiled machines—their leaders, bureaucrats, and activists efficiently execute and oversee tasks. They avoid factionalism and main-tain internal discipline. They are better able to reach out to out-group voters by build-ing and maintaining ongoing relationships with local communities, which contributes to electoral success.

Building cohesive organizations is crucial when the incorporation of new elites expands the party cadres. Organizational cohesiveness requires resources of local leadership and coalition building. Effective party leaders establish clear expectations about the nomination of candidates during elections, the procedures for promotion, and the consequences of undisciplined behavior. If the party organization is cohesive, local elites who fail to receive a nomination or promotion continue executing their responsibilities, which enables the party to present a united front to the local commu-nity. Cohesive parties are active in between elections, and have the organizational capacity to build enduring bonds with the non-core constituencies they seek to court.

As this discussion suggests, the cohesiveness of party organizations cannot be reduced to organizational efficacy. Political parties are not merely bureaucratic orga-nizations. In addition to undertaking administrative tasks, they have to manage con-flicting elite interests—between business and union leaders, businessmen and merchants, varied demands for patronage, and requests for promotion and nomination to elected office despite limited openings. These tasks call for building and managing political ties in addition to developing a Weberian bureaucracy.

The concept of “organizational cohesiveness” as it applies to political parties can be unpacked into three interrelated components—reliability, esprit de corps, and bureau-cratic competence. First, party organizations have to be reliable in carrying out the tasks given to them by the national party center. Cohesive parties implement the elec-toral strategies adopted by the national party center even if these strategies hurt the interests of the local party officials. Second, party organizations need to have a team spirit. Cohesive parties instill in their members an esprit de corps, which entails taking responsibility, carrying out one's duties, and allegiance to the party despite personal dissatisfaction. This spirit unites the party behind the political mission and motivates



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its members to be bureaucratically competent. Bureaucratic competence implies that party organizations operate according to clear procedures about the responsibilities of party officials and activists. Competent bureaucracies implement party-related tasks in a timely and efficient manner.

The three components of cohesiveness often reinforce one another and yield a more robust party organization. However, tension may emerge between reliability and esprit de corps when the decisions of the national party center threaten the internal cohesion of a local branch. As mentioned above, the electoral strategy of elite incorporation requires on the restructuring of local party organizations. The Salihli case analyzed below suggests that party branches with highly cohesive and entrenched local politi-cians may resist the directives of the national party center to recruit new elites. Maintaining cohesiveness at a time of organizational transformation requires willing-ness on the part of existing members to build esprit de corps together with the newly recruited local elites.

Organizational cohesiveness is measured by evaluating the internal workings of a party organization. A party organization is cohesive if it carries out the electoral strate-gies adopted by the national party center, follows clear procedures for implementing party-related administrative tasks, and the party officials remain loyal to their organi-zation despite interpersonal disagreements. This variable is coded positive if a local party organization has a clear division of labor among its active members, consistently implements party-related tasks, oversees this process through regular meetings and reports, executes the decisions of the national party organization, and retains its disaf-fected members when conflicts of interest and differences in opinion naturally arise. It is coded negative if the party branch lacks a clear division of labor, fails to implement and oversee organizational tasks, refuses to implement the strategies adopted by the national party center, or party officials disrupt the routine functions of their party due to conflicts of interest or opinion. While most party organizations cannot satisfy all of these conditions to the same degree at all times, the variable is coded negative if more than one of these conditions are lacking.

The evaluation procedure for the organizational cohesiveness variable, like that for strategic local elite incorporation, requires detailed case knowledge. Conducting in-depth interviews with party officials and activists is an effective method of collecting this type of information. However, the existence of multiple factions in some party organizations necessitates careful triangulation of the interviewees' factual claims. Increasing the number of interviews of party officials and checking the validity of their claims by interviewing members of the local press, other political parties, and civil society organizations help to develop more valid assessments.

The cohesiveness of party organizations leads to electoral success through two causal mechanisms. The first is the party discipline mechanism. Disciplined parties inspire hard work and sacrifice from their members, build loyalty, and behave as a united actor in the local community. However, when a local party organization expands its portfolio of local elites through strategic elite incorporation, factionalism becomes a likely challenge. When elites who have no prior experience working together are joined in the same organization, it is natural to expect conflicts of interest




and differences in opinion. To the extent that a local party organization overcomes the tensions that arise with the incorporation of new elites, it avoids debilitating factional-ism and presents a united front to potential voters.

The second causal mechanism is community outreach. Cohesive parties have capa-ble bureaucracies that enable them to create and manage grassroots activist networks. They are able to launch community outreach programs that establish direct ties between the party and potential voters. Activists and party officials attend weddings, funerals, circumcision ceremonies, mourning ceremonies, and fundraisers for civic organizations. They organize charity drives, and help the needy either through direct transfers or by encouraging local authorities to act. The youth and women's groups of cohesive Islamist party organizations are very active in their local communities. They regularly organize visits to peripheral neighborhoods and shantytowns both before and in-between the elections. These visits take place in the homes of party sympathizers and invoke traditional expectations of hospitality. They build personal relationships between the party, the host family, and their neighbors who are invited to attend the meeting. The party's neighborhood committees also meet local residents to discuss problems of infrastructure, such as water outages, fallen trees, unfilled ditches, and poor electricity distribution quality. When community outreach programs are success-ful, they enable the party to have an impact on the lived experiences of community members.

However, having a robust organization is not sufficient for thoroughly penetrating large segments of a local community. The party organization needs to find a way into the local social networks. The local elites, strategically recruited by the party organiza-tion, hold the keys to local social networks. The brokerage activities of local elites, combined with the capacity of cohesive parties to reach out to the local community with their grassroots activist networks, enable the party to permeate the society. Successful penetration of local communities contributes to the party's electoral success.

Expansion-Cohesion Trade-off

The foregoing discussion suggests a source of tension between the two independent variables. Strategic elite incorporation enables the party to permeate new social net-works, and thereby attract out-group support. On the other hand, it also introduces more competition between party members for positions of influence in the party hier-archy, local patronage, and tickets for elected office. In doing so, it can challenge party cohesion. Cohesive party organizations have esprit de corps and are effective at field-ing community outreach programs, which helps to attract non-core voters. However, too much cohesion among entrenched party officials may compromise the incorpora-tion of new elites. Parties that are moving from the edges to the center of the political system have to strike a balance between cohesion and expansion.

The trade-off between pragmatic expansion and organizational cohesiveness bedevils all parties that seek to appeal to new constituencies. To understand how this trade-off affects party organizations, we need to focus on the local level. Party



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strategies adopted by the national party center and carried out by local party branches do not work similarly across different cities. The comparative case studies examined below demonstrate the hazards of too-expansive elite recruitment as well as too-rigid party cohesion. Too much cohesion among entrenched party officials may lead to an inflexible organization that is unable and unwilling to recruit new local elites. The case of Salihli shows how cohesion among existing party officials does not guarantee elite incorporation; it may, in fact, prevent it. On the other hand, the case of Çorlu shows how elite incorporation that is too broad may lead to a breakdown of internal order and unity, preventing the party from penetrating the social networks of non-core voters. The social structures encountered by parties at the local level also complicate the effects of party strategy. The case of Muş demonstrates that the cohesiveness of the local party organization does not guarantee effective elite recruitment. A well-orga-nized party may wish to incorporate local elites, but, as the Kurdish clan politics in Muş shows, the elites are not always available for recruitment.

The next section explains the logic of case selection, data sources, and methods used in the study, and sets the stage for the examination of the closely matched cases.

Research Design, Case Selection, and Methods

The AKP was founded by the young and reformist wing of the Islamist movement in Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Abdullah Gül, and their colleagues formed the party in 2001 in response to the anti-systemic ideology of the Islamist movement on one hand, and the illiberal secularism of the Turkish military on the other. The founders of the AKP declared their intention to make peace with the secular principles of the con-stitution.22 However, the new party’s electoral success was far from certain. The high-est vote share achieved by an Islamist party in Turkey had been 21 percent in 1995 (the Welfare Party), and had declined to 15 percent by 1999 (the Virtue Party). The Constitutional Court had banned two Islamist parties in the three-year window between 1998 and 2001. Given the relatively meager electoral performance of its predecessors, and the risk of closure by the strictly secularist state institutions, how did the AKP broaden its voter base to receive 34 percent of the vote in 2002, and 47 percent by 2007? What explains the significant variation in the AKP’s electoral support at the sub-national level despite the rapid rise in its overall popularity?

This article examines the formative phase of the AKP's life cycle, when the Islamists established new links to non-core constituencies. It focuses on the time period that includes the national elections of 2002, the local elections of 2004, and the national elections of 2007. During this period, the political Islamists in Turkey sought to rein-vent themselves by making peace with the secular nature of the Turkish state and by declaring their support for the country's accession to the European Union. At the same time, the AKP's local party organizations underwent radical changes that influenced the process of constituency building. The comparative case studies examined below account for this transformation and its impact on electoral performance.

To explore the causes of Islamist electoral success, this article sets up a controlled comparison based on the most-similar-systems research design. It focuses on cities




where the existing theories would predict Islamist parties to perform similarly. The observed variation in the AKP’s electoral performance is the empirical puzzle at the heart of the research design. The cases are chosen strategically to maximize variation in the outcome.23 Gebze and Çorlu, Ödemiş and Salihli, and Bingöl and Muş are insti-tutionally, culturally, and socioeconomically similar to one another. They are also similar in their ethnic and demographic compositions. However, they differ signifi-cantly in the AKP’s electoral performance. The closely matched cases help to control for variables identified in competing explanations and to trace the processes that lead to Islamist electoral success or failure (see Table 1).

The theoretically relevant parallels between the matched cases justify the use of the most similar systems design. Each pair of cities is geographically proximate, roughly equal in population size, and very similar in levels of economic development, the pres-ence or absence of a devout bourgeoisie, inward and outward migration, ethnic com-position, and the pervasiveness of religious brotherhoods. The AKP’s local party organizations function under the same electoral rules, compete with the same political opponents, and share the same national media environment. Taken together, the six cases represent the majority of the cities in Turkey. They cover the east, west, and northwest regions of the country, and include developed, underdeveloped, industrial, agricultural, predominantly Kurdish, and Turkish regions. The findings account for the variation in Islamist electoral performance in small and medium-sized cities, where the vast majority of Turkey’s population resides.

Table 1. The Distribution of Cases.

The Winning Party

City Types & Characteristics

Secularist Party Islamist PartyKurdish National

MovementCHP AKP

Northwestern Developed Industrial Migrant receiver Mixed ethnicity Çorlu Gebze Western Developed Agricultural No migration Predominantly Turkish Salihli Ödemiş Eastern Underdeveloped Agricultural Migrant donor Predominantly Kurdish Bingöl Muş



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The outcome of interest—electoral success—is defined as exceeding the party’s competitors in vote share. Gebze, Ödemiş, and Bingöl are “most different” cities, but the AKP has achieved electoral success in all three. These cities were represented by the AKP politicians in Turkey’s parliament, and Islamist mayors managed their local governments. By contrast, Çorlu and Salihli elected secularist candidates as mayors and parliamentarians. In Muş, the Kurdish nationalists consistently outperformed the Islamists in the national elections.

The center-right voters, the AKP’s non-core constituency, were abundant in each of the six cities. The leading center-right parties, the Doğru Yol Partisi (DYP, “True Path Party”) and the Anavatan Partisi (ANAP, “Motherland Party”), averaged 41 percent of the vote share in Ödemiş, 38 percent in Salihli, 33 percent in Bingöl, 34 percent in Muş, 26 percent in Gebze, and 40 percent in Çorlu in the five national and local elec-toral competitions held during the 1990s. Despite the general availability of non-core voters to boost the Islamist party at the polls, the AKP performed differently in each matched city.

The general argument can now be restated with reference to the cases analyzed in this article. The AKP achieved electoral success in Gebze, Ödemiş, and Bingöl because it strategically incorporated local elites and, at the same time, its local party organiza-tions were cohesive. The Islamists lost elections to the secularist CHP in Çorlu and Salihli, and to the Kurdish National Movement in Muş, because they either failed to incorporate local elites strategically or failed to form cohesive local party organiza-tions. Figure 3 summarizes the argument.

The empirical findings are based on extensive fieldwork in the six cities and their surrounding areas. Over 130 in-depth interviews were conducted with local party offi-cials and activists, local journalists, political experts, and civil society leaders during five field trips between 2007 and 2014. In addition to interview data, the article draws on extensive field observations in the local offices of the AKP and its competitors and in civil society organizations. Participant observation conducted during the AKP’s municipal election campaigns in Ödemiş, Salihli, and Gebze also contributes to the

Figure 3. AKP’s Paths to Electoral Success and Failure.




analysis. Archival materials, including limited-access government documents obtained from the provincial and sub-provincial governorates of Bingöl, Muş, Gebze, and Çorlu, as well as local newspapers, supplement the observation and interview data.

Comparative Case Studies

The following analysis of comparative case studies traces the local roots of Islamist electoral success. First, the comparison between Bingöl and Muş elucidates the cen-trality of strategic elite incorporation and organizational cohesiveness for developing out-group support. It also shows that organizational capacity alone is not sufficient for strategic elite recruitment when local social structures cause elites to be unavailable. Then, the comparisons between Gebze and Çorlu, and Ödemiş and Salihli clarify how elite recruitment and organizational cohesiveness interact. These sections examine the conditions under which pragmatic expansion and cohesiveness may lead to electoral success, and when the tension between them may undermine the competitiveness of the party at the polls.

Clans and Kinship Networks: Islamist Party Building in Ethnic-Minority Regions

Since its founding in 2001, the AKP has emerged as the only party, other than the Kurdish National Movement (KNM), that can credibly claim to represent the Kurds of Turkey. Other parties are practically locked out of the Kurdish-majority Eastern and Southeastern regions. The electoral competition between the Islamists and the pro-Kurdish activists dominates the political arena. Existing approaches to Islamist parties predict similar levels of electoral support for the AKP in Bingöl and Muş due to their extensive institutional, demographic, and socioeconomic similarities. Both have simi-lar religious compositions, are migrant-donors, and completely lack dislocated urban masses or a devout bourgeoisie. Why, then, did the AKP win unprecedented electoral victories in Bingöl, but lose national elections to its pro-Kurdish rivals in the neighbor-ing city of Muş?24

The causes of the variation in the AKP’s electoral success lie in the structure of the local clan system and the relationships between the AKP and clan elites. The AKP constructed a cohesive party organization in Bingöl that was able to permeate local clan networks and win out-group support by strategically recruiting Kurdish clan elites. The case of Muş demonstrates that organizational capacity is not always enough to integrate local elites who could deliver votes. The AKP formed a cohesive party organization in Muş, but the strength of the Kurdish National Movement cut across clan lines and diminished the ability of the local elites to bring new voters. The alle-giances of Kurdish clans affected the outcome of electoral competition.

Table 2 summarizes the characteristics of the AKP’s local party organizations and elite incorporation in Bingöl and Muş, as well as the difference in the party’s electoral performance across the two cities.



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In Bingöl and Muş, Kurdish clans constitute the primary form of local authority structures.25 The clan alliances forged by the AKP in Bingöl, and their failure in Muş, were crucial for the electoral outcomes. In both cities, significant clan leaders were embedded into the patronage networks of the center-right parties, particularly the DYP and the ANAP, during the 1990s. The center-right received similar rates of support in both cities during this period. In Bingöl, the center-right received 32 percent of the vote share in national, and 35 percent in local elections during the 1990s. In Muş, the average vote share of the center-right was 28 percent in national and 43 percent in local elections. The Islamists thus faced similar opportunities in both cities to recruit clan elites and to stake a claim for the votes of centrist constituencies.

In Bingöl, the AKP built a cohesive party organization that was reliable, bureau-cratically competent, and had a sense of esprit de corps. The party organization was reliable in that it decisively implemented the national party center’s decision to pursue local elite recruitment as an electoral strategy. Party members were willing to carry out their responsibilities, and none of the interviewees reported factional disputes. Party work was coordinated according to rules that suited the local customs and social struc-tures. For example, each activist sought to promote the AKP within his or her clan during the electoral campaigns.26 Party officials regularly attended circumcision cer-emonies, weddings, and funerals in order to show solidarity with their fellow towns-men. The taziye (“mourning”) ceremonies were particularly important. The local AKP officials and activists made sure to offer their condolences to the family of the deceased in their own home during the three days of the mourning ritual. Even members of the parliament flew in from Ankara as often as they could to attend the taziye ceremonies of significant families in Bingöl.27

The Islamists in Bingöl recruited local elites with strong ties to the populous clans in the city’s center and southern districts. The Zigte, Az, and Taus clans were the lead-ing forces that delivered the elections to the AKP.28 The charismatic leader of the Az clan, Haydar Baylaz, and his political successor, Feyzi Berdibek, illustrate how the AKP was intimately linked to elite-led clan politics in Bingöl. Haydar Baylaz was an eminent DYP politician before the establishment of the AKP. His ability to mobilize the votes of the Az clan, as well as his personal appeal, made him a valuable political asset. When Baylaz passed away, Berdibek replaced him as the power broker for the Az clan. Berdibek had built a sizable construction business through military contracts. He pioneered the establishment of the AKP in Bingöl, and became the dominant politi-cian in the new party with the support of the Az clan.29

Table 2. The AKP's Party Organization, Elite Incorporation, and Electoral Performance in Bingöl and Muş.

Bingöl Muş

Local party Organization Cohesive CohesiveElite incorporation Strategic recruitment No strategic recruitmentAKP’s electoral outcome Success Failure




Other local elites with significant clan support also joined the AKP. Yusuf Coşkun, a prominent lawyer, former ANAP member, and member of the Taus clan joined the AKP soon after its establishment. His move from the ANAP to the AKP strengthened the centrist credentials of the new party, while also linking it to the Taus clan. Kazım Ataoğlu and Abdurrahman Anık of the Zigte clan helped the AKP establish its support base in the populous Genç district. Ataoğlu represented a powerful family in the Zigte clan, while Anık was a former mayor of the Genç district, and had served as the local mufti.30 Concrete clan ties, particularly in the vote-rich southern districts of Bingöl, enabled the Islamists to expand their electoral appeal to constituencies that had sup-ported center-right parties in the past.

The AKP could not duplicate its success with the Kurdish clans in the neighboring city of Muş despite having a cohesive party organization. The party branch was founded in 2001 by Islamist activists from the Zazalar clan. Similar to its counterpart in Bingöl, it quickly evolved into a reliable organization that had an effective bureau-cracy and a sense of esprit de corps.31 The interviewees reported not witnessing explicit conflicts between the party members. Party officials consistently joined local celebra-tions, such as weddings and circumcisions, as well as funerals and taziye ceremonies. Even though the party branch had all the indicators of a cohesive organization, its elite recruitment strategy failed to have the desired impact on its out-group support because of the structure and allegiances of the local clans.

Although the local AKP branch in Muş was established by experienced Islamist politicians linked to the Zaza clan, other prominent Zaza clansmen remained with the old-guard Islamists and divided the clan vote.32 The largest and politically most influ-ential clans in Muş were the Sasonlar and the Batıkanlılar clans. The Batıkanlılar clan traditionally supported secularist and pro-Kurdish parties, placing their votes out of Islamist reach. However, the Sasonlar clan elites had been closer to the center-right, making them prime targets for the Islamists. The AKP recruited a number of Sasonlar elites, but other prominent clan members chose to remain with the DYP, thus dividing the clan vote.33 The Hiyanlilar, Bekiriler, and Elmani clans were also internally divided. Their constituents continued to support the pro-Kurdish candidates even though the clan elites joined various parties, including the AKP.34 As a result, the Islamists were unable to forge an elite-led electoral alliance with local clans that could deliver the votes necessary to overcome their competitors in the national elections.

Merchants and Moderates: Islamist Party Building in Secularist Strongholds

Existing approaches would predict low levels of support for Islamist parties in Ödemiş and Salihli. Both are small cities with agricultural economies, and they both experi-enced very low levels of urban migration. There is no devout bourgeoisie that could support Islamist networks. Both cities are located in the periphery of Izmir, the metrop-olis often considered the bastion of secularism in Turkey. The macro-social character-istics that are linked to the growth of Islamist parties are conspicuously absent in both



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cases. How was the AKP able to build a broad base and win elections in Ödemiş, and why did it fail to do the same in Salihli?35

Table 3 summarizes the AKP’s electoral performance in Ödemiş and Salihli, as well as the relevant features of its local party organization and elite incorporation.

Islamist parties received very limited support in Ödemiş and Salihli prior to the AKP’s establishment. Political competition was dominated by secular and center-right parties. The lack of Islamist movement vibrancy imposed constraints on the AKP. First, the party could not rely on an established Islamist core constituency to kick start its political campaign. Neither were there a devout bourgeoisie or disaffected masses to rely on for support.36 Second, the weakness of the Islamist movement in Ödemiş and Salihli meant that the AKP’s only source of votes would be its non-core constitu-ency, the supporters of center-right parties. The center-right parties had averaged 42 percent in national and 40 percent in local elections in Ödemiş throughout the 1990s, while in Salihli they averaged 45 percent in national and 29 percent in local elections. Thus, in both cities, the Islamists faced similar opportunities to incorporate local elites and attract center-right voters.

Political Islamists in Ödemiş comprised a small group of artisans organized as a mosque community in the old çarşı (“shopping district”). The mosque at the center of the old bazaar was the social and religious hub of the conservative merchant commu-nity. When the Constitutional Court banned the Virtue Party in 2001, the Islamists in Ödemiş split into two groups. The senior members established the local chapter of the Saadet Partisi (SP, “Felicity Party”), which retained the radical Islamist ideology of its predecessors and remained as a fringe party in the city. The younger cohort founded the local AKP organization. Despite the willingness of the reformist Islamists to mod-erate their ideology, they lacked the means to penetrate the social networks of the center-right constituency. The weakness of the party organization, coupled with its detachment from the general population, led the AKP to lose its first election in the following year.

Despite its local electoral failure, the national rise of the AKP prompted the reorga-nization of the party branch. The Islamists sought to strengthen their party cadre with experienced center-right politicians. An official at the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) described the AKP’s strategy during this period:

The AKP made a good investment at that time. It reached out to the internal opposition groups of their rivals and invited them to join the party. These people had less to lose

Table 3. The AKP's Party Organization, Elite Incorporation, and Electoral Performance in Ödemiş and Salihli.

Ödemiş Salihli

Local party organization Cohesive CohesiveElite incorporation Strategic recruitment No strategic recruitmentAKP’s electoral outcome Success Failure




from leaving their old parties, and that’s why they were more willing to accept the invitation. The AKP talked to many people from different parties. That’s why they have politicians from very different backgrounds.37

In addition to incorporating center-right politicians,38 the Islamists recruited local merchants39 and sought the endorsement of artisanal and commerce associations.40 As a result, the AKP was able to shed its image as a fringe Islamist party, gain access to the social networks of center-right constituencies, and improve its electoral support.

Incorporating local elites enabled the AKP to transform its party organization. The newly recruited members helped the party to reach out to new constituencies, which made electoral victory seem possible. The developing esprit de corps motivated the party activists, who channeled their energy into building community outreach pro-grams that were novel in the small city. The party developed a volunteerist approach to political engagement and functioned like a civil society organization. The leader of the AKP’s women’s group in Ödemiş explained that she was motivated by the party’s social mission: “I see our job not as a political one but as a social one. I gained so many social contacts due to my work at the party. Our job is to be helpful to people. It is purely a volunteer activity.”41

The AKP’s activists organized regular household and coffee-house meetings, char-ity events, and youth outreach programs across Ödemiş, particularly focusing on the relatively poor peripheral neighborhoods.42 The leadership of experienced center-right politicians, coupled with the newly constructed party bureaucracy, contributed to the emergence of a cohesive party organization.

The Islamists were similarly unpopular in Salihli before the establishment of the AKP. However, the key difference was that the Islamist movement in Salihli was led by a small, tightly-knit, and cohesive group with close ties to the national party center. Bülent Arınç—a nationally renowned Islamist politician from the same region—acted as the patron of the local party leaders, who followed him en masse when Arınç became one of the founders of the AKP at the national level. As a result, unlike in Ödemiş, the Islamist movement in Salihli never experienced a split between the old-guard and reformist wings. The old-guard Islamist politicians established the local AKP branch.43

Salihli’s cohesive group of personalistic party leaders had a vested interest in pre-serving the status quo in the local party organization. Their close relationship with Bülent Arınç enabled them to silently refuse to implement the national party center’s electoral strategy. Their failure to incorporate new elites into the AKP organization perpetuated the old party-constituency linkages. The continuity between the banned FP and the new AKP organizations enabled the Islamists’ rivals to characterize the party as just a new front for radical Islamists. Whether the AKP had actually moder-ated its ideology remained questionable.44

The initial split between the old-guard and the reformist wings of the Islamist movement in Ödemiş prevented the capture of the new AKP organization by entrenched Islamist politicians. The majority of the party posts passed on to centrist local elites following a period of organizational restructuring. The shift paid off when the new



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party was able to permeate the social networks of the center-right voters with the help of the newly recruited elites and a cohesive party organization. The lack of strategic local elite incorporation, due to the Islamist old-guard’s unwillingness to restructure their organization, prevented the AKP from becoming competitive in Salihli, which led to electoral failure.

Migrants and Businessmen: Islamist Party Building in Industrial Zones

Existing theories suggests that a devout bourgeoisie and socially dislocated urban masses are the recipes for Islamist electoral success in Muslim-majority states.45 These theories would predict high levels of support for Islamist parties in Gebze and Çorlu. Located in the immediate periphery of Istanbul, the two cities have received hundreds of thousands of migrants due to their industrial development since the late 1970s.46 The growth of the gecekondu (“built overnight”), or shantytowns, created the urban masses that could potentially be mobilized by Islamist parties. At the same time, eco-nomic liberalization led to the emergence of a devout bourgeoisie in both Çorlu and Gebze. The two cities also displayed similarly high rates of electoral support for cen-ter-right parties throughout the 1990s. During this period, the center-right parties aver-aged 26 percent vote share in national, and 25 percent vote share in local elections in Gebze; 40 percent in national, and 39 percent in local elections in Çorlu. Thus, the AKP had ample opportunities to expand its appeal to center-right constituencies in both cities. Why, then, did the AKP win every election it contested in Gebze, but lost to the secularist CHP in Çorlu?47

Table 4 summarizes the characteristics of the AKP’s local party organizations and elite incorporation in Gebze and Çorlu, as well as the difference in the party’s electoral performance across the two cities.

The differences between the AKP’s Gebze and Çorlu branches emerged during their formative phase. Elite incorporation and party building in Gebze was a well-planned and meticulously implemented process. On the other hand, elite incorporation in Çorlu was very abrupt and too broad, leaving the organization vulnerable to internal strife.

In Gebze, a committee composed of reformist Islamist politicians took on the task of building the new party organization and managing elite-level recruits in 2001, before the party was officially established. They selected and interviewed local politi-cians, trade unionists, merchants, businessmen, and civil society leaders with socially

Table 4. The AKP's Party Organization, Elite Incorporation, and Electoral Performance in Gebze and Çorlu.

Gebze Çorlu

Local party organization Cohesive NoncohesiveElite incorporation Strategic recruitment Strategic recruitmentAKP’s electoral outcome Success Failure




conservative reputations.48 Their first targets were the leaders of the center-right par-ties.49 The DYP’s leader, Eyüp Ayar, joined the AKP during this period.50 Conservative trade unions were also convenient recruitment grounds for the Islamists. The commit-tee approached representatives of the Turkish Metal Workers Union, and other mem-bers of the Türk-İş Labor Confederation.51 They also contacted economic elites, particularly the well-connected merchants in the town center and the industrialists linked to local business associations.52 This proactive strategy of elite recruitment allowed the Islamists to identify reliable partners, and to moderate their expectations regarding local patronage and nomination to elected office. The well-planned expan-sion of the local party organization created a motivated cadre of politicians and activ-ists and helped develop a palpable esprit de corps. The recruited local elites attained influential positions in the party hierarchy, took on the responsibilities of party admin-istration, and organized community outreach programs to help the AKP permeate local social networks.

In contrast to Gebze, the AKP’s Çorlu branch was founded exclusively by reformist Islamist politicians. Elite recruitment occurred in an ad-hoc fashion after the national election in 2002.53 As opposed to the selective incorporation of local elites in Gebze, the AKP branch in Çorlu was inundated by a large wave of local elites who wished to join the party. Some of them were businessmen integrated into Çorlu’s growing com-mercial and industrial networks. Adnan Volkan, a well-known merchant in the food-stuffs sector, was a local politician in ANAP before joining the AKP. Businessman Atilla Kılıç, the members of the large landowning Erginler and Ersözler families, as well as the members of the Erçiller and Kumyollar families joined the AKP during this period.54 Among established local politicians who joined the AKP, Seyfettin Meriç and Enis Sülün stand out. Meriç was a former mayor of Çorlu from the ANAP ticket who had been active in local politics for over twenty years. Sülün was a former mayor of Marmara Ereğlisi, a neighboring district of Çorlu, who had served for three terms. He had also served in the national parliament as a deputy from the ANAP ticket.55 The Islamists also formed close links to hometown associations.56

The AKP’s rapid growth in Çorlu between 2002 and 2004 brought together a diverse coalition of local elites. However, their sudden and overly-broad incorporation came at a significant price. Some of the new joiners were entrepreneurial elites who were not linked to the AKP’s non-core voters. For example, some were secularist poli-ticians and businessmen whose social networks were less likely to consider voting for the Islamists. Unbridled expansion, lack of effective local leadership, and opportunis-tic behavior by the new recruits led to the emergence of factional conflicts within the party organization. The absence of a unified party organization precluded the Çorlu branch from institutionalizing community outreach programs. The factional disputes were heavily advertised and exploited by the AKP’s rivals during the elections.

Disputes often surfaced before elections. The elites who did not get a promotion or nomination tried to undermine their competitors. For example, in the run-up to the 2004 local election, eleven candidates applied to be the AKP’s mayoral nominee. One of the contenders was the local party leader, Dalyan-Vatansever. When İbrahim Yerlioğlu won the nomination, Dalyan-Vatansever simply departed from the city and



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withheld the institutional support of the local AKP branch from the party’s candi-date.57 Businessmen such as Volkan and Kılıç, who similarly failed to receive the party’s nomination for office, also withdrew their support.58 The same scenario took place in every election after 2004. Enis Sülün, the former mayor and parliamentarian recruited by the AKP, abandoned his new party and ran for the parliament from the DYP ticket in 2007. The factional disputes continued well after the party’s formative phase.

Intense factionalism among status-conscious elites also stifled the AKP’s com-munity outreach efforts. The elites could have used their resources to expand the party’s links to migrant communities, but the lack of an esprit de corps made them less willing to do so. Without an effective grassroots organization and cooperative local elites, the AKP’s election campaigns were ineffectual. Intraparty factionalism would remain a staple of Çorlu’s Islamist politics. Although local elite incorporation improved the representativeness of the party branch, the internal divisions dimin-ished the AKP’s campaigning efficacy significantly, and undermined its competi-tiveness elections.

The AKP was well positioned to broaden its support base and succeed electorally in the two leading industrial cities of Turkey’s—Gebze and Çorlu. The Islamists expanded their electoral base in Gebze by carefully incorporating centrist local elites and build-ing a cohesive party organization that effectively engaged with local social networks. An abrupt and ad hoc spurt of local elite recruitment in Çorlu threatened the cohesive-ness of the party organization. Too much pragmatic expansion eroded the esprit de corps and demotivated the party officials. As a result, the AKP’s Çorlu branch could neither implement effective community outreach programs nor penetrate the society, which lead to its successive electoral failures.

Conclusion

The strategic incorporation of local elites provides a new perspective on how identity-based parties attract non-core supporters. This article shows that the AKP was able to establish new linkages to the traditional constituencies of center-right parties by stra-tegically recruiting local elites from that constituency and by building cohesive party organizations. The incorporation of centrist local elites enabled the Islamists to project an inclusive image to swing voters. The elite recruits also provided the AKP with access to local social networks and visibility among non-core constituencies. The cohesiveness of the local party organizations allowed the Islamists to campaign effec-tively and build community outreach programs.

In Gebze, Ödemiş, and Bingöl, the AKP incorporated businessmen, merchants, civil society leaders, clan elites, and local politicians while also building robust party organizations, which contributed to electoral success. On the other hand, in Çorlu, the infighting among newly recruited local elites divided the party organiza-tion and prevented effective voter outreach. The entrenched old-guard Islamist poli-ticians in Salihli barred the recruitment of new elites, thereby retaining the marginal character of the Islamist movement in this city. The AKP recruited clan elites from




the leading Kurdish clans in Muş, but the internal divisions within these clans dimin-ished their ability to concentrate their votes. The Islamists could not broaden their support base to non-core constituencies in these cities, which contributed to their electoral failure.

These empirical findings have theoretical significance for our understanding of how new party-voter linkages develop. The evidence provided in this article draws on in-depth field studies of six different local party organizations of the AKP, offering a new perspective on how parties that move toward the political center appeal to a broader set of voters. The strategic incorporation of local elites, coupled with cohesive party organizations, help to build new links to previously inaccessible constituencies and contribute to electoral success. However, there is an important trade-off between pragmatic expansion and organizational cohesiveness that could derail efforts to build out-group support. Parties that expand their ranks too aggressively risk internal frag-mentation and deteriorating party discipline. Too much cohesion among party elites may jeopardize pragmatic expansion, preventing the party from penetrating new sec-tions of the society. Parties that move from the edges to the center of the political system face distinct challenges in different local contexts, and have to strike a balance between expansion and cohesion.

This article goes against the grain of studies that treat the support for Islamist par-ties as sui generis. Islamists do not necessarily have a religious advantage that makes Muslims more likely to vote for them. The AKP’s success in attracting new constituen-cies was not merely a function of its Islamist appeal—the AKP was the moderate alternative to radical Islamist movements. It drew in new supporters after the reformist Islamists chose moderation. However, as the cases of Çorlu and Muş demonstrate, even when the party moderates, it does not necessarily win elections. Similarly, the plight of the urban poor, the decline of the left, and the rise of the devout bourgeoisie do not account for the variation in Islamist electoral success. The AKP won elections in some cities that did not experience these transformations (e.g., Bingöl, Ödemiş), and lost elections in others that did (e.g., Çorlu). The existing explanations of the Islamists’ electoral success are incomplete without taking into account these actors’ agency and strategic behavior.

Further research on the voter-linkage strategies of other identity-based political parties in developing democracies, such as the BJP in India, the UDI in Chile, and Ennahda in Tunisia, would help test these findings and lead to a better understanding of how identity-based parties achieve electoral success. The AKP’s electoral strategy broadened the party’s appeal to center-right constituencies. The non-Islamist parties in Turkey, including the CHP and the pro-Kurdish parties, face an uphill battle against the AKP partly because of its effective local organizations, which span the entire coun-try. The CHP and the pro-Kurdish parties have more limited capabilities at the local level. Their local organizations are unevenly distributed across the country and lack systematic links to non-core constituencies. Understanding the sources of Islamist electoral support is more crucial today than before not only because of the emerging authoritarian tendencies of the AKP in Turkey, but also due to the significance of Islamist parties in the post-Arab Spring Middle East.



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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editorial board of Politics & Society for very helpful comments on the earlier versions of this article. I would also like to thank Melani Cammett, Pauline Jones Luong, Patrick Heller, Yelena Biberman, Gavril Bilev, Richard Snyder, Ceren Belge, Roy Ginsberg, Kate Graney, and the participants of the Northeast Middle East Politics Workshop.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research for this article was supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation and Brown University, for which I am grateful.

Notes

1. Among the prominent works in this vast literature are Carrie R. Wickham, “The Path to Moderation: Strategy and Learning in the Formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party,” Comparative Politics 36 (January 2004), 205–28; Jillian Schwedler, Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Mona El-Ghobashy, “The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (August 2005): 373–95; and Murat Somer, “Does It Take Democrats to Democratize? Lessons from Islamist and Secular Elite Values in Turkey,” Comparative Political Studies 44 (May 2011): 511–45.

2. See Adam Przeworski and John D. Sprague, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), and Herbert Kitschelt, The Transformation of European Social Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), on the transformation of European social democratic parties; Stathis N. Kalyvas, “Commitment Problems in Emerging Democracies: The Case of Religious Parties,” Comparative Politics 32 (July 2000): 379–98, and Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), on European Catholic parties. Scott P Mainwaring and Timothy Scully, eds., Christian Democracy in Latin America: Electoral Competition and Regime Conflicts (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), and Juan P. Luna, “Segmented Party Voter Linkages in Latin America: The Case of the UDI,” Journal of Latin American Studies 42 (2010): 325–56, have expanded the scope of the debate to Latin America; and Kanchan Chandra, “Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability,” Perspectives on Politics 3 (June 2005): 235–52, and Tariq Thachil, “Embedded Mobilization: Nonstate Service Provision as Electoral Strategy in India,” World Politics 63 (July 2011): 434–69, to South Asia.

3. See Somer, “Does It Take Democrats to Democratize?”;. Sebnem Gumuscu, “Class, Status, and Party: The Changing Face of Political Islam in Turkey and Egypt,” Comparative Political Studies 43 (February 2010): 835–61; and Sarah W. Sokhey and A. Kadir Yildirim, “Economic Liberalization and Political Moderation: The Case of Anti-System Parties,” Party Politics 19 (March 2013): 230–55.

4. Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” Atlantic Monthly 266 (September 1990): 47–60; Nikki R Keddie, “The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations




and Relations to Imperialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36 (July 1994): 463–87; Mohammed Ayoob, “Political Islam: Image and Reality,” World Policy Journal 21 (Fall 2004): 1–14.

5. Nathan J. Brown, When Victory Is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012).

6. Günes M. Tezcür, “The Moderation Theory Revisited: The Case of Islamic Political Actors,” Party Politics 16, no. 1 (2010): 69–88.

7. Wickham, The Path to Moderation; El-Ghobashy, “The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers.”

8. Schwedler, Faith in Moderation; Janine A. Clark, “The Conditions of Islamist Moderation: Unpacking Cross-Ideological Cooperation in Jordan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, no. 4 (November 2006): 539–60; Vali Nasr, “The Rise of Muslim Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 16, no. 2 (April 2005): 13–27; Quinn Mecham, “From the Ashes of Virtue, a Promise of Light: The Transformation of Political Islam in Turkey,” Third World Quarterly 25, no. 2 (2004): 339–58.

9. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Anatomy of Egypt’s Militant Islamic Groups: Methodological Note and Preliminary Findings,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 12 (December 1980): 423–53; Bryan S. Turner, “Class, Generation and Islamism: Towards a Global Sociology of Political Islam,” British Journal of Sociology 54 (January 2003): 139–47.

10. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Haldun Gülalp, “Globalization and Political Islam: The Social Basis of Turkey’s Welfare Party,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 (August 2001): 433–48; Fuat Keyman and Berrin Koyuncu, “Globalization, Alternative Modernities and the Political Economy of Turkey,” Review of International Political Economy 12 (February 2005): 105–28; Yahya Sadowski, “Political Islam: Asking the Wrong Questions?” Annual Review of Political Science 9 (June 2006): 215–40; Cihan Tugal, “NATO’s Islamists: Hegemony and Americanization in Turkey,” New Left Review 44 (March 2007): 5–34.

11. Mark Tessler, “Origins of Popular Support: A Political Economy Analysis,” in John Entelis, ed., Islam, Democracy and the State in North Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997): 93–126; Jenny B. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002); Banu Eligur, The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

12. Sami Zubaida, “Trajectories of Political Islam: Egypt, Iran and Turkey.” Political Quarterly 71 (August 2000): 60–78; Ziya Onis, “The Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence in Turkey: The Rise of the Welfare Party in Perspective,” Third World Quarterly 18 (September 1997): 743–66.

13. Hakan Yavuz, “Political Islam and the Welfare (Refah) Party in Turkey.” Comparative Politics 30 (October 1997): 63–82; Cihan Tuğal, “Islamism in Turkey: Beyond Instrument and Meaning,” Economy and Society 31 (February 2002): 85–111; Onis, “The Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence.”

14. Nasr, “The Rise of Muslim Democracy”; Seyyed V.R. Nasr, Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World (New York: Free Press, 2009); Hakan Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

15. Non-core constituencies, or swing voters, comprise voters who are mildly opposed to a party and whose voting patterns cannot be predicted with certainty. Susan C. Stokes, “Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina,” American Political Science Review 99 (August 2005): 315–25.



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16. See Melani Cammett, Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon (New York: Cornell University Press, 2014) for the political uses of social wel-fare provision by identity-based parties in unconsolidated democracies, particularly the Hezbollah and the Future Movement in Lebanon.

17. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey; Cihan Tugal, “The Appeal of Islamic Politics: Ritual and Dialogue in a Poor District of Turkey,” Sociological Quarterly 47 (2006).

18. Pradeep Chhibber and Samuel Eldersveld, “Local Elites and Popular Support for Economic Reform in China and India,” Comparative Political Studies 33 (April 2000): 350–73.

19. Subrata K. Mitra, “Making Local Government Work: Local Elites, Panchayati Raj and Governance in India,” in Atul Kohli, ed., The Success of India’s Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Subrata K. Mitra, “Room to Maneuver in the Middle: Local Elites, Political Action, and the State in India,” World Politics 43 (April 1991): 390–413.

20. Thachil, “Origins of Popular Support.”21. Carrie R. Wickham, Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism and Political Change in

Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Asef Bayat, “Activism and Social Development in the Middle East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34, no. 1 (2002): 1–28.

22. Mecham, “From the Ashes of Virtue.”23. Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development

in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004); Jason Seawright and John Gerring “Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options,” Political Research Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2008): 294–308.

24. The city of Bingöl consistently voted for the AKP. The Islamists received 31.73 percent of the vote in 2002 (KNM, 22.18 percent), 37.15 percent in 2004 (KNM, 17.15 percent), and 71.1 percent in 2007 (KNM, 14.3 percent). In Muş, the AKP received 16.90 percent of the vote in 2002 (KNM, 38.09 percent), 35.41 percent in 2004 (21.38 percent), and 38.6 per-cent in 2007 (KNM, 45.8 percent). Türkiye Istatistik Kurumu (Turkish Statistical Institute, TUIK), “Adalet, Seçim İstatistikleri,” available at http://www.tuik.gov.tr/AltKategori.do?ust_id=12.

25. Ceren Belge, “State Building and the Limits of Legibility: Kinship Networks and Kurdish Resistance in Turkey,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (February 2011), 95–114.

26. Interview with Muhittin Bey, Deputy Mayor, Bingöl, October 6, 2008; Selahattin Bey, Bingöl Gazetesi, Bingöl, September 2008; Serdar Bey, Olay Gazetesi, Bingöl, September 2008.

27. Interview with Selahattin Bey, Bingöl Gazetesi, Bingöl, September 2008; Serdar Bey, Olay Gazetesi, Bingöl, September 2008.

28. Interview with Selahattin Bey, Bingöl Gazetesi, Bingöl, September 2008; Serdar Bey, Olay Gazetesi, Bingöl, September 2008; Party official, SP, Bingöl, October 2008; Doğan Bey, local researcher, Bingöl, October 2008; Activist, Eğitim-Sen, Bingöl, October 2008.

29. Interview with Feyzi Berdibek, former AKP MP, Bingöl, October 2008.30. Mufti is the state appointed religious authority in a district.31. Interview with Emrullah Bey, Haber 49 Gazetesi, Muş, October 2008; Cevat Bey, Muş

Ovası Gazetesi, Muş, October 2008.32. Interview with party official, SP, Muş, October 2008.33. Interview with Emrullah Bey, Haber 49 Gazetesi, Muş, October 2008; Cevat Bey, Muş

Ovası Gazetesi, Muş, October 2008; Tuncay Bey, Muş’un Sesi Gazetesi, October 2008;


http://www.tuik.gov.tr/AltKategori.do?ust_id=12

http://www.tuik.gov.tr/AltKategori.do?ust_id=12



Party official 1, AKP, Muş, October 2008; Party official 2, AKP, Muş, October 2008; Party members, KNM, Muş, October 2008.

34. Ibid.35. In Ödemiş, the AKP lost the 2002 national elections with 17.66 percent of the vote as

opposed to the DYP's 23 percent. However, it received 37.48 percent of the vote in 2004 (CHP, 30.12 percent), and 32.7 percent of the vote in 2007 (CHP, 26.3 percent). In Salihli, the AKP received 17.11 percent of the vote in 2002 (CHP, 25.76 percent), 24.85 percent in 2004 (CHP, 34.45 percent), and 28.3 percent in 2007 (MHP, 30.2 percent). TUIK.

36. Interview with Ömer Bey, Yerel Güç Gazetesi, Ödemiş, February 2009; Mustafa Bey, Küçük Menderes Gazetesi, Ödemiş, February 2009; Nihat Ataş, AKP, Ödemiş, February 2009; Yaşar Bey, Saadet Partisi, Ödemiş, March 2009.

37. Interview with Kemal Çetin, MHP, Ödemiş, February 2009.38. Interview with Asil Sönmezoğlu, Demokrat Parti mayoral candidate, Ödemiş, February

2009; Nihat Ataş, AKP, Ödemiş, February 2009; Münir Bezmez, former mayor, DYP, Ödemiş, February 2009.

39. Interview with Ömer Bey, Yerel Güç Gazetesi , Ödemiş, February 2009; Mustafa Bey, Küçük Menderes Gazetesi , Ödemiş, February 2009; Nihat Ataş, AKP, February 2009; Lütfiye Keser, Ödemiş Chamber of Architects, February 2009; Münir Bezmez, former mayor, DYP, February 2009; Mehmet Eriş, former mayor, CHP, February 2009.

40. Nihat Ataş, AKP, Ödemiş, February 2009.41. Interview with Müjde Özkumova, AKP, Ödemiş, February 2009.42. Focus group with members of the AKP Youth Organization, Ödemiş, February 2009; inter-

view with Müjde Özkumova, AKP, Ödemiş, February 2009; Tülay Hanım, AKP, March 2009.

43. Interview with Haluk Bey, AKP, Salihli, March 2009; Ertan Bey, Gelişen Salihli Gazetesi, Salihli, March 2009; Alparslan Bey, AKP, March 2009.

44. Interview with Ertan Bey, Gelişen Salihli Gazetesi, Salihli, March 2009; Alparslan Bey, AKP, Salihli, March 2009; Rafet Bey (ADD, “Ataturkist Thought Association”), Salihli, March 2009; Sibel Hanım, CHP, Salihli, March 2009.

45. Nasr, “The Rise of Muslim Democracy” and Forces of Fortune; Gumuscu, “Class, Status, and Party”; Yavuz, “Political Islam and the Welfare (Refah) Party” and Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey; Tuğal, “Islamism in Turkey”; Onis, “The Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence”; Tessler, “Origins of Popular Support”; White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey; Eligur, The Mobilization of Political Islam; Zubaida, “Trajectories of Political Islam”; Kepel, Jihad.

46. Gülfettin Çelik, İki Dönemde Bir Kent: Gebze (Gebze: Gebze Ticaret Odası, 1999); Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Çorlu Kaymakamligi. Brifing. Issues: 1999–2009.

47. In Gebze, the AKP received 42 percent of the vote in 2002 (CHP, 16 percent), 42 percent in 2004 (CHP, 20 percent), and 53 percent in 2007 (CHP, 17 percent). In Çorlu, the AKP received 14 percent of the vote in 2002 (CHP, 31 percent), 22 percent in 2004 (CHP, 39 percent), and 29 percent in 2007 (CHP, 37 percent). TUIK.

48. Interview with Metin Gökçe, former leader of the AKP’s Gebze branch, Gebze, July 2007; Ekrem Özenir, former leader of the AKP’s Gebze branch, Gebze, July 2007; Mehmet Ali Okur, former leader of the AKP’s Gebze branch, Gebze, May 2009.

49. Interview with Adnan Bey, Çağdaş Kent Gazetesi, Gebze, May 2009; Ekrem Özenir, AKP. Gebze, August 2010.

50. Interview with Adnan Bey, Çağdaş Kent Gazetesi, Gebze, May 2009.



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51. Interview with Mehmet Yetis, former Türk-Metal unionist, AKP, Gebze, August 2010.52. Interview with Adnan Bey, Çağdaş Kent Gazetesi, Gebze, May 2009; Mehmet Ali Okar,

AKP, Gebze, May 2009; Ekrem Özenir, AKP, Gebze, August 2010.53. Interview with Fikret Kurtuluş, AKP, Çorlu, April 2009; İbrahim Yerlioğlu, AKP, Çorlu,

April 2009; Murat Bey, AKP, Çorlu, May 2009.54. Interview with Levent Bey, Avrupa Yakası Gazetesi, Çorlu, April 2009; İbrahim Bey, AKP.

Çorlu, May 2009; Murat Bey, AKP, Çorlu, April 2009; Zeki Bey, AKP, Çorlu, May 2009.55. Ibid.56. The hometown associations allied to the AKP in Çorlu included the Balkan Göçmenleri

İktisadi, Sosyal, Kültürel Araştırma ve Yardimlaşma Derneği (BISADER, “Balkan Immigrants Economic, Social, Cultural Research and Mutual Aid Association”); Samsunlular, Sinoplular, and Aksaraylılar Associations, the hometown associations for migrants from Samsun, Sinop, and Aksaray, respectively.

57. Murat Bey, AKP, Çorlu, April 2009; İbrahim Bey, AKP, Çorlu, April 2009; Zeki Bey, AKP, Çorlu, May 2009.

58. Interview with Erdoğan Bey, Democratic Left Party, Çorlu, April 2009; Murat Bey, AKP, Çorlu, April 2009; İbrahim Bey, AKP, Çorlu, April 2009.

Author Biography

Feryaz Ocakli ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of government and interna-tional affairs at Skidmore College. His research focuses on Islamist and ethnic party politics, local party strategies, coalition building, and civil society. His current book project is entitled Embedded Islamists: Local Elites and Electoral Strategies in Turkey.


mailto:[email protected]


Documents

Notable Networks: Elite Recruitment, Organizational Cohesiveness, and Islamist Electoral Success in Turkey