Culture, Socio-Economic Development, and Refugee Immigration: A Spatial Analysis of the 2017 Referendum in Turkey

Download

KalkanOzen_MPSA(Referandum_Paper).pdf

Date

2018-6-24

Author

Özen, İlhan Can

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

172
views

47
downloads

The 2017 referendum on controversial constitutional amendments witnessed a fierce competition in Turkey. Despite the joint campaign of AK Party (current ruling party) and MHP (nationalist party), the electoral outcome yielded only a slight edge for accepting the amendments (Yes 51%, No 49%). Why was there such a narrow margin of victory? What explains the defection among MHP voters at the aggregate level? Our paper examines these questions through a unique dataset along with spatiallyautoregressive and multilevel modeling techniques. We collect the sub-provincial and provincial level electoral results since 2002, and match them with the 2004 socioeconomic development data from the Ministry of Development and the 2017 development data from the Ministry of Health. In addition, we add provincial level mosque information, and sub-provincial level official Syrian refugee numbers to the dataset. The advanced geospatial and multilevel models show strong empirical support for our hypotheses. Cultural indicators are as likely as socioeconomic features to explain the 2017 referendum results in Turkey after controlling for political factors. The number of Syrian refugees in provinces diminishes the level of support for “yes” whereas the number of mosques boosts its support. The refugee migration also explains the MHP voters who defected in the referendum: the higher the number of refugees in a sub-province, the more likely that the voters in that sub-province vote against the constitutional amendments. All models show that voting in Turkey has considerable levels of spatial dependency - the neighborhood matters.

Subject Keywords

Political Economy, Migration, Political Polarization, Turkish elections, Referendum, Spatial analysis, Politics, Socioeconomic status, Culture

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/91532

Conference Name

MPSA

Collections

Department of Economics, Conference / Seminar

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Culture, Socio-Economic Development, and Refugee Immigration: A Spatial Analysis of the 2017 Referendum in Turkey Özen, İlhan Can (2019-04-01) The 2017 referendum on controversial constitutional amendments witnessed a ercecompetition in Turkey. Despite the joint campaign of AK Party (current ruling party)and MHP (nationalist party), the electoral outcome yielded only a slight edge for ac-cepting the amendments (Yes 51%, No 49%). Why was there such a narrow marginof victory? What explains the defection among MHP voters at the aggregate level?Our paper examines these questions through a unique dataset along with spatially-autoregressive and multile...
Critical acts without a critical mass: The substantive representation of women in the Turkish parliament Ayata, Ayşe (2008-07-01) Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 20 women MPs and parliamentary debates during the amendment of the Turkish Civil and Penal Codes, we elaborate on the possibility and conditions of women's impact on politics without their constituting a critical mass in the parliament. Our research reveals that when state machinery, women's machinery, and supra-national agencies have created a conducive context, as in the case of the last decade in Turkey, the substantive representation of women's issues become possibl...
Spatial analysis of contemporary Turkish elections: a comprehensive approach Özen, İlhan Can (2017-01-01) This study offers a comprehensive approach to spatial analysis of parliamentary elections in Turkey since 2002. Using advanced spatial models, we find that electoral competitiveness and concentration mostly stabilized in the Western subprovinces whereas they are still in flux in the Eastern and Southern regions. There is an increasing level of geographically dependent concentration and competitiveness in recent elections, particularly in the 2015 elections (June and November). Our analyses also show that wh...
The Turkish Parliamentary Elite and the EU: Mapping Attitudes towards the European Union AKSIT, Sait; Şenyuva, Özgehan; Gurleyen, Isik (Informa UK Limited, 2011-01-01) This study aims to map out the opinions and attitudes of the Turkish parliamentary elite regarding Turkey's membership of the European Union in general and the future of Europe in particular. The parliamentary elite group consists of political party representatives present in the current Turkish Grand National Assembly. The study uses the findings of the Turkish Elite Survey 2009 conducted by the Center for European Studies, Middle East Technical University. The article argues that while Turkish parliamenta...
The Erdoganization of Turkish politics and the role of the opposition Selcuk, Orcun; Hekimci, Dilara; Erpul, Onur (2019-10-01) This article examines the personalization of Turkish politics during Recep Tayyip Erdogan's third term as prime minister. While many studies focus on the prime minister's growing personal domination of the executive branch, we consider how leaders of the opposition reflected and reinforced that trend. To test our hypotheses on this 'Erdoganization,' we employed a content analysis to consider Kemal Kilicdaroglu and Devlet Bahceli's speeches at weekly parliamentary group meetings of the CHP and the MHP. Our f...

Citation Formats

İ. C. Özen, “Culture, Socio-Economic Development, and Refugee Immigration: A Spatial Analysis of the 2017 Referendum in Turkey,” Chicago, 2018, p. 1, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/91532.