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This chapter highlights the theoretical contribution of the book. It demonstrates how an overarching cleavage that is Ottoman-Turkish/Imperial-Republican explains the current dynamics in Turkish politics and society. This cleavage fits with how, following Justice and Development Party's (Adalet ve Kalkinma Parti, JDP) consolidation, the party and its leader began to attack all the values and symbols of the Republic. This chapter also explores the author’s observations of an extreme organisational structure and how this provided Erdogan with advantages over other parties. It also discusses the 2018 referendum and legislative elections in Turkey from the angle of the incumbent party’s leadership, the other parties’ challenger position, and the JDP’s welfare and economy agenda.

This chapter explores the theme of civil and democratic rights. It demonstrates how Justice and Development Party (JDP) framed its discourse to maximise its ability to attract votes. In portraying this change in its discourse over time, it shows how the party instrumentalised potential European Union (EU) membership to eliminate the power of the military. The JDP’s bold movement for demilitarisation appealed to diverse segments of society, from liberals, Islamists, leftists, and Kurds who sought demilitarisation as an element of democratisation. The chapter demonstrates how, when the party lost support among majority of Kurds in 2015, it shifted its political discourse and established a new, ultranationalist alliance to secure a majority with less support among Kurds. It also portrays how the JDP isolated all of its detractors that constitute half of the society.

This chapter explores the Justice and Development Party (JDP)’s economic plans and its social welfare agenda, illustrating the role of these factors in the party’s consolidations. It shows how the party used strong political communication skills to demonstrate the delivery of its tangible projects, which previous coalition governments were not able to do. It highlights how economic reforms convinced external and domestic actors that the JDP would adhere to a neoliberal economic agenda. As a second stage, it analyses the JDP’s social assistance and health policy and shows how the party managed to reach out a large segment of Turkey that have historically had little access to public officials. In portraying the social policy agenda, the chapter touches upon the necessity of a rights-based agenda.

This chapter looks at the evolution of the Turkish party system by introducing the Lipset-Rokkan’s cleavage structure and updating it for the contemporary Turkish context. The chapter analyses cleavages that characterise the Turkish political system that consisted of the centre-periphery, left-right, secularist-Islamist, Turkish-Kurdish, as well as sub-cleavages. It describes the background of these cleavages and how they have translated into political parties since the establishment of the Republic. It also demonstrates how ethnic and identity claims became apparent at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In line with dynamic cleavages, the chapter also provides clues on how the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, JDP) managed to capitalise on different cleavages through a policy agenda that in turn helped Recep Tayyip Erdogan to gain a foothold in 2002.

This chapter brings to the surface an angle previous research on Turkish political parties has neglected: socioeconomic transformation. The analysis highlights how the adopted economic models shape the changes in socioeconomic structures and how parties have responded by developing a new set of policies that fit the demands of their constituencies. The chapter demonstrates that the economic decisions of 1980 have led to an emergence of intermediary stratum, which in return created demand for a political party such as the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, JDP) in 2002. It also adds institutional factors to the discussion and demonstrates how the JDP reshuffled itself as a mainstream party rather than an Islamist one.