Trends in Party System Indicators for the July 2007 Turkish Elections

The stellar success of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has led to the interpretation of the 2002 and 2007 elections as sharp deviations from past political trends. Through an analysis of national and regional-level party system indicators in the post-1980 period, the authors find that the success of the AKP should rather be seen as the continuation of trends that started in the early 1990s. Throughout the 1990s, the pro-Islamist and nationalist bloc had already established a strong base in Central Anatolia, and the success of the AKP is due to its expansion of this voter base to Western regions and some of the predominantly Kurdish provinces in the southeast.