Political petitioning, denunciation, and state–society relations during the single-party period in Turkey

Through a close reading of hitherto untapped archival sources, this article looks at the 1939 Turkish elections and argues that through extensive denunciation, petitioning, and an unofficial pre-election procedure, provincial urbanites had local candidates selected as MPs while discarding candidates proposed by Ankara. Petitioning and clandestine but extensive mobilization from below had an impact on state–society relations, state policies, and politics. Petitions, denunciations, and their processing constituted a communicative and essentially political space that facilitated state–society interaction and served as a means of empowerment of social actors at the local level to negotiate and modify the policies of an authoritarian single-party regime. In turn, the state appeared pragmatic in its attempt to boost its legitimacy through considering societal demands, although, in doing so, it demonstrated class, ethnic, educational, and religious biases. Nevertheless, in this way the regime became more amenable to popular participation and its policies to manipulation by society.