Elections and human rights violations during civil conflict: the case of Turkey

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1628614 (Table of Contents)

This thesis aims to study the impact of human rights violations by combatants during a civil conflict on election results. During civil conflict, the combatant sides –either state or insurgent group- seek to gather support and paralyze the rival by cutting the human and logistic support of local people by resorting to violence. These actions of the combatants are resulted with serious human rights violations. This thesis is an attempt to estimate political outcomes of civilian victimizations by the state and the PKK. Two types of, indiscriminate and selective, victimizations are examined separately. During the analysis we use multivariate tobit regression to assess the impact of the state and PKK civilian victimizations on the government party/parties', left and right wing parties', and pro-Kurdish (HADEP) and ultra-nationalist (MHP) parties' vote share. Our results suggest that indiscriminate victimization by the state increases voter's approval rate for the government parties; while the PKK victimization decreases the government parties' vote share in the following elections. Turkish voters, who are exposed to state indiscriminate victimization, vote for the left wing parties those are more concessionist to insurgency in order to build peace. HADEP increases its vote share in response to indiscriminate victimization by both the state and the PKK.