Internal party democracy in Turkey: theory, prospect and problems

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2058028 (Table of Contents)

This thesis aims to analyse the theory of internal party democracy (IPD) and mainly tries to show hypothetical connection between broad political problems of Turkey and party-level ones. The main question of this thesis is whether there is connection between wider problems of Turkish Politics and party-level ones or not. To answer this, the thesis firstly explains the importance of political parties for democracies by showing that the political parties are requisites for consolidated democracies. Secondly, the study explains why ‘internal party democracy’ is a need for consolidated democracy and what ‘internal party democracy’ means by focusing on different components which are participation, representation, competition, autonomy and transparency as core values. Thirdly, the analytical framework of this study has been developed by using Rahat and Shapira’s Internal Party Democracy Index (2017) to create Turkey-specific methodology. Justice and Development Party (AKP), Republican People’s Party (CHP), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and Good Party (İP) are analyzed by applying this framework with 5 different components. The study has introduced that each political party has different strengths and weaknesses related to the components of internal party democracy and resulted in having different levels of IPD for each political party. Nevertheless, this study has also found out that wider political problems of Turkey are also same at the political party-level.