Description
The main topic of this paper was to how it can be explained the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) paradigm shift to nationalism in Turkish politics since 2014. The AKP has been one of the most successful examples for ensuring its political survival in Turkish politics as compared to other political parties. The main secret to this success was to keep the voter base (nominal selectorate) as large as possible in the Bruce Bueno De Mesquita’s Selectorate Theory, which was used throughout this paper. This party was able to follow three different policies in three different periods and succeed in elections, keeping the nominal selectorate large and maintaining its survival until 2014.
The analysis of the 2014 presidential election results showed that the AKP government must enter a new crossroads. Two actors; Fethullah Gülen Movement and Kurds who had maintained their good relations during AKP’s clash with the Kemalist establishment before 2014, could be a threat to the AKP's political survival for the post-2014 period. In such a picture, it would be inevitable for the AKP’s paradigm shift to a more nationalist line. This paper aims to reveal the cause-effect mechanism between the Islamist-nationalist coalition and the AKP's survival.
