When local becomes general: Turkey's 31 March 2019 elections and its implications for dynamics of polarization and sustainability of competitive authoritarianism

Abstract

Following the snap general elections in 2018, Turkish voters again went to ballot-box to cast their verdict on local elections on 31 March 2019. While the electoral playing field remained heavily skewed to the benefit of the incumbent bloc as it has been during the recent rounds of electoral contestation, the opposition, for the first time, broke the winning series of the incumbent AKP and won nearly all the major metropolitan municipalities including Ankara and Istanbul. This article aims to delineate the dynamics of polarization/depolarization in a competitive authoritarian setting. Through an analysis of political and economic context and campaign discourses of main parties in recent local elections, this article argues that under a regime level cleavage, performance failure of incumbent enabled the opposition to initiate a depolarizing and inclusive campaign discourse while captivating its core constituency. Secondly, this article assesses the possible ramifications of recent electoral loss for the sustainability of competitive authoritarian regime in Turkey through an analysis of AKP’s politics of patronage and clientelism and party organization. Such an analysis demonstrates that despite its local character, the recent elections will have important ramifications for the sustainability of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey.