Why has Social Democracy not Developed in Turkey? Analysis of an Atypical Case

Yunus Emre

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2015, vol. 17, issue 4, 392-407

Abstract: This paper scrutinizes why the Western European type of social democracy has not developed in Turkey. Both the historical backdrop and current constraints on the development of social democracy are examined. This paper argues that social democracy's failure in Turkey has stemmed from two reasons. On the one hand, historical and structural constraints that obstructed social democracy should be taken into account. On the other, social democratic movements suffered from an agency question. The leadership of the political parties, which defined themselves as centre-left entities, had a number of chances to build a ‘genuine social democracy’, but they chose alternative policy paths based on identity politics. This phenomenon too prevented the development of social democracy. The CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Republican People's Party) is the focal point of the paper since it has always been the main subject in the debates over social democracy in Turkey.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19448953.2015.1063298 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjsbxx:v:17:y:2015:i:4:p:392-407

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjsb20

DOI: 10.1080/19448953.2015.1063298

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies is currently edited by Professor Vassilis Fouskas

More articles in Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().