The Turkish grand national assembly: new challenges and old problems

Turkish politics has been shaped by a fragmented, polarised, and volatile party system (Erguder, 1980–1, pp. 48–51;Ozbudun, 1981, pp. 237–8; Erguder and Hofferbert, 1988, pp. 84–94; Ozbudun, 2000, pp. 74–80, see also Table 7.1). As a corollary of the party system, the legislative party system suffered from a similar malaise as it moved from a two-party structure, under the influence of a predominant Democrat Party (DP) in the 1950s, to a moderate, pluralist party format in the 1960s and 1970s. The same trend seemed to have re-appeared in the aftermath of the last democratic breakdown from 1980 to 1983. Indeed, Ozbudun recently argued that ‘all three maladies of the Turkish party system in the 1970s (volatility, fragmentation and polarisation) have reappeared, if anything in worse form’ in the 1980s and 1990s (Ozbudun, 1997, p. 88 and see Table 7.2). The data in Tables 7.1 and 7.2, as well as the fact that two smaller parties (each winning 4–8 per cent of the national vote at every national election) could not win any parliamentary seats and thus are not included in Table 7.2, gives the impression that Turkey moved from a moderate pluralist party system toward an extreme pluralist one during the 1980s and 1990s (Table 7.2).