TURKISH PARTY SYSTEM FRAGMENTATION AND ELECTORAL VOLATILITY

The party system is a concept in comparative political science concerning how political representation is shared by competing parties and the relational positions of parties in parliament. This article focuses on the major transformations and main characteristics of Turkish party system. The analysis is carried out based on the electoral data of 18 general elections of representatives at national level since 1950 when the first free elections took place in Turkey. The basic indicators of the party system are compared with those of other countries. In the history of Turkey, party system has evolved from the single-party system to multi-party system without a radical regime interruption. The degree of party system fragmentation gradually has increased over time until the early 2000s and high electoral volatility has been the case. However in the last fifteen years, a growing level of competitiveness and relatively decreasing fragmentation of the party system have been observed. The ruling party constantly has had the largest vote share in the consecutive elections and controlled of the majority of seats. In this period, a multi-party system turned towards a dominant party system according to the terminology of political science. Historical development and the basic indicators of party system (i.e. fragmentation and electoral volatility) evaluated together it could be noted that Turkish party system has still not sufficiently institutionalized compared to advanced democracies