If You Cannot Beat Them, Join Them? An Analysis of Political Party Behaviour Using the Case of the Turkish Republican People’s Party (CHP)

Abstract: This thesis aims to contribute to the academic debate surrounding how votes affect political party behaviour. To do so, two theories explaining political party behaviour, which belong to opposite camps, will be under focus. These theories are the cleavage theory by Lipset and Rokkan and the voter transition and policy positioning theory. While the cleavage theory argues that political party behaviour is intransigent, the voter transition and policy positioning theory suggests that political party behaviour can be flexible depending on whether and to what extent they have lost their votes to their rivals (Lipset & Rokkan, 1967; Abou-Chadi & Stoetzer, 2020). These theories will be tested on the Republican People's Party (CHP) in Turkey, which is the founding party of the Turkish Republic, by comparing the speeches of the previous and current party leaders, Deniz Baykal and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Having a long history, CHP was the backbone of a strong secularist tradition in Turkey. However, as Turkey experienced drastic changes in its socio-political conditions towards a more conservative structure and policy, CHP was hard pressed to keep its commitment to the strong secularism of its founding. This makes the CHP case both interesting and essential to test the theories mentioned above so as to seek answers to the political party behaviour debate.