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Given the vague characteristics of the left and the right in the Turkish context, having identified the electoral superiority of the center-right parties as well as the center-right as a relatively understudied area, “What does center-right correspond to in Turkey?” is a starting point for my dissertation. In order to answer this question, I asked further questions. In order to understand what the center right mentality corresponds to, I

8 In order to indicate the absurdity of the left-right constellations in the Turkish context, Cemil Meriç stated that “when I exclaimed in the court that I was Marxist, I had not shaken even one workers’ hand”

Cemil Meriç. 2005. Bu Ülke. 26^th ed. İstanbul: İletişim, 96. Meriç asserts that without experiencing the Western historical process that gave rise to the left-right constellation, Turkey does not need to use these terms.

believe that it is necessary to look both at the politics and discourse of the center-right parties. Thus, what are the basic characteristics of the center-right politics and discourse in Turkey? Under what parameters/notions can we formulate the center-right understanding in Turkey?

One of the most recurrent questions for political scientists studying Turkey is the debate over continuity or rupture in the analysis of Turkey’s modernization—particularly, the transition from the late Ottoman Empire to the early Turkish Republic (Ford, 1939;

Lerner, 1958; Berkes, 1998; Lewis, 1968; Yalman, 1973; Hale, 1980). I shall apply the same framework in analyzing center-right politics in Turkey. Throughout this dissertation, by exploring different parties’ approaches to democracy, the state, and secularism, I ask, what are the continuities (similarities in policy and discourse) and ruptures (radical breaks or changes, transformations) across the different instantiations of center-right politics in Turkey? As the first representative of the center-right mentality, the Democratic Party constitutes a ground for this analysis, and the subsequent parties’ positions (continuity or rupture) on the same ground provide some particular implications on the basis of identification of the center-right mentality. This investigation enables us to elucidate the Turkish center-right mentality up until the 2000s. After that period, though, marked by the filling of the center-right vacuum by the AK Party, another set of questions are needed, namely: why did the classical center-right parties leave the center-center-right arena to the AK Party? Through the three main categories guiding my analysis (democracy, the state, secularism), I argue that when the center-right parties began to abandon these principles of center-right politics in Turkey through increasing authoritarianism and/or seizing state power and/or forsaking the

passive secularist understanding, they encountered trouble both from the state elite and from the public. Consequently, one of the problematiques of this dissertation has to do with why these parties did not endure in the long run.

Although there are various possible answers to these questions, asking and trying to answer them will contribute to our understanding and consciousness of one of Turkish politics’ dominant actors, namely, the Turkish center-right.

1.4. Methodology

My dissertation relies on empirical case studies to analyze the center-right concept.

Regarding conceptual analysis, Tilly and Goodin draw attention to the fact that an analysis depends on the context of its place, time, explanation mechanisms, existing culture, history, psychology, population, technology and the philosophy of the researcher (2006). Unit of analysis, method and other contextual factors also significantly influence the definition of the left and right distinction, making it essential to pursue this research accordingly. In that regard, before analyzing the nature of center-right politics in Turkey, it is necessary to examine the ideological connotations of the left and right, considering such particular variables as time and context. Since the focus of the work will be Turkey and the unit of analysis its center-right political parties, it is necessary to compare the divergent parties of the center-right with each other as well as to compare their distinguishing policies and ideologies to those of their center-left and far-right contenders.

I chose to analyze political parties as the agents of center-right ideology because, in a country like Turkey that still could not adequately consolidate its democracy in liberal pluralist terms, political parties enjoy a significant degree of dominance in the political terrain. As Linz states, “there is also considerable agreement, in both established and unconsolidated or unstable democracies, that political parties are essential to the working of democracy” (2002:291). Linz also notes, “In parliamentary systems, political parties relatively play a more efficient and active role than the presidential systems”

(2002:292). Political parties are thus one of the best instruments for analyzing political traditions in the Turkish case due to its parliamentary system as well as the incomplete implementation of democracy. Neumann states that a political party is “the articulate organization of society’s active political agents…the great intermediary which links social forces and ideologies to official governmental institutions” (Neumann 1963:352).

Building on an understanding of parties “as a vehicle with which to understand the polity” (Reiter 2006:614) this study takes parties as the main unit of analysis.

In studying party politics, locating parties on the left-right spectrum has been identified as the most important dimension by many scholars (Laponce, 1981; Fuchs and Klingemann, 1990; Knutsen 1998; Volkens and Klingemann 2003; Klingemann in Thomassen, 2005; Freire, 2006). Fuchts and Klingemann state that, “At the individual level, the division between left and right functions as an instrument to reduce the complexity of the political universe; on the systemic level, it functions as a code of communication” (Fuchs and Klingemann, 1990:205). Klingemann, who studies voter alignments, argues that utilizing a left-right scale is quite advantageous, especially for studies of Western Europe, since almost every election study considers this scale and

almost all respondents are able to define themselves on this spectrum (Klingemann 1995:183-206). Verifying Klingemann’s argument, many other studies of political parties and electoral behavior suggest that individuals' left-right self-placement is one of the major indicators of their voting choices—hence the continuing importance of this cleavage in the study of many countries in recent decades (Freire 2004, 2006:360;

Gunther and Montero, 2001, Franklin et al., 1992; Eijk et al., 2005, Niemi and Norris 2010).

Methodologically, the study first tries to understand the origin and the transformation of the concept of the center-right in Turkey. The search for the genesis of the concept of a left-right cleavage helps to underline the various connotations of these concepts.

Evaluating the Turkish case within such a conceptual framework, I selected three major notions/parameters—democracy, the state, and secularism—because of their unique significance in political debates and thus their ability to help us understand the main dynamics of and divergences within the center-right in Turkey. In doing so, by scrutinizing the sometimes blurred, sometimes clear lines between the center-right and center-left, as well as between the center-right and far-right, we will have a better grasp on what uniquely defines the right in Turkey and how the concept of the center-right has been deployed, with its all complexity, across different conjunctures and contexts.

Primary sources of analysis include official party programs and documents, government programs, Parliamentary records, leaders’ speeches, media records and statistical data.

That said, the self-proclamations of a party are far from sufficient data sources on their own, as there may be—indeed, most likely are—considerable gaps between the portrait

they drew and the policies they pursued, between explanation and action. Secondary sources—existing studies, newspaper columns, biographies and autobiographies—will be utilized to balance the possible biases of official party pronouncements. While drawing on such a wide range of materials, this dissertation not only focuses on concrete instruments such as implemented laws and policies. It also aims to integrate speeches and policies, perceptions and concepts—consonant with my interest in understanding different political mentalities, and different instances of how “language is action”

(Brown and Yule 2000:5)—to contribute to the definition of the nature of center-right ideology in Turkey. The priority of the viewpoint throughout this dissertation is domestic politics and discourse of the center-right rather than anything else.

In any effort to interpret policies and speeches for the purpose of conceptualizing the Turkish center-right context matters considerably. In that regard, it is possible to observe some certain non-linear trends in center-right politics during conjunctural transformations. For instance, as was seen in 1960 and 1980 military breakdowns, even institutional frameworks were by and large altered. However, as Isard observes, discourses “do not merely depend on the context for…interpretation, they change that context” (1975:377). Thus, the theoretical approach followed in this dissertation sees a mutually constitutive relationship between conjunctural conditions or context and the discursive or interpretive acts of specific center-right parties. In other words, different parties, in their historical context, are both the result of and the reason for their contextual conditions. For this reason, policies of the Democratic Party -as the founder of the origins of the center-right mentality- and the subsequent parties who all acted in

divergent atmospheres, naturally influenced the conjunctures as well as were influenced by the conjunctures.

Integrating historical analysis and discourse analysis, the main aim of this dissertation is to formulate an empirically grounded understanding of the center-right by analyzing the politics and discourses of three major center-right parties, through an approach that emphasizes the heterogeneity and complexity inherent in the very concept of center-right.