This paper addresses the inuences of social movements on voting behaviour. In a recent paper, McVeigh, Cunningham, and Farrell (2014) showed that increases in Republican voting in the United States were most pronounced in southern counties where the KKK was active in the 1960s, and that this movement in on presidential voting persisted long after the movements decline. In this paper, we investigate whether the political polarization that the authors observed in the United States travels beyond that particular context, addressing the Turkish case. We examine whether the Gray Wolves, the right-wing militia during the political violence of the 1970s, increased voting behaviour in favour of its mother party, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) in local and national elections in the short- and long-run. Furthermore, addressing the same theoretical issue with a non-right-wing movement, we look at the short-term impact of the 2013 Gezi Park protests on voting behaviour.
