One Man Show? How Erdoğan Used His Party to Build a Personalist Regime

Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power with 34% of the votes in a parliamentary democracy in 2002. 16 Years later, he is president in an authoritarian regime, limited by no institutional constraint, controlling a state apparatus whose every action seems to respond to directives from Erdogan or his close circle. This paper proposes to analyze how Erdogan used his party AKP to expand and consolidate his personal power. Focusing on the evolution of intra-party politics and institutions in the AKP, I argue that well-organized and institutionalized parties may paradoxically facilitate the exercise and expansion of personal power. In fact, it seems difficult for parliamentary regimes to gradually evolve towards a personalist regime without the executive leader establishing personal control over a mass organization. Building on informal intra-party institutions inherited from an earlier period, Erdogan developed a sophisticated political organization that has regular personal contact with a large number of voters, and which he can effectively control with the help of intra-party bureaucratic mechanisms. The existence of this tightly controlled mass organization has had important consequences for regime dynamics as a whole, not only because it helped mobilize masses in Erdogan’s support, but also because it provided Erdogan with great latitude in changing his ruling coalition in response to evolving political circumstances, allowing him to challenge and successfully defeat one opponent at a time. To document the extent of Erdogan’s personal authority in intra-party decisions, how his authority evolved over the years, and how it was exercised thanks to bureaucratic and personalist intra-party practices, I use party documents and personal interviews with AKP politicians at different levels of the party. I use original survey data collected around the 2018 general elections to support claims about the ongoing importance of the party for mobilization.