The Challenge of Turkey’s Opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in a Dominant Party System

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) obtained 34.3% of the votes and 365 seats out of 550 in the Parliament to become the outright victor thus the 2002 general elections marked an important turning point in Turkish politics. The AKP continuously increased its vote to 46.6% and 49.8% in the 2007 and 2011 general elections respectively. Since 2011 scholars of Turkish politics have been defining the Turkish party system as a dominant party system as the AKP won three consecutive elections which was put forward as one of the criteria of a dominant party system by Sartori. There are serious challenges of the opposition parties in a dominant party system due to the fact that ruling party has the ability to access state resources and it can easily monopolize key media resources which limited the potential of opposition parties in appealing to the different segments of the society. That’s why, the opposition party’s (Republican People’s Party – CHP) percentage of the total votes has been around half of the AKP. Scholars of dominant party systems propose that there are three strategies of opposition parties: activist recruitment, ideological positioning, and coalition-building. This article aims at examining the challenges of opposition CHP and analyzing the performance of the party regarding the activist recruitment, ideological positioning, and coalition-building. In doing so, the reasons of the inability of CHP in transforming its rhetoric to be able to appeal to different sections of Turkish society.