Primaries in Turkish Parties, Factions and Intra-Party Democracy

Party organizations have been historically oligarchical in Turkish politics. Elections to the top executive party boards have been very tense escalating to factional splits from time to time. After more than a decade, a variety of party primaries started to be held on the eve of 2011 parliamentary elections. Whether this was an ostensible move targeting the voters or reflected the beginning of a transformation within the parties remains to be seen. This paper, on the other hand, focuses on how the party members perceived the re-institution of primaries. Relying on a series of in-depth interviews with the members of the two major parties of Turkish politics, AKP and CHP, it tries to uncover transformation of the factional politics, focus on the current debates on the intraparty democracy and identify different forms of primaries in comparison to those in the European party systems.