A Comparative Analysis of Election Campaigns of New Splinter Parties in Turkey

Emergence of new political parties in Turkey increased in the last five years. Among newly formed political parties, splinter parties (both from the incumbent and opposition parties) deserve attention. Although the voter base of such parties seems yet to be limited, it is crucial to examine how newly formed splinter parties shape their election campaign strategies to better understand their potential effects on the party system of the country. To do this, digital election campaign materials of four new splinter parties (GP, DEVA Party, Memleket Party and ZP) in 2023 General Elections and 2024 Local Elections are examined with a qualitative approach from the prism of positive (focusing on parties’ own merits and success) and negative (focusing on the weaknesses or failures of the opponents) campaigning strategies. According to the preliminary findings, although all four parties use both positive and negative campaigning strategies, the variety of indicated/referred parties and politicians in their campaign materials seem to be changing from one splinter party to another. Stemming from arguments in the literature, it can be expected that the parties with electoral alliances (or with potential collaboration) may refrain from negative campaigning regarding many different opponents. Additionally, parties split from opposition parties may target both the incumbents and opposition parties when they use negative campaigning strategies. Indeed, the initial findings suggest that the parties with more alliance experience have limited diversity of opponents indicated in their campaigns (largely the incumbent party and its allies) while parties with no alliance experience seem to refer to a variety of opponents in their campaign materials. Also, parties split from the incumbent party such as the GP and DEVA use negative campaigning mostly with indication of the incumbent party and politicians (and their allies), while the ZP and Memleket Party refers to both incumbent party (and their allies) and other parties with increasing variety.