Negotiating Political Power in Turkey

<p>This edited collection looks at how political parties in Turkey actually work inside and out. Departing from traditional macro-level analyses the book offers a new sociological approach to the study of political parties treating them as non-unitary entities composed of many different groups and individuals who both cooperate and compete with one another. </p><p></p><p>The central proposition of the book is that parties must be studied as clusters of relationships in specific locales rather than as unitary ‘black boxes.’ This ground-up approach provides new insights into the internal workings of political parties; why parties gain and lose elections and other political resources; and the ways in which power is negotiated and exercised in Turkey and beyond. </p><p></p><p>Chapters include studies of Islamic and Islamist parties from the 1970s to the present ethnic Kurdish parties center- and extreme right parties and the far left as well as independent candidates. The authors pay particular attention to relations – and the blurry boundaries-- between parties and civil society groups religious associations non-governmental organizations ethnic and socio-economic groups and state institutions and to the variability of external and internal party politics in different geographies such as Adana Mersin and Diyarbakir. </p>