Turkish party system: leaders, vote and institutionalization

Research indicated that partisan affiliation, ideological and economic factors are the main determinants of the voters’ party preferences at Turkish elections. However, as Turkish political parties have been non-institutionalized structures, the role played by their political leaders seems to be larger than life. This paper seeks to assess the relative impact of the party leaders on the voters’ party preferences vis-à-vis ideology, partisan identity and economic satisfaction through empirical analyses with binary logistic regression. The data for the study were compiled as nationally representative surveys of the Turkish voters in June–July 2007 and May–June 2011.