Elections and Party Preferences in Turkey: Changes and Continuities in the 1990s

Two major factors are identified as sources of party preference among voters in Turkey. The main theoretical assertion of the article is that party preferences of the Turkish voters across a left-right continuum are determined by the historical divide between the center and the periphery of the Turkish polity and rapid social mobilization. Data for the study consist of the findings of the Turkish Values Survey of 1990, in which 1,030 adults were selected according to the procedures of multistage stratified cluster sampling and then subjected to face-to-face interviews. A discriminant analysis was conducted to predict the party preferences of each voter on the basis of sociodemographic characteristics and of ideological affiliation with the center versus the periphery. The former included type of residence, gender, formal education, and socioeconomic status.