Turkey's Republican People's Party: Politics of Opposition under a Dominant Party System

This article seeks to account for the prolonged inability of the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) to be considered as a credible alternative to the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP). Accounting for this is relevant from two perspectives: the emergence of a dominant party system during the AKP decade, and the increased rhetoric and public discourse stressing the "lack of [credible] opposition parties" in the party spectrum. The article attributes the CHP's electoral malaise to a mixture structural and leadership problems specific to the party organization. This argument, however, is placed against the backdrop of the dominant distributive position that the incumbent occupies in Turkey's political arena. The AKP's domination of both national and local government, typified by a service-oriented governing style, serves to undermine not just the CHP's chances of success, but virtually all opposition parties.