Research On The Social Bases Of The Justice And Development Party Of Turkey

Since 2002, the Justice and Development Party which has a landslide election victory for three times opens the period of “Justice and Development Party” in Turkish history, and it has achieved the transformation to New Turkey. This paper studies the social bases of the Justice and Development Party so as to reveal the impact of social bases to the ideology, rulings and ruling crisis of the Justice and Development Party. Besides the introduction and conclusion, this article consists of three chapters.The first chapter mainly analyzes the historical bases of the Justice and Development Party. Through Summarizing Turkish political democratization and economic liberalization, this paper explains that the implement of multi-party system and ?zal’s liberal economic policies promotes the rising of new middle class which is marked by the liberal economy and the freedom of religion. It also motivates popular who was once margined participate politics. They all support Islamic parties to compete for nation power. Turkish Islamic parties try to adjust to the process of democratization continuously. In 2002, the Justice and Development Party, which carries forward the system of Islamist party and absorbs the elites from other center-right political parties, won the general election victories and came into power.The second chapter illustrates the supporting bases of the Justice and Development Party. With the explanation of the three successive general election in the following years: 2002, 2007, and 2011, this paper reveals that the new middle class like professional technicians, enterprise mangers, and Islamic intellectuals support the Justice and Development Party to run for parliamentary seats, besides the traditional social classes, such as Anatolia villagers, workers and the petty-bourgeoisie. Therefore, the Justice and Development Party has broken the limitation of traditional Islamic Parties and gained the extensive social basesThe third chapter discusses the impact of social basis on the political orientation, the guiding principle, and the ruling crisis of the Justice and Development Party. Based on the Islamic tradition, the re-division of the social structure and globalization, the Justice and Development Party puts forward to guiding principle of “Conservative Democratic”, and pursues the liberal economic-political principle, so as to gradually abandon military tutelage and rescue civil ruling completely. It also strives to solve Kurdish problems and carries out the foreign policy of balance between east and west. However, the Justice and Development Party also faces great challenge such as philosophy, policy reformation and so on. It affects the stability and extension of the Justice and Development Party’s social bases.In conclusion, this article indicates that the rising of the Justice and Development Party is the inevitable result of the conformity from Islam Parties and Centre-right political Party. It not only represents the political-social appealing from the marginalized commons and new middle class, but also shows the competition between Kemalism and Islamism, whose Conservative Democratic pattern will be the reference to the whole Middle East and other developing countries.