Beliefs, economics, and spatial regimes in voting behavior: the Turkish case, 2007–2018

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has governed Turkey since 2002 and has never received less than 34% of votes in general elections. Much of the literature explains the AKP’s successive victories through Economic Voting Theory (EVT)—pocketbook and sociotropic voting. This study argues EVT alone cannot account for sustained support under poor economic performance and insufficiently considers spatial components of peripheral sociologies. Using a comparative approach integrating EVT with the Center–Periphery (C–P) framework, the study assembles an original dataset covering per capita growth, unemployment, inflation, education, age, religious conservatism, ethnicity, and spatial factors at national and local levels (81 provinces; 2007–2018). Results show voting for the AKP is driven by both EVT and C–P factors, with C–P exerting the stronger effect. Religious conservatism and ethnicity outperform national and local economic conditions as predictors of AKP vote share. Spatial analyses indicate distinct spatial regimes based on ethnic identity and no spatial spillovers between regimes in voting behavior.

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