Political polarization in Turkey

However it may not be classified as a "negative" aspect, and it can be used by politicians to examine the social and economic parts to develop in a country.

[4] Mexico, Turkey, India, South Africa, Brazil and Venezuela are amongst the countries that have the highest polarization.

[3] Turkey is different than the other western countries as the multi-party system in politics was actually imposed from the above rather than the citizens really wanting and establishing it with their own initiations.

[3] In 1946, twenty six years after the founding of the parliament, the multi-party elections started in Turkey, and since then the politics have been one of the main subjects of focus.

[8] Polarization in the modern Turkey is believed to date back to the Democrat Party (DP) which started a populist approach that socio-economic status is more important for politics than the cultural revolutionaries, in which it resulted in getting more democratic but also started a populist era.

However when CHP was not successful in either 1965 or 1969 elections, to get in more supported position in politics, they stated that they were a center left party.

This started a more scientifically termed political polarization as referred to today: it is right vs. left rather than the older definition traditionalist vs. modernist.

When in 1969 elections the government's decision was that small parties could not enter the legislature, it meant that there would be no opposition which caused more tension.

[8] In 2015 the Comparative Study of Electoral System based on the Dalton Index classified Turkey as one of the 38 countries that are most polarized.

[7] Gezi Parkı protests are actually a milestone seen as the time people started to observe the polarization and political situation.

[10] The participants were from many different generations and ideologies, and most were opposed to the authoritarian approach of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and demanded real democracy.

Though Gezi Parkı protests were started due to environmental reasons, they became a political opinion and stood up.

[11] Gezi Park protests can also be shown as the period of time when the social media became very effective in the polarization, most probably as it demonstrated the opinions of people through numbers and statistics.

[11] During the period before and after the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum, partisan asymmetries and mood swings induced by transient events were also considered to be latent factors behind the seasonal behavior differences observed between the two sides of referendum, i.e., social media communities supporting yes-vote and no-vote.

It is now found on many different technology platforms such as Ekşi Sözlük, Twitter, Periscope, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.