Islamists, democracy and Turkey A test of the inclusion-moderation hypothesis

• Published in: Party politics Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 646 - 653
• Main Author: Gurses, Mehmet
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.07.2014; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Attitudes; Democracy; Elections; Electoral behaviour; Electoral College; Electoral systems; Hypotheses; Intellectuals; Islam; Islam and politics; Islamism; Norms; Policy making; Political behaviour; Regression analysis; Religion Politics Relationship; Turkey; Values; Voting behaviour; Turkey; Turkey; Islamists; AKP; moderation
• ISSN: 1354-0688; 1460-3683
• DOI: 10.1177/1354068812448688

The rise of Islamist movements in the Muslim world has been the subject of heated debate among scholars and policymakers. One group of scholars argues that Islamists use elections as a façade and warn against their political ascendency via electoral democracy. Another group of scholars, however, points to the moderating effects democracy has on views held by Islamists. This article does not present a novel theory but rather attempts to improve on existing studies by providing a test for the inclusion-moderation hypothesis using the data on Turkey collected by the World Values Survey. The findings from the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis, as well as in-depth face-to-face interviews with ranking members of the Islamist parties and communities in Turkey, show that Islamists develop positive attitudes toward electoral democracy to the extent that they are allowed to share power. Islamists’ support for democracy, however, seems to be fragmented, provisional and driven by pragmatism more than a principled commitment to democratic norms and values.