INSTRUMENTALISATION OF GERRYMANDERING IN RECENTRALIZATION IN TURKEY: THE CASE OF ANKARA

The aim of this research is to demonstrate empirically that gerrymandering takes place specifically in the municipal elections which first started by the law 6360 in 2012 and not only leads to expansion of the political power’s hegemony while limiting the opposition party’s electoral boundary but also centralization. In order to prove this argument, civil voluntarism model, which deals with the relationship between electoral behaviors and voter’s profile, was used. We use data on voter qualifications and election results from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TSI) and the Supreme Electoral Board (SEB), two state institutions. And we also used an economic data we created from a real estate website. The findings show that the areas dominated by the opposition party are shrinking. Furthermore, the findings show that the ruling party that made this regulation tended to be centralized to the extent that it did not leave its domination areas to their local representatives. In this case, the regulation cannot be seen as a simple arrangement about only expanding of electoral boundaries. It also shows that mobilizes the dynamics of recentralization in Turkey and the place is instrumentalized for this purpose.