POLS Ph.D. Student Gül Arıkan Akdağ's Conference Participation

Political Science Ph.D. student, Gül Arıkan Akdağ, has been accepted to 70th Midwest Political Science Association Conference to present her paper “Distribution of Material Incentives for Ethnic Mobilization: The Case of Turkey”  between April, 12-15, 2012.

Abstract: The move towards a dominant party system thanks to AKP’s successes at the ballot box is one of the most important developments of the Turkish party system. In addition, it is also suggested that rising Kurdish ethnic demands contributes to ideological polarization. The combination of these two developments make the study of mobilization strategies used by the dominant party in order to mobilize ethnic votes particularly interesting since the incumbent party has steady access to state resources. This paper focuses on the differences in the capacity of the incumbent party to distribute material resources via municipalities and how it affects its strategy on ethnically conscious voters. The empirical analysis is conducted at the district level where the differing mobilization strategies of AKP on citizens of Kurdish origin are investigated.