Constitutional Debate in Turkey: From Dominant Party Heresthetical Strategy to Single-Party Hegemony, Quantitative Text Analyses

This essay explores the evolution of the constitutional debate in Turkey during the 2009–11 period in terms of political parties' strategies. It provides analytical insight via quantitative text analysis into party positions based on the four major parties' proposed constitutional drafts in 2013. The analyses reveal a path from the employment of heresthetics to hegemonic, single-party dominance: the dominant party employed the constitutional debate to manipulate the ethnic dimension by engaging in heresthetics while various political party constellations were also in play.