How does the AKP pick its candidates?

On April 7, Turkey’s political parties announced their lists of candidates that will run in the June 7 general elections. The lists are important, for they signal what sort of a parliament Turkey will have for the next four years. The list of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is particularly crucial, for all polls indicate that the AKP will form the largest and dominant group in Turkey’s 550-seat National Assembly.

Before going into details, one must first note a key feature of Turkey’s political system and culture that may sound unusual to a Western reader. In the West, political candidates are often selected in a bottom-up process, where parties in each district elect their own deputies, and these deputies elect the higher officials. In Turkey, however, the system is often the reverse: The party leadership decides who will run for office in every single province.

For the June 7 elections, the only party that broke with this hierarchical tradition was the main opposition Republican People’s Party, which held primaries for its own candidates March 29. In contrast, the ruling AKP decided upon its candidates through the office of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and, less explicitly, through the office of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Notably, this new AKP list will not include some prominent party members who have been in key positions since its founding in 2001. Among them are deputies who have served three parliamentary terms, the limit in the AKP bylaws. These include Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, one of the three founding pillars of the party with Erdogan and Abdullah Gul. Arinc recently made headlines by daring to criticize Erdogan’s overbearing style of rule, to accusations of treason. By June 7, he will retire from politics — something he apparently looks forward to. Ali Babacan, another deputy prime minister and also the successful manager of the Turkish economy since the AKP came to power 13 years ago, will also leave the parliament.