ABSTRACT
The Turkish Republic emerged in 1923 as a modernizing, Western-oriented, secular and authoritarian state. In 1946 Turkey began implementing the procedural requirements to transition the state to electoral democratic politics. In 1950 the country held its first free and fair elections and the opposition Democrat Party (DP) dethroned the Republican People’s Party (CHP) which had run the country since its founding. For the ethnic Kurdish minority in the country, however, more substantive, liberal democratic politics did not begin to appear until after 2002.
