ABSTRACT
How do political parties function abroad? How do political parties mobilize overseas supporters during elections? This chapter focuses on the cases of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the two most successful Turkish political parties among emigrants. It compares their distinct organisational structures and mobilisation techniques when seeking to reach out and gain the electoral support of Turkish citizens residing in Germany. It is argued that after enabling non-resident voter enfranchisement in 2012, Turkish political parties have expedited their lobbying activities particularly in Germany, where reside half of the eligible external Turkish voters (almost 1.5 million). This study combines semi-structured interviews with the party supporters and the participatory observation of their campaign strategies between 2014 and 2017. It reveals that despite adopting similar campaign strategies, the AKP supporters were organized in a systematically top-down manner via the formation of AKP satellites, while the HDP supporters arose in a bottom-up manner, through the alliances that were built by the long-standing grassroots community organisations.
