Introduction

Modern Turkey is socio-culturally a deeply divided and also politically polarized country. The deep-running cultural cleavages that further intensify such divides have often been missing in the examples that Lipset and Rokkan analyzed in Europe appear prominently in the shaping of the electoral scene in Turkey. Both horizontal and vertical social mobility rendered the cultural kulturkampf of the earlier times ever more complicated, deep, intense, and rife. As such, the 2018 elections mark the beginning of an illiberal term in Turkish electoral politics with the absence of a level playing field during the campaign, non-autonomous administration of elections, and rising ideological polarization. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.