Effects of Political Violence on Incumbent Political Parties

Effects of Political Violence on Incumbent Political Parties
Reşat Bayer, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey, +90-212-3381551, [email protected]
Özge Kemahlıoğlu, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey,+90-216-4839268
[email protected]
Zübeyde Ece Kural, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, [email protected]
Abstract
While the large-N literature has paid some attention to the relationship between electoral politics and
terrorism with a focus on whether terrorism affects left-wing or right-wing parties, we argue, that the role of
incumbency is overlooked. We maintain that through local state resources and party machinery the national
incumbent party is able to overcome criticisms that breaches to security happened on its watch. We conduct
separate analyses on the 1993 and 1997 general elections from Chile and five general elections between
1995 and 2011 in Turkey. These two countries are not only historically among the most terror-affected
countries of the world and have a checkered history with democracy (Weinberg 2013) but they also enable
us to compare the effects of urban ideological terrorism in the case of Chile with that from Turkey which
includes rural guerrilla warfare and has an ethnic dimension, and also affected civilians as well as noncivilians. We combine data from the Global Terrorism Database with electoral politics data. Our choice of
countries enables us to examine left-wing incumbents, right-wing incumbents, single party and coalition
incumbent governments. Unlike much of the relevant literature, our statistical analysis is conducted at the
municipal level, where we argue that the effects of terrorism are most likely to be felt given the proximity to
the attack. The results demonstrate the importance of considering the municipal level electoral linkages as
well as the local party organizations more in the study of political violence as strong local organizations
present incumbent parties the opportunity to avoid blame for their failure to provide security to citizens.
1
Introduction
The 2004 Madrid bombings are portrayed as having played a major role in the electoral
loss of the incumbent right-wing political party in Spain. On the other hand the incumbent
right-wing political party or parties appear to gain from terrorist attacks in Israel. This
creates several questions: Given that most studies linking electoral politics with terrorism
are based on Israel and Spain: is the finding for Israel or Spain more pertinent for other
parts of the world? While the focus has mainly been on the fate of right-wing incumbent
parties, what about left-wing parties? Moreover, if terrorist attacks do not affect the
incumbent political parties, how can this situation be explained? Finally, given that
different parts of the same province (let alone country) experience terrorism at a different
level, how does this translate to voting behavior in different corners of the same province?
In this paper we argue that some of the answers lie in the electoral accountability
process in democratic regimes and the role that political parties play in it. Political parties
are crucial for the study of terrorism. The intricate ties between terrorist groups and
political parties such as the role of political parties in terrorist group formation as well as
in terrorist groups' decision to participate in elections and their relations to their political
branches (Braithwaite, 2013; de La Calle and Sánchez-Cuenca, 2013) have been shown
previously. Since terrorist organizations have aims that they are trying to achieve through
violence, political parties become paramount because in a modern democracy, the
demands of a group using terrorism, can only be addressed by the political parties, in
particular the incumbent political party. Moreover, political parties give terrorist
organizations legitimacy by accepting to have talks with them, conveying the messages of
terrorists to a wider audience, and by helping with their recruitment through their
reactions. Finally, one way in which the broader society can show its approval of political
parties during periods of terrorism is through elections. Thus, this linkage of terrorism,
2
elections, and political parties has multiple implications for the study of terrorism,
electoral politics and more broadly to modern democracy.
We delve further into the role that political parties and party machines play in the
mechanisms of electoral accountability for terrorist activities. Our theoretical contribution
lies in our focus on the mediating effect of party machines that are built with local state
resources. We argue that national incumbent parties have control over state resources that
can be transferred to partisans at the local level, which can be used to build effective party
machines. These machines are, then, used to the advantage of incumbent parties in
offsetting the negative effects of terrorist attacks and the consequent perception of loss of
security among voters. Therefore, we argue that incumbents might avoid blame and
punishment with the help of the party machines that they build using local state resources.
Empirically we analyze municipal level legislative election results to see how terrorism
affects incumbent parties in elections. We conduct the empirical analysis at the municipal
level where the citizens would feel more threatened by the attacks since they are closer to
the location of the attack. This is also the level where party machines, which our theory
expects to be critical for mechanisms of electoral accountability, are typically built.
We carry out our empirical analysis in two countries, Chile and Turkey, which are
listed among the two countries with the greatest amount of terrorist incidents historically.
Moreover, both of their democracies during the years under consideration had problems
with their democracy (Weinberg 2013). At the same time, they serve as two opposing
contexts with respect to the question of how terrorist attacks would affect the incumbent
parties’ performance in the national elections. While the terrorist activities mostly
consisted of radical leftist attacks in urban areas in Chile, political violence in Turkey also
included ethnically based mobilization in rural areas.
3
In addition to the type of terrorism, the electoral context is also different in the
periods of analyses across these countries. In the post-transition period of Chile the most
destructive and frequent terrorist attacks occurred right after the transition before political
parties had an opportunity to consolidate their power locally. In contrast, especially the
pre-2015 elections in Turkey saw an incumbent party that has turned itself into a
predominant party through an effective party organization. While there has been interest in
how the electoral system (Piazza 2010, Foster, Braithwaite, and Sobek, 2013), e.g.,
majoritarian or proportional, might affect terrorism, our results focus here on political
parties. At the same time, it is important to note that one of our cases is a presidential
system whereas the other would be classified as parliamentary throughout this period.
In a more straightforward way, the choice of these two different cases helps us to
assess whether our theory is applicable in more than one region of the world.
Comparisons between Turkey and Latin American countries have taken place in the past
both in terms of violence (Eccarius-Kelly 2012) as well as electoral politics (Kemahlioglu
2012). The current study of electoral politics and terrorism in Latin America in the large-N
literature seems to be mainly limited to the study of Colombia (Holmes & Gutiérrez de
Piñeres 2012) even though much of Latin America such as Uruguay, Peru, and Argentina
have their own experiences with terrorism. The case of Chile is particularly relevant here
as most current studies on electoral violence and terrorism focus on politically violent
non-state actors that are mainly using (rural) guerrilla warfare. This is problematic and
can even be considered as conceptual stretching as deaths that emerge from guerrilla
warfare and terrorism are lumped together despite the differences between them (SánchezCuenca and de la Calle 2009). While we recognize that non-state actors can use guerrilla
and terrorist tactics, we believe that the literature is presenting the findings as if they were
entirely of terrorist nature when they tend to include behavior that would be closer to
4
guerrilla warfare. This has policy implications. Moreover, besides the political violence in
Turkey which is associated with PKK, there are other terrorist groups in Turkey and by
separating the attacks from PKK with others, the effects of both sorts of violence can be
seen. In addition, Chile offers us the possibility of studying the fate of left-wing incumbent
political parties, which is missing in the literature. This omission is highly problematic as
the literature also shows that terrorist groups are found more where many left-wing
parties are present and winning votes (Weinberg and Eubank 1992). Moreover, the
September bombings of 2014 in Chile have once again brought its history with terrorism
into the spotlight and serve as a reminder of the terrorism of the early 1990s1, which had
raised concerns about the future of stability and democracy (Long 1991). By analyzing
terrorism in Turkey and Chile particularly in early 1990s, we are also able to contribute to
the understanding of the impact of terrorism during a vulnerable stage of democratizationan issue which is of growing relevance as there is fear in several corners of the world of
the impact of terror on the fate of democracy and elections. In the case of Turkey, it is
noteworthy that for a country that has a long history with terrorism, there is a dearth of
studies on terrorism and electoral politics. In addition, while Turkey is mainly thought of
in relations to terrorism emerging from the Kurdish question (Satana, 2011), the January
2015 bombings in Istanbul as well as the Synagogue and HSBC Bank bombings of 2003
were not the activities of Kurdish groups, which demonstrates the variety of groups that
relied upon terrorist activities in Turkey making it a particularly useful location for testing
the effects of terrorism. Finally, while, there are often suggestions in the pro-government
media that terrorist groups want to see the incumbent political party lose elections (Zaman,
2008a), we do not know whether AK Parti (incumbent party) has indeed been affected.
1
Interview with Marcelo Schilling who headed Consejo Coordinador de Seguridad Pública in early 1990s.
http://diario.latercera.com/2014/09/21/01/contenido/reportajes/251735659marceloschillingnohaynadamasin
mundoquelaluchaclandestina.shtml
5
In the rest of the paper, we first present the literature review. We then discuss our
main theoretical contribution that highlights the role of local party organizations and
incumbency in the process of electoral accountability for terrorism. We also give
information about the nature of the party system and terrorist activities in the two
countries of analysis. We continue by presenting our findings from a regression analysis of
the 1993 and 1997 elections in Chile and five elections from 1995 until 2011 in Turkey.
Literature review on Electoral Effects of Terrorism
While there is growing interest on how political parties fare as a result of terrorism, we
believe the issue of incumbency has not received due attention in the literature. Yet, this is
rather critical as we can find examples such as Israel and Spain which would support both
theses on whether incumbents are blamed for terrorism or receive public support. More
worrisome is the lack of a theoretical argument on the relationship between terrorism and
incumbency.
The literature shows that terrorism affects electoral politics in democracies
(Berrebi and Klor, 2008; Kıbrıs, 2011; Montalvo, 2011; Holmes & Gutiérrez de Piñeres
2012; Robbins, Hunter and Murray, 2013; for recent studies on non-democracies see
Newman, 2013; Aksoy, Carter, and Wright, 2012). Some studies maintain that right-wing
incumbent parties receive more votes following terrorism (Berrebi and Klor, 2006; Berrebi
and Klor, 2008; Kıbrıs, 2011). This would also tie with Onreat, van Hiel, and Cornelis's
(2013) finding that in the face of threats there is a turn to right-wing attitudes. Specifically,
in the case of Israeli elections, a right-wing incumbent prime minister's party encountering
local fatalities due to terrorism does not witness lessened votes and that the vote for the
right is not due to turnout but due to change of preferences (Berrebi and Klor, 2008;
Getmansky and Zeitzoff 2014). Contrast that with the Spanish 2004 national elections
where survey results show that terrorism contributed to the victory of the Socialist Party
6
over the incumbent Popular Party; specifically the terrorist attack in Madrid seem to have
particularly influenced young and uneducated as well as the center and left leaning
individuals to vote (Bali, 2007). Not only was the fate of the incumbents different but
unlike in Israel, it would appear that turnout was consequential in Spain. In fact, Montalvo
(2011) using overseas ballots cast before the elections estimates that the ruling right-wing
party could have won between 42 and 46 per cent of the vote rather than 37.6 per cent of
the vote had it not been for the Madrid bombings. Somewhat similarly, in the case of three
Colombian presidential elections (Holmes & Gutiérrez de Piñeres, 2012), the right-wing
incumbent political parties lost support in the face of leftist human rights violations (which
is broadly defined to include terrorism) and to a lesser degree gained support from
paramilitary violations but it is not possible to say whether the different incumbents
equally gained or lost as all elections are analyzed together. While the Israeli case would
suggest that the right-wing appears to see its votes increase in the face of terrorism, the
Spanish case suggests that this support is conditional on public approval of relevant policy
areas: Specifically, the right-wing political party's vulnerability in relevant policy areas to
the terrorist attack such as foreign policy was highlighted by terrorism (Bali, 2007).
Moreover, there are some interesting findings reported for left-wing parties. The
amount of terrorist attacks is found to be higher when a left-leaning party is in office in
Israel (Berberi and Klor, 2006). In fact, right-wing incumbent parties do not appear at a
marked advantage over their left-wing parties in receiving (verbal) support from
opposition political parties in the face of terrorist attacks (Chowanietz, 2010). This finding
is also collaborated by Koch and Cranmer (2007) and Williams, Koch, and Smith (2013),
which respectively demonstrate that left-wing governments attract more transnational
terrorism and that left-wing governments are less likely to survive transnational terrorist
attacks. In addition, Alonson (2013) points out that negotiations with ETA negatively
affected the ensuing left-wing goverment that came to power after the Madrid bombings
7
and, thus, terrorism affected first a right-wing then a left-wing government in elections.
In fact, Echebarria-Echabe and Fernandez-Gued maintain that conservative and
authoritarian feelings increased in the Spanish electorate following the Madrid attacks
(2006).
Moreover, in a global analysis, it should be noted that 47 leftist terrorist groups
were identified by Weinberg to be either created by an (extreme) left party or a left party
faction that broke away and created a terrorist group (2003, p. 30, 44-45). In their
examination of the 1960s and 1970s, Weinberg and Eubank (1992, p. 132) report that
while 40.4 per cent of terrorist groups were in countries where right-wing political parties
were winning votes in parliamentary elections, 61.5 percent of terrorist groups were in
countries where left-wing parties won votes (but these percentages would be closer
depending on how one classifies nationalist, regionalist, and religious parties).
It has to be said that there is not much theoretical discussion on why political
parties fare the way they do in the face of terrorism. The underpinning of much of the
literature appears to be that in the face of threats, people espouse more authoritarian values
and this benefits right-wing political parties rather than left-wing political parties. Yet, it is
noteworthy here that even in the case of Israel where support for the incumbent right-wing
political party is reported, there is a difference between local and non-local vote whereby
local terror fatalities result in an increase for the right even in left-leaning parts of the
country but in non-local terror fatalities, the right-wing parties lose votes. If the issue was
solely about a turn to the right when confronted with terrorism, we would expect to see
neither the left at times gaining votes such as in Spain nor a turn away from the right in
non-terror locations (Berrebi and Klor, 2008). In addition, Danzell (2010) argues that
opposition political parties can be expected to turn to terrorism particularly when the
incumbent's ideology is right-wing. Moreover, Krieger and Meierrieks (2010) report that
welfare spending in Western European countries decreases terrorism and report that
8
terrorism decreases when left-wing governments are in place. Bourgon (2006) also
maintains that left-wing governments should decrease terrorism because they should be
able to bring in excluded groups; in fact, exclusion appears to increase the chances that
excluded minorities will turn to terrorism (Satana, Inman, and Birnir, 2013).
Chenoweth (2013) points towards the differences between transnational and
domestic terrorism in explaining these rather contradictory findings but as SánchezCuenca and Luis de la Calle (2009) point out the distinction is questionable. Thus, despite
the considerable interest on this topic, we do not have a clear understanding of how an
incumbent party is able to avoid blame for terrorist attacks and consequent electoral
losses. We next outline our argument that focuses on the role of party machines in the
process of electoral accountability
Mediating Effect of Local Party Organizations
Although incumbency hurts politicians’ electoral chances when they cannot perform well
in the provision of public goods such as security or economic growth, incumbent
politicians can use state resources selectively in order to offset the negative consequences
of poor performance in public good provision. There are mainly two manners through
which incumbents can benefit from their control over state resources. They can either
distribute benefits to a selective group of citizens within their clientelistic circle directly to
change the recipients’ vote choices (Stokes, 2005; Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007; Stokes
et. al. 2013) or they can use state resources to build strong party organizations, which they
can then use effectively in electoral campaigns (Kemahlioglu, 2012; Kopecky et. al, 2012;
Grzymala-Busse 2007).
We, therefore, argue that incumbent parties at the national level can use their
control over state resources to either directly change the vote of potential constituents that
9
might turn away from them as a result of their failure against political violence through
vote buying or to conduct a more effective electoral campaign through strong local party
organizations. With the help of these local party organizations they can more effectively
convince potential supporters that they have conducted an important anti-terrorist
campaign and that the results of their efforts might need some more time to materialize.
With respect to Turkey, scholars have shown evidence of both ways that patronage
and clientelistic resources are employed by incumbent politicians and parties. While
Kemahlioglu (2012) shows that party activists and members are hired in the public sector
in return for their party and campaign work, Carkoglu and Aytac (2013) provides evidence
from list experiments in survey analysis that citizens, when voting, take into account the
particularistic material benefits they receive from parties. In contrast, Chile is considered
as one of the unique cases in the developing world that is relatively free of patronage and
clientelism (Calvo and Murillo, 2013).
Since we cannot measure the extent of patronage distribution in each municipality,
we use local government control as a proxy of patronage and clientelistic resources
controlled by the national incumbent party. Since the national incumbent party in that case
can both channel more resources to their co-partisans at the local level and use these
resources to benefit the party in the national legislative elections, we expect the negative
electoral consequences of violence to be offset by local party mobilization when the
national incumbent party also controls the local government in a municipality.
We would expect this effect to be especially paramount if central financial
resources are important for local governments and some amount of discretion is allowed in
the allocation of central resources to municipalities (Scheiner, 2005). Even after some
decentralization efforts in both Chile and Turkey, they remain as highly centralized
unitary countries (Eaton, 2004; Loewendahl-Ertugal, 2005). Therefore, for both cases
central government transfers to municipalities are essential. However, an important
10
difference exist between them is that while some element of discretion is allowed in the
allocation of resources to municipalities in the case of Turkey (Mutluer and Oner, 2009),
Chile has established universal rules in the distribution of resources from the national
government to local governments (Eaton, 2004).
Another important characteristic of the period of analysis for the case of Chile is
that the elections prior to which terrorism was especially destructive and frequent
correspond to the immediate aftermath of the transition from Pinochet rule. We, therefore,
would expect that the party organizations might not have had much time and opportunity
yet to establish themselves after a pretty long period of repression (almost fourteen years)
under an authoritarian regime that did not allow any electoral competition or existence of
parties. Therefore, through the lack of time to build effective party machines and lack of
discretionary financial transfers from the national government, Chile poses itself as a hard
case to find a mediating effect of local incumbency on how terrorism might hurt national
incumbent parties.
Party System in Chile and Turkey
The party system in Chile has been considered as one of the most institutionalized, at least
at the elite level (Luna and Altman, 2011), in Latin America and even in the developing
world (Mainwaring and Scully, 1995). Although three cleavages - religious, urban and
rural class conflict - are identified as the important ones that led to the formation of the
party system as existed prior to military intervention in 1973 (Scully, 1995), these
cleavages collapsed on one single dimension and the main parties could be located along
this single left-right policy (ideological) space. The Popular Action Front (FRAP) including the Socialist Party - whose presidential candidate , Salvador Allende, under the
Popular Unity electoral bloc won the last elections prior to the military intervention was
the main representative on the left. Christian Democratic Party (PDC) emerged as the
11
stronger party at the center in its competition with the Radicals (PR) (Scully, 1995). The
main right-wing parties, Liberals and Conservatives, formed the National Party coalition
in 1967. Growing ideological polarization prior to the collapse of democracy was reflected
in the party system through the formation of the Democratic Confederation (CODE) in
opposition to Allende and the Popular Unity Coalition.
Polarization in the form of competition between two major electoral blocs
continued after the transition to civilian rule in 1990 though there was a major realignment
in the party system (Torcal and Mainwaring, 2003) where the composition of the electoral
blocs changed most notably with the new alliance of the center with the left under the
major governing coalition, Concertación, this time representing the opposition to the
authoritarian rule (Torcal and Mainwaring, 2003). The binomial electoral systems
introduced by the authoritarian government also played a role in the persistence of the
two electoral blocs - the Concertación representing the center and the left and the Alianza
representing the right (Valenzuela and Scully, 1997). The Communist Party (of Chile) that
formed an important part of the PU coalition prior to the military intervention remained
outside the center-left governing coalition until very recently.
Center-periphery cleavage including the religious element and class conflict also
formed the two main forces behind the Turkish party system prior to the military
intervention of 1980 that resurfaced after the transition to civilian rule in 1983 (Çarkoğlu
1998). As in Chile, repression, of especially the left, and changes in the electoral system,
most notably the introduction of the ten percent threshold, by the authoritarian government
also led to some important changes in the party system. Departing authoritarian
government's enforcement of a ban on the prominent civilian politicians' political activities
for ten years had left an empty space that was filled by new parties. However, the removal
of the ban in the 1987 referendum brought back these politicians and partly led to the
proliferation of parties in the center-left and center-right (Sayari, 1996). Two center-right
12
parties (Anavatan Partisi - Motherland Party, ANAP and Doğru Yol Partisi - True Path
Party, DYP) and two-center left parties (Republican People’s Party, RPP – formerly Social
Democratic Populist Party, SHP – and Democratic Left Party, DSP) played important
roles in the coalition governments between 1991 and 2002. The 1990s also saw the small
parties that existed on the extreme right prior to the coup gain prominence. The Welfare
Party (Refah Partisi, RP) emerged as the leading party in the 1995 elections though with a
small margin of 1.73 percent. The nationalist party, MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi), in
turn, participated in the three-party coalition after gaining 17.98 percent in the 1999
elections. Especially relevant for the link between terrorist activities and elections, an
important change in the post-transition Turkish party system is the representation of the
Kurdish minority with its own party. Due to closures by the Constitutional Court, it has
taken on different names. Currently HDP (Halklarin Demokrasi Partisi) represents the
movement in the Parliament.
One of the most critical elections in the post-transition period of Turkey is the
2002 elections that brought AK Parti to power as a single party government. Since then,
the party won three more legislative elections2, three municipal elections, two referenda
and the country's first direct presidential elections. As a result, most scholars characterized
the Turkish party system as a predominant one (Carkoglu 2011; Esen and Ciddi 2011;
Muftuler-Bac and Keyman 2012; Gumuscu 2013; Ayan Musil 2014). In this new party
system, the CHP emerged as the main opposition party and the MHP and HDP as the two
other major parties represented in the Parliament.
In the light of these party system characteristics, we would expect some
differences in the way voters respond to the terrorist activities in Chile and Turkey
irrespective of the mediating role of the local party machines. The incumbent governing
coalition of the 1990s in Chile, Concertación, is expected to lose votes as a result of
2
AKP won the plurality, but not the majority in the June 2015 elections.
13
terrorist activities at the center to Alianza, on the left to the Communist Party or in the
form of invalid, protest votes if the voters are not satisfied with the incumbent, but are not
willing to vote for the alternatives, either. In Turkey, the fragmented multi-party system of
the 1990s provided ample opportunities for the dissatisfied voters to switch their votes, but
clarity of responsibility (Powell and Whitten 1993) was low due to short lived, unstable
coalition governments. In the aftermath of 2002 elections, in turn, dissatisfied supporters
of the AK Parti are expected to switch to MHP or smaller religious parties if they are part
of their conservative base, switch to HDP if they are Kurdish, and decide not to vote if
they are not willing to vote for these alternatives.
Terrorism and Elections in Chile and Turkey
According to Global Terrorism Database, Chile is ranked in the top twenty most
frequently attacked countries during the 1970- 2007 period. Since the seventeen years of
Pinochet rule was a period of intense state terror, most of the studies on violence in Chile
tend to focus on state terror rather than terrorist activities carried out by non-state actors.
Although currently not well remembered, Chile was faced with frequent terrorist attacks in
the years immediately following the transition to civilian rule in 1990. For example, in
1991 a report by Asociación Latinoamericana para los Derechos Humanos (ALDHU)
ranked Chile in the third place behind Colombia and Peru among the Latin American
countries that faced terrorist attacks (Americas Watch Report, 1991).
In this period most of the terrorist activity was carried out by FPMR3 (Manuel
Rodríguez Patriotic Front) Autónomo (that split from FPMR after the transition to civilian
rule), Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) and MJL (Lautaro Youth Movement)
(Americas Watch Report, 1991). In the beginning of 1990, MJL and FPMR were mainly
3
FPMR was formed in 1983. It is considered to be affiliated with the Communist Party of Chile (Feldmann,
2005; Castañeda, 1993). When the Communist Party rejected violence and decided to participate in electoral
politics after transition to civilian rule, FPMR-A split from the FPMR.
14
responsible for the sharp increase in the number of terrorist incidents. Both of the groups
had been founded in the 1980s and continued the armed struggle after the democratic
elections (Feldmann, 2005). Jaime Guzmánm's, a senator and doctrinal founder of the
conservative Independent Democrat Union party, assassination in April 1991 by FPMR-A
was one of the most critical terrorist activities of the period. Especially after Guzmán’s
assassination, but even prior to that, terrorist attacks were used by the right to create a
perception of insecurity among citizens, which then could be used to increase the power of
Pinochet and the military against the civilian government. In response to these attacks and
the rightist propaganda, the first civilian President Patricio Aylwin Azócar’s government
took measures to empower the police forces under the control of the Ministry of Interior
and “took legal action” against the FPMR-A and the MJL (Americas Watch Report,
1991).
However, rather than Aylwin and his government, it was the army and the right
and their voices that reached the population through widely circulating newspapers such as
El Mercurio and La Epoca. Therefore, we expect the party organization to be especially
critical in disseminating information about Aylwin government’s anti-terrorist efforts
although Chilean party organizations in this period are expected to be weak and not to
benefit much from local incumbency and partisan ties with national incumbents.
The history of terrorism in Turkey has a long history (Mango 2005; Ergil 1980).
The focus here will be on Turkey since the 1990s and thus the terrorist attacks against
Turkish diplomats or the extreme leftist/rightist terrorist acts in the 1970s will not be
considered. In a 2007 Turkish police report, the 12 main active groups listed by the
Turkish emanated from three main types: ethnic-based, religion-based, and leftist groups.
The ethnic-based one has particularly received attention. The majority of domestic
activities can be attributed to Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK). While the PKK and its
captured leader has changed some of its demands over time, PKK is a major component
15
of the Kurdish question that continues to be a central issue in Turkey including for
democratization and electoral politics (Tezcür 2010; Kibris 2011; Kibris 2014).
Yet, other types of terrorism also exist. In the 2000s, al-Qaeda and later Islamic
State were linked to major terrorist attacks in Turkey. However, local organizations such
as Islamic Great Eastern Raiders-Front and Hezbellah have been around for considerably
longer and were willing to challenge Turkey's secular nature. Since they share al-Qaeda's
vision, some of the acts tied to al-Qeada in Turkey were carried by these local groups.
Left-wing groups in Turkey might not be as active as in the 1970s but Marxist-Leninist
organizations who are anti-US and anti-NATO, such as The Revolutionary People's
Liberation Party–Front, continue to conduct attacks, e.g., on September 10, 2001, their
suicide bomb attack resulted in four deaths and twenty injuries (Mango 2005).
Between 1990 and 2011, the Global Terrorism Database lists 1944 terrorist events
in Turkey. It reports 96 terrorism events spread throughout Turkey between the 2007
elections and 2011 elections, 144 between the 2002 and 2007, 121 between 1999 and
2002, 169 between 1995 and 1999, 1016 between 1991 and 1995, and 576 between 1987
and 1991 (START 2013a). While one needs to be careful with comparing the terrorism
from one election period with another period, the greater amount of terrorism for the
1990s compared to later years has face validity. Of course, the terrorism events are not
evenly distributed. For example, after the capture of the leader of PKK in February 1999,
there is a spike the following month with 34 events. Yet, terrorism is distributed around
the country and 49 different provinces have had terrorist attacks. Moreover, of all the 39
municipalities in Istanbul, we only were able to identify nine municipalities throughout
this period that did not witness any terrorism. Regional effects of terrorism differ,
including in economic growth (Öcal and Yıldrım, 2010). Poverty, ethnic heterogenety,
and residential mobility have been shown to be predictive of terrorism across the 81
Turkish provinces (Akyuz and Armstrong, 2011). Compared to other countries such as Sri
16
Lanka, suicide terrorism was not particularly common in Turkey until very recently. For
example, Ergil (2000) is able to identify only 15 suicide attacks for PKK between 1995
and 1999.
This amount of attacks is difficult to ignore especially as these attacks did result in
loss of life. Incumbency hurts politicians’ electoral chances when they cannot perform
well in the provision of public goods such as security or economic growth. It should be
said that both in the case of parliamentary, i.e., Turkey (Kıbrıs, 2011), as well as
presidential systems (Holmes and de Piñeres, 2012) incumbent governments are blamed
for losses and that repeated attacks result not in support but criticism of the incumbent
(Chowanietz, 2010).
There is not much quantitative work analyzing terrorism specifically in Chile or
Turkey. Through an examination of military funerals attributed to PKK terrorism, Kıbrıs
(2011; see also Kıbrıs 2014) demonstrates that in the 1991 and 1995 elections, voters were
sensitive to the deaths of soldiers attributed to PKK and they blamed the government for
the deaths. Moreover, this results in voters turning to right-wing political parties,
particularly to opposition right-wing political parties.
With respect to Turkey, scholars have presented evidence as mentioned above that
incumbent politicians and parties also enjoy some benefits through their control over
financial resources. Therefore, keeping their performance in the provision of public goods,
incumbent parties are expected to gain electorally from their control over the government.
However, we do not know whether the evaluations of security or the provision of private
material goods weighs in more strongly in the Turkish elections. For example, the
incumbent right-wing political party in the 2011 elections faced at least two conflicting
forces: on the one hand, terrorism was present but on the other hand, they might have been
able to address terrorism through the advantages of incumbency and this could have led
the effects of terrorism to be mitigated.
17
Analysis
The analysis is conducted at the municipal level. The dependent variable is the vote share
of the national incumbent party in that municipality in the legislative elections. We also
include the party’s vote share in the previous legislative elections to control for the base
level of support in the municipality for the party. The Turkish analyses rely upon data
provided by Turkish Statistical Institute.4 Municipal level election results in Chile were
accessed from SERVEL’s (Servicio Electoral de Chile) website.5 Since our dependent
variable is continuous, we rely upon ordinary least squares regression and also use robust
standard errors.
Our main terrorism variable takes on the value of one if a terrorist attack took
place in the municipality since the last legislative election. We interact this variable with
whether the incumbent party controlled the municipality or not. We also controlled for
whether any terrorism took place within the province in which the municipality is located
in the past (which due to space issues we do not report here). This second variable helps to
capture the proximate time and spatial effects of terrorism on elections as voters can be
influenced by what happened not just since the last election cycle but also in the past and
they might also be influenced by proximate events. The correlation between the two terror
variables is below 0.5 for most election years.
Our terrorism variables are influenced by what is used in publications on electoral
politics and terrorism. We decided to rely upon Global Terrorism database due to its
comprehensiveness and extensive usage in the past (Newman, 2013; Şatana, Inman and
Birnir, 2013; Robbins, Hunter and Murray, 2013). A terrorist attack is defined in this
database “as the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non‐state actor
4
http://www.tuik.gov.tr/
The data were accessed from the web page, http://historico.servel.cl/, on various dates between September
2010 and February 2014.
5
18
to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or
intimidation” which needs to satisfy two of the following three criteria: the act should not
fall under humanitarian international law, the act must have a political, economic,
religious or social goal, and the act must not be just targeted at the immediate victims
(Start, 2013b, p. 7-8). Since the location of many terrorist attacks are missing in the data
set, additional research was conducted to identify the municipality of the terrorist attack.
In studies that analyze the relationship between terrorism and elections some
focused on support for political parties (Holmes and de Piñeres, 2012; Kıbrıs, 2011) and
others on voter turnout (Robbins, Hunter and Murray, 2013). In our case, we were unable
to find voter turnout information from Chile at the municipal level and thus we are not
able to examine voter turnout.
We also include in the analyses control variables that measure the socio-economic
condition of the municipality. For Turkey, the overall economic development of the
municipality is measured by illiteracy rate6 for the last two elections or a development
index for the previous elections. The index is developed by the DPT (Devlet Planlama
Teskilati – State Planning Organization) and is a composite measure of fifteen variables.7
These variables and the index are provided for the 872 municipalities in 2004. The most
developed municipalities are excluded from the index. For Chile, socio-economic
development of the municipality is measured by (logged) average income. The data were
gathered by the Survey, Encuesta CASEN, administered by the Ministry of Social
Development.8 Finally, we control for the size of the municipality in Turkey by including
the (logged) number of registered voters in that municipality and in Chile with the
6
Municipal level illitracy data can be accessed from TUIK’s web page, http://www.tuik.gov.tr/
Dinçer, Bülent ve Metin Özaslan 2004, “İlçelerin Sosyo-Ekonomik Gelişmişlik Sıralaması Araştırması
(2004)”, DPT Bölgesel Gelişme ve Yapısal Uyum Müdürlüğü.
8
The data can be accessed from the Ministry’s web page,
http://www.ministeriodesarrollosocial.gob.cl/casen/bases_datos.html.
7
19
(logged) population data from the 1992 Census.9 In the analyses of Turkish elections we
also include a control variable that takes on the value of one when the municipality is
located in the Southeast since PKK attacks frequently take place in this region and the
Kurdish nationalist parties receive votes from Kurdish citizens who form a large part of
the population in this area. The coding replicates the procedures in Kibris (2011). We
provide descriptive statistics in the appendix.
Results
In Table 1, we present the results for Turkey. In Model 1, we start with the
incumbent single party rule by examining AK Parti’s share of the vote in the 2011 general
elections for all municipalities. Most of the time terrorism only took place once (34 as
compared to 16 cases where terrorism occurred twice or more). In Model 1, while the
variable capturing the terrorist incidents is negative and significant, the interaction
variable is insignificant.10 Thus, while terrorism was making the incumbent party lose
votes in locations where it did not control the municipality, in locations where it controlled
the municipality, terrorist attacks were not making the party lose votes. The substantive
effect is quite high as the party lost 6 percent of votes when the municipality suffered from
a terrorist attack.
[Table 1 about here]
While not all terror activities in Turkey take place in the east and southeast
provinces, it is clear that this region has experienced more than its fair share of terrorism.
Thus, like previous work (Kıbrıs, 2011), we removed these provinces and estimated the
same model with a smaller set of municipalities; similar results are found. In fact, in other
analyses that we did with opposition parties, we saw the BDP increased its votes in the
9
The Census data can be accessed from the National Institute of Chile’s website, http://www.ine.cl/
The marginal effect is equal to -1.06 and teh standard error for the marginal effect is equal to 1.95.
10
20
east and southeast of the country (including in locations where terrorism occurred-given
the ties between BDP and PKK this is not surprising).
We next analyze the results for the 2007 general elections. There are 38 instances
of a municipality being attacked only once and 13 instances where terrorism occurred
more than once. In Model 2, we find that terrorism from 2002 to 2007 has had no effects
on the incumbent AK Parti’s share of the vote. One difference here from Model 1 is that
even outside of the municipalities that it controls, it is not affected. Given that the 20022007 period is when PKK terrorism starts again following a hiatus, it is important that the
party was able to avoid losing votes in such an atmosphere. The finding is also similar
even if we exclude the east and southeast provinces.
In Model 3, we turn to the 2002 elections. Unlike the 2007 and 2011 elections, the
government in this case was a three party coalition led by the DSP that also included
ANAP and MHP. Terrorism between 1999 and 2002 was limited with 29 cases where a
municipality experienced terrorism only once and only 13 instances where a municipality
experienced more than once. Once again, it is found that the incumbent political parties
despite other problems (mainly an economic crisis in 2001) were not affected by terrorism.
In Models 4 and 5, we are examining periods when terrorism was much more
rampant in Turkey. The 1995-1999 era (Model 4) witnessed many coalitions of short
duration among different political parties. We examined here the votes of ANAP, DYP,
DSP, DTP, and RP (all parties that joined a coalition government in this period). At the
municipality level, the incumbent parties do not appear to lose votes due to terrorism.
While we have 28 instances of municipalities having only one terrorist attack and 11
instances where they had more than one terrorist attack, we believe that this low count is
not capturing the full amount of terrorist attacks as at the province level there were 40
instances of terrorist attack occurring once within a province and 26 cases of a province
having more than once (with two provinces having 48 attacks). This is partly because the
21
terrorist attacks during this era are more difficult to pin down with several references to
terrorist attack occurring on the road among two or more municipalities and also finding
data sources is harder. However, when we use a continuous province terrorism variable
and interact it with the municipality control variable, the results are the same-positive but
considerably short of statistical significance even at 10%.
In Model 5, we examine the 1991-1995 period, a period of heightened PKK
terrorism. Although this was a period of a stable coalition government between CHP (SHP
prior to June 1993) and DYP, we again cannot find an effect of terrorist attacks on the
incumbent parties’ vote shares. Here a key element is that the SHP had entered the 1991
elections with an agreement with a (Kurdish nationalist) party strong in the southeast of
the country and had listed the Kurdish candidates of this party on its list. However, these
Kurdish members of parliament later resigned from CHP. Thus, a comparison of 1991 and
1995 vote for the CHP needs to bear in mind that the relatively weak showing of CHP in
1995 is due to the overly strong performance of the party in the southeast in 1991 even
though the party machinery in the region was weak. If we exclude the southeast provinces
or conduct the analysis only for the Southeast, the results are similar.
In Table 2, we present the results for the Chilean elections. Since terrorism was a
major concern in the early years of the post-transition period, we focus only on the 1993
and 1997 elections. The dependent variable is the vote share of the Concertación, the
national incumbent coalition, in a municipality. Given the considerable loss in cases when
we include the average income variable, we present here two sets of results - with and
without the income variable. In the case of the 1993 elections presented in Model 1,
concurring our theoretical expectations, terrorist attacks in a Concertación municipality
does not lead to a loss in the coalition's vote share. The marginal effect of the terror
variable (whether a terrorist attack occurred in a municipality between 1989 and 1993)
when the municipality is controlled by Concertación is equal to 0.74 and it is not
22
statistically significant at 95 percent (the covariance of the two interacted variables is 11.31). When we exclude the income variable and conduct the analysis with the whole
sample (Model 3), the results are similar. The marginal effect is now equal to -2.1 and
again not statistically significant at 95 percent (the covariance is now -25.68). In contrast,
in locations where they do not control the municipality, terrorism clearly has a large and
negative effect on the incumbent coalition's vote. The coefficient for the terror variable is 14.18 in Model 1 and -19.89 in Model 3. Both are statistically significant at 95 percent.
Thus, through their use of local party organizations the Chilean incumbents seemed to
have been able to convince the electorate that they were effectively carrying out security
policies to protect them from terrorism and thus avoid electoral punishment for terrorist
activities.
[Table 2 about here]
In Models 2 and 4 that analyze the 1997 elections, the major change in the findings
is that in locations where the Concertación does not control the municipality, terrorism
does not lead to a loss of votes. The coefficient of the terror variable (the number of
terrorist activities between 1993 and 1997) is positive, but not statistically significant at 95
percent neither in Model 2 nor Model 4. This is not surprising given that even by 1997 the
number of terrorist activities in Chile declined to a large extent. The main variable of
interest, i.e., the interaction between municipality control and terrorism is again
insignificant.
When we briefly look at the findings for the control variables, we can see that there
was a strong correlation between the vote shares of Concertación in 1993 and 1997, but
not between 1989 and 1993. As expected, Concertación increases its votes in poorer and
larger municipalities in 1993 elections. For the 1997 elections, the income level does not
lead to a difference in the electoral coalition's vote share compared to the 1993 shares, but
this time the coalition loses votes in large municipalities.
23
Overall our findings for the case of Chile suggests that the national incumbent
coalition is held accountable for terrorist activities in the 1993 legislative election for
which terrorism was most relevant, but still the incumbent parties could avoid electoral
punishment in the locations where they controlled the local municipality. Therefore, even
for the hard case of Chile, our theoretical hypothesis that local party organizations that are
built through municipal resources help to mitigate the effect of terrorism on incumbents'
electoral performance is supported.
Conclusion
The results for incumbent parties are particularly interesting both in the case of
Chile and Turkey as well as in the wider context. Our results broadly show that in two
different contexts, local incumbency helps to alleviate the costs of terrorism for the
national incumbent. The results for Chile are particularly important as it is shown that
incumbency plays a role even in the context of left-wing governments. Moreover, in the
Turkish context, it is noteworthy that only when the incumbent is a single party
government, it is held responsible for terrorist attacks and not when it is a coalition
government as the theoretical argument of “clarity of responsibility” (Powell and Whitten
1993) would predict. At the same time, the incumbent party takes advantage of state
resources and its partisan links with local governments to alleviate some of the electoral
costs from terrorism.
Overall, our results point out the importance of considering various elements of
political parties besides whether they are left-wing or right-wing. Our argument that local
incumbency needs to be considered in terrorism studies received support. At the same
time, our argument is not that in a context of terrorism, the local incumbency would help
to increase votes but that it helps in controlling the damage. Nonetheless, our results speak
to the discussions on whether right-wing or left-wing governments are punished more by
24
voters by demonstrating that being the national incumbent right-wing or left-wing parties
can result in loss of votes due to terrorism and what is particularly important for the
incumbent national party is whether the party can convince the voters that the government
is effectively dealing with terrorism.
Since the quantitative study of electoral politics and terrorism in Chile and Turkey
is limited, we are limited in the comparisons that we can make to the existing literature
that deal with Chilean or Turkish elections. In the case of Turkey, our results differ from
Kibris (2011) but there are several differences between the research designs. For example,
our cases are at the municipal level rather than the provincial level and our terrorism
variable captures all terrorism events rather than those that resulted in military fatalities.
Moreover, Kıbrıs does not focus on the 2000s but terrorism remained a major societal
concern of the electorate as shown in public opinion surveys in that era (Habertürk, 2011;
Cumhuriyet, 2011).
In the past, ghettos were pointed out as a breeding ground for terrorists, in part
because of the lack of municipal services and lack of authority (TBB 2006). Ghettos are a
reality in much of the developing world, including in relatively more developed Chile and
Turkey. While we do not directly study terrorism in ghettos, our study would suggest that
as a municipality becomes more consolidated (particularly in terms of party machinery),
there are implications for electoral politics. One implication is that national incumbent
parties can avoid vote losses. Another implication is that the existence of party machinery
might help in overcoming disillusionment with politics among the urban disenfranchised
and turning to violence, including terrorism, in the first place. This second implication
would have to be analyzed in greater extent. Overall, however, the results here confirm
the importance of local politics, including the party machinery.
While in Turkey many terrorist attacks during the 2000s until very recently did not
result in fatalities, it is important to bear in mind that there were attacks such as that in the
25
Güngören municipality of Istanbul in 2008 which resulted in double-digit civilian losses.
In fact, there is some evidence that the Güngören municipality acted fast in responding to
the attacks first through crisis response coordination, providing emergency care, cleaning
up the bomb damage and then by providing psychosocial support (Şavur and Tomas 2010)
and assistance to shop owners and civilians as the Mayor (from the incumbent party) at the
time said, “We made the citizens feel that the state was with them.... We enlightened the
public about the event” (Zaman, 2008b). Güngören municipality major was reelected in
2009 elections with a higher turnout than when he was elected in 2004 and in the 2011
general elections, AK Parti received 55.6 percent of the vote (compared to 50.90 percent
in the 2007 general elections). More recently, an exit poll from the June 2015 Turkish
general elections has maintained that the terrorist bomb at the Diyarbakir meeting of the
Kurdish People's Democracy Party resulted in a 4.4% gain in votes (Cumhuriyet 2015);
while this requires considerable additional analysis, it is noteworthy that the incumbent
party was not controlling the metropolitan municipality of Diyarbakir and saw its vote
share in Diyarbakir plummet.
At the same time, the results here raise questions on whether the results found in
the context of Chilean and Turkish elections can also be seen in other countries. Further
qualitative examination can also be illuminating. There is some interest in institutional
features and this can be incorporated into future research as well. For example, it has been
argued that terrorism affects Indian states (Piazza, 2010) where there are elections with
more competitive parties or where there is a minority party government but dominance of
largest party in legislature decreases terrorism. Such features can be considered within
other countries as well.
Studies that focus on municipal results and not provincial level data when
examining terrorism’s effects on elections are rare. The municipal level is difficult to work
with as there is limited public data, but we believe that our results show that more research
26
is necessary to understand how terrorism influences and is in return influenced by
municipal-level politics in the future.
27
Table 1. Elections in Turkey and Terrorism
VARIABLES
(1)
2011
(2)
2007
(3)
2002
(4)
1999
(5)
1995
Lagged vote share
0.94*** 0.83*** 0.30*** 0.74***
0.57***
(0.015)
(0.019)
(0.024)
(0.032)
(0.033)
Terrorist attack
-6.23***
-2.06
0.81
0.83
1.61
(1.935)
(2.178)
(1.724)
(2.901)
(1.918)
Municipal Control
-0.57
2.76***
1.01**
-0.90
2.83***
(0.425)
(0.537)
(0.471)
(0.715)
(0.670)
Mayor* Terrorism
5.17*
3.73
-0.75
-1.08
-2.70
(2.759)
(3.518)
(2.732)
(4.553)
(3.219)
Socio-economic development -0.20*** 0.41*** 0.64*** -1.05*** -2.39***
(0.046)
(0.052)
(0.250)
(0.331)
(0.368)
(Logged) Voters
-1.33*** -0.56** -1.20***
-0.64
-2.50***
(0.159)
(0.227)
(0.296)
(0.397)
(0.462)
Southeast
-5.98*** 5.32*** 3.28*** 4.71*** -10.72***
(1.045)
(1.444)
(1.021)
(1.529)
(1.593)
Constant
24.87*** 18.52*** 11.43*** 16.47*** 36.60***
(1.875)
(2.551)
(4.029)
(5.140)
(5.274)
Observations
R-squared
913
904
845
0.876
0.741
0.305
Robust standard errors in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
826
0.499
784
0.509
28
Table 2. Elections in Chile and Terrorism
(1)
VARIABLES
1993
Lagged Concertacion Votes
Terrorist attack
Concertacion Mayor
Mayor*Terrorism
(Logged) Average Income
(Logged) Population
Constant
Observations
R-squared
(2)
1997
(3)
1993
(4)
1997
-0.10*
0.50***
0.04
0.61***
(0.057)
(0.120)
(0.061)
(0.068)
-14.18***
7.13
-19.89***
4.02
(3.632)
(5.639)
(5.316)
(3.502)
1.03
4.09**
2.36
3.54**
(1.971)
(2.015)
(1.534)
(1.373)
14.92***
-6.37
17.79***
-4.88
(3.530)
(6.153)
(5.136)
(4.333)
-8.43***
-1.10
(1.716)
(2.126)
1.89**
-1.77** 2.13***
-0.91*
(0.895)
(0.879)
(0.618)
(0.486)
144.49*** 53.14** 30.04*** 24.16***
(18.664) (25.877) (5.750)
(5.942)
201
0.220
187
0.179
330
0.134
Robust standard errors in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
335
0.300
29
Appendix
Descriptive Statistics for Chilean Data
Variable
Obs
Mean
Std. Dev.
Min
Max
1993 Data
Concertación votes
Lag. Conc. votes
Terrorist attacks
Mayor
Mayor* Terrorism
(Logged) average income
(Logged) population
330
330
330
330
330
201
330
54.06233
47.40409
.1545455
.8090909
.1393939
12.20057
9.721517
10.668
13.89988
.3620198
.3936144
.3468831
.4497944
1.376236
20.9
7.04
0
0
0
11.49
4.88
88.56
76.25
1
1
1
14.32
12.70
1997 Data
Concertación votes
Lag. Conc. votes
Terrorist attacks
Mayor
Mayor* Terrorism
(Logged) average income
(Logged) population
335
335
335
335
335
187
335
50.29813
54.13272
.0626866
.558209
.0447761
12.73948
9.72616
12.44169
10.65754
.242761
.497343
.2071214
.4450376
1.374973
.4149
20.9
0
0
0
12.00
4.88
83.04
88.56
1
1
1
14.82
12.70
30
Descriptive Statistics for Turkish Data
Variable
Obs
Mean
Std. Dev.
Min
Max
913
913
913
913
913
913
913
913
52.53604
47.87808
.0492881
.4983571
.0186199
13.61614
9.959096
.1522453
16.14576
15.67002
.2165875
.5002713
.1352526
9.643964
1.209764
.3594554
3.85
3.70
0
0
0
.05
7.04
0
91.53
87.41
1
1
1
67.97
13.33
1
904
904
904
904
904
904
904
904
47.89586
32.75
.050885
.4988938
.0154867
13.63948
9.93
.1537611
15.60213
15.41
.2198844
.5002756
.1235466
9.682425
1.14
.3609192
3.70
1.70
0
0
0
.05219
7.23
0
87.41
73.65
1
1
1
67.97
13.28
1
845
845
845
845
845
845
845
845
18.04699
49.67715
.0272189
.4781065
.008284
3.659172
9.824035
.1656805
7.715206
15.37124
.1628172
.4998163
.0906925
1.309753
.9904702
.3720138
2.52
6.71
0
0
0
1
7.28
0
56.07
79.66
1
1
1
6
13.06
1
826
826
826
826
826
826
826
826
61.66301
74.12896
.027845
.6864407
.0157385
3.673123
9.7635
.1610169
12.38509
12.20109
.1646284
.4642206
.1245374
1.311831
.9603144
.3677693
23.07
20.78
0
0
0
1
7.06
0
91.90
95.86
1
1
1
6
12.92
1
2011
AKP vote share
Lagged AKP vote
Terrorist attack
Mayor
Mayor*Terrorism
Illiteracy rate
(Logged) Voters
Southeast
2007
AKP vote share
Lagged AKP vote
Terrorist attack
Mayor
Mayor*Terrorism
Illiteracy Rate
(Logged) Voters
Southeast
2002
Incumbent vote share
Lagged incumbent vote
Terrorist Attack
Mayor
Mayor*Terrorism
Development index
(Logged) voters
Southeast
1999
Incumbent vote share
Lagged incumbent vote
Terrorist Attack
Mayor
Mayor*Terrorism
Development index
(Logged) voters
Southeast
31
1995
Incumbent vote
Lagged incumbent vote
Terrorist Attack
Mayor
Mayor*Terrorism
Development Index
(Logged) voters
Southeast
784
784
784
784
784
784
784
784
30.7146
48.45124
.1262755
.3010204
.0420918
3.664541
9.701505
.1415816
12.45141
13.63987
.3323716
.4589944
.2009269
1.283939
.9323392
.3488431
1.33
9.12
0
0
0
1
7.09
0
83.60
95.38
1
1
1
6
12.54
1
32
Acknowledgements: The research of this project is funded by Marie Curie International
Reintegration Grants (IRG). Ozge Kemahlioglu is grateful for this support. We would also
like to thank Elif Ozdemir and Merve Beydemir for their research assistance.
33
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