Construction of hegemony and ideological apparatus in the transition from single-party to multi-party system

One of the important turning points of Turkish political life after Republic is the transition to multi-party political life with the trasition to democracy, the single-party government, which continued its rule between 1923-1950, left its place to the Demokrat Parti (Democrat Party). Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP, The Republican People's Party), which ruled the country as a single-party government for 27 years, worked like almost an architect in the social and political field as the founder party of the republic, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and İsmet İnönü after the World War I. In the conjuncture of the period, the CHP under the leadership of Atatürk and Inönü, who thought that western countries representeda more advenced civilization in social and political terms, saw the "West" as the key to the development of the newly established Republic of Turkey and actualized policies in this direction. While carriying out its policies in this context, the CHP followed an authoritarian policy course by making use of what Althusser called the ideological apparatus of the state. In 1950 the DP which came into power after the CHP, which lost its power due to reasons that many different dynamics were effective on, benefited from ideological devices for the establishment and reproduction of hegemony. By attempting to analyze the Turkish political life by adapting Althusser's aparatuses of the state notion and Gramsci's concept of hegemony in the theoretical framework, this study reveals how and for what purposes CHP and DP benefited from ideological apparatuses in the construction of new hegemony during the transition to multi-party political life. It also demonstrates that ideological devices can be used for ideological or pragmatic purposes in accordance with the conjuncture and policy differences.