Neuropolitical analysis of party loyalty of Ak Party members

The concept of party loyalty is very up-to-date and important for political parties. The different thought patterns and rapid change processes offered by the changing world to people push the groups that try to manage politics to be much more pragmatic and faster. One of the natural consequences of this was the Local Government Elections held in 2019. Opinion polls, which constitute a very important part of the election process of political parties, are conducted by survey companies and according to the results of these studies, political parties construct and implement their election strategies. However, one of the biggest criticisms made in the last election was the low accuracy of the survey results of the survey companies. The natural consequence of the metaphor of change we have already mentioned is the difficulty of predicting how the party's commitment to the voter has changed and in what way. At this point, the researches on the quality of the bond formed between the political party and the mass become more deeply needed in the micro context. Political science has begun to adopt a new interdisciplinary approach to eliminate the current deficiency by using neuroscience methods developed in recent years. In general terms, this interdisciplinary method, which is used to understand people's political behaviors more deeply and to bring new interpretations, has entered into the literature with the name "neuropolitics". In this respect, classical research methods were excluded and field researches were conducted on the political behaviors of the people using the technological equipment provided by neuroscience. In this study, the concept of party loyalty is discussed in the context of the concepts of political party and the members of the party representing the closest audience to the party called as militant by Duverger. Research universe, and Turkey's most popular party member with the longest ruling party Justice and Development Party (AKP) was elected from its members. Neuroimaging methods, EEG and eye tracker, main methods of data acquisition, qualitative observation and structured interview guide were evaluated as auxiliary methods. Accordingly, the results obtained in the most general way in the research show that under the leadership concept, the concepts of religion and economy have a negative impact on party loyalty and the management concept is influenced by these concepts. The concepts of foreign policy and national security, which are under the concept of survivability, had a positive effect and the concept of political stability had a weak effect. It was seen that the party members did not develop a strong reaction when dealing with the concept of direct survival problem. The concept of non-existence, which is under the concept of non-existence in another political party, had a positive effect, the concept of reaction to other political parties was weak, and the concept of material reasons had a positive effect. In summary, it can be said that the members of the Justice and Development Party are still affiliated to the party, but have a critical attitude towards religious and economic issues. It can be said that the view that foreign policy and national security-defense industry is met and that there is no alternative in terms of not being present in another political party is partly formed. As a result, the general opinion is that the party loyalty of Ak Party party members is not weak but future measures should be established. Keywords: Political Party, Party Loyalty, Ak Party, Neuroimaging, Neuropolitics, EEG, Eye Tracker.