Transition from the Single Party Period populism to the Democrat Party populism: The formation dynamics of center-right politics in Turkey and populism

Populism had been received as "halkçılık" in the Ottoman constitutional era during the years it first appeared in the world politics, and the ideas of populism developed by Ziya Gökalp's amalgamation of Durkheim's solidarist society theories with solidarism have gradually been transformed into the official ideology of the state, after the foundation of the republic. These ideas have found their way into the Six Arrows –principles of the Republican People's Party(RPP)– as "halkçılık" (populism), and have also appeared in the Constitution for a while. Although the word "halkçılık" is the Turkish equivalent of populism, the ideas set out in the Republican People's Party's "halkçılık" principle have been totally exclusive. In contrast to the populist policies, the populist ideas of the RPP, implemented as an elitist and idealist movement on behalf of the people, relying on the ideal of bringing the country up to the level of developed Western civilizations, and without relying on the mass support from the people, had been overshadowed by the rise of the Democrat Party's (DP) populist movement during the transition to multi-party system. The DP seized power by achieving to bring together the working class and the peasantry who had been unorganized and who had been unable to voice their political opinions, with other opposing groups under the same roof against the RPP. The great shift in the mentality of the political elite, starting from the Tanzimat era, and the power drift from the dynasty to the people, had seen a different dimension with the people's appearence on the political stage. This period, during which the halkçılık movement of the RPP was replaced by DP's populism, had also been the era when the foundations of the Turkish center-right politics had been laid.