Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Rural-urban divide meaningful in Turkish referendum, too

I've spent a lot of time documenting the rural-urban divide in politics--from Brexit to Poland--and all around the United States.  (On the latter, read more here, here, here, here, here and here, with several of these posts written by students in my Law and Rural Livelihoods course).  In each instance, rural voters are by and large opting for the more regressive position, the more authoritarian candidate.

Now, coverage of last week-end's Turkish referendum suggests that the pattern has held up in that country, too.  Here's the salient part of Patrick Kingsley's story for the New York Times:
[T]he referendum reflected a country sharply divided, with voters in the major cities tending to oppose the changes while those in rural areas, who usually are more religious and conservative, voting in favor of them.
Being religious and conservative are certainly associations with rural America, too, and they arguably played role in the 2016 election that put Trump in the White House.  In due course, I hope we'll hear more analysis of the rural-urban divide in contemporary Turkish politics.  

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