Political ideologies and preferential treatment of regions in Turkey

Local political preferences are perceived to be central for understanding the resource distribution of governments. Previous literature argues two separate channels: (i) governments favour stronghold regions which dominantly support their political views, (ii) governments target swing regions where there is more competition and chance to change the minds of the voters. There is also growing interest on the role of political ideologies which is beyond political parties. Ruling political elites can target regions where they see similar ideological values. In other words, governments can also target regions where the majority votes for a political view (right/left) matching with the agenda of the government. In return distributive politics literature discusses that governments can be ideologically selective while distributing resources. This can be a potential source for the unequal regional growth and development.
This project aims to;
a) collect historical data on parliamentary and local elections at the province level for the multi-party period in Turkey (1950-2023),
b) compute a regional ideology index based on left/right separation (for each of the election years)
c) collect historical data on regional gross domestic product (GDP), value added (VA) and public expenditures (for the most available time interval)
d) analyse the impact of political ideologies on the preferential distribution of resources and evolution of regional disparities.