Blood gambit: how autocratizing populists fuel ethnic conflict to reverse election setbacks – evidence from Turkey and Israel

Abstract

Through a comparative study of Turkey and Israel, this article highlights a specific strategy that autocratizing populist incumbents in ethnically divided societies utilize when they face election setbacks. A “blood gambit” entails fomenting violent conflict to keep the opposition divided along identitarian cleavages, while creating a rally-around-the-flag effect to help the incumbent win a renewed election. After failing to secure a parliamentary majority in June 2015, Erdoğan ended the Kurdish peace process and engineered repeat elections amidst heightened nationalist fervour and renewed conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). These elections gave the Justice and Development Party (AKP) a majority and marked the beginning of its alliance with the ultranationalists. Following Israel’s March 2021 elections, Netanyahu increased state repression of Palestinians, which triggered interethnic violence and renewed confrontation with Hamas. The violence threw a wrench into coalition-building efforts between ideologically and ethnically diverse opposition parties. The comparison of Israel and Turkey as two countries with different majority religions, ethnic compositions and socioeconomic levels shows that “blood gambit” is not a parochial strategy. Our analysis also demonstrates that the outcomes of these strategies are shaped by differing institutional and political contexts, in particular, the extent of executive aggrandizement and the level of party fragmentation.