Different Political Parties Similar City Politics: An Analysis on Local Election of 30 March 2014 in the Case of Malatya

This article aims to analyze the local election on March 30, 2014 through the case of Malatya city. It is emphasized that the neoliberal and neoconservative power block of the hegemonic structure whose leader is AKP is decisive in the strategies and tactics of other national and local actors upon the local politics. Hence, the main hypothesis of this article is that the existence of the power block at the national political scale with the strong centralist tendency of the political parties causes the similarities rather than the differences among the political parties’ strategies and policies in local politics. The reasons of these similarities were tried to be analyzed through the Gramsci’s conceptualization of “historical bloc”. These similarities can be clearly seen in the political parties’ articulation mode to the local agencies in Malatya, their nominating process, the profiles and discourses of their candidates. The AKP, CHP, MHP and SP are elected as political parties for the case study of this article because of their significant achievements in the local election in Malatya in 2014. In-depth interviews are conducted with the senior executives of these parties and the thirteen people who witnessed the city’s social and political life and the gathered data is analyzed thematically.