Yaşar SARI

Article | 2013 | Central Asia and the Caucasus14 ( 4 )

This study aims to describe and explain the relations between identity and conflict by drawing on different theoretical approaches in political science. It examines the questions of whether collective identity, either on a national, civilizational, religious, or social level, is an important variable in trying to understand current conflicts, as well as the prospects for formulating identity-based approaches to conflict. In other words, is it even possible to think about collective identity and conflict simultaneously? This gives rise to another question: Why is collective identity an important factor for explaining the conflict in . . .the Ferghana Valley? The Ferghana Valley has played a role both in establishing stability in Central Asia and in becoming the starting point of violent conflict throughout the history of the region. The valley became administrationally and ethnically divided into several parts during the Soviet and post-Soviet era. Currently, the tension among the different ethnic, social, and political groups is high because of overpopulation, the increasing scarcity of water and arable land, and the economic hardships and social differentiation that occurred during the political, economic, and social transformation after the Soviet Union collapsed. The Ferghana Valley, at the heart of Central Asia, has become one of the most conflict-prone areas in Central Asia. For these reasons, the valley is a good area for testing the explanatory power of different approaches of political science to explain identity-conflict relations. Ethnic issues are still extremely important for understanding much of the tension arising in the valley. Not only is there division among the Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tajik people, the issue is further complicated by the hostility between different identity-groups and minorities in the region. Additional pressure is arising due to the fact that not only does this tension exist inside each state, it could also escalate to the interstate level. - Keywords: Central Asia, identity, Ferghana Valley, ethnic relations, conflict More less

Seyit Ali AVCU

Article | 2013 | Central Asia and the Caucasus14 ( 2 )

A political party system is the nature and relations of the political parties in a given political system. There are four main variables in the classification of party systems: the extent to which parties penetrate society, the ideologies of the parties, the stance of the parties toward the legitimacy of the regime, and the number of parties in the system. The number of parties determines the level of fragmentation of the party system. Kyrgyzstan emerged as an independent country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After two revolutions, which resulted in the ousting of the presidents, Kyrgyzstan officially changed its political . . . system by announcing the introduction of parliamentary democracy and held its first elections after the regime change in October 2010. Five parties were able to pass the 5% national threshold to gain seats in the parliament. However, no single party gained enough of a majority to form the government on its own. Therefore, they formed coalitions, the latest of which includes three parties—the SDPK, Ar-Namys, and Ata-Meken—while the other two remained in the opposition: Respublika and Ata-Jurt. I estimated the effective number of parties by votes and seats and the least squares index for the 2010 parliamentary elections using Michael Gallagher’s index, which utilizes the Laakso-Taagepera formula. The effective number of parties’ index in Kyrgyzstan in terms of seat distribution in the Jogorku Kenesh was 4.90 for the 2010 parliamentary elections. However, the effective number of parties’ index in terms of votes received by the parties is much higher: 9.86. On the other hand, the least squares index, which measures the disproportionality of the election results, is 13.75, which indicates the existence of many small parties with no seats. The 5% national threshold played a role in this disproportionality. The thesis of this article is that Kyrgyzstan’s political party system is highly fragmented, and both institutional factors, such as constitutional and political party laws and the electoral system, and structural factors, such as social and political cleavages, play a role in this fragmentation. Keywords: political parties, social cleavages, fragmentation, polarization, Kyrgyzstan More less