This chapter examines the transformation of the party system in Turkey from the 1980s onwards. The chapter illustrates that the struggle between the secularist establishment elite and Islamist political actors is more complicated than has been depicted by the 'secular–religious polarization perspective'. The chapter argues that the secularist elites’ strategy of 'selective pluralism' led them to criminalize the left-wing and pro-Kurdish political movements and to tolerate Islamist political activism and movements. After the 1980 military coup, the so-called secularist establishment elite opened room for a gradual Islamization of society as an antidote to radical left. The political conflict between the secularist establishment elite and Islamist actors, therefore, has mainly been a non-violent confrontation. As a result of this 'virtual consensus', the Islamist elite could take part in elections and learn crucial lessons in moderation from their electoral failures. Nevertheless, the struggle between the secularist establishment elite and the Islamists was not an entirely peaceful one, and the nature of the political conflict in Turkey led Islamists, and later the post-Islamist JDP elite, to construct a massive, resilient, tightly controlled mass membership organization in order to counterbalance the concentrated leverages of the secularist establishment elite in Turkey.