This chapter focuses on the elite recruitment dynamics within the JDP in Turkey. It starts out by illustrating the changes in the party’s statutes during its initial years, when Erdoğan and the founding party elite collaborated to drive the JDP organization immediately in a much more hierarchical and centralized direction. Then, the chapter focuses on the formation of the party’s local governing bodies and shows how central interventions from JDP headquarters define the minute details of these local branches. Similarly, the chapter demonstrates that candidate selection processes within the JDP are highly exclusive. This is to say that, as party leader, Erdoğan has the ultimate say in the identification of candidates. The chapter also focuses on how the party elite and the centre have dealt with factionalism and local elites. It has been argued that the JDP embraced a much less compromising attitude towards local elites and factionalism within the party than did its right-wing predecessors. The party elite legitimized the leadership’s domination of the JDP and its interventions in local politics as a necessary response to an 'organizational conservatism' which is not considered to be in the general interests of the party or of the nation.