The Rise of Populism in Turkey: A Content Analysis

ABSTRACT

The rise of populist parties around the world raises concerns about liberal democracy. Amid the discussions on democratic backsliding, this study scrutinises populism in Turkey by using quantitative content analysis. For this goal, this article uses parliamentary group speeches of political leaders between 2011 and 2019 (N = 569) as raw data. The results illustrate that Erdoğan is significantly more populist than other leaders. Kılıçdaroğlu, on the other hand, appears as the least populist political figure. While Bahçeli exploits a Manichean discourse, Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP)) instrumentalises anti-elitism. The overall results indicate that Turkish politics is stuck in the spiral of populism, which damages democracy in Turkey.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• populist discourse
• Turkey
• content analysis
• democratic backsliding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Before April 2017, Turkey had a parliamentary system that required the president to be impartial. Thus, Erdoğan ceased to attend the AKP’s parliamentary group meetings. Instead, he held regular meetings with mukhtars as an alternative to parliamentary meetings to address his constituency.

2. İyi Parti (Good Party) speeches are not publicly available.

3. List of the words used in the dictionary-based content analysis.

4. I used R packages Rmisc (Hope 2013) and ggplot2 (Wickham 2009) for analysis and visualization.

5. Irrelevant words: halkalı*, halkapınar*, halkbank*, milletler*, milletli*, milletvekil*.

6. Birleşmiş Milletler (United Nations) is replaced with ‘BM’; Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (Turkish Grand National Assembly) is replaced with ‘TBMM’; Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party) is replaced with ‘CHP’; Halkların Demokratik Partisi (Peoples’ Democratic Party) is replaced with ‘HDP’; and Ulusal Egemenlik ve Çocuk Bayramı (National Sovereignty and Children’s Day) is replaced with ‘uecb’.

7. The overall mean value of the populism index is 1.89 (SD = 0.79).

8. The results were robust when I excluded the HDP from pooled data.

9. Erdoğan’s speech on 13 June 2017. Translated by the author.

10. Bahçeli’s speech on 26 April 2016. Translated by the author.

11. Buldan’s speech on 2 February 2019. Translated by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ezgi Elçi

Ezgi Elçi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at Koç University. He was a Visiting Student Researcher at the University of Georgia with a Fulbright grant during the 2018-2019 academic year. His primary research interest lies at the intersection of political behaviour and political communication, with a focus on how collective nostalgia shapes mass support for populism. His research interests also include democratization, civil-military relations, and minorities in Turkey.