Nationalism, Affective Recruitment, and Authoritarianism in Post-Coup Turkey

Abstract

This chapter offers an in-depth analysis of a publicly performed commemorative speech by Turkish president Erdoğan on the third anniversary of the July 15 coup attempt of 2016. The analysis examines how his nationalistic and populist discourses affectively recruit members for his imaginary of the new Turkey and its millet (nation) in the wake of this critical political episode. Using a qualitative approach rooted in the principles of critical discourse analysis, this chapter looks closely at questions of power and exclusion and takes less obvious forms of affective transmission between Erdoğan and his millet into consideration. In this way, it empirically demonstrates how a passionate sense of belonging to an imagined national community is being affectively produced. By illustrating how Erdoğan invokes the contours of the new Turkey and its millet by mobilizing evocative discourses that demarcate who belongs to the nation state, and who is an enemy or threat, this chapter discusses why any “imagined community” is also an “affective community”, created and upheld by an “affective economy”.