Populism in Turkey

Abstract

The central cleavage of Turkish politics has created a fertile ground for certain parties to adopt a populist strategy since the first free and fair elections in 1950. In contemporary Turkish politics, the leadership of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) harbors the core characteristics of doing politics on a populist platform. We back up this claim by highlighting the political discourse of AKP’s long-time leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who extols populist principles, and by describing the institutional changes brought upon to concentrate power in the hands of the executive branch. We also examine the prevalence and correlates of populist attitudes in the Turkish population by drawing on an original, nationally representative survey. We find that populist attitudes are quite prevalent in the Turkish electorate, and support for populism is significantly and positively related to being a partisan of the incumbent AKP. Rather than discontent, the fact that the AKP, a party with a populist agenda, has long been in power seems to be the key driver of mass populist attitudes in Turkey where supporters of this party have internalized the core premises of populism to a significant extent.