After the Breakdown: The Transformation of Political Identities in Turkey

• In Event: The Evolution of Populism in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Executive aggrandizement and the resulting democratic backsliding transform not only the institutional environment, but also the party system, voter’s political identities and possibly their policy preferences (Laebens & Ozturk 2021). In this paper, we analyze the evolution of partisan identities, political participation, assessments of government performance and interest in politics in Turkey from 2011 to 2023, over 4 election cycles during which AKP and Erdogan first consolidated their electoral hegemony, then succeeded in changing the parliamentary democratic regime to a personalist hyper-presidentialist authoritarian one. To do so, we use CSES data from 2011, 2015 and 2018 surveys in Turkey, as well as nationally representative data from our surveys conducted in the aftermath of 2018 and 2023 elections.

Because of changing levels of political engagement and conflict at different stages of regime transformation, we expect to find an inverse U-shaped trend in the prevalence and strength of partisanship, and a declining trend in political interest and government approval. As contestation over the democratic regime fuels political polarization and mobilization, partisan identities take shape and harden. Over time, however, as democracy weakens institutionally and the government grows more hegemonic, partisan attachments and government approval may weaken for several endogenous reasons. First, as the ruling party becomes the hegemonic political force, genuine political activism can recede. Our previous work suggests that this was the case in Turkey in 2018, where, despite similar partisanship strength among government and opposition partisans, the former’s mobilization depended partly on the provision of selective incentives. A second endogenous change can be the emergence of new grievances resulting from government repression and corruption, some of which the opposition may be able to successfully mobilize. In particular, politically motivated mismanagement of the economy can eventually strain government support. As competitive pressure on the government falls and the economy deteriorates, public service provision may also worsen. Declining government performance and living standards can affect political attitudes and behavior. On the other hand, two further political dynamics are expected to counteract the trend of declining government support. The first is growing repression of the opposition and civil society, which make it ever harder to inform the public about the government’s power abuses, corruption and policy failures. A second plausible trend working in favor of the government is growing political apathy.

Our paper aims to make a theoretical contribution to the literature on post-populism. Based on the trends we observe in Turkey, we develop a theoretical account of how political identities and preferences are transformed throughout the process of populist autocratization, and discuss the implications for successful opposition mobilization in post-populist regimes after democratic breakdown.

Authors

• Melis G. Laebens, Central European University

• Aykut Ozturk, University of Glasgow

• Melis G. Laebens, Central European University