The Relationship Between Populism and Democracy in Turkey: An Evaluation on 24th June Presidential Elections

Abstract

Populism is one of the most referenced concepts in both economic and political analysis in the past decades but what is semantically controversial. The representation crisis and economic crises, in which politics in general and liberal democracy in particular, and the structural transformations brought along with these crises strengthened the tendency towards populism. Populism, which has turned into a kind of shadow of democracy, is fed by the tensions between democracy and liberalism to a great extent. In this study, Populism was tackled as a form of discourse which enables to political actors to want to obtain power or protect the existing power by mobilising masses and the influence on Turkish politics was analysed. Based on the claim that every political movement is inherent, populism has been evaluated both on the basis of power/opposition and on the right/left axis. For this purpose, speeches during 24th June presidential election that made by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who was the candidate of the ruling party AKP (Justice and Development Party) that is representing the Turkey’s right-wing political axis and Muharrem İnce who was the candidate of the opposition party CHP (Republican People’s Party) that is representing the Turkey’s left-wing political axis, was examined by using Essex School Discourse Analysis method. © 2020, Yerel Yonetim Arastirma Yardim ve Egitim Dernegi. All rights reserved.