Abstract
This article aims to demonstrate the tension inherent within the Turkish opposition between those favoring technocratic anti-populism and/or pragmatic politics and those calling for a passionate and resolute anti-AKP platform seeking revenge. These competing inclinations offer alternate anti-populist platforms and ‘styles.’ The article asks whehter opposition to a populist regime inherently generates an anti-populist platform that ideologically confronts it. The article examines three contenders to President Erdoğan as representatives of three alternative anti-populist styles. It also reflects on the debates among various public intellectuals around the ways to electorally defeat populism.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 499-528 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| Journal | Turkish Studies |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Funding
Until 2010, the CHP was headed by Deniz Baykal, who was supported by the party’s Kemalist establishment. Adhering to the nationalist-statist creed, Baykal had been resolute in his hostility toward the sectarian and ethnic networks active within the party as well as their left-leaning identity politics. As Ciddi and Esen observed, ‘Baykal did not use his … opportunity to rebuild the CHP into a mass organization that was able to match the AKP electoral machine.’ On the contrary, ‘Baykal’s CHP continued to wage the cultural war of the 1990s [which] restricted the party’s support to a minority group … whereas the AKP, no doubt taking advantage of its access to state resources, became a catch-all party.’
Keywords
- democratization
- islamism
- neoliberalism
- populism
- technocracy
- Turkish Politics