Authoritarianism and Political Dynamics in Turkish Governance

Since the early 2000s, Turkey’s political landscape has been dominated by a governing party whose leader has systematically consolidated executive power, reshaped state institutions and curtailed core democratic liberties. What began as a narrative of economic modernisation and EU accession evolved into a model of strong-man leadership underpinned by emergency decrees, weakened judicial independence and tightened control over the media and civil society. Central to this transformation has been the strategic mobilisation of religious identity, the expansion of a patronage network across local and national levels, and the deployment of populist rhetoric that frames opponents as existential threats. These dynamics have produced a hybrid regime in which formal multiparty elections coexist with practices that undermine checks and balances and erode pluralistic debate.

Political scientists highlight the role of socio-spatial cleavages—particularly the divergence between urban elites and peripheral conservatisms—in sustaining popular support for an increasingly personalised rule. Economic policies have oscillated between liberal-market reform and selective developmentalist intervention, reinforcing state control while generating pockets of both growth and vulnerability. On the foreign policy front, Turkey’s leadership has combined transactional bilateral diplomacy with a projection of religious soft power, recalibrating alliances from the European Union to the Middle East. Globally, this case illustrates how electoral legitimacy can coexist with concentrated authority, offering lessons on the fragility of democratic institutions in the face of sophisticated legitimation strategies.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have employed a comparative spatial analysis to disentangle economic voting from deeper centre–periphery cleavages in Turkey’s electorate. Using a novel dataset that maps regional variations in growth, unemployment, inflation, education, religiosity and ethnicity, researchers have shown that cultural and spatial factors often outweigh pocketbook considerations in predicting electoral outcomes. In particular, religio-ethnic identity and peripheral conservatisms exhibit a stronger association with voting patterns than local economic performance. This spatial regime approach reveals distinct electoral geographies in which support for the ruling party is sustained through non-economic solidarities, emphasising the importance of identity-based mobilisation in contemporary authoritarian-leaning democracies.

Authoritarianism and Political Dynamics in Turkish Governance publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in authoritarianism and political dynamics in turkish governance across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Authoritarianism: A governance mode characterised by the concentration of power in a leader or small elite, limited political pluralism and constraints on civil liberties.

Populism: A political approach that constructs a moral division between a virtuous “people” and a corrupt “elite”, often mobilising direct appeals to mass constituencies.

Center–Periphery phenomena: Socio-spatial dynamics in which political, cultural and economic interests diverge between metropolitan cores and outlying regions.

Necropolitics: The use of narratives of death, martyrdom and existential threat as instruments of political legitimation and control.

References

1. Beliefs, economics, and spatial regimes in voting behavior: the Turkish case, 2007–2018. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2023).
2. Antidemocratic populism in power: comparing Erdoğan’s Turkey with Modi’s India and Netanyahu’s Israel. Democratization (2020).
3. Populism, violence and authoritarian stability: necropolitics in Turkey. Third World Quarterly (2021).
4. Religion in Creating Populist Appeal: Islamist Populism and Civilizationism in the Friday Sermons of Turkey’s Diyanet. Religions (2021).
5. The rise of transactionalism in international relations: evidence from Turkey’s relations with the European Union. Australian Journal Of International Affairs (2019).
6. Islam and Foreign Policy: Turkey’s Ambivalent Religious Soft Power in the Authoritarian Turn. Religions (2021).