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When and under what conditions do ideologically similar nationalist parties adopt different positions and discourses about refugees and immigrants? We address this question by examining nationalist parties' approaches toward Syrian refugees in Turkey. Documenting these differences based on an original Twitter dataset and party manifestos, we argue that electoral dynamics under the new presidential system have shaped nationalist parties' discourses about refugees in the country. In particular, we explore how pre-electoral alliances and a strategic opening in the political space have motivated nationalist parties to amplify, ambiguate, or silence their otherwise conservative and nativist refugee discourses. Additionally, we maintain that urbanization has influenced the discursive strategies of nationalist party elites toward immigrants and refugees, giving rise to contradictory forms of nationalism in urban areas, including both far-right and liberal nationalisms. Overall, this study offers valuable insights into the complex interactions between refugee politics, electoral dynamics, nationalism, and urbanization in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To consolidate a predominant party system, an incumbent party will attempt to anchor voting behavior to social cleavages, a strategy called cleavage enclosure. However, does this strategy actually work? In Turkey, the incumbent AKP government has focused its campaigning on conservatives and nationalists. The analysis of the 2018 post-election survey reveals that the cleavage enclosure worked for conservatives but not for nationalists. Of the incumbent supporters in the previous election, conservatives replicated their support, whereas nationalists were less likely to support the incumbent than other identity holders. Nationalists tend to punish but not reward the incumbent party for its economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main argument of this paper is that Turkey had close relations with Middle Eastern states during the Atatürk period, which is contrary to the literature that claims the opposite because of Turkey's Western-oriented ideology. The article asks why Turkey as a Western-oriented state sought to have close relations with Middle Eastern states. To answer this question, the article uses discourse analysis focusing on Middle Eastern leaders' visits as represented in Turkish public discourse. Accordingly, it proposes two main answers. Firstly, the paper argues that the new state's relations with Middle Eastern countries played an important role in legitimation of its Westernization projects in the eyes of its citizens. Secondly, the Turkish state marginalized rival political discourses, mainly Islamism, by proving that even Muslim majority countries wanted to imitate modern Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘Alevi openings’ launched in 2007 by the Justice and Development Party have been widely lauded as a historic and unprecedented step in the Turkish Republic. In contrast, this article places the ‘openings’ in a wider historical context, analyzing them in relation to processes of nation-building. Firstly, it is argued that the ‘openings’ marked continuity with previous interventions by state actors, including the military, dating back at least to the 1960s. Secondly, it is contended that these interventions should be regarded as a process of re-framing Alevism within a Turkish–Islamic framework, consigning it to ‘invisibility,’ rather than as democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]