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What accounts for the variation in the judiciary's ability to serve as a democratic guardrail under populist rule? This article contends that populist governments use judicial activism against their political agenda to portray courts as institutions that curtail popular sovereignty and subsequently adopt a democratizing discourse to conceal their assault on the judiciary. Based on the Turkish case under the rule of the AKP (Justice and Development Party), it explores how the judiciary's democratic deficits provided a legitimation strategy for the ruling party's gradual capture of the courts. During its initial term, the right‐wing populist AKP government faced staunch opposition from high courts aligned with the secular establishment. In response, it strategically used the Turkish Constitutional Court's counter‐majoritarian decisions to legitimize its actions, paving the way for court‐packing and other forms of judicial manipulation through a series of constitutional amendments. These changes set a dangerous precedent for future clashes with the judiciary, hastening the erosion of Turkish democracy and the subsequent shift toward a competitive authoritarian regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do right-wing populist leaders address a public health crisis? This article addresses the evolution of right-wing populist leaders' communication tone and style during the COVID-19 pandemic. By analysing the Twitter accounts of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, we explore how right-wing populist leaders control the portrayal of a health crisis from above, shift blame and consolidate support. We argue that while all three leaders initially downplay the pandemic, once they acknowledge the severity of the crisis, they vary in the extent to which they give importance to the coronavirus and shift blame. While Trump uses Twitter to praise himself and his policies, and to polarize the electorate, Modi and Johnson employ Twitter to inform the public and deliver solidarity messages. The frequency of Twitter use and the tone of the language leaders employ depend on the domestic context of that country. Our findings contribute to the scholarship on populist communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On May 14, Turkish voters headed to the polls to vote for presidential and parliamentary elections. This was the most challenging race yet for authoritarian populist Erdoğan, as the ongoing economic crisis and deadly earthquakes severely diminished his performance legitimacy. Moreover, the opposition parties united against his regime by rallying behind a joint presidential candidate. However, Erdoğan turned the tables on the opposition and won the presidential race for a third consecutive term while his electoral bloc secured a majority in the parliament. This paper analyses the context and results of Turkey's 2023 twin elections. We highlight the features of the competitive authoritarian regime, Erdoğan's religio-nationalist electoral strategy, and the opposition's fragile state and weak strategy to explain Erdoğan's electoral resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tracks far-right attitudes and policies toward organized labor and the working class in Turkey since the 1960s. In particular, we attempt to explain why nationalist attitudes have remained unchanged over nearly six decades, whereas political Islamists have shifted to neoliberal policies since the 1990s under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In explaining Erdoğan's neoliberalism, we highlight the working relationship between Islamist mayors and the so-called pious bourgeoisie in local governments as well as the willingness of neoliberal ulema to endorse these ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of multiparty politics, Turkey is no longer a democracy. A theory-upending case, the country has descended into a competitive authoritarian regime under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi —AKP), despite rising income and education levels and strong links with the West. What accounts for democratic breakdown in such an unlikely case? Instead of ideological and institutional factors, we offer a political economy account. We contend that the coalitional ties that the AKP forged with businesses and the urban poor through the distribution of public resources has altered the cost of toleration for the party leadership and their dependent clients, while reducing the cost of suppression for incumbents. This new political calculus led to increasing authoritarianism of the AKP government through securitization of dissent, mounting repression, and systematic violation of civil liberties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the prospects of and limits to political party change through a case study of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) under the leadership of Bülent Ecevit in the 1960s and 1970s. We demonstrate how the CHP, via a new generation of politicians led by Ecevit, gradually transformed its ideological programme and cadres in an effort to turn into a social democratic mass party, thereby maximizing its voter base in the 1973 and 1977 elections against the currents of the extant socio-political faultlines of Turkish politics. We claim that the potential for party change depends on the interplay between three factors: political entrepreneurs, the prevailing preferences and structures of a society, and the extant institutional setup. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for the prospects of party change as well as for the present and future trajectory of the CHP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]