FEAS RESEARCH E-BULLETIN FEAS E-BULLETIN DECEMBER 2016 | Page 11

Author: Köroğlu, Esin Kıvrak
Title: Chain of Populism from the Democrat Party to the Justice and Development Party in Turkey
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ayşe Ayata
Department: Political Science and Public Administration
Date: July 2016
Abstract: This dissertation analyses the relationship between populism and democracy in Turkey from
the perspective of Laclau‘s theory on populism, focusing on the Democrat Party and the Justice and
Development Party as illustrative cases. As the framework that Laclau developed to the end of studying
the phenomenon of populism takes discourse analysis as its methodology, this dissertation addresses
the discourse of democracy adopted by the Democrat Party and the Justice and Development Party. The
cases of these two political parties fits Laclau‘s theoretical framework perfectly, which provides us with
the opportunity to reach key findings on the relationship between populism and democracy in Turkey.
Populism is believed to contribute to the further development of democracy at times, and is deemed to
be a pathological constituent of democratic systems at others.This dissertation demonstrates that the
cases of the Democrat Party and the Justice and Development Party give revealing clues regarding the
nature of the relationship between populism and democracy as experienced in Turkey. In this context,
while carrying out a discussion on this relationship, this dissertation analyzes the circumstances in
which populism contributed to and those in which it impaired democracy in Turkey.

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