What Kind of Democracy for Whom?Exploring the Role of Political Islam,Conservatism,Advanced Democracy and Majoritarianism in the Ideological Premises of President Erdogan(2014-2017)

This study explores the ideological premises of President Erdogan and reveals the usage of political Islam, conservatism, advanced democracy and majoritarianism in the presidential speeches delivered during the period of 2014-2017. Although many studies analysed the ideological premises of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) from the perspectives of the evolution of political Islam, conservatism, advanced democracy, and majoritarianism, no research has focused either on Erdogan’s presidential term or on the shifts in the usage of ideological premises over time. In this sense, this article aims to reveal the linkage among these concepts and to detect the shifts in President Erdogan’s discourse. By examining 295 presidential speeches with quantitative text analysis, this study reveals that President Erdogan shifts his focus from Islam to the institutional changes in order to enhance majoritarianism and from a defensive to an offensive approach on the international policies in the 2016 and 2017 speeches. This study contributes to the debate over the AKP’s and its leader’s ideological premises and clarifies that the concepts of conservatism and majoritarianism that have been embraced pragmatically rather than as an ideological standing, while political Islam has been ignored strategically.