Changing Strategy by Turkey’s AKP: The Learning Curve Theory

Syaza Shukri

Millennial Asia, 2019, vol. 10, issue 2, 148-166

Abstract: Since 2014, Turkey has been moving towards a heightened sense of nationalism and populism especially after Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the first popularly elected President of Turkey in 2017. His nationalist rhetoric went up compared to when he became Prime Minister over a decade ago when the country was touted as a model of liberalism among Muslim countries. Rather than putting a damper on the party, government, or Erdogan himself, his conservative rhetoric has helped consolidate the government’s power, showcasing the shift in strategy by the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) during uncertain times. This article borrows from behavioural psychology the concept of the learning curve theory or the S-curve theory to examine this shift in AKP strategy. It is argued that after reaching a political peak with the Gezi Park protest in the summer of 2013, Erdogan is employing a different rhetorical approach—a populist one—to gain more political traction.

Keywords: Turkey; AKP; S-curve; populism; rhetoric (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0976399619853709 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:millen:v:10:y:2019:i:2:p:148-166

DOI: 10.1177/0976399619853709

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Millennial Asia
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().