City Research Online

Abstract

The May 2023 elections in Turkey are puzzling because public support for President Erdoğan did not erode despite political-economic failures of considerable magnitude. The economy was ailing, the government’s performance in containing natural disasters was dismal, and oscillations in foreign policy were perplexing. Yet, Erdoğan managed to win elections once again, giving him the mandate to continue ruling the country over the next five years. What explains this political outcome in the face of ‘multiple governance crises’? We adopt Albert O. Hirschman’s ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’ framework to explain the multiple but interrelated sources of the resilience of authoritarian populism in Turkey. We suggest the ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’ equilibrium in the 2023 Turkish elections requires an integrated analysis along two dimensions, each interacting with and mutually reinforcing the other: the economy-identity nexus and the domestic-external nexus.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Publisher Keywords:	May 2023 Turkish elections, Hirschman, exit, voice, loyalty
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > International Politics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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