Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, cilt.19, sa.57, ss.129-144, 2020 (AHCI)
This paper deals with the AKP’s religious-political propaganda in the 7 June and the 1 November election processes. It forms a frame for this propaganda by focusing on some ideological-political formulations appearing in Turkish political history. It argues that these formulations are the product of two significant political interventions by the Turkish right-politics, including the 1960s and 1970s’ nationalist-conservative composition and the post-1980s’ Turkish-Islam synthesis. From a historical-political standpoint, it introduces how they have shaped and framed religion as an instrument of political propaganda. For this, the paper concentrates on the 7 June and 1 November elections hold in 2015 in Turkey, and discusses the AKP case to have put such propaganda into practice in the elections mentioned, by quoting the statements and views by the leading political actors of the party (AKP). It presents a historical-political framework, and tries to unveil the historical-political line of the AKP’s religious-political propaganda within this framework. Taking into account all of these, it examines a religious-political propaganda special to Turkey interwoven with the state, the Turkish nation, and nationalism, and asserts how important this propaganda becomes for the right-wing politics, and thus the AKP, to come out of the elections with victory in Turkey.