Analysis of political advertisements used in 2017 constitutional referendum

The political parties and candidates present in the countries dominated by democracy have a great importance to use their political communication policies, strategies and tools effectively in order to obtain the administrative power they desire according to legal framework. In this plane, political advertising is one of the most effective methods of convincing voters and referring them to targeted behaviors. In this respect, many issues related to political advertising were studied in detail. In this study, in the referendum on the amendment of 16 April 2017 dated constitutional articles, political party and other components (NGOs, foundations, associations, individuals and civil platforms) who are actively involved in the political campaign, both in the "yes" and "no" sides and the political advertisements they gave to the newspapers (Hürriyet, Sabah and Sözcü), which are in the first three places in terms of the number of daily circulation, were dealt with in detail by the content analysis method. The political advertisements of the newspaper were analyzed in terms of control, stylistic and contextual variables within the content analysis. At the core of the findings and analyzes, the political parties that led the both campaign sides carried out different strategies. While The "yes" political campaign, led by the AK Party, were prepared quite professionally and systematically, the political ads for the "no" campaign remained slightly dimmer and amateur. A critical manifestation of the strategic difference of the campaign parties is that the CHP, which led the "no" campaign, has not published political advertisements. Nevertheless, both "yes" and "no" campaigns' advertisements differed in certain formal and contextual categories, and in some cases were showed similarities.