Differantiation of political actors in periods of homogeneous economic policies: 1987 and 2002 Turkish general elections

Since the 1980s, the world has been the scene of political, economic and technological developments which have affected all. The bipolar system has come to an end; Keynesian policies have lost their credibility and neoliberal ideology gained domination. The process, also called globalization, has changed all the relationships in the individual, social and international context. States are facing new problems in a global structure where neoliberalism is accepted without alternatives. As the fact that supranational institutions are increasing their effectiveness on states gradually, this situation limits the ability of states to act against these problems. In the light of these developments, the ways of making politics have changed. At this point, there are political parties that cannot draw different directions in economic policies. Along with the contemporary campaign techniques, which are the products of a globalized world, a new and media-centered style of politics is now dominant. Based on all these, the aim of this thesis is to reveal how political parties that show similarities in terms of their economic policies differ from each other in the election campaigns. As a result of the groups that emerged with the complex social structure, the way for identity politics is paved. A media-centered election campaign emphasizes the issues of leadership qualification and personalization. The existence of areas where political leaders can address all voters through media organs causes political parties to produce discourses that embrace everyone and try to cover all ideological identities that are different from each other and also sometimes even contradictory to each other. In addition to these factors, the feeling of distrust towards politicians is increasing with the economic crises encountered; parallel to that emphasis on clean politics becomes one of the main issues in election campaigns. Moral and ethical emphases in politics are increasing. The proliferation of these emphases leads to a way of politics that is exclusionary and illegalizes each other. For this purpose, a theoretical framework will be created by making a literature review. In the light of the findings, the election campaigns of the political parties before the 1987 and 2002 Turkish General Elections will be examined by investigating through the newspaper archives.