Health and legitimacy: A discourse analysis on AK party era health policies

Health is one of the most important needs of society. The access of the society within a state to health care and its view on health care is an indicator of the legitimacy of the state in the field of health. Legitimacy is generally defined as rightness and compliance with the law. There is a dependency between power, authority and legitimacy within the state. There are various elements that the state uses to provide legitimacy. One of these is the field of health. This thesis focuses on the role of the health field in gaining legitimacy of the state. In this context, the role of health in gaining legitimacy has been tried to be revealed by analyzing the health policies and discourses of the AK Party period. For this purpose, the concepts of society, state, legitimacy and health and their relations with each other are discussed in a theoretical framework. Again, the approach to health policies was evaluated by touching on Turkey's historical investments in the field of health. Finally, the health discourses of the AK Party government and Erdoğan were analyzed within the framework of gaining legitimacy. The data obtained in the research were visualized with graphical outputs such as code frequencies, word cloud, double case model, using the MAXQDA 2024 program prepared for qualitative data.