Invented myths in contemporary Turkish political advertising

Abstract

This article focuses on the November 2015 elections in Turkey and analyzes the discourses embedded in the political campaign videos produced and circulated by the Justice and Development Party (ruling party since 2002), Republican People’s Party (first political party of the republic), People’s Democratic Party (main vehicle of the Kurdish politics), and Nationalist Movement Party (ethno-nationalist party). Republic of Turkey’s construction in the national imagination over the past 90 years have both rested on and reproduced a range of themes which are themselves based on recently invented nationalist myths such as the common enemy, the multicultural mosaic, order and progress, fight against imperialism, the break from the Ottoman empire, and Turkey as bridge between east-and-west. Hence, we argue that regardless of their severely diverse stance on key issues in the political realm, all the political parties use the hegemony’s myths as tools in their advertisements, therefore reifying these themes in the public imagination.