Türklerde Devletin Bekası Kavramı ve 2019 Mahalli İdareler Seçimlerinde Söylem Olarak Kullanımı

Abstract

Since Ancient Greece, the state has been the most important actor of political theories in the world. Until the modern era, thinkers have been influenced by the country and period they lived in while formulating their theories on the state, and they have drawn ideal state types for the preservation and survival of the existence of the state they belong to. Turks, on the other hand, have always seen the state as powerful and noble, and even prioritized its survival above all else, so much so that they considered their very existence to be dependent on the state. As a matter of fact, the Ottoman policy of tolerance during the conquests and the fratricide practiced to prevent the fight for the throne were always for the sake of survival. However, in the 19th century, when the Ottomans began to collapse, survival became a concern. At this point, modernization was seen as a tool for survival and was implemented with a sense of urgency to save the state as soon as possible. From the late Ottoman Empire to the Republic, survival has been a concern, but it has now shifted from a goal to a means. Especially in Turkish nationalism, it has been constantly reproduced against internal and external threats and has become a part of nationalist discourse for pragmatic purposes based on instrumental reason. Communism during the Cold War, the Kurdish problem/PKK since the 80s and the July 15 coup attempt have been the cornerstones of this discourse. In our study, the pragmatic use of the concern for survival to influence voter behavior in the 2019 local government elections was examined within the framework of the discourses of politicians. In this context, the statements of especially MHP officials, one of the components of the People's Alliance participating in the elections, were evaluated under the headings of “concern for survival”, “foreign powers”, “separatism-terrorism (HDP-PKK-FETÖ)” and “pragmatic use of the survival discourse” together with sources from the literature, and it was tried to verify whether the survival of the state was used as a discourse.