Opposition Strategies and Coordination Against Populists: The Case of Turkey

How can populist electoral authoritarian regimes be defeated through elections? This paper focuses on the strategies, rhetoric, and repertoire of political parties that oppose populists in power. To analyze factors that shape electoral competition in countries ruled by populists, this paper focuses on the 2019 municipal elections and the upcoming 2023 national elections in Turkey. These two elections will be compared based on a) patterns of opposition coordination and b) political strategies of the opposition; b) n. We argue that a) the diversity of the cleavages, b) the level of repression and c) the likelihood of transition shapes the incentives of opposition parties to coordinate. We then argue that the winning strategy of the opposition is a form of inverted populism in which opposition parties are able to reformulate the master narrative of the populists.