Reconstruction of the Public Space Through Religious Populism: Spatial Politics of the AKP

Coming to power in 2002, Justice and Development Party (AKP) changed the silhouette of the public space in Türkiye under its 21 years of government in line with its religious-driven politics. It can be claimed that as staying in power for more and more years, the AKP became more religious and populist, in the context of using religion as the dividing marker between ordinary people and the elite. In this sense, the main dynamics of the AKP’s populism can be seen in its religious character. Having its roots in the Islamist parties of Turkish political history, the AKP adopted more conservative and religious, predominantly Sunni Islamist policies and discourse as it increased its support from the electorate. In this regard, this paper aims to elaborate on the relationship between religious populism and changes in the public space by analyzing the spatial politics of the AKP and its religious policies and discourse. Spatial politics can be regarded as politics of space, the way how space becomes politicized. On a larger scale, the paper touches on the impact of the adaptation of the religious populism of the AKP on its policies and discourse concerning the public space. While doing this, the paper has a closer look at the case of the AKP and the reconstruction of the public places on the basis of religious-dominated transformation in Türkiye under its government. The paper argues that the public space in Türkiye is subject to reconstruction under the AKP as the party has politicized the public space in religious means through religious populism in order to consolidate the religious-conservative electorate. In doing this, in the first section of the paper, I will focus on the populism of the AKP by investigating party politics and discourses that intersect with religion and the public space. The main purpose of this section is to understand how the AKP frames its policies and discourse in a religious context. Following this section, I will assess how the religious populism of the AKP affects its spatial politics in the sense that how the reconstruction of the public space in religious means can have an impact on the support it receives from the religious-conservative electorate. In this section, I take a look at numerous projects of the AKP that ended up changing the face of the public space, such as; the construction of great mosques to crucial and debated locations, reshaping the state architecture in Islamist lines, the reopening of Hagia Sophia to worship, and so on. In this sense, this section attempts to establish a framework to understand the relationship between the AKP’s religious populism and the implementation of these projects. Throughout the research, I predominantly will use secondary resources on the populism of the AKP and various primary sources, including policies and discourse, concerning the spatial politics of the party and the projects it implements in the public space.