From Policy Trade-Offs to Partisan Hostility: Issue-Based Sorting and Affective Polarization in Turkey, 2015–2023

How do disagreements over democratic principles and governance trade-offs translate into affective polarization? Using nationally representative Turkish Election Studies from 2015, 2018, and 2023, this paper examines how citizens’ own positions and their perceptions of where major parties stand on key governance issues structure partisan affect. I focus on four recurring items that capture moralized trade-offs at the core of contemporary Turkish politics: defending secularism even at the expense of individual freedoms, accepting restrictions on liberties to combat terrorism, preferring a presidential over a parliamentary system, and prioritizing unity in state administration over pursuing corruption allegations. I combine respondents’ self-placements and perceived party placements on these issues to construct measures of perceived issue distance, in-party versus out-party sorting, and perceived party-system polarization. These cognitive structures are then linked to direct affective outcomes, including party and leaders’ like–dislike ratings. The analysis shows that affective polarization is driven primarily by out-party hostility rather than increased in-party warmth. Perceived distance to the out-party and the resulting sorting gap are strong predictors of negative affect, net of ideology, religiosity, and standard demographic controls. By pooling the three election waves, I seek temporal patterns linked to democratic backsliding in the country. By also linking issue positions, perceived party locations, and partisan affect, I aim to demonstrate how debates over rights, security, institutional design, and accountability have evolved into powerful engines of affective polarization in Turkey. My findings highlight how moralized governance conflicts can entrench partisan hostility even in the absence of large shifts in citizens’ own policy preferences.