DOI: 10.30586/pek.1960300 ISSN: 2587-2567

Political Marketing Strategies of the Opposition in Türkiye (2013–2019): A Mixed-Methods Analysis Through Critical Threshold Cases

Esat Saygın
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This study aims to comparatively examine the political marketing strategies of the main opposition in Türkiye in the period of 2013-2019 through seven critical political threshold cases (2013 Gezi Park protests, 2014 Presidential election, June-November 2015 general elections, post-coup attempt period of 2016, 2017 constitutional referendum, 2018 Presidential and parliamentary elections, 2019 Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality mayoral election rerun). The main research question is how a pattern emerges between the opposition's political marketing preferences and electoral performance indicators at critical thresholds. The study is based on a mixed-methods data triangulation approach that combines directed content analysis, comparative case analysis, and descriptive election statistics within a qualitative, multi-case study design. The theoretical framework is established through Lees-Marshment's party-orientation typology, Smith and French's political brand approach, Coombs' Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), and Capoccia and Kelemen's critical juncture conceptualization. The final results of the Supreme Election Board, institutional decision texts, campaign documents, and Google Trends data were evaluated across six predefined analytical dimensions. The findings show that in the 2019 Istanbul rerun election, all six dimensions simultaneously achieved high values and translated into electoral performance; in contrast, in the 2014 and 2018 cases, isolated dimension success did not alone translate into structural electoral results. The study provides case-based empirical support, with limited causal claims, for the idea that candidate brand alignment and crisis communication consistency function as two complementary central political marketing capacities in crisis-intensive political conjunctures.

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