Foreign policy as domestic politics in populist competitive authoritarianism: the case of the May 2023 elections in Turkey

In populist competitive authoritarian regimes, the distinction between the domestic and the foreign has become increasingly more porous. Yet we have limited knowledge about how populist politicians in competitive authoritarian regimes use foreign policy to mobilise their electoral base and fragment the opposition to advance their electoral agendas. This article focuses on how foreign policy issues were instrumentalised by Turkey’s President Erdoğan and his ruling AKP in the run-up to the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections in May 2023 and finds that foreign policy was subject to populist politicisation through the discursive metanarrative of status elevation and external sponsorship.