Everyday Scandals & Community Making in Authoritarian Turkey

In recent decades, many countries have experienced democratic regression. As democracies have declined, authoritarian tendencies have proliferated. My research asks a deceptively simple question about transitions away from democracy and towards authoritarianism: In increasingly authoritarian political settings where political and economic frustrations are on the rise yet cannot be articulated via regular routes, what do disgruntled citizens do? Under authoritarian rule, political grievances (whether against the leading party, the leader, or the system at large) are not articulated easily. Complaining about authority figures can have legal or economic repercussions. However, in countries where democracy once prevailed but has since declined, most citizens would be critical and resentful of authoritarian tendencies. My research focuses on this mismatch between the rise of political resentments and their failure to be voiced in relevant venues. First, I hypothesize that in increasingly authoritarian settings, the articulation of political grievances shifts to seemingly non-political everyday injustices, such as consumer complaints. The articulation of these ordinary complaints, particularly on the internet, constitute an outlet for voicing political discontent. Secondly, I hypothesize that online complaints bring to life a public space and a political community. Through online complaining and contributing to particular websites, people develop a sense of political belonging. Even though complainants do not know one another and the topics they voice appear apolitical, the ways they voice their discontent generate a sense of collectivity and righteousness. Such shared feelings are crucial in sustaining deep currents of opposition against the authoritarian regime, particularly among politically non affiliated citizens. My case country to test the above hypotheses is Turkey, a country which has swung from a functioning democracy to authoritarianism in the last 25 years. I will focus on a particular website, eksisozluk.com, to track both online complaints and online community building. Eksisözlük is a highly visible website, with hundreds of thousands of users and millions of visitors. I will focus on a particular genre of everyday complaints that have become popular on this website in the last 15 years, namely the scandal (rezalet in Turkish) genre. While Turkey is at the center of my research, I suggest, and aim to show, that the results of my research are also generalizable.