Rethinking Populism Geopolitically: Authoritarian Populism and Migration Politics in Britain and Turkey

Abstract

This research aims to analyse the authoritarian populism-migration nexus and to evaluate why and how authoritarian populist rhetoric vary in different geopolitical contexts. Recently, there has been a significant increase in the number of studies on populism and its impact on international politics and foreign policy. However, there is a dearth of research on the specific impact of authoritarian populist discourse on migration in different geopolitical specificities. This article will engage with two key research objectives to fill this gap. First, it examines the interaction between authoritarian populist rhetoric on managing migration in Britain and Turkey. Second, it interrogates whether the authoritarian populist impact on migration in these countries has overlapping features. This article contends that, as far as the authoritarian populism-migration nexus is concerned, populism is developed geopolitically.

The populist way out: Why contemporary populist leaders seek transnational legitimation

“…This alienation of ‘others’ is certainly not restricted to populism in the Global North, as it has featured frequently in many populist leaderships of the Global South. In Erdoğan’s Turkey, the further the processes of de-Europeanisation and authoritarianism advanced, the more ‘the West’ took on the form of ‘the other’ (Altinörs 2021; Özpek and Yasar, 2018: 203–205). Anti-Westernism has also been historically present in several Islamic populist leaderships in Southeast Asia and the Middle East (Hadiz, 2018).…”