The Discursive Governance of Population Politics: The Evolution of a Pro-birth Regime in Turkey

Abstract

This article presents how Turkish politicians' discourse on population stagnation and growth becomes palpable -despite the healthy population growth in Turkey. Empirically, our article traces the slogans that the then Prime Minister Erdoğan, and the governing party politicians use to frame the 'population issue' in Turkey from 2008 to 2013. By using Ajans Press database comprising over 5,000 newspaper articles, we selected 120 of the news items that presented us with the politicians' slogans whereby general terms such as children, women, economy, family, morality, and birth featured. We show that the 'three children' slogan of the current President Erdoğan preceded and replaced policy deliberations regarding the making of population politics, but aimed at affecting public's deliberative reasoning discursively. We argue that normative mechanisms embedded in political discourse and circulated for public deliberation would generate discursive governance of population politics. Thereby, politicians could advance governance even without introducing major policy changes.

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