This research on the use of discursive strategies in Turkish politics is a result of an interest in the ways language is employed in politics. Although the political science literature about Turkey concentrates on the power struggles between political actors on the policy level, the use of language as a strategic tool to establish a discursive hegemony as an indispensable part of wider political hegemony is neglected. Especially since the AKP has come to power as a single party government in 2002, the increasing executive capacity of the party makes it crucial to deal with the discursive practices both to identify and evaluate the party as well as its policy-making preferences.

Hence, this research approaches Turkish politics from an interdisciplinary discourse-analytical perspective in order to deepen our understanding of political power and discourse, with the help of a critical realist approach. Thus, this study re-conceptualizes discursive strategies as hegemonic projects and analyzes them with the help of the DHA (discourse-historical approach) in order to see the ways in which the ruling AKP tries to establish and maintain its political hegemony on the discursive level.

In order to achieve these aims, thirteen governmental texts from three sub-genres of election rally speeches, party-group speeches and ministerial speeches are analyzed with the methodological tools provided by the DHA. After the analysis, the findings are interpreted to evaluate the current policy making process and AKP’s role of realizing the particular policy preferences.