The Abject Other in Turkish Politics: Populist Securitization, Affect, and the Victory Party

Abstract

This article examines the populist securitization of migration in Turkey through Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection, arguing that refugees are discursively constructed as the 'abject other,' contaminating the imagined national body. Far-right actors normalize exclusionary politics by mobilizing affects of disgust, fear, and anger to dramatize crisis, scapegoat refugees for socioeconomic grievances, and demand extraordinary measures. Drawing on discourse analysis (2011-2025), the study traces how metaphors of dirt, invasion, and purification are translated into securitizing logics. This dynamic is crystallized in the discourse of the Victory Party (Zafer Partisi) and its leaderÜmitÖzdağ, whose rhetoric diffuses contagiously across the political spectrum. Integrating Kristeva's psychoanalytic framework with scholarship on populism and securitization, the article theorizes how affective economies of revulsion underpin exclusionary politics. The findings reveal a paradox: far-right actors in Turkey remain electorally weak yet discursively hegemonic, illuminating affect-driven populist securitization in non-Western contexts and its global implications.