Political marketing and the end of ideologies!

Starting in the 1950s in the USA, economic marketing techniques began to be applied in election campaigns. 

Economic marketing strategies, which involve the process of understanding consumers' needs and expectations and planning how products can be designed and presented, became the determinant of politics. 

In election campaigns where high budgets, mass media, and image studies gained weight, the consumer was replaced by the “voter”, and the product to be marketed was replaced by the “political party and its leader”. 

While the ideological positions of political parties gradually lost their importance, the leader's image was highlighted as a competitive element.

In other words, the Party and its Leader were now the product to be marketed, and the Voter was the consumer…

The primary target audience of the campaigns was determined not as the party-affiliated voters who are the loyal consumers of the product, but as the “undecided”.

For the broad masses that have been made compatible with the consumption patterns of the capitalist system, it became increasingly common for “personal interest and expectations” to take precedence over “ideological expectations”.

In Turkey, political marketing was initiated with the 1983 elections. It gradually became widespread. It even affected ideologically based political parties.

Professional companies that took over the image studies of political party leaders began to present political products to the voter in mysterious, attractive packaging through perception operations they launched based on the post-truth concept of neoliberalism.

It no longer mattered that the product inside the presented packaging was disconnected from reality or even entirely unreal.

What mattered was the packaging that would meet the voter's expectations and create excitement in them. 

The leader's rhetoric, movements, clothing, and the colors and symbols on the parties' billboards had now become indicators that ideological politics had lost its importance.

“Money”, the divine power of the capitalist system, also turned into the deity of politics.

In politics, money was now the leading determinant of power. It became increasingly impossible for those who could not receive election aid and lacked secret donors to explain themselves to the voter in the face of unfair competition.

Since the purpose of political marketing is to define the voter's expectations and design the marketing of the product—that is, politics—accordingly, ideological differences between political parties lost their importance.

Competitive style began to be built on trust, honesty, prosperity, democracy, and economic issues, detached from ideological differences. Thus, election campaigns emerged in which all political parties focused on similar promises in election squares.

POLITICAL MARKETING AND ELECTION SLOGANS:

In the 2007 General Elections, while the AKP set out with the slogans “Now is the Time for Democracy”, “No stopping, keep going”, and the slogan swiped from the DP, “Enough! The word belongs to the nation!”,

The CHP highlighted its party ideology by saying, “We are the Party of the Republic. We are the Party of the People. We are the bright future”, and in its election song;

After the words “This time the Republic will win, This time the People will win”, Deniz Baykal's voice could be heard.

What was Baykal saying?

“When I look at you, I do not see those who signed the Treaty of Sèvres, but those who tore it up and threw it away. I see the Kuvayı Milliye members, those who established the Atatürk Reforms, the Village Institutes, and the People's Houses. 

When I look at you, I see the spirit of Turkey's independence.” 

2007 was the last election in which the CHP entered with ideological rhetoric.

In the 2011 General Elections, the CHP's election song was; “You whistle too”. 

In the 2014 Presidential Elections, a slogan that would go down in history had been found;

“Ekmeleddin for Bread”. In addition to this, a song making a reference to the AKP was put into play;

“They said white, it turned out black”

In the 2015 General Elections, the CHP was investing in the Kurdish voters it had identified as its target audience, emphasizing “A colorful Turkey to be lived in and democracy” at rallies without flags. 

In the 2023 Presidential elections, the slogan “I am coming, Kemal” was witnessed amidst calls for abundance, hope, and justice with the song “Come on, let's win, come on”.

In summary, the CHP and its Leader were careful to stay away from ideological slogans and not to remind people of the responsibility they carry as the founding party.

Whereas the AKP continued to courageously emphasize its Political Islamist politics at every opportunity.

Based on these slogans, it was clear that it was impossible to distinguish the Founding Party from other political parties. Because politics had been limited to just marketing expectations.   

The CHP, which is fulfilling the requirement of the “End of Ideologies” thesis put forward by Daniel Bell in 1960, unfortunately does not seem to have noticed that the liberal doctrine is expanding its sphere of influence by breaking and rendering dysfunctional all ideological molds.

Those who view ideologies as theories that have remained on the dusty pages of history and do not meet the needs of the age are not much different from those who were debating “which country's mandate we should accept” in the days when the Kuvayı Milliye was being founded.

We are going through days when the Ruling Party is changing the sociological and hierarchical structure of society. The functioning of social institutions is being transformed. The focal points of the factors that make up the social environment are being changed.

The infrastructure of the Political Islamic State is being prepared with a highly influential Ulema Class and a new generation of religious youth class that will feed it.

While ideology-free political marketing gnaws at the Republic's ideology, fundamentalist religious ideology is gaining power.

In a world where capitalism constantly creates its own successors and even produces Liberal Left by deforming the “LEFT”, those who throw the brave, original, and exemplary model of the Republic into the dustbin of history are far from being a hope for Turkey.