Pious people, patronage jobs, and the labor market: Turkey under Erdoğan’s AKP.
Oyvat, C., Tekgüç, H., & Yagci, A. H. (2025).
Public Choice, 203: 465-491.

In this article we examine how the employment prospects of people from different self-reported identity groups (pious Sunnis vs secular others) changed during Turkey’s religiously conservative incumbent party AKP’s time in office. There is no survey series that spans pre-AKP and AKP eras with information about people’s employment status and religious identity. So, for suggestive evidence we develop an alternative identification strategy that relies on birth cohorts, similar to Franck and Rainer (2012). We find that pious Sunnis became more likely to be employed in public sector (especially women) and also in private high-status jobs (especially men) when their labor market entry coincided with AKP’s term in power, controlled for education differences (which also closed over time). Lastly, though it didn’t make it into the publication, we also examined income trends and found significant increase of pious Sunnis’ likelihood of entering top income groups.

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In this article we use survey data to map economic policy preferences across Turkish citizens, using discriminant function analysis. We argue that a one-dimensional left-right spectrum fails to meaningfully distinguish between individuals, whereas group identity on the basis of religiosity and ethnicity is more revealing. We also compare the preferences of party voter groups with programs of the parties themselves.

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How voters respond to presidential assaults on checks and balances: Evidence from a survey experiment in Turkey.
Şaşmaz, A., Yagci, A. H. [corresponding author], & Ziblatt, D. (2022).
Comparative Political Studies, 55(11), 1947-1980.

Taking advantage of a 2017 constitutional amendment towards hyper-presidentialism in Turkey, we ran an experiment embedded in a representative face-to-face survey just before the first (2018) presidential election under the new government system. We treated participants with varying information about who was expected to win the imminent election. We then asked them about their preferences regarding the new system. Among both those voted in favor of the new system in 2017 and those who voted against, we found substantial numbers of voters that were elastic in their institutional preferences in 2018: they updated their preference for strong executive powers based on who was going to win. Those who were socially further away from the other camp displayed such elasticity to a greater degree. I think it is fair to say that, together with Milan Svolik’s earlier works, this article has become a pioneering one in the burgeoning study of why voters support democracy-eroding executive aggrandizement.

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Populist attitudes and conspiratorial thinking.
Balta, E., Kaltwasser, C. R., & Yagci, A. H. (2022).
Party Politics, 28(4), 625-63.

Turkey is a rare case where a party/leader widely recognized as populist has been in power for a long time. We find that under these circumstances, populist attitudes of the anti-elite kind are endorsed less by pro-incumbent voters compared to opposition voters. Nonetheless, pro-incumbent voters are espousing conspiracy theories that center on malign foreign or global forces to a much greater degree. It seems that when populist political leadership establishes itself as the new power elite of the country and runs out of credible domestic foes, the anti-elite sentiment is redirected to external targets. An interesting outcome is that although there is a positive bivariate correlation between populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs, they are disproportionately espoused by opposite voter blocs.

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Partisanship, media and the objective economy: Sources of individual-level economic assessments.
Yagci, A. H., & Oyvat, C. (2020).
Electoral Studies, 66, 102135.

Theoretically, voting behavior should be affected by economic perceptions, which in turn should be informed by economic conditions. However this is difficult to empirically verify because partisanship acts like a perceptual screen. To address this issue we use repeated cross-sectional surveys to estimate individual income growth rates that are unaffected by partisanship. We demonstrate that in Turkey individual variation in economic perceptions do have a meaningful relationship with differences in income growth. We also suggest a particular pattern in how pro-government media exposure biases these perceptions: least on perceptions about personal circumstances, more on national conditions, and most on which leader could improve the conditions.

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Policy knowledge, collective action and advocacy coalitions: regulating GMOs in Turkey.
Yagci, A. H. (2019).
Journal of European Public Policy, 26(6), 927-945.

In this article I provide a close-up tracing of the process that resulted in the making of a controversial policy regime that bans the use of genetically modified seeds in Turkish agriculture. Despite pressure from transnational firms and the US embassy, the GMO-skeptic public opinion partly prevailed in generating a policy regime that is inconsistent yet largely restrictive. Through elite interviews and archival research I examine the role played by all the major stakeholders: transnational biotechnology firms, domestic farmers’ associations, NGOs, bureaucrats and politicians.

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Status quo conservatism, placation, or partisan division?.
Young, K. L., & Yagci, A. H. (2019).
New Political Economy, 24(3), 313-333.

After the 2008 financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street protests that followed, a comprehensive financial sector reform in the USA could be expected. However, the Dodd-Frank reform act that actually materialized was quite shallow. We investigate how this outcome relates to US public opinion: Was there not much demand for reform to begin with? Was there a demand that was placated by the limited reform and subsided over time? Using a number of surveys, we find not. There was consistent majority support for financial reform, which expected tougher reforms after Dodd-Frank passed. A more comprehensive reform didn’t happen, we argue, because of elite-level obstruction, which became easier due to the partisan split in the public opinion.

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The political economy of coups d’etat: a general survey and a local theory for Turkey.
Yagci, A. H. (2018).
Turkish Studies, 19(1), 72-96.

In this article I discuss the relationship between economic conditions and the likelihood of military interventions. I also put forward a special theory for the Turkish experience with military interventions. The explanation goes from external financial dependency, balance of payments difficulties, currency depreciation, need for unpopular measures to combat inflation that could otherwise follow depreciation, and the difficulty to implement the precautions under a civilian electoral regime.

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The great recession, inequality and occupy protests around the world.
Yagci, A. H. (2017).
Government and Opposition, 52(4), 640-670.

Occupy protests against inequality and corruption gained most visibility in the USA, but they were also held in 86 other countries like Namibia, Papua New Guinea and Yemen. In this article, I use an original database of Occupy protest events, and examine which kind of countries were likely to have (more of) them. More unequal countries and countries that experienced greater economic slowdown over 2007-11 were likely to experience more protests.

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Research articles in Turkish academic journals:

2018-23 Döneminde Türkiye’de Ekonomik Değişim ve Seçmen Eğilimleri.
Yağcı, A. H. (2023).
Mülkiye Dergisi, 47(4).

This article narrates economic change in Turkey during 2018-23, and analyses voter preferences based on representative survey data, predicting that incumbent Erdogan will win the presidency.

Actual and Popularly Attributed Placement of Political Attitudes on the Left-Right Scale: Results from a Representative Survey of Turkey.
Yağcı, A. H. (2022).
Siyasal: Journal of Political Sciences 31(2):235–253.

This article analyses an original representative survey to examine the meanings Turkish citizens attribute to the left-right divide in the abstract, in comparison to how their preferences actually correlate with their left-right self-placements. It shows that in Turkey the left-right divide is mostly about secularism and it is related to economic preferences to a lesser extent than people imagine.

Türkiye’de Bireylerin Sol-Sağ Ayrımına Göre Konumlanışı: Dünya Değerler Araştırması 1990-2018 Verilerinin İncelenmesi.
Yağcı, A. H. (2022).
Marmara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilimler Dergisi, 10(1), 21-50.

This article analyses six waves of World Values Survey data to show that in Turkey the left-right divide has become less related to economic issues since the end of the Cold War, while it remains strongly related to a divide between emancipative secularism vs religiosity & nationalism. For this reason, workers place themselves to the right of managers and employers even though they actually have more socialistic economic preferences than them.