Rival or Villain? The Evolution of Language Depicting the Opposition under Authoritarianisation
2026-07-28
Discursive attacks towards the opposition are often a harbinger of polarisation, democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. We study the evolution of negative language about the opposition in Turkey under Erdoğan, a pioneering case of democratic backsliding. We distinguish between two types of negative language: a valid competitor – ‘rival’ – versus an enemy that needs to be destroyed – ‘villain’. We leverage machine learning to examine every opposition-related sentence in two major newspapers from 2009 to 2022. Our data allow us to compare the depictions of the main opposition party as a rival or villain between media outlets, before and after media ownership change, during election times and beyond. We also test how these depictions respond to currency shocks and military casualties, as the incumbents could try to contain the fallout from these adverse events by discursively attacking the opposition. We find that vilification of the opposition is driven by security challenges rather than economic troubles, which are associated with increases in rival discourse. Results also suggest that political competition can appear unrepresentatively civil precisely during election periods, as an already polarising incumbent may try to present himself in a more reconciliatory light during the campaign period.