The Populism of the Republican People’s Party During the Ecevit Presidency and the Road Politics: The KUP Example

It’s a well-known fact that between the 1960s and the 80s in Turkey, left populist political actors aimed at enlarging their supportive bases as well as organizing a new hegemony through the road construction mobilization projects they started. However, this aspect has not attracted an interest and attention in the scientific literature up to now. It is also known that right wing political actors have been trying to organize consent and hegemony around their “road construction†agenda, especially since the 1980s. Nevertheless, those hegemony projects organized by the left wing populist actors before the 80s which were obviously linked to the “road politics†have been systematically ignored in the political agenda. At this point, the KUP project (rural road construction project) which was launched by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) at the end of the 70s in order to reach to the poor rural segments of the society deserves a special focus. Because of these reasons, this article investigates the new historical bloc initiative of Ecevit populism through the lens of KUP project which can be seen as an important component of the discourse that prioritized rural development then.