This chapter focuses on the relationship between narratives of economic development and prospects for democracy. It does so by tracing the political speeches of high-ranking Turkish government officials and journalists close to them to show how they use narratives of economic development as a tool to politically legitimise interventions to liberal democracy. The chapter first illustrates the dangers caused by these stories of economic development to democracy by looking at the Gezi protests of summer 2013. It shows how demands for pluralism and respect of different lifestyles – which are indeed crucial aspects of a liberal democracy – were instead framed by the government as chaos created by agents of the so called ‘interest rate lobby’ and provocations caused by those who want to stop Turkey's economic development from within and from without.

The chapter analyses the Gezi case in comparative perspective with presidentialism debates and the corruption scandal of December 2013. It detects a similar pattern in these cases as well, such that demands for democracy, transparency, checks and balances are pitted against economic development. Citizens are made to choose vaguely defined promises of economic development over demands for democratisation. The chapter thus tries to shed light on the impacts of economic development narratives on democratic backsliding, which is a serious threat not only valid for Turkey but for other developing countries as well. The chapter also delves into the question of how institutional settings and structural conjectures provide opportunities for certain political narratives to thrive. In particular, it shows how the economic, social and political transformations that led to the rise of neopopulism were also greatly responsible for the expansion of economic narratives at the expense of democracy and human rights.

Narratives of Economic Development

In understanding the role economic development narratives play in the fate of democracy, a refreshment of our discussion of public narratives and meta-narrativity will be useful. These concepts will help us situate individual economic development narratives into the broader context in which they are utilised. Somers (1994, 619) defines public narratives as ‘narratives attached to cultural and institutional formations larger than the single individual, to intersubjective networks or institutions, however local or grand, micro or macro’.