For my research project, I am analyzing the pragmatic populism of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. So far I’ve written my three main sections describing how both leaders use religious, historical, and nationalist narratives to gain power domestically and justify their countries’ foreign policies. I want to consider what this analysis says about populism and the co-opting of ideologies and culture.

 My plan has changed a lot since I began my research. I started with the question: How has Turkey’s national identity affected Turkey’s policy response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine? However, my faculty mentor helped me see that it’s reductive to say that a country as complex and diverse as Turkey has only one singular national identity. Rather, there are many influential ideologies within the country that are more interesting to study. Therefore, I decided to focus on a few key ideologies and cultural dimensions. From my analysis of Turkish policy I was able to see that Turkey has been more closely aligned with Russia than other NATO countries. That made me curious about the reasons for that close relationship. I thought that a comparison of the tactics that presidents Erdogan and Putin use would be helpful in understanding Turkey’s closeness with Russia, especially the “special relationship” (in Erdogan’s words) between the two leaders. 

One thing I learned that I didn’t expect to learn is that there is a lot of debate about how to characterize populism. Different scholars are arguing that populism is an ideology, a strategy, or a discursive frame. I was expecting there to be a solid consensus that I could use as a jumping-off point, but now I have to navigate the debates about what populism is.

I have faced challenges in settling on a consistent focus. I ended up with my current topic after a few days of drifting between ideas because nothing really seemed right. I’m happy that I ended up with this and I’m finding all my research very interesting, but I was stressed for a little while that I wouldn’t be able to find a good topic. What worked for me was trying to think about what I wanted to say and working from there. My mentor and I found that we kept coming back to pragmatic populism to explain both leaders’ actions. I wanted to focus on that angle, so I reworked my topic to fit that. I’m really happy that it ended up working out because I think my topic is really interesting and I’ll have a lot to say! Moving forward I need to go back and edit some old writing so it fits my new topic. That shouldn’t be too taxing but it’s still somewhat frustrating that I have to redo writing I already completed. 

As I move forward, I need to complete the rough draft of my final essay. Then I need to make my research poster as well as a PowerPoint to do a practice presentation with my mentor. After doing that I will edit and rewrite my paper until I’m happy with it. Overall, I’m very excited for the rest of my Laidlaw journey!