Reading Turkey Politics on Values: May 14, 1950 Elections

This study’s subject is the May 14, 1950 elections in which political power has changed by national will. The aim of the study is to reveal the values that dominate politics discourse in this important election. The CHP, which was the ruling party of the period, and the speeches of the DP political actors in the period newspapers were examined in terms of values. In the research conducted with the content analysis method, the basic and upper level dimensions of the Schwartz Value Scale were used as the analysis categories. In this way, it was tried to determine the expectations and values of the CHP and DP politicians to convince the voters and the dominant value priorities of the period politics. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the values most frequently used in the discourse of political actors in the 1950 election were the values of self-management, success, benevolence, security, power and universality. When the discourses of the CHP and DP actors were compared in terms of basic values, it was seen that both parties put forward similar values but the order of priorities was different