The Political Messaging behind an Unexpected Advocacy Success in a De-Democratizing Context: Pension Policy Change in Türkiye

The changing nature of media systems and the increasing use of online platforms for policy objectives and political mobilizations have attracted unprecedented scholarly interest. Studies investigate how political actors try to involve in issues, connect, and interact with citizens through emerging digital platforms. However, competing political actors’ use of social media to oppose or support a policy reform is a crucial but poorly observed question in the literature. This paper analyzes the narrative policy framework of an advocacy group (called “People Suffering from the Retirement Age Barrier,” Emeklilikte Yaşa Takılanlari, EYT) on social media, campaigning on decreasing the pension age in Türkiye. In the recent decade, almost all countries have increased the pension age to relieve the financial burden on the state budget. However, in Türkiye, in late 2022, a law was passed granting an early-retirement option to a segment of the population. EYT is the movement behind this policy’s success, organized viral social media campaigns and lobbied for an early-retirement policy with opposing political parties and groups. The paper investigates how this advocacy group uses Twitter to introduce and support a new policy. The paper studies the narrative elements and strategies of EYT movement to succeed in their political agenda, by analyzing the tweets of EYT movement representatives from December 2019 to December 2022, until the policy succeeded. After collecting the tweets with R, the analysis uses structured content analysis to systematically investigate the policy strategy and preference frames using Nvivo software. The paper examines the social media campaign and the role of organized movements in policy discussions related to the retirement age in Türkiye. Twitter messaging of the advocacy group is analyzed using Narrative Policy Framework to examine its strategies to mobilize support, create legitimacy and pressure the government to take action, providing empirical evidence from the competitive authoritarian context of Türkiye. The findings show that social movements opposing or supporting a social policy can facilitate change in government attitudes, even in a competitive authoritarian context, by creating a broad coalition around an injustice frame and establishing a common ground with opposing political forces through its discursive bipartisanship.