Description
Astrologers in Turkey regularly appear on prime-time news and social media, offering predictions on elections, economic trends, and global politics and shaping public discourse. Their prominence has grown to such an extent that one astrologer was recently imprisoned for speculating about the health of a key government ally. This paper examines the political and affective resonances of astrology in contemporary Turkey along two strata: First, as an everyday practice of ontological security amid intensifying political and economic uncertainty; and second, as a discourse that supports right-wing politics through the promotion of a victorious national biography and an “ideology of dependence.” Drawing on media analysis along with phenomenological reflections and autoethnographic observations, the paper explores how astrology has become both a politicized and depoliticized mode of finding meaning in a politically restrictive environment and economic precarity. In this context, the paper argues that astrology operates as a diffuse, affective infrastructure through which individuals collectively manage the “mood of anxiety” and assert temporal agency within an increasingly blurry present while also reinforcing ideological dispositions aligned with right-wing politics. Situating the Turkish case within broader theoretical debates in ontological security studies, the paper shows how subjects seek meaning and control in response to structural powerlessness.
