Pinar Baser

The House Has a Political View: Domestic Material Culture Under AKP Rule in Turkey

A social media trend has arisen in Turkey in recent years. People share photographs or videos of particular interiors, especially living rooms, accompanied by the caption “The house has a political view.” The videos often feature President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s election music or his speeches, making clear that the referenced political view is support for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The houses are predominantly new, large, with opulent gold patterns, Rococo-style furnishings, and shiny decorative elements, as well as symbolic references to Islam or the Ottoman Empire. This thesis explores the ways in which a particular design style in domestic interiors becomes associated with a political party. By focusing on the AKP’s discourse of nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire and its public visual representations, the study investigates how the digital dissemination of domestic interior designs on social media has a mutually reinforcing relationship with the state’s imperial nostalgic narratives. Through ethnographic research on four different social media platforms, I examine the role of social media in the making of “houses with political views.” The thesis concludes that social media provides a platform for amplifying and reinforcing public narratives by linking private interiors to the AKP’s visual language of nostalgic Neo-Ottomanism on a different scale. By considering a specific case in Turkey, the paper illustrates how the globally rising nostalgia for the imagined pasts and historical utopias might interact with design in everyday life.

Erdoğan and Trump in Oval Office. Washington DC, USA, 2025. (BBC)

"Ottoman-style" dining room set by the furniture company Luxury Line.