‘I Shout, yet My Words Vanish Before Reaching My Ears’: Emotional Encounters of Young People in Türkiye with the Concept of ‘Politics’

The literature on youth political participation primarily focuses on analysing visible and measurable forms of institutional and non-institutional politics among young people. However, such a behavioural approach fails to capture the deeper cognitive and emotional dimensions through which young people interpret, experience and relate to politics. Using the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), this article seeks to surface the metaphors, sensory experiences and affective meanings that shape young people’s understanding of politics. Drawing on 30 ZMET in-depth interviews with participants aged 18–25 in Samsun, Türkiye, and 180 metaphorical images, the article demonstrates that young people collectively equate the concept of politics with its institutional form, which is thematized under absolute power struggles, clientelist ties and moral irresponsibility. Consequently, politics represents a repulsive emotional space, where the drive to reclaim rights and hope for the future are overshadowed by feelings of helplessness, mistrust and rage. The article argues that this emotional space is embedded within authoritarian neoliberal power relations which transform young people from rights-claiming subjects into self-entrepreneurial objects. It concludes that when authoritarian neoliberal political narratives collide with socio-economic realities, young people’s disillusionment does not indicate apathy, but rather manifests the inability of institutional politics to respond to their lived experiences.