Since the 1970s, the neoliberal consensus, which replaced the social democratic consensus, has led to extensive changes in traditional social configurations, economic and political settings. In this new phase of capitalism, ordinary citizens were excluded from decision-making, depoliticization and technocratization became widespread, political institutions lost their legitimacy, and critical decisions were taken unilaterally by a handful of financial and political elites. These ideologically motivated limitations along with the depoliticized character of neoliberal democracy have largely ruined democratic or public control over decisions. Nevertheless, the social crisis of neoliberalism and the crisis of representative democracy have also broken out during the same period. Illustrating the well-known dictum that the old is dying but the new cannot be born, one might describe the situation as an interregnum, when several morbid symptoms including populism have appeared. Here, populism denotes a way of stealing but not representing the will and sovereignty of the people, mostly based on a rule of charismatic authority. In this framework, the populism of the Justice and Development Party, which has been in power in Turkey since 2002, is a key to comprehend the neoliberal authoritarian transformation that has accelerated in recent years. In particular, one could trace the ruling party’s populist attitude in the externalization of structural causes of crises, the activation of social mobilization against dissidents, and the institutionalization of exclusionary politics.