Dr Elifcan Celebi, Departmental Lecturer in Comparative Social Policy at DSPI, has won the 2025 European Consortium for Political Research’s Best Paper on Public Policy award.
The prize recognises her paper, “Narrative Power in Electoral Autocracies: Policy Narrative Behind the Unlikely Success of the Turkish Pension Movement”, co-authored with Dr Volkan Yilmaz (Ulster University), which examines how citizens can shape policy change even when democratic freedoms are constrained.
Focusing on the Turkish pension movement (EYT — emeklilikte yaşa takılanlar, or "those stuck in the pension age barrier"), the research analysed nearly 2,100 tweets published between 2020 and 2023 to understand how the movement built, deployed and adapted its policy narrative on social media over time.
The EYT movement emerged in the mid-2010s in response to a 1999 reform that reinstated a pension age requirement which affected citizens who had begun working before the change and believed the reform should not be applied to them retrospectively.
At a time when debates about pension age and retirement entitlements are dominating policy agendas across Europe and beyond, this research brings a fresh and underexplored perspective to pension reform and how social movements can influence policy.
Key findings
Using the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), the study shows how the EYT movement used a carefully planned narrative strategy to challenge the long-established pension age. Rather than directly targeting the government, it positioned itself as the ‘hero’ while keeping the ‘villain’ deliberately vague. This approach helped to keep dialogue with the government open while maintaining public pressure.
The research also found that the movement strategically extended its narrative beyond those directly affected by the reform, thereby broadening its social base and demonstrating the importance of pension reform to the government.
Impact on social policy studies
The study demonstrates how policy narratives are not merely rhetorical, but are strategic tools that actively shape the policy process.
The ECPR jury praised for its strong empirical grounding, transparent analysis and its significant contribution in linking theory to practice in an authoritarian setting.
Reflecting on the award, Dr Celebi said: “This recognition means a great deal to me personally, because at its heart the paper carries a message I care deeply about: that social movements acting strategically under authoritarian pressure can still win and impact social policy. It is not a lost game and it is a reminder of just how much elections and strategically organised opposition matter, even when the odds seem stacked.”
Read the research in full in Policy Studies Journal
