This study traces the trajectory of populist political oratory in Türkiye through the rhetoric of Democrat Party leader Adnan Menderes, Motherland Party leader Turgut Özal, and Justice and Development Party leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Drawing on parliamentary speeches, rallies, press conferences, and television programs, the study identifies the main themes characterizing populist rhetoric. The glorification of the Turkish people is predominantly articulated in the context of modernization and economic development, framed through the claim that citizens deserve what is good and beautiful, as realized in the West. The groups constructed as elites or negative “others” vary across periods: for the Democrat Party, they include the single-party rule, the main opposition Republican Peoples Party, leftist organizations, and the press; for the Motherland Party, coalition governments, the years of anarchy, foreign forces; for the Justice and Development Party, along with political opposition and dissident activists, a wide range of establishment actors have been coded as the other, including judiciary and the parliamentary system. Consequently, populism in Turkish politics demonstrates certain continuities within changing antagonists-– and particularly in recent years has functioned as a discursive strategy to undermine democracy, facilitating the transition toward, and maintenance of, competitive authoritarianism.