How is the ascending authoritarian discourses and practices of the regime in Turkey restructuring the realm of everyday life, outside of parliaments, courthouses, elections, and constitutions? I approach people’s sense of authoritarianism as a complex process of “becoming” rather than a one-time “choice” at the polls. Thus, it is crucial to examine people’s changing daily interactions, choices, conflicts, understandings, experiences and struggles to see how this current version of right-wing authoritarian populism plays out differently in ordinary men and women’s lives, and how ordinary people’s interactions contribute to or challenge the restructuring of the realm of everyday life. I analyze the 90 in-depth interviews and 90+ hours of urban bus ethnography that I conducted in Istanbul during the immediate post-emergency rule period (2018-2019). After thematically coding the accounts following the grounded theory methodology, in this paper, I focus on “distancing”—minimizing communication and interaction with both acquaintances and strangers based on increased conflict aversion and reduced trust among fellow citizens. I find that to maintain ties in the long-run with acquaintances and to avoid conflicts with strangers; people minimize communication on what they perceive to be politically contentious topics— any comment that sounds like complaints and being completely against or for the government’s actions. This encompasses a range of topics that cause people to get into arguments easily such as unemployment, soccer, skyrocketed prices of onions and potatoes, and many more. This theme of conversational micro fields crosscuts class, gender, and ideological position and closely related to the shifting boundaries of daily “normal(s)” in Istanbul such as choice of attire, use of language, ways of doing gender, and presenting ethnic and religious identities. I show how social and political polarization, aggravated by party elites and the media, affect men and women differently in the way they interact with each other. I contribute to the literature on polarization in authoritarian populisms by asserting that polarization shapes not only party politics and voter behavior but also people’s daily perceptions and networks and vice versa. Discussing these questions will pave the way for increasing knowledge about the potential consequences of prolonged populism and provide insights on how to strengthen democracy as a way of life as well as governance. Studying the gendered organization of authoritarian populism at the level of social interaction and contribute to the global debates with the case of Turkey could expand the theories that create an “Atlantic bias.”