A vast literature is preoccupied with the (new) authoritarian drift of Turkey in the last decade and it focuses mostly on legal and institutional changes. It also comprises different perspectives about the specific starting moment of the “authoritarian turn” as well as varying assessments about the place of the country on the authoritarianism spectrum (Esen& Gümüşçü, 2016; Erensü& Alemdaroğlu, 2018; Arat& Pamuk, 2019). In fact, Erdoğan has completely ripped the political system off its checks and balance mechanisms and ruled out any political opposition. Yet, I argue that such institutional changes and coercion are as important as the affective and emotional dynamics of his authoritarian rule. Accordingly, what is being missed in existing discussions is the “connection, love and respect” as Erdoğan likes to call it, between the Turkish leader and his people. Portraying himself as a man of heart, and the relation between him and his people as a love-story, Erdoğan points to these features as the core of the AKP-style politics. In this paper, I will analyze how Erdoğan performs affective authoritarianism through governing with love. Empirically, my analysis is grounded in his election campaign speeches between 2014-2019. Conceptually I base my analysis on Sara Ahmed’s approach to emotions as an economic model in her famous “affective economies”. This conceptualization enables us to see how emotions, by working as a form of capital, “do things” in affective economies through circulation. I will scrutinize the distribution and circulation of (signs, figures and bodies of) love, glory and admiration in Erdoğan’s campaign speeches. I argue that these circulating signs work to affectively construct boundaries and assure forms of the collective, i.e. the millet of the “new Turkey”. And it is through such a “governing with love” which is one of the core features of Turkey under Erdoğan, I hold.