How do the meanings attached to democracy reflect political polarization in a context where the very existence of democracy is seen to be in peril? Previous research examines polarization by focusing on the juxtaposition of competing terminologies while debating the same political issues. However, polarization can also be reflected by attaching different meanings to the same wordings. Moreover, scholarship tends to focus on relatively stable political cultures with an established democratic tradition. To advance our understanding of discursive reflections of political polarization, where the stability of democratic institutions themselves are being questioned, we analyze the online political discursive field during the June 2019 re-run Istanbul elections in Turkey. We create a dataset of approximately 116 thousand tweets and analyze Twitter discussions using both formal computational methods and qualitative text analysis. We find that the local re-run election was brought into the national spotlight in which the future of democracy was perceived to be at stake. We further conducted an in-depth analysis of the political discussion around three interrelated prominent themes: “democracy,” “elections,” and “public service.” Our findings indicate that public service came to be associated with an anti-corruption stance by the opposition. Conversely, for the supporters of the ruling party, public service embodies the ruling party’s past achievements. In addition, casting a vote was not simply associated with electing the preferred candidate, but more importantly, it was presented as the defense of democracy by the opposition. Our analyses indicate that public service came to be associated with an anti-corruption stance by the opposition. Conversely, for the supporters of the ruling party, public service embodies the ruling party’s past achievements. In addition, casting a vote was not simply associated with electing the preferred candidate, but more importantly, it was presented as the defense of democracy by the opposition. Our analyses imply that polarization is increasingly becoming a contestation over the meaning of foundational concepts. As such, our research endeavors to contribute to the literature on political polarization by looking at a disputed election as a case-study at the heights of these contestations. In our context, we can see competition over core concepts of democracy, and even democracy itself.