“Erdogan is Turkey,” one of his supporters wrote in an op-ed. The practical consequence of this is to link Erdogan’s fortunes with that of Turkey as a whole.
The key point is that the “man of the nation” is in fact the embodiment of the nation - he alone represents the national will. He is the first popularly elected president of the Turkish Republic, they point out, thanks to a 2007 constitutional amendment that made the presidency an elected position rather than one appointed by Parliament. This is a title used for Erdogan by his supporters.
Supporters in Istanbul try to touch then Prime Minister Erdogan, far right, on Augduring the presidential election. They are either soulless degenerates or, worse, fifth columnists serving the interests of foreign nations.įor example, the Gezi Park protests in June 2013, which were sparked by opposition to the government’s decision to turn a public park into a shopping mall, were defined by the AKP as opposition to the “national will,” and thus as a “coup attempt.” This propaganda demonized the protesters, who were subsequently dispersed by the police, sometimes brutally, leading to seven deaths. Moreover, those who oppose the “national will” are illegitimate. The winners of the ballots represent the “national will” in this discourse, which is a kind of metaphysical truth that cannot be limited by any law, tradition, international norm, or universal value. Accordingly, “democracy is nothing but the ballots,” as Erdogan and many of his supporters have repeatedly said. It actually venerates democracy, but a crude kind. If you think Erdoganism is a rejection of democracy, you would be wrong. Here’s a dictionary to help get oriented.Īnti-government protestors in Taksim Square on Jin Istanbul. Understanding Erdogan’s new Turkish state requires deciphering the new concepts and slogans undergirding it. “That is why he is a great man.”Įrdoganism also has rewritten the rules of Turkish politics, spawning a language all its own to describe the country’s heroes and villains. “He controls the money,” a proud Erdogan supporter told me recently in Ankara. He has dominated the ruling party, the government, the Parliament, key positions of the judiciary, at least three-fourths of the Turkish media, and even established some control over business through the channeling of state contracts to preferred companies. This ideology has been crystallized in the past three years, making Erdogan the most powerful Turk since Atatürk.
It rather seems to be - just like its predecessor, Kemalism - an ideology centered around a cult of personality: Erdoganism. Some Turkey observers call this ideology “Islamism,” but that’s not the whole story. Moreover, Erdogan’s governing philosophy is on its way to becoming Turkey’s new “official ideology,” as Kemalism was for almost a century. And this unchecked power made the AKP more corrupt, ambitious, and arrogant. This looked like a process of democratization, but in practice resulted in unchecked AKP power. But after the initial years of AKP rule, these Kemalist institutions - including the most important one, the military - were either defanged or subdued. They faced many checks on their power, as the bureaucracy was dominated by “Kemalists” - followers of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s secular founder. When Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, it was a party of aspiring former Islamists who needed to prove themselves as democrats to both secular Turks and the Western world.
Turkey makes the news today not because of its domestic reforms and regional “soft power,” but because of its increasingly authoritarian regime and frequent terror attacks.īut why did “New Turkey” fail? In a sense, it’s simple: intoxication by power. It is no secret that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “New Turkey,” which was hailed five years ago as the shining model of a Muslim democracy, now looks rather bleak.
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