Third World Quarterly

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The AKP after 15 years: emergence of Erdoganism

in Turkey

Ihsan Yilmaz & Galib Bashirov

To cite this article: Ihsan Yilmaz & Galib Bashirov (2018) The AKP after 15 years:
emergence of Erdoganism in Turkey, Third World Quarterly, 39:9, 1812-1830, DOI:
10.1080/01436597.2018.1447371

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Third World QuarTerly, 2018
Vol. 39, No. 9, 1812–1830
https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1447371

OPEN ACCESS

The AKP after 15 years: emergence of Erdoganism in Turkey

Ihsan Yilmaza  and Galib Bashirovb 
a
Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia;
b
Politics and International Relations, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In recent years, several observers of Turkey have recognised a novel Received 16 July 2017
development in Turkish politics: the rise of Erdoganism. President Accepted 27 February 2018
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s personality and style have come to embody
KEYWORDS
the Turkish nation, the state and its economic, social and political Turkey
institutions. But what is Erdoganism? What are its main attributes? Is Erdoganism
it a mere ideology or the name of the emerging political regime in electoral authoritarianism
Turkey? While commentators have provided several observations of populism
Erdoganism, it has not been duly examined on its own in the academic Islamism
literature. This paper’s main premise is that in Turkey, a new political neopatrimonialism
regime has emerged in recent years which can best be defined
as Erdoganism. Erdoganism has four main dimensions: electoral
authoritarianism as the electoral system, neopatrimonialism as the
economic system, populism as the political strategy and Islamism as
the political ideology. We first explain why we think Erdoganism is
a better concept to define the emerging political regime in Turkey.
We briefly discuss Sultanism, Khomeinism and Kemalism in order
to produce a set of references for our discussion of Erdoganism.
We then provide a thorough analysis, explaining the ways in which
Erdoganism manifests itself through electoral authoritarianism,
neopatrimonialism, populism and Islamism.

Introduction
In recent years, several observers of Turkey have recognised a novel development in Turkish
politics: the rise of Erdoganism. In his newspaper column right after the July 15 coup attempt
in 2016, Hayrettin Karaman, a religious ideologue and Islamic law professor close to President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, claimed ‘the members of our heroic nation are those who love
President Erdoğan and who have not lost their traditional values’.1 Indeed, such proclama-
tions are abundant in Turkey today. Erdoğan’s personality and style have come to embody
the Turkish nation, the state and its economic, social and political institutions. But what is
Erdoganism? What are its main attributes? Is it a mere ideology or the name of the emerging
political regime in Turkey? Within the academic literature, Ahmet Kuru discussed Erdoganism
as President Erdoğan’s ‘one-man rule’ filled with populist rhetoric and polemical style.2 Ihsan

CONTACT  Galib Bashirov  [email protected]; Ihsan Yilmaz   http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8409-3045; Galib Bashirov 

 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4093-2916
© The author(s). Published by informa uK limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution-NonCommercial-Noderivatives license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
 Third World QuarTerly 1813

Yilmaz examined the evolution of Turkey from Kemalism and Erdoganism, focusing on how
these two ideologies tried to create their own palatable citizens through the state institutions
they controlled.3 Commentators have also provided various observations of Erdoganism.
Mustafa Akyol argued that Erdoganism is ‘Erdogan’s governing philosophy’ which ‘is on its
way to becoming Turkey’s new “official ideology”’ to replace Kemalism.4 He further asserted
that Erdoganism ‘is mainly a story of populism’.5 Soner Cagaptay and Oya Aktas claimed
‘Political Islam, authoritarianism, and Turkish nationalism are now integral pieces of
Erdoganism’, which also ‘blends post-colonial theory with anti-Westernism’.6 For Tanil Bora,
Erdoganism ‘refers to a form of governance and ideology’ around Erdogan’s cult of person-
ality.7 Despite this interest in Erdoganism, it has not been duly examined on its own and has
not been clearly defined.
This paper’s main premise is that in Turkey, a new political regime has emerged in recent
years which can best be defined as Erdoganism. Erdoganism refers to the emerging political
regime in Turkey that has four main dimensions: electoral authoritarianism as the electoral
system, neopatrimonialism as the economic system, populism as the political strategy and
Islamism as the political ideology. In explaining this development, this paper makes two
contributions to the literature. One, it examines Erdoganism as a novel phenomenon in
Turkish politics. Rather than merely an ideology, our paper defines Erdoganism as a political
regime type that encompasses not only ideological, but also political, economic and stylistic
aspects of the emerging regime in Turkey.
Two, it aims at making a better conceptualisation of the latest changes in Turkey. In
describing Turkey’s ongoing process of democratic roll-back since the late 2000s, scholars
have provided an array of concepts to describe it: ‘delegative democracy’,8 ‘illiberal democ-
racy’,9 ‘competitive authoritarianism’,10 ‘electoral authoritarianism’,11 and ‘weak authoritarian’.12
Our research indicates that the political regime in Turkey has evolved into ‘electoral author-
itarianism’ in recent years. Nevertheless, we claim that this concept falls short of providing
a holistic picture of the emerging regime, as it leaves out the discussion of the regime’s
economic, ideological and strategic features, which correspond to neopatrimonialism,
Islamism and populism, respectively. In order to overcome this conceptual inadequacy, we
offer a new definition, called Erdoganism, which combines elements of electoral authoritar-
ianism, neopatrimonialism, populism and Islamism.
In what follows, we first explain why we think Erdoganism is a better concept to define
the emerging political regime in Turkey. We briefly discuss Sultanism, Khomeinism and
Kemalism in order to produce a set of references for our discussion of Erdoganism. After
providing a concise background to Turkey’s evolution under Adalet and Kalkinma Partisi -
Justice and Development Party (AKP) from a model Muslim democracy to an authoritarian
state, we provide a thorough analysis, explaining the ways in which Erdoganism manifests
itself through electoral authoritarianism, neopatrimonialism, populism and Islamism.

Why Erdoganism?
As we mentioned above, we offer a new term, called ‘Erdoganism’, which defines the emerging
Turkish regime that combines elements of electoral authoritarianism, neopatrimonialism,
Islamism and populism. Why not another universal category? We believe no universal category
adequately captures the main tenets of the regime in Turkey. Electoral authoritarianism leaves
out the regime’s three other important elements: neopatrimonialism, Islamism and populism.
1814 i. yilMaZ aNd G. BaShiroV

Because Erdoganism is a personalistic regime, we discuss Sultanism, Khomeinism and

Kemalism as personalistic regimes to produce basic reference points for our discussion of
Erdoganism in Turkey. Certainly, these are not the only types of personalistic regimes in the
world, or in Muslim-majority countries, and neither do we ignore important differences
between these regimes and Erdoganism. Rather, our contention is that despite the differ-
ences, similarities emanating from their personalistic character can help us generate the
main dimensions of the Erdoganist regime in Turkey.
Sultanism is a universal category that fails to provide a holistic picture of the regime in
Turkey. Sultanistic regimes ‘are a generic domain of extreme patrimonialism where the state
is assumed to be closely bound up with the fate of the leader’.13 Moreover, ‘the distinction
between regime and state is much more blurred’ in these regimes.14 The developments in
Turkey in the post-2016 abortive coup period have pointed at extreme personalisation of
the regime whereby the fate of Erdoğan the leader and Turkey have merged. However, as
Chehabi and Linz mention, sultanistic regimes are
based on personal rulership, but loyalty to the ruler is motivated not by his embodying or artic-
ulating an ideology, not by a unique personal mission, nor by any charismatic qualities, but by
a mixture of fear and rewards to his collaborators.15
Hence, Sultanistic regimes lack any ideology and they are not popular at all, as they rule by
fear and rewards.16 In contrast, the Erdoganist regime in Turkey is popular with a significant
portion of the society. Also, Islamism is an important feature of the Erdoganist regime and
provides a significant ideological backbone. The regime instrumentalises Islam in generating
justifications for its hegemonic role in Turkish society and politics, in demanding obedience
to its rule, and in sustaining the support of its voter base. Therefore, Sultanism is not a suffi-
cient category to capture the main tenets of the regime in Turkey.
Khomeinism emerged in Iran after the 1979 Revolution. It referred to a form of governance
and ideology around Ayatollah Khomeini and his cult of personality.17 Khomeinism was
against representative politics. Within two years, it had outlawed most opposition parties,
both secular and Islamic, such as the Tudeh Party, the Islamic People’s Republican Party, and
the People’s Fighters.18 While the regime introduced presidential elections after 1979 as a
show of respect to popular will, as Jason Brownlee shows, they ‘had come to function as
plebiscites of approval for the system … negotiations within the regime had produced a
leading candidate whom the public then elected overwhelmingly’.19 Under the Khomeinist
regime, neopatrimonialism has become the norm of state–society relations whereby ‘easy
access to allocated oil revenue and unchecked trade activities have provided some religious-
ly-privileged groups with unique opportunities to form autonomous politico-economic
bonds’.20 The regime directed the state budget to the regime-connected companies and
organisations such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Imam Charity
Committee (ICC), which in turn propagated its ideology. The Khomeinist regime also regularly
confiscated property belonging to the political opposition under the banner of ‘war booty
according to religious law’ and distributed it to its cronies.21 In this sense, the Khomeinist
regime made instrumental use of Islamism to pursue its political goals. The regime and its
leaders constantly resorted to religious dogmas, such as being heirs to the ‘Hidden Imam’
or ‘Sayyed’ to justify their ‘divine’ right to rule and free themselves from checks and balances.22
Indeed, the use of such popular notions was part of the Khomeinist regime’s populism as
well. It divided the society into two rival camps of the oppressors, imperialists and the West
on the one hand, and the oppressed Muslims on the other, and positioned itself as the
 Third World QuarTerly 1815

protector of the latter against the former. Khomeini and other Iranian populist leaders, most
importantly Mahmood Ahmadinejad, constructed an image of a ‘saviour’ around themselves,
embellished by motifs of ancient Persian empires and the Shi’ite Imamate.23
Kemalism was the official doctrine of the Turkish Republic before it was replaced by
Erdoganism. Kemalism was mainly a nationalist and secularist regime and was centred
around the authoritarian figure of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.24 Mustafa Kemal viewed his party
as an institution ‘representing the entire Turkish people and the general interests of the
nation’.25 In Atatürk’s lifetime, only his party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), ‘competed’
at the elections, the purpose of which was to rubberstamp the candidates chosen by Atatürk
himself.26 The Kemalist regime continued the neo-patrimonial practices of the late Ottoman
era such as state manufacturing of a nationalist bourgeoisie that would be loyal to the regime
and control the media for the benefit of the rulers. Property of non-Muslim citizens of Turkey,
who were dismissed as ‘foreigners’ and even ‘traitors’, was either confiscated or meted out
by heavy taxes and then was channelled to the nationalist ‘Turkish’ bourgeoisie.27 As an
ideology, Kemalism rested on secular Turkish nationalism and the personality cult of Mustafa
Kemal who was presented as the father of the nation, its saviour and its teacher. Kemalism
discriminated against practicing Muslims, Kurds, Alevis and non-Muslims based on secularist
and nationalist notions and homogenisation policies. Kemalism was also populist. Indeed,
one of its six fundamental principles is populism. Mustafa Kemal misused the concept of
‘the national will’, viewed himself as the representative of the national will and dismissed his
critics as traitors.28
As the above analysis shows, Sultanism, Khomenism and Kemalism are personalistic
regimes in which the leader embodies the fate of the nation and the state. Elections, when
they take place, act as a rubber stamp for the regime’s preferred policies. They are also neo-
patrimonial regimes in which state resources are distributed among regime cronies and
clients. However, in contrast to Sultanism, both Khomenism and Kemalism are populist
regimes that rely on nationalist ideologies and blend them with a thick ideology such as
secularism and Islamism, to maintain their legitimacy. Recent political developments in
Turkey point at a similarly personalised but highly popular regime that crushes domestic
opposition at will, distributes economic benefits to its supporters in a discriminatory fashion
and uses religious nationalism as an ideological backbone to its practices.

Emergence of the Erdoganist regime in Turkey

AKP in Turkey has Islamist origins. The party is the latest and the most successful political
organisation of the Islamist National Outlook Movement (Milli Görüş Hareketi, MGH) in
Turkey. Political Islamism emerged in the 1970s as a formidable challenger to hegemonic
Kemalist ideology in Turkey. The MGH created Islamist political parties in the 1970s which
rejected Kemalism and offered an Islamist path as an alternative to Kemalist notions of
secular nationalism, Westernisation and modernisation.29 Erbakan and other leading mem-
bers of the MGH were constantly agitating their voters with Islamist pleas, dividing them
along religious lines. For example, for Erbakan, elections in Turkey were ‘a census’ on religious
identity, where Muslims voted for the MGH parties, and non-Muslims voted for other par-
ties.30 The Erbakan-led Welfare Party (RP) won the 1995 general elections and earned the
right to create a government as the leading member of a coalition. Erdoğan also won his
first major election in 1994 when he became the mayor of Istanbul from the RP ticket.
1816 i. yilMaZ aNd G. BaShiroV

However, the RP continued to be an Islamist party in power after 1995. Its leaders, including
Erbakan and Erdoğan, continued their anti-democratic and Islamist positions. Although they
began to pay lip service to themes such as secularism and democracy, their Islamist character
resulted in the 1997 postmodern coup when the Erbakan-led government was toppled and
moved out of office by the Kemalist military establishment. Immediately after the coup, the
reformist younger generation of Turkish Islamists claimed to have changed their orientation
towards democracy and started to make references to universal human rights and other
Western ideals.31
AKP was established by the reformist wing of the MGH in 2001. The leaders of the party
claimed to have abandoned the retrogressive Islamist outlook for democracy and human
rights. Immediately after seizing power in 2002, AKP began to pass democratisation reforms
aimed at fulfilling the Copenhagen Criteria of the European Union (EU) and strengthening
democracy in Turkey.32 This led some scholars to argue that the party ‘embraced a process
of moderation and pragmatic change’ over ideological objectives, and hence gave us ‘the
best picture we have so far of what Muslim Democracy might become and what it might
stand for’.33 Scholars argued that AKP pragmatically embraced notions of democracy to
survive in power, reframe its image as a democratic actor, and gain the support of the EU
and those segments of society that previously did not vote for Islamist parties, such as Kurds,
liberals and the Gülen movement.34
Although the AKP government managed to start official negotiations for accession with
the EU by 2005, severe opposition by Germany and France against Turkey’s EU membership,
as well as the Cyprus debacle, considerably stalled the accession process.35 AKP’s reform
drive also faded by 2007. As Murat Somer explains, instead of democratic consolidation, AKP
was instead focused on consolidating its power and ‘capturing the state’ in its second period
in power from 2007 to 2011.36 The party continued to make strategic use of political reforms
to weaken rival political institutions and capture them from within. Particularly instructive
in this sense were the judiciary and military. The 2010 Referendum introduced sweeping
changes to the Constitution, reorganising the Constitutional Court and the High Council of
Judges and Prosecutors in order to bring them under the government’s control. The changes
also reduced the military’s power by restricting its privileges to intervene in social affairs
and severely curbing the authority of military courts. Furthermore, in a series of investigations
between 2008 and 2011 called Ergenekon and Balyoz, the government purged as well as
put to trial tens of high-ranking military generals who were accused of plotting to overthrow
the government. Along with the Constitutional changes in 2010, these developments ter-
minated the Kemalist hegemony in the judiciary and weakened the military’s de facto checks
on AKP’s executive power.37
The second AKP government also started to undermine another important institution
that was key to checking its power: independent media. Beginning with 2009, the AKP
government started to jail journalists en masse on dubious charges as part of the Ergenekon
and Balyoz cases. By 2012, there were 61 journalists in gaol in Turkey according to the
Committee to Protect Journalists, more than any other country in the world.38
Their decisive victory in the 2011 general elections gave the Islamists yet another electoral
opportunity to form a government of their own. In contrast to the previous two periods,
however, this time they were free to a great extent from the shackles of Kemalist bureaucracy
and the military establishment. However, rather than further democratising the system, they
 Third World QuarTerly 1817

decided to take a decisive reverse turn, and began to work on establishing an authoritarian
populist regime around the cult of Erdoğan.

Electoral authoritarianism
An important feature of Erdoganism is ‘electoral authoritarianism’. Electoral authoritarian
regimes have three common characteristics: an uneven playing field for the opposition,
elections that are neither fair nor free, and a widespread crackdown on fundamental free-
doms. In electoral authoritarian systems, opposition exists, but opponents are not allowed
to win the majority of votes. Opposition parties’ existence mainly serves to legitimate the
authoritarian political system which, in selective ways, continues to repress them. In electoral
authoritarian systems, elections for legislative and executive offices occur regularly, yet they
are often rigged in favour of the incumbent. The elections are not ‘competitive’, because
political freedoms are severely curtailed. Heavy authoritarian controls prevent certain parties
from participating in elections, or campaigning for them. The elections themselves often
involve vote rigging and electoral fraud in various forms such as ballot-box stuffing, vote
buying and voter intimidation. Finally, electoral authoritarian systems engage in widespread
violation of civil liberties. They frequently harass independent media, restrict freedom of
association and speech, and suppress government critics.39
Similarly to White and Herzog, we also categorise the Turkish political regime as electoral
authoritarianism.40 Since 2011, the regime in Turkey has come to represent all three charac-
teristics of an electoral authoritarian regime. To begin with, the political playing field has
been increasingly skewed to favour the incumbent regime. Independent media was pre-
vented from covering the opposition parties, and their members were harassed and fre-
quently arrested on spurious charges.41
Secondly, elections since 2015 have been neither free nor fair. This is a radically pervasive
development in Turkish politics, since although Turkey had never been a liberal democracy,
the political elections had been free and fair since 1950 and the incumbents left their offices
peacefully after losing elections. However, the 7 June and 1 November elections in 2015 and
especially the Constitutional Referendum in 2017 demonstrated that those days were over.
AKP refused to relinquish power after failing to establish parliamentary majority in the June
2015 elections. The biggest opposition party, CHP, accused President Erdoğan of preventing
the opposition parties from establishing a coalition government in the period following the
elections.42 During the process of this ‘constructed impasse’ in the summer of 2015, the
government re-started the war with the Partiye Karkaren Kurdistan - Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK) in the south-east of Turkey, as the latter resorted to terrorism.43 Coupled with AKP’s
politics of fear, the PKK’s terrorist attacks led the Turkish voters to believe that AKP’s loss of
power was the reason behind the new wave of terror. Together with the ‘inability’ of the
opposition parties to form a coalition government, this atmosphere of fear helped AKP to
gain its power back in November 2015 as the party received 50% of votes in the new
elections.44
A more pervasive set of developments took place during the 2017 Constitutional
Referendum cycle that changed Turkey’s political regime from a parliamentary system to a
strong presidential one. The referendum was conducted in an environment of an unprece-
dented level of fear and restrictions against the opposition forces who campaigned for a
‘No’ vote. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Preliminary
1818 i. yilMaZ aNd G. BaShiroV

Report claimed that ‘Lack of equal opportunities, one-sided media coverage and limitations
on fundamental freedoms created [an] unlevel playing field in Turkey’s constitutional ref-
erendum’.45 AKP won the referendum by the slightest margin: 51% ‘Yes’ against 49% ‘No’.
However, both international and opposition election observers documented widespread
irregularities during the vote-counting. Opposition parties claimed that the elections were
rigged and demanded the results be annulled, to no avail.46
Thirdly, the political regime has conducted an unprecedented level of crackdown against
opposition forces ever since the 2013 Gezi Protests in Istanbul. During the 2013 Gezi Protests,
the opponents of the AKP government ‘who were fed up with an aggressive and dominant
political style’ poured into the streets to protest the regime.47 The latter responded harshly,
and in the crackdown eight protesters were killed and hundreds were wounded.48
In December 2013, a series of police investigations revealed corruption involving high-
level AKP elite including Recep Erdoğan’s son Bilal Erdoğan and three cabinet ministers. The
regime refused to let its elite to be investigated. Erdoğan characterised the investigations
as a judicial coup designed by the Gülen movement and initiated a comprehensive crack-
down against the latter. The police officers in charge of the operations were arrested. The
prosecutors of the case were replaced and the cases were subsequently closed.49 In the
following months, the regime appointed its trustees to all Gülen-affiliated media organisa-
tions to turn them into pro-AKP mouthpieces and other institutions, effectively usurping
thousands of private properties.
The government’s crackdown against the Gülen movement reached a massive scale after
the failed coup attempt in July 2016. Despite a lack of clear evidence50 the government
blamed the Gülenists for the coup. Erdoğan and AKP used the coup attempt as a justification
for mass detention of not only Gülen movement members but anyone who criticised Erdoğan
and his political regime. In 2017, Amnesty International reported ‘the arbitrary dismissal of
more than 100,000 public sector employees’ which included over 3500 judges, ‘members of
the armed forces, police officers, teachers, doctors, academics, and people working at all
levels of central and local government’.51 The persecuted judges and public prosecutors were
replaced with those loyal to the Erdoganist regime. These massive purges and evacuation
of complete branches of state bureaucracy provided a suitable ground for AKP to rig the
Constitutional Referendum in 2017, given no independent media or judiciary remained to
check the implementation of election rules and regulations.
Finally, Erdoğan and AKP have eliminated opposition parties from the electoral compe-
tition through various means. When two young popular leaders emerged out of the ranks
of the traditional Islamists (Numan Kurtulmus) and the centre-right Democrat Party
(Suleyman Soylu) in 2010, Erdoğan co-opted both by bringing them into AKP and appointing
them to powerful positions. When another popular leader (Meral Aksener) emerged out of
the opposition Milliyetci Hareket Partisi - Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in late 2016,
the regime prevented her from rallying the party’s base against its current leader Devlet
Bahceli, who proved to be Erdoğan’s favourite in MHP due to his ineptitude.52 Lastly, since
the 7 June 2015 elections, Halklarin Demokratik Partisi – Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP),
the key opposition party with the capacity to deny AKP parliamentary majority, has been
the target of a series of intimidations and arrests. Right after the 1 November elections in
2015, the leaders of HDP, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, were arrested on dubious
charges. These were followed by a series of arrests of the elected HDP deputies and mayors
from the south-east of Turkey.53 As a result, the HDP has been effectively paralysed. These
 Third World QuarTerly 1819

developments show that in addition to ‘democracy’, the Turkish regime has lost its ‘compet-
itive’ component as well.

Political economy: neopatrimonialism

Neopatrimonialism has been an integral feature of the Erdoganist regime in Turkey. A ‘neo-
patrimonial system’ can be defined as ‘a mixture of two co-existing, partly interwoven, types
of domination: namely patrimonial and legal-rational bureaucratic domination’.54 Under
patrimonialism, all power relations between ruler and ruled, and political as well as admin-
istrative relations, are personal relations; there is no differentiation between the private and
the public realm. However, a neopatrimonial regime does not rely exclusively on traditional
forms of legitimation or on hereditary succession. It provides loyalty and submission to a
ruler by means of both formal and informal mechanisms. Neopatrimonial regimes ‘are based
not only on patriarchal values and norms, but on rationally driven exchange of services,
when a patron buys the loyalty of a client in exchange for protection of client’s interests’.55
Clientelism is an integral part of neopatrimonialism. The patron transfers public goods and
services to his clients, who may or may not be linked with kinship ties. Although clientelism
can be based on some sort of traditional relations, it is a rather modern phenomenon, linked
to the existence of a state.
In Turkey the successive AKP governments established a neopatrimonial network of rela-
tions whereby the AKP gained popularity with and the loyalty of its voters and certain seg-
ments of society. Although patronage relations between ruling parties and society have
been one of the important characteristics of mass politics in Turkey,56 the AKP government
broadened its range and scope during its tenure in power.57 To begin with, provision of
welfare has become one of the leading channels of mass patronage. The loyal support of
voters has been gained through the provision of public welfare as ‘charitable patronage’,
redistribution of public resources, and access to public jobs, health services and public hous-
ing.58 The regime deliberately channelled state funds, such as free goods and services, to
the districts and cities that voted for the party and effectively punished those who did not.59
Therefore, the ruling party skewed the principles of the welfare state which would normally
require the state to remain impartial in its provision of welfare to citizens and to establish
‘rights-based relations’ with its citizens.60 Instead, it used welfare as part of its clientelist
network in which ‘providers are patrons and beneficiaries are clients’; thus, loyalty to the
party is rewarded while distrust and criticism are punished.61 Indeed, these changes are the
result of a long-term transformation in the Turkish welfare system since the early 2000s that
focused on utilising, for welfare provision, those religious values and institutions associated
with the AKP government.62 These measures have transformed AKP into an instrument of
popular mobilisation geared towards sustaining and enhancing the party’s support base in
society.63
The AKP governments also distribute patronage through privatisation and redistribution
of rents within the upper income brackets.64 AKP has brought the ‘periphery’, its conservative,
nationalist and non-affluent supporters, to the ‘centre’ and elevated them to a new bour-
geoisie. Through this new bourgeoisie, the party has gained the loyalty of conservative and
religious voters.65 However, the regime also punishes those businesses that have been critical
of its rule and have supported the opposition. It has been pursuing particularly oppressive
measures towards critical media outlets. A Freedom House report66 dated 2014 showed that
1820 i. yilMaZ aNd G. BaShiroV

through various repressive measures, the government restricted the critical media outlets
and forced them out of business. They were either sold to government cronies or completely
shut down.
Furthermore, AKP established several regime-connected charity organisations and foun-
dations which have not only become a ‘substitute for welfare state functions’,67 but also
indulged themselves in an extortion racket. The most influential of these foundations has
been TURGEV. Created by Erdoğan himself in 1996, Türkiye Gençlik ve Eğitime Hizmet Vakfı
- Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey (TURGEV) is currently owned and
managed by Erdoğan’s family, and does not pay any tax to the state. TURGEV acts as a qua-
si-official charity of the regime. It collects exorbitant sums of donations from wealthy busi-
nessmen, as well as foreign and domestic companies, who are in turn rewarded by lucrative
deals with the government.68
Finally, after capturing the state, AKP monopolised access to state resources, including
jobs and public tenders. The party and the state have been fused in an AKP organisational
framework that oversaw party-connected personnel combining political and administrative
functions. In addition, AKP allocated state-sponsored development projects to regime-con-
nected businesspeople, distributing economic benefits to and enriching regime cronies in
the process.69 As a result, AKP has turned into a neopatrimonial tool serving to empower
the regime’s leaders.

Political strategy: populism

Populism is the core feature of Erdoganism. Populism is ‘a particular moralistic imagination
of politics, a way of perceiving the world that sets a morally pure and unified … people
against elites who are deemed corrupt or in some other way morally inferior’.70 Populists
frame the meaning of ‘the people’ in a form conducive to their political interests and claim
to represent the people,71 against the ‘corrupt’ elite who try to exclude the people from
power. Populists also divide the society in a horizontal/identitarian dimension between the
insiders and outsiders, whereby the outsiders, who may even be citizens, are regarded as
the foreigners, if not the internal enemies, based on their identities.72 In this sense, populism
divides the society into the opposite poles of ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’.73 Populists
are not only anti-elitist, but also anti-pluralist. They are ‘hostile to representative politics’ and
its institutions.74 They claim that only they represent people, while rejecting the legitimacy
of other political elite, past or present. What is more, populists claim that only those who
support them are the ‘real people’, while those who do not are ‘traitors’. Populists delegitimise
opposition by associating opponents with the ‘corrupt elite’, ‘foreign interests’ and ‘terrorists’.
Populism also relies on personalistic and paternalistic leadership. The charismatic leader is
generally attributed divine characteristics: He represents the national will and has the ulti-
mate capacity to discern the common good. His authority and judgement should not be
questioned.
Populists also use authoritarianism and neopatrimonialism as their techniques of gov-
erning. They fill the state with loyalists and deny doing so to the opposition. They also capture
media and prevent opposition outlets from reporting on their crimes. They enact ‘an eco-
nomic project that utilises widespread redistributive or clientelistic methods’.75 In other
words, populists engage in mass clientelism: the exchange of material and immaterial favours
by elites for mass political support. Moreover, populists support ‘discriminatory legalism’
 Third World QuarTerly 1821

which redefines citizenship: that only some people can enjoy full protection of laws, while
others cannot. As Muller suggests, ‘what makes populists distinctive is that they can engage
in such practices openly and with public moral justifications’.76 Populists justify their coloni-
sation of the state by claiming that only they are the true representatives of the nation. Mass
clientelism is also justified by the claim that only ‘some people’ deserve the support of the
state.
In Turkey, Islamists have developed a peculiar strand of populism since their inception in
early 1970s. Islamists emphasised their quality of representing the practicing Muslim majority
population in Turkey, who were oppressed by the Kemalist regime and were excluded from
strategic bureaucratic positions and denied entry to universities with headscarves. They
famously referred to themselves as ‘the blacks’ of Turkey who were stigmatised and discrim-
inated against by the Kemalist hegemony and were deprived of opportunities of employ-
ment in prestigious positions and of upward mobility.77 Furthermore, as Tuğal mentioned,
Islamists attached a strong ‘religio-moral’ component to their populism and claimed that
‘the people’ referred to not only those who were exploited and excluded, but also the faithful
and morally superior.78 They claimed to represent these poor Muslim masses who were
following Islamic practices and rituals. They also relentlessly attacked the West, in particular
the ‘Western values and Western imperialism’.79
Erdoğan and AKP also adhered to the features of the classic populist agenda. For example,
Erdoğan divided the society into ‘pure’ people and ‘corrupt’ elite and depicted himself as the
man of the people. Erdoğan’s charismatic leadership played an important role in enabling
AKP to increase its popularity and remain in power.80 He presented himself as the ‘voice of
deprived “real people” and the champion of their interests against the old elites’.81 He also
increased his popularity with the working class through such populist acts as having his hair
‘cut in the poor neighborhood where he grew up’ which helped to show that his ‘newly
acquired power has not changed him’.82 Orcun Selcuk also demonstrated that Erdoğan’s
peculiar populist style carried important similarities with Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa’s
in Venezuela and Ecuador, respectively.83
After AKP consolidated its power in 2011, one-sided messages in media imposed Erdoğan’s
cult on society, which portrayed Erdoğan as the saviour of the nation who embodies its
glorious past and future. As a charismatic leader with aggressive nationalistic rhetoric,
Erdoğan aims to fulfil utopian dreams of loyalist voters who see in him ‘a new father of Turkey’.
The personality of Tayyip Erdoğan is divinised by partisan voters and elites, and as such a
cult of personality around him has been entrenched.84
Erdoğan’s populism also carried an anti-institutionalist attitude. He opposed horizontal
accountability structures such as the judiciary and the Constitutional Court, and blamed
them for the ills of society.85 Erdoğan asserted the moral and normative supremacy of the
national will86 and, acting as if he were the embodiment of the national will, he vilified his
critics such as Kurdish nationalists and Gülenists, as traitors and the ‘enemies of the state’.87
The regime divided the society into ‘us’ and ‘them’ based on the distinction between its
conservative and nationalist allies and secular, leftist, Alevi, non-Muslim and Gulenist
critics.88
Furthermore, the Gezi Protests and the December 2013 investigations dramatically
increased the ‘existential insecurity’ of the regime and led to an obsession with the threat of
a revolution or a coup.89 Convinced of a Western conspiracy and fuelled by an insecurity
complex, the regime has been engaging in creating domestic and international controversies
1822 i. yilMaZ aNd G. BaShiroV

which usually involve conspiracy theories of sort. From the failed coup attempt in 2016 being
a Western, mainly US, conspiracy90 to diplomatic spats with Netherlands and Germany over
the right to carry out political campaigns,91 the regime has been continuously involved in
creating ‘managed international crises’ to sustain its political platform inside.

AKP’s ideology: Islamism

Islamism is ‘a form of instrumentalisation of Islam by individuals, groups and organisations
that pursue political objectives’.92 Islamism ‘provides political responses to today’s societal
challenges by imagining a future, the foundations for which rest on reappropriated, rein-
vented concepts borrowed from the Islamic tradition.”93 Islamists are rational actors ‘engaged
in cost–benefit calculations’.94 They are pragmatic decision makers who are willing to
exchange theological ideals for political gains.95 They use ideology instrumentally and stra-
tegically to earn votes and justify their policies.
Starting with its second term in power, AKP’s Islamist outlook made a comeback in its
official rhetoric and practice.96 After it consolidated its power and captured the state in 2011,
AKP launched an ambitious project to Islamicise Turkish society and politics. To be clear, we
do not claim that Turkey has become a theocratic regime under AKP, nor that it is on its way
to becoming one. The religious establishment in Turkey is completely subordinated to polit-
ical authorities and has no independent position on political issues. Rather, the political
regime has increasingly turned into an Islamist one and currently carries some of the most
important features of such a regime.
It is important to understand that while Islamists generally claim to adhere to ‘universal’
notions of Islam, they usually derive their doctrines from their national contexts. This is
because their religious and political vocabulary is usually shaped by national notions. The
worldviews of Islamist organisations, movements and parties are further shaped by political
struggles they engage with in a given country. Therefore, if a country hosted a historic Islamic
empire such as the Ottomans or the Safavids, the Islamists tend to idealise them in their
search for ideal reference points. Similarly, the ideal form of government can be an Ottoman
Sultanate, a Sunni Caliphate or a Shia Imamate depending on national identities.
In this sense, it is no surprise that Erdoganists in Turkey long for the Ottoman past and
the glorification of Turkish–Ottoman history. As Saracoglu and Demirkol show, ‘Sunni-Muslim
values … have become the core element defining what the ‘nation’ is’ in the AKP period.
Nostalgia for the Ottoman past has been a long-time Islamist notion in Turkey.97 The Islamist
ideal in Turkey is the regime of the Ottoman classic period. Historically, they desired to tra-
ditionalise society ‘by creating an invented ideal Ottoman society that would serve as a
model for restructuring the present and the future’.98 AKP has put this neo-Ottomanist ide-
ology in practice in both domestic and foreign policy. As a result, peculiar Ottoman motifs
has been recreated in national education, national holidays,99 media and TV shows,100 and
foreign policy.101
The regime slowly but surely fought against secular principles that the state–society
relations in Turkey were based on.102 An important part of this project was to create an ideal
Turkish citizen, a project that was first carried out by Kemalists in Turkey. As part of this
project, the regime embarked on creating ‘a pious generation’ that would serve its ideological
goals,103 while using the Diyanet (Directorate of Religious Affairs) as an ‘imposer’ of this state
ideology.104 The regime also overhauled the Turkish education system to promote its Islamist
 Third World QuarTerly 1823

ideology and ‘capture the minds’ in Turkey.105 The national education curriculum was emptied
of philosophy, secular principles and Darwin, and filled with religion and history courses
that glorify jihad and martyrdom.106
AKP’s Islamism demonstrated itself in the party’s foreign policy as well. Particularly since
the failed coup attempt in 2016, the AKP government grew increasingly anti-Western in its
outlook. It went so far as accusing the US and EU of being behind the failed coup of 15 July
2017.107 In particular, Erdoğan brought back religio-civilisational animosity against the West
in his rhetoric. Today, Erdoğan and his media constantly propagate the existence of a holy
warfare between the Muslims and the Christian West and claim that the latter is bent on the
former’s destruction.108 Also, Erdoğan uses blatant Sunni sectarianism in his rhetoric which
constantly pits Sunnis against Alevis both within Turkey and outside.109
Furthermore, AKP’s Islamism evolved into a new and radical rhetoric filled with glorifica-
tion of martyrdom, constant calls to mass sacrifice in defence of both Islam and Turkey
against domestic and foreign infidels, and populist agitation of society through such rep-
resentations. While the motifs of martyrdom and sacrifice have been features of AKP’s youth
policies,110 they have gained a cultic quality in the period following the 2016 coup attempt.
They involve billboards showing the pictures of those killed during the failed coup, constant
media broadcasting of their funerals, embellished with sentimentalised narratives of the
tragedy, and changing the names of an endless number of streets, bridges, schools and
buildings to ‘the July 15 Martyrs’. As a New York Times story stated, ‘[a] cult of martyrdom
reminiscent of that in post-revolutionary Iran was being manufactured in Turkey.111
Finally, a growing trend in AKP’s Turkey has been the rising status of regime-connected
religious scholars such as the head of Diyanet Mehmet Görmez and columnist/scholar
Hayrettin Karaman, who have become instrumental in legitimising the regime’s policies
through various Islamic injunctions ie fatwas and declarations. Görmez made statements in
support of the AKP government’s newly emerging radical Islamist rhetoric attacking abortion,
women’s rights and the New Year’s celebrations.112 Furthermore, both Görmez and Karaman
utilised a jihadist takfiri rhetoric to demonise the regime’s opponents such as the Kurdish
nationalists and the Gülenists, and labelled them as ‘out of Islam’ and ‘heretics’. Islamist scholar
Hayrettin Karaman emerged as the religious ideologue of the hard-line Islamists with his
personal fatwas that he issued in his column in a pro-government daily, Yeni Safak. In the
aftermath of the 17–25 December investigations that revealed blatant corruption of top-
level AKP bureaucrats, Karaman issued a fatwa, declaring that ‘corruption is not a theft’.113
Karaman also declared that voting ‘Yes’ was a religious obligation in the April 2017 referen-
dum, effectively labelling the ‘No’ voters heretics.114 Furthermore, Karaman played an impor-
tant role in providing religious justifications for the rise of the security state and extrajudicial
activities that emanated from it. He issued a fatwa in 2017 in which he asserted that the vile
crimes of those who support Erdoğan and his regime cannot be prosecuted, because Muslims
in Turkey are under attack by anti-Muslim forces both inside and outside.115

Conclusion
This paper argued that in Turkey, a new political regime has emerged which can best be
defined as Erdoganism. Rather than merely an ideology, it defined Erdoganism as the emerg-
ing political regime in Turkey that has four main dimensions: electoral authoritarianism as
the electoral system, neopatrimonialism as the economic system, populism as the political
1824 i. yilMaZ aNd G. BaShiroV

strategy and Islamism as the political ideology. We showed that no universal category ade-
quately captures the main elements of the emerging regime in Turkey. Electoral authoritar-
ianism left out the economic, strategic and ideological elements of the regime. Although
Sultanism provides a better focus on personalistic and clientelistic features, it falls short of
discussing the role of ideology and populism. From our analysis of Sultanism, Kemalism and
Khomeinism, we derived four reference points for the Erdoganist regime – electoral author-
itarianism, neopatrimonialism, populism and Islamism – and demonstrated the ways in which
the emerging regime in Turkey shares these attributes in a detailed examination of the latest
political developments in Turkey.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank James Barry, Umit Cizre, Mustafa Gurbuz, Caroline Lancaster and Markus Thiel for
their feedback on previous versions of this paper and the two reviewers for their very helpful reviews.

Notes on Contributors
Ihsan Yilmaz is a research professor and Chair of Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue
at Deakin University, Australia. He was a professor of political science at Istanbul Fatih
University between 2008 and 2016, a lecturer in law at SOAS, University of London, between
2001 and 2008 and a research scholar at the Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Oxford
between 1999 and 2001.

Galib Bashirov teaches at Florida International University’s Department of Politics and

International Relations. He finished his PhD in international relations in the same department.
Galib’s research areas include state-society relations in Azerbaijan and Turkey and the United
States’ foreign policy in Central Asia.

Notes
Hayrettin Karaman, “İsyan hakkında,” Yeni Safak, July 21, 2016.
1.  
2.  
Kuru, “Turkey’s Failed Policy,” 96–102.
3. Yilmaz,
  Kemalizmden Erdoğanizme.
Mustafa Akyol, “Erdoganism [noun],” Foreign Policy, July 21, 2016.
4.  
Zia Weise, “Erdoğan, the New Atatürk,” Politico, December 26, 2016,
5.  
Soner Cagaptay and Oya Aktas, “How Erdoganism Is Killing Turkish Democracy,” Foreign Affairs,
6.  
July 7, 2017.
“Tanıl Bora: Erdoganism Is on the Rise,” Cumhuriyet, January 20, 2017, http://www.cumhuriyet.
7.  
com.tr/haber/english/663367/Tanil_Bora__Erdoganism_is_on_the_rise.html
8.  
Taş, “Turkey – from Tutelary to Delegative Democracy.”
9.  
Turkmen-Dervisoglu, “Turkey: From ‘Role Model’ to ‘Illiberal Democracy.’”
10.  Özbudun, “Turkey’s Judiciary”; and Esen and Gümüşçü, “Rising Competitive Authoritarianism
in Turkey.”
11.  White and Herzog, “Examining State Capacity.”
12.  Akkoyunlu and Öktem, "Existential Insecurity.”
 Third World QuarTerly 1825

13.  Eke and Kuzio, “Sultanism in Eastern Europe,” 530.

14.  Chehabi and Linz, Sultanistic Regimes, 10.
15.  Ibid., 5.
16.  Eke and Kuzio, “Sultanism in Eastern Europe,” 531.
17.  Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic.
18.  Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization, 64–72.
19.  Ibid., 164.
20.  Alamdari, “Power Structure of the Islamic Republic,” 1291.
21.  Arjomand, After Khomeini: Iran under his Successors, 23.
22.  Ansari, “Iran under Ahmadinejad.”
23.  Ibid.
24.  Mango, Atatürk: The Biography, 225; Yilmaz, “Towards a Muslim Secularism?”.
25.  Hanioğlu, Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography, 82.
26.  Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 177.
27.  Ibid., 200; Kuyucu, “Ethno-Religious ‘Unmixing’ of ‘Turkey,’” 370–1; see in detail Toprak, Türkiye'de
Ekonomi ve Toplum.
28.  Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün, 90–1, Akyol, Atatürk’ün İhtilal Hukuku, 67–95.
29.  Yildiz, “Politico‐Religious Discourse.”
30.  Ibid., 205.
31.  Cizre and Cinar, “Turkey 2002.”
32.  Karaveli, “Erdogan’s Journey.”
33.  Nasr, “Rise of ‘Muslim Democracy,’” 23.
34.  Dagi, “Turkey’s AKP in Power”; Hale and Ozbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey;
Patton, “AKP’s Reform Fatigue”; Börzel and Soyaltin, “Europeanization in Turkey.”
35.  Schimmelfennig, “Entrapped again”; Yilmaz, “The Role of Liberalized Autocracy.”
36.  Somer, “Conquering versus Democratizing the State.”
37.  Taş, “Turkey – from Tutelary to Delegative Democracy,” 780–3; also see Lancaster, “Ideology
and Hegemonic Rule.”
38.  CPJ, Annual Report 2012.
39.  Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism.
40.  White and Herzog, “Examining State Capacity.”
41.  Esen and Gümüşçü, “Rising Competitive Authoritarianism in Turkey,” 1587–94.
42.  “Turkey’s Main Opposition Accuses Erdogan of Blocking Coalition Efforts,” Reuters, August 3,
2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-politics/turkeys-main-opposition-accuses-
erdogan-of-blocking-coalition-efforts-idUSKCN0Q80TJ20150803
43.  Cizre, Leadership Gone Awry.
44.  “Turkey Election: Erdoğan and AKP Return to Power with Outright Majority,” The Guardian,
November 2, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/01/turkish-election-akp-
set-for-majority-with-90-of-vote-counted
45.  OSCE, Turkey, Constitutional Referendum.
46.  “Turkish Opposition Tries to Annul Referendum Result,” Politico, April 18, 2017, http://www.
politico.eu/article/turkish-opposition-tries-to-annul-referendum-result/
47.  Gençoğlu Onbaşi, “Gezi Park Protests,” 276.
48.  Günay and Dzihic, "Decoding the Authoritarian Code.”
49.  “Turkey Dismisses Corruption Case that Has Dogged PM Erdogan,” Reuters, May 2, 2014, http://
www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-corruption-idUSBREA410NE20140502
50.  Several international reports questioned that Gulen was against the coup. See “Gulen Did
not Order Turkey Coup, EU Spies Say,” EUObserver, January 17, 2017, https://euobserver.com/
foreign/136568; “‘No Hard Evidence’ Entire Gulen movt. Behind Turkey Coup, Only Some Members
– UK Report,” RT, March 25, 2017, https://www.rt.com/news/382287-gulen-uk-report-coup/
51.  Amnesty International, No End in Sight, 4.
52.  “Can the ‘She-Wolf’ Who Rejected the Harem Take On Sultan Erdogan?” Foreign Policy, April 24,
2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/24/can-the-she-wolf-who-rejected-the-harem-take-
on-sultan-erdogan-meral-aksener/
1826 i. yilMaZ aNd G. BaShiroV

53.  OSCE, Turkey, Constitutional Referendum.

54.  Erdmann and Engel, "Neopatrimonialism Reconsidered,” 105.
55.  Ilkhamov, “Neopatrimonialism, Interest Groups,” 66.
56.  Kalaycioğlu, "Turkish Democracy: Patronage versus Governance”; and Sunar “Populism and
Patronage.”
57.  Sayarı, “Clientelism and Patronage in Turkish Politics.”
58.  Somer, “Conquering versus Democratizing the State”; Kirdiş and Drhimeur, “The Rise of
Populism?”
59.  Sayarı, “Clientelism and Patronage in Turkish politics.”
60.  Buğra and Candas, “Change and Continuity,” 521.
61.  Somer, “Conquering versus Democratizing the State,” 10.
62.  Buğra and Keyder, “Turkish Welfare Regime in Transformation,” 224.
63.  Yabanci, “Populism as the Problem Child.”
64. While
  and Herzog, “Examining state capacity”; R. Kaya and Çakmur, “Politics and the Mass Media
in Turkey.”
65.  Yildirim, Muslim Democratic Parties, chapter 3.
66.  Corke et al., Democracy in Crisis.
67.  A. Kaya, “Islamisation of Turkey under the AKP Rule,” 13.
68. “Main
  Opposition CHP Will Continue Digging out Ruling AKP’s Corruption: Kılıçdaroğlu,” Hurriyet
Daily News, April 13, 2014, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/main-opposition-chp-will-continue-
digging-out-ruling-akps-corruption-kilicdaroglu.aspx?pageID=238&nID=64968&NewsCatID=338
69.  For an extended account of business–party relations under the AKP rule, see Buğra and
Savaskan, New Capitalism in Turkey.
70.  Muller, What is Populism?, 19–20.
71.  Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
72.  Taguieff, “Political Science Confronts Populism,” 32–5.
73.  Stanley, “Thin Ideology of Populism,” 103.
74.  Taggart, “Populism and Representative Politics,” 273.
75.  Roberts, “Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism,” 88.
76.  Muller, What is Populism?, 46.
77.  Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey, 214.
78.  Tuğal, “Islamism in Turkey.”
79.  Önis, “Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence,” 753.
80.  Önis, “Triumph of Conservative Globalism.”
81.  Günay and Dzihic, “Decoding the Authoritarian Code,”12.
82.  Kirdiş and Drhimeur, “The Rise of Populism?,” 606.
83.  Selcuk, “Strong Presidents and Weak Institutions.”
84.  Lancaster, “The Iron Law of Erdogan,” 1680–4; Yilmaz, Barton and Barry, “The Decline and
Resurgence,” 59–60.
85.  Dinçşahin, “A Symptomatic Analysis.”
86.  Yabanci, “Populism as the Problem Child”; see also Selcuk, “Strong Presidents and Weak
Institutions.”
87.  Gençoğlu Onbaşi, “Gezi Park Protests,” 278.
88.  Yilmaz, “Religious Freedom.”
89.  Akkoyunlu and Öktem, “Existential Insecurity,” 2016.
90.  “Conspiracy Theories Flourish after Turkey’s Failed Coup,” Reuters, July 27, 2016, http://www.
reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-conspiracy-idUSKCN1071XZ
91.  “Turkey Suspends High-Level Diplomatic Relations with Dutch,” CNN, March 14, 2017, http://
edition.cnn.com/2017/03/13/europe/turkey-demands-apology/index.html
92.  Ayoob, Many Faces of Political Islam, 2.
93.  Denoeux, “Forgotten Swamp: Navigating Political Islam,” 61.
94.  Wiktorowicz and Kaltenthaler, “Rationality of Radical Islam,” 298.
95.  Mufti, “Elite Bargains”; and Somer, “Conquering versus Democratizing the State.”
96.  Eligür, Mobilization of Political Islam.
 Third World QuarTerly 1827

97.  Saracoglu and Demirkol, “Nationalism and Foreign Policy,” 307.

98.  Yavuz, “Political Islam and the Welfare (Refah) Party,” 34.
99.  Lüküslü, “Creating a Pious Generation.”
100.  Erdemir and Kessler, “A Turkish TV Blockbuster Reveals Erdogan’s Conspiratorial, Anti-Semitic
Worldview.”
101.  Saracoglu and Demirkol, “Nationalism and Foreign Policy.”
102.  Somer, “Whither with Secularism.”
103.  Lüküslü, “Creating a Pious Generation.”
104.  Öztürk, “Turkey’s Diyanet under AKP Rule.”
105. Kandiyoti
  and Emanet, “Education as Battleground”; For the impact of these policies on Turkey’s
educational activities in Azerbaijan, see Bashirov, “Islamic discourses in Azerbaijan”, 37–38.
106.  “In Turkey’s New Curriculum, Ataturk, Darwin and Jihad Get Face-Lifts,” The New York Times,
September 17, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/world/europe/turkey-curriculum-
darwin-jihad.html
107.  Yilmaz, “Religious Freedom.”
108.  “Muslims and Christians at War in Europe, Turkey Warns, Lamenting ‘Clash between the Cross
and the Crescent,” Newsweek, March 17, 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/erdogan-islam-
christianity-battle-europe-569792
109.  Karakaya-Stump, “AKP, Sectarianism and the Alevis’ Struggle.”
110.  Lüküslü, “Creating a Pious Generation.”
111.  “Propaganda in Istanbul,” New York Times, March 10, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/
2017/03/10/opinion/sunday/propaganda-in-istanbul.html
112.  Öztürk, “Turkey’s Diyanet under AKP Rule.”
113.  Hayrettin Karaman, “Yolsuzluk başka hırsızlık başkadır,” Yeni Safak, December 21, 2014.
114.  Hayrettin Karaman, “Neyi Oyluyoruz?,” Yeni Safak, April 13, 2017.
115.  Hayrettin Karaman, “Laik düzende Müslümanca yaşamak,” Yeni Safak, July 3, 2016.

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