For the past two decades, Turkey has been going through visible and deep-rooted political and societal cleavages between modernist and reactionary forces. Since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) took the presidency from the nationalist Kemalists in 2007, the country has been heading towards increasingly authoritarian, populist and Islamist rule. How did the party that initially presented itself as pro-European, democratic, pluralist and libertarian become the polarising one we know today?
Turning Point
Between 2001 and 2007, the AKP presented Turkey as the most celebrated model of a ‘moderate’ Muslim state on the basis of it having been a secular republic for many decades and a NATO member state. But soon after the presidential election in 2007, it adopted a markedly authoritarian and Islamic agenda. This was made possible by the party’s increasing electoral strength in both local and general elections.
The shift was met with some opposition, including lawsuits by members of the Kemalist-militarist elite who had held power for decades before the AKP’s electoral win. In March 2008, the chief public prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals petitioned for the Constitutional Court to close the AKP down and requested a ban on 71 politicians, including the then prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the president, Abdullah Gül. The argument was that, “The party has become a focus of anti-secular activities.”
