Between Old and New Turkey

In roughly the first decade of the century, the “conservative democratic” Justice and Development Party (AKP) government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan assumed the role of vanguard in the fight for New Turkey by making EU accession a centerpiece of its political platform, and through EU-inspired reforms, it achieved much progress. Those social groups who suffered from Kemalist authoritarianism, and other political, economic and cultural forces -- each with different characteristics and expectations -- lent support to Erdoğan's reforms. The New Turkey coalition achieved its broadest support in the 2010 referendum for constitutional amendments, with 58 percent voting in favor of them. The coalition included even those business groups that disliked the Islamic character of the AKP leadership but approved of its liberal economic orientation. And it included those soldiers who began to realize that the political role of the military served neither the interests of the country nor helped them perform their professional duties.

In roughly the second decade of the century, the objective of being New Turkey was shelved perhaps not by the entire AKP, but by Erdoğan and the close circle around him. Erdoğan, encouraged by garnering roughly half of the vote in the general elections of 2011 -- having defeated coup attempts of various sorts against his government -- and considering that the military had been put, at least in practice, under civilian control, turned to his personal agenda. He decided that in order to make Turkey one of the 10 largest economies in the world by the 100th anniversary of the republic in 2023, it was necessary to concentrate all power in his own hands and become as powerful as President Vladimir Putin in Russia.

He proposed a change of the governmental system to a “Turkish style presidency,” in which neither the legislature nor the judiciary would be able to get in his way. He began claiming that democracy basically means elections. He got critical voices in the mainstream media fired through his leverage over media barons dependent on his favor. He started to mend his ties with Old Turkey, assuming the position of an Islamic Kemalist. Fearing that popular support behind him was declining, he started pretending to be solving the Kurdish question, and adopted an Islamic populist discourse.

Erdoğan's third term in power increasingly brings to the mind Lord Acton's dictum, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

It looks like some people belonging to the close circle around Erdoğan, believing to have achieved limitless, uncontrolled power, have sunk into corruption of the shameless kind, as implied by the scandal that erupted last week. The polarizing strategy Erdoğan pursues has led to divisions in almost all segments of society. Unity is at stake even in his own party. The increasingly evident divergences of opinion with President Abdullah Gül, a co-founder of the AKP, and resignations and rising objections from within party ranks are the main indications of this.

The first major manifestations of the fact that the emerging New Turkey will not yield to Erdoğan's authoritarianism were the mass Gezi Park protests of the past summer. The second is the recent corruption probe, initiated by prosecutors and police officers committed to their professional duties. Recent events have led to realignments in alliances for Old as well as New Turkey, and to the sharpening of the clash between the two. What is taking place in Turkey today is thus not a “war of religion” as some foreign and local pundits claim, but an intensifying conflict between Old and New Turkey.