After coming to power in 2002, the AKP in Turkey took the country on a roller coaster from democratic reforms to authoritarian retreat. Starting off as a “conservative democratic” party with liberal tendencies, the AKP pivoted back to majoritarianism over the years. This chapter aims to make sense of this drastic shift and offers an account of the AKP’s swing from liberalism to electoralism. It discusses the AKP’s origins, its trajectory in government, and how it has taken a hegemonic direction despite its branding in its inception as a conservative party with an explicitly democratic agenda. To explain this transformation, the chapter identifies major forces inside the AKP, their diverging understandings of democracy, and describes how one wing prevailed over the other to take the party into a majoritarian direction. A key part of this process involves the rise of a dominant coalition under Tayyip Erdoğan’s leadership. His growing command over organizational resources weakened his rivals with more liberal democratic orientations. This chapter traces these processes and their political consequences for Turkish democracy, with specific focus on Erdoğan’s righteous majoritarianism.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this book, the erosion of democracy has become pervasive. Countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have seen the rise of executives with hegemonic aspirations. The threat of antisystemic populist outsiders has even spread to developed democracies in Europe and North America. In this chapter, I assess the theory outlined in the book in some of these cases. Doing so allows me to evaluate if, when, and how does the argument of this book work outside Colombia and Venezuela.

Chapter 6 discusses the origin and protracted development of capitalism in Turkey in the post-World War II period. I show how capitalist social relations began to penetrate the social fabric, and how the initial Kemalist project has been reinvented by different actors to contest and produce capitalism. In addition, the period after the 1950s witnessed the rise of a new capitalist class in provincial Anatolian towns. Pace the conventional interpretation, commercial groups of Anatolian towns organized in and through the Islamic National View Movement (NVM), neither supported an "artisan" or "statist" capitalism, nor was it simply an Islamic critique of the developing market society. Instead, the movement envisioned a novel political space as the foundation of a new capitalist industrialization strategy unencumbered by the spirit of earlier Republican policies. Although the NVM was unable to take control of the state from the 1970s to the 1990s, its conservative capitalist heritage was appropriated by the Justice and Development Party, which has led to an unprecedented consolidation and deepening of capitalist social relations in Turkey since the beginning of the new millennium.

This chapter discusses the Erdoğanist nation-building project, which aimed t to create its own desired citizen: Homo-Erdoğanistus. Erdoğanists openly express that they have a desired citizen creation project. However, they have a different name for it: Dindar Nesil, the pious generation. Erdoğan has consistently argued that it is the state’s duty to raise a religious generation. For at least the last decade, the AKP has been using many apparatuses of the state as well as the media, popular culture and Erdoğanist educational foundations to raise this generation, whichis not only religious but is also staunchly Erdoğanist. Homo Erdoğanistus emanates from Erdoğanism. Erdoğanist ideology and national identity, which is based on Islamism, majoritarianism, Muslim nationalism, authoritarianism, patrimonialism, personalism, the cult of Erdoğan, Ottomanist restorative nostalgia, Islamist myth-making, militarism, jihadism, glorification of martyrdom Islamist populism, civilisationism, anti-Westernism, resentfulness, vindictiveness, and anti-Western conspiracy theories. Thus, Homo Erdoğanistus citizens are under the influence of all these. Like the Kemalist relationship with Homo LASTus, Homo Erdoğanistus is the Erdoğanist regime’s favoured citizen who ascends to the critical positions of state and military bureaucracy and economic positions.

This chapter discusses the use of popular culture and the personality cult of Erdoğan in creating the desired citizens of Erdoğanism, the Homo Erdoğanistus. Media, entertainment and pop culture are used to raise the Erdoğanist generation. One of the influential tools of doing this is to manufacture and propagate the personality cult of Erdoğan via different narratives, acts, speeches, performances, emotional instances, movies and TV dramas. All these have been informed and guided by the Erdoğanist ideology. Also, via historical movies and dramas, socio-political reality is shaped to help the Erdoğanist political cause. This chapter discuss, first, Erdoğan’s personality cult and its propagation. Then it elaborates on Erdoğanist myth-making and the rewriting of history. This is followed by an analysis of how reality has been shaped by using movies and historical TV dramas. The chapter then focuses on Erdoğan’s open and direct support for these movies and dramas.

This chapter analyses the Diyanet’s Friday sermons delivered in the last two decades between January 2001 and July 2020. Attending Friday prayers is obligatory for Muslim adult males and, according to surveys, about 60 per cent of males attend Friday prayers. The state has always seen this as an adult education and indoctrination tool to propagate its religious doxa, the Diyanet Islam. To trace the change in the content and perspective of the sermons from pre-AKP times to the AKP 3.0 period, and also to investigate the worldview that is disseminated through these sermons, I have looked at topics and themes on ‘Love of Homeland’, ‘Turkish Nationalism, National Unity and Solidarity’, ‘Reconstructing History: From Nationalism to Islamist Populism’, ‘Disappearance of Atatürk’s Personality Cult’, ‘Conspiracies, Victimhood, and the Crusader West’, ‘Militarism and Sacrificing Life for Allah, Islam and Ummah’, andthe ‘Turkish Army’s Jihad’, Each of these are analysed in a separate section in this chapter. Each section starts with the last decade of Diyanet 1.0 (2001–2010); it then moves on to the Diyanet 2.0 period (2010–2020). The analysis shows that Diyanet Islam has significantly moved towards an Islamist, populist, Ottomanist with a restorative nostalgia and more intense resentment, ummatist, anti-Westernist, jihadist, conspiratorialist, and more militarist direction.

This chapter discusses the revival of Islamism as a counter-hegemonic paradigm in Turkey. After giving a brief definition of Islamism, it looks at the genealogy of Turkish Islamism, it looks at how the Kemalists put an end to Turkish Islamism, securitised and criminalised it. Then, the chapter summarises the several Turkish Islamist parties that were by the National Outlook Movement, after the closure of each party by the Kemalist constitutional court. After briefly evaluating National Outlook Islamism’s divisive, Islamist populist, anti-Western and conspiratorial rhetoric, the chapter proceeds to the emergence of AKP and consolidation of its own authoritarian regime. This chapter argues that there are three different versions of AKP. The first one’s (AKP 1.0) emergence can be traced back to 1997 when the Kemalists profoundly victimised and traumatised the Turkish Islamists once again after staging a coup. The AKP was established in 2001 as a Muslim Democrat party and until 2008 continued to democratise Turkey in line with the EU’s requirements. AKP 2.0 emerged in authoritarian drift times between 2008 and the Gezi events of mid-2013 when Erdoğan decided to crush the peaceful demonstrators with violence. AKP 3.0 is the full authoritarianist and Erdoğanist version of the AKP that started with the Gezi protests of mid-2013 and has continued until present.

This chapter elaborates on the state’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) under AKP rule. Even during the AKP’s democratisation and human rights reforms, the Diyanet remained untouched and the AKP kept the Diyanet under its direct control. This chapter shows that, along with the rising Islamist populism and Muslim nationalism in Turkish politics, the Diyanet has gradually embraced a populist Islamist and Muslim nationalist rhetoric, paving the way for the emergence of Diyanet Islam 2.0. Via its centrally prepared Friday sermons that are delivered in Turkey’s 90,000 mosques attended by60 per cent of Turkey's adult males, the Diyanet propagated its new version of Diyanet Islam 2.0. Thus, in the sermons, glorification of martyrdom, anti-Western conspiracy theories, existential threats posed to the Muslim nation and the ummah by external and internal enemies, politics of victimhood, reverence of military, ummah and jihad, and enthusiastic support of the Turkish military’s incursions to other countries and framing it as jihad have become prominent themes. Similar to the earlier version, Diyanet Islam 2.0 too has its own corresponding version of the tolerated citizen, Homo Diyanetus 2.0.The chapter concludes with the definition of Homo Diyanetus 2.0.

This chapter analyses how the state, under the rule of Erdoğanists, has been treating undesired citizen identity groups. In post-coup-attempt Turkey, the AKP has developed a staunchly populist narrative to divide the citizens of Turkey as factions of 'the people’ (or ‘the nation’) versus its out-groups: Kemalists, White Turks, Kurds, Alevis, Gülenists, leftists, liberals, etc. who are framed as citizen-enemies. All of these groups have been constructed as terrorists – internal enemies of the nation and pawns of Western powers that do not want Turkey to lead the Muslim world. The chapter starts with the most significant and oldest antagonists of Islamists – Erdoğanists – who arethe Kemalists and their desired citizens –the Homo LASTus – and also the non-Kemalist White Turks and secular elites who allegedly victimised Islamists in the past and who are allegedly stillplotting against them. Then, following the same order of the chapter on Kemalism’s undesired citizens, this chapter will discuss other undesired citizens of Erdoğanism: disloyal practising Muslims and Islamists; leftists, liberals, socialists; non-Muslims; Alevis; and disloyal Kurds.

This chapter investigates how the AKP has been very gradually de-Kemalising education and Islamising it at the same time. It explores how the AKP has been instrumentalising the national curriculum and compulsory and optional religious lessons at schools, Erdoğanism’s most-favoured schools, Imam Hatip Schools and Islamist educational foundations to create the Homo Erdoğanistus. The chapter starts with an analysis of the continuities and changes between the Kemalist and Erdoğanist national curriculums, showing how these to overlap to a great extent when it comes to the nation’s insecurities. The AKP has been using these insecurities for its desired citizen project too, and the education system has been undergoing profound changes that are intended to enable Erdoğanists to shape the worldview and national identity of the citizens.

The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria raised the prospect of a Turkish-led regional order, backed by Qatari economic power, and based upon the regional ideological co-dependencies of the AKP. At the same time, the renewed potential for a grand bargain between the United States and Iran held out the possibility that empowered Iranian reformists might substitute integration into Western economic and security frameworks for the Axis of Resistance. This chapter first examines the ways in which Turkey and Qatar sought to consolidate a new regional order based on alignment with Western-friendly Islamist governments. It then elaborates upon the counterrevolutionary forces within the region, emanating from both pro-Western and Axis of Resistance actors, that militated against the realisation of a new regional order. The final section of the chapter sketches the main features of a restored regional order based on authoritarian resurgence and sectarianised antagonisms across all pivotal powers in the region.

Moving from politics to economics, this chapter investigates the role of Islam in the success of an Islamic-based business association operating in Turkey. MÜSİAD, the Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association, was founded to bring together small- and medium-sized enterprises based in Anatolia who, because of their size and their lack of political connections, struggled to succeed in Turkey’s volatile, statist economy. Since its foundation, MÜSİAD seems to have helped these small businesses grow into “Anatolian Tigers,” apparently outpacing non-member firms. While existing theories of identity-based trade would suppose that MÜSİAD’s success rests in its ability to support a reputation mechanism among member firms or, alternatively, because of its new-found political connections to the AKP or privileged access to Islamic micro-credit, I find little empirical support for these hypotheses. Instead, using data at the firm level, I show that MÜSİAD firms succeed by relying on long-term “quasi-integrative” relationships among members, relationships which mimic the benefits of vertical integration enjoyed by larger firms. More specifically, this quasi-integration serves to protect MÜSİAD members during periods of economic volatility, although it proves to less efficient under more stable conditions, including during the period of AKP rule.

What can explain the rapid rise of Islamic politics in Turkey, a historically secular country? Many observers assume that the success and sustained popularity of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) reflects a religious resurgence in Turkey. But when this presumption is directly tested, evidence indicates that Turkish piety may actually be declining over time. This highlights the importance of statistical tests,leveraging variation across individuals, space, or time: they have the potential to overturn widely held assumptions and reopen key questions about the world around us. In finding no evidence of a religious resurgence in Turkey,an alternative explanation is needed. I introduce my trust-based theory of Islamic mobilization, explaining how references to Islam prime feelings of trust among those with a salient religious group identity, and how this group-based trust operates as an effective substitute for more generalized feelings of interpersonal trust, which are largely absent in Turkey and in many other Muslim countries. I contrast my trust-based theory with existing theories of Islamic-based politics and economics and preview the findings of the book, wherein I dismiss the existing explanations and offer support for mine.

If there is no evidence of a religious resurgence in Turkey, what can explain the rise and sustained success of Islamic-based parties there? To understand the popularity of Islamic parties, like the AKP, a broader view of the Turkish electoral system as warranted: alongside the rise of the AKP came a sharp decline in electoral volatility -- vote swings between parties from election to election -- and in the share of votes that were wasted, cast for parties that failed to secure a seat in a given district. I argue that these two trends are not coincidental but are both based on matters of trust: low levels of interpersonal trust makes it difficult for voters within districts to vote strategically and successfully coordinate their individual votes into meaningful outcomes; but this trust problem is effectively solved within religious voters, to the comparative advantage of Islamic parties. Moreover, the ability of religious voters to coordinate their support for Islamic parties, and to do so consistently, helps to make these parties an attractive target for strategic votes from distrusting, conservative voters, even if they are secular. Analysis of panel data from the Turkish case provides empirical support for both hypotheses.

Observable implications ofthree existing theories of the Islamic advantage -- grievances, faith, information -- are tested using a variety of data sources. Contrary to the expectations of grievance theory, individuals in the Muslim world appear to be more dissatisfied and less apathetic. Moreover, participation rates are lowest among the most aggrieved, much as they are elsewhere in the world. In contrast to what the faith-based theory expects, participation rates are significantly lower among individuals with the strongest religious beliefs. Further, the popularity of Islamic-based political and economic movements does not appear to follow trends in religiosity in the aggregate, neither across space nor across time. Instead, support for these movements appears to come from both the religious and the secular, in Turkey and across the Muslim world. Finally, there is little evidence that voters in Muslim countries are uninformed, generally, or better informed about Islamic-based parties, in particular. The lack of support for the all three existing theories reopens the puzzle of Islamic-based movements yet again.