Turkey’s Future Direction Under Erdogan’s Regime

Abstract

Gülen and his sympathizers publicly supported the AKP at the referendum on September 12, 2010, for this removed impunity for coup perpetrators. Through the reforms which were accepted in the referendum, the military tutelage was neutralized. Erdogan and the AKP secured the popular and institutional support through this referendum to implement its political agenda. After 2011, by gaining confidence in its power base, the AKP shifted its orientation to an authoritarian style. In particular, the AKP broke with three main tenets; market-driven economics, Kurdish recognition, and the EU standards. Erdogan’s authoritarian attitude greatly blemished the AKP’s previous achievements. The erosion of the state’s constitutional order changed Turkey into an authoritarian, unpredictable, and unreliable state. With the election of Erdogan as president in 2018, the new Turkey project has commenced. This is a project which aims to conquer the Turkish state and establish the sovereignty of political Islamists. This is a restoration process that the glorious Ottoman Islamic sovereignty will be able to defeat the secular state. A new Turkey is an idea that under the rule of political Islamists and the caliph Erdogan, the entire Middle East will be guided out of the 100 years of western imperialist rule. The idea of uniting Muslims under the leadership of the caliph Erdogan is one of the main goals of the Political Islamists of Turkey. They hope that by building Islamic solidarity, Turkey could be the leader of Muslims all over the world. The current AKP ideology can be named as giving all the power to Erdogan and standing with him when establishing the new Turkey. Lastly, this chapter explains how Political Islamists of Turkey (the AKP) have failed to uphold justice, democracy, and human rights after winning elections successively. It also illustrates that the AKP government applied the state of emergency decree against all opponents and violated many basic rights in various fields.