The Decline and Resurgence of Turkish Islamism: The Story of Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP

Abstract

ledge and its as soon d profits without the ain investigation also entation in its current narrative technique., period e entry into force and art of the literary porUniversity, 2 Pei-Ning University, 2 Pei-Ning er.This work is ives 4.0 License. Research Article Open AccessIhsan Yilmaz*, Greg Barton, James Barry Abstract: For decades, Turkish Islamists have failed to attract the votes of large sections of society and remained marginal. As a result of this failure to come to power, and due to domestic and international constraints and windows of opportunities, they have declared that they have jettisoned Islamism. Many Turkish Muslims whose religious disposition was shaped by the pluralistic urban Ottoman experience and small-town Anatolian traditionalism, and by the contesting currents of cosmopolitan pluralism and rural social conservatism, voted in favour of these former Islamists who have become "Muslim Democrats". This paper elaborates on the genealogy of Turkish Islamists and their political trajectories and argues that when the forces and constraints of domestic and external social, political and economic conditions disappeared and the opportunities derived from being Muslim Democrats no longer existed, the former Islamists easily returned to their original ideology, showing that despite assertions to the contrary their respect for democracy and pluralism had not truly been internalised. This paper also aims to demonstrate that similar to other authoritarian populists, Erdoganists perceive the state and its leader as more important than anything else and as being above everything else, which has culminated in a personality cult and sanctification of the state. As long as Turkey's economy continued to boom, almost everyone was happy that Turkey could readily market the "Muslim Democrats" story to the whole world for a long period as a major success story, or as an "exemplary Muslim country" or "model". Yet, Middle Eastern elites and Western forces got carried away and learnt the hard way just how naive their view was in perhaps the first great transformation movement of the twenty-first century -the Arab Spring. Likewise, the Turkish Spring turned all too quickly towards autumn and then winter.

A Systematic Literature Review of Populism, Religion and Emotions

“…For example, must religious populism always be religiously exclusivist? Yilmaz et al (2017) have used Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a case study to explore this question where the merger between religion and liberal democratic values is used by the populist party to survive and grow in an inhospitable environment, where religion was previously not tolerated in politics. They suggest the APK's bid to pose as 'Muslim Democrats' was intended to be short-lived, and discuss the political, social and economic external and internal factors that led the party to disengage with Islamist populism, only to revert back to religious populism with greater zeal.…”

The AKP’s Authoritarian, Islamist Populism: Carving out a New Turkey

“…These groups were institutionally discriminated against or denied recognition, all in an effort to form a singular Turkish identity. This would be an ideal citizen, the secularized Sunni Turk (Yilmaz, Barton & Barry, 2017).…”

“…The 2010 referendum limited the military's power and also paved way for more political control over the judiciary. It also financially benefitted the pseudo-capitalist AKP by allowing businesspeople with tax debts to go overseas (Yilmaz, Barton & Barry, 2017;Şahin & Hayirali, 2010). Essentiality, "the others" were defeated in favour of "the people."…”

Toward Islam Through Political Parties, Ideology, and Democracy: A Discourse Analysis on Turkey’s AK Party, Tunisian Ennahda, and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami

“…Many scholars from both Western and non-Western countries argue and attach the label 'mainstream Islamist,' 'moderate conservative,' 'conservative democracy,' 'Muslim democrats,' post-Islamist and emerging 'liberal Islamic parties' to Islamic values-oriented political parties, endorsed with secular and democratic values such as Turkey's 'AK Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, the Justice and Development Party), the Tunisian Harakat Ennahda (Renaissance Movement) and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI)' (Bayat 2007;Bokhari and Senzai 2013;Islam, Bingol, and Nyadera 2020;Islam, Onder, and Nyadera 2020;Kosebalaban 2011: 8;Nyadera and Islam 2020a;Özbudun 2006: 543-557;Yilmaz et al 2017).…”