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Theodoros Tsakiris

Abstract

The longevity of Erdoğan’s political dominance that allowed him to change the structure of the Turkish Republic in 2017-2018 cannot be explained only in political or economic terms, but also in terms of cultural identity and ideology. Erdoğan is the anti-Kemal. Erdoğan as the head of his Turkish Islamist revolution succeeded -almost bloodlessly and within a period of about 16 years- in overturning the Kemalist structure of power that had been built precisely to prevent the rise of an Islamist party to power. The fact that the dismantling of Kemalism took 16 years and was not achieved through a popular revolution, as was the case of Iran in 1978-1980, or an armed uprising, as was attempted in Egypt or Algeria between 1992-1997, does not mean that Erdoğan’s revolution was less Islamic or less revolutionary in scope and ambition.

Emphatically after 2016, Erdoğan completely dismantled the Kemalist ‘levers of power’ by replacing Kemalism with an Islamist-Ultranationalist ideology that is now embraced by the great majority of the Turkish political forces and inspired by the work of Necmettin Erbakan and, primarily, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek. Erdoğanism follows the same ideological imperatives and is fundamentally revisionist from a geostrategic point of view. The dissolution of Kemalism at home is also accompanied by the dynamic revision of the Treaty of Lausanne abroad, as all Turkish Islamists have historically desired and as it is already being applied on land and sea against Iraq, Syria, Cyprus, and Greece, with an increasing rate of audacity and aggression that is set to continue in the coming years.

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Keywords

Turkish Islamism, Erdoğan, Erdoğanism, Necmettin Erbakan, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Mavi Vatan

References
Section
Research Articles