Islamist Populist AKP and Turkey’s Shift Towards Authoritarianism

Turkey became a secular nation–state under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after the First World War. For decades, Islamist movements languished under authoritarian rule, unable to flourish under a system in which the state exercised absolute jurisdiction over religious matters through the Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet. Established by second-generation Islamists, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been Turkey's ruling party since 2002, and this chapter looks at the party's ascension to power and the rise of Islamism in the country since then. Here, we look at how the AKP’s expanding electoral popularity and the populist actions of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have pushed the party into an increasingly authoritarian populist direction. Turkey has evolved towards majoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism after winning several consecutive elections, making it also the dominant Islamist authority with control of the Diyanet. The Islamist populist administration, like the Kemalist secularist one before it, is using all of its power to socially engineer and shape society in its image.