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This study examines the relationship between populism, nationalism and religion through evidence from Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule. The literature on the populism's rapport with nationalism has developed in isolation from the burgeoning theorization of populism-religion nexus. This study has a two-fold contribution. Theoretically, it advances a historical approach to deepen our understanding of the widespread appeal of contemporary populism. It argues that populism can capitalize on unique contextual fusions of religion and ethnic (secular) nationalism that originate from historical legacies and ideas of modern nation-building to (re)construct the antagonistic discourse dividing the society into two camps of 'the people' and 'the elites'. Empirically, by drawing upon discourse theory and empirical analysis of the AKP's public discourse, the study offers a nuanced approach to the AKP's much-debated stance on religion as an ideology versus instrument. Three areas are investigated to exemplify AKP's construction of populist dichotomy: a) ethnic and religious minorities, b) women, and c) youth. The analysis reveals that the AKP has built three different, and at times, contradictory articulations of 'people as underdogs', 'people as nation' and 'people as the ummah' against 'the secular elites', 'the enemies within' and 'the West', respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) is one of the longest ruling among contemporary populist radical right parties (PRR). For nearly two decades, the AKP has shown tremendous success in achieving electoral dominance and political control. This article argues that AKP's success lies in its ability to reconfigure the issue salience in Turkish politics by bringing the secular-conservative cleavage into the center of political competition. However, as this article shows, while the government's framing of conservative/religious values was initially populist, as the Party consolidated its power, populism became secondary to nativism. This nativist turn is characterized by an emphasis on the foreignness of "the elites" and is shaped by secularization of the public sphere and antiwesternism. Overall, AKP has not presented a fundamental opposition to the "establishment" but brought together many components of Turkey's institutional and cultural structure and radicalized patterns already present in earlier eras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains how the Turkish nation's composition has changed under Justice and Development Party rule. Turkish nationalism and Turkish national identity have dramatically changed since 2010, when the Kurdish Opening process was started by former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Syrian refugee crisis and the influx of Syrian refugees into Turkey created another change in Turkish national identity. Increasing religiosity in Turkey and the use of Islam by the Justice and Development Party created a flexible nation, where all Sunni Muslims can be considered members even though they are not ethnically Turkish. The author uses primary sources, such as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's speeches since 2010, to show how his discourse became more embracing of non-Turkish Muslim groups and created a dynastic understanding of nationalism based on religion rather than the idea of an ethnically homogenous, secular Turkish nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence of Nobel Prize-winning Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar as a scientific persona model. After receiving the Nobel Prize in 2015, Sancar's nationalistic tendencies and close relationship with incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) leaders opened up a wide range of discussions on how a scientist's relationship with politics should be intellectually interpreted. Focusing on the case of Aziz Sancar, this article examines the specific contextual conditions in which a scientist expresses his identity and how it is interpreted by the public. To this end, the aim of this work is to present an in-depth analysis of the discussions that took place in Ekşi Sözlük, a popular social media platform acting as an online forum in Turkey, and news from the national media and to scrutinize how a scientific persona is conceived in Turkey and how Aziz Sancar has been 'de-scienticized' in the heavy polarized Turkish political atmosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey has become a powerful example of rising ethno-religious nationalism since the ruling Justice and Development Party allied with the Nationalist Movement Party in 2016. Conceptualising the political ideology in power as Islamic nationalism, I expose ways in which this ideology is articulated in the education reform discourse of 'new Turkey' through a critical analysis of a foundational education reform report (the Report). The analysis shows various aspects of ethno-religious construction of education reform discourse through a focus on citizenship education (CE) partly because the prominent configuration of power relations manifests itself in considerations of CE. The analysis finds that the Report vilifies CE and proposes an alternative for it: social entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it presents Turkey's diverse population as a monolithic homogenous mass and makes no mention of democracy and human rights values. These findings call out the research community to investigate the negative implications of rising ultra-nationalism for CE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern Turkey's emergence was a nationalist struggle that aimed to cultivate youth as secular citizens. Almost a century later, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) attempts to re-model youth through a new ethno-religious nationalist project. This study argues that different from the secular Kemalist social engineering that dominated the state's youth policy for decades, the AKP relies on the intermediary agency of Islamist-conservative and government-oriented civil society to shape young generations and convey ethno-religious nationalism to youth. Seventeen government-oriented youth organizations illustrate the extent of the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) quest for a new national identity and cultural hegemony within the broader context of Turkey's steady decline into an authoritarian regime. The findings—based on original fieldwork conducted between October 2017–June 2019—demonstrate youth organizations' country-wide grassroots engagement in four categories: indoctrination, extra-curricular training, service provision in the education sector, and street activism and humanitarian work. Their self-defined goals, ideological roots and grassroots reach inject a new disciplinary ethos and statist values in youth towards shaping them as Muslim and nationalist 'ideal citizens'. The study offers insights on the societal aspects of authoritarian regime building and cautions that crafting 'successful' authoritarian regimes is not a one-way process that takes place only at the formal institutional level. A broad range of societal players and coalitions, including civil society, play a critical role in authoritarian regime building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the coming to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkish Muslim nationalism, a new national ideology promoted by the AKP, laid the foundations for a new Turkey and new Turks. Yeni Türkiye Yolunda (Towards a new Turkey) is the slogan used by the Erdoğan's party to support a more nationalist Turkey intertwined with its Ottoman and Islamic heritage. In this paper, I put forward the claim that a number of State-sponsored institutions, including new national museums, play a relevant role in shaping this new Turkey. The aim is to investigate how museums operate as instruments of national identity building by exhibiting a fictitious national past. The case study of the Kabatepe Simulation Centre and Museum will serve this purpose. By interviewing politicians, bureaucrats, and historians, I have researched the links between a ruling class that supports Turkish Muslim nationalism, and new public museums, which exhibits it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the foundation of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP) after a paradigm shift and its maintenance through retooling, which involves strategic positionings and tactical manoeuvres within its new paradigm. The positionings and manoeuvres that the party took vis-à-vis states of exception have been imperative for its survival in government. The main argument of the article is that the AKP retooled itself in the face of crises rather than going through a paradigmatic change, that is to say, resorting back to the Islamism of the party elite's origins, in Kuhnian terms. Through the fluidity of its discourse and the unrivalled charisma of its leader, the AKP has -multiple times- changed the center of gravity of its discourse and policies without having to disarticulate its founding political imaginary. Neither its recently increased nationalism nor authoritarianism was the result of an ideological orientation, just like the democratic reforms in its initial years. They were mostly by-products of survival efforts at power positioning, through retooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the uses and abuses of two terms, ‘White’ and ‘Black Turk’, which have been significant in the ways modern Turkish society and national identity have been defined and contested in recent decades. Initially emerging in social analysis in the 1990s, ‘White Turk’ was a metaphor for and critique of the class culture, subjectivity and worldviews of the ‘new middle classes’ in a period of rapid integration to neoliberalism and globalized capitalism. Over time, both White and Black Turks have come to be used as part of a politics of identity and a politics of authenticity to characterize who are seen as the ‘authentic self’ and inauthentic others of national identity and to assert different visions for the future of Turkish society. White Turk has been adopted as an identity by outspoken members of the media and business elite, whereas its binary opposite, Black Turk, has been appropriated by Islamist politicians of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a metaphor to characterize the marginalization and purported oppression of their conservative Muslim constituency. As White and Black Turks were adopted as self-proclaimed identities, they provided a basis for a culturalist depiction of Turkish society, contributing over time to an increasingly divisive politics. Even though the AKP initially used the reference to White and Black Turks to appeal to specific demands for inclusion, as it increased its grip on power, it also (hyper)politicized the terms to articulate nativist claims to authenticity. In recent years, this nativist populism has been used to justify increasing authoritarianism and to delegitimize belonging and political participation of those deemed inauthentic others of the body politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A revisionist tone that has created several crisis has become more pronounced in Turkish foreign policy. This trend has been particularly evident after 2010 when the AKP consolidated its power base, the military's tutelage over politics subsequently disappeared and the Arab Spring opened a new window of opportunity for Turkey in the Middle East. This has been surprising because de-militarization of political space was envisioned to produce more cooperative stances in the globalized post-Cold War world. This trend has occurred alongside what many would argue has been the AKP's authoritarian and Islamist agenda. Such an argument suggests that earlier the AKP had pragmatically used democratic values and integrationist policies to weaken the military, and then adopted Islamism in foreign policy and authoritarianism in domestic politics. This study aims to explore the common characteristics of the AKP in domestic and international realms while the extant paradigm tends to divide the AKP period into two categories, which are democratic/pro-western and authoritarian/Islamist. In order to suggest a common characteristic to identify the AKP's domestic and foreign policy in a holistic manner, this article applies the term ‘populism’ to describe a number of AKP policies and positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘Alevi openings’ launched in 2007 by the Justice and Development Party have been widely lauded as a historic and unprecedented step in the Turkish Republic. In contrast, this article places the ‘openings’ in a wider historical context, analyzing them in relation to processes of nation-building. Firstly, it is argued that the ‘openings’ marked continuity with previous interventions by state actors, including the military, dating back at least to the 1960s. Secondly, it is contended that these interventions should be regarded as a process of re-framing Alevism within a Turkish–Islamic framework, consigning it to ‘invisibility,’ rather than as democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the history and contemporary revival of male belly dancers -- zenne or köçk -- in Turkey and in cities with large Turkish populations, such as Berlin. What does the current revival of male belly dancing tell us about the relationship between modern ideologies of sex and gender and narratives of modernity as they have taken shape in Turkey? The zenne dancer embodies the contradictions of contemporary Turkish culture, which includes a variety of same-sex practices, along with sexual taxonomies that have developed in collusion with discourses of modernity. The revival of zenne dancing can be seen as part of a series of global transformations in the visibility of gay, lesbian, and trans people in popular culture and public discourse. However, it is also an unpredicted consequence of the Justice and Development Party's (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) purposeful revival and romanticization of Turkey's Ottoman past, which has been ahistorically remembered as more pious than the present. Re-emerging in the twenty-first century as an embodiment of competing definitions of sexuality and modernity in contemporary Turkey, precisely at a moment when Turkish national identity is a hotly contested issue, the zenne dancer is queer ghost, returning to haunt (and seduce) the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes how the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) understanding of new nationalism, or neo-Ottomanism, incorporates the logic of masculinist protection in its discourse. This necessitates a security-oriented state that firmly connects domestic politics with foreign policy. The concept of the logic of masculinist protection, borrowed from Iris Morrison Young, refers to the reinforcement of a gender hierarchy in politics, and signifies a paternalistic state charged with protecting a society identified with femininity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The argument of this paper is that the new foreign policy orientation of Turkey under the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government is a constitutive component of a new nationalist project, constructed and carried out by the AKP over the last decade. The article expounds the ways in which the AKP has reformulated the notions of nation, national history, homeland and national interest and demonstrates the role foreign policy has played in this reformulation. Our point of departure will be the patterns we have observed in the statements and political practices of the AKP government and its officials, particularly the incumbent minister of foreign affairs Ahmet Davutoğlu, whose book, Strategic Depth, presents a more systematic explanation of the major principles and assertions of AKP nationalism and foreign policy. We will also argue that after the Gezi protests in June 2013 this new conception of nation and nationalism has faced with a deep crisis, which has also exacerbated the problem of pursuing an ambitious foreign policy strategy in international arena. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the 2013 Gezi Park movement in Turkey that began with localised resistance to government plans to raze a historical public park in central Istanbul. The movement swiftly escalated into a national outcry that manifested itself in wider criticism of AKP (Justice and Development Party) policy. How did various protestors in Gezi Park comprehend and respond to the concerns raised by the movement? How did a local event trigger such a degree of national political activism among a host of different community actors in Turkey, and among those who are ordinarily ideologically and culturally opposed? Based on the findings of a qualitative study carried out in Gezi Park at the peak of the protests during June 2013, it is argued that certain patterns of revealed political disenfranchisement emerged alongside the wants and needs of marginalised Turks caught between conservatism and secularism, between localisation and globalisation, and between nationalism and majoritarianism. The theoretical emphasis of the paper is grounded in the data analysis, the aim being to present the major themes emerging from the range of responses from protesters situated in the park, and to provide a holistic perspective on them and the Gezi Park movement as seen from their specific standpoints. This study highlights how historical ethno-political and ethno-cultural distinctions can unfold to generate new urban social and political opportunities that are both interactive and transformative. Such mobilisation has implications for the future democratic and civil society potential of Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the prospects of Turkey moving toward authoritarian form of government under Turkish political party Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, referencing the country's political history and nationalism from 2002 through 2014. The Turkish government's response to the protests at Gezi Park in Taksim Square, Istanbul, Turkey in 2013 is discussed. The relationship between Islam and state in Turkey is also discussed.

This paper discusses the surge of neo-nationalism and conspiratorial thinking in tandem with the rise of the Turkish revisionist historiography highly critical of Turkish nationalism and its legacy in the 20th century in the 2000s. The paper also examines the demonization of these historiographical deviations by proponents of Kemalist nation-statism. Because these revisionists challenged nation-statist assumptions, such as the innocence of the Turkish nation and its self-victimization, their academic output was perceived as blasphemy against the common values of Turkish society, further fomenting neo-nationalist sentiment. Thus, the paper argues that the genesis of a revisionist historiography and the rising popularity of conspiracy theories among the public cannot be disassociated from each other.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of debates over the compatibility of Islam and democracy, their importance in the EL) candidate state of Turkey which has been led by the religious-based Justice and Development Party (JDP) since 2002, and the paucity of research examining liberal-democratic value change, we examine liberal-democratic value change and its sources in Turkey between 2000 and 2008. The results of our descriptive, factor, and multivariate analyses of European and World Values Survey data (2000, 2001, 2007, and 2008) indicate that despite Huntington's (1996) and Turkish secularists' pessimism, people in Turkey have not adopted more politically religious values during this time. However, personal expressions of religiosity are on the rise, and they are intertwined with politically religious values to some extent. People in Turkey have generally adopted less politically authoritarian values, but they are more supportive of military rule in 2008 than before the JDP came to power. Ethnic tolerance peaked in 2007 but declined below its 2001 level in 2008. While human development theory helps to explain these trends and values, the case of Turkey reveals that other, more political factors -such as nationalism -may counteract liberal-democratic value change. The results are suggestive of a political realignment in Turkey that transcends a secular-religious divide. They further suggest that Turkey is moving neither 'East' nor 'West'; rather, it is very much moving in its own direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article probes the transformation of Kemalism to a xenophobic nation-statism with a strong anti-western animus diluting its self-styled westernism and elitism in response to the rise of the reformist-Islamist ruling JDP and its patchy liberal rhetoric and pro-EU stance. The article points to the novel qualities of the Kemalism of the 2000s but also attests to its inherent anti-elitist, anti-liberal and anti-intellectual nature that reigned in the 1930s given that the Kemalist project in the inter-war period involved the denunciation of the Ottoman establishment with its elite and intelligentsia and its replacement with an intelligentsia of its own that is acquainted with anti-liberalism, anti-cosmopolitism and also anti-intellectualism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The article presents an overview of the Ottoman Empire's ethnic cleansing of its Armenians during the World War I era and notes the author's view that Turkey's current ruling Justice and Development Party government is unlikely to acknowledge the country's crimes against humanity. The development of Armenian nationalism in the Empire's Turkish Armenian region and the Armenian nationalists' escalating violence against Ottoman rule which led to the mass deportations and massacres are discussed. The article notes that many of the displaced Armenians were sold in the white slave market or forced to work at hard labor jobs with little compensation. The Young Turks regime, prosecuted for the atrocities after the war, was followed by the Turkish republic which renounced Ottoman imperialism.

This article analyzes the Kurdish issue in various aspects before the June 2011 elections. The main research questions include what constitutes the major grievances of the Kurds; how the ongoing conflict is framed as “Kurdish issue” versus a “terrorism problem” and how major political parties in Turkey approach the issue and its solution in their 2011 election manifestos and rallies. This article contributes the literature on the Kurdish issue in particular and Turkey's democratic consolidation in general by identifying the problems and political views of all relevant sides. Finally, based on both a historical and empirical analysis, the article reflects on the reasons why the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi and Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi have become the major players in addressing the Kurdish issue after the 2011 election. The findings are relevant for Turkish democratic consolidation in particular and the democratization literature in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers an analysis of basic trends in the post-1980 Turkish party system. How has the Turkish party system evolved during the last eight elections? How do these characteristics change with the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi)? Utilizing statistical methods informed by fieldwork conducted during the parliamentary elections of 2002, 2007, and 2011, the article suggests that Turkish elections exhibit unmistakable patterns of regionalization, which in turn have strongly contributed to the AKP's electoral ascendancy. Barring external shocks such as major economic crisis or leadership replacement, these regional patterns make it difficult for the opposition parties to effectively challenge the AKP. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses the gender policies of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—Justice and Development Party) government in Turkey. It is argued that AKP's period in government has been marked by the emergence of a new mode of patriarchy. The article aims at a tentative conceptualisation of this new mode of patriarchy in terms of neoliberal, nationalist and religious discourses in comparison with the already existing republican and liberal modes of patriarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The outcome of Turkey's June 2011 elections temporarily quelled – though by no means entirely put to rest – growing concern over the creeping autocratic tendencies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). To ensure that democracy remains durable, the AKP must now clearly demonstrate that it is willing to shun heavy-handed tactics and instead engage the opposition in a genuine dialog regarding important matters of constitutional change, especially those related to individual rights and identity issues. A slide toward autocracy has been an all-too-common pitfall in Turkish politics over the years. Should it so choose, the AKP is well poised to break the cycle at this critical juncture in Turkish politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses why Turkey has failed to propose an effective political solution of the Kurdish problem. It is argued that Turkey's failure to propose an effective political agenda is the main explanation of why Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan (PKK) insurgency has been rampant for so long. Turkey's commitment to militaristic methods worsened the Kurdish problem by creating deeper social problems. Furthermore, it is argued that the explanations tendered also point out the important factors that may affect the fate of any political agenda on the Kurdish problem, including that of the recent Kurdish initiative of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The AK Party's chronic 'political insecurity' may have passed a threshold as the ruling party resurfaces as an actor taking advantage of its pro-European Union sentiments to begin a 'grand negotiation' with Turkey's thus-far publicly shunned Kurdish leaders after decades of bloodshed. This new window of opportunity could not have emerged without the explosion of the Ergenekon incident, which has offered a persuasive critique of the closed, dark, intolerant and secret communities friendly with the military bureaucracy and state officials but insidiously devoted to destroying the government. In the post-Ergenekon era, the new democratic opening represents a significant departure from a military solution to the Kurdish issue which has blocked civilian imaginations by declaring the Kurdish identity demands as a security threat to the officially proscribed Turkish identity. The real issue at stake now for the AK Party government is a redefinition of the locus and space where the phenomenon of real political power takes place in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey is now more polarized than at any other time since the left-right violence that engulfed the country during the 1970s. As Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) have lurched from one crisis to another over the last two years, the domestic coalition that brought them to power has fractured. In an effort to satisfy different constituencies, AKP has jettisoned prudent reformism in favour of ad hoc policies. If its Western partners do not act, Turkey will drift away from the United States and Europe in the powerful undercurrents of populism, nationalism and authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traces the efforts of the Justice and Development Party to deal with the problems surrounding Turkey in relation to secularism and Turkish nationalism. Historical background of the country; Ethnic conflict in the country; Description of Islamic and secular trends in the country.