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

Yilmaz, Ihsan

doi:10.55271/op0005

Cited by 22 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The AKP's first two tenures were dedicated to accomplishing these goals but, due to their complex nature and the party's failure of nuanced skills, this led to opposite results. By the end of 2010, the party found itself losing popular support (Yilmaz, 2021b). Even when the AKP was a democratising force during its first term, these Kemalist bureaucrats tried to maintain their tutelage over elected politicians and vehemently resisted the pro-EU reforms.…”

Section: The Case Of Erdoganmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the years, the list of 'others' continues to grow, encapsulating not just national but transnational 'threats.' These layers of crises are added to the AKP's narrative (Carol & Hofheinz, 2022;Yilmaz, 2021a;Yilmaz & Albayrak, 2021A;2021b;Yilmaz & Erturk, 2021). The sense of a looming crisis justifies the AKP's undemocratic actions and it sows deep divisions within a society shaped, in part, by Islamist civilisationalist populism.…”

Section: The Case Of Erdoganmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Manufacturing Civilisational Crises: Instrumentalisation of Anti-Western Conspiracy Theories for Populist Authoritarian Resilience in Turkey and Pakistan

Yilmaz¹,

Shakil²

2022

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This paper looks at the importance of ‘crisis events’ used by leaders employing populist civilisational populism in Muslim democracies. While populism is widely acknowledged and studied as part of early twentieth century political developments, various aspects remain unexplored. One feature is how populists make use of a crisis. While populists do benefit from social and political rifts, this paper goes a step further and argues that civilisationalist populists create imaginary and exaggerated ‘crises’ to sustain and prolong their relevance/position in power as well as justify their undemocratic actions. Using the case studies of Turkey (Recep Tayyip Erdogan) and Pakistan (Imran Khan) allows for a comparison to be drawn between two different leaders seeking to maintain power by using their position to either create civilizationalist crises or to frame ordinary crises as civilisational. The findings highlight that despite different political scenarios and outcomes, both these populist leaders gained political support by creating crises. We find that in most cases, populists exaggerate pre-existing insecurities and events to their benefit. The overblown claims and conspiratorial scenarios aid populists in creating a niche for their narratives by reaffirming their populist categorisation of societies. At the same time, the findings bring forth the troubling issues of the social-political cost of these Islamist civilisationalist populists.

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Section: The Case Of Erdoganmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Case Of Erdoganmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manufacturing Civilisational Crises: Instrumentalisation of Anti-Western Conspiracy Theories for Populist Authoritarian Resilience in Turkey and Pakistan

Yilmaz¹,

Shakil²

2022

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“…This hyper-politicization was accelerated after the appointment of the current Diyanet director, Ali Erbaş, in 2017 (Yilmaz and Erturk 2021). The literature has shown how like other contexts where populists made use of religion (Yilmaz and Morieson 2021;Yilmaz et al 2021b;Yilmaz et al 2021c), the Erdoganist AKP (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018), fused its populism and Islam (Yilmaz 2018;Yilmaz 2021a;Yilmaz 2021b;Yilmaz 2021c). Diyanet's Islamism and Islamist populism emerged and intensified in parallel with the AKP's increasing anti-Western 'civilisationist' (Brubaker 2017) rhetoric (Bashirov and Yılmaz 2020) and Islamist populism (Akalin 2016;Öztürk 2016;Öztürk and Sözeri 2018;Yucel 2019;Ongur 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instrumentalization of Religious Conspiracy Theories in Politics of Victimhood: Narrative of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs

Yilmaz

Albayrak

2021

Religions

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While victimhood has been studied from very different perspectives, the question how secular nation states have instrumentalised religion for the politics of victimhood has not been studied. This paper addresses this gap in the literature on victimhood by analysing the empirical case of Turkey. As is well known, the constitutionally secular Turkish state, first under the rule of the Kemalists and now Erdoganists, has been using the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) to propagate the state ideology to the faithful. This paper shows that the Turkish state has recently been using Islam to construct and disseminate a religious victimhood narrative, mainly based on conspiracy theories via the Diyanet’s Friday sermons. To do this, the article investigates the texts, such as the sermons produced by the Diyanet that are read verbatim, in every mosque in Turkey during Friday prayers that are attended by more than half of the adult male population. The paper contributes to the victimhood literature by showing how religion, i.e., Islam, has been instrumentalised by a secular state in the construction of an Islamist populist and civilisationist victimhood narrative. Further studies are needed to see if and to what extent the Islamist victimhood narrative of the Turkish state has been impactful on the mosque-goers in the country.

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Redefining Diyanet in the AKP Era

Yılmaz

Albayrak

2022

Palgrave Studies in Populisms

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

Cited by 22 publications

References 4 publications

Manufacturing Civilisational Crises: Instrumentalisation of Anti-Western Conspiracy Theories for Populist Authoritarian Resilience in Turkey and Pakistan

Manufacturing Civilisational Crises: Instrumentalisation of Anti-Western Conspiracy Theories for Populist Authoritarian Resilience in Turkey and Pakistan

Instrumentalization of Religious Conspiracy Theories in Politics of Victimhood: Narrative of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs

Redefining Diyanet in the AKP Era

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