Çınar, Menderes. “From Moderation to De-Moderation: Democratic Backsliding of the AKP in Turkey”. In The Politics of Islamism, edited by John L. Esposito, Lily Zubaidah Rahim, and Naser Ghobadzadeh, 127–157. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018.

Çınar, Menderes. “From Moderation to De-Moderation: Democratic Backsliding of the AKP in Turkey”. In The Politics of Islamism, edited by John L. Esposito, Lily Zubaidah Rahim, and Naser Ghobadzadeh, 127–157. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018.

• The Justice and Development Party [AKP] was founded in 2001 by younger members of the National Outlook Movement, an Islamist group. It won a massive majority in the 2002 parliamentary elections, has been in government ever since, and has withstood both temporary closure by the Constitutional Court and an attempted military coup (127-128).
• The AKP is the only party in Turkish democracy to have ruled for more than 10 years without having the military successfully intervene in government (128).
• Between 2001 and 2010, the AKP used moderate rhetoric and spoke about the reconciliation of Islam and liberal democracy. It spoke as a champion for liberal democracy against the history of military rule, and used its anti-authoritarian credential in political battles against the military (129).
• After winning several major political battles against the military establishment, beginning in the 2011 elections, the AKP dropped many of its rhetoric commitments to liberal democracy. It refused to dismantle many anti-democratic institutions in Turkish politics and established show trials for its political opponents in the military. It attacked secularism and those who deviated from Muslim social norms (129-130).
• After a protest against the destruction of Gezi Park in Istanbul transformed into national anti-government protests in 2013, the AKP government cracked down with force and refused to give in to any demands. It has claimed that both the Gezi Park protests and accusations of corruption are calculated to weaken Turkey. It has used this justification to introduce greater restrictions on freedom of the press and judiciary (130-131).
• Since 2010, the AKP has tried to redefine Turkish democracy by arguing that each country has a different version of democracy and that Turkish democracy must then look different from Western democracies. This rationale has been used to justify the termination of liberal rights and increased authoritarianism on the basis of the AKP's electoral majority (131-132).
• Political Islam in Turkey has primarily been a political tool to defend the interests of conservative Muslims from the secularist Turkish state, not as a transformative ideology. Islamism in Turkey has also always had strong nationalist overtones, having not emerged from the same pan-Islamism or Ottoman intellectual milieu as other Islamist movements (133).
• Islamist did win power in Turkey in the mid-1990s, but were forced out without completing any of their campaign promises because of pressure from the military. The Islamist government was exclusionary and alienated its potential allies, causing the entire state system to turn on it for threatening secular lifestyles (133-134).
• The young Islamism who would go on to found the AKP learned from the failure of the Islamist government of the 1990s. The believed that the previous government had fallen because it had been too aggressive in challenging the secular order. Instead, it would try to underplay its Islamist politics in favor of general right-wing view while undermining the legitimacy of the Kemalist conservatives by arguing they were anti-democratic (134-135).
• The adoption of pro-democracy rhetoric and a friendly stance towards the West was very popular, since it captured popular discontent with the Kemalist establishment. It also attacked the core of the Kemalists' legitimacy -- their claim to be Westernizing Turkey -- by arguing that they had retarded this process by restricting democracy (135).
• The AKP was able to be so moderate and liberal while maintaining legitimacy because its stance matched that of a class of pious businessmen with pro-market views and because there were no other Islamist parties, allowing the AKP to dilute Islamism as much as it wanted without losing out to Islamist competitors (135-136).
• The AKP moved strongly against the democratic institutions of Turkey and railed against liberal limits on its power in government because it had grown out of opposition to the Kemalist regime and associated all the political institutions of Turkey with this order. Thus, to the AKP, all institutions of the Turkish government were illegitimate tools of Kemalism (136).
• Since becoming the head of the AKP in 2003, Recep Erdogan has turned the party to a tool of his own power and emphasized his personal political identity. His personal leadership of the AKP has diminished the party's ability to accept opposition (137, 139, 151).
• After its victory in 2002, the AKP decided to concentrate more power in the hands of party leaders, diminishing the extent of intra-party democracy. Mr. Erdogan tended to equate intra-party disagreements with disunity and weakness, leading him to take steps against it. This movement was particularly orchestrated against the far-right Islamist edge of the party, which has seen being too extreme (137-138).
• Mr. Erdogan considers opposition to be against the interest of national union and thus disloyal. His view of himself as a national leader, not a factional one, has led him to attack the opposition. These personal tendencies have impacted the AKP's uncompromising stance on political opposition and criticism (137).
• Recep Erdogan began to develop a number of vague political stances, like 'civilizational restoration' or 'new Turkey', that existed outside of party policies. This created a political force around only him, and to which the AKP was increasingly tied. The policies of the AKP are now increasingly determined by Mr. Erdogan without reference to party ideology. Leaving this situation would impose electoral costs upon rogue AKP members, as their own policy points are now longer popularized (139).
• Mr. Erdogan has defined all attacks on his rule as tantamount to threatening a military coup, forcing an extremism into political discourse. This has polarized Turkish politics and decimated the liberal media environment. Since he views himself as the representative of Turkey, all who disagree with him are painted as traitors (139-141).
• The AKP has sought to eliminate the potential threats to its domination of Turkish politics. It merged with the HAS Party after recruiting its leader, Numan Kurtulmuş, thus eliminating its only major center-right and Islamist rival. It then sought to punish those who don't support Mr. Erdogan, not only those who oppose him, created an environment of fear and forcing public institutions to pick sides (140).
• Recep Erdogan continued to dominate the AKP after being elected to the non-partisan office of president in 2014, as he feared the AKP disparaging him and the AKP did not want to lose the electoral advantages of association with Erdogan (141-142).
• Mr. Erdogan intervened in AKP affairs to prevent Ahmet Davutoglu from developing an independent base of power as Prime Minister, often publically mocking and humiliating Mr. Davutoglu to discredit him politically. Mr. Erdogan remained intimately involved in selected the Turkish Cabinet. He then organized a referendum which empowered the presidency, given him expanded powers vis-a-vis parliament (142).
• Mr. Erdogan's presidential ambitions were unpopular in much of Turkey and cost the AKP politically, as they worse in 2015 than in any previous elections. Rather than accepting coalition with the Kemalist CHP and the presence of the Kurdish HDP in parliament, Erdogan demanded that new elections take place. The AKP complied and new elections were scheduled for November 2015 after the AKP refused to enter coalition talks (142-143).
• The potential for a coalition government was scuttled by Mr. Erdogan's abandonment of the peace process with the Kurds, using the election to denounce the HDP as the electoral wing of the PKK and as dangerous radicals threatening Turkey (143).
• The AKP won the November 2015 elections, at least partially from its demonization of the HDP and the Kurds, and established a majority government. Mr. Erdogan talked less about his plans for the presidency during these campaigns, allowing Mr. Davutoglu to play a larger role. In May 2016, Mr. Davutoglu was replaced as Prime Minister with Binali Yıldırım (143).
• The opposition, from 2002 onwards, rejected the legitimacy of the AKP on the basis that it was Islamist and therefore illegitimate and undemocratic. The opposition denied the legitimacy of any of the AKP's criticisms of Turkish democracy, while actively attempting to subvert the AKP through undemocratic means, including the military (144).
• This behavior only convinced the AKP that the existing state institutions were illegitimate and that compromise with the opposition was pointless. The extreme opposition to the AKP justified and confirmed beliefs within the party that all opposition members would endorse a military coup or other extra-legal means of removing the AKP from power (144).
• Liberal politicians and public figures originally supported the AKP in its struggles against the military, but refused to support it when it tried to overturn bans on hijabs at universities in 2008. This turned the AKP against the liberals as well, who it denounced as being uninterested in protecting the rights of conservative Muslims. It has since viewed the entire opposition as essentially opposed to Islamism (144-145).
• The author rejects the idea that the AKP never had any democratic potential or was only pretending to be democratic to aid a conspiracy. Nor does the author accept the notion that the semi-democratic political environment of Turkey caused the AKP to become undemocratic. Neither of these explanations allows for the political agency of the AKP and its members (145).
• The AKP has become less democratic because it responded to the fierce, uncompromising, and unprincipled opposition of the secular opposition by becoming less compromising and more firm in its denunciation of all opposition forces. This has created a rift in Turkish politics, raising the stakes and curtailing democracy (145-146).
• The AKP's conception of its Islamist identity fits well with this essentialist view of the secular opposition. It views Turkey as a fundamentally Muslim country and believes that the secular and Westernized identity is artificial and runs counter to the genuine and authentic Muslim nationalism of Turkey. It is thus the force of 'real Turkey' against the conniving secular elite (146).
• Chances of democratization were limited by the AKP's characterization of secularism as a tool of Kemalist authoritarianism. Instead of imagining the possibility of a secular democracy, the AKP views secularism as inherently an authoritarian tools imposed. It thus sought to erode secularism as part of its democratization process (146-147).
• Turkey began to turn away from the norms of Western liberal political discourse during the continued failure of its government to acquire EU membership. This failure supported Mr. Erdogan's arguments about the irreconcilability of Turkey with the West. This allowed Mr. Erdogan and the AKP to dismiss standards of democracy as Western norms not applicable in Turkey and justify their own increasingly authoritarian behavior (147-148).
• This view was sharpened by the behavior of EU countries towards Turkish membership. France and Germany both rejected Turkish membership on the grounds that it was not and could not be culturally European. The European Court on Human Rights then upheld the Turkish ban on hijabs at universities, adding weight to the argument that Islamism could not be reconciled with Western values and secularism (148).
• Under the AKP, Turkey has increased its commercial and political presence across the Middle East, taking advantage of the general popularity of Recep Erdogan in the Arab world and prestige granted by Turkish support of the Palestinians (148).
• The Arab Spring forced the AKP into a difficult position, because it didn't necessarily want to support many of the Islamist movements and most Arab Islamists viewed the AKP as illegitimate and not sufficiently Muslim (149). It attempted to avoid these discussions by taking a more active role in championing the Arab Spring and establishing Turkey's position as the Islamist leader in the Middle East on the claim that it shared a culture with these countries separate and distinct from that of the West (149-150).