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From the outside, Turkey has the hallmarks of a consolidating authoritarian regime. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan exercises near absolute control through the parliamentary majority of his Justice and Development Party (AKP), his influence over a politicized judiciary, and a stranglehold on news media and political dissent. President Erdoğan was further granted expansive emergency powers by Turkish Parliament in the wake of the July 15, 2016, coup attempt. These factors have allowed Erdoğan and the AKP to rule by decree, sideline political rivals, and enact sweeping changes to the Turkish state, constitution, and economy.

Yet Erdoğan and the AKP still feel the need for fundamental democratic justification, even for majoritarian policies that ignore constitutional limits. For Erdoğan and many of his supporters, this democratic legitimacy seems to begin and end at the ballot box: A free press, independent judiciary, and other checks and balances are unnecessary frills that impede their ability to reshape the country. For all these autocratic tendencies, however, they must still win elections.¹

Initially, the AKP’s electoral strength was built on delivering improvements to Turkish voters’ daily lives. In the early years, this economic progress was accompanied by democratic reforms. From 2002 to at least 2007, greater political freedom served the party’s interests. After all, the secular establishment and the military fiercely resisted religious conservative influence through judicial action and periodic military coups. The AKP sought to dismantle this repressive state apparatus, so inclusive, emancipatory politics, press freedom, and outreach to Kurds and liberals made sense. Alongside this domestic opening, the AKP articulated a vision of a country freed from the confines of the Cold War and confidently engaging with the world. In 2009, Erdoğan declared, “We are not a country surrounded by enemies anymore.”²

But perhaps because of the AKP’s history of repression at the hands of the state, the party defined itself largely by what it opposed, conceiving of itself as a voice for the conservative, religious working class that the traditional elite had excluded and victimized. In Erdoğan, the party had a charismatic leader to drive this effort, a man who could appeal to many Turks in visceral terms, channeling their resentments and a sense that “it’s our turn” into electoral dominance.

Faced with the challenges of long-term incumbency and slowing economic growth, Erdoğan and the AKP came to rely on aggressive populist tactics to reinforce a fraying plurality. This was starkly illustrated in 2013, when the Gezi Park protests spiraled into nationwide demands for less state interference in people’s personal lives. Instead of negotiating, Erdoğan suppressed the demonstrations with force and declared them “an attempted coup,” saying they were orchestrated by shadowy international forces bent on tearing Turkey down; most remaining liberal supporters abandoned the AKP.³ The resumption of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) conflict two years later—likewise blamed on outside actors—drove away many Kurdish voters. With the loss of these voting blocs of the early AKP coalition, Erdoğan came to rely heavily on identity politics and “us versus them” rhetoric to rally the base and hold off political challenges. One of the overarching stories of Turkish politics in recent years has been the retrenchment of the AKP into the populist party of Erdoğan. Gradually, a party that defined itself as against state interference in society and culture began to orchestrate that dominance, advancing social conservatism in many walks of life.⁴

Beginning last year, the Center for American Progress set out to study Turkey’s rising nationalist sentiment and improve scholarly understanding of the dynamics of religion, ethnicity, history, grievance, class resentment, and insecurity that have fueled it. By learning more about the constituent parts of and justifications behind Turkey’s current brand of populist nationalism, CAP’s project aims to shed light on the domestic imperatives that could shape Turkey’s trajectory over the coming years—including its place in the Western cultural, political, and security architecture. Equally important, the story of how Erdoğan has used his popular politics of resentment to undermine constitutional and judicial checks may also prove helpful in understanding other cases of authoritarian populism around the world.

The primary questions animating this research included:

• What are the core components of modern Turkish nationalism? What is the size and shape of this constituency, and is it coherent?
• What are the beliefs driving its apparent resurgence?
• What, if anything, is new about this wave of nationalist sentiment? Is this just a replay of past efforts to unite religious Turks and the nationalist right?
• How much of this framework of belief is attached to Erdoğan personally—to what extent has Turkish nationalism become “Erdoğanism”?
• What does this transformation mean for Turkish politics moving forward and for relations with the United States and Europe?

To answer these questions, CAP worked with the polling firm Metropoll—chosen after a competitive selection process—to conduct an initial round of focus groups in Turkey in late September 2017. The focus groups included a group of older AKP voters, a group of younger AKP voters, a group of Republican People’s Party (CHP) voters, and a group of Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) voters.⁵ CAP used these groups to hone questions for a nationwide poll of Turkish citizens, fielded in November 2017.⁶ The resulting nationally representative survey shed light on the current state of Turkish politics and Turks’ self-perception. The results of the poll are summarized in the companion report “Is Turkey Experiencing a New Nationalism?”

This additional report presents further reflections and analyses based on observations from the focus groups; further cross-tabulation of the polling data; and the authors’ own research. Some of these points are more qualitative or anecdotal than empirical, representing a good faith effort to better understand Turkish nationalism; these points are naturally open to interpretation and should not necessarily be treated as established fact. As part of this effort, CAP has also asked a handful of expert authors to analyze the polling data independently and will publish their commentaries in the near future.

Taken as a whole, these sources and the polling data inform this report’s analytical exploration of modern Turkish nationalism and the country’s changing political landscape. The report also presents findings that highlight the contest to define and control the influential legacy of former President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the importance of the July 15 coup attempt against the government—two trends that stand to redefine Turkey’s national self-perception in enduring ways. Finally, the report looks at Turkey’s political outlook and party politics, as well as its approach to foreign policy, in order to better understand the tangible effects of these strains of nationalist thought.

Today, the more insular, statist AKP remains dominant, relying on widespread social conservative support, a fractured opposition, and profound political polarization. Having lost the support of most Kurds and liberals, Erdoğan has sought to define a new, cohesive concept of Turkish conservatism that satisfies the traditional religious base but appeals to sufficient numbers of nationalists as a means to consolidate control of the Turkish right.⁷ This “AKP base plus nationalist Turks” coalition is key to securing the 50 percent support needed to pass constitutional changes and win presidential elections—such as the simultaneous presidential and parliamentary votes scheduled for November 3, 2019—unless early elections are called.⁸ This electoral imperative is layered on top of long-standing ideological suspicion and hostility from the AKP and Erdoğan toward secularism, urban elites, and the West—views that the AKP shares with many right-of-center Turkish nationalists. It was a political marriage of convenience made possible by more fundamental changes to society and politics.

These views are not simply innate to the Turkish right, of course—outside events dramatically sharpened them. The spillover effects of the war in Syria, the resumption of the conflict with the PKK,⁹ and the July 15, 2016, coup attempt each represented serious threats to the state and the party—threats that produced a general right-wing “rally around the flag” effect and, to many nationalist and conservative Turks, confirmed their worst fears about Western intentions and the dubious loyalty of more cosmopolitan Turkish citizens and the political opposition. This nationalist pivot has further driven an ethnic disaggregation of Turkish politics, something against which the AKP had originally struggled. The alienation of conservative Kurds—previously a reliable AKP constituency—by Erdoğan’s tack to the nationalist right has sharpened ethnic divides, with little political crossover between Kurds and Turks.

The political alignment of religious conservatives and conservative Turkish nationalists may now be solidifying into something more permanent. Erdoğan’s populist pitch and sustained dominance of politics and the news media have shifted the parameters of Turkish politics and, to some extent, Turkey’s national self-perception. By tapping into the deep insecurity and legitimate concern many Turks felt in the face of profound socio-economic changes and foreign and domestic security threats—both real and imagined—the president has fused the deep sense of victimhood that many religious conservatives feel to the anti-Western, “go-it-alone” attitude of many traditional Turkish nationalists.

In 2014, Erdoğan said:

[O]nly we can solve our problems. I speak openly; foreigners love oil, gold, diamonds, and the cheap labor force of the Islamic world. They like the conflicts, fights and quarrels of the Middle East. Believe me, they don’t like us. They look like friends, but they want us dead, they like seeing our children die. How long will we stand that fact?¹⁰

The West is a convenient rhetorical foil against which Erdoğan seeks to define the struggle of the faithful and the “national will” (milli irade). This adversarial outlook often leads to the logical conclusion that Turkey must go its own way—which, in turn, frees its political leaders from the pesky constraints of Western-defined liberal democracy. Indeed, Erdoğan has blamed on the West nearly every calamity to befall Turkey in the past decade, including global interest rates; sluggish economic growth; the resumption of the PKK conflict; the rise of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria; the Islamic State; the Gezi Park protests; the December 2013 corruption allegations; the Iran-sanctions evasion case against Turkish Halkbank; and, indirectly, the July 15 coup attempt.¹¹ Furthermore, deep skepticism and even animosity for the West and the West’s intentions toward Turkey help unite Turkish religious conservatives and nationalists—crucial glue for the AKP’s electoral coalition.

But Erdoğan wants to permanently fuse his conservative religious base with the conservative nationalist constituency and purge this unified right-wing alliance of dissent. The July 15 coup attempt effectively served these pre-existing efforts. The coup—its anniversary now marked as “Martyrs and Democracy Day” and taught in primary school curricula¹²—is the defining political moment for a generation of Turks. Erdoğan has sought to channel the public’s outrage and confusion into a new, defensive national myth. Placing the coup attempt—and the public’s brave resistance—at the center of the national consciousness provides a flexible tool for targeting external and internal enemies and defining the national in-group as well as the so-called other. The ongoing purge of supposed Gülenists¹³ is an excellent example; the Gülenist label is an effective tool for maintaining party discipline and eliminating political rivals, while their alleged infiltration of state structures (with alleged outside backing) is another ideal populist foil.¹⁴

CAP’s analysis confirms much of this view of Turkey, a view roughly in line with what might be called a Washington consensus on Turkey, one shared by most political analysts studying the country. Much of Turkish society is deeply anxious and hostile toward the outside world; Erdoğan both reflects this widely held attitude and has helped shape it. The AKP constituency is split in its understanding of Turkishness—there is a small ethnic nationalist component; a large component whose nationalism is heavily influenced by religious conservatism; and an Islamic component, a significant part of which is described here as compassionate Islamists. The internal contradictions between these groups somewhat limit Erdoğan’s room for maneuvering.

While the AKP remains solidly behind Erdoğan, there is substantial criticism of him personally as well as generalized discontent. Young AKP supporters, in particular, often view Erdoğan as the “least bad option.”¹⁵ Erdoğan and the AKP are trying to shape July 15 into a founding myth of the New Turkey, but views on the coup attempt and its aftermath are deeply split along partisan lines. Atatürk remains by far the most influential touchstone for Turks of all political stripes, and support for his legacy is one of the few points of consensus in the body politic, although that legacy is often interpreted in very different ways.¹⁶ Turkey is currently in a contested process of redefining Atatürk’s legacy and using it to establish political legitimacy.

There is deep resentment—particularly among nationalist Turks—of the large presence of Syrian refugees, especially in major urban areas. Indeed, to the extent that there is meaningful right-wing dissent, it is grounded in anger about the government’s admirable efforts to aid the displaced Syrian population and the perception that this assistance is coming at the expense of support to Turkish citizens. Indeed, Syrian refugees are the only group with favorability ratings as low as those given to the United States by poll respondents. This is a potent political issue and a serious vulnerability for the AKP that, unfortunately, could be picked up by a right-wing challenger to Erdoğan, such as Meral Akşener, with potentially disastrous social and political effects. Those in the international community who value Turkey’s stability—particularly the European Union—should bear these potential effects in mind when crafting policy toward Turkey. In effect, the AKP government has been taking serious political risks to do the morally right thing and care for the Syrian refugee population; the government’s anger about a perceived lack of credit for this undertaking—particularly from the European Union—should therefore be contextualized.¹⁷

There may be a “Turkey First” nativist constituency of people angry about the influence of external powers over Turkey, Ankara’s inability to chart its own course, a perceived lack of domestic production (particularly of machinery and military hardware), and the visibility of Syrian refugees. These attitudes, however, are shared across the political spectrum and may not necessarily represent a coherent constituency; there are, of course, fascinating parallels here to the rise of right-wing populism in the United States and Europe. Erdoğan and the AKP’s nationalist pivot may be driven in part by the imperative to appeal to these currents.

Turkish citizens of all political stripes are deeply hostile toward and angry with the United States and the West. Indeed, conservative Turks (AKP and MHP respondents) favor a policy of greater confrontation toward the United States. Europe and Germany both poll very poorly, although many Turks also wish for their country to emulate Europe in many ways. Russia, on the other hand, is growing in popularity but remains deeply unpopular. Overall, Turkish public opinion broadly favors a go-it-alone approach in foreign policy and sees few friends abroad.

The polling data suggest that the AKP is not really an Islamist party, as it is frequently described.¹⁸ Its brand of conservative nationalism is certainly suffused in religion, but true Islamists—those seeking political implementation of Islamic law or principles in politics and the judiciary—comprise about 35 percent of the party.¹⁹ The preponderance of the AKP’s constituents are more traditional Turkish nationalists and social conservatives, leaning perhaps toward a more religious-dominant culture but more concerned with broader traditionalism and hierarchy. It is true that most AKP voters strongly agree with the statement that “Islam is central to my life and my conception of Turkish identity,” but this is an attitude shared by most Turks across party lines; it is not unique to the AKP. In fact, there is no difference between self-described “Conservatives/Religious” and “Nationalists” on this measure of religiosity nor any difference between AKP voters and MHP voters.

Furthermore, the majority of AKP voters do not appear to harbor political goals that could be categorized as Islamist and, in fact, support the secular roots of the republic, with Atatürk as its avatar. A strong majority of AKP voters agree that Turkey should be a secular state with no official religion: 61 percent agree, while just 34 percent disagree. More than 80 percent have a favorable view of Atatürk, despite his role in institutionalizing staunch secularism. Only 26 percent of AKP voters support “a sharia state,” and just 20 percent support the restoration of the caliphate.²⁰ Younger Turks—including AKP voters—were less likely to report that Islam is central to their life and their conception of Turkishness, indicating perhaps an erosion of this religious constituency and that Erdoğan’s avowed attempt to build a “pious generation” does not seem to be working.²¹

That said, there appears to be a 25 percent to 35 percent Islamist constituency within the AKP that is politically crucial for the party as well as Erdoğan. In addition to the attitudes above regarding support for “a sharia state” and the restoration of the caliphate, 34 percent of AKP voters disagree with the proposition that Turkey should be a secular state with no official religion, and 15 percent disagree strongly. Furthermore, one-third of AKP voters agree that Atatürk’s reforms are under assault today but still support the party in power—the party that, one assumes, they consider responsible for that assault, although this causal relationship cannot be fully established by the survey. Some members of this last group might, of course, be pleased that Atatürk’s reforms are under assault.

A meaningful minority of the AKP might be categorized as compassionate Islamists, for whom Turkey’s care for Syrian refugees—and wider humanitarian work supporting the umma, or global community of Islam—is an important source of national pride. While most voters agreed strongly that, “Turkey spends too much time and money caring for refugees,” AKP voters were twice as likely to disagree with that proposition.²² Likewise, AKP voters were more likely to agree with the statement that “immigrants and refugees in Turkey have much to contribute to Turkish society and deserve our support” than other voters. One focus group participant captured this strain of opinion, saying, “[W]e are helping Syrians, but many people think we shouldn’t as they are not Turkish; I don’t approve of this—we should see them as humans … It is wrong to think that we should only help people if they are Turkish.”²³ Still, this constituency is a distinct minority, even within the AKP. Overall, 77 percent of AKP voters agreed that Turkey spends too much money on refugees, and 47 percent strongly agreed. These attitudes came through clearly in the focus groups with statements such as, “I feel like a stranger in my own country,” or “even the signs in the supermarkets are in Arabic—in Fatih, I feel like I don’t live in Turkey anymore.”

Erdoğan and the AKP may see some political warning signs with this group of compassionate Islamists, given Erdoğan’s tack toward the nationalist right. Policy shifts such as the reduction of support for Sunni rebels in Syria, rapprochement with Israel, and public spats with religious charities such as İHH may have eroded support among this group.²⁴ But Erdoğan has also taken steps in a likely effort to please this subset of his constituency, such as his strong stand against the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the widespread encouragement of imam hatip religious vocational schools. (For an in-depth resource on the subject of religious education, see the 2015 CAP report, “Re-Educating Turkey.”²⁵) These latter changes, however, may in turn anger less religious but still conservative Turks who support secularism and are skeptical of official state religion; indeed, quality of education emerged as a key complaint in the focus groups, even among AKP supporters. These issues illustrate the difficulty of Erdoğan’s political balancing act between conservative nationalists and religious conservatives within his party.

There seems to also be a generational gap among AKP supporters and, particularly, greater discontent among younger voters. Younger respondents were consistently more critical of both Erdoğan personally and the AKP overall and gave lower marks to the president on his job performance. However, young voters still regard Erdoğan more favorably than any other active political figure, as do all other age brackets. Anecdotal evidence from the focus groups further suggests that the younger AKP cohort holds more heterodox opinions and frequently views Erdoğan as the “best of the bad options.” Erdoğan is the only political figure many young voters can remember and may face the electoral fatigue associated with representing the political establishment at a time of discord, sluggish economic growth, and persistently high youth unemployment.²⁶ Older AKP voters, meanwhile, often referred to Erdoğan’s past achievements in describing their support for him, saying, for example, “[I]n the 1980s my parents could not find water, there was trash everywhere and lines to get food—he came just when we needed him.”

There, likewise, appears to be a gender gap within the party; AKP women were significantly harsher in their views of political opponents and unwavering in their support for Erdoğan. Indeed, women AKP voters consistently held more stringent nationalist views across a range of questions in the poll. For some AKP women, this may have to do with spatial realities of their lives—many respondents were housewives or reported spending much of their time at home, often watching television, where Erdoğan is ubiquitous. Many AKP women also focused on education and lamented their prior exclusion from universities based on the headscarf ban, which remains a potent political talking point and lingering source of resentment for AKP women years after the ban was lifted—and a source of credit for Erdoğan among this constituency.²⁷ One AKP woman voter said she “achieved [her] freedom thanks to Erdoğan’s stand on the headscarf issue.” 

The Turkish people’s deep sense of insecurity and disorientation in the wake of rapid modernization came through clearly in both the focus groups and the polling data. This is not a new phenomenon, but respondents and participants overwhelmingly shared the premise that Turkey is surrounded by enemies and in constant danger from foreign and domestic threats. Analysts tend to pay lip service to the country’s history of near-disintegration following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but this outlook is deeply engrained and powerful—the success of Erdoğan’s rhetoric of conspiracy and threat makes perfect sense in this context. And, of course, the country has endured years of terrorist attacks, domestic insurgency, political chaos, and, most recently, a coup attempt. For some more nationalist participants, the twist on this sense of insecurity—perhaps a reflection of the nationalist self-perception of Turkey as a strong, martial nation—was often a variation on the idea that Turkey’s enemies “want to divide us because they fear our strength.”²⁸

Indeed, the response from right-wing Turks to this siege mentality was to lash out and/or advocate for a go-it-alone approach. This was visible in what seemed to be a strain of “Turkey First” political thought in the survey responses, in which mostly male nationalists advocated for nativism, increased domestic production, and reduced immigration. The parallels to the United States were clear—MHP men in particular, but also some older AKP and even CHP voters, lamented the supposed loss of Turkey’s domestic production, often expressing feelings such as “we used to make airplanes, now we’re dependent on others.” The blame for this loss of economic independence often fell on outside forces—frequently Jews, global powers, or the shadowy “interest rate lobby” that Erdoğan so frequently references.²⁹

The Syrian refugee issue

Across political parties, this nativist strain was intertwined with deep anger about the presence of Syrian refugees. This anger is linked to the economic anxiety described above, with much of the hostility toward Syrian immigrants—and other Arab immigrants as well as Afghans—focused on their presence in the cities, where they are perceived to be begging, undercutting wages, raising rents, and collecting state benefits such as healthcare. Indeed, the polling showed that the poorest respondents were the most hostile toward refugees. In this vein, as reported anecdotally elsewhere, Kurdish attitudes toward the Syrians were among the harshest, perhaps reflecting competition for low-wage jobs often occupied by Kurds in many big cities and border areas. Previous polls have uncovered similar economic anxiety aimed at refugees, focusing on fears of unemployment, begging, lower wages, and taxes.