Is Turkey's political Islam experiment coming to an end?

Clear political cycles

Turkish history shows clear cycles in this regard.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Ataturk Party ruled with a combination of nationalist modernism and strict secularism, challenging the remnants of the Ottoman era.

However, in the early 1950s, they lost power to the Democrat Party led by Adnan Menderes, who was implicitly allied with conservative rural religious currents. Menderes continued to rule throughout the 1950s, relying on his legacy of confronting the dominance of the urban coastal population and elites.

However, in the early 1960s, with an increase in rural migration to the cities and the Cold War at its peak, a wave of nationalist-leftist parties associated with labour unions emerged.

This wave subsided in the early 1970s, giving way to centre-right parties represented by Presidents Suleyman Demirel and Turgut Ozal — who remained in power throughout the 1970s and 1980s, benefiting from the hostility of the military and the deep state towards those leftist-leaning parties.

This continued until the emergence of ruling tripartite alliances in the 1990s, after which political Islam, represented by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and led by President Erdogan, became the sole ruler of the country.

Unfulfilled promises

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) emerged as a movement founded by a group of young politicians who came from several conservative Turkish parties, primarily the Welfare Party.

Since its unexpected appearance on the Turkish political stage in 2001, AKP has presented itself as a movement with a comprehensive political project based on three foundations: sustainable economic development, resolving the Kurdish issue, and meeting the necessary criteria for entering the European Union.

AKP's dedication to these foundations led to its popularity, winning in all election rounds for two successive decades. However, according to AKP's opponents, Erdogan's compulsive desire to remain in power hurt the party, which ultimately deviated from these foundations by implementing policies and programmes that negated its original platform. 

How the 1990s economic crisis gave rise to the AKP

The AKP rose to power after a decade and a half of economic chaos, which persisted after the departure of economic reformer Turgut Ozal from his post as prime minister in 1989 until the AKP won the elections in 2003.

During those years, coalition governments failed to put forward any sustainable economic programmes or agree on any developmental plans, resulting in the largest inflation experienced in the country's history, rising unemployment and public debt, and the spread of corruption.

When AKP came to power, Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit was extremely ill, and his entourage was sure that they were at the end of their political careers. Various government agencies were experiencing functional paralysis, and the economy had come to a complete standstill.

As a result, the 3 November 2003 elections brought the AKP to power. During the first three years, AKP was able to implement its ambitious economic programme, outlined by the brilliant economists Kemal Derviş and Ali Babacan, which was well-received by international financial and economic institutions.

The results of this transformation were quickly apparent, with annual development reaching 7%. The Turkish economy jumped from 27th to 16th rank in the world, with a size of $740 billion.

Exports increased from $36 billion to $135 billion in a few years, and the returns of the productive economy — particularly in industry and tourism — became the backbone of the country's economy after it had relied on agriculture and services.

Turkey managed to overcome the 2008 global economic crisis smoothly and carried out a series of administrative, economic, and sectoral structural reforms with the support and guidance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

This ended the inflation cycle for the first time in modern Turkish history, and per capita income in 2010 became five times what it was seven years before. Development peaked in 2011, approaching 10%. 

Erdogan adopts neoliberal economic policies to consolidate his rule

However, Turkish economic growth has since slowed down, coinciding with President Erdogan's call for a transition to a presidential regime.

He halted negotiations with the World Bank and IMF and encouraged the privatisation of the public sector, favouring a class of newly wealthy people around him and adopting neoliberal economic policies.

He also sought to obtain massive foreign loans to spend on infrastructure while simultaneously seeking to gain full control over independent economic entities, such as the central bank and business associations.

Inflation has surged since 2015, causing the Turkish lira to lose 1000% of its value within seven years. As a result, the average income of Turkish citizens has dropped, and allegations of corruption have been levelled against members of Erdogan's family and the entire political and economic elite around him. 

Embracing the Kurds

After one year in office, Erdogan acknowledged the existence of a Kurdish issue in a speech at a rally in the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, marking the first time a Turkish leader had done so in modern history. This created a wave of optimism, leading to a decrease in the levels of confrontation and violence that had continued for three decades and resulted in tens of thousands of casualties.

Over the next 10 years, AKP implemented a series of steps to address the issue, including opening a government television channel in the Kurdish language, allowing the opening of Kurdish educational institutes, and granting Kurdish citizens an optional school course in their mother tongue.

The party also abolished many laws and procedures that were considered discriminatory, restored the original names of Kurdish villages and towns, and lifted the ban on Kurdish clothing and language.

The transformation reached its peak during negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party in the Norwegian capital Oslo from 2010 to 2015, under the auspices and attendance of the United States.

These negotiations resulted in ending the armed action in exchange for achieving some political demands, such as turning the Kurdish language into an official language and achieving more autonomy through local administrations.

Position reversed

However, everything changed in 2015, when the Justice and Development Party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time during the parliamentary elections. The Peoples' Democratic Party, which supports the Kurds, refused to give the AKP a parliamentary majority and rejected Erdogan's project to change the country's political system.

Additionally, Turkey launched attacks against the Kurds in Syria, viewing the Syrian Democratic Forces as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. This violence extended into Turkey itself.

Read more: Kurdish Rojava region in northern Syria faces uncertain fate

As a result of the decline in popularity since 2015, the AKP was forced to ally with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, leading to a series of policies that stood against any possibility of solving the Kurdish issue, thus increasing tension and violence to an unprecedented level.

Death of the European dream

Erdogan declared at the World Economic Forum in January 2004 that "Turkey is pretty much ready to become a member of the European Union family and is committed to continuing the necessary political and economic reforms to comply with the EU's conditions and requirements for membership."

Less than a year later, the European Union agreed to begin accession talks with Turkey, with the 17 Copenhagen criteria serving as the basis for attaining full membership.

Under AKP rule, Turkey succeeded in fulfilling all economic and administrative criteria, but struggled considerably in the political sphere, particularly regarding public freedoms and to some extent, the judiciary. Over time, the executive power overextended its authority, interfering with numerous independent institutions and bodies.

Turkey's economic and development figures outperformed those of several Eastern European countries in the EU, and Turkey agreed to accept judgments from the European Court of Justice.

It also amended various laws and regulations related to political, personal, and public freedoms, recognised the independence of numerous educational, economic, professional, and sectoral bodies, and tied its criminal laws and local administrative systems to the EU's criteria.

Thus, a general sense of optimism permeated Turkey between 2003 and 2015, with the vast majority of the population believing that Turkey would eventually join the EU.

However, the situation drastically changed due to a variety of factors, many of which were related to Erdogan's pursuit of long-term power.

Laws, regulations, and policies became subject to this criterion, and the deep state realised that fulfilling European criteria would encourage Kurds to mobilise support for their cause and shift the political, security, and economic balance of power out of their control.

As a result, Erdogan backed away from these promising reforms, stifling progress toward European integration. 

Over the past decade, Turkey's erosion of human rights and democracy has manifested in several ways. One of the most significant events was the trial and conviction of hundreds of generals and judiciary members accused of involvement in the Ergenekon conspiracy.

This was followed by rumours of a global alliance aimed at weakening Turkey. Matters climaxed during the military coup in 2016, which some doubted was genuine. This event marked the beginning of a decline in Turkey's ability to meet European criteria for human rights and political reform.

Turkey is increasingly turning into a police state, which saw the imprisonment of hundreds of journalists and human rights activists and the closing down of their institutions.

Tens of thousands of citizens were brought to trial on charges of insulting the president. Elected mayors were removed from their positions, and loyalists were appointed in their place.

The government consolidated its control over all independent institutions in the country — including those related to the judiciary, economy, unions, army, security agencies, sports teams, and cultural gatherings.

These actions cemented the growing rift between the ruling party and opposition forces, who were completely excluded from decision-making processes.