TURKEY AFTER ATATÜRK
Erdoğan made Turkey powerful again. The price was making Turkey increasingly dependent on Erdoğan.
There are countries that change governments.
And there are governments that change countries.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan belongs to the second category.
When he became prime minister in 2003, Turkey was still a republic defined largely by the political architecture inherited from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: secular, Western-oriented, suspicious of political Islam, guarded by an army that considered itself the ultimate protector of the state.
More than two decades later, that Turkey has not disappeared.
But another Turkey has been built on top of it.
More religious. More nationalist. More assertive abroad. Less deferential to Europe. Less intimidated by its military. More economically ambitious. More comfortable dealing simultaneously with Washington, Moscow, Brussels, the Gulf, Africa and Central Asia.
And much more concentrated around one political figure.
That is the Erdoğan paradox.
He did not simply govern Turkey.
He changed what Turkey believed it could be.
The question for the next decade is whether he built a stronger Turkish state — or a state whose strength has become too dependent on the man who rebuilt it.
FROM ISTANBUL TO THE PRESIDENCY
Erdoğan’s rise did not begin in Ankara.
It began in Istanbul.
He became mayor in 1994 and developed a reputation as an effective administrator. After being convicted following the public recitation of a religiously charged poem, he spent several months in prison and temporarily lost eligibility for political office.
In 2001 he co-founded the Justice and Development Party, the AKP.
The party won the 2002 parliamentary election.
Erdoğan became prime minister in 2003. He remained in that office until 2014, when he became Turkey’s first directly elected president.