Populist radical right beyond Europe
The case of Islamic nativism in Turkey
Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is one of the longest ruling among contemporary populist radical
right parties (PRR). For nearly two decades, the AKP has shown tremendous success in achieving electoral dominance and political
control. This article argues that AKP’s success lies in its ability to reconfigure the issue salience in Turkish politics by
bringing the secular-conservative cleavage into the center of political competition. However, as this article shows, while the
government’s framing of conservative/religious values was initially populist, as the Party consolidated its power, populism became
secondary to nativism. This nativist turn is characterized by an emphasis on the foreignness of “the elites” and is shaped by
secularization of the public sphere and antiwesternism. Overall, AKP has not presented a fundamental opposition to the
“establishment” but brought together many components of Turkey’s institutional and cultural structure and radicalized patterns
already present in earlier eras.
Article outline
- 1.Populist radical right beyond Europe: The case of Islamic nativism in Turkey
- 2.It is Us: Building a populist coalition
- 3.Neoliberalism a la Turca
- 4.It is Them: The conservative masses in power
- 5.Are you Muslim enough? Political religion as a boundary marker
- 6.Foreigners among us and anti-westernism
- 7.The authoritarian path: A difference of degree or kind?
- 8.Conclusion
-
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