The Turkish malaise

After 20 straight years of AK Party rule, Turkey's President Erdogan resembles other strongmen and autocrats across the globe. Grounding his regime in disregard for the rule of law and a lack of institutional checks and balances, he has cemented his alignment with a new genre of platforms and sentiments rooted in a nationalist–authoritarian–conservative dogma and morality. The failed coup attempt of 2016 enabled President Erdogan to consolidate political control, and his regime has since amassed unprecedented power. The coup attempt has also led to a sustained, round-the-clock government campaign that is underpinned by a discourse of hatred against a long list of ‘enemies’ in all spheres of life. Arrests on a massive scale, mock trials and purges of thousands of perceived opponents are commonplace under Erdogan's leadership. This treatise by the renowned scholar Cengiz Aktar conducts a timely and poignant search for the root causes of this democratic backsliding

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Globe · Government (linguistics · Hatred · Law and economics · Morality · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Rule of law · Sociology · Turkish · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Turkey's Politics and Society