Publication

Contemporary Turkish politics is striking for many reasons, not least the fundamentally opposing and mutually exclusive narratives by which domestic as well as foreign observers describe its major fault lines. Hence the irreconcilable descriptions of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, in power since 2002: its supporters describe it as a the Muslim world’s equivalent of Christian Democracy, the political force that is ridding Turkey of its authoritarian past and making it a European democracy.