In my 2012 e-book, Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, I outlined the scheme hatched by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s then-prime minister and leader of its ruling Islamist party (AKP), to rewrite the country’s constitution. The plan was to create an authoritarian presidency, which he planned to fill, consummating Turkey’s two-decade transition from West-leaning secular democracy to sharia state.

Erdogan did slide over to become president – installing a reliable apparatchik, Ahmet Davutoglu, in his stead as prime minister. But the Turkish presidency is a largely ceremonial position (Erdogan’s continuing control over Turkey lies in his control over AKP). To finish the job, he needed to win the election held last weekend – the election AKP has, thankfully, lost.

My column today is a celebration, but something of a muted one. The election is just the bare beginning, not the end, of what it would take to reverse Erdogan’s Islamist revolution. The outcome is very much in doubt and, as I argue in the column, it would be a mistake to underestimate Erdogan:

Erdogan established his dominance despite entrenched opposition from the “deep state” that had preserved Ataturk’s secular order for decades. As I illustrated in Spring Fever, he did it by systematically implementing the Muslim Brotherhood’s program: He remained mindful that controlling the culture and boring into the bureaucracy are the keys to taking over a society. He strategically provoked controversies that paralyzed his enemies: leveraging Turkey’s craving for acceptance by progressive European elites against the Turkish armed forces (coup insurance); pitting the population’s Islamic piety against secularist principles (the kind of controversies the Kemalist order had not tolerated); and tapping into deep-seated anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism to promote public support for his movement.
As his position became stronger and the institutions that had checked Islamism withered, he pounced: using his control over law enforcement and judiciary to trump up prosecutions against military officers and his critics; heavily influencing the press coverage of his regime; dramatically changing the tone of what was taught in the classrooms and preached in the mosques.

The full column is here.