What started in Taksim Square as an environmental uprising, as it was described by some, turned rapidly into an uprising of a different nature, of a more serious one. What we are witnessing in Turkey today is a power struggle between the 13-year-old Islamist regime in power and the anti-Islamist constituency.

Various factors have affected the Turkish role; among them are the policy of gradual and soft Islamization of society and the state, mainly the moralization of many laws — though it creates a lot of constraints on individual freedoms — and the newly built legitimacy of economic success. The neutralization of the army’s role in politics, the dynamic and active foreign policy of “zero problems with neighbors” and the relative success of settling the Kurdish problem at home — some would say containing — were all important pillars in the strong reemergence of a neo-Ottoman Turkish regional role.

Turkey’s policy could be rightly described as an overreaching imperial policy without an empire, using its soft power as the tool of influence. Economics and ideology were the two key elements of that soft power. It was a policy that was encouraged and facilitated by many factors: One is the power vacuum in the Arab world whereby Turkey positioned itself as the defender of the Islamic Arab dignity and all Islamic Arab concerns such as the Palestinian issue.

Turkey stood up to Israel in a diplomatic confrontation in the eyes of a thirsty Arab public for that kind of dignity while their governments were suffering from weakened or non-existent legitimacy. Turkey was also seen as a counterweight to Iran by the same conservative pro-status-quo Arab governments.