The AKP, Ibn Khaldun and The New 'Desert Tribes' of Turkey
Medieval Muslim thinker Ibn Khaldun provides insight into the evolution and prospects for the AKP.
Most objective observers of Turkey concede these days that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power for more than a decade, has changed considerably in the past few years. In its first two terms, from 2002 to 2011, the party was largely seen as one of the most liberal and reformist political forces in Turkish history. That most AKP members, including its leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were pious Muslims had not prevented them from aspiring to the norms of the European Union. However, since the elections of 2011, the AKP leadership has proven less interested in liberal reform and has used an increasingly authoritarian tone, which has peaked since the Gezi Park protests of last June.
In other words, most objective observers of Turkey agree that something bad happened to the AKP. They just wonder why.
Some over-skeptical commentators, especially hard-core secularists who have always despised the AKP’s “Islamism,” find the answer in a “hidden agenda.” Accordingly, the whole liberal, pro-EU agenda of the AKP was in fact a well-calculated trick to deceive Turkey’s liberals and the West until the governing party could feel powerful enough to show its true colors. These commentators, in other words, find the answer in a conspiracy theory — a very typical reflex in Turkey in the face of unpleasant political phenomena.
I argue, however, that we need a less conspiratorial and more sociological explanation to account for the AKP’s transformation. And I find it in the works of none other than Ibn Khaldun, the 14th century Muslim polymath who is also widely considered a forefather to modern sociology.
