One of the hot topics in Turkish politics these days is the schism among “the liberals,” a political group whose voting power is minimal, but whose intellectual power is phenomenal. Although they still share many common goals about the future of Turkey, they now seem to have quite diverging views on how to get there, and, especially, on whether the AKP (Justice Development Party) is an asset or a threat.

To look deeper into this, let me first explain who “the liberals” are in the Turkish context. These are public intellectuals who arose mainly in the '90s, and as an independent force from the country’s two major political blocks: Secular Kemalists (followers of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) and religious conservatives. Most liberals were secular themselves, if not outright atheists, but they strongly disagreed with the self-styled authoritarian secularism and illiberal nationalism of the Kemalist establishment. They, for example, defended the right to wear headscarves in universities, criticizing a ban imposed and passionately defended by the Kemalists and bitterly opposed by the religious conservatives. The liberals also condemned military coups, “military tutelage” on politics, and “militarism” with regards to the Kurdish question or the Cyprus conundrum. As an alternative, they defended the European Union criteria and universal standards of liberal democracy.

This political scene soon led to a rapprochement, even synergy, between the liberals and the religious conservatives who have been represented by the AKP since 2002. Both groups saw the Kemalist establishment as the main obstacle to Turkey’s progress, and agreed on most of the necessary reforms. For the liberals, the AKP was often not liberal enough, but it was much more preferable to the Kemalists and it had a huge political power they could never dream of. For the conservatives, the liberals were too Western-minded, yet still friendly and helpful.

However, as the common enemy — the Kemalist establishment — gradually collapsed, the liberal-conservative alliance began to fray. (A loose analogy would be the alliance in Tahrir Square between Egypt’s liberals and the Muslim Brotherhood against the Mubarak regime, and the consequent tension between these groups. But since the AKP is relatively more secular and liberal-leaning than the Muslim Brotherhood, the tension in Turkey is less intense.) In particular, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s intolerant attitude toward critical news media and his growingly assertive moral conservatism (on issues such as abortion, alcohol, or religious education), became “the new problem” in the eyes of some liberals.