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Erdogan's 'New Turkey' much like the old

The Turkish government’s narrative of a “New Turkey” facing counterrevolutionary “internal enemies” is hardly different from the Kemalist narrative that Turkey’s Islamists resisted for decades.
High school students wearing Guy Fawkes masks take part in a protest against the education policies of the ruling AK Party in Istanbul February 13, 2015. Education is the latest flashpoint between the administration of President Tayyip Erdogan, and secularist Turks who accuse him of overseeing creeping 'Islamisation' in the NATO member state. Parts of some regular schools have been requisitioned to create more places for students in "Imam Hatip" religious schools championed by Erdogan, where girls and boys
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Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been busy lately boasting of the difference between the “New Turkey” it claims to have built and the “Old Turkey” left behind. This narrative tells us that we Turks have overcome a past of utter darkness, leaving all evil behind, and have opened up to bright horizons with all good ahead of us.

A sharp eye, however, would instead discern that the “New Turkey” is in fact a continuation of the “Old Turkey” in many aspects. So much so that even the big bugaboo of the “Old Turkey” — “the reactionary threat” — continues to exist today, even if with different names.

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