When Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to power in 2002 after tumultuous years that saw the closure of its Islamist predecessors, it endorsed the rhetoric that the Turkish state was in the hands of a pro-Western, secularist, bureaucratic minority, and that the conservative masses were not represented in state governance.
On many issues, including its economic and foreign policies, the AKP broke with the Islamist tradition, but its political narrative relied heavily on notions borrowed from that tradition. According to the party’s representatives, the AKP’s coming to power was a “revolution.” For the grassroots, this was a rather alien term, but AKP leaders believed the party deserved the “revolutionary” epithet for all the courageous steps it was taking.
