Unexpected for many in Greece and the EU Mr. Erdogan’s election victory on May 21 shows the impossibility of understanding the phenomenon of Erdogan as an Islamist revolutionary movement. Erdogan was never just a political leader, but what exactly Erdoganism represents to tens of millions of loyal AKP voters may not be clear even today. These solid socio-economic classes, whose rise was suppressed for seven decades by the Kemalist regime, provided the AKP with a comfortable parliamentary majority for 20 consecutive years (from 2002 and, presumably, until 2027).

The durability of this political dominance, which allowed Erdogan to change the structure of the state in 2017-2018, cannot be explained in political or economic terms alone. It is necessary to analyze its ideological dimension, since Erdoganism does not replace, but has already largely replaced Kemalism as a revolutionary ideology on which the power and ambitions of the modern Turkish state have been built and are being built. To a large extent, these two ideologies were and remain mutually exclusive, contrastingly antagonistic, although almost equally anti-Hellenic.

Erdogan is an anti-Kemal, he is the founder of Kemalism in terms of the secularization of the state, the Westernization of society and the pro-Western geopolitical orientation of the country, which supported, with the exception of his anti-Hellenic policy, the strategy of non-interference in regional processes. Kilicdaroglu, together with the unarmed coalition he created, tried to turn back the clock, confirming the three above-mentioned principles of the Kemalist revolution, not realizing that time had simply passed him by.

Erdogan, as the head of the Turkish Islamist revolution, managed almost bloodlessly and over the course of about 16 years to overthrow the Kemalist structure of the power system, which was built precisely to prevent the Islamist party from coming to power. The fact that the dismantling of Kemalism took 16 years and was not achieved through a popular revolution, as was done in Iran in 1978-1980, or an armed uprising, as was done in Egypt or Algeria, does not mean that Erdogan’s revolution was less Islam or less revolution.

The changes that have taken place in Turkish society are of a structural nature. The Islamization of the education system, the anti-secularization of the Diyanet, the weakening of the possibility of political intervention by the military, the dictatorial powers of the president over parliament, the stifling control of the judiciary and the dominance of the established police state. during the period of “extreme need” of 2016-2018, dramatically changed both the internal character and the external orientation of Turkey.

The fact that the dismantling of Kemalism took 16 years and was not achieved through a popular uprising, as was the case in Iran, does not mean that Erdogan’s revolution was less Islamic or less a revolution.

Especially after Erdoğan completely dismantled the Kemalist “junctions of power” in 2016, replacing Kemalism with an Islamist-nationalist ideology adopted by the vast majority of Turkish political forces and inspired by the works of Necip Fazil Kisakürek, the ideological leader of Alparslan Türkeş, the founder of the Gray Wolf Party. His direct (Bahceli) and indirect (Aksener, Ogan) political descendants won 25% of the vote in the May 21 elections.

What may not be entirely clear in Greece is that the biggest supporter of Kisakürek’s anti-Western, ultra-nationalist and Islamist ideas is Erdogan himself. The political alliance between the AKP and the MHP, who co-ruled Turkey after 2015, was not forced on Erdogan due to modern necessity. It was built on the basis of the great ideological proximity of the two parties, which draw their common ideological inspiration from Kisakürek.

Kisakürek’s ideology is structurally anti-democratic in its separation of powers, anti-Western in its geopolitical orientation, and fanatically anti-Semitic to an almost metaphysical level of historical revanchism, as it attributes to the leaders of the Zionist movement a macabre conspiracy responsible for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Kemalism. Erdoğanism descended from him follows the same ideological imperatives despite his regular diplomatic retreats or retreats.

Erdogan’s slowly smoldering Turkish Islamic Revolution has overturned decades of Kemalism, which AKP figures, including former Turkish prime minister and current opposition figure Ahmet Davutoglu, openly viewed as “a failed Westernization experiment that destroyed the Ottoman state, undermined its religious legitimacy and created a society with weakened historical consciousness and uprooted identity. Erdogan was able to rally his base on May 21, removing the risk of Kılıçdaroğlu undoing the gains of his Islamic revolution.

Since 2016, both Kemal himself and Inonou have been openly accused by Erdogan himself of unacceptable obedience to the West and Greece, to which they “surrendered” the Aegean Islands. The dissolution of Kemalism at home is also accompanied by a dynamic revision of the Treaty of Lausanne abroad, as historically desired by all Turkish Islamists, and as it is already being applied on land and at sea against Iraq, Syria, Cyprus and Greece with increasing speed. from arrogance and aggression. This will continue despite the post-seismic “windows of opportunity” that some present after May 28, 2023.

Mr. Theodoros Tsakiris is Associate Professor of Geopolitics and Energy Policy at the University of Nicosia.