{"id":106613,"date":"2014-02-06T04:43:29","date_gmt":"2014-02-06T02:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=106613"},"modified":"2023-04-02T16:02:16","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T13:02:16","slug":"whose-turkey-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2014\/02\/06\/whose-turkey-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose Turkey Is It?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"story-meta-footer\">\n<p class=\"byline-dateline\"><span class=\"byline\" itemprop=\"author creator\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/Person\">By <span class=\"byline-author\" itemprop=\"name\" data-byline-name=\"SUZY HANSEN\">SUZY HANSEN<\/span><\/span><time class=\"dateline\" datetime=\"2014-02-05\">FEB. 5, 2014<\/time><\/p>\n<div class=\"inside-story\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"lede-container\">\n<figure class=\"media photo lede layout-jumbo-horizontal\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul2\/09istanbul2-master1050.jpg\" itemprop=\"associatedMedia\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" data-media-action=\"modal\">\n<div class=\"image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/istanbul2-master1050.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-106614\" alt=\"istanbul2-master1050\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/istanbul2-master1050.jpg\" width=\"667\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/istanbul2-master1050.jpg 1050w, https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/istanbul2-master1050-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/istanbul2-master1050-1024x575.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/istanbul2-master1050-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 667px) 100vw, 667px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Launch media viewer<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\" itemprop=\"description\"><span class=\"caption-text\">Protesters in Istanbul last June.<\/span> <span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"sharetools theme-classic sharetools-init\" id=\"sharetools-story\" data-shares=\"email|email,facebook,twitter,save,show-all|more,ad\" data-url=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/whose-turkey-is-it.html\" data-title=\"Whose Turkey Is It?\" data-description=\"The struggle for the future between a megalomaniacal prime minister, a cultish leader in the Poconos and thousands of citizens taking to the streets.\" data-publish-date=\"Feb. 5, 2014\">\n<ul>\n<li class=\"sharetool email-sharetool login-modal-trigger\" data-modal-title=\"Log in to Email\"><a data-share=\"email\"><span class=\"sharetool-text\">email<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"sharetool facebook-sharetool \" data-modal-title=\"\"><a data-share=\"facebook\"><span class=\"sharetool-text\">facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"sharetool twitter-sharetool \" data-modal-title=\"\"><a data-share=\"twitter\"><span class=\"sharetool-text\">twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"sharetool save-sharetool login-modal-trigger\" data-modal-title=\"Log in to Save\"><a data-share=\"save\"><span class=\"sharetool-text\">save<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"sharetool show-all-sharetool \" data-modal-title=\"\"><a data-share=\"show-all\"><span class=\"sharetool-text\">more<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"lede-container-ads\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"1062\" data-total-count=\"1062\">It is still a marvel to behold Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s self-confidence, even after 11 years of his rule. In recent weeks, a new poster featuring Turkey\u2019s prime minister has appeared throughout Istanbul, on highway billboards and mass transit. Wearing his usual dark suit, Erdogan looks to be in purposeful motion, like an action hero. Two large words in block letters, SAGLAM IRADE, Turkish for \u201cIron Will,\u201d accompany him. Surely some of his supporters appreciate this evocation of 1930s-era masculinity, but for others, it must feel like an invasion of personal space. The enormous billboards intensify the claustrophobia that many Turks have felt for years: that Erdogan is everywhere, in every tree or open space sacrificed for a building, in every traffic jam, in every newspaper column and pro-government tweet and call to prayer. The poster, which a group of his supporters claims to have put up, begs to be defaced, and Turks have torn at it or covered it with new slogans: \u201cIron Fascist,\u201d \u201cIron Corruption,\u201d \u201cIron Enemy of the People.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media photo embedded has-adjacency layout-large-horizontal\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul3\/09istanbul3-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"associatedMedia\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" data-media-action=\"modal\">\n<div class=\"image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul3\/09istanbul3-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"url\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul3\/09istanbul3-articleLarge.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul3\/09istanbul3-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"Taksim Square, in the center of the city&amp;rsquo;s European side, is considered the heart of Istanbul.\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Launch media viewer<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\" itemprop=\"description\"><span class=\"caption-text\">Taksim Square, in the center of the city\u2019s European side, is considered the heart of Istanbul.<\/span> <span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"932\" data-total-count=\"1994\">The public turn against Erdogan began last May, when protests in Istanbul escalated and pictures of police officers violently attacking the demonstrators circulated around the world. For the first time in a decade, Turkey didn\u2019t look like one of the few Middle Eastern destinations where Westerners would take a vacation. The government was caught off guard. A couple of weeks later, Erdogan convened two meetings in the capital, Ankara, with assorted activists, artists and observers. Many immediately dismissed this public exercise as a sham gesture \u2014 plausible, given that the invitees included film stars \u2014 but some activists relished the opportunity to speak to their prime minister. The episode recalled the time when Robert F. Kennedy met with James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte and Lorraine Hansberry in 1963 because he wanted to understand why blacks were angry. Erdogan wanted to understand why so many Turks were angry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"464\" data-total-count=\"2458\">In one meeting, Erdogan sat at the head of the table, constantly writing with a fountain pen in a leather-bound notebook. He wrote for five hours as activists gave testimony about their experiences in the previous weeks. Erdogan\u2019s cabinet ministers often cut them off or spoke with weary condescension about whether, say, tear gas could be dispensed from a low-hovering helicopter. Erdogan sometimes told his officials to be quiet. \u201cLet them speak,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"724\" data-total-count=\"3182\">The protests began when activists gathered in Gezi Park to demonstrate against its demolition. Ipek Akpinar, a professor of architecture, asked Erdogan if he gave orders during the brutal first days, when the police burned the tents of peaceful environmentalists and assaulted them with pepper spray and tear gas. \u201cSomehow, in the last 10 years, he gave an image of being democratic, of trying to talk with everyone, to understand other groups,\u201d Akpinar told me later. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t believe \u2014 we didn\u2019t want to believe, probably \u2014 that he would do this.\u201d The activists kept returning to this question. \u201cPrime Minister Erdogan,\u201d Akpinar asked, \u201cdid you know what was happening in the first three days?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"375\" data-total-count=\"3557\">He said he did not. \u201cMy team didn\u2019t take it very seriously,\u201d Erdogan said, according to several people who attended the meeting. \u201cWe thought it was just environmentalists, and so we didn\u2019t react. But yes, the police acted severely. I wasn\u2019t aware of the burning of the tents the first two nights. I was told about it on the third day, and then it was too late.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"226\" data-total-count=\"3783\">\u201cAnd then what happened?\u201d the professor asked. Several other activists joined in. \u201cWhat did you do?\u201d cried Nil Eyuboglu, a 20-year-old college student. \u201cTell us! They violently attacked us! How could you not know?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"125\" data-total-count=\"3908\">\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d Erdogan said. \u201cI brought the people responsible into my office and yelled at them. I made them cry.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media photo embedded layout-large-horizontal\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul1\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA1-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"associatedMedia\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" data-media-action=\"modal\">\n<div class=\"image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul1\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA1-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"url\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul1\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA1-articleLarge.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul1\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA1-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"A man selling flags in Taksim Square.\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Launch media viewer<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\" itemprop=\"description\"><span class=\"caption-text\">A man selling flags in Taksim Square.<\/span> <span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"582\" data-total-count=\"4490\">The prime minister seemed more like a clan leader than the head of a government. \u201cIt was like . . . there\u2019s just one man,\u201d Akpinar said later. She wasn\u2019t the only one disappointed. Some of the young people in the meeting had attended religious schools, as Erdogan had, and their families had championed Erdogan\u2019s conservative Muslim party. Like the millions of countrymen who regarded him as a hero, they had lived through decades of repression of religious Turks by secularist regimes. Now they were criticizing Erdogan harshly. Some even cried at the betrayal they felt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"146\" data-total-count=\"4636\">Finally, listening to those who once supported him, he showed emotion: \u201cHow can even you misunderstand us,\u201d he said,\u201c like everyone else?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"989\" data-total-count=\"5625\"><strong>Over the last decade,<\/strong> Erdogan has made himself the most powerful prime minister in Turkey\u2019s history, the most successful elected leader in the Middle East and the West\u2019s great hope for the Muslim world. In the last year, however, a thoroughly different Erdogan has emerged: a symbol of authoritarianism, corruption and police brutality whose once-populist rhetoric has turned into thundering rage. The Gezi Park protests last spring challenged the enduring dysfunctions of the Turkish state \u2014 mainly disregard for the rule of law \u2014 as well as the dubious economic policies of Erdogan\u2019s ruling Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P. What followed was worse for Erdogan. In December, extensive accusations of corruption were leveled at him by followers of an Islamic movement that propelled him and the A.K.P. to power. The threat to Erdogan posed by the Gezi Park protests has been largely photogenic, but the challenge raised by the corruption charges is existential.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"886\" data-total-count=\"6511\">Erdogan\u2019s response to both threats has been to punish those he considers disloyal. Critics of Erdogan are called traitors or terrorists \u2014 or, more colorfully, assassins. Thousands of activists have been detained, their schools or workplaces investigated, their homes raided. Informal emergency medical care, common during street protests, has been criminalized. Some 5,000 police officers and prosecutors, who Erdogan claims are conspiring against him, have been dismissed from their jobs or reassigned. Internet sites have suddenly become inaccessible. The judiciary is in danger of falling under Erdogan\u2019s control. The exchange rates for Turkey\u2019s currency, the lira, have plunged significantly, and predictions for the economy are dire. The feeling in Turkey is that, all of a sudden, the country that was a model for the modern Muslim world is on the verge of disintegration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"825\" data-total-count=\"7336\">An Erdogan government was once synonymous with stability. One reason even skeptical secular Turks tolerated the A.K.P. was its hard-working officials. Even if people disliked their Islamist pasts or their head-scarf-wearing wives, they liked their industriousness, and above all the rapid economic development they facilitated in the 2000s. Before then, Turkish politicians were mostly bland bureaucrats, and Turkey was very poor. The military staged coups every decade or so in the name of secularism or anticommunism, each time shattering the country\u2019s diverse political longings and enfeebling its government. The pattern changed somewhat in the mid-1980s, when Prime Minister Turgut Ozal liberalized the economy, which allowed a capitalist class of small-town entrepreneurs and fledgling corporate bigwigs to take root.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"472\" data-total-count=\"7808\">Erdogan, who attended a religious high school and played semiprofessional soccer, grew up in a conservative, blue-collar neighborhood in Istanbul called Kasimpasa. The men there are quick to say they are Erdogan\u2019s \u201cbest friend,\u201d and their loyalty to him can be fierce. At Erdogan\u2019s old soccer club, I once asked some of them what makes a Kasimpasa man. A silver-haired guy in a black leather jacket said: \u201cWatch Tayyip, watch how he walks. That\u2019s Kasimpasa.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media photo embedded has-adjacency layout-large-horizontal\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul4\/09istanbul4-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"associatedMedia\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" data-media-action=\"modal\">\n<div class=\"image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul4\/09istanbul4-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"url\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul4\/09istanbul4-articleLarge.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul4\/09istanbul4-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"On the evenings the riot police in Istanbul stayed away last June, thousands of people &amp;mdash; Kurds and nationalists, gays and soccer fans, secularists and leftists &amp;mdash; streamed into Taksim Square.\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Launch media viewer<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\" itemprop=\"description\"><span class=\"caption-text\">On the evenings the riot police in Istanbul stayed away last June, thousands of people \u2014 Kurds and nationalists, gays and soccer fans, secularists and leftists \u2014 streamed into Taksim Square.<\/span> <span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"404\" data-total-count=\"8212\">A member of the youth groups of Islamist parties that later evolved into the A.K.P., Erdogan was elected Istanbul\u2019s mayor in 1994 at age 40. He cleaned up the city; his administration distributed largess to peripheral neighborhoods and improved the water supply. To various elites, the A.K.P. men might have seemed like provincial rubes, but as an organization, the A.K.P. was like a sleek corporation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"461\" data-total-count=\"8673\">\u201cOne usually assumes that Islamists are not educated, that Islamists are provincial \u2014 no, no, no,\u201d says Seyla Benhabib, a Turkish political philosopher at Yale University. \u201cThere is a new political class in Turkey. The C.H.P. cadre\u201d \u2014 the Republican People\u2019s Party, the main secularist opposition party \u2014 \u201ccomes from the usual civil servants, teachers, judges, bureaucrats. A.K.P. is a very young and ambitious professional cadre of people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"1134\" data-total-count=\"9807\">The A.K.P. emerged from an Islamist movement called Milli Gorus, whose outlook was anti-Western and combative \u2014 the Turkish, watered-down version of Egypt\u2019s Muslim Brotherhood. Theirs was a challenge to the preceding Kemalist regimes, which embraced the ideals of Turkey\u2019s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and enforced strict adherence to a secularist, nationalist identity. In the late 1990s, after he was jailed briefly for reciting a supposedly Islamist poem in public, Erdogan shifted course. He began preaching a pro-European Union, pro-American and pro-business worldview, and rather than espousing Islamist politics, he framed religious rights in terms of personal freedom. As a Turkish scholar named M. Hakan Yavuz put it in his 2009 book, \u201cSecularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey,\u201d the A.K.P. didn\u2019t operate outwardly as an Islamist group at all; it was a pragmatic party of \u201cservices.\u201d Erdogan\u2019s transformation won him the admiration of liberals at home and abroad. It also caught the attention of another Islamic movement eager for power, one that followed the teachings of an imam named Fethullah Gulen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"1165\" data-total-count=\"10972\"><strong>Gulen is a Muslim preacher<\/strong> who in the 1960s began promoting a Sufi-inspired vision of Islam and a strategy for leading a modern and religious life that offered his followers a path to success in Turkey. The stated goal was spreading an emphatically peaceful expression of Islam, but a central ambition was also the expansion of the movement, which required amassing followers and capital. The Gulenists, who prefer to be called sympathizers, describe themselves as nonpolitical, anti-violence, pro-business and deeply patriotic. Indeed, the movement advocates a specifically Turkish Islam. Unlike Milli Gorus, it rejects party politics; theirs is \u201ccultural Islam,\u201d its adherents say, a religion-based civic movement they call Hizmet, or Service. Instead of Quranic schools, the Gulenists have built secular ones emphasizing science, as well as colleges, media companies, publishing houses, industrial groups, tutoring centers for the college entrance exam and international nongovernmental organizations. The Gulenists run 2,000 schools in 160 countries; outside Turkey, the countries with the greatest number of these schools are Germany and the United States.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"830\" data-total-count=\"11802\">When I embarked on a tour of Gulen\u2019s world a few years ago, I visited some of the schools in Houston and Washington, as well as a boarding school in Kabul, Afghanistan. In many of them, students learn Black Sea folk dances\u00ad and Turkish poetry. Gulen himself, who is 72, lives in a wooded area in the Poconos behind a security checkpoint; he is supposed to have moved to the United States for medical treatment, and his residence in a country that many Turks deem meddlesome, if not nefarious, has made him the human flame that sustains a thousand conspiracy theories. In 2010, when I visited Gulen\u2019s compound, a couple had come from Japan to see him. \u201cHocaefendi,\u201d or master teacher, as he is called, was too ill to meet me. He typically gives interviews to journalists only when he has something specific to announce.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"426\" data-total-count=\"12228\">The Gulenists I met at the compound were relentlessly charming, friendly and intelligent. They also engaged in self-protective obfuscation, something the sociologist Joshua Hendrick, an assistant professor at Loyola University in Maryland, calls \u201cstrategic ambiguity,\u201d which shrouds some of their activities. This lack of transparency, they say, is justified by their past persecution at the hands of the Turkish military.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media photo embedded layout-large-horizontal\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul5\/09istanbul5-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"associatedMedia\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" data-media-action=\"modal\">\n<div class=\"image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul5\/09istanbul5-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"url\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul5\/09istanbul5-articleLarge.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul5\/09istanbul5-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"Among the silent protesters in Taksim Square.\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Launch media viewer<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\" itemprop=\"description\"><span class=\"caption-text\">Among the silent protesters in Taksim Square.<\/span> <span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"760\" data-total-count=\"12988\">An alliance in the early 2000s with the ascendant A.K.P., whose center-right, pro-business perspective they shared, offered the Gulenists a way to extend their influence, even as they refrained from putting up their own candidates for Parliament. In Turkey, Hendrick says, \u201cparties come and go, and any party isn\u2019t going to have a long shelf life.\u201d But, he says, succeeding in business or receiving ministerial appointments or joining the police confers lasting power: \u201cAffiliates of the Gulen community have been accruing influence in the Istanbul police force and other police forces, and in the judiciary and prosecuting offices around the country.\u201d This aspiration to secure important government jobs makes many Turks suspicious of their motives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"520\" data-total-count=\"13508\">Mustafa Yesil, the president of the Journalist and Writers Foundation, an Istanbul-based public-relations arm for Gulen\u2019s followers, argues that every citizen has the right to work in any sector of the society. \u201cMr. Gulen sees three problems in society: ignorance, conflict and poverty,\u201d he said of the Gulenists\u2019 ideals. \u201cHizmet supported A.K.P. based on the promise that A.K.P. would fight against the military tutelage, further the E.U. process and democratization and create a new civilian constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"498\" data-total-count=\"14006\">Erdogan welcomed the movement\u2019s international influence and media support. With its endorsements, he achieved real gains. He sidelined the military. He moved Turkey\u2019s laws significantly toward European Union norms. The economy flourished, as he pushed privatization and investors from abroad poured money into the country. The A.K.P. built hospitals, roads, bridges and luxury shopping malls. Turkey had been so dysfunctional, and so undemocratic, that many of these initiatives were necessary.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"800\" data-total-count=\"14806\">Eventually, however, they seemed like a power grab. Around 2007, the A.K.P. and Gulenists in the judiciary and the police force put hundreds of journalists and former military generals on trial, charged with being members of a Kemalist \u201cdeep state.\u201d Much of the evidence appeared to have been manufactured by Gulenists. At the same time, many Turks were beginning to believe that the intelligence wing of the police force was wiretapping the phones of journalists and businessmen. Erdogan himself bullied the corporate owners of media outlets, and hundreds of journalists were muzzled or fired. And in 2010, a referendum on the Constitution revamped the judicial system to favor the judges affiliated with Erdogan and Gulen. Instead of reforming the state, the A.K.P. appeared to be capturing it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"318\" data-total-count=\"15124\">Yet the Erdogan-Gulen media machine, suffusing the landscape with the rhetoric of freedom and progress, managed to portray Erdogan as the very incarnation of democracy. In 2011, Erdogan won his third national election with nearly 50 percent of the vote, which he took as a mandate for the Erdoganization of everything.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"889\" data-total-count=\"16013\"><strong>One of Erdogan\u2019s third-term<\/strong> promises was a package of vast construction projects, and he quickly got to work. Turkey is run like a city, where the prime minister can control local projects as if he\u2019s playing in his own private Legoland. An earlier venture he endorsed, for example, was Miniaturk, a park in Istanbul. It is a scaled-down version of the country\u2019s major historical sites (the Hagia Sophia, for one, is nose height), and it seemingly embodies Erdogan\u2019s aesthetic vision for Istanbul: a theme-park parody of itself. He started construction of a third bridge over the Bosporus, which meant removing a million trees. He flirted with a plan, known as the Crazy Project, to build a second Bosporus, as well as a second Istanbul, the promos for which looked liked something out of the 1927 Fritz Lang film \u201cMetropolis.\u201d Then he announced a new project for Taksim Square.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media photo embedded has-adjacency layout-large-horizontal\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul6\/09istanbul6-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"associatedMedia\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" data-media-action=\"modal\">\n<div class=\"image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul6\/09istanbul6-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"url\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul6\/09istanbul6-articleLarge.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul6\/09istanbul6-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"Police officers in Taksim Square.\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Launch media viewer<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\" itemprop=\"description\"><span class=\"caption-text\">Police officers in Taksim Square.<\/span> <span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"806\" data-total-count=\"16819\">Taksim, in the center of the city\u2019s European side, is considered the heart of Istanbul. The square itself surrounds tiny Gezi Park and is covered with concrete and filled with traffic, but the absence of buildings offers at least a sense of free space. Erdogan wanted to close the square to cars, build tunnels for them beneath it and replace Gezi Park and its rows of sycamore trees with a giant shopping center designed to look like Ottoman-era military barracks. Putting anything Ottoman-like in Taksim, a symbol of the secular republic, felt like an assertion of Erdogan\u2019s neo-Islamic identity. In terms of scale and presumption, it would be as if Michael Bloomberg, New York\u2019s former mayor, tried to erect a five-story shopping mall in Bryant Park with facades like blinking Bloomberg terminals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"376\" data-total-count=\"17195\">Except Erdogan wasn\u2019t the mayor of Istanbul. And he wasn\u2019t consulting his constituents there. Far from it: When a local committee composed of academics, historians and municipal appointees unanimously voted against the plan, he simply had another committee made up of his own bureaucratic appointments override the vote. This, to Turks, was what his rule had come to mean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"544\" data-total-count=\"17739\">Osman Can, a constitutional scholar who is on the A.K.P.\u2019s executive committee, says Erdogan\u2019s ability to act unilaterally is a byproduct of Turkey\u2019s highly centralized political structure, in which all decisions are made in Ankara. \u201cThe governors are appointed by the central government, so they are not elected,\u201d Can says. \u201cThe mayors are elected, but Ankara also controls the mayors. Normally the mayor would decide things in a city. But if the prime minister happened to be interested in a park, the mayor can\u2019t resist him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"497\" data-total-count=\"18236\">The A.K.P. is the rare party that has made important changes to democratize Turkey, Can says, but the system established a century ago by Ataturk and his followers limits those advances. \u201cIt was a conscious choice of Ataturk,\u201d he says. \u201cThey wanted to control everything, they want to change the people, change the minds, reformat people. How could they do this? A decentralized system? No. An independent judiciary? No.\u201d The only limitation, Can says, \u201cis the reaction of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"499\" data-total-count=\"18735\">And the people reacted in a surprising and organic way. Many of the protesters in Istanbul last year were not activists. They were apolitical verging on apathetic members of the middle class, whose parents, traumatized by coups, taught them to stay out of politics. Radicalization happened quickly. Guzin, a 35-year-old lawyer who didn\u2019t want me to use her last name, was a typical case. A week after the police cleared Gezi Park of its occupants, I met her in the Taksim neighborhood of Cihangir.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"551\" data-total-count=\"19286\">\u201cMy father is a supporter of Erdogan \u2014 he is in love,\u201d she said. \u201cMy parents also had not been happy about what happened to religious people in the 1990s, when women couldn\u2019t wear the head scarf \u2014 my mother covers \u2014 and Erdogan had fought for their rights. But it\u2019s more that my father likes all the things that capitalism brings; every time I go to my village, he says, \u2018Look at the roads, look at the factories, look at the health care.\u2019 He doesn\u2019t see the negative. And he was really angry when I told him I was protesting.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media photo embedded layout-large-horizontal\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul7\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA0-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"associatedMedia\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" data-media-action=\"modal\">\n<div class=\"image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul7\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA0-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"url\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul7\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA0-articleLarge.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul7\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA0-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"Protesters in Taksim Square last June.&lt;em&gt; &lt;\/em&gt;\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Launch media viewer<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\" itemprop=\"description\"><span class=\"caption-text\">Protesters in Taksim Square last June.<em> <\/em><\/span> <span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<aside class=\"marginalia comments-marginalia  selected-comment-marginalia\" style=\"display: block;\" data-marginalia-type=\"sprinkled\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"module-heading\">Recent Comments<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"comments-view\">\n<article class=\"comment\" data-permid=\"11105561\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"commenter\">Look Ahead<\/h2>\n<p><time class=\"comment-time\" datetime=\"\">1 hour ago<\/time><\/header>\n<p class=\"comment-text\">Secular and nationalist Turkey was on a trajectory of economic integration with Europe through substantial foreign investment in a growing&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<article class=\"comment\" data-permid=\"11105276\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"commenter\">Turgut Dincer<\/h2>\n<p><time class=\"comment-time\" datetime=\"\">1 hour ago<\/time><\/header>\n<p class=\"comment-text\">Please do not forget that Erdogan is the first modern Turkish politician who dared to confront and stop the Turkish military behaving like&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<article class=\"comment\" data-permid=\"11105260\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"commenter\">MK<\/h2>\n<p><time class=\"comment-time\" datetime=\"\">1 hour ago<\/time><\/header>\n<p class=\"comment-text\">Extraordinary photography. Such a match with the article.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<footer>\n<ul class=\"comment-actions\">\n<li class=\"comment-count\">See All Comments<\/li>\n<li class=\"comment-reply\">Write a comment<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/footer>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"465\" data-total-count=\"19751\">Guzin had heard that some 50 environmentalists, in a city of 15 million people, in a country of 80 million, had pitched tents in Gezi. \u201cWhen I read about Gezi Park, for the first time I said, \u2018We should do something,\u2019 \u201d she told me. \u201cI got like five people, and we just went and sat on the grass. There were some tents, but it wasn\u2019t that crowded. I had wanted to see so many more, like 5,000 people. So I was a little disappointed, and we went home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"222\" data-total-count=\"19973\">Around 4 the next morning, the police lit tents on fire. Guzin said that when she read about it in the newspaper the next day, she thought: They have no right to do that. They don\u2019t even have the right to take the tents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"463\" data-total-count=\"20436\">\u201cI got really angry,\u201d she said, \u201cand I called all my friends and said, \u2018Come on, let\u2019s go again.\u2019 We knew they had used tear gas before, so we went to the pharmacy to get masks, and they said: \u2018O.K., get ready, bring water, put on your gas mask. And come back safe.\u2019 We thought, What is happening? Then we saw a huge crowd walking toward Gezi Park. And suddenly I couldn\u2019t see anything, I couldn\u2019t breathe, I couldn\u2019t even put my mask on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"482\" data-total-count=\"20918\">Guzin continued: \u201cI started to breathe again, thankfully, but I saw the water cannon, and I was scared, and people got panicked. I kept checking behind me to see if it was going to hit me, and it did. But then I thought, O.K., we passed this, we can survive it. And I became braver. We went back maybe 10 times that night. When everyone in the neighborhoods began banging pots and pans from their windows for us, I was going to cry. I thought, Wow, we are doing something good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"535\" data-total-count=\"21453\">Within a week, the activists\u2019 tiny sit-in spread to 70 cities. The occupation of Gezi Park lasted 19 days. In Istanbul, on the evenings the riot police stayed away, thousands of people \u2014 Kurds and nationalists, gays and soccer fans, secularists and leftists \u2014 streamed into the square to celebrate what was a historic act of state defiance. It was utterly leaderless. One Kurdish demonstrator told me, \u201cPerhaps the only thing that could have brought all of these warring groups together was something as innocuous as a park.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"967\" data-total-count=\"22420\">Many participants described their time in Gezi Park as a first brush with political consciousness. In the early 2000s, the Turkish people experienced what they were told was a democratic opening. Now they wondered whether something was being taken away from them, or whether that democracy was a mirage. The protesters showed a global audience that Turkey\u2019s new wealth was a distraction from the realities of injustice and one-man rule. And the cacophonous utopia that bloomed in the park served as a rebuke to the blandly baroque language of neoliberal democracy and family-values conservatism that the A.K.P. and Gulenist media had so skillfully deployed. As one activist named Zeynel Gul explained to me, Gezi wasn\u2019t Occupy, Syntagma or Tahrir \u2014 referring to the protests in New York, Athens and Cairo \u2014 it was \u201call but none.\u201d Erdogan, meanwhile, called the protesters \u201cterrorists\u201d and \u201clooters\u201d and declared that a conspiracy was opposing him.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media photo embedded has-adjacency layout-large-horizontal\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul8\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA2-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"associatedMedia\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" data-media-action=\"modal\">\n<div class=\"image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" itemid=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul8\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA2-articleLarge.jpg\" itemprop=\"url\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul8\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA2-articleLarge.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2014\/02\/09\/magazine\/09istanbul8\/mag-09Istanbul-t_CA2-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"A protester in Taksim Square.&lt;em&gt; &lt;\/em&gt;\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Launch media viewer<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\" itemprop=\"description\"><span class=\"caption-text\">A protester in Taksim Square.<em> <\/em><\/span> <span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"459\" data-total-count=\"22879\"><strong>From Pennsylvania,<\/strong> Fethullah Gulen chastised both the prime minister and the protesters. \u201cWe need to handle them in a smart way,\u201d he said in a video on his website. \u201cIf you are facing an invasion of ants, you can\u2019t disregard it, thinking that they are \u2018ants.\u2019 \u201d The Gulenists do not support street protests, and they, like Erdogan, believed that armed groups had joined the demonstrations in Gezi Park \u2014 but Erdogan was making Turkey look bad.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"920\" data-total-count=\"23799\">The quarrel between the two allies had been slowly brewing for years. It was financial, ideological and moral, but it was mostly about power. The Gulenists didn\u2019t like Erdogan\u2019s sudden transformation into a hero of the Arab street. In 2010, when the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara tried to break an Israeli blockade of Gaza, the Gulen sympathizers were against, as they put it, \u201cconfrontation.\u201d \u201cWhat I saw was not pretty,\u201d Gulen said in a rare interview with The Wall Street Journal. \u201cIt was ugly.\u201d More important, Gulenists seemed to oppose Erdogan\u2019s ways of resolving the 30-year-old conflict between Turkey and its disenfranchised Kurds. In 2012, prosecutors who were assumed to be Gulenists subpoenaed a Turkish official who had been negotiating with Kurdish leaders and who also happens to be the head of Turkey\u2019s national intelligence organization. Erdogan was enraged by the Gulenists\u2019 meddling.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"384\" data-total-count=\"24183\">Fundamentally, Gulenists disagreed with Erdogan\u2019s political tactics. \u201cGulen doesn\u2019t cultivate influence through top-down reforms,\u201d says Hendrick, who lived among the Gulenists for more than a year while researching his book about Gulen. \u201cThey encourage social change by winning hearts and minds through media, through education and through competitive market performance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"433\" data-total-count=\"24616\">Erdogan attacked the Gulenists at that level. In November, his plans to close the college-exam-preparation schools, many of which are run by the Gulen movement, became public. Closing a multimillion-dollar industry has more than financial ramifications; those schools are where the Gulen movement recruits members. Erdogan, Hendrick says, is \u201cgoing after the existential nature of the movement by destroying its human resources.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad ad-placeholder\">\n<div class=\"clearfix wrap marketing-module-legacy\" style=\"border: solid #999; border-width: 1px; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-align: left; width: 334px; background: #fff;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 7px 9px 0; background: #fff;\">\n<h2 style=\"font-size: 22px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0; padding: 0 0 4px;\">Watch Now: Finding love after cancer<\/h2>\n<ul class=\"refer\" style=\"font-size: 12px; margin: 0; padding-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc;\">\n<li style=\"font-size: 12px;\">Watch: The Read Around | Barry Werth<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-size: 12px;\">Watch: Relocating traditions in China<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ad text-ad middle-right-ad\" id=\"SponLinkA\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"917\" data-total-count=\"25533\">Three weeks later, the Gulenists struck back. (On Twitter, someone posted a doctored picture of Gulen holding a lightsaber.) In mid-December, the authorities, presumably Gulenist sympathizers, brought corruption charges against the businessman sons of three A.K.P. ministers and several businessmen tied to Erdogan, including his son, Bilal. Millions of dollars were said to have been suddenly discovered in shoe boxes in a closet belonging to the chief executive of a bank. Shady gold-for-oil schemes with Iran were exposed. Bribery for construction projects unexpectedly came to light. Corruption is an open secret in Turkey, but the A.K.P. had been untouchable. When Erdogan asked the ministers to take the fall and resign, one of them said publicly that most of the construction projects had been approved by Erdogan. \u201cI want to express my belief that the esteemed prime minister should also resign,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"741\" data-total-count=\"26274\">Since then, Erdogan has declared that the Gulenists\u2019 corruption charges\u00ad constitute a conspiracy against him by a \u201cparallel state.\u201d To obstruct the investigation, he has purged thousands of supposed Gulenists from the police forces and reassigned the prosecutors on the corruption cases. Last month, the Gulenist Journalists and Writers Foundation held a news conference in Taksim Square and denied that Gulen sympathizers made up a parallel state with intelligence capabilities. One speaker there nevertheless made it clear that the movement wanted Erdogan to go: \u201cIn England, Margaret Thatcher lost touch with the people at the end. In the United States, even a popular politician like Bill Clinton cannot serve three terms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"813\" data-total-count=\"27087\"><strong>Are the Gulenists<\/strong> a parallel state, or a hierarchical minority faction with some self-serving ambitions, like interest groups in any society? Hendrick says that \u201cgroups coming from the same educational or religious networks and gaining positions of authority in the state \u2014 for the United States, this is normal. In Turkey, where the state has not been open to all, it is conspiratorial.\u201d Osman Can says their presence in the judiciary is a \u201cviolation of state sovereignty.\u201d The Gulenists\u2019 opacity makes it difficult to tell whether they seek to control Turkey. Nonetheless, that they are able to exercise any power at all resulted from the same forces that allowed Erdogan to come to power, as well as made it possible for thousands of Turks to occupy a park \u2014 because Turkey had opened up to them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"661\" data-total-count=\"27748\">But Erdogan no longer has use for his country\u2019s nascent inclusiveness. With his electoral mandate, he seems to believe he embodies Turkey himself. It is very likely that his core constituents, those who still love the man they call the Conqueror, will cast their votes for the A.K.P. in this spring\u2019s municipal elections. Erdogan\u2019s public vengefulness, however, may well wreck the economy, wounding the vulnerable people he once claimed to speak for. When he lashes out during public appearances \u2014 most recently describing his critics as members of a \u201closers\u2019 lobby\u201d \u2014 many Turks feel as if they are seeing the fractured future of their country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"1001\" data-total-count=\"28749\">In a way, Erdogan\u2019s bad year is a result of a liberalizing society clashing with an inherently illiberal Turkish system. The Turkish Model \u2014 the idea that the A.K.P.\u2019s softer vision of Islam was compatible with democracy \u2014 suggested a way forward for Middle Eastern countries. But Turkey\u2019s biggest problem, its authoritarian structure, has little to do with Islam. The state remains a tool for accumulating disproportionate power, and when threatened, it sacrifices its citizens to save itself. If a prime minister can co-opt the laws and the media, and if a self-interested group can prosecute trials of dubious legality, and if the citizens have nowhere to express themselves but in the streets, then the state institutions are broken. Someday Erdogan will be gone, but Turkey\u2019s system will still be a work in progress. Democratization takes a long time, and as Gezi Park and other global movements have proved, part of the process is figuring out what kind of country its citizens want.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-para-count=\"461\" data-total-count=\"29210\">The activist Zeynel Gul touched on this feeling when he said to me about Gezi Park: \u201cIt was important for us to experience that kind of life. If you were hungry, the food was free. If you were wounded, someone would carry you to the emergency tent. If you needed a lawyer, he is always there. Gezi gave us a powerful sense of a world based on solidarity and equality, which we could not imagine before. No one can take away what we experienced in the park.\u201d<\/p>\n<footer class=\"story-footer story-content\">\n<div class=\"story-meta\">\n<div class=\"story-notes\">\n<p>Suzy Hansen is a contributing writer for the magazine. She lives in Istanbul.<\/p>\n<p>Editor: Dean Robinson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"story-print-citation\">A version of this article appears in print on February 9, 2014, on page MM34 of the <span itemprop=\"printEdition\">Sunday Magazine<\/span> with the headline: A megalomaniacal prime minister, a cultish leader in the Poconos, citizens taking to the streets. . . Whose Turkey Is It?. <span class=\"story-footer-links\"><span>Order Reprints<span class=\"pipe\">|<\/span><\/span><span>Today&#8217;s Paper<span class=\"pipe\">|<\/span><\/span><span>Subscribe<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/footer>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By SUZY HANSENFEB. 5, 2014 Launch media viewer Protesters in Istanbul last June. Joachim Ladefoged\/Vll, for The New York Times email facebook twitter save more It is still a marvel to behold Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s self-confidence, even after 11 years of his rule. In recent weeks, a new poster featuring Turkey\u2019s prime minister has appeared [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":106614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}