How Erdogan Won Türkiye's Culture War
The Turkish experience of conservatives successfully turning the tables on a smug, oikophobic elite can teach us important lessons.
Do liberals always win culture wars?
By looking at the trajectory of the post-WWII Anglosphere, it would appear so. Whilst on economics the right rolled back the advance of the economic left, as I explain in my Margaret Thatcher article, every resistance the right tried to put up to the left’s cultural agenda ended up being thwarted, and in future decades the right always ended up saying the cultural left had been correct at the time.
But this hasn’t been the case everywhere across the world. In many Islamic countries, social conservatism is higher than it was in the 1950s; cultural leftists really did lose.
In a series of articles, I will be looking at various different countries where the right was able to ‘win the culture war’, and what we can learn from each one. No single experience reflects our experience exactly, but each can teach us important lessons. My good friend Will Solfiac has done a great article analysing the Hindu Nationalist Movement in India which you should definitely read, and covers that example for me.
The rise of Islamism in the Muslim world starting in the 1970s, and carrying on until the 2010s (likely the Taliban returning to power in Afghanistan represents their final big triumph) would be a huge counter-example to the idea that history only ever moves towards the cultural left. In the 1970s, Islamic societies became more religious than they had been a decade prior. Partly this was demographics, as pious Muslims had higher birthrates, but there was a genuine shift on the elite level as well, with Muslim women adopting the hijab in many countries where it had become uncommon in the early post-WWII period. The Islamic world was far more socially conservative in the 2000s than it had been in the 1950s, a complete inversion of the trajectory of the West.
No nation is more relevant to study than Türkiye (I will use that new spelling because Substack spellchecks it). It’s uncompromisingly secular ‘progressive’ Kemalist elites were in many ways similar to our own Woke elites. They were oikophobic (hatred of ones own culture), looked down upon their ‘bigot’ countrymen, and controlled every elite institution whilst zealously denying entry to anybody who might challenge their cultural hegemony. Their control seemed an unshakable leviathan.
But the means by which Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party prevailed, and undid many things the smug secular establishment had said for decades were ‘settled’ and a ‘losing battle to try to change’ provides an inspiration and many important lessons through which we too could overthrow our oikophobic elite.
Western Misconceptions About Ataturk
The normal narrative is to see Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as the hero and Erdogan as the villain. This is actually more common on the Right than on the Left, with Ataturk mentioned when criticising Islamism and advocating in favour of hardline secularist policies that crack down on expressions of Islamic identity, like in France (1). The Intellectual Dark Web and the Fortuynists are very into this anti-Islam narrative, using Ataturk to demonstrate ‘universal liberal values.’
In reality, right-wingers should dislike Ataturk for two reasons.
Firstly, despite his reputation as a ‘Westerniser’ and ‘the man who made Türkiye a Western, European nation’, it was he who transformed it into an exclusively Muslim nation. The ‘Westernising’ Ataturk expelled the most Westernised parts of Anatolia, the Greeks and the Armenians, from the peninsula. He ensured that neither Greece or Russia would ever reclaim Constantinople, renaming it ‘Istanbul’ and severing its ties with the West completely. His reputation as a ‘liberal’ is also laughable when you remember that his movement ensured that the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, a genocide of Christians, would never be punished, and finished the job that the ‘Three Pashas’ started. He also established Türkiye’s ridiculous stance of denying that it took place; which is bizarre given how in other areas he did everything possible to separate the new ‘Republic of Turkey’ from the Ottoman Empire.
Secondly, his self-loathing cultural stance and repression of the national religion should draw parallels with our own entitled oikophobic elites who believe they can dismantle and destroy our traditions because they are ‘bigoted’ and ‘oppressive’. Whilst he expelled Christians from Anatolia, which is the reason Erdogan and Islamist Turks don’t completely denounce Ataturk, Ataturk went on to erase Muslim’s sense of identity. His latinisation of the Turkish script simply served to isolate Türkiye from its heritage and its Muslim neighbours from which it shared centuries of history, and his anti-religious policies parallel those imposed by the Warren Court in the US. His converting the Hagia Sophia into a ‘museum’ was Jacobin and Bolshevik-adjacent, the ultimate rejection of the Ottoman’s proud history as the centre of the Islamic world.
He therefore is a strange contradiction, he completely severed Türkiye’s historic links with the West by expelling almost all of its Christians, but also decided to completely repress authentic Turkish culture to make it more like the West. Because he had expelled living, breathing communities of Christians, the ‘Westernisation’ was top-down imposed, and created a highly artificial culture, built almost entirely on a propaganda cult around himself.
It also wasn’t as if the Ottoman Empire was a complete primitive backwater prior to Ataturk either, though many people in the West would tell you otherwise. It had undergone over 100 years of Tanzimat Reforms. These reforms were more similar to the Meiji Reforms in Japan in that they adopted particular Western institutions and technology, but still did not renounce their heritage or cultural distinctiveness. Islam remained the state religion just like how Japan further lent into Shinto and the divinity of the Emperor during the Meiji period. The Ottoman script was still used, just like how Japan stubbornly refused to change their script or even reform it.
But in other areas, like secular civic legal codes, Western military technology and organisation, Western timekeeping to conform with international trade, and some aspects of Western dress (though keeping national distinctiveness with the Fez), they did emulate the best aspects of the West, showing a healthy approach to modernisation.
It’s also very easy to see people like Ataturk in a positive light, because the West was civilised BACK THEN, in the 1920s and 1930s. You see men in suits and their wives looking like Hollywood movie stars, driving attractive cars amongst Art Deco architecture, and it’s very easy to favourably compare them to the barbarian-looking Islamists with long beards, robes, and turbans.
But just remember what these people would be like now. Their fetishism for the West would lead to them plastering their historic monuments with rainbow flags.
The alternative to the Hagia Sophia being reverted to a Mosque was it flying the pride flag. When you stop seeing ‘Westernisation’ as frozen in time, and think what the term would naturally mean today had the Islamists lost, the Islamist movement becomes far more sympathetic.
The Kemalist Regime
The Kemalist regime is an excellent parallel to the predicament that the West finds itself in today, despite the difference in that it was made up of ‘lions’ far more than ‘foxes’, aka, the Turkish military.
After Ataturk’s death, there was a multiparty system, but the military made sure it was a ‘uniparty’, and that nobody was allowed to deviate from their cultural policies, hardline Kemalist secularism. This involved women who wore the hijab being banned from university and all public sector jobs, Islamic prayer being banned in public, and all religious instruction controlled by the state. Social conservatives were relegated to second class citizens, a parallel with how our current regime treats anybody who deviates from Wokeism.
In this ‘managed democracy’ disagreement and debate was permitted on economics. But if one made the SLIGHTEST move against the Kemalist consensus on culture, even something like allowing Muslims to practice their faith in public, the Kemalist military would use a variety of methods to eject them from power, not too different from the Anglosphere Woke ‘Cathedral’ today.
The first example of this was elected Prime Minister Adnan Menderes of the Democratic Party, who beat Ismet Inonu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the party founded by Ataturk and led by him until his death in 1939, in the 1946 election. In 1960, the military used an economic crisis as a justification to topple his government, due to fear he was departing from Kemalist cultural policies. The military also intervened in deposing the government in 1971, undertook a violent coup in 1980, and probably had something to do with Turgut Ozal’s, the centre-right Prime Minister of Türkiye from 1989 to 1993, mysterious death.
In 1997, a similar memorandum to in 1971 deposed Prime Minister Necmettin Ebrakan and banned his Welfare Party. Recep Tayip Erdogan was thrown in prison that same year simply for reciting an Islamic prayer in public, and his first party, the Virtue Party, was banned even though it was not explicitly Islamist, for suspicion that it was a vehicle for Islamists .
Of course, Türkiye was never accepted as a Western country, nor should it have been, as an Islamic country will never be part of Western civilisation. But the Kemalist secularist elite endlessly ‘virtue signalled’ their ‘progressivism’ to Western elites by banning religious expression. Many religiously observant Turks would have been confused that Ataturk fought against Western domination, only to change his mind and try to make Turkiye exactly like the West.
Rod Dreher I think analysed Türkiye in the most empathetic light. It’s easy to like Kemalism because it was making Türkiye more Western, but just compare it to how various traditions and the culture of the West are being pulled down to be more ‘inclusive’. Imagine if the Latin script was replaced with Arabic script, and we all had to learn how much better other cultures were and how the West was backwards? In fact, the push towards ‘de-colonisation’ is precisely this.
For the conservative Muslim in Türkiye in the 1980s, they were constantly told they were on the ‘wrong side of history’. They were endlessly degraded, humiliated, forced into second class status by an underconfident elite that ultimately hated their own countrymen, and viewed them of undeserving of any representation in public life for being ‘bigots’.
There are a lot of parallels between Kemalist Türkiye and many Western nations today, though without the military coups. Our Deep State is made up of foxes, not lions, but it is just as ruthless at asserting its control. The German authorities have made plans to ban right-wing NGOs and even the entire Alternative for Germany (AFD) Party.
But the repression that we face is nothing compared to the threat of death, that conservative Muslims faced if they attempted to challenge secularist dominance. Every single leader who even slightly deviated from their proscribed cultural line was thrown out and often murdered. There would have been many ‘doomers’ who, like Curtis Yarvin and Academic Agent today, would have advised dissidents to just ‘wait for the collapse’.
But thankfully for them, they didn’t listen.
Necmettin Erbakan
Necmettin Erbakan was the intellectual godfather of the movement that Erdogan represents, Mili Gorus.
Erbakan was a politician for the Welfare Party and was briefly Prime Minister from 1995 to 1997, before his party was banned. But he was also a political philosopher who inspired Erdogan.
Erbrakan’s view was that Türkiye should stop trying to mirror itself off the West, as the West would never accept it as one of them, and that the nation had a proud identity in its own right. He advocated increased engagement with the Islamic world and embrace of Türkiye‘s Ottoman and Islamic identity.
Indeed, it is ludicrous to see the height of Turkish international prestige as the era of Ataturk. The pre-Ataturk Turkish nation had ruled the Ottoman Empire, one of the largest Empires in history. Whilst Ataturk stopped the partition of the Anatolian peninsula, it was only a saving from complete defeat rather than a restoration of former glory.
In many ways, the way Türkiye was cut off from celebrating its Ottoman identity is akin to how Britain is cut off from celebrating the British Empire. We are conditioned to see the post-war period as the ‘enlightenment’ of Britain, when in fact our best days were before then, when we ruled a third of the globe.
Due to the repressive environment in which he operated, Erbakan often used ‘code words’ to discuss his worldview, as he could not openly challenge the secular state. He also focused a lot on economics and industrial development with a nationalist bent; which one could maybe compare to the metapolitics behind Anglofuturism.
Mili Gorus did not envision the restoration of the Ottoman Empire, but did envision the restoration of Türkiye as a proud, self-confident nation that was economically prosperous and able to project soft power. This should also be the goal of Anglofuturism, not just Imperial nostalgia but a case of reconnecting with the past whilst continuing to believe that for us living on this island, the future can be better than the past.
Erbakan was the tutor of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who began his career in Ebrakan’s Welfare Party, which advocated engagement in the political process and adopting a gradualist posture to be able to dismantle the Deep State. However, even though he presented a more moderate face than previous generations of Turkish Islamists, the transformation of the movement’s public face would need to go much further in order to triumph.
Gulen Movement
It’s ironic given that the Gulen Movement is the No. 1 enemy of the state in Türkiye today, but Erdogan’s destruction of the Kemalist regime (2) would not have been possible without them (3).
Since the 1980s, Fethullah Gulen built a comprehensive network of counter-elites. He presented a façade of moderation and non-ideology to his programmes, but in actual fact it was a means of building a religiously conservative establishment. These people were encouraged to engage in mass entryism into the military and civil service, media, and universities, to hide their real beliefs until the perfect moment to strike, and co-ordinate attacks against the secular elites.
The impressiveness of this is even more pronounced when you consider that they were going against the ideas of the man who founded modern Türkiye, where these ideas had a far greater degree of legitimacy than anything Western Wokeism does. It would have seen like a ‘losing battle’, but under a regime where expression of religious identity was harshly repressed, the Gulen movement was able to build this sprawling apparatus of institutions. And unlike mainstream conservatism in the Anglosphere, which focuses on free-market economics that benefit their wealthy donors, this was purely focused on ‘culture’ and shaping cultural values.
Criticising Ataturk directly in Türkiye is still taboo, but because of this, they were able to create far more implicit and metapolitical means to attract elite groups to their orbit.
Patience is also key; the Gulen movement needed to wait for decades before they could realise their ambitions. We would do well to learn patience; if we are serious about exorcising Wokeism from Britain, we must be prepared to do the hard work to achieve it. As Theodore Herzl said ‘if you will it, it’s not a dream’ but the ‘will’ needs to be off the charts, far greater than what we currently have.
Erdogan’s Electoral Posturing
After his imprisonment and the banning of the Welfare Party, Erdogan recognised that he needed to work within the parameters of the system. He could not advocate Islamic rule, but he could present himself as a ‘Conservative Democrat’, a Muslim equivalent to the Christian Democratic parties of Europe, whilst advocating globalist and neoliberal economic policies. In this, he broke with Erbakan, who continued to advocate a more purest, uncompromising approach in the Felicity Party, but who Erdogan recognised his approach could only appeal to around 20% of the Turkish electorate. With the help of Abdullah Gul, a liberal reformer, he was able to reinvent himself politically (4).
What’s interesting about the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is how it presented an image of being more consistently principled than the hard-line secularists. For instance, the support of the party for religious freedom also extended to being more ‘liberal’ in matters regarding nationality and even LGBT rights. They championed democracy and the rule of law. This was a clever trick to appeal to groups also discontented with the military, but often for different reasons.
It was also careful to present ‘plausible deniability’ that they were Islamists. They were able to present the secular elite as being hysterical and paranoid about Islamist infiltration, winning majority support by building bridges across different groups who were similarly disaffected by the Kemalist elite and military. Of course, in truth, they really were Islamists, but the disguise was so good that Western commentators fawned over the ‘Turkish Model’ throughout the 2000s, as they gradually burrowed their way in.
The veiled woman going into the Turkish Parliament to be immediately excluded was a watershed in demonstrating the hypocrisy of the Turkish secular elite. But Erdogan recognised that this elite would never be persuaded to ‘live up to their principles’, the showing of hypocrisy was meant to convince the Turkish people.
When he was elected in 2002, he was forbidden from being able to take office due to his previous criminal conviction for reciting a religious poem. However, his perception of reasonableness whilst being unfairly maligned by a corrupt elite, that people were blaming for the economic crisis in 2001, increased his popularity each time the Deep State tried to repress him.
How the Kemalist Deep State was Dismantled
But by the late 2000s, that happened. The Ergenekon and Sledgehammer Trials uncovered plots by the military to depose Erdogan, who was in league with the Gulen Movement at that time, and using their tight co-ordination skills and representation in the bureaucracy, were able to uncover the plots and imprison everybody involved. The Kemalist Deep State had been neutered, and it allowed Türkiye to become increasingly Islamified during the 2010s.
The Woke left’s ‘Long March Through the Institutions’ was a walk in the park. As I’ve said, Cold War liberals already fundamentally agreed with their underlying values, and were always prepared to give them a seat at the table. They never had to hide their left-wing views, they were willingly embraced.
What the Turkish Islamists did was much more impressive, and that is why it is worthy of study. They faced a regime that was far more violent at asserting itself than the Woke could ever be, carrying out executions and assassinations. They were prepared to truly do a ‘Long March’, i.e., to actually hide their real views and parrot out the dogma, in the vague hope that there would be a time when they could strike.
That is courage and commitment. It is what we must be prepared to do. At the very least, we must package our ideas in a respectable format in line with the current Overton Window, and fully embed ourselves within mainstream conservatism. We need to have a deep institutional knowledge of how the Civil Service operates, and be able to war game effectively so that when the moment comes, we are able to have Woke government workers fired en-masse. In Britain, whilst of course we should have a Heritage Foundation-like organisation with complex policy planning and the personnel trained, as I explained within ‘How the British Right Can Build a Counter-Elite’, we also should be trying to build networks of turncoats within the Deep State and establishment, like what
suggests in his article on this subject, so that we have knowledge of how Whitehall operates and the weak-spots that can be pushed. That is exactly what the Turkish Islamists were able to do to outmanoeuvre their opponents.The 2016 coup attempt was the final justification for Erdogan to clamp down on the Deep State, even though the Gulen Movement was behind it and bore the brunt of the repression. He used this opportunity to purge the remaining secularists from the high echelons of power, not only the military but also teachers, university lecturers, journalists, and basically the entire Turkish Kemalist ‘Cathedral’.
Culture under Erdogan
On the cultural front, a huge part of the Gulen Movement was about cultivating conservative artists to create culture, to celebrate Türkiye’s Ottoman past and history, something that the AKP government has promoted. Some of the most popular series in Türkiye today are epics about the Ottoman Empire, something that was taboo in previous years as all the focus had to be on Ataturk. Shows like ‘Downton Abbey’ might be a parallel of how we should operate, indeed it was created by a Tory Peer.
In Türkiye, the creative class does not lean ‘Woke’ at all, and that was because decades of effort was made. Even those people who vote for the CHP accept the cultural paradigm that Erdogan set.
Erdogan completely abolished any headscarf prohibitions after judicial reforms approved in a referendum, harshly restricted the sale of alcohol, subsidised and greatly expanded religious schools across Türkiye, and as a final sign of cultural victory, reverted the Hagia Sophia back to a Mosque.
And, once staunch secularists, the CHP, Türkiye’s previously dominant party and hardline Kemalist, has been forced to compromise on virtually everything. It does not seek to reverse Erdogan’s cultural reforms, proving that opposition parties can be forced to compromise on social issues, as much as it may seem like they won’t. In order to defeat Erdogan, the opposition has had to make more and more compromises, even allying with Islamist groups, so that it’s only defining characteristic is ‘anti-Erdogan’, yet the cultural hegemony Erdogan set is enshrined. This has proven that a ‘New Labour Moment’ isn’t only possible on economics, it can also be achieved on culture.
Lessons for Britain and the West
I had been meaning to write this article for a while. An article from J’Accuse mentioned the Turkish AKP as an example a British counter-elite should seek to follow, something that struck me as I had also thought similarly.
There seems to be a reluctance to learn from the Islamist movements, and how they reversed secular hegemony, on the Western right because it is culturally predisposed to see the secularists as ‘based’ and the Islamists as ‘barbarians’. However, if one was to take off their cultural biases which are ‘similar to West = good’, ‘Islamic = bad’, there is indeed a rich tapestry of experience as to how a culture can be taken back.
Erdogan said ‘democracy is like a tram, you get off when you reach your destination’. This was behind his push towards Presidentialism and expanding ‘religious freedom’. This should be our orientation. Even if we aren’t a religious movement, championing ‘religious freedom’ is a good road to go down. We should use IDW-talking points, like ‘free speech’ in order to get ourselves elected, and pretend to be consistent on this, when in actual fact we use ‘free speech’ to end all ‘hate speech laws’, so that we can mobilise civil society against Woke hegemony on an even playing field.
As mentioned, our Deep State is not a military-based one. It is ‘foxes’ not ‘lions’. This means that they are less likely to try a coup, as they would have very little capacity to use such a blunt instrument, but would be more effective at spinning the narrative. So we need to adapt our approach; in Türkiye, the military was the first target. For a country like Britain, the first target would need to be institutions like the BBC, so that we can control the narrative.
We should purge Woke bureaucrats all in the name of ‘expanding democracy’. Mechanisms like citizens initiatives could be tools by which the people, who whilst not agreeing with us entirely, agree with us more than the elite does, and can be used to erode the legitimacy of the established elites.
Another thing we can learn from Erdogan is to focus on economic issues. The AKP was able to expand its base from just Islamists by talking about bread and butter issues, and having concrete policy solutions to solve them. Erdogan had a great record as Mayor of Istanbul, greatly improving quality of life for its inhabitants, and AKP policies oversaw an economic boom for Türkiye throughout the 2000s. We can see this paralleled with how Javier Milei has been received by the global establishment, he has been able to completely defund DEI in Argentina because global finance is mostly concerned about his economic policies. If you can convince the rich that you can fill their pockets better than the Woke, and also convince the people of the same thing, their cultural values will be secondary to that. On issues of secondary importance, it is best to toe the establishment line in order to buy political capital to be used on other issues, like fighting Wokeism.
Importance of Ideological Cohesion
One missing ingredient however is the level of will. Like Richard Hanania discussed in ‘Why is Everything Liberal?’, in a representative democracy it is a matter of cardinal utility, aka ‘who cares the most’. The Gulen movement was deeply committed to infiltrating the state apparatus and prepared to play a long game, and even though the movement itself lost power, they still managed to dismantle the secular Deep State so that Erdogan, a fellow Islamist, could fill the void.
The Western Right needs to have a similar ideology that promotes absolute dedication. The belief in serving God and contributing to one’s salvation is certainly a powerful motivator, something that we don’t have, though the Religious Right in the US was able to get to where it is because it did have that religious motivator. It is why the pro-life movement has not given in; it didn’t say in 1973 when Roe was passed ‘it’s over, we lost’, like many conservatives say with Obergefell.
We need to construct an ideology that people are willing to dedicate their lives to. This doesn’t have to be strictly religious, Marxism and Woke are able to inspire a similar degree of fanaticism, but it must be uncompromising and totally convinced of its moral righteousness. We can’t have an extremely fragmented online movement like we have now; there needs to be a common line.
I don’t like this kind of cultural outlook, but as I have said before, if you want to change the system, you have to win at the current one. Implementing citizens initiatives and referendums would weaken the power of these fanatical minority groups in time, but in order for that to be implemented, you need to create a fanatical movement of your own first.
In later articles I will explore more Western-examples of the right winning the culture war, but despite the differences, the Islamist movements are worthy of study as the region is a place where conservatives really did ‘win’ the culture war. Not just like America where they achieved ‘one step back’ if the 1960s had achieved ‘three steps forward’ for the cultural left, but actually dismantling it at its root.
You can debate whether that is a good or bad thing, I’d obviously prefer the ‘Westernisation of the 1950s - 2000s’. But I respect that different peoples want to be proud of their unique history and culture, and not have a constant inferiority complex to another culture, even if that happens to be our own. And as I said before, if the Islamic world had been totally incorporated into the Western cultural sphere but the trajectory of the West remained unchanged, it would not have remained men in business suits, driving beautiful cars, and attractive women on advertisements; that was just a reflection of what the West was like BACK THEN; if the Westernisers were in power today, it would be promotion of pride parades and transgenderism.
The Anglofuturist ideology has some similarities with the type of Turkish nationalism that Erbakan endorsed, though without the religious angle. A conception of national rejuvenation, particularism, and embrace of modern technology without an embrace of liberal values.
The road ahead will be long and hard, but we must always remember that ‘if you will it, it’s not a dream’, though that will must be immense indeed.
Bibliography
Tarhan, G. (2011). Roots of the headscarf debate: Laicism and secularism in France and Turkey. Journal of Political Inquiry, 4(2011), 1-17.
Sullivan, A. (2018). Unconditional Surrender: The Rise of President Erdogan and the end of Kemalist Turkey. History in the Making, 11(1), 5.
Yavuz, M. H., & Koç, R. (2016). The Turkish coup attempt: the Gülen movement vs. the state. Middle East Policy, 23(4), 136-148.
Yilmaz, I., Barton, G., & Barry, J. (2017). The decline and resurrection of Turkish Islamism: the story of Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP.
Good article. A few minor points - James Tucker of course, mentions that Ataturk was in many respects 'anti-woke' in that he was a Turkish nationalist; so his language reforms need to be seen in that light. As I mentioned below, there is a tension between the nationalist right and the religious right, which will need to be ironed out. I'd also add that although he failed to save the empire, preventing the complete dissolution of Turkey into the rump of Anatolia was a major achievement, given what befell other collapsing empires. It's also looking into the Tanzimat reforms, because they were largely a failure, and it's important to know why. Finally, Islamism itself as a broader movement is receding and it's vital to consider why that is, for our own project, if/when we get that far. Arguably it's due to problems inherent to both Islam and the middle east, but it's worth a deep dive at some point.
Nice, I hadn't realised before but Erdoğan converting the Hagia Sofia back to a mosque has a close parallel with Modi inaugurating the Ram Mandir temple on the site of the Babri Masjid.