WORLD
Turkey’s Man of The People Third-term Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the most popular politician of his generation. But is he a reformer or a strongman in waiting? BY RANA FOROOHAR
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ou could call it poetic justice. Back in 1999, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then an upand-coming young mayor of Istanbul with populist appeal and Islamist leanings, was sentenced to 10 months in jail for reciting a century-old poem that the country’s generals—the enforcers of Turkey’s constitutionally mandated secularism—found offensive. “Minarets are our bayonets,” the poem went, “the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks, and the believers our army.” Erdogan was packed away for inciting religious hatred, but not before shouting that “this song is not yet over.” And how. On June 12, Erdogan led his Justice and Development Party (the AKP) to its third consecutive victory in Turkish parliamentary elections, improving on his 47% landslide victory in 2007 by bringing in 50% of the vote. The Prime Minister, who has led Photograph by Jodi Hilton—ENN Photo
the country since 2003 and is widely considered to be the most successful politician of his generation, had lost none of his bluster, proclaiming the results a victory “for Bosnia as much as Istanbul, Beirut as much as Izmir, Damascus as much as Ankara.” Certainly people in all those places— and far beyond—were watching the election, which will likely have a critical impact on the region and the wider world. Erdogan has arguably been the most transformational leader in Turkey since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923. A 57-year-old former soccer player and native of Istanbul’s tough Kasimpasa district, Erdogan, a pious Muslim with a headscarf-wearing wife, appeals to the devout among Turkey’s Anatolian masses, who, like religious Americans from the heartland, often feel condescended to by the coastal, secular elite. But he’s also popular among the urban working class,
Jubilant in Istanbul
Supporters of the Justice and Development Party celebrate its third consecutive victory in parliamentary elections