Retrograde Turkey

The journal Foreign Policy carries an article defining several specialized terms much in use in Erdogan's Turkey. These are terms which his AKP movement have redefined to fit their anti-democratic needs. Those terms are national will, man of the nation, tutelage, mastermind, traitors, parallel state, Islamism, and Ottomanism.

Erdogan is gradually moving Turkey away from secular Kemalism toward a cult-of-personality authoritarian state. Author Mustafa Akyol concludes thusly:

Erdoganism belongs in the array of populist authoritarianisms similar to Peronism in Argentina, Chavism in Venezuela, and Putinism in Russia. It has already made Turkey, at best, an illiberal democracy where free elections take place but liberal values and institutions languish and decay.

You'll not be surprised to learn that back in January Erdogan spoke admiringly of several things accomplished by one Adolf Hitler in 1930s Germany.