Wall Street Journal
Emre Peker | Joe Parkinson
Turkey—Kemal Akinci’s reverence for Turkey’s president runs so deep that when his wife gave birth to triplets he named them after the leader: Recep, Tayyip and Erdogan.
When news of a coup attempt broke in mid-July, the 33-year-old baker asked his wife to pray for him and rushed to the streets in protest, beginning 27 straight days of demonstrations in the medieval square in support of his hero. “I’m ready to give my life for the president, and that was the spirit of the crowd, too,” he said.
In the months since the failed coup, devotion such as his has moved from the fringe to the political mainstream, fortifying an Erdogan personality cult that is now reshaping Turkey’s democracy.
Across the country, Mr. Erdogan’s image has become omnipresent, gazing from billboards, TV screens and newspapers. A biopic called “The Chief,” his nickname, is due for release around his birthday in late February. A song titled the “Erdogan March” lauds what it calls the lion-hearted protector of the global Muslim community, and became a Twitter top trend in Turkey. When the president asked Turks to exchange their dollar savings for Turkish lira to stop the currency’s slide, thousands complied, fuelling a brief rally.
Kemal Akinci with his family, including triplets named Recep, Tayyip and Erdogan, in Sivas,Turkey
Bolstering the genuine public support, which pushed Mr. Erdogan’s approval rating to 68% after he put down the rebellion, is a fast-expanding architecture of power that many here regard as repression.
Since July, more than 125,000 mostly public employees have been purged, including 40,000 who are under detention. The government of Mr. Erdogan has closed more than 169 media outlets during the same period. It has jailed the entire top leadership of a pro-Kurdish political party that won six million votes in an election last year. Mr. Erdogan delivers daily hourlong speeches, which television stations that haven’t been shut down uniformly broadcast live.
With the opposition cowed or co-opted, Mr. Erdogan appears almost sure to achieve his longstanding ambition of overhauling Turkey’s constitution by establishing an executive presidency. Under Mr. Erdogan, his behavior over the past few years suggests, that would essentially mean one-man rule.
“I don’t care if they call me a dictator or whatever else. It goes in one ear, out the other,” Mr. Erdogan said at an Istanbul university on Oct. 6 as he accepted the latest of some three dozen honorary doctorates. “I have come to serve my people, not dominate over them.” The president’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.
Turkey is going through its most tumultuous time in decades. The murder of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey on Dec. 19 capped 10 days of violence, including bombings that killed at least 58 people—volatility that only strengthens Mr. Erdogan’s push for expanded powers.
His unfolding efforts to reshape Turkey place Mr. Erdogan in the vanguard of illiberal populism personified by leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Mr. Erdogan’s movement has been a long campaign against a secular elite installed early last century by Turkish independence hero Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and kept in power by the military.
His movement, sometimes called Erdoganismo, is an Islamist-infused cocktail of winner-take-all democracy, nationalism and nostalgia for the past glories of this onetime center of the Ottoman Empire. Those sidelined include the once-dominant secular and West-leaning intelligentsia, along with ethnic and religious minorities.
The secret to the power grab is a political base of religious Sunni Muslims who have seen their incomes rise, their formerly circumscribed rights restored, and their pride enhanced by Mr. Erdogan’s policies. Zealous support from this bloc, about half of Turkey’s voters, has helped ward off challenges from critics and political opponents. Murat Toraman, a software entrepreneur, is an Erdogan backer and local official of the ruling AKP.
“The more they tried to stop Erdogan, the stronger he got. Without realizing, they created a giant,” said Murat Toraman, a software entrepreneur in Sivas and councilor with the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP.
Supporters say Mr. Erdogan, who has marshaled nine AKP election victories since 2002, has shown himself a benevolent and capable leader. Dismissing the idea he is autocratic, they credit his skill at developing trust and credibility across society.
The steep accumulation of Mr. Erdogan’s power since the failed coup, as he rules by emergency decree, has spooked fellow members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
