TÜRKİYE ORTA ASYA HABER KKUORDİNATÖRÜ

JOURNAL OFB DEMOCRACY. Secularism, Islamism, and the Future of Turkey Ahmet T. Kuru (bio) In March 2025, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was jailed on corruption charges—the same day he was elected as the Turkish opposition’s presidential candidate by 15 million voters in an unprecedented primary. His candidacy poses a significant challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 22-year rule and redefines the Islamist-secularist divide by resonating with both religious and secular voters. As Erdoğan’s support declines amid economic turmoil, Turkey’s opposition offers a potential model for resisting authoritarian populism. This political shift carries broader implications for the future of secularism, Islamism, and democratic resilience—not only in Turkey but across the Muslim world and beyond. In March 1999, the then mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, began serving time in prison for inciting popular polarization and hatred with a speech he had given two years earlier. His conviction effectively barred him from holding political office, as Turkish law prohibited individuals sentenced for that offense from serving in such roles. Four years later, however, a constitutional amendment lifted the legal restrictions on his political career, paving the way for Erdoğan to become prime minister. Since then, he has remained Turkey’s most powerful executive—first as prime minister (2003–14) and then as president (2014 to present). This historical moment resurfaced in public memory in March 2025, when Istanbul’s current mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was jailed on corruption charges and his three-decade-old undergraduate degree was annulled. These dual actions appear to have been aimed at disqualifying him from running for president, as the Turkish constitution requires presidential candidates to hold a university degree. The parallels and contrasts between these two episodes reveal both continuity and profound change in Turkish politics over the past quarter-century. While Turkey has undergone significant transformations—albeit with certain continuities—the regional and global contexts have also shifted substantially. On critical issues such as democracy and secularism, particularly in terms of their interaction with Islamism and populism, a global debate continues to unfold, and Turkey has long stood at its center. The country’s significance does not stem from its economic weight—its GDP accounts for only about 1 percent of the global total—but rather from its strategic geography (linking Europe, Asia, and [End Page 92] Africa), its imperial legacy (as successor of the Ottoman Empire), its complex foreign-policy orientation (as a Muslim-majority nation and longstanding NATO member integrated into nearly all European institutions, short of full EU membership), and its enduring ideological polarization—most notably, between secularists and Islamists. This final factor has elevated two Turkish presidents to global relevance. The first, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (d. 1938), abolished the Ottoman caliphate and established the most staunchly secular republic the Muslim world has seen. The most recent, Erdoğan, has gradually reversed key aspects of Atatürk’s legacy—particularly in public discourse, relations between the ulema (Islamic scholars) and the state, and the education system—although the secular character of the constitution remains formally intact. I argue that the current political contest between two mayors of Istanbul—Erdoğan (b. 1954) and İmamoğlu (b. 1971)—is not merely a rivalry for the presidency. Rather, it represents a deeper struggle over Turkey’s future direction. If Erdoğan prevails, he will consolidate the incremental gains he has made in steering the Turkish state and public discourse toward a more Islamist direction. If İmamoğlu comes out on top, he will seek to restore the legacy of Atatürk—not as a century-old replica, but in his own vision of the coexistence of the secular state and Muslim society. I therefore begin by analyzing Atatürk’s legacy. Atatürk versus Erdoğan Atatürk and the other founders of the Turkish Republic (established in 1923) envisioned a modern state that would differ fundamentally from the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922). They believed that being overly religious and excessively diverse had contributed significantly to the empire’s collapse and that the new republic therefore needed to be different. The Ottoman Empire integrated Islamic law into its legal system, and the clergy played social-leadership roles within both Muslim and non-Muslim communities. The empire was also marked by significant ethnic and religious diversity. The founders of modern Turkey therefore aimed to construct a nation based on a single (secular) legal system and a single (Turkish) national identity. Although they won the War of Independence against Western imperialists, they still drew inspiration from the French model of nation-building, and their decision to abolish the caliphate was compatible with British geopolitical goals. Until the 1970s, this nation-building project was largely mirrored by the secular-nationalist movements seen elsewhere in the Muslim world—such as those led by Iran’s Reza Shah, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Tunisia’s Habib Bourguiba, and the various Baath regimes in Syria and Iraq. In Turkey and across the Muslim world, however, this secularist wave was met with resistance from the ulema, the Islamists [End Page 93] (who were seeking to turn Islam into a political ideology), and the sheikhs (leaders of Sufi tariqas or orders).1 The turning point came in 1979, a pivotal year in global Islamic politics: The Iranian Revolution brought an Islamist government to power; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan triggered a U.S.-backed jihad; and the Grand Mosque in Mecca was seized by a radical Islamist group.2 Amid this growing regional turbulence and increasing Islamist activism at home, Turkey’s military intervened with a coup in 1980, claiming to protect the republic and its secular foundations from both leftist and Islamist threats. The military regime of 1980–83 was firmly anticommunist, but its approach to Islamism was more nuanced. The generals, believing that the best way to contain Islamism was to keep Islam under state control, enshrined mandatory Islamic education in the constitution. This marked a departure from Atatürk’s French-style assertive secularism, yet it still echoed his original vision—most notably, in the establishment of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a state agency that paid the salaries of imams to ensure that all mosques remained under government oversight.3 Another factor that led the Turkish military to adopt a more accommodating stance toward Islam in public life was the necessity of foreign-policy realignment. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1980 had rocked Turkey’s economy, creating an urgent need to strengthen ties with the oil-rich—and more overtly Islamic—Gulf states. In addition, Turkey faced growing international isolation following its 1974 military intervention in Northern Cyprus. During the early 1980s, few countries supported the Turkish military regime, including General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamist government in Pakistan. These dynamics pushed the military establishment to recalibrate its approach to religion—to use it as a strategic tool for geopolitical and economic survival. In the two decades between the end of the military regime and Erdoğan’s rise to power as prime minister, the military allowed multi-party elections but retained significant control through a system of tutelage. The generals exercised oversight not only through their ideological dominance—as the guardians of secularism—but also through institutional prerogatives. The military imposed certain policies (particularly those related to Islamism and Kurdish resistance) on civilian governments during monthly National Security Council meetings, operated its own judicial system, and educated future officers from a young age in military-run boarding schools. The generals also exerted influence over the judiciary, helping to secure rulings that aligned with their ideological vision. This included upholding the ban on headscarves for all students—even at private universities. Secularists in the judiciary, media, business, and political parties believed their dominance in Turkish politics was secure, safeguarded by the enduring influence of the military. This short-term confidence, however, [End Page 94] proved deceptive in light of its long-term consequences. The military’s long shadow over Turkish politics ultimately discredited the secularists and enabled Islamist politicians, along with the ulema, tariqas, and Islamic communities, to construct a compelling counternarrative: that the Turkish people desired a greater role for Islam in public life but were being suppressed by a secular, Western-aligned elite led by the generals. According to this narrative, Turkey was witnessing a struggle between the Muslim majority and their faith versus a corrupt elite clinging to a secularist ideology. A popular slogan among these groups targeted the Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded by Atatürk: “The CHP plus the army equals power.” It was a reference to the military’s recurring interventions in politics, often with the CHP’s support. Two movements became the most influential proponents of this narrative. One was the National Outlook (Millî Görüş) movement, led by Necmettin Erbakan (d. 2011), who founded a series of Islamist political parties—many of which were shut down by the secularist judiciary, only to be reestablished under new names. Erdoğan himself emerged from this movement. The other was the movement led by Fethullah Gülen, an imam who went into self-imposed exile in the United States in 1999, during a period of military pressure on all Islamic groups, and lived in Pennsylvania until his death in 2024. The Gülen movement advanced Erdoğan’s goal of breaking the military’s longstanding grip on politics. Until Erdoğan, nearly all Islamist or even center-right political leaders had been removed from power by the military. The generals began targeting Erdoğan when he was mayor and aspiring to become a national leader: In 1998, they supported the prison sentence handed down to him. Although the conviction disqualified him from holding public office, Erdoğan was still allowed to be the founding leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Amid a political and economic crisis, the AKP won the 2002 parliamentary elections. Erdoğan visited and was welcomed at the White House and in European capitals as Turkey’s new leader. Leveraging his popularity and Western support against the generals, he secured a constitutional amendment that removed the legal barriers to his running for parliament. Yet even after becoming prime minister in 2003, the generals continued to make attempts to challenge Erdoğan. The most notable of these was the 2007 e-memorandum—a public warning posted on the Turkish Armed Forces’ official website, emphasizing that the military was closely monitoring the upcoming presidential election in parliament and expecting a president who would be loyal to secularism. In response, the Constitutional Court blocked the parliamentary vote, preventing then–prime minister Erdoğan’s ruling AKP from electing a president. In the end, a general election had to be called, which the AKP won again, and the presidential vote proceeded, resulting in the election of AKP [End Page 95] candidate Abdullah Gül as Turkey’s new president. This fueled further concern and hostility toward AKP rule among the secularist establishment, but internal divisions within the armed forces were growing, making a full-scale military coup more difficult. Thus in 2008, the secularist elite pursued what many referred to as a “judicial coup”—an attempt to shut down the AKP and ban Erdoğan and other top party leaders from politics with the charge of being antisecular. This effort narrowly failed: The Constitutional Court fell one vote short of the required supermajority to dissolve the party. This outcome was shaped by the joint efforts of Erdoğanists and Gülenists, who at the time functioned as an unofficial coalition. The Gülen movement operated with both public and clandestine faces, using each to thwart any military or judicial attempt to unseat Erdoğan. How did an Islamic movement manage to gain such deep influence within Turkey’s secular military and judiciary? Erdoğan versus Gülen Gülen founded his movement as a continuation of the ideas of the influential Islamic scholar Said Nursi (1876–1960). In the 1980s, Gülen’s followers began establishing private schools and test-preparation centers geared toward Turkey’s nationwide university entrance exams. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the movement expanded its educational network into Central Asia throughout the 1990s. By the time Erdoğan rose to power in 2003, the Gülenists already operated dozens of universities and hundreds of schools in Turkey and abroad; over the following decade, they expanded this network to more than a hundred countries. The movement’s visible success depended on a close alliance between teachers and merchants, forming what many described as a Muslim Turkish bourgeoisie who financially supported the schools. The Gülenists also built a powerful media empire, centered primarily in Turkey but with international reach. Zaman, their flagship publication, became popular and played a key role in connecting the movement with liberal intellectuals. These intellectuals viewed Gülenists as more moderate than Islamists and more open to globalization than the secularist elite dominant in Turkey. Nonetheless, Gülen also presided over a parallel and clandestine network with the long-term goal of infiltrating all organs of the Turkish state—in particular, the military, police, and judiciary.4 When accused of orchestrating such an infiltration, Gülen consistently denied the existence of a covert organization, and insisted that “the people” had every right to serve in all branches of the bureaucracy. This rhetoric echoed the broader Islamist claim of a dichotomy between the faithful Muslim majority and a secularist elite who had obstructed popular participation in state institutions. [End Page 96] The Gülenists managed to place thousands of their members into the military ranks over decades without the support of civilian governments, as they had very limited influence over military promotions. Yet the group did receive Erdoğan’s support in other branches of the bureaucracy, such as the police and judiciary. The main joint effort of Erdoğanists and Gülenists was the Ergenekon, or “deep state” (derin devlet), trials against secularist forces in the military and judiciary. Starting in 2008 and lasting five years, these trials accused secularist officers of plotting coups. In short, the alliance between Erdoğanists and Gülenists was a pragmatic one based on a shared adversary: the secularist establishment. In 2010, a referendum amending the Turkish constitution to bring the judiciary under government and parliamentary control passed with 58 percent of the vote. This was a major victory for the Erdoğan-Gülen alliance and a blow to the secularists. Erdoğan also took bold steps to address Turkey’s decades-long Kurdish question. He came close to securing a historic peace deal with Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdish guerrilla group PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in early 2013. At that time, Erdoğan seemed to be at the peak of his leadership. Economically, Turkey was thriving—one U.S. dollar was worth 1.8 Turkish lira. In foreign affairs, then–U.S. president Barack Obama obtained an apology from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his military’s assault on Turkish citizens during the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid. A persistent problem, however, was the European Union’s refusal to make progress toward granting Turkey full membership, reinforcing the perception within the Erdoğan government, and among much of the Turkish public, that the EU was reluctant to admit Turkey due to its Muslim identity. In response, Erdoğan increasingly shifted his focus to the Middle East, where the Arab Spring energized his ambitions. His aspirations were buoyed by support from Qatari emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and the 2012 election of Islamist Mohamed Morsi as Egypt’s president. Erdoğan began to envision himself as a regional leader—a role that complemented his growing self-image as Turkey’s uncontested national chief. But things began to change rapidly in June 2013. What started as a small protest in Istanbul’s Gezi Park quickly escalated into a nationwide wave of demonstrations. The protests were sparked by public outrage over Erdoğan’s plans to build in the park, using the construction sector as a vehicle for rent seeking at the expense of the environment. The then–prime minister responded with a harsh crackdown—once again with the help of the Gülenist police officers. Yet within weeks, he suffered significant setbacks in the region. Mohamed Morsi was overthrown in a military coup in Egypt, and the Qatari emir stepped down due to health reasons, handing power to his son. The real challenge, however, emerged from within: With the secularist [End Page 97] establishment in decline, Erdoğan and Gülen turned on each other, launching a power struggle to determine who would ultimately control Turkey. The Gülenists believed that Erdoğan had grown weak—he had lost his regional allies, faced criticism from 47 U.S. Congress members for bypassing Iran sanctions,5 and lacked a loyal base within the bureaucracy. In December 2013, Gülenists in the judiciary and police launched a corruption investigation targeting Erdoğan’s family members, cabinet ministers, and senior bureaucrats. Erdoğan, however, was well-prepared for a struggle and responded forcefully, labeling the prosecutors, judges, and police officers involved as coup plotters. The Gülenists had aimed to consolidate their power by winning a nationwide election in which eleven-thousand judges and prosecutors would vote to select the judicial council responsible for appointments and promotions, but the Gülenists narrowly lost. Hoping for a shift in public sentiment, they then pinned their hopes on upcoming municipal, presidential, and parliamentary elections in 2014 and 2015—yet Erdoğan and his AKP prevailed in all of them. Bolstered by popular support, Erdoğan launched a sweeping purge that targeted not only bureaucrats but also the Gülenists’ organizational leaders and business-people, branding them as terrorists. It was under these circumstances that the failed coup attempt of July 2016 occurred. The coup plotters killed 251 civilians and police officers. Erdoğan accused Gülen of being the mastermind behind the putsch and responded by significantly deepening the purge. In this conflict between Erdoğanists and Gülenists, the secularists—along with their party, the CHP—sided with the Erdoğanists, especially after the coup attempt. That decision was pivotal in the Gülenists’ eventual defeat. Erdoğan versus Secularists There are three main reasons why secularists came to prefer Erdoğan over Gülen. First, Erdoğan was an elected—and thus legitimate—politician, whereas Gülen was an opaque leader of a clandestine network. Some secularists expressed this view: “We can remove Erdoğan through elections, but if Gülen returns like Khomeini, we may never get rid of him.” Second, Erdoğan remained highly popular among conservative Muslims and consistently won elections. In contrast, the Gülenists’ popularity sharply declined after their direct confrontation with Erdoğan. They backed a few independent candidates—including world-renowned soccer player Hakan Şükür—in the June 2015 parliamentary election, but none came close to winning. When the Gülenists’ growing influence within the bureaucracy was an open secret, many conservative Muslims had backed them as a counterweight to the secularist establishment. But once they turned against Erdoğan and the AKP, that support disappeared. [End Page 98] Therefore, it became clear to the secularists as well that siding with the Gülenists increasingly meant backing a lost cause. Third, secularists harbored a deep resentment toward the Gülenists because of the Ergenekon trials, during which secularist military officers were prosecuted and purged. Although these trials were a joint effort between Erdoğanists and Gülenists, Erdoğan—ever the pragmatic politician—managed to reconcile with secularist officers by overturning their court sentences, calling the trials a sham, and placing full blame on the Gülenists. He would even enlist some of these officers (and their media allies) in his personal battle against the Gülenists. Nonetheless, Erdoğan and the secularists have had starkly contrasting interpretations of the coup attempt and following events. In Erdoğan’s telling, it was ordinary people who took to the streets to stop the Gülenist coup attempt, just as they had supported him in dismantling the secularist establishment. Erdoğan portrays himself as founding a new republic shaped by the will of “the people”—one that embraces their Islamic values and aspirations. This vision includes stronger ties with Arab countries and a cultural revival of Ottoman identity through television series and public ceremonies. The secularists, however, have emphasized the role of secularist military officers in thwarting the coup attempt and argue that it was Erdoğan himself who had empowered the Gülenists in the first place—and thus he bore responsibility for the chaos they had caused. For secularists, the Gülenist threat only reinforced the importance of Atatürk’s secular republic and further discredited Islamism. Thus, Erdoğan’s moment of dominance is temporary; he will be unable to alter the core tenets of Atatürk’s vision in either foreign policy or cultural identity. These two contrasting interpretations of recent events connect to certain paradoxes in Turkish politics. One concerns Erdoğan. On the one hand, he succeeded in creating an all-powerful presidency. The 2017 constitutional referendum (though narrowly passed) established a new presidential system that granted sweeping powers over parliament and the judiciary, formally making Erdoğan the most powerful Turkish leader since Atatürk. On the other hand, Erdoğan has struggled to secure an outright majority when the opposition unites (as happened in the June 2015 parliamentary election). In addition, after purging Gülenists from the bureaucracy, he needed a new ally there. So, in 2018, he formed [End Page 99] a coalition with Devlet Bahçeli and his right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which contributed about 10 percent of the vote, along with parliamentary and bureaucratic support. Another paradox lay with the secularists. On the one hand, they were pleased to see Erdoğan carry out a widespread purge of the Gülenists, something they themselves could never have done without risking backlash from the conservative majority. With the passive support of secularists and the active backing of his new nationalist ally, Erdoğan launched an unprecedented crackdown following the 2016 coup attempt. Since then, more than 705,000 people have been investigated for alleged links to the “Gülenist terrorist organization,” with around 300,000 detained and 125,000 indicted. More than 100,000 public servants were dismissed, including more than 25,000 from the military, 13,000 from the police, and 4,000 from the judiciary.6 Additionally, the AKP–MHP coalition targeted and imprisoned two other groups that had once been Erdoğan’s allies during his first decade in power: Large numbers of Kurdish nationalists—accused of having ties to the PKK—and a smaller but intellectually influential group of liberal intellectuals with alleged ties to the Gülenists. On the other hand, while the purges of Gülenists, Kurdish nationalists, and liberals pleased many secularists, they also transformed the Erdoğan regime into a vast machine of police, prosecutors, judges, and media propagandists, capable of labeling and imprisoning political opponents on a massive scale. It was only a matter of time before the secularists themselves risked being caught in its gears. Erdoğan was confident that by replacing the proportional parliamentary system with a winner-takes-all presidential system, he had eliminated any real chance for the secularists to come to power. He believed that with roughly 60 percent of the electorate identifying as conservative Muslims, the secularist CHP would stand little chance in a presidential race. He was especially convinced that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the CHP’s leader at the time and an Alevi (a religious minority comprising less than a fifth of the population) could never win a national majority. Erdoğan did not seriously consider the possibility that the CHP might nominate someone like İmamoğlu. Erdoğan versus İmamoğlu The 2019 municipal election came as a shock to Erdoğan. His party’s candidate, former prime minister Binali Yıldırım, lost the Istanbul mayoral race to the CHP’s İmamoğlu, at the time a relatively unknown 47-year-old. Refusing to accept the result, Erdoğan pushed for the Supreme Electoral Council to annul the election. But in the rerun, İmamoğlu won by an even larger margin. The AKP also lost Ankara’s mayoral race to the CHP candidate, Mansur Yavaş. This defeat was less [End Page 100] of a concern for Erdoğan: Ankara, with a population of six million, was smaller than Istanbul’s sixteen million and did not hold the same symbolic value for Erdoğan’s political career and his broader vision of reviving an Ottoman identity. Moreover, Yavaş—older, a less dynamic speaker, and not as politically assertive as İmamoğlu—was seen as less of a threat to Erdoğan’s national leadership. Over the years, İmamoğlu gained national prominence. Right before the 2023 presidential election, polls showed that he was more popular than both Erdoğan and CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu. Nevertheless, Kılıçdaroğlu insisted on running as the opposition’s presidential candidate. Erdoğan, meanwhile, maneuvered to ensure that the mayor would not be a contender. Progovernment prosecutors and judges charged İmamoğlu with insulting the Electoral Council by calling them “fools” after the 2019 annulment. If upheld on appeal, the case could have disqualified him from running for office. This legal threat gave Kılıçdaroğlu the excuse he needed to sideline İmamoğlu and secure the nomination for himself. Erdoğan won the race by campaigning with Islamist-populist rhetoric, such as reciting the Koran in Hagia Sophia (which he had reconverted into a mosque a few years earlier), and appealing to nationalist voters with battleships and drones built by the country’s growing defense industry.7 The election loss revitalized the CHP base and sparked a movement to unify around İmamoğlu. The party elected a new leader, Özgür Özel, who signaled his readiness to nominate İmamoğlu in the next presidential race. Under this new leadership—and bolstered by the nationwide popularity of both İmamoğlu and Yavaş—the CHP became the leading party in the 2024 municipal elections and defeated the AKP in most major cities. There are two main reasons for the declining popularity of Erdoğan and his AKP. First, the Turkish economy has been in crisis for the past four years. Economists such as Daron Acemoglu have highlighted the importance of property rights as a foundation for economic growth. Yet Turkey has moved in the opposite direction, confiscating private properties on a large scale by labeling the owners as terrorists. Such labeling has long been an instrument of power in Turkish politics. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, secularists called Islamists “reactionaries” (irticacı) to legitimize marginalizing them in politics and the bureaucracy. Between 2008 and 2013, the Erdoğanist-Gülenist alliance turned against the secularists, labeling them members of the “deep state” (Ergenekon) to justify purges within the military and civilian bureaucracy. Since 2014, Erdoğanists have used the term “Gülenist terrorists” to delegitimize all Gülenists, whether they are bureaucrats or ordinary citizens. In doing so, the government has been able to seize tens of billions of dollars’ worth of personal and institutional assets belonging to individuals, corporations, and foundations linked to the Gülenists. [End Page 101] This assault on property rights has played a role in deepening Turkey’s economic crisis—although it remains a taboo subject, rarely acknowledged publicly or analyzed seriously. A more direct cause of Turkey’s economic crisis is Erdoğan’s policy of lowering interest rates to combat inflation—an approach that defies economic theory and has led to inflation soaring above 50 percent over the past four years. The president sometimes justified this strategy by citing the Islamic prohibition on interest, though his primary motive was to keep the construction and related sectors afloat with cheap credit. As expected, the policy backfired. Eventually, Erdoğan allowed the Central Bank to sharply raise interest rates to nearly 50 percent. Yet despite this U-turn, both high inflation and currency depreciation have persisted: One U.S. dollar now equals 39 Turkish liras. Amid the economic instability, authoritarianism, and populist attacks on the “elite,” many well-educated professionals—including medical doctors—have sought opportunities abroad, particularly in Europe, despite visa restrictions. This ongoing “brain drain” is both a symptom and a contributing factor to Turkey’s deepening economic crisis. The second reason behind Erdoğan’s declining popularity is the failure—despite full control over the state apparatus and vast propaganda resources—to achieve a lasting cultural transformation in line with his Islamist-populist vision. The AKP controls public television and radio, exerts strong influence over private media, deploys professional propagandists on social media, and uses Diyanet to coordinate government-friendly sermons in eighty-thousand mosques. Yet this extensive machinery has failed to produce ideological hegemony. Among younger generations, in particular, Erdoğan is increasingly seen as an aging leader fixated on history.8 Moreover, the president’s demonization of the Gülenists has had unintended consequences for his ideological battle against the secularists. If Turkey’s most well-known Islamic movement turned out to be a terrorist organization, would that not validate longstanding secularist warnings about the dangers of Islamists? The AKP’s narrative of the virtuous Muslim masses versus a corrupt secularist elite was deeply undermined by the Erdoğanist-Gülenist feud. In response, Erdoğan has focused on consolidating his conservative base by warning of a secularist resurgence. But this strategy has become less effective with the rise of İmamoğlu, who resonates deeply with conservative voters despite being a strong advocate of Atatürk’s secular [End Page 102] republicanism. İmamoğlu’s background—coming from a conservative family, with a mother who wears a headscarf—helps him to bridge cultural divides. During his 2019 campaign, İmamoğlu made symbolic gestures such as reciting the Koran alongside an imam in a mosque. And in 2020, as mayor of Istanbul, he acquired a rare portrait of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (1432–81) by the Renaissance painter Gentile Bellini for US$1.2 million and returned it to Istanbul from London—a move that appealed to nationalists and neo-Ottomanists. Simultaneously, he reached out to Kurdish voters, notably by visiting the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey, Diyarbakır, and delivering an inclusive speech aimed at reconciliation just days before his arrest in March 2025. As a “big tent” candidate, skilled communicator, and shrewd strategist, İmamoğlu attracts both secularists and conservative Muslims, as well as Turkish nationalists and Kurdish citizens. Erdoğan, now 71 years old and without an heir apparent, is seeking to remain in power as long as possible. Although the constitution limits the presidency to two terms, Erdoğan is currently serving a third, arguing that his first term—prior to the 2017 constitutional amendment that introduced the presidential system—does not count. The March 2025 operation against İmamoğlu—revoking his degree and imprisoning him—was a calculated move with multiple goals: eliminating Erdoğan’s most popular rival and installing an AKP politician as the substitute mayor of Istanbul; sowing chaos within the CHP, prompting a court to appoint a kayyum (trustee)9 to take control of the party; and creating a climate of fear that would make the public more accepting of a new constitutional change that would enable Erdoğan to become president without a term limit. But things did not go as planned. A group of students at Istanbul University began a protest, which spread into large-scale demonstrations across multiple cities and lasted more than a month. On March 24—the day İmamoğlu was jailed—more than fifteen million participated in a primary election to nominate the mayor as the CHP’s presidential candidate. This number represented a quarter of all registered voters, far exceeding expectations for what was meant to be a small party primary. Initially, only the CHP’s two-million members were expected to participate, but millions more joined in a show of solidarity. Since then, the party’s leader, Özel, has taken a firm stance, calling Erdoğan a junta leader who staged a coup against the people’s will to elect the next president. Meanwhile, Ankara’s Mayor Yavaş, rather than using the moment to advance his own candidacy, expressed unity by publicly voting for İmamoğlu. There has also been a financial reaction: Many international investors withdrew their funds from Turkey, leading to a steadily increasing demand for U.S. dollars. To prevent a rapid devaluation of the Turkish lira, the Central Bank was forced to raise the policy interest rate from 42.5 percent to 46 percent and to sell more than $50 billion, shrinking its U.S. dollar reserves in March–April 2025. [End Page 103] Given the public resistance, the CHP’s organized counteroffensive, and the economic repercussions, Erdoğan was ultimately unable to appoint a substitute mayor for Istanbul or to impose a trustee on the CHP—at least for the time being. An Uncertain Future We must now ask: Will İmamoğlu’s political career follow the path of Erdoğan’s—mayor of Istanbul, prisoner, and ultimately leader of Turkey? Time will tell, but it is important to recognize that the two cases unfolded in different international contexts. Erdoğan was arrested when the United States and European countries were actively supporting Turkish democracy. Additionally, the George W. Bush administration (2001–2009) supported efforts to lift Erdoğan’s political ban, viewing him as the most viable partner among Turkish politicians during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. In contrast, İmamoğlu faces a far less favorable international environment. The current U.S. president, Donald Trump, has shown little concern for democratic developments in Turkey, even publicly declaring his admiration for Erdoğan. Similarly, European countries have largely deprioritized democracy in their dealings with Erdoğan, focusing instead on military cooperation and, more importantly, on curbing the flow of migrants from Asia and Africa. İmamoğlu’s political future therefore depends largely on domestic dynamics—such as whether the opposition can sustain mass demonstrations and whether the ongoing economic crisis will worsen. It remains unclear whether the protests will gradually fade and İmamoğlu—like other political prisoners, such as Selahattin Demirtaş, the former leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, and Ümit Özdağ, the leader of the far-right Victory Party—will become largely forgotten by the public. What is certain, however, is that Erdoğan can no longer maintain his dual strategy of winning competitive elections to claim legitimacy while simultaneously relying on authoritarian tactics. He is losing the former and doubling down on the latter. Turkey stands out as a unique case where an Islamist party won competitive elections and has stayed in power for a long time, perhaps too long. Furthermore, Erdoğan is a pioneering figure in now–globally ascendant right-wing populism. If he loses power to a popular challenger who blends secular and Islamic elements, it will offer important lessons—for parties in other Muslim-majority countries attempting to challenge Islamists at the ballot box and for a global audience seeking to understand how to defeat a populist leader democratically. For all these reasons, İmamoğlu and the opposition he represents constitute a significant case study for students of international politics. This analysis has focused on a number of influential men—Atatürk, [End Page 104] Erdoğan, Gülen, Bahçeli, Öcalan, Kılıçdaroğlu, and İmamoğlu—because Turkish politics has long revolved around charismatic leaders and their followers. With the exception of İmamoğlu, all these figures are either deceased or over the age of seventy. As long as Erdoğan remains politically dominant, İmamoğlu is likely to remain in prison. If he is released, however, İmamoğlu will be poised to become Turkey’s next leader. If that happens, we should expect İmamoğlu to initiate significant reforms in key areas including politics, education, and the economy; to seek to dismantle core elements of Erdoğan’s ideological and institutional legacy; and to reassert Atatürk’s secular vision. But rather than revive the assertive secularism of the Atatürk era, which now belongs to a bygone time, İmamoğlu would likely introduce a more inclusive and democratic form of secularism. This would distinguish İmamoğlu from both Atatürk and Erdoğan—making him a leader in his own right, following his own path. Ahmet T. Kuru Ahmet T. Kuru is director of the Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies and professor of political science at San Diego State University. He is the author of Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison (2019). NOTES 1. Ahmet T. Kuru, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 37–48. 2. Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East (New York: Henry Holt, 2020). 3. Ahmet T. Kuru, Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 202–35. 4. “Fethullah Gulen Shares Blame for Turkey’s Plight,” Economist, 13 August 2020. 5. “Turkey-Iran Letter,” U.S. Congress, 11 April 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20131023211718/http://roskam.house.gov/images/turkey-iran_letter_april_11_2013.pdf. 6. Alican Uludağ, “15 Temmuz Darbe Girişiminin Üzerinden 8 Yıl Geçti [Eight Years Passed Since the July 15 Coup Attempt],” Deutsche Welle (Turkish), 14 July 2024, https://www.dw.com/tr/15-temmuz-darbe-girisiminin-izerinden-8-yil-gecti/a-69655943. 7. Nihan Kalle, “Analysis: Turkey’s Election Results Show Rising Tide of Nationalism,” BBC Monitoring, 24 May 2023, https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c204b8uo. 8. “Gençlerin Politik Tercihleri Araştırması: 2024” [Survey of the political choice of the youth: 2024], Konda Research, March 2024, 21, https://konda.com.tr/rapor/182/genclerin-politik-tercihleri-arastirmasi. 9. Sultan Tepe and Ayça Alemdaroğlu, “How Authoritarians Win When They Lose,” Journal of Democracy 32 (October 2021): 87–101.