Turkey, Reactionary Nationalism and the Challenges of Straddling the East and West: An interview with Selim Koru

You may listen to this interview from HERE. 

Selim Koru is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in the United States. He is also an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV), where his research focuses on Turkish politics and foreign policy. Before TEPAV, he worked at various media organizations. Selim is the author of the book New Turkey and the Far Right: How Reactionary Nationalism Remade a Country. He also has a Substack called Kültürkampf, which is a blog on political culture. Selim holds a BA in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA in International Relations and Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Q1. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your current interests.

I write about political ideas, mostly as it pertains to Turkey, but increasingly also beyond that as well. In my book on “New Turkey” I looked at the ideological origins of the Erdoğan movement, and what’s essentially a re-framing of the Turkish state and politics. I also recently earned a PhD at the University of Nottingham, where I studied Nietzsche’s theory of historical change, and the nature of reactive politics. So, in my academic work, I write about reactionary politics in a more historical and theoretical dimension as well.

Q2. Your new book looks at the political ideas that have shaped Turkey’s politics and foreign policy. Please summarize these ideas and explain how they influence what Erdoğan and his Islamist movement are doing domestically and internationally.

I argue that Turkish Islamism, and thus the Erdoğan movement, is an extension of reactionary politics seen throughout European history. The French were resentful of the English, and the Germans were certainly resentful of both, and the competition between these powers, and those feelings were essential in the formation of those nations, as well as the economic and military competition they engaged in. I argue that Turkey’s development fits that pattern. Islamist politics isn’t to be understood as a theological enterprise, but fundamentally a form of reactive nationalism against Western supremacy. As with the European examples, this also means that Turkey mimics Western forms and practices.

The first part of the book details the AK Party’s takeover of the state and the creation of the Erdoğan-shaped presidency. I go into the institutional structure that was set up, as well as the people who devised strategy in this new setting. I then have a chapter on relations with Russia and China, as well as Turkey’s overall geopolitical stance.

What’s distinctive about my argument, I think, is that I take the reactionary aspect of Turkish Islamism as foundational for “New Turkey,” and reflect about its implications for the long term. In terms of geopolitics, this means that they are revisionist, meaning that they have problems with the international arrangements Turkey is embedded in, and have radical plans to change them.

Q3. What do you mean by the transformation of “Old Turkey” into “New Turkey”? How is this reflected in various aspects of society across governance, religion, the economy and foreign relations?

I take these terms from everyday usage in Turkey. When people talk about “Old Turkey,” they mean the state of the country before the AK Party, and specifically Erdoğan’s rise. When they are talking about “New Turkey” they are usually referring to the system and environment that Erdoğan and his movement have built.

One’s valuation of these terms can vary. Roughly half of Turkey supports Erdoğan, and for them, Old Turkey is weak, morally bankrupt, and subservient to Western values, while New Turkey is strong, confident, and has its own value system. To many in the opposition, Old Turkey is a time when the rule of law still mattered, institutions could be trusted, and the arts flourished. To them, New Turkey is a quasi-theocratic regime governed by the whims of one man, that takes from the many and gives to the few. As with many things, there are aspects of truth in both perspectives, and part of what I do in the book is to explore how that might be.

Q4. How has Erdoğan managed to stay in power for so long? Does he still enjoy widespread support or is it more about his ability to undercut the opposition at this point?

From the 1990s until the late 2000s or so, he was becoming more and more popular. In the 2010s, he captured enough institutional power to steadily get a razor thin majority in national elections. More recently, his popularity has waned when there weren’t elections, and it picks back up in the lead-up to elections, when a cocktail of economic stimulus and jingoistic rhetoric gets him back up to 51-52 percent.

With economic conditions being dismal in the past few years though, even Erdoğan’s supporters are finding it hard to defend him. There’s a lot of talk about how “Erdoğan is good, but the people around him are corrupt,” which I always read as a sign of loyalty for the Erdoğan of the 2000s and 2010s, rather than the Erdoğan of the present and the future. That’s why the repression of the opposition has increased since 2024.

Still, there is a core Islamist voter base that’s always going to be excited about Erdoğan and be highly active in supporting him.

Q5. The arrest of Istanbul mayor and presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu seems like a clear red line crossed by the ruling party but what can the opposition do? Criticism from the EU and the US has been surprisingly muted. Why do you think this is the case?

The Erdoğan government has at this point evolved into a regime that controls law enforcement, the courts, and media channels. They seem determined to topple the main opposition CHP’s leadership and replace them with a loyalist opposition. The takeover of Istanbul was part of that broader strategy.

If they want to do that, they absolutely can. They have the institutional capacity to do so. The problem is that the regime that Erdoğan has built still derives its legitimacy from the idea of democracy, so they need to keep up the appearance of due process. What the CHP — and the opposition more broadly — can do is to take the case to the public as much as possible, and make it very obvious that they are being steamrolled by state power. The hope would be that the public would somehow punish the Erdoğan palace whenever they get to vote. That’s a very critical thing to understand about Turkey: the public isn’t very particular about upholding the constitutional order, but they are sensitive to the state’s meddling with the voting process. If people are deprived of a relatively fair vote for a long time, then we’re really off the map.

As for the lack of criticism from the EU and US, I think that’s just the nature of the international environment we’re in. That kind of thing mattered during the Cold War, and certainly in the 1990s, but as reactionary forces rose in Turkey, and the country’s economic and miliary weight increased, it stopped having an effect. Since Erdoğan’s Islamist-nationalism is a reactionary force against Western dominance, condemnation from the West actually validates it in the eyes of its base. I think Western diplomats understand that now. They still put out statements, but those aren’t written with an eye to change behavior in Turkey, they’re to maintain an image the Western public still has of itself as being guardians of liberal values across the world.

So, when İmamoğlu was arrested, the EU made some perfunctory statements, but that was it. Everyone knew that they would continue working with the Erdoğan palace, but also that cooperation would have firm limits. The US, of course, is now governed by reactionary right as well. Donald Trump has condemned the prison sentence brought on former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, not because it violated democratic norms, but because it upheld them. It would be very strange if he were to give Erdoğan trouble over İmamoğlu.

Q6. It is surprising to outsiders that Erdoğan and the AK Party can remain in power when inflation has run at such extreme levels for so long. Dramatic increases in prices typically lead to electoral losses but why has this not been the case in Turkey? More generally, how would you describe Erdoğan’s economic philosophy, since it is hard to understand his views on market forces, economic theory, interest rates, etc.

There is quite a bit of debate on where Erdoğan’s views come from. He likes to frame his low interest rate agenda in quasi-theological terms. In the Islamic tradition, as with other Abrahamic faiths, charging interest is believed to corrupt society, and is therefore forbidden. Erdoğan hints at this in his speeches, but it’s likely not the most important factor behind his thinking. The economist Ümit Akçay has argued that Erdoğan was mostly influenced by a series of well-connected exporters who stood to benefit a great deal from a weak lira. I think as we entered the inflationary vortex, people with insider information also found that there were a lot of opportunities to make money, and that became another incentive to keep going.

This was a huge issue going into the 2023 elections. Turkey was still on its unorthodox economic path, inflation was rampant, and the opposition’s leadership thought that they could score an easy win. But the economic program they came up with was a very cut and dry, orthodox neoliberal plan. They even brought on Erdoğan’s Finance Minister from the 2000s, Ali Babacan, into their coalition.

Voters didn’t get the sense that the economic agenda on the opposition side was all that different. There were a lot of leftist economists in the opposition who were begging for a more populist approach, something that signaled a significant break with neoliberal norms, but the CHP’s then-chairman and presidential candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, would have none of it.

So, the opposition lost, I think mostly because they kept competing on Erdoğan’s terms, rather than coming up with something fresh and daring on the economic side. Erdoğan then assembled a new team of orthodox economists who were tasked with raising interest rates and getting the country back on track, but they haven’t really been able to do that, at least not as quickly as they had hoped. The result has been that the public has been on an economic rollercoaster ride.

Q7. To what extent are Erdoğan and his supporters driven by ressentiment against the West and its perceived liberal values? Is this genuine or simply a tool to rally support? What role does Islamism play in these narratives?

Most people who write about Turkish politics in English still don’t really take the reactionary element very seriously. They argue that nationalistic or “anti-American” rhetoric is not very substantive in the end, and that it’s mostly done as a performance to voters. There is an element of truth to that. Erdoğan and his people do turn that dial up and down depending on the electoral cycle. They’re also very pragmatic about working with the US and Europe on key issues, and especially in multilateral fora like NATO.

I have long argued that this is far too shallow a way of looking at things. You can’t just classify politicians into categories of “ideological zealot” and “pragmatist.” The point of being a politician is being both! Erdoğan and his generation of Islamists are steeped in a culture of existential resentment of the West. They have a cause, and it is in the pursuit of that cause that they have accrued great power. I think the strategic direction they have charted for the country is towards what they think of as regional Turkish hegemony, greater power for Muslims around the world, and a return to what they see as a more pious past. The tragedy with these things, of course, is that the pursuit of them can have the opposite effect. I think Islamism is an engine that makes Turkey more capitalist, more nationalist, and less pious, so in other words, it makes the country a lot like the West in some ways.

Q8. Please talk us through how Turkey’s foreign policy has evolved in recent decades and where you see the country’s international role today. In such a tumultuous time, how is Turkey positioning itself and in which countries/regions do you see its influence most noteworthy?

In the AK Party years, I think there have been three phases. The first, roughly in 2002-2013, was the liberal phase, and the most important aspect of that was the EU accession process and economic reforms. Accession of course did not work for reasons stemming from both sides. The second phase was 2013-2023, and it was characterized by more strident revisionism and a desire to reduce Turkey’s dependence on the West. I think this turned out to be more demanding than Erdoğan’s people thought. Turkey is deeply integrated into the Western economic and security architecture, and the Erdoğan system wasn’t able to reverse engineer that and come up with viable alternatives.

That leaves us in the third phase, in which we have been since Erdoğan announced his 2023 cabinet. This group sought to mend fences with the West, albeit with an understanding that Turkey was going to keep pursuing other partners. I think Turkey’s search for closer relations with the BRICS, as well as its forays into Africa and Central Asia are all serious efforts. The problem is usually that the country doesn’t have the institutional capacity to deepen these relationships. There isn’t a concerted effort to turn that flicker of political will into policy, no buildup of expertise, no effort to coordinate that into real policy that moves the dial. Perhaps that will develop in the coming years.

As mentioned, Turkey’s influence is growing across a variety of regions, but it is most pronounced on its southern border. Turkey has very deep influence on Syria’s nascent system, not just diplomatically or militarily, but economically, culturally, demographically. Turkish institutions and norms are going to spread across Syria very quickly in the coming years. Turkey also has growing influence in Iraq, which has economic potential for Ankara.

Q9. Turkey is notable for maintaining good relations with both Russia and Ukraine. How do the leadership and society in general view this conflict and what do you think is reasonable to expect from Turkey as a potential mediator in this dispute?

People usually say that Turkey’s policy has been to be “pro-Ukrainian without being anti-Russian.” That’s true. Another way of putting it would be that Turkey has sought to be “pro-Ukrainian without being pro-Western.” That’s because Turkey sees Ukraine’s Western orientation as a fundamental mistake but is willing to work through that. The Turkish assumption is that the West will eventually disappoint Ukraine, and that Turkey will be there as a partner to provide security, and to establish broader relations in other areas. Turkish officials often talk about opportunities to cooperate in fields like defense technology and agriculture, probably thinking to build up relationships in these fields that are free of Western conditionalities.

Erdoğan has sought to leverage this position to act as a mediator in the conflict. There have been successes here and there, in terms of the grain deal and prisoner exchanges, and probably things that we don’t know about as well. Those were significant, but the greater peace deal obviously can’t happen through strong mediation alone.

Q10. While one can argue their influence and cohesion, there is no denying the surging interest in BRICS+ and the more generally termed “Global South”. Where does Turkey see itself vis a vis these constructs? The country remains very Western facing but is this changing?

The Erdoğan elite is very much interested in developing its relationships in the Global South. Turkey’s presence in Africa has grown significantly, and it is quietly deepening its relations with BRICS+ countries. I think the trend is accelerated by Trump and the disorder in the Western world.

As I touch on above, the problem here is institutional capacity. In order to pivot its economic and political relations to the Global South, Turkey would need to re-engineer its economy and security infrastructure. That can be done, but it would come at a huge societal price. What it’s doing instead, I think, is to try and stay plugged into the West and benefit from its technology and capital, while developing indigenous capabilities that would allow it to interact more with the “Global South.”

Q11. How would you characterize Turkey’s relationship with China? There would appear to be synergy between China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) and Turkey’s own Middle Corridor (MC), but while there has been a lot of talk, signed deals remain elusive. There are certainly thorny issues between the two countries – NATO membership, Uyghurs, Chinese experiences with the Sinop nuclear power plant tender in 2013 and the cancelled air defense tender in 2015, etc. – but what do you believe are the primary obstacles to a deeper relationship?  

Researching my book, I was taken aback by how much rhetoric there was on this, and just how little substance. Turkish officials love drawing arrows on the map and talking about the “middle corridor,” but there’s very little substance behind it. Similarly, Erdoğan has long sought to build up relations with China more broadly, but that hasn’t happened either.

I came away thinking that the problem was Turkey’s capabilities. Turkey is good at building relationships when it is the relatively large country, and can come down on a neighboring country, build infrastructure, and develop top-down relations. It is not good about being a small country approaching a much larger country. That’s why relations with the US never developed all that much either. You look at Turkey’s presence in DC, and it’s basically some diaspora groups and president-to-president relations. There’s never been a significant effort, for example, to get Congress on Turkey’s side. It’s just not something that Turkey’s institutions did. They relied on Americans (mostly in the defense establishment) to continually emphasize how “strategic” of a country this was.

Something similar is the case in China. Turkey doesn’t have the institutional capacity, nor even the urgency, to study the Chinese system, develop the capabilities to penetrate it, and really build a strong relationship with it. The number of serious China experts in Turkey is still very small. The number of Chinese-speakers in the diplomatic corps is negligible. Even businesspeople who travel to China regularly only get a very thin slice of the country before they fly back right away. So, the connections between the countries are very shallow. I think you can do a lot of trade that way, but not much more.

There are now hints that this might be changing, partly because China seems to be developing an interest in Turkey. We’ll see how that goes.

Q12. As Turkey is not well understood by many external observers, are there any pernicious myths that you find repeated by pundits or commentators in the global media that you would like to dispel?

The analysis is usually very Erdoğan-dominant. I understand why that is, and it really is very difficult to talk about the Turkish state without talking about him, but I think it’s important to see “New Turkey” as the product of a political movement, rather than one man. I think that if you go back in time and make Erdoğan a successful soccer player, and the same structural forces are still in play, we’d still end up with something like this.

Another thing is that people sometimes assume Turkey is becoming more religious. Yes and no. There are more signs of overt piety, and the state certainly wants to impose its understanding of orthodox Islam on the population, but I don’t think that means that the country is becoming more religious. Turkey is now a heavily urban and globalized country. Studies have shown that piety goes down as people become more connected, and Turkey certainly isn’t an exception. What’s happening is that Islamic practice is becoming thinner, and rather than religion being its own sphere, it is bleeding into nationalism and becoming a political force.

Q13. From a cultural perspective, what are some of the exciting changes and developments happening in modern Turkey? Are there cultural phenomena among today’s youth that give you hope or concerns about the future?

I’ve been hooked on standup comedy recently. There were some excellent comedians in the 1990s and 2000s, but a few people dominated the space, so you didn’t get much variety. Somehow the cultural ferment of the climate of the 2010s saw an explosion in very talented standup artists, and I’ve enjoyed that immensely.

Turkey’s film industry is also known either for its long soap operas or high-end artistic movies. Now there’s also a lot in between, including very clever TV shows. So popular culture is going all right I’d say.

Turkey has very high social media saturation, but I’m already seeing how people are moving away from that a bit, becoming more offline and analogue. There’s a revived interest in libraries, for example, which is a good sign.

Q14. Please share any favorite books, publications, blogs, podcasts or other resources that readers could use to improve their understanding of Turkey, its domestic politics, foreign policy, culture, economic/trade issues, or other related topics.

My fellow Substackers Turkey recap and Turkey Book Talk by William Armstrong have been consistently excellent. The former is a good source to get Turkey-related book reviews, the latter a growing team of very talented reporters.

As for books – I’m assuming you’re looking for something current here – Hannah Lucinda Smith has written a very good biography of Erdoğan (and also writes a substack about Istanbul). Suzy Hansen wrote a book that’s as much about American influence abroad as it is about Turkey, and it gets at some of the same things I grapple with, which is Turkey’s contentious relationship with the West. Gönül Tol, Dimitar Bechev, and Soner Çağıptay, have multiple books covering the AK Party years from various angles, and they’re all well-researched and well-written. I’d recommend Onur İşçi and Sam Hirst’s work, especially on Turkey-Russia relations. Ceren Ergenç and Çağdaş Üngör write about Turkey-China relations.

There used to be some English-language publications put out by independent Turkish newspapers, but they’ve all been shut down or gone under. There are the state-run or directed channels like TRT World and Daily Sabah, and those can give readers an idea of those circles. Similarly, there’s “Tabii” which is a streaming platform controlled by the state, producing glossy TV shows. Its purpose is very much to spread the “New Turkey” world view.

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