After more than a decade in power, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has come to tower over Turkey. The country has started to slip its western moorings. A republic shaped to be secular and westernised is in some respects beginning to resemble its Arab neighbours.
Mr Erdogan, who five years ago, during the Arab uprising, urged countries in the region to adopt secular constitutions, has now chosen identity politics — with sectarian trimmings. Polarisation has brought the president unparalleled electoral success. He has sharpened the Sunni, Islamist and Turkic identity of his Justice and Development party (AKP), and has worked to lock his opponents into separate blocs for the quasi-Shia Alevi and Kurdish minorities. He has trampled on the rule of law and, after the shock of mid-July’s abortive coup, decreed emergency rule.
Turkish officials can and do point out that France — the European state the Turkish republic arguably has most copied — also declared a state of emergency after last November’s jihadi assault on Paris. But the emerging reconfiguration of Turkey’s armed forces and security services may be heading towards models more familiar to the Arabs and Iranians.