“Erdogan won more on the grounds of nationalism than on the grounds of Islamism”

sEkip Tayyip Erdogan took the lead in the first round of the presidential elections on Sunday, May 14. He retains a majority in Parliament. The results are there, despite everything that seems to threaten his victory: the February earthquake, massive inflation, an ongoing financial crisis, suppression of freedoms, a good campaign for opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his allies.

This result is interpreted as the effect of a “democracy” established since the failed coup in 2016. Ankara is repeatedly playing against its interests. One tends to think of the status of Türkiye. Do we understand, then, why 26 million Turks turned out to vote for Erdoğan, at a time when everything seemed to be going well, while many of them were unable to make ends meet, and when the earthquake showed the dilemmas in the governance of the Justice and Development Party (AKP)? no.

The ruling coalition came out on top because Erdoğan was able to articulate his record with a toss. I saw him again on the 14th of May in Erzurum, in eastern Anatolia, where I was and where the president had won more than two-thirds of the vote: the country had grown rich; Everywhere roads and hospitals, everywhere parks and schools. But above all because the Islamic president knew how to embody one of the founding principles of Kemalism: “Happy is he who calls himself Turkish”Adding to it the happiness of declaring Islam.

Erdoganism is post-kemalism. The desire to be Western was the fear of never being satisfied. To want to join the European Union at all costs meant to risk never being accepted as a European and to be less Turkish by having to share national sovereignty. from any act.

Erdoganism calls on us to abandon this quest for an impossible recognition in order to embrace the project of sovereignty within reach. “Keep wanting what you have”This is the key to happiness for Saint Augustine. For twenty years, Erdogan has been doing it for him “dear millet” – His dear people – take inventory of what he owns. He restored her places in memory, and re-converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, as the poets of Islam quote in his sermons. Outside, he congratulates himself on giving the country its name: no longer Turkey or Turkey in English, which makes you smile, but Türkiye. For much of the poll on Sunday 14 May, a renewed sense of pride for twenty years prevailed over apprehensions of an uncertain future.

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