Dictatorship of the great sultan: what Erdogan turned Turkey into?

The Foreign Ministers of the member states of the European Union on the results of the meeting of the General Affairs Council on December 14, 2021 submitted a report on evaluation of the progress of Turkey's integration into the EU. In the document it was underlined that Ankara continues to step farther and farther from the principles of democracy, commitment to which is the main and necessary condition for obtaining the status of the member of political association.
 
So, authors of the document noted that the situation with rule of law, independent justice and observance of basic human rights and freedoms in Turkey continues to worsen. The special powers of Turkish authorities gained by them after attempted coup d'etat in 2016 still remain in force, therefore pressure on civil society and representatives of opposition parties does not stop.
 
Actually, recent developments show that Ankara is more and more drifting towards authoritarianism and Islamization. The Turkish political order in recent years had undergone substantial changes. If the initial period of Erdogan’s being in power (2002-2011s) was characterized by stability in policy, the high level of economic growth, undertaking liberalization reforms, then since the beginning of the 2010s the trends which in result caused the formation of authoritarian regime in the form of personalistic government of the Turkish leader prevailed.
 
The new tendencies in Justice and Development Party (AKP) were one of the reasons of such global changes in Turkish political system. At the beginning of 2000s Erdogan’s party has neglected its own target audience, character of rhetoric and management techniques. As a result AKP started focusing, first of all, on nationalists, having radicalized interpretation of the notion «nation», and political Islam became the fundamental principle of the regime.
 
Meanwhile socialist studies show that not everybody in Turkey is happy with such situation. According to the survey conducted in the summer of 2021 by Turkish academic, professor of international relations, writer, columnist, TV commentator and public intellectual Mustafa Aydin, in recent years significant disappointment in conservative and all the more Islamic values became a characteristic trend for Turkey’s population. In particular, as the unjust victimization of the regime and ideological pressure increased, the number of people identifying themselves as supporters of political Islam decreased from 47,4% in 2017 to unprecedented 27,0% in 2021.
 
Against this backdrop, this is very logical when it comes to severe criticism of the European Union concerning Turkey which continues to drift further from European integration processes. Earlier European Parliament members studied the report prepared by Spanish politician Nacho Sanchez Amor. The document stated that Erdogan’s authoritarian regime unleashed a fierce crackdown, started repressions, unprecedented in atrocities and scale against citizens of the country, opposition and mass media. In that regard, parliamentarians called into question the appropriateness of further negotiations on accession of Turkey in the EU.
 
While there is an intense struggle between democracy and authoritarianism in developing world, the Turkish President Erdogan stakes its future on deep-rooting of political Islam. Such choice, obviously, puts all the range of his ideological outlooks at serious risk of a failure, when increasing impatience with policy of ruling party not only among the Turkish citizens, but also in the West already affirms this.