Religion, State & Society ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/crss20 Religious populist parties, nationalisms, and strategies of competition: the case of the AK Party in Turkey Nukhet A. Sandal To cite this article: Nukhet A. Sandal (2021) Religious populist parties, nationalisms, and strategies of competition: the case of the AK Party in Turkey, Religion, State & Society, 49:3, 248-263, DOI: 10.1080/09637494.2021.1949216 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2021.1949216 Published online: 30 Jul 2021. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=crss20 RELIGION, STATE & SOCIETY 2021, VOL. 49, NO. 3, 248–263 https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2021.1949216 ARTICLE Religious populist parties, nationalisms, and strategies of competition: the case of the AK Party in Turkey Nukhet A. Sandal Department of Political Science, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Religious populism features prominently in the global political landscape. This contribution focuses on this particular type of populism, and the political strategies employed by religious populist actors, with a focus on the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) under the leadership of Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey. Although there is an established literature on religious populism, there are still dynamics that need to be studied further. How religious populists outflank their rivals, especially those with relatively conservative ideologies and understandings of nationalism, remains unanswered, for example. In this study, I investigate how the AKP, as a religious populist party, has competed with and distinguished itself from other mainstream and conservative Turkish political actors and movements, and their respective nationalist ideologies: (a) the secular political establishment, including the Kemalist Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party), (b) the tradition(s) the party was originally part of but is no longer viable, the Milli Görüş (National Outlook) movement, (c) other popular religious movements that have a claim to power (such as the Gülen, or Hizmet, movement), and finally (d) ultranationalist segments and parties such as the Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Action Party), each of which has their own interpretations of citizenship and nationalism. Received 3 August 2020 Accepted 25 June 2021 KEYWORDS Islam; Turkey; competition; populism; religion Populism has multiple definitions. In most of these definitions, the term contains two primary claims in itself: A country’s ‘true people’ are locked into conflict with outsiders, including establishment elites; and nothing should constrain the will of the true people (Kyle and Gultchin 2018). Populist leaders, for the most part, securitise (Wæver 1993) their identities, basing their arguments on internal (such as immigrants) and/or external threats (such as organisations that threaten state sovereignty or countries with hostile intentions); these threats can change over time and help populist leaders update their political strategies vis-à-vis their rivals. Populist leaders usually belong to movements that had been excluded from power for a long period of time, and ‘the (real or perceived) discrimination they faced reveals itself as a determination to control the state and its resources in a zero-sum view of politics’ (Lancaster 2016, 371). Whether it is conceived as a political strategy (Weyland 2001, 14) or a discursive frame (Aslanidis 2016), populism situates itself against the values of individualism, internationalism, and multiculturalism of CONTACT Nukhet A. Sandal sandal@ohio.edu © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Department of Political Science, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA RELIGION, STATE & SOCIETY 249 the liberal elite political culture (Canovan 1999, 4); as a set of ideas, it has two core elements of anti-elitism and anti-pluralism (Plageman and Sandra 2019, 284). With the increasing number of populist parties coming to power around the world, there is a renewed interest in studying the dynamics of contemporary populism. Given that populist leaders, on average, stay in power much longer when compared to their non-populist counterparts, populism indeed deserves special investigation with its multiple manifestations (Mounk and Kyle 2018). There are various types of populism. Erdem and Ziya (2014, 45), for example, show how Argentina’s Kirchner can be characterised as promoting a left-wing type of populism while Erdoğan’s policies in Turkey put him into the category of right-wing populism, which is distinguished from its leftwing counterpart by its prioritising of economic stability and physical security over redistribution and social equality. In countries ranging from Hungary to India there are new manifestations of right-wing populism, especially with religious undertones, sometimes creating new definitions of belonging, and sometimes claiming existing nationalism(s) as the basis of their ideologies. Right-wing populist parties are ‘experiencing a new and striking rise’ (Zakaria 2016, 10) while left-wing populist parties, especially in Europe, have now come closer to centre. Among different types of populism, the religious variety features prominently in the global political landscape. Although religion is mostly observed in right-wing populist movements, historically it has also been critical to some left-wing populists as a way to legitimise their rule (Berenson 1984; Forster 2020). There is an established literature on religious populism, but there are still dynamics that need to be studied further. How religious populists win over their rivals, especially those with relatively conservative ideologies and understandings of nationalism and belonging remains an unanswered question, for example. Recognising that religious populism can be part of both left- and right-wing populist agendas, this contribution investigates the case of Tayyip Erdoğan as the leader of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP hereafter) in Turkey, as a prominent example of a religious right-wing populist actor, and the political strategies he followed to gain and remain in power as a religious right-wing populist. In this contribution, I identify four key strategies religious populists have used against different rivals: Outbidding, Replacement, Securitisation, and Co-optation. These strategies also constitute a distinct political path followed by religious populists that traces the process of competition with secular parties (outbidding); making the case that the new religious party is different from old religious movements (replacement); representing rival religious movements as existential threats (securitisation); and collaborating with the remaining significant conservative/religious political actors (co-optation). Not every strategy needs to be used by every religious populist. However, it is easy to locate these strategies in the trajectories of many religious populist actors. The four strategies – outbidding, replacement, securitisation and co-optation – are different from those an authoritarian leader would use, as they are geared towards a supporter base and employed by an actor who actually competes in elections, with claims to be representing the interests of the majority. As Moffitt and Tormey (2014, 391) argue, ‘the evocation of “the people” is the central element that differentiates populism from other political styles’. Populist leaders in relatively democratic contexts, such as Erdoğan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orbán in Hungary, and Modi in India need to select 250 N. A. SANDAL strategies that will help them prevail in a politically competitive landscape, even if they end up subverting parts of the political system in their favour in the process. Focusing on the case of Turkey and the AKP (whose policies have been determined by its leader Erdoğan and his cadres), this contribution argues that religious populists create a distinct national political identity through adopting diverse strategies towards their rivals. In the case of Turkey, these rivals were (a) the secular political establishment, including the Kemalist Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party, hereafter CHP), (b) the tradition the party was originally part of but that is no longer viable, the Milli Görüş (National Outlook) movement, (c) other popular religious movements that have a claim to power (such as the Gülen, or Hizmet, movement), and finally (d) ultranationalist segments and parties, such as Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Action Party, hereafter MHP), each of which has its own interpretations of citizenship and nationalism. In competing with some of these rivals, the AKP first employed one particular strategy and then changed it for another – for example, although this contribution focuses on outbidding vis-à-vis the secular establishment parties, the AKP has also tried to securitise various secular actors at times. Similarly, relations with the Gülen movement started with co-optation yet turned into securitisation after 2013. The cases provided in the contribution exemplify the dominant strategies applied so far towards the actors and parties mentioned. AKP and religious populism in Turkey Why study Turkey when investigating right-wing religious populism? According to an investigation conducted by Team Populism using textual analysis of speeches, of the 40 countries studied Turkey has witnessed ‘the largest increase in populist rhetoric’, and Erdoğan is the only right-wing leader to reach the highest level (‘very populist’) of populist discourse (Lewis et al. 2019). Indeed, Erdoğan’s anti-establishment approach and paternalistic attitude towards the Turkish political sphere, combined with a Manichaean worldview, classify him as a populist leader (Selçuk 2016). There is a significant audience – especially politically conservative and pious voters who had felt marginalised by the secular establishment between the 1920s and 2002 – that responded favourably to these anti-elitist populist messages. In their study of the appeal of populism in Turkey, Aytaç and Elçi (2019, 103) report that supporters of the AKP score ‘considerably higher than other partisans on the dimensions of centrality of people’s will and disdain for institutions of horizontal accountability’. Given the centrality of the AKP case to the study of right-wing populism, it makes sense to study what kind of strategies the party employed to get ahead of its rivals and how its ideology evolved as a result of this process. The AKP was established in 2001 by former members of the Milli Görüş movement, a Turkish Islamic political movement founded in 1970. The AKP came to power as a result of the 2002 elections, at a time when other political parties were facing leadership crises, coalition governments had become the norm in Turkish politics, and the Turkish economy was experiencing a downturn (Coşar and Özman 2004; Sandal 2014; Taş 2015). During its establishment years, the AKP embraced a transformative agenda with emphasis on economic liberalisation, European Union membership (long coveted by the Turkish policy elites), and the recognition of minority rights, mostly to outbid the existing secular parties. Although the leadership cadres of the party came from an Islamist background and used RELIGION, STATE & SOCIETY 251 religion in their political discourses, the AKP initially distanced itself from an Islamist identity to avoid being shut down, which was the fate of many Islamist parties in Turkish political history. Turkish politics had been dominated by centre-right parties since a multi-party system was introduced in 1950. There are multiple answers as to why and how the AKP managed to come to power in a staunchly secular political landscape where religious parties had not usually been tolerated. White (2013, 8) attributes this success to the economic opening of the 1980s and 1990s, which gave rise to new ‘Muslim publics’ including ‘pious political pragmatists’, ‘an Islamic bourgeoisie’, ‘a nationalist racist Islamic fringe’, and ‘the networks of the preacher Fethullah Gülen’, among others. These groups, combined with secular liberals and pro-business circles, found Erdoğan’s initial pro-democracy and European Union discourse attractive. The AKP was, for a considerable period, represented as a ‘model’ for the Muslim world even by liberal commentators and media outlets. Although the AKP began its governance with a pro-democracy and pro-European Union agenda, it took an authoritarian turn starting in its second term. Especially after this authoritarian turn, the AKP securitised religion at the expense of other identities to serve its political needs and used neo-Ottoman geopolitics to ‘appeal simultaneously to Muslim and nationalist constituencies across the political divide’ (Sandal 2019, 11). Erdoğan portrays Turkey as the leader of the Islamic world; in one speech, for example, he said that ‘Turkey means the hands of the 1.7 billion people living in the Islamic world opening to the sky, and their continuous prayers’ (TCCB 2018). The AKP also advanced its own form of nationalism. White (2013, 9) defines Muslim nationalism as ‘the identity of a pious Turk whose subjectivity and vision for the future is shaped by an imperial Ottoman past overlaid onto a republican state framework but divorced from the Kemalist state project’. This nationalism encompassed Turks living in the country as well as those living abroad. Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) has become a ‘foreign policy tool’ in countries with significant Turkish-Muslim diaspora communities (Öztürk and Sözeri 2018) and Turkey’s diaspora engagement even reached out to European Muslim organisations and individuals with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (Vidino 2019). In the remainder of the contribution, I introduce and investigate the four main strategies pursued by religious populist parties, using the AKP and Erdoğan’s leadership as a case study to show how these strategies have been employed. Due to space limitations, this study does not go into any depth on the histories and ideologies of the AKP’s rivals, as that requires a book-length treatment. Instead, it focuses on which particular strategies a religious populist party employed in order to take and consolidate power in a staunchly secular political landscape. Outbidding the establishment: AKP vs. secular parties There is an established literature on ethnic and nationalist outbidding, which investigates how political parties gain votes through outbidding their rivals in an auction-like scenario (Horowitz 1985; Rabushka and Shepsle 1972; Snyder 2000). Religious populists usually need to outbid rivals, including secular political actors, during their ascent to power. At that stage religious populist parties are still vulnerable, so in a competitive electoral system they might choose to cater to a large constituency by emphasising more inclusive 252 N. A. SANDAL agendas rather than their religious identity and aspirations. Hall (2017), for example, details how Narendra Modi tried to soften his image from a hardline Hindu nationalist to a vikas purush (‘development man’) and inclusive national leader in order to outbid his rivals. In a similar vein, Haynes (2020a, 490) discusses how right-wing populist parties that claim to be representing Judeo-Christian culture in Norway, Denmark, and other European countries ‘place emphasis on gender equality, human rights, freedom of speech, individualism, and gay rights’ in order to outbid their mainstream competitors. The AKP’s outbidding of the secular establishment through its populist discourse is well known (Dinçşahin 2012). When it first came to power in 2002, the party had a proEuropean Union agenda, which included consolidation of democracy, human rights, and economic liberalism. It represented pious people as the victims of the secular rule of disconnected elites. Yılmaz (2017) defines this victimhood vis-à-vis the secular and Kemalist elites as the ‘constitutive element of the hegemonic imaginary of TurkishIslamist ideology in Turkey’. More than ten years after the AKP won the elections in Turkey, Erdoğan was still saying, ‘In Old Turkey, there was poverty, confusion and chaos. In Old Turkey, there was CHP oppression’ (Milliyet 2014). Before the 2002 elections the AKP strategically addressed the notorious ban on headscarves in public places; the ban had been condemned not only by religious circles but also by liberal feminists and human rights platforms (Aksu and Çalışkan 2007). The AKP represented itself as a champion of the communities marginalised by the secular elite, and tried to outbid the secular elite in foreign policy, engaging regions and communities that did not rank highly with Kemalist policymakers. In his book Strategic Depth, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Davutoğlu (2009) talked at length about the failure of the Kemalist establishment to fulfil its responsibilities in the region, including the Balkans, the Middle East, and even Africa. Turkish nationalism, even in its traditional form as conceived by the Turkish military and the secular political elite, had religion as an integral dimension, which made it easier for the AKP to claim a slightly modified – in other words, Ottomanised – version of that nationalism as part of its ideology. When the Republic of Turkey was established, the definition of the Turkish citizen focused more on duties rather than on rights, and was the result of Turkism rather than Ottomanism or Islamism. In the 1970s and 80s, the Turkish military used Islamic identity as an instrument and an ‘antidote’ to left-wing radicalism and socialism (Bora 1995). The state welcomed religion as long as it could regulate it, but it discriminated against those religious manifestations and symbols that did not fit into the state’s conceptualisation of Turkish nationalism. The Turkish state’s policies and structures, ranging from the existence of the Directorate of the Religious Affairs to the population exchanges in the early years of the Republic, demonstrated the intention ‘to consolidate the nation as a community of Sunni Muslims’ (Sandal 2013, 643). The anti-coup, democratic, and pro-European Union agenda made it possible for the party to outbid the Kemalist elite and to weaken the military, before it turned to a populist Islamist and authoritarian domestic and foreign policy agenda (Dağı 2006; Özpek and Yaşar 2018). The notorious Ergenekon trials, the crackdown that began in 2008 and was named after a mythical valley in ultranationalist Turkish lore, charged prominent members of the judiciary and military elite. According to the prosecutors, this network of militant secularists had plotted coups against the government as well as executing extra-judicial killings and attacks on minorities, Kurds, and Islamists. Defence RELIGION, STATE & SOCIETY 253 lawyer Celal Ulgen said the trial was designed ‘to silence Turkey’s intellectuals, to redesign the Turkish Armed Forces, to ensure the government controls the ways in which it can be opposed’ (in Butler 2012). In the end, most of the evidence turned out to be fabricated and many defendants were acquitted, but the trial weakened the Turkish military and revealed not only the deep rift between the AKP and secular Kemalist intellectuals, but also the extent of liberal hostility against the Turkish army and its grip on politics in recent history. The AKP’s authoritarian character became even more visible in the aftermath of the famous Gezi Park protests in 2013. These protests initially targeted urban development plans for Gezi Park, a large park in the historic Taksim Square in Istanbul. The protests quickly turned into wide-scale demonstrations against human rights violations, erosion of freedoms, and the AKP’s undermining of the secular establishment (see David and Toktamis 2015; Kongar and Kucukkaya 2013). Bashirov and Lancaster (2018) count the Gezi Protests among the reasons why the AKP radicalised, in addition to ‘Erdoğanisation’ (the deinstitutionalisation of the party) and the 2016 coup attempt. Taş (2020) describes Erdoğan’s perspective in the aftermath of the 2013 Gezi Protests as ‘a conspiratorial mindset that sees any contention as orchestrated by a dark international elite force, called the mastermind (üst akıl), and any opposition as its subcontractors’. After its authoritarian turn, the AKP’s conservative policies and narrowly defined pious nationalism excluded, and at times threatened, ‘Alevis, unveiled women, university students and non-practicing Muslims in different parts of the country’ (Toprak et al. 2009, 81). In the face of the AKP challenge and restructuring of the political space, CHP – the main secular/Kemalist party – has remained largely ineffective under the leadership of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Especially in the post-coup period, the AKP’s discourse on protecting the country from existential threats ‘forced CHP to accept the legitimacy of AKP’s practices to “protect the nation” through antidemocratic practices’ (Yılmaz, Efe Caman, and Bashirov 2020, 270). The populist ‘Erdoğanist’ narrative was able to outbid the elitist Kemalist narrative to address the changing political landscape, political struggles, and identity tensions (Çapan and Zarakol 2019; Akkoyunlu and Kerem 2016). Replacing ‘the original’: AKP and Milli Görüş movement Populist parties usually trace their lineage to previous political movements, ideologies, and sometimes even empires. The cases of Turkey and Hungary are clear examples of this imperial populism. It is critical to their existence and popularity, however, that these parties show that their ideology adds to what existed before them, and do not just represent themselves as a continuation of past political initiatives, most of which have likely failed for one reason or another. Haynes (2020b, 2) states that the first goal of the populists is ‘getting rid of the old ruling elites and replacing them with themselves’. In that sense, ‘replacement’ is not always outbidding or delegitimation, but rather a matter of emphasising a distinct identity while keeping the core values connected to the root ideology. Iran’s populist president between 2005 and 2013, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example, ‘was able to come to power precisely because of the success of the reform movement’s discourse’, but he worked hard to distinguish his ideology and leadership by stressing ‘the corruption of the old guard’ and returning to ‘the rhetoric of the early revolutionary period’ (Sohrabi 2006, 3–5). Similarly, when Khomeini came to power he 254 N. A. SANDAL distanced his regime from the previous religious opposition, and created new rules and understandings for revolutionary Iran (Halliday 1982, 188). The predominant Islamic movement of the twentieth-century Turkish political sphere was the Milli Görüş movement. Established in the 1970s, the movement manifested itself in multiple Islamist political parties catering to disenfranchised and conservative elements of society, with varying degrees of conflict with the secular establishment. Gumuscu (2010, 845) states that ‘marginalized Anatolian business funneled their grievances about the close alliance of Istanbul-based secular big bourgeoisie and the state through the Milli Selamet Partisi’ (National Salvation Party – the first political party of the Milli Görüş movement). Milli Görüş espoused an economic view based on ‘fair order’ (the leader of the Refah Partisi, Necmettin Erbakan, published a book called Fair Economic Order in 1991) while AKP Islamists embraced the capitalist system (Bölükbaşi 2012). Gumuscu (2016) notes that both Milli Görüş and Gülen movements ‘agreed that Muslims should live under Islamic states and converged on an equally statist, authoritarian, hierarchic and antipluralist outlook’. They had particular brands of nationalism that differed from that of the AKP. Founded in 1983, Refah Partisi (Welfare Party), a political party that continued the Milli Görüş ideology, distinguished itself from others by its ‘populist image, a vaguely Islamic platform, and an impressive organization set-up’ (Kamrava 1998, 276). Erbakan became prime minister in 1996 as part of a coalition government. On 28 February 1997, in what has been called a ‘postmodern coup’ (Toprak 2020), the National Security Council (dominated by the Turkish military) issued an ultimatum with ‘a list of measures designed to nullify the supposed Islamization of Turkey and fortify the secular system’ (Cizre and Cinar 2003, 309) and toppled the Refah Partisi and Doğru Yol Partisi (True Path Party) coalition government. The 1997 military intervention made Islamist actors reconsider their future strategies and discourses if they wanted to survive in a hostile political landscape guarded by the Turkish military (Kilinc 2014). The dissolution of the Refah Partisi by the Constitutional Court was later followed by the establishment of two parties, Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party, which was also shut down in 2000) and the AKP, representing the traditional and new political Islamic ideologies respectively. Many members of the AKP leadership cadres, including Tayyip Erdoğan himself, started their political careers in the Milli Görüş movement. Similar to that movement, the AKP also represented ‘a coalition of different Islamic, nationalist and center-right groupings’ (Atacan 2005, 197). As might be expected, the AKP’s Islamist populist overtures replicate aspects of the Milli Görüş movement (Yılmaz, Barton, and Barry 2017). AKP leadership continued and increased the social assistance by municipalities, in the form of distribution of food, coal, and clothing, mostly funded by private donors (Buğra and Keyder 2006, 224); these forms of assistance, being neither reliable nor long-term, consolidated the patron– client relationship and aimed to increase the AKP’s vote and popularity among poorer segments of society (Muhafazakar Sosyal 2010). Abdullah Gül, who was put in charge of the new AKP government in 2002, stated that the party would prove that Islamic identity is congruent with democracy and the values of the modern world (Hurriyet 2002). The AKP was seen as a liberal Islamist party (Yavuz 2009, 78), a modern alternative to the Milli Görüş movement. While recognising the movement’s importance, the AKP distinguished itself from Milli Görüş in terms of social and economic policies and in consideration of ‘the socio-structural transformation of the RELIGION, STATE & SOCIETY 255 Islamist constituency’ which had interests in economic liberalism (Gumuscu and Sert 2009, 958); and was called post-Islamist due to its distancing from the traditional political Islamist ideology in Turkey (Dağı 2005, 30). AKP foreign policy also constituted a break from that of Milli Görüş parties (Köni 2011), which had distinct anti-globalisation perspectives (Dağı 1998). AKP officials avoided adopting Islamism as a core ideology, and called themselves ‘conservative democrats’ (Akdoğan 2004). From the very beginning, party elites were very cautious about (not) replicating the policies of the traditional Islamist parties which ‘would mean political suicide’; and at times the leadership stated that ‘the Party had nothing to do with Islam’ (Cavdar 2006, 481). The AKP started to use distinctly Islamist discourse mainly after 2011 (Shukri, Mohamad, and Hossain 2017) to promote a Muslim nationalism that is based on pious Turkish Muslims ruling over other minorities and a global vision of creating a Muslim world under Erdoğan’s leadership. Securitising rival movements: AKP and the Gülen movement Another strategy that religious populist actors employ is undermining the legitimacy of a rival’s political credentials, rather than mere criticism of a given action or perspective. This is usually done through securitisation of identities and movements. Securitisation means an issue is taken out of the regular political realm and elevated to emergency status through public discourse as a threat to existence (Laustsen and Waever 2000). State elites might securitise (Buzan, Waever, and Jaap 1998) religious movements, both in their own traditions and those of others. This can happen in multiple ways. Labelling the leaders of an organisation ‘terrorists’ or ‘criminals’ pushes them from the political sphere into the realm of security and emergency. In Egypt, for example, the populist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had a ‘pious Muslim’ persona, did not hesitate to ban the Muslim Brotherhood after an assassination attempt in 1954. Rodrigo Duterte, the populist president of the Philippines who often uses religious rhetoric, has ‘waged a relentless crusade against the Catholic church, wielding its record of sexual abuse as moral leverage’ and ‘predicted a future in which the Catholic church would be irrelevant and beckoned his countrymen into an “iglesia ni Duterte” (a “church of Duterte”)’ (Willis 2019). One can clearly see the dynamics of securitisation in the contentious relationship between the AKP and the Gülen movement in Turkey (Taş 2017). Although there are historical instances of cooperation and overlap between the two actors, each religiouspolitical actor has had its own distinct agenda and ambitions. After a 2016 coup attempt carried out by officers with alleged ties to the Gülen movement, the AKP pushed the movement out of the acceptable political sphere altogether. In 2004 Berna Turam, a prominent sociologist, described the Gülen movement as ‘the largest Islamic movement in Turkey and the most widely recognized and effective one internationally’ (Turam 2004, 265). The Gülen movement has traditionally ‘refrained from supporting political Islam and from direct participation in politics’, associating itself more with ‘civil Islam’ instead of ‘political Islam’ (Cornell 2017, 24). Yavuz (2018) states that the Gülen movement followed three stages of development: ‘a communitarian network of piety [cemaat]; education-cum-media global movement [hareket], and a secret religiopolitical configuration commonly referred to as a “parallel structure of the state” [parallel yapı], with the goal of controlling the mechanisms of the state’. 256 N. A. SANDAL Both the Gülen movement and the AKP fought against the staunchly secular Turkish political structure, which aligned their base early on. In its initial years, the AKP needed and used the high penetration of Gülenists in the civil service. Yavuz (2018) notes that ‘by 2002, when AK Party came to power, the Gülenists had full control of the police academy in Ankara’. Although as early as 2004 the Turkish National Security Council (Milli Guvenlik Kurulu) issued a statement designating the Gülen movement as ‘a threat to the Turkish state’, an informal AKP–Gülen movement alliance continued into the next decade. As a staunchly pro-AKP author acknowledges (Selvi 2014), the Gülen movement grew 15-fold under the AKP administration. Gumuscu (2016) argues that the AKP–Gülen alliance ‘replaced merit with ideological and political criteria in bureaucratic appointments’ which led to an increase in the Gülenists’ influence and presence within the state cadres. Bayulgen, Arbatli, and Canbolat (2018, 338) note that especially after 2013, the AKP’s strategy of survival became more focused on repression and centralisation in the face of economic challenges. In 2013 AKP–Gülen movement tensions heightened. The university preparatory schools (dersanes) run by Gülen networks were closed down by the state. After a high-profile corruption scandal and charges brought mainly by Gülenist prosecutors targeting top AKP cadres, including members of Erdoğan’s family, Erdoğan launched ‘a revenge campaign targeting followers of the Gülen community, many of whom are said to hold key positions in the secret services, the police and the judiciary’ (Ulusoy 2015, 2). Erdoğan started to talk publicly about the Gülenists in the strongest negative religious and moral terms. During an interview in which he discussed the Gülen community, for example, Erdoğan said, ‘They [Gülen supporters] practice takiyya [dissimulation], they lie, they slander. As a result, they are involved in sedition, malice. They are far ahead even of Shiites. Shiites cannot compete with them’ (quoted in Tastekin 2014). The coup attempted by a faction of the Turkish Armed Forces (who described themselves as the Peace at Home Faction) in July 2016 ended with the death of around 300 people. Erdoğan blamed the attempted coup on the Gülen movement, which had already been designated as a terrorist organisation by the government. The leader of the movement, Fethullah Gülen, rejected the accusations and argued that the coup was orchestrated by Erdoğan himself to tighten his grip on power. Erdoğan indeed openly called the coup attempt a ‘gift from God’ (Allahin Lütfu) (Şık 2016) and started a massive crackdown on members of the military, state bureaucracy, journalists, academics, and business people. After the 2016 coup attempt the Turkish government continued with the mass firings of academics and public officials who were suspected of having any ties to the Gülen movement. Dismissals and accusations have not been on clear criteria; one could be designated a member of the organisation for reasons ranging from using the messaging app ByLock to having used the services of the Asya Bank (a leading institution that offered Islamic finance options and attracted investments from multiple circles). Extreme nationalist circles and ‘rampant Islamist and nationalist feelings’ led to extending the purge to leftist intellectuals who had no ties to the Gülen movement (Yılmaz 2017, 496). Regardless, Erdoğan used the coup attempt to legitimise and consolidate his harsh policies against a wide range of enemies and removed affiliation with the Gülen movement as an acceptable identity in Turkish public sphere. RELIGION, STATE & SOCIETY 257 Co-opting ultranationalism: AKP and MHP (Nationalist Action Party) Nationalism and religious populism go hand in hand. Religious right-wing populist parties usually use discourses and strategies similar to their ultranationalist counterparts in the public sphere. It is thus not surprising that they co-opt the conservative political parties that they can control, especially when such a coalition is necessary to secure a ruling majority. In terms of strategy, co-opting another conservative political party that is not considered a major threat by the religious populist party is usually less costly than the securitisation or outbidding strategies. There are multiple instances of this strategy being employed by religious populists. In Hungary, FIDESZ, for example, partnered with the Hungarian Christian Democratic People’s Party (Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt, KDNP) to dominate the political scene. Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) in Poland, another religious populist party, made an alliance with United Poland and the Agreement parties to form the United Right ruling coalition. In Turkey the AKP had this marriage of convenience with MHP, with which it shared common religious values. Yabanci (2020) argues that ‘right-wing populists rally support by selectively evoking the “cultural toolkit” available to them’ and they tend to ‘sacralise’ the political arena; in the context of Turkey, the AKP’s cultural toolkit blended elements from the ultranationalists and the political Islamists. Bacik (2011) similarly notes that ‘the fusion of state and nationalism is a recurring theme of the various political actors in Turkey, whether they are nationalist or religious’ (also see Karakas 2007). In a study using content analysis, Elçi (2019) finds that that although the AKP is more populist than its rivals (including the CHP, MHP, and the pro-Kurdish HDP), both the AKP and the MHP share a Manichaean worldview. The history of extreme right-wing parties in Turkey can be traced back to Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi (the Republican Peasant Farmer’s Nation Party), which was established in 1948. The most prominent of these ultranationalist parties, the MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, loosely translated as Nationalist Action Party), is a pan-Turkist political party with an anti-globalisation agenda, which was established in 1969 by Alparslan Türkeş, a former colonel in the Turkish Army. Arikan (2002, 373) classifies the MHP as an extreme right-wing political party, as it is ‘strongly nationalist, racist, xenophobic, anti-democratic and strongly statist’. The MHP is based on the ‘ülkücü’ ideology which can roughly be translated as ‘idealism’. The ideology can be more accurately described as ‘the love and ideal of serving the state’ (Çınar and Arikan 2002, 34) within the context of an ethnic nationalist political outlook that sees Marxists, communists, non-Muslim Turkish intellectuals, and Kurdish nationalism as salient enemies. Alparslan Türkeş, the party’s iconic leader who died in 1997, emphasised that the movement was based on ‘love of the Turkish nation, and loyalty and service to the Turkish state’ (Türkeş 1996, 16). Throughout its history, the party has been associated with fascist militias that have targeted Kurds, human rights advocates, minorities, and leftist intellectuals (Bose 2018, 182; Bora and Can 1991; Poulton 1997). The MHP’s discourse has always included the Turkic people beyond Turkey’s borders, including those in Central and East Asia. Islam has always been part of the ultranationalist agenda of the MHP, especially in the fight against communism during the Cold War years. The MHP has professed an ‘ethnicized Islam’, or Turkish-Islamic synthesis, in contrast to the nationalism of the Milli Görüş 258 N. A. SANDAL parties, which was based on Islamism (Yavuz 2002, 211). ‘The MHP’s success in part also reflected its adaptive capacity to build on the failures of political Islam in Turkey’ (Önis 2003, 33) and it ‘conceived itself as a natural alternative to the Islamist Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi)’ (36). Atasoy (2009, 97) traces the AKP’s ideological lineage partly to the MHP’s nationalism and ‘ülkücü’ ideology, in addition to neoliberalism. The AKP’s religious populism encompassed Muslim populations around the world, including the spaces and communities claimed by the foreign policy agendas of the MHP and the Gülen movement. In the sense of diaspora activism, the MHP competed with the Gülen movement, which also emphasised Turkish culture and extended to areas that were beyond the scope of the MHP, such as Sub-Saharan Africa. The AKP’s neo-Ottoman foreign policy aimed to cater to both conservative diasporas and Muslim populations regardless of their ethnicity, and in that sense ended up being more inclusive and populist than either the MHP or the Gülen movement. Yavuz (2002, 201) argues that the MHP’s surge to power in the late 1990s was due to ethnic (Turkish vs. Kurdish) and sociocultural polarisation (Sunni Islam vs. Alevi Islam), as well as Turkey’s frustration at failing to become a member of the European Union. After the death of the MHP’s charismatic leader, Alpaslan Türkeş, the party became more pragmatic in its orientation under its new leader, Devlet Bahçeli (Avcı 2011). By virtue of its ultranationalist outlook, the MHP has been vehemently against any type of deal – including peace process – with Kurdish political actors. Initially, the MHP was critical of AKP’s initiatives with the Kurds, and it accused AKP of being ‘separatist on the basis of ethnicity and discriminat[ing] against other religions in Turkey’ (Yenicag 2011). After the June 2015 general elections and the increasing popularity of the pro-Kurdish Halkların Demokratik Partisi (Peoples’ Democratic Party) not only among the Kurds but also in Turkish liberal circles, the AKP shifted to an ultranationalist agenda which brought it closer to the MHP base and led to an eventual formal electoral alliance between the two parties in 2018. In short, while the AKP was trying to outbid the secular parties and liberal actors with its pro-European Union and human rights agenda in its formative years, the MHP distanced itself from the AKP. However, in later years, the parties’ ideologies became closer, as the AKP became more authoritarian and conservative in its definition of nationalism and the MHP became more pragmatic in order to survive in a globalising world. This partnership helped both parties survive in the Turkish political landscape. Conclusion In studies of populism, there is still a gap when it comes to the dynamics and strategies of political competition. This contribution has identified four main strategies – outbidding, replacement, securitisation, and co-optation – that are frequently employed by religious populist actors, using the AKP and Tayyip Erdoğan as a case study. Erdoğan is the only right-wing leader to reach the highest (‘very populist’) level of populist discourse, according to Lewis et al. (2019), so the case of Turkey continues to warrant further investigation in populism studies. Given the wide array of opponents the AKP faced during its political journey, the party leaders have made use of diverse approaches starting with the outbidding of the secular establishment when the AKP first entered the political scene in 2001. The party ‘replaced’ RELIGION, STATE & SOCIETY 259 the previous Islamist parties, as its leadership cadres coming from those parties created a new Muslim conservative identity. The Gülen movement was a significant rival that had penetrated state institutions. The AKP could not ‘outbid’ this group, so the 2016 coup attempt provided a golden opportunity to ‘securitise’ this movement. The last strategy, co-optation, was used towards smaller parties that the AKP had sway over; without cooptation and a level of political cooperation, the AKP would not be able to rule. Religious political parties can change strategies towards a given actor as their own preferences or conditions on the ground change. For example, Erdoğan initially co-opted the Gülen movement, especially when the AKP first came to power and in initiatives targeted at the secular establishment. After 2010 the tensions between Gülen and Erdoğan escalated, and with the 2016 coup attempt Erdoğan found the opportunity to completely securitise the movement which was already designated as a terrorist organisation by the Turkish government. Although this study recognises the variety of strategies religious populist parties use, it does not investigate in detail why and when strategies change. How do parameters of competition change between left-wing and right-wing religious populists? What are the more refined sub-categories of these four strategies identified in the contribution, and do they differ across different religions? 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