The Turkish Sonderweg: Erdoğan's New Turkey and its Role in the Global Order

Introduction 

About an hour’s drive north of Istanbul on a newly built highway stands the city’s new airport. “This is not an airport but a monument to victory,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said at its inauguration on October 29, 2018—incidentally, a day that also marked the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey. The project was controversial—and highly politicized—even before breaking ground, pitting environmentalists and Turkey’s secular opposition against the government. When the new airport fully opened in April 2019, travelers passing through it could not help but notice the enormous mosque under construction in front of it. Outside the mosque, a huge poster of Erdoğan bearing the insignia of the Turkish presidency read, “We are building the new Turkey.” By this time, the term “Yeni Türkiye (New Turkey)” was known to everyone in the country. Over the past few years, Erdoğan had used it in political rallies as shorthand for the rebirth of a nation under his gaze and in line with his principles. In August 2014, a day before he became Turkey’s first popularly elected president (having won 51.8 percent of the vote), Erdoğan wrote on Twitter, “Today is the birthday of the New Turkey. The New Turkey corresponds to new politics, a new economy and a new sociology.”