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The AK Party's Islamic Realist Political Vision: Theory and Practice


Affiliations
1 Department of Political Science, Packard Hall, Tufts University, Medford, MA, 02155, United States
 

The currently governing Turkish AK Party's reformist agenda at home and its increasingly assertive policies abroad, like the "soft" and "hard" power elements of its foreign policy, reflect a remarkable coherence and continuity in the politi-cal vision of the party leadership. That vision - a contemporary manifestation (sometimes described as "neo-Ottomanism") of an older tradition of Islamic realism - is explicated through a detailed analysis of the speeches and writings of the main AK Party leaders, as well as of their opponents within the Islamist movement, and correlated with actual policy practice. It is further suggested that the AK Party's preoccupation with its traditional secular-nationalist (Kemalist) adversaries has left it unprepared to confront an even more formidable looming challenge: liberalism.

Keywords

AK Party, Davutoglu, Democratization, Erdogan, Gul, Islamic Realism, Neo-Ottomanism, Turkey.
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  • The AK Party's Islamic Realist Political Vision: Theory and Practice

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Authors

Malik Mufti
Department of Political Science, Packard Hall, Tufts University, Medford, MA, 02155, United States

Abstract


The currently governing Turkish AK Party's reformist agenda at home and its increasingly assertive policies abroad, like the "soft" and "hard" power elements of its foreign policy, reflect a remarkable coherence and continuity in the politi-cal vision of the party leadership. That vision - a contemporary manifestation (sometimes described as "neo-Ottomanism") of an older tradition of Islamic realism - is explicated through a detailed analysis of the speeches and writings of the main AK Party leaders, as well as of their opponents within the Islamist movement, and correlated with actual policy practice. It is further suggested that the AK Party's preoccupation with its traditional secular-nationalist (Kemalist) adversaries has left it unprepared to confront an even more formidable looming challenge: liberalism.

Keywords


AK Party, Davutoglu, Democratization, Erdogan, Gul, Islamic Realism, Neo-Ottomanism, Turkey.

References