The Last Pillars of Kemalism Have Fallen

摘要

For many of us, the possibility of the fall of Turkish Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised hopes that the country might experience a return to the secular state that dominated the nation for the past 50 years. If history was any guide, the military would have declared victory over the Islamist leader, as with all four previous successful coup attempts in modern Turkey (1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997), where the military preserved the secular democratic state (to an extend). This is not what happened on 15 July. It became clear very quickly Erdogan would use the opportunity as an excuse to garner more power to himself, in effect, exploiting the coup as his own "Reichstag fire."