Islamist Outbidding in Turkey: The Strategic Rationale of Dominant Party Radicalization
Since consolidating institutional dominance in 2011, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey’s ruling party for the past twenty plus years and the world’s longest-governing Islamic party, has engaged in Islamist outbidding wherein it has employed religious rhetoric and policies more radical...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
A journal of church and state
Year: 2025, Volume: 67, Issue: 4 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Turkey
/ Politics
/ Islam
/ Fundamentalism
|
| RelBib Classification: | BJ Islam KBL Near East and North Africa ZC Politics in general |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Since consolidating institutional dominance in 2011, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey’s ruling party for the past twenty plus years and the world’s longest-governing Islamic party, has engaged in Islamist outbidding wherein it has employed religious rhetoric and policies more radical than the societal average. This has included citing Quranic principles in economic policymaking, aligning with fringe Islamist groups, and reshaping education to emphasize Islamic identity, even as Turkish society has grown increasingly secular and religio-politically diverse. This article investigates why a dominant party would pursue such a strategy despite declining electoral returns and limited public demand for religious radicalization. Drawing on Turkish studies that emphasize AKP’s pragmatism, literature on radicalization as a strategic tool of the state, and theories of ideological outbidding, this article explores how a dominant incumbent can deploy non-violent yet ideologically radical discourse and policies to maintain power. Specifically, it examines how the Party has used Islamist outbidding to navigate electoral threats, consolidate patronage networks, build cultural hegemony, and intensify societal polarizations. Employing process tracing, the study analyzes speeches, policy documents, and public opinion data from the post-2011 period to uncover the mechanisms behind this shift. In doing so, it offers a new theoretical framework for understanding how political radicalization can emerge from the center, reframing it as a strategy of incumbency rather than merely a symptom of extremism. |
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| ISSN: | 2040-4867 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: A journal of church and state
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jcs/csaf048 |
