The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey by Soner Cagaptay (review)

Between 1983 and 2002, Turkey experienced tremendous social and political change. Taking advantage of both domestic and transnational opportunities in the post-1983 era, a diverse composition of new social elites emerged to influence the transformation and diversification of the country’s political, economic, and social landscape. Turkey’s old beneficiaries, often colloquially termed “Kemalists” (after modern Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk), were forced to make room for an upwardly mobile constituency of actors who found economic success through liberalization and who found domestic and international support for their project to “democratize” the Turkish power structure. After a brief stint in power in the mid-1990s, the political force representing Turkey’s new elite cemented its hold on power in 2002 under the leadership of a former semiprofessional soccer player, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP, from the Turkish Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) have now governed Turkey for over 15 years, and under his leadership Turkey has transformed again. Between 2002 and 2011, Turkey’s economy grew substantially, foreign direct investment remained high, millions moved out of poverty, whole swaths of the country enjoyed significant infrastructural development, and Turkey’s international footprint widened beyond its traditional Western alliance. Since 2011, however, domestic discontent has grown, various and repeated failures have come to define Turkey’s regional foreign policy, the economy has overheated, the country’s tourism sector, in particular, has collapsed, and its leaders have only barely survived two successive political crises: the Gezi Park uprising of 2013 and the failed coup attempt of July 2016. These trials have all been compounded by a dramatic increase in Turkish-Kurdish fighting in the country’s southeast. Collectively, these realties have led Erdoğan to crack down on all forms of social dissent, which has helped him consolidate executive power, crush opposition, and garner infamy as an emerging authoritarian.

The story of Turkey’s 21st century transformation(s), and of its leader specifically, is the subject of Soner Cagaptay’s new book, The New Sultan. The title calls attention both to the “neo-Ottoman” worldview that is mildly employed by Erdoğan and the AKP, and to the reality that he is arguably the most powerful leader in modern Turkish history. Indeed, early in the text, Cagaptay explains, “Erdogan will go down in history as one of Turkey’s most memorable, effective, and influential leaders, likely ranging alongside Ataturk” (p. 5). Importantly, however, Cagaptay is also quick to (rightfully) contend that, “having governed Turkey for 15 years . . . Erdogan has amassed powers sufficient to undermine Ataturk’s legacy and, were they alive, make those original Kemalists question their absolute confidence in their system” (pp. 7–8).

The first half of The New Sultan (Chapters 1–6) recounts Erdoğan’s coming of age, education, and maturity as a political leader in Millî Görüş (“the national outlook”), an Islamist movement within a broader, albeit brief, narrative of late 20th century Turkish political and economic development. There is not much new to learn here for the well-informed analyst or scholar of modern Turkey, but Cagaptay’s prose is tight and the flow of the story is captivating. A newcomer to Turkish politics will learn much. Unlike Patrick Seale’s Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (University of California Press, 1988), however, which brilliantly situates the rise and consolidation of the late Hafiz al-Asad’s regime in Syria within the larger geopolitical context of the modern Middle East, Cagaptay’s treatment of Erdoğan is far less ambitious. His data are derived primarily from secondary sources, and most of these consist of media reports and truncated policy briefs. Moreover, Cagaptay did not interview his subject or his immediate handlers to help explain this man, his power, his successes, or his struggles. The New Sultan introduces Erdoğan and “the new Turkey” to the relatively uninformed but...