In this essay for The New Yorker, written in the aftermath of the July, 2016, coup attempt, Elliot Ackerman examines the long struggle between the secular Turkey founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the more religiously rooted Turkey that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has built in its place.

A Sixth Coup, and a Failed One

Ackerman situates the failed coup within Turkey's history of military intervention, including the 1997 "coup by letter" that forced Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan from power, and argues that declining public trust in the armed forces helps explain why the 2016 attempt collapsed.

From Prison Cell to Prime Minister

Ackerman traces Erdoğan's rise from a four-month prison term for reciting a nationalist poem in 1999 to his election as Prime Minister in 2003, and lists the grievances, from the war with the Kurds to a crackdown on the press to the push for an executive presidency, that had eroded his support by 2016.

Two Founders, Two Turkeys

Ackerman closes by contrasting Atatürk's vision of a secular republic grounded in science and democracy with Erdoğan's identification with Turkey's Ottoman and Islamic past, framing the coup attempt as one more chapter in that unresolved struggle.

Read the Original Article

This essay originally appeared in The New Yorker.

Read “Atatürk Versus Erdoğan: Turkey’s Long Struggle” at The New Yorker →