#kemalists

Erdoğan has not got where he is by taking fancy degrees or showing off his restaurant French (he is defiantly monolingual) – but through straightforward piety and political nous. Just as the Kemalists used to disparage the “primitive” ways of Turkey’s Islamists, so too does Erdoğan deplore liberal freedoms that he regards as obstacles to development and virtue. He has compared abortions to mass murder and derides all drinkers as alcoholics; environmentalists, he has said, should move to a forest.