Nationalism and Religion Exploited For Personal Power

Submitted by Dave (United States), Apr 15, 2017 at 16:38

By making his rule represent a return to Turkish Ottoman glory and Islamic fidelity, Erdogan seeks to align loyalty to his person with loyalty to the nation and to God. Conversely, that means that opposition to him means opposing the state and is a kind of blasphemy as well. Very clever, but not very original. Despots stretching back to the Egyptian pharaohs have used a similar rationale to justify their tyranny. North Korea's ruler is an extreme example, with himself playing the role of the deity.
The discouraging thing about this is that this ruse is as accepted as it is, both within Turkey and beyond. There are a lot of educated Turks who aren't buying the Sun King bit, but it looks like the yahoos there have simply overwhelmed them. Meanwhile, the new Trump administration doesn't seem to have anything notably critical to say, and NATO goes on its blithe way as though nothing has changed.
Maybe Erdogan is planning to be entombed some day in a pyramid?

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