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      Erdogan Pushed to Victory in Turkey by Conservative Women

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      In winning another term as Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was propelled to victory in part by the fervent support of an often underappreciated constituency — conservative religious women.Ten years ago, Emine Kilic, was focused on raising her two children at home in Istanbul when she decided to set up her own clothing company to help support her family.Her business, started with an interest-free government-backed loan for female entrepreneurs, now employs 60 people and exports to 15 countries, said Ms. Kilic, who has an elementary-school education. She credited a powerful motivator who inspired her to transform her life — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — calling him a champion for women.“Thanks to my president, I became the boss of my own company,” said Ms. Kilic, 38. She said she had voted for him for years and did so again to help him secure another presidential term on Sunday.To beat back the most serious political threat to his two-decade tenure as Turkey’s dominant politician, Mr. Erdogan counted on the fervent support of an often underappreciated constituency: conservative religious women.Across Turkey, devout women, both professionals and those who don’t work outside the home, not only turned out to vote for Mr. Erdogan in large numbers, but also coaxed their friends and relatives to do the same. Women are also active across the country in his governing Justice and Development Party, ranging from activists who spread party messages among their neighbors over tea to the dozens of women who represent the party in Parliament.Since arriving on the national stage in 2003 as an ambitious Islamist politician, Mr. Erdogan has sidelined Turkey’s secular elites.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesUniting these women and Mr. Erdogan is a shared conservative Muslim view of female roles in Turkish society, first as mothers and wives, second as members of the work force. In a staunchly secular country where women who covered their hair were long barred from universities and government jobs, many devout women view Mr. Erdogan as their protector because he pushed to loosen those rules.“Voting in Turkey, especially for our community, is not only about electing someone. It is making a decision about your life,” said Ozlem Zengin, a lawmaker and senior female member of Mr. Erdogan’s party.For many conservative women, the bitterness of having their ambitions limited by public expressions of their faith runs deep, even affecting the children of those who lived through it, she said. That resentment also fuels the tremendous gratitude toward Mr. Erdogan.“Erdogan is loved that much, because he changed people’s lives,” Ms. Zengin said.The electricity between Mr. Erdogan and his female supporters coursed through an Istanbul conference hall during a women’s rally two days before the May 28 runoff. Thousands of women, some with babies or children in tow, packed the hall, clapping and waiving their arms to campaign anthems and holding up their cellphone flashlights to welcome him onstage.“Women are the most important heroes in our struggle to serve the country,” Mr. Erdogan said, to rapturous applause.“Women are with you!” the crowd at a campaign rally chanted to Mr. Erdogan.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesHe reminded his audience that he had delivered on conservative causes, lifting head scarf bans and turning the Hagia Sofia, one of Turkey’s architectural treasures, from a museum into a mosque. And he made a new promise to seek retirement pay for women who do not work outside the home, garnering more cheers.“We will burst the ballot boxes,” Mr. Erdogan said. “Don’t just go by yourself. You must make sure your families, neighbors and distant relatives also go to the ballot box.”“The women are with you!” the crowd chanted.Mr. Erdogan’s loyal following among conservatives is rooted in Turkey’s history.Though a predominantly Muslim society, the country was founded in 1923 as a secular state. That gave the government oversight of religious institutions and the power to keep open displays of religiosity out of the public sphere.Some Turks treasure that secularism as a founding pillar of the republic. But it rankled many devout people, including women who felt that it made them second-class citizens. Some women had to remove their veils to attend university. Others wore wigs.In a staunchly secular country where women who covered their hair were long barred from universities and government jobs, many devout women view Mr. Erdogan as their protector.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMs. Zengin, the lawmaker, said she had worked as a lawyer for 20 years without being allowed to even enter the courtroom because she covered her hair.“If you were a defendant or an aggrieved party, you could enter the courtroom, but not as a lawyer,” she said. “It was incomprehensible.”Since Mr. Erdogan arrived on the national stage in 2003 as an ambitious Islamist politician, he has sidelined Turkey’s secular elites and consolidated more power in his own hands. Along the way, he pushed to loosen head scarf restrictions.The restrictions were lifted on university campuses in 2008, and in 2013 four veiled women from Mr. Erdogan’s party became Parliament members, a first. Now, there are many more, and conservatives still thank Mr. Erdogan with their votes.“I feel like I have a debt to him,” said Eda Yurtseven, a kindergarten teacher. “I owe him a lot because now I can live freely.”Mr. Erdogan’s vision of the family remains conservative, holding sacrosanct the notion of marriage being only between a man and a woman, preferably with three children. His idea of personal freedom leaves little room for L.G.B.T.Q. people in Turkey.“We believe the family is sacred,” he said during the women’s rally. “We must take precautions now against these trends that are spreading like the plague.”Turkey’s Constitution grants equal rights to men and women, and its labor code bars gender-based discrimination. But women still earn 15.6 percent less than men on average, according to a United Nations report last year.Mr. Erdogan’s foes say he has acquired too much power and accuse him of pushing the country toward one-man rule.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesIn 2021, Mr. Erdogan shocked rights groups by withdrawing Turkey from an international treaty on preventing violence against women that he had signed in 2011. Women’s advocates consider the country’s domestic violence laws strong but say that physical and sexual abuse against women remains common and often goes unreported or is not properly investigated by the authorities.Female political representation has increased during Mr. Erdogan’s tenure, and women won about 120 seats in the 600-member Parliament in this month’s election. Still, the United Nations report said, most women work in campaigning, communications or support roles, not in high-level decision making.Mr. Erdogan has been a pioneer in tapping the power of devout, conservative women in grass-roots politics in Turkey, said Nur Sinem Kourou, a professor at Istanbul Kultur University who has studied his party’s women’s groups. Many work in their neighborhoods, she said, spreading party views through informal meetings or religious activities while gathering information to feed back to the party.“The fact that the women’s branches are on the ground every week, every day means that they analyze society very well,” Ms. Kourou said. “That data leads back to Erdogan’s speeches on TV.”Those activists remain fiercely loyal to Mr. Erdogan and consider him key to Turkey’s future, she added.“We have to protect him,” Ms. Kourou said, summarizing their views. “Erdogan protects us.”That bond means that Mr. Erdogan’s staunchest female supporters tend to give him a pass on the country’s problems, including a painful cost-of-living crisis, blaming instead other members of his party or foreign powers.Woman at a meeting of Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in Istanbul. He pushed to loosen head scarf restrictions.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMr. Erdogan’s foes say he has acquired too much power and accuse him of pushing the country toward one-man rule. But his vast control does not bother his loyalists. On the contrary, they say he needs it to do his job.Mina Murat, 26, said she voted for Mr. Erdogan and his party because they protected her right to cover her hair.“My teacher used to wear a wig over her head scarf in school,” she recalled. “Women couldn’t attend college and couldn’t get government jobs because of their head scarves.”Now, Ms. Murat works in a clothing store geared toward conservative women, with head scarves in a vast array of colors and patterns.“Now we can dress fashionably and conservatively,” she said. More

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      Erdogan’s Victory in Turkey’s Presidential Election: Key Takeaways

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      Crises including earthquakes and inflation did not stop the re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The vote was seen as free but not fair, as he used his power to tilt the playing field.President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election grants him five more years to deepen his conservative imprint on Turkish society and to realize his ambition of increasing the country’s economic and geopolitical power.Turkey’s Supreme Election Council named Mr. Erdogan the victor after a runoff election on Sunday. He won 52.1 percent of the vote against the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who had 47.9 percent with almost all votes counted, the council said.The election was closely followed by Turkey’s NATO allies, including the United States, who have often seen Mr. Erdogan as a frustrating partner because of his anti-Western rhetoric and close ties with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which have grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Mr. Erdogan has given no indication that he plans to change his policies abroad, where he has sought to use Turkey’s place at the juncture of Europe, Asia and the Middle East to expand its influence, or at home, where has consolidated power in his hands and responded to an inflation crisis with unconventional measures that economists said exacerbated the problem.Challenging him in the election was a newly united opposition that billed the election as a make-it-or-break-it moment for Turkish democracy. The opposition’s candidate, Mr. Kilicdaroglu, ran as the anti-Erdogan, vowing to restore civil freedoms and improve ties with the West. He billed himself as more in touch with common people’s struggles.Here are some key takeaways:Crises damaged but did not break Erdogan.The opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, on the right of this banner in Istanbul, presented himself as an anti-Erdogan.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThis was the most challenging election of Mr. Erdogan’s 20 years as Turkey’s most prominent politician, as prime minister since 2003 and as president since 2014. Before the initial vote, most polls suggested a tight race with Mr. Kilicdaroglu in the lead.Analysts cited several reasons Mr. Erdogan might struggle. Anger at a painful cost-of-living crisis turned some voters against him. Powerful earthquakes in February killed more than 50,000 people and damaged hundreds of buildings in southern Turkey. Many quake survivors complained about the government’s slow initial response while the destruction raised questions about whether Mr. Erdogan’s haste to develop the country had encouraged unsafe construction.Turkey’s historically fractious opposition set aside its differences to come together behind Mr. Kilicdaroglu and argued that change was needed to stop the country’s slide toward one-man rule.But Mr. Erdogan prevailed, thanks to fervent support from a significant portion of the population and his skills as a campaigner. Religiously conservative Turks who appreciate his expanding the role of Islam in public life stood by him, and even many of those angry about inflation said they did not have faith that the opposition could govern any better.The earthquake didn’t affect the election much.Lining up for supply distribution after earthquakes hit the city of Antakya, Turkey, in February. Turnout in quake-hit areas was surprisingly high.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMr. Erdogan came to power 20 years ago amid anger at the government’s disastrous response to an earthquake near Istanbul in 1999 that killed more than 17,000 people. So many expected this year’s quake to hurt his standing as well.But there few indications that it did.Mr. Erdogan came out ahead in eight of the 11 provinces affected by February’s earthquake. His governing Justice and Development Party and its political allies fared even better, winning a majority of votes in the simultaneous parliamentary elections in all but one of the quake-stricken provinces.Participation in the earthquake zone was also high, despite worries that many voters displaced by the destruction would struggle to return home to cast their ballots as is required. Although participation in the 11 quake-affected provinces was lower than the 88.9 percent of eligible voters who cast ballots nationally, in none of those provinces did turnout dip below 80 percent.Interviews with quake survivors indicated many reasons that the disaster had not changed their political outlook. Some described the quake as an act of God that any government would have struggled to respond to. Others whose homes were destroyed said they had more faith in Mr. Erdogan to rebuild the affected areas than they had in his challenger.Terrorism warnings resonated with voters.Supporters of Mr. Erdogan in Istanbul on Sunday. He made opposition to Kurdish militants a key campaign issue. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMr. Erdogan undermined the opposition by portraying its leaders as weak and incompetent, but one line of attack proved to be especially potent: accusations that they would be soft on terrorism.The president repeatedly made this argument to voters, based on the opposition’s having received the support of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party. The government often accuses that party of collaboration with militants from Turkey’s Kurdish minority who have been at war with the Turkish state for decades, seeking autonomy.Mr. Erdogan even went so far as to air videos at his rallies that had been doctored to show militant leaders singing along to Mr. Kilicdaroglu’s campaign song. Many voters believed him, saying in interviews that they did not trust the opposition to keep the country safe.The vote was free but not fair.Counting ballots in Istanbul on Sunday. The opposition challenger did not contest the count, but said the election overall was unfair.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesInternational observers reported no large-scale problems with the process of collecting and counting votes during the first round, deeming the process free.But they noted the tremendous advantages Mr. Erdogan had before voting began, including his ability to unleash billions of dollars in state spending to try to offset the negative effects of inflation and other economic strains and the abundant, positive media coverage he received from the state-funded broadcaster.Late on Sunday, Mr. Mr. Kilicdaroglu did not contest the vote count, but told his supporters that the overall election had been “one of the most unfair election processes in recent years.”Many in the political opposition fear that the closeness of the race will lead Mr. Erdogan to crack down on his political opponents more aggressively to prevent such a stiff challenge in the future.Mr. Erdogan must now confront economic problems.Turkey has drawn on its foreign currency reserves while trying to stabilize its own currency.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesEconomists warn that Mr. Erdogan resorted to expensive short-term tactics to insulate voters from inflation and prevent the value of the national currency from sinking further. But he can’t keep it up forever.Turkey’s foreign currency reserves have declined steeply, meaning the country could lose its ability to pay back foreign creditors. And because much of that money has been spent to keep the currency stable, its value could dive once that spending stops.Mr. Erdogan gave no indication during his campaign that he planned to modify his economic policies, despite stubbornly high, double-digit inflation that economists say has been exacerbated by his insistence on lowering interest rates instead of raising them to combat inflation, as orthodox economics recommends.So regardless of what moves Mr. Erdogan would like to prioritize at the start of his new term, the risks of a currency crisis or recession are likely to demand his attention.Gulsin Harman More

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      Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey Is Re-elected

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      President Recep Tayyip Erdogan beat back the greatest political challenge of his career on Sunday, securing victory in a presidential runoff that granted five more years to a mercurial leader who has vexed his Western allies while tightening his grip on the Turkish state.His victory means Mr. Erdogan could remain in power for at least a quarter-century, deepening his conservative imprint on Turkish society while pursuing his vision of a country with increasing economic and geopolitical might. He will be ensconced as the driving force of a NATO ally of the United States, a position he has leveraged to become a key broker in the war in Ukraine and to enhance Turkey’s status as a Muslim power with 85 million people and critical ties across continents.Turkey’s Supreme Election Council declared Mr. Erdogan the victor late Sunday. He won 52.1 percent of the vote; the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu got 47.9 percent with almost all votes counted, the council said.Mr. Erdogan’s supporters shrugged off Turkey’s challenges, including a looming economic crisis, and lauded him for developing the country and supporting conservative Islamic values.In many Turkish cities on Sunday night, they honked car horns, cheered and gathered in public squares to watch the results roll in and await his victory speech. Thousands gathered outside the presidential palace in Ankara, waiving red and white Turkish flags.“It is not only us who won, it is Turkey,” Mr. Erdogan said, to raucous applause. “It is our nation that won with all its elements. It is our democracy.”Mr. Kilicdaroglu told his supporters that he did not contest the vote count but that the election overall had been unfair, nevertheless. In the run-up to the vote, Mr. Erdogan tapped state resources to tilt the playing field in his favor.During his 20 years as the country’s most prominent politician — as prime minister beginning in 2003 and as president since 2014 — Mr. Erdogan has sidelined the country’s traditional political and military elites and expanded the role of Islam in public life.Along the way, he has used crises to expand his power, centering major decision making about domestic, foreign and economic policy inside the walls of his sprawling presidential palace. His political opponents fear that five more years at the helm will allow him to consolidate power even further.Mr. Erdogan has offered few indications that he intends to change course in either domestic affairs or in foreign policy.A currency exchange office in Istanbul. Mr. Erdogan’s most immediate domestic challenge is likely to be the economy.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMr. Erdogan’s unpredictability and frequent tirades against the West left officials in some Western capitals wondering whose side he was on in the war in Ukraine and privately hoping he would lose.The Turkish leader condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, but refused to join Western sanctions to isolate President Vladimir V. Putin and instead increased Turkish trade with Moscow. He calls Mr. Putin “my friend” and has hampered NATO efforts to expand by delaying the admission of Finland and still refusing to admit Sweden.During his campaign, Mr. Erdogan indicated that he was comfortable with his stance on Ukraine. He described Turkey’s mediation at times between the conflict’s warring parties as “not an ordinary deed.” And he said he was not “working just to receive a ‘well done’ from the West,” making clear that the desires of his allies will not trump his pursuit of Turkey’s interests.Mr. Erdogan operates on the understanding that “the world has entered the stage where Western predominance is no longer a given,” said Galip Dalay, a Turkey analyst at Chatham House, a London-based research group.That view has led regional powers like Turkey to benefit from ties with the West even while engaging with American rivals like Russia and China. The idea is that “Turkey is better served by engaging in a geopolitical balance between them,” Mr. Dalay said.Critics accuse Mr. Erdogan of pushing Turkey toward one-man rule. Election observers said that while this month’s voting was largely free, he used state resources and his sway over the news media to gain advantage, making the wider competition unfair.Voting on Sunday at a polling station in Istanbul.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesStill, his opponents came closer to unseating him than ever before, and many expect he will try to prevent them from ever being able to do so again.“Winning this election will give him ultimate confidence in himself, and I think he will see himself as undefeatable from now on,” said Gulfem Saydan Sanver, a political consultant who has advised members of the opposition. “I think he will be more harsh on the opposition.”Mr. Erdogan’s victory did not come easy.Heading into the first round of voting on May 14, he faced a new coalition set on unseating him by backing a single challenger, Mr. Kilicdaroglu. Most polls suggested that the president’s popularity had been eroded by a painful cost-of-living crisis that had shrunk the budgets of Turkish families and that he could even lose.Mr. Erdogan’s government also faced criticism that it had failed to respond quickly after powerful earthquakes in February killed more than 50,000 people in southern Turkey. But in the end, the disaster did not effect the election much.Mr. Erdogan campaigned fiercely, meeting with earthquake victims, unleashing billions of dollars in government spending to insulate voters from double-digit inflation and dismissing Mr. Kilicdaroglu as unfit to herd sheep, much less run the nation.In fiery speeches, Mr. Erdogan charmed his supporters with songs and poetry and painted his opponents as soft on terrorism.Destroyed buildings in Antakya, Turkey, after powerful earthquakes in February.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesAlthough he fell short of the majority required to win outright in the first round, Mr. Erdogan came out in the lead with 49.5 percent of the vote to Mr. Kilicdaroglu’s 44.9 percent, sending them to a runoff.Over the years, Mr. Erdogan has merged himself with the image of the state, and he is likely to keep leveraging Turkey’s position between the West, Russia and other countries to enhance his geopolitical clout.His relations with Washington remain prickly.The United States removed Turkey from a program to receive F-35 fighter jets in 2019 after Turkey bought an air-defense system from Russia.And during the long war in neighboring Syria, Mr. Erdogan criticized the United States for working with a Syrian Kurdish militia that Turkey says is an extension of a Kurdish militant group that has fought the Turkish government for decades to demand autonomy.Mr. Erdogan’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, accused the United States of a “political coup attempt” to unseat Mr. Erdogan during the campaign. As evidence, Mr. Soylu cited comments from President Biden’s own campaign, in which he criticized Mr. Erdogan as an “autocrat” and said the United States should support Turkey’s opposition.Diplomats acknowledge that Mr. Erdogan’s ties to both Russia and Ukraine allowed him to mediate an agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea as well as prisoner swaps between the warring parties.Mr. Erdogan meeting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in October in Kazakhstan.Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRecently, Mr. Erdogan has worked to patch up relations with former regional foes, including Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, in order to cool tensions and stimulate trade. After conciliatory moves by Turkey, Saudi Arabia deposited $5 billion in Turkey’s central bank in March, helping shore up its sagging foreign currency reserves.The Turkish leader has said he might meet with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria after years of supporting anti-Assad rebels. The goal: speeding the return of some of the millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, a key demand of Turkish voters.Mr. Erdogan, the son of a ferry captain who grew up in a tough Istanbul neighborhood and dreamed of playing professional soccer, retains the deep devotion of many Turks, who credit him with developing the country. Swift economic growth in the 2000s lifted millions of Turks out of poverty and transformed Turkish cities with new highways, airports and rail lines.Mr. Erdogan also expanded the space for Islam in public life.Turkey is a predominantly Muslim society with a secular state, and for decades women who wore head scarves were barred from universities and government jobs. Mr. Erdogan loosened those rules, and conservative women vote for him in large numbers.He also has a habit of making smokers he encounters promise to quit — and getting it in writing. In March, his office displayed hundreds of cigarette packs signed by the people Mr. Erdogan had taken them from, including his own brother and a former foreign minister of Bulgaria.He has also expanded religious education and transformed the Hagia Sophia, Turkey’s most famous historic landmark, from a museum into a mosque.Musa Aslantas, a bakery owner, listed what he considered Mr. Erdogan’s most recent accomplishments: a natural gas discovery in the Black Sea, Turkey’s first electric car and a nuclear power plant being built by Russia.“Our country is stronger thanks to Erdogan,” said Mr. Aslantas, 28. “He can stand up to foreign leaders. He makes us feel safe and powerful. They can’t play with us like they used to.”Praying at the Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesOver the past decade, Mr. Erdogan has deftly used crises to expand his authority.He responded to street protests against his rule in 2013 by restricting freedom of expression and assembly and jailing organizers. After surviving a coup attempt in 2016, he purged the civil service and judiciary, creating openings for his loyalists. The next year, Mr. Erdogan pushed for a referendum that moved much of the state’s power from the Parliament to the president — meaning him.Over time, he has extended his sway over the news media. The state broadcaster gives him extensive positive coverage, and critical private outlets have been shuttered or fined, leading others to self-censor.Mr. Erdogan’s critics worry that he will find new ways to weaken democracy from within.“The judiciary is controlled by the state, Parliament is controlled by the state and the executive is controlled by Erdogan,” said Ilhan Uzgel, a former professor of international relations at Ankara University who was fired by presidential decree. “That means there is no separation of powers, which is the ABCs of a democratic society.”But Mr. Erdogan’s most immediate challenge could be the economy.Istanbul this month.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesHis insistence on lowering interest rates has exacerbated inflation that peaked at more than 80 percent annually last year, economists say, and expensive moves he made before the election added to the state’s bills and depleted the central bank’s foreign currency reserves. Without a swift change of course, Turkey could soon face a currency crisis or recession.Economic trouble could lead more voters to seek change in the future, assuming Mr. Erdogan’s foes can overcome their disappointment and mount another challenge.“Erdogan has clear vision of what he wants for the country, and he has had that vision since he was very young,” said Selim Koru, an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey. “What people like about him is that he has not really compromised on that.”Safak Timur More

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      How Turkey’s Erdogan Rose to Power

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      Turkey’s leader faced a criminal conviction, mass protests and a coup. Instead of hurting or ending his political career, they helped him accumulate ever more control.From mayor to lawmaker and prime minister to president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan rose through the ranks to Turkey’s highest positions and then made them his own, bringing the country over the course of 20 years closer to one-man rule.On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan will try to secure another term as president, although only after the opposition forced him into a runoff vote. That the election has gone to a second round is a sign that his grip on the country has slipped, if not been broken, amid a host of problems like economic turmoil, widespread corruption and his government’s handling of catastrophic earthquakes this spring.But Mr. Erdogan has navigated crises since the earliest days of his career, including a jail sentence, mass protests and an attempted coup. Several of those episodes illustrate how he not just survived crises, but found opportunities to consolidate power through them.A lifetime ban that lasted a few yearsIn 1998, Mr. Erdogan, then Istanbul’s 44-year-old mayor, was a rising star of Turkey’s Islamist political movement — which was the target of a crackdown by the military-backed authorities. That year, a court convicted him of having called for religious insurrection by quoting an Islamist poem from the 1920s. He was sentenced to 10 months in jail and handed a lifetime ban on political activity.Although predominantly Muslim, Turkey was founded as a secular republic and the traditional political elites felt the Islamists were anathema to those values.Mr. Erdogan when he was mayor of Istanbul in 1998.Murad Sezer/Associated PressMr. Erdogan spent four months in jail, making plans for a comeback despite the ban. In a general amnesty in 2001, Turkey’s Constitutional Court lifted the ban, and he soon assembled a new political party with other reformists from the Islamist movement who promised good governance and sought ties with the West.Allies who changed the rulesMr. Erdogan’s ascent was nearly stopped in 2002 by Turkey’s electoral board, which barred him from an election because of his criminal conviction. But his party colleagues, who had swept into Parliament, amended the Constitution to let him run. Mr. Erdogan won office and became prime minister in 2003.He governed piously at home and pragmatically abroad, winning allies with a mix of charisma and nationalistic fervor. He pushed to lift bans on women’s head scarves in state offices, promoted the construction of mosques, courted the E.U. market and fended off challenges from rivals among Turkey’s military and business elites.Mr. Erdogan promoted the construction of mosques in the country, such as the Taksim Square mosque in Istanbul.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesHis government also began prosecuting some of those figures, in 2008 accusing dozens of people, including retired army generals and journalists, of trying to stage a coup. Mr. Erdogan’s allies called the trial an attempt to reckon with Turkey’s history of violent power struggle. Critics called it an effort to silence the secular opposition.With voters’ approval in a referendum two years later, Mr. Erdogan reshaped the Constitution again. He said the 2010 overhaul brought Turkey closer to Europe’s democracies and broke from its military past, while his opponents said it gave his conservative government greater control over the military and the courts. He won a third term as prime minister in 2011.The mall that provoked protestsMr. Erdogan was not without significant, if disparate, opposition. In 2013, protests that erupted over a proposed mall to replace an Istanbul park morphed into a demonstration of discontent over many issues, including the drift toward Islamist policies and persistent corruption.Mr. Erdogan cracked down, not just on protesters but also on medics, journalists, activists, business owners and officials accused of sympathizing. Some cultural figures were imprisoned and others fled, and for many who remained, an atmosphere of self-censorship descended.People running away as Turkish riot police fire tear gas on Taksim Square during protests in 2013.Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs his term neared its end, Mr. Erdogan faced a problem: His party’s rules prevented him from another turn as prime minister. In 2014, he instead ran for another office — becoming Turkey’s first popularly elected president, opening his term with words of rapprochement.“I want us to build a new future with an understanding of societal reconciliation, while considering our differences as our richnesses and bringing forward our common values,” he said in a victory speech.But rather than limit himself to the mostly ceremonial duties of the role, he moved to maximize its powers, which included a veto on legislation and the ability to appoint judges.The transformative aftermath of a coupMr. Erdogan’s rule nearly ended in 2016, as a chaotic insurrection by parts of the military and members of an Islamist group that had once been his political ally tried to oust him. But he skirted capture, called Turks to protest in the streets and soon re-emerged in Istanbul to reassert control.“What is being perpetrated is a rebellion,” he said. “They will pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey.”Soldiers involved in a coup attempt surrendering in Istanbul in 2016.Gokhan Tan/Getty ImagesA purge that followed reshaped Turkey: Thousands accused of connections to the coup plot were arrested, tens of thousands lost jobs in schools, police departments and other institutions, and more than 100 media outlets were shuttered. Most of those caught up in the purge were accused of affiliations with the Gulen movement, the Islamist followers of Fethullah Gulen, the cleric accused by Mr. Erdogan of orchestrating the coup while living in exile in the United States.Within a year, Mr. Erdogan had arranged another referendum for voters, this one on whether to abolish the post of prime minister and move power to the president, as well as grant the role more abilities.With his opponents under pressure and his allies reinvigorated, he narrowly won the referendum, calling the changes necessary to make the government more efficient. The next year, he won re-election to another five-year term.A blitz of decrees and growing discontentHours before his inauguration in 2018, Mr. Erdogan published a 143-page decree that changed the way almost every government department operated. He fired another 18,000 state employees and made several major appointments, naming his son-in-law the new finance minister.The decree was just one sign of how far Mr. Erdogan has taken Turkey down the path toward strongman rule. The government announced new internet restrictions and started monumental projects — including soaring bridges, an enormous mosque and a plan for an “Istanbul Canal.”Many of Mr. Erdogan’s supporters hail efforts like these as visionary, but critics say they feed a construction industry that is plagued by corruption and which has wasted state funds.A poster featuring Mr. Erdogan during the election campaign this month in Istanbul.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThose frustrations have spread among many Turks in recent years. While Mr. Erdogan has raised Turkey’s stature abroad and pursued major projects, his consolidation of power has left some uneasy, and the economy has suffered.That dissent has loosened Mr. Erdogan’s hold over the country.In 2019, his party lost control of some of Turkey’s largest cities — only to contest the results in Istanbul. Turkey’s High Election Council ordered a do-over election, a decision condemned by the opposition as a capitulation to Mr. Erdogan, but his party lost that second vote, too, ending 25 years of dominance in Turkey’s largest city.And now, with his government criticized for its preparation for earthquakes and its response to them, and Turkey’s economy teetering on the verge of crisis, Mr. Erdogan has persisted with major spending and lowering interest rates despite inflation, which has left many Turks feeling far poorer. More

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      Burhan Sönmez on the Tensions Between Politics and Art in Turkey

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      Burhan Sönmez, who is president of PEN international, discusses the tension between politics and art and the role of literature in authoritarian societies.The momentous Turkish presidential election, whose second round will take place on Sunday, has more than just geopolitical consequences; it is a watershed for culture as well. Since 2016, after a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the government here has cracked down on artists, writers, filmmakers and academics, who have experienced censorship, job losses and a climate of fear.For the novelist Burhan Sönmez, who is part of the country’s ethnic Kurdish minority, the upheavals of the Erdogan years are only the latest chapter in an ongoing struggle between Turkish power and Turkish art.Born outside Ankara in 1965, where his first language was Kurdish, he worked as a human rights lawyer but went into exile in Britain after a police assault. He has written five novels, including the prizewinning “Istanbul Istanbul,” “Labyrinth” and “Stone and Shadow,” newly out in English by Other Press. His novels delve into imprisonment and memory, with echoes of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Jorge Luis Borges.
      Sönmez now lives in Istanbul and Cambridge, and in 2021 he was named president of PEN International, where he has been an outspoken defender of freedom of expression in Turkey and elsewhere.I spoke to Sönmez over video a few days after the first round of the Turkish general election, in which Erdogan finished a half-point shy of an absolute majority. This interview has been edited and condensed.Istanbul has always been a city of arrivals. When did you first come here?During the military-coup era, the 1980s. I was born and grew up in a small village in central Turkey. It’s in the middle of the countryside, like a desert village, without electricity. I moved to Istanbul to study law, and the next phase of my life began after I went to exile in Britain. So now I can combine those different spaces — small village, big Istanbul and then Europe. They all come together and sometimes they separate.Frequently, there’s an indeterminacy of setting in your novels, not only of geography but of time. You rarely use the obvious tells of technology or current affairs that some authors use to ground a reader in time.Particularly in my novel “Istanbul, Istanbul,” I didn’t state a specific year, or period, when the events take place. When people read it, everyone feels that this is the story of their generation.For better and for worse!Yes. But, you know, only a naïve writer would feel proud of that. You would say, “OK, I am reflecting the feelings of different generations in a single novel.” In fact, it comes from the society itself in Turkey. Every generation has gone through the same suffering, the same problems, same oppression, same pain. So it is not a literary talent, actually, to bring all those times into a single story.In “Istanbul, Istanbul,” the narrators are prisoners, held without charge in underground cells, who tell one another stories. What their stories sketch in aggregate is a kind of dream-state Istanbul, where freedom is always abbreviated but with which freethinkers and artists remain hopelessly in love.This really started in the 1850s, when the first liberal intellectuals were oppressed by the Ottoman sultan and went into European exile. When we look at this history over time, 150 or 170 years, we see that, with every decade, governments used the same methods of oppression against writers, journalists, academics, intellectuals.But the tradition of oppression also created a tradition of resistance. And now look: After 20 years of the rule of Erdogan, still nearly half of society is against him strongly. We haven’t finished. This is partly our history of resistance.Turkey, like America, has a strong political fault line between the cities and the countryside. But your novels have crisscrossed from Istanbul to rural Anatolia and back.Especially in my last novel, “Stone and Shadow,” I wrote about this, comparing the eastern, middle and also the western part of Turkey over the last 100 years.What’s the difference between life in a small village in rural Turkey and in Istanbul? You could say it’s the difference between living in a small hut with a gas lamp and living on a street with flashing neon lights. Two different worlds, two different eras.But you should understand: Istanbul is now also part of rural Turkey. There has been a huge migration from the countryside. When I went to study in Istanbul, the population was about five million. Now it’s 17 million. It’s not easy for a big city to create a new citizen, a new cultural spirit.On that subject, one of the most disturbing themes of this election has been the demonization around refugees. I wonder how it sounds to you, as a former refugee yourself.The sad thing for Turkey now, we’ve seen a new rise of nationalism — in the color of racism, actually — against immigrants. There’s open racism against Syrians and Afghan people in Turkey. And every side, every political platform, has different ways of legitimizing this.Right-wingers say, “These people are underdeveloped Arabs. This is a backward race.” From secular progressive people, you hear, “Oh, they’re right-wing Islamist militants. They are here to support Erdogan, and to invade our country, to turn it into an Islamic republic.” In every case, racism or hatred of immigrants is on the top of the agenda.Nationalism now dominates almost every political movement.Yet there’s a rare lightness and freedom to your characterization of these political themes. “Labyrinth,” the story of a musician who loses his memory after jumping into the Bosporus, barely hints at the upheavals of the Erdogan years, when the amnesiac sees a torn poster of the president and confuses him for a sultan.We know the difference between art and journalism. Journalism speaks directly. Speaking this different language of art, we feel that we are no longer in the field of society, of politics. A political matter or a historical fact is just a color in my novel. That is real power. When I write a novel, I feel that I unite the past and the future. Because the past is a story and the future is a dream.Has there been a self-censorship of artists and writers in Turkey over the last few years?Well, first, every year more than 500 new Turkish novels are being published. When I was at the university, the number of new novels published in Turkish was about 15 or 20. That’s an enormous difference.With the young generation, I see that they are brave. Despite all this oppression, this danger of going to prison or being unemployed, young people are writing fearlessly. They are writing about Kurdish issues, about women’s issues, about L.G.B.T. issues, about political crimes in Turkey.Hundreds of writers are like this: writing openly, and at some point a bit dangerously, for themselves. This is something of which we should be proud.As president of PEN International, you have a particularly close view of the state of free expression. Have things gotten any better in Turkey since the crackdowns of 2016-2017, when thousands of academics and journalists were arrested or purged?No, no, it’s not better. In Turkey, we never got to distinguish between bad and good. It was always: bad or worse.In Turkey, PEN International has been supporting writers in prison. For myself, being a lawyer, I have the opportunity to go to prisons. Anytime I go to Turkey, I use this advantage. I go and I see Selahattin Demirtas, or Osman Kavala, so many people. It is sad to see great people are still in prison.But also it is great to see that we have solidarity. At the end of my novel “Istanbul, Istanbul,” I used an epigraph by a Persian Sufi from the Middle Ages. He says, “Hell is not the place where we suffer, it’s the place where no one hears us suffering.” I know that if I am arrested, I will never be left alone.I probably shouldn’t ask you what you expect when Turks vote in the presidential runoff next Sunday. …No, you should ask. I think we’ll win. I’m too optimistic in life, and very naïve. More

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      Turkey’s Erdogan Woos Voters in Re-Election Campaign

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      President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rock star appeal at his election rallies, promising to lead Turkey to claim its rightful place as a global power if he is re-elected in a runoff on Sunday.ISTANBUL — His campaign addresses begin softly, drawing the audience in. A devout Muslim, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan frequently says he seeks to please not just the Turkish people, but also God. Playing to the crowds, he sings folk songs, recites lines from local poets or drapes the sash of the local soccer team over his shoulders.He sometimes wades into the throngs of supporters for photos or greets children, who kiss his hands. Then he takes the podium to speak, dressed in a suit or a plaid sports coat.To the cheers and whistles of hundreds of transportation workers at a campaign rally last week, he laid out why they should keep him in power in a runoff on Sunday. He boasted that he had improved the country’s roads and bridges, raised wages and offered tax breaks to small businesses.He also vowed to keep fighting forces that he deemed enemies of the nation, including gay rights activists, to make Turkey “stronger in the world.” And he bashed the leaders of the opposition who are seeking to unseat him, accusing them of having entered “dark rooms to sit and bargain” with terrorists because they won the support of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party.“We take refuge only in our God and we take our orders from our nation,” the president said. The crowd roared and men leaped to their feet, chanting, “Turkey is proud of you!”Mr. Erdogan, 69, came out ahead in the toughest political fight of his career on May 14 — the first round of the presidential election. Since then, he has kept a busy schedule in the run-up to final vote.In multiple appearances a day and in speeches that sometimes last 40 minutes, he has stuck to themes that have served him well during his two decades as Turkey’s leading politician. He bills himself on the campaign trail as the leader needed to shepherd a rising nation struggling to beat back multiple threats so it can claim its rightful place as a global power.Listening to Mr. Erdogan at the Justice and Development Party headquarters in Ankara, the day after the first round of voting.Necati Savas/EPA, via ShutterstockIn the first round of voting, Mr. Erdogan failed to win the majority he needed for an outright victory. But with 49.5 percent of the vote, he did beat his main challenger, the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who got 44.9 percent.Many analysts predict Mr. Erdogan will win on Sunday given his strong showing in the first round and his subsequent endorsement by the third-place candidate, Sinan Ogan, who received 5.2 percent of the vote and was eliminated from the race.In grand terms, the president casts Turkey as being in a great struggle to rise in spite of forces conspiring to keep it down, and he invites voters to join him in this heroic national cause.He vows to fight “imperialists,” a code word for the West that recalls the fight for independence from European powers that led to Turkey’s founding 100 years ago. He warns of “traps” and “plots” against the nation, like the attempted coup against him in 2016. He speaks out against “economic hit men” and “loan sharks in London,” hinting at foreign hands behind Turkey’s economic struggles. And he blasts terrorist organizations, pointing to decades of bloody battles between the government and militants from Turkey’s Kurdish minority.To tout his government’s accomplishments, he lauds the infrastructure, calling out airports, tunnels and bridges by name and reminding voters how new highways have cut drive times between cities. Other oft-cited points of pride are the drones, warships and satellites produced by Turkey’s growing defense industry.Mr. Erdogan spends little time on the country’s economic woes, including annual inflation that peaked above 80 percent last year and remained stubbornly high at 44 percent last month, greatly reducing the purchasing power of ordinary citizens. Nor has he hinted that in victory he would revise policies that some economists say have left the economy vulnerable to a possible currency crisis or recession.The president particularly relishes belittling his challenger, Mr. Kilicdaroglu, who pitched himself to voters as less imperious and more in touch with the concerns of common people. Mr. Kilicdaroglu promised to strengthen Turkish democracy following years of a slide toward autocracy, and to repair relations with the West.A campaign poster for the Turkish opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in Istanbul on Monday.Sedat Suna/EPA, via ShutterstockIn nearly every speech, Mr. Erdogan dismisses his rival as incompetent and as a servant of Western powers. But his most potent line of attack has been to link the opposition, in voters’ minds, with terrorism.Turkey has fought for decades with Kurdish militants seeking autonomy from the state. Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider them terrorists. The Turkish government has also often accused the country’s main pro-Kurdish party of collaborating with the militants, and many party members and leaders have been jailed or removed from elected posts in parliament or city councils.In the run-up to the election, the pro-Kurdish party endorsed Mr. Kilicdaroglu, and Mr. Erdogan pounced, leveling terrorism accusations and even showing videos at campaign rallies that falsely showed militant leaders singing along to an opposition campaign song.“Can any benefit come to my nation from those who are going around hand in hand with terrorists?” Mr. Erdogan said at one rally in Hatay Province, one of the areas hardest hit by the February earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in southern Turkey.For his staunchest supporters, who tend to be working class, rural, religious or from smaller cities away from the coasts, Mr. Erdogan has rock star appeal.His campaign anthems blare as his supporters crowd into stadiums to await his appearance. The orange and blue flags of his governing Justice and Development Party are often strung up overhead.During appearances in the quake-hit region, campaign organizers flooded audiences with Turkish flags, turning otherwise drab expanses of temporary shelters into seas of red and white.Mr. Erdogan addressing supporters at a hospital opening ceremony in Hatay Province. The photograph was released by the presidential press office.Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Turkish Presidency, via ReutersMr. Erdogan acknowledged some criticisms that his government was initially slow to respond. Calling the quakes the “disaster of the century,” he spoke of a newly built hospital and his government’s plans to build hundreds of thousands of homes in the area in the next year.“With your support and your prayers, we will bring you to your new homes,” he told supporters in Hatay.In recent appearances, Mr. Erdogan has put his connection with voters in almost romantic terms.“Don’t forget, we are together not until Sunday, but until the grave,” he told supporters in the central province of Sivas, where he won more than two-thirds of the vote in the first round.Even opposition supporters acknowledge Mr. Erdogan’s strong bond with his constituents.“He has been in power for a very long time and he is very good at delivering a message,” said Gulfem Saydan Sanver, a Turkish political consultant who has advised members of the opposition. “Over the years, he has built trust with his voters, and they believe whatever he says.” More

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      How Erdogan Reoriented Turkish Culture to Maintain His Power

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      At the final sundown before the first round of voting in the toughest election of his two-decade rule, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey visited Hagia Sophia for evening prayers — and to remind his voters of just what he had delivered.For nearly a millennium the domed cathedral had been the epicenter of Orthodox Christianity. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it became one of the Islamic world’s finest mosques. In the 1930s, the new Turkish republic proclaimed it a museum, and for nearly a century its overlapping Christian and Muslim histories made it Turkey’s most visited cultural site.President Erdogan was not so ecumenical: In 2020 he converted it back into a mosque. When Turks return to the ballot box this Sunday for the presidential runoff, they will be voting in part on the political ideology behind that cultural metamorphosis.Join the crowds at the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque now, leaving your shoes at the new long racks in the inner narthex, and you can just about glimpse the mosaics of Christ and the Virgin, today discreetly sheathed with white curtains. The famous marble floor has been upholstered with thick turquoise carpet. The sound is more muffled. The light’s brighter, thanks to golden chandeliers. Right at the entrance, in a simple frame, is a presidential proclamation: a monumental swipe at the nation’s secular century, and an affirmation of a new Turkey worthy of its Ottoman heyday.“Hagia Sophia is the crowning of that neo-Ottomanist dream,” said Edhem Eldem, professor of history at Bogazici University in Istanbul. “It’s basically a transposition of political and ideological fights, debates, polemical views, into the realm of a very, very primitive understanding of history and the past.”In the 1930s, the new Turkish republic made Hagia Sophia, which, over the centuries, had been a cathedral and a mosque, into a museum. In 2020 President Erdogan made it a mosque again. Bradley Secker for The New York TimesBradley Secker for The New York TimesBradley Secker for The New York TimesIf the mark of 21st-century politics is the ascendancy of culture and identity over economics and class, it could be said to have been born here in Turkey, home to one of the longest-running culture wars of them all. And for the past 20 years, in grand monuments and on schlocky soap operas, at restored archaeological sites and retro new mosques, Mr. Erdogan has reoriented Turkey’s national culture, promoting a nostalgic revival of the Ottoman past — sometimes in grand style, sometimes as pure kitsch.After surviving a tight first round of voting earlier this month, he is now favored to win a runoff election on Sunday against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the candidate of the joint opposition. His resiliency, when poll after poll predicted his defeat, certainly expresses his party’s systematic control of Turkey’s media and courts. (Freedom House, a democracy watchdog organization, downgraded Turkey from “partly free” to “not free” in 2018.) But authoritarianism is about so much more than ballots and bullets. Television and music, monuments and memorials have all been prime levers of a political project, a campaign of cultural ressentiment and national rebirth, that culminated this May on the blue-green carpets beneath Hagia Sophia’s dome.Some mosaics with Christian imagery are now discreetly covered by white curtains.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesOn the eve of the first round of voting President Erdogan visited Hagia Sophia for Maghrib prayers. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/PPO, via ReutersOutside Turkey, this cultural turn is often described as “Islamist,” and Mr. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., have indeed permitted religious observances that were once banned, such as the wearing of head scarves by women in public institutions. A Museum of Islamic Civilizations, complete with a “digital dome” and light projections à la the immersive Van Gogh Experience, opened in 2022 in Istanbul’s new largest mosque.Yet this election suggests that nationalism, rather than religion, may be the true driver of Mr. Erdogan’s cultural revolution. His celebrations of the Ottoman past — and the resentment of its supposed haters, whether in the West or at home — have gone hand in hand with nationalist efforts unrelated to Islam. The country has mounted aggressive campaigns for the return of Greco-Roman antiquities from Western museums. Foreign archaeological teams have had their permits withdrawn. Turkey stands at the bleak vanguard of a tendency seen all over now, not least in the United States: a cultural politics of perpetual grievance, where even in victory you are indignant.For this country’s writers, artists, scholars and singers, facing censorship or worse, the prospect of a change in government was less a matter of political preference than of practical survival. Since 2013, when an Occupy-style protest movement at Istanbul’s Gezi Park took direct aim at his government, Mr. Erdogan has taken a hard turn to authoritarian rule. Numerous cultural figures remain imprisoned, including the architect Mucella Yapici, the filmmakers Mine Ozerden and Cigdem Mater, and the arts philanthropist Osman Kavala. Writers like Can Dundar and Asli Erdogan (no relation), who were jailed during the purges that followed a failed military coup against Mr. Erdogan in 2016, live in exile in Germany.This election suggests that nationalism, rather than religion, may be the true driver of Mr. Erdogan’s cultural revolution. Bradley Secker for The New York TimesMore than a dozen musical concerts were canceled last year, among them a recital by the violinist Ara Malikian, who is of Armenian descent, and a gig by the pop-folk singer Aynur Dogan, who is Kurdish. The tensions reached a grim crescendo this month, shortly before the first round of voting, when a Kurdish singer was stabbed to death at a ferry terminal after declining to sing a Turkish nationalist song.In the days after the first round of voting, I met with Banu Cennetoglu, one of the country’s most acclaimed artists, whose commemoration of a Kurdish journalist at the 2017 edition of the contemporary art exhibition Documenta won acclaim abroad but brought aggravation at home. “What is scary right now compared to the 90s, which was also a very difficult time, especially for the Kurdish community, is that then we could guess where the evil was coming from,” she told me. “And now it could be anyone. It is much more random.”For the Turkish artist Banu Cennetoglu, Istanbul has become a city of self-censorship. “But even if you don’t speak,” she says, “you can be the next one.”Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesThe strategy has worked. Independent media has shrunk. Self-censorship is rife. “All the institutions within art and culture have been extremely silent for five years,” Ms. Cennetoglu said. “And for me this is unacceptable, as an artist. This is my question: when do we activate the red line? When do we say no, and why?”Nationalism is nothing new in Turkey. “Everybody and his uncle is a nationalist in this country,” Mr. Eldem observed. And the Kemalists — the secular elite who dominated politics here for decades until Mr. Erdogan’s triumph in 2003 — also used nationalist themes to spin culture to their political ends. Turkey’s early cinema glorified the achievements of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Archaeological digs for Hittite antiquities aimed to provide the new republic with a past rooted even more deeply than Greece and Italy.Edhem Eldem at his home in Istanbul. “When it comes to heritage, the uses of the past, he’s not very different from his predecessors,” the historian says. “He’s just more efficient.”Bradley Secker for The New York TimesIn the 2000s, Mr. Erdogan’s blend of Islamism and reformism had Turkey knocking at the door of the European Union. A new Istanbul was being feted in the foreign press. But the new Turkish nationalism has a different cultural cast: proudly Islamic, often antagonistic, and sometimes a little paranoid.One of the signal cultural institutions of the Erdogan years is the Panorama 1453 History Museum, in a working-class district west of Hagia Sophia, where schoolchildren discover the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in a painted cyclorama. At one point, a painting in the round might have been immersion enough. Now it’s been souped up with blaring video projections, a wildly nationalist pageant styled like the video game “Civilization.” Kids can watch Sultan Mehmed II charge toward Hagia Sophia, while his horse rears up in front of a celestial fireball.Visitors to Panorama 1453, a history museum founded in 2009, whose 360-degree mural celebrates the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesAn immersive video animation depicts the Ottoman victory over the Byzantine Empire.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesSultan Mehmed II rears for battle.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesThere’s a similar backward projection in Turkey’s television dramas, which are hugely popular not just here but internationally, with hundreds of millions of viewers throughout the Muslim world, in Germany, in Mexico, all over. On shows such as “Resurrection: Ertugrul,” an international hit about a 13th-century Turkic chieftain, or “Kurulus: Osman,” a “Game of Thrones”-esque Ottoman saga airing every Wednesday here, past and present start to merge.“They are casting the discourse of Tayyip Erdogan in the antique ages,” said Ayse Cavdar, a cultural anthropologist who’s studied these shows. “If Erdogan faces a struggle right now, it is recast in an Ottoman context, a fictional context. In this way, not the knowledge about today’s struggle, but the feeling of it, is spread through society.”A still from “Kurulus: Osman,” starring Burak Ozcivit as Osman I, the first sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish historical dramas are popular not just at home but abroad.ATVIn these half-historical soap operas, the heroes are decisive, brave, glorious, but the polities they lead are fragile, teetering, menaced by outsiders. Ms. Cavdar noted how frequently the TV shows feature leaders of an emerging, endangered state. “As if this guy has not been governing the state for 20 years!” she said.Culture came on the agenda during the runoff, too, as Mr. Erdogan showed up to inaugurate the new home of Istanbul Modern. The president had praise for the new Bosporus-side museum, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano — but he couldn’t help bashing the creations of the previous century, with what he described as a misguided abandonment of the Ottoman tradition.Now, the president promised, an authentic “Turkish century” was about to dawn.Assuming he wins on Sunday, his neo-Ottomanism will have survived its strongest test in two decades. The cultural figures with the most to regret are of course those in prison, but it will also be a bitter outcome for the academics, authors and others who left the country in the wake of Mr. Erdogan’s purges. “A.K.P.’s social engineering can be compared to monoculture in industrial agriculture,” said Asli Cavusoglu, a young artist who recently had a solo show at New York’s New Museum. “There is one type of vegetable they invest in. Other plants — intellectuals, artists — are unable to grow, and that’s why they leave.”Back issues of Agos, the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper edited by Hrant Dink, a journalist assassinated in Istanbul in 2007. His home has been converted into a memorial museum.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesNayat Karakose, coordinator of the museum, in Hrant Dink’s office. “In the past we were able to cooperate more with universities, but now it’s almost impossible,” she said.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesTurkey’s minorities may face the greatest hazards. At the memorial museum for Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist assassinated in 2007, I looked through copies of his independent newspaper and watched footage of his television chat shows, each an admonishment of contemporary Turkey’s constricted freedom of expression. “Civil society actors are becoming more prudent,” said Nayat Karakose, who oversees the museum and is of Armenian descent. “They do events in a more cautious way.”For Mr. Eldem, who has spent his career studying Ottoman history, the reconversion of Hagia Sophia and the “Tudors”-style TV dramas are all of a piece, and are less confident than they seem. “Nationalism is not just glorification,” he said. “It’s also victimization. You can’t have proper nationalism if you’ve never suffered. Because suffering gives you also absolution from potential misconduct.”“So what the naïve Turkish nationalist, and especially neo-Ottomanist nationalist, wants,” he added, “is to bring together the idea of a glorious empire that would have been benign. That’s not a thing. An empire is an empire.”But whether or not Mr. Erdogan wins the election on Sunday, there are headwinds that no amount of cultural nationalism can stand against: above all, inflation and a currency crisis that has bankers and financial analysts flashing a red alert. “In that future, there’s no place for heritage,” Mr. Eldem said. “The Ottomans are not going to save you.”Hagia Sophia has been the epicenter of Orthodox Christianity, one of the Islamic world’s finest mosques and, for decades, a museum that was Turkey’s most visited cultural site. Now it is called the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque.Bradley Secker for The New York Times More