'Turkish democracy is under assault. The increasingly conservative rhetoric of the AKP, the country's dominant political party, is fueling widespread concern that the secular Turkish Republic might soon be supplanted by an Islamist regime. The end result, many worry, could be a repressive state dominated by sharia law—one similar to Iran.
But a different geographic analogy might be more appropriate. The AKP's conservative leanings notwithstanding, Turkey isn't about to go Islamist. In fact, the party's systematic campaign to eliminate political rivals is rooted not in religious fervor but in the secular aspiration to retain and consolidate power. A deeper look at Turkey's political trajectory under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggests that he is steering Turkey in an authoritarian but secular direction, toward a state not unlike President Vladimir Putin's Russia.'
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