This interview was published in the second issue of “The New Spirit of Islamism” (the first series of Estera – MilitiaSequi newsletter). To read the issue (in Italian), click here. To subscribe to the newsletter, click here. This interview follows “The New Spirit of Islamism (Ep.

1)”, the first issue of Estera – MilitiaSequi, Lo Spiegone’s newsletter, in which we explained what is meant by the term and sought to trace its history, causes, and evolution. One case in particular is widely regarded as archetypal: the Justice and Development Party (Akp) of Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

As a precursor of an approach that is simultaneously neoliberal and Islamist, the Akp is considered a key actor in the diffusion of the New Spirit of Islamism. Moving between economic development, foreign policy, and authoritarianism, this interview examines the centrality of the Akp in contemporary Islamism.

We discuss these issues with Ezgi Başaran, Professor of Politics of the Middle East at the University of Oxford and author of The New Spirit of Islamism. In your book, The New Spirit of Islamism, you discuss how Islamism has evolved over the second half of the 20th century and in the recent decades.

In some cases, even abandoning some of its previous rhetoric in favor of approaches more aligned with the neoliberal orientation typical of Europe and North America. Could you briefly explain what do you mean by “the new spirit of Islamism” and which factors have influenced it?

The very basic definition of what I mean by “new spirit of Islamism” is that Islamist leaders have started acting like CEOs and losing their initial spirit, which had to be revolutionary. Now, instead, they measure themselves by success in a neoliberal order rather than by how close they get to a so-called Islamic State that is run by Sharia law.

So in the book I argue that over the last few decades, and especially in the period after the 2011 Arab uprising, many Islamist parties moved away from grand projects of going back to the golden era of Islamism towards a much more pragmatic goal: they want to win elections, run municipalities, attract foreign direct investment in a way to keep their electorate, especially youth, on board and prove that they can deliver growth and order. In this sense, success – in a very managerial and neoliberal sense – becomes the organizing principle.

So, I call this the new spirit of Islamism, because it mirrors what Weberian scholars called the new spirit of capitalism: Islamist actors borrow the rhetoric and the language of entrepreneurship, efficiency, performance, self-improvement, all those bestsellers of productivity.

In this context governance is seen almost as a business enterprise and leadership as a form of CEO-style governance, as figures such as Rashid Ghannouchi (Ennahda) or younger Muslim Brotherhood leaders increasingly envisioned: they wanted to run a party or a State through toolkits, workshops and management techniques rather than through doctrinal debates. This is a shift about what I call diffusion, because the main data I gathered focused on the relationship between Turkey’s Akp, Tunisia’s Ennahda and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood between 2011 and 2013.

So there was a toolbox travelling among them, emanated from the Akp, to teach Ennahda and Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt how to win elections, how to provide visible public services like garbage collection, how to build protective alliances against the old regime – which neither of them managed to succeed -, how to cultivate a loyal business class. This is why I insist that the diffusion I studied was interest-driven and realist, rather than old-school Islamist or neo-Ottoman like Erdogan is nowadays accused of by French and American Orientalist scholars.

Erdogan can be many things, and he is, but neo-Ottomanism is a very vague term that pops up only when he refers to Arabs, Syrians and Kurds as part of one Nation (Turkey), hence when the target is the domestic audience. When I looked at the real dialogue between how Erdogan speaks to their Syrian counterparts, Ikhwani counterparts, there’s no such thing, because he knows that nobody wants an Ottoman Empire coming back with a Turkish leader.

But so the aim is to write another success story, Islamist success story, like the Akp (Justice and Development Party) sees itself: not neo-Ottomanism, not Panislamism, but something else, that is the main argument of the new spirit of Islam. You mentioned several times a key actor that is indeed Erdogan’s Akp that is well known now as a champion of Islamism and as a model for economic development.

And Erdogan, we know him as someone who had been there for a long time since the beginning of the 2000s when the Akp started to offer to the Turkish voters something new. How did this switch happen in the 2000s?

And how was the change at the level of economic policies at the beginning of 2000? So, Erdogan’s Akp took an Islamist tradition called Milli Görüş, that was often in conflict with the State (in its secular and Kemalist identity) and repackaged it as a party of conservative and competent management, visible services, and pious.

The Akp comes out of this specific Milli Görüş current, whose leader was Necmettin Erbakan, Erdogan’s mentor. But Milli Görüş Party had been repeatedly halted by the Turkish State in the postmodern coup of the February 28th, 1997, taking the form of a process.

So that was a rupture point, because after that, a younger generation around Erdogan drew a very sober conclusion: direct ideological confrontation with this rigid secular establishment was too costly. And if they wanted to survive, they had to look like a more center-right party, speak the language of market and democracy like in Europe.

And that was the trend back then, it wasn’t only happening in Turkey – there was a similar trend in Iran for instance. But within Turkey, it was more about the language of the market.

So from 2001 on, the Akp presented itself as conservative democratic party, consciously echoing Christian democracy in Europe, rather than using Islamic labels. It promised European Union accession, macroeconomic stability, and to end military tutelage in Turkey.

Thus, in policy, this meant a very aggressive neoliberal program made of privatization after privatization, a construction boom, integration into global financial markets, and very flexible labor regimes. At the same time, they built up a very sophisticated system of municipal service delivery with the mottos like “serving people”, meaning that “service to people are like a prayer to God” and “serving people is serving God”, which is like a Muslim Calvinist attitude capturing a fusion of religious legitimacy and technocratic performance.

And the crucial part of the story is also the creation of a loyal business class: the conservative small and medium enterprises clustered around this association called Musiad (Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association) that quickly became Akp’s economic backbone. Through state contracts and regulatory advantages, this new bourgeoisie, the pious Anatolian tigers, accumulated capital.

And in return, they gave money, cadres, and media support to the Akp. And this is what I call a pious neoliberalism.

It is a capitalism with an Islamic tendency and a clear political clientelism. You mentioned something really interesting in the first part of the interview and in your book, because when dealing with the uprising in the broader Southwestern Asian region and also North African region, the Akp was interpreted as a model of success by other Islamist parties, especially in Tunisia and in Egypt, as you said, and became a kind of a hub for knowledge, dissemination and exchange.

How did this process unfolded? Was something formal and official or informal?

Well, we didn’t see it while it was happening, because the diffusion from the AKP, the toolbox of this new spirit of Islamism was delivered by a team of Akp technocrats, and it was happening in the background. It was only after the coup in Egypt 2013 (exerted by the army against the Muslim Brotherhood government led by Morsi), and especially during my research around a couple of years ago that we put together the pieces and started to uncover the details.

If we go back and look at how Turkey was perceived in the early Arab uprising, many people in the region and in the West projected onto the Akp what they wanted to see: a successful Muslim democracy that had pained the Turkish military around the economy, and that was able to reassure international partners for Ennahda in Tunisia and Ikhwan in Egypt. A kind of guarantor of what Islamist parties may become and be.

Indeed, Akp’s trajectory looked like the first real success story for a party with an Islamist background operating inside a Republic (Turkey). There, as shown in my research, between 2011 and 2013 the interactions between these three actors were intense.

There were formal visits in both directions, but diffusion was in a very low profile. So, for example, delegations from Ennahda and Muslim Brotherhood party went to Ankara, and Istanbul, they visited municipalities, party HQs, and business associations.

They did workshops on campaigning, opinion polling, party discipline, and crisis communication. Alongside that, there was a diffusion of frames: the Turkish model, the so-called Turkish model, was a rhetorical tool, which was very powerful, for all actors involved.

It was indeed a way to enable Ennahda to say to secular Tunisians and to Western diplomats that they were also Muslim democrats, center-right, not theocrats. On the other hand, the Brotherhood never fully adopted that label, the Turkish model- Muslim democrats, but they liked the Akp results and successes.

As a matter of fact, it was common in Egypt to hear the rhetoric, among Ikhwan members, admitting that they’re looking after something like the Turkish model, aiming at attracting investments. At the same time, I think one of the main points was the Akp passed on lessons of survival: they urged Ennahda and Brotherhood to, for example, to take the military and court seriously, to build coalitions, to avoid hubris, and to be pragmatic.

In Tunisia, for example, in 2011 they formed the Troika coalition (alliance between Ennahda, Ettakatol and Cpr) showing comprehension of the lessons by Akp and adaptation to the context; they also stepped down when they thought they needed to be, showing maturity. The Brotherhood did not, even though mistakes did not really toppled them: there was this coup already in place and they were doomed from the start.

So this is how the very rough summary of the interaction between these three actors went. We are talking about a political and economic approach that may be recognizable as an “Akp brand”, and indeed it seems that it has been used also in foreign policies.

But, besides the broader Southwestern Asian region, did Erdogan also use it to innovate its engagement with the Western counterparts? Like this new spirit of Islamism by Akp changed something in the relations between Ankara and Western countries?

Of course it did. From the very beginning the Akp wanted to ally itself with the Europeans.

And that was one of the strategies of protection against the military tutelage – and intrusion in politics – in Turkey. In this context, looking for European, and Western at large, appreciation was a guarantee against possible coups – like the postmodern one mentioned at the beginning of the interview.

The European Union and Akp were partners in many ways and for many years until 2010: the Akp’s pro-market stance was really important for the European Union, which was eager to invest in the country and to better integrate Turkish production and especially logistics in its economic and financial system. Hence, from the very beginning, the AKP turned its domestic formulae into a foreign policy brand, like showing itself as the business-friendly, pious leader that built mosques, but also airports and TV dramas, and spoke both, the language of the Muslim Ummah and the global market.

If into one hand, the ability to relate and refer to Muslims – not only in Turkey – made Erdogan and its party an indispensable mediator for the West in the region – at the time was characterized by turbulent dynamics and political actors not really friendly towards the West -; into the other, this news wave in Turkish politics represented a chance to amplify the integration between the European Union and its closer neighbours. Nonetheless those were the years in which Turkey started the procedure to join the Union.

So, in short, yes: Erdogan and the Akp used the new spirit of Islamism as a foreign policy tool as well.

You mentioned that relations between European countries and Turkey benefited from the political and economic posture of Akp. However, after 2013, Akp embarked on a more authoritarian path.

How does this internal evolution affect the new spirit of Islamism that you described in your book, especially regarding the relationship between religious ethics, governance and economic rationality, because it seems that at some point Erdogan started to get back to illiberalism in every field, at least as observed? The authoritarian turn after 2010 and 2011 does not really overturn the new spirit of Islamism, because in the new spirit of Islamism, there’s not much about democracy.

That’s the whole point. In many ways, the illiberal turning point exposes its internal inner logic: the pursuit of success, understood as survival, growth, control of the state, and a loyal bourgeoisie, remains the organizing principle.

Erdogan and Akp became increasingly coercive, but what changes are not the managerial ethos or the neoliberal form, but the political environment in which they are deployed. After the Gezi protest and after the 2016 coup attempt, the AKP moved from a competitive electoral machine into a project more visibly of State captors.

So, institutions were flooded with loyalists, opposition was criminalized and still, and the whole space for pluralism collapsed, so there’s no liberalism or democracy left. But it really doesn’t mean anything about the core of the new spirit of Islamism, because it doesn’t have these values.

You can be really authoritarian and pro-market. You can be a champion of neoliberalism, and be authoritarian, be a despot.

We see many of such figures, so it really actually exposes my argument in plain sight, it is authoritarianism built on neoliberalism. Somehow it reminds of Trump and Berlusconi… That’s exactly my point.

So it really doesn’t have anything to do with Islamism. That is my whole point.

When you look at Trump, Meloni or Erdogan, what do you see? It’s the same global trend.

It’s just Erdogan started it earlier: he’s a political animal and if anyone thinks that he has a genuine ideological action plan regarding an Islamic State, he is very mistaken. Erdogan uses Islamist credentials domestically to consolidate his base and justify the broader economic plan and system of power, as happens in many other contexts everywhere, even in the West (with identitarian labels).

So, it’s important to understand the spirit of the Akp model and how many of the other Islamist movements want to adopt it. It’s not a story only about Turkey: yes, the model developed in Turkey for several reasons, but many Islamist parties want to emulate it, so it is “ready” to spread, just like neoliberalism was ready to spread towards Turkey at the end of the 1990s.

In case, this model will make Islamist parties just regular capitalist agents, as those observed in the West, only with a different rhetoric. This is important to understand.

I have one last question: we have seen how Akp became some model to follow in the region and some observers suggested that emerging figures in more unstable contexts may look like such a model for inspiration, for example Al-Shara’s Hts, the new powerholder in Syria. In your view, is it plausible that the Turkish experience could be adapted to a radical or militant context like the Syrian one or the structural differences make it too difficult or even inapplicable?

So, Turkey is using in Syria the same toolkit used in 2013 with the already mentioned Ennahda and Ikhwan. The relationship between Ahmad al-Shara’s government and Akp technocrats may be the third attempt at creating a success story, to frame it in my research as a case study.

There is certainly a diffusion similar to what happened in 2011 and 2013 and it is very tempting to think that Ahmad al-Shara will try to emulate the Turkish model, but it’s a very different context: Jihadist until recent times, since 2016 al-Shara had a downward tail shift, abandoning the language of global Jihad in favor of local governance, like he built in Idlib.

His relationship with Turkish intelligence started back then, and after 2019 they started to work really closely. So, the Turkish intelligence, back then, when it was led by Hakam Fidan, knows Ahmad al-Shara very well, and I think Turkey is influencing and helping – with the mentioned same toolkit – Syria.

This time it’s more important for Turkey, because it’s not only about writing another success story with an Islamist frame: having a stable and friendly Syria is crucial for Akp survival due to the immense number of Syrian refugees living in Turkey. Since Turkey cannot afford another instability in Syria, they really worked so hard to legitimize Ahmad al-Shara’s government.

So rather than saying the Akp model can be transplanted to Hts like it is is impossible: it’s more accurate to say that elements of the new spirit of Islamism, like its managerial pragmatism, its symbolic moderation, and its pursuit of success are being selectively borrowed by them because they (al-Shara government) want to survive in a post-revolutionary environment. Furthermore, the key-points of Akp’s ideology are very meaningful to the eyes of the Syrian youth and diaspora (many are planning to go back to their country of origin) and can pave the way to Hts’s political success and stabilization.

But it’s a totally different environment than Turkey’s, so we’ll see how it goes, right now it still is very early. However, there’s definitely a third diffusion process going on between Turkey’s Akp and Ahmad al-Shara’s government.

L'articolo The New Spirit of Islamism: Erdoğan’s Akp as a Model of Development.

An Interview with Ezgi Başaran (University of Oxford) proviene da Lo Spiegone.