It Is Religion, Stupid! Of the Different Facets of Muslim Democracy in Turkey

The last two decades have witnessed the mushrooming of Islamic-rooted parties vying for people’s vote and embracing a vision of Muslim democracy. Yet, both the concept and experiments on the ground lack a unified message on what constitutes an Islamic path to democracy and the specifics of  Muslims’ governing project. This paper aims to identify the aspects that Muslim democracies share with, add to, and deduce from the general pluralist democracy model; And, how to assess their evolution, advances and regress.

AKP’s governing project in Turkey is a crucial case to analyze those issues. AKP is a unique case among the universe of Islamic-rooted parties which has run three consecutive governments, while its overarching democratic program tends to highlight signs of democratic fatigue already during its second term in power. This allows us a sufficiently long time-span to analyze the features and direction of AKP’s governance, often considered as the most developed instance of Islamic democracy today.

The argument follows in three parts. The first part outlines a theoretical framework to assess religious group’s moderation and the depth of support for democracy assessed as a conglomeration of partial regimes. The second part provides a snapshot to AKP’s commitment to democracy in the period 2002-2013. The last part then analyses AKP’s selective and uneven approach to different areas of democracy -civilization of politics, political liberties and rule of law –which can serve to assess the features and the perils of Muslim democratic project.