Often touted as a bridge between East and West, Turkey is of considerable interest to scholars, geopolitical analysts, and the wider public. Turkey’s tribulations through a century as a Western-looking republic on the periphery of the Islamic world have been well-documented. In the early 2000s, after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) assumed government and implemented a raft of political and economic reforms, hopes were high that democracy might be consolidated and a free and prosperous future assured. As Ayça Alemdaroǧlu and Fatma Müge Göçek, the editors of this new volume, argue, such optimism was misplaced. In recent years, Turkey, under the rule of the AKP and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan, still in power after two decades, has experienced a period of creeping authoritarianism, marked by human rights violations; repression of journalists, academics and dissenting voices; and increasing political violence and societal polarization. These, and other developments, have amounted...

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