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Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the G20 leaders summit in Hamburg, Germany. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

This week is the first anniversary of the failed coup against Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdoan, a coup he has used since to further alienate his opponents. Most recently, on 16 April, he won a referendum to become head of state and head of government simultaneously, emerging as the most unassailable Turkish politician since Mustafa Kemal Atatrk established the secular republic in 1923.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Atatrk shaped Turkey in his own image as a western society. In his Turkey, the state banished religion to the private sphere and discriminated against pious citizens. But since 2003, Erdoan has dismantled Atatrks societal model, flooding political and education systems with rigidly conservative Islam, as well as pivoting Turkey away from Europe and the west.

This is, paradoxically, Erdoans Atatrk side. Of course, Erdoan does not share his values, just his methods. Just as Atatrk reshaped Turkey, so Erdoan is building a new country, but one that sees itself as profoundly Islamist in politics and foreign policy to make it a great power once again.

Erdoan is an anti-Atatrk Atatrk. As I explain in my book The New Sultan, having grown up in secularist Turkey and faced social exclusion at a young age because of his piety, Erdoan is motivated by animosity towards Atatrks ways. Yet he has dismantled Atatrks system by using the very tools that the countrys founding elites provided: state institutions and top-down social engineering.

Erdoan has used the founders means and methods to replace even Atatrk himself. The end product is that Turkey now discriminates against citizens who do not first and foremost identify through conservative political Islamism, the branch to which Erdoan belongs. However, Erdoan has a problem: whereas Atatrk came to power as a military general, the president has a democratic mandate to govern. And what is more, Turkey is split almost down the middle Erdogan won the April referendum with only 51% popular support.

Despite this, Erdoan wants to change Turkey in his own image in the way that Atatrk did and herein lies the crisis of modern Turkey: half of the country embraces Erdoans brand of politics, but the other half vehemently opposes it. So long as Turkey is genuinely democratic, Erdoan cannot continue to govern the way he likes to.

This has given birth to Erdoans dark, illiberal side: in order to push forward with his platform of revolutionary change against a split society, he has been cracking down on his opponents and locking up dissidents. Although he has won elections democratically, Erdoan has gradually become more autocratic, ensuring, once he has won an election, that the political playing field is uneven in order to prevent power from escaping his hands.

Accordingly, although Turkeys elections continue to be free, they are increasingly not fair. Erdoans electoral strategy has created deeply entrenched polarisation in Turkey: his conservative base, constituting about half of the country, has zealously rallied around him in his defence; the other half resents him.

Last years failed coup only sharpened Turkeys dilemma. Although the initial post-coup purges and arrests targeted members of the conservative Glen movement erstwhile allies who seem to have turned against him in the coup Erdoan has since cast a wide net, arresting anyone who opposes him. He has jailed 40,000 people since the coup, purging another 150,000. His opponents now loathe him.

But Erdoan does not seem to take notice. On 18 May, he declared that the state of emergency put in place after the 2016 coup would be extended until there is welfare and peace in the country. He has even threatened todetainKemal Kilicdarolu, head of the main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP), who is currently leading a march from Ankara to Istanbul to protest against Erdoans ongoing crackdown. Erdoan knows that he cannot continue to govern Turkey the way he likes so long as it is a democracy which is why he is now taking steps to end democracy.

Soner Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of The New Sultan: Erdoan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey

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