COMMENTARY
by Michael Rubin
June 28, 2015

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is no advocate of democracy, having once famously compared it to a street car: ‘You ride it as far as you need and then you step off.” But, he is a man on a mission. While he once parroted the rhetoric of economic reform and democracy, today it is apparent that self-enrichment trumps reform, and he has long since acknowledged that his goal is to “raise a religious generation.” That goal — and its fulfillment of a religious dream — trumps any sort of democratic legitimacy or accountability. Erdoğan will never allow voters to prioritize Kurdish identity or secularism to derail what his behavior suggests he sees as a divine mission. READ MORE