'May God Protect us from the Evil of Well-Educated': The Failed Coup, Populism and the AKP Organization in Turkey

The bloody coup attempt in Turkey on 15 July 2016 was an extremely curious development not just because it failed but because it eluded the grasp of conventional wisdom which sees Turkish politics mainly as a struggle between secular state vs. religious sectors. In this paper, instead, I propose to understand the coup as a reflection of the populism-anti-populism divide in Turkish politics. I argue that the failed coup was staged by a shaky anti-populist coalition within the Turkish Armed Forces and a backlash in the form of a rapid, effective and resilient popular sector mobilization relying on Erdoğan’s populist appeal and the AKP’s extraordinary organizational capacity followed this. In order to support my argument I use the evidence published by various media outlets in the aftermath of the putsch, personal observations during and after the coup and a research conducted by Konda Research Company regarding the profiles of the anti-coup protestors. By analysing this exceptional event I propose to think current Turkish politics around the concept of “populist predominance”. This concept can help us to understand dynamics of further occlusions and setbacks in democratically already deficient contexts which surfaces after the rise and consolidation of a certain type of hegemonic party.