TODAY’S MESOP QUOTATION : TOWARDS THE END OF ISLAMIC LIBERALISM‘S (GUELEN & ERDOGAN)
Erdoğan and some of his coterie come from the Milli Görüş (National Outlook) tradition of Necmettin Erbakan, the late leader of the Refah Partisi (Welfare Party). This tradition is anti-West and has major doubts regarding the free market economy and democracy. The movement is, loosely speaking, a counterpart of the Muslim Brotherhood and similar groups. Gülen, by contrast, has been pro-West and strongly free market-oriented. His democratic credentials, however, have been exaggerated, given his strongly pro-state position on the Kurdish issue, the military interventions of 1980 and 1997, and other topics. So, even though both sides have had strongly authoritarian tendencies, in the former this was condensed into a demand for a rigidly Islamic state, while in the latter the implication was upholding the existing Turkish state (with its semi-democratic, somewhat secular structure).