Turkey's Counterrevolution: Notes from the Dark Side

'Democracy' came to Turkey in 1946, but the military remained the guardian of the state and what it regarded as 'Kemalist values.' It struck down civilian governments in 1960 and 1980 and drove the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party out of office in 1997. Political Islam resurfaced in the form of the Justice and Development (Adalet ve Kalkinma) Party (the AKP), elected to office in 2002 with 34 percent of the vote. In June 2011, the AKP won 49.83 percent of the vote in general elections, establishing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of the party's founders and a former member of Refah, as the most successful politician in Turkey's history and setting the government up for another electoral victory in 2015. Adapted from the source document.