The Hand of the Market & the Boot of the Army

Turkey is going through hard times. The bastion of secularism in the Middle East is forced to make a choice between the hand of the market and the boot of the army. The AKP’s conservatives gain momentum by building Islamic and liberal consent for the market option. The opposition, aligned behind the army and nationalist parties, lacks a clear economic alternative, while it mobilizes around anti-market and anti-Islamist slogans. The electorate heavily weighed on the side of the market in July 2007. Yet, the military and its allies still threaten to destabilize the AKP’s neoliberal democratization