Life is a perpetual quest for renewal, and the not-so-uncommon pain of change often calls for a strong narrative. After all, one tends to find some comfort in the magic of words. The power of discourse allows us to blend yesterday's memories with the promise of today and the future. Politics, too, cannot cut off discourse since politics, as a focal point of human activity, represents a multi-dimensional and extremely complex platform - a domain of struggle and interaction where old and new compete only to join together and learn from one another.
Political discourse, in this sense, is an instrument of writing and interpreting political history anew.In Turkish politics, one frequently experiences a sense of scrumptiousness and new beginnings. Hence our habit of referencing military coups to periodize the country's political life. The last 12 years, in turn, represented a period when public debate concentrated on the repugnant disappearance of the guardianship regime. Most commentators, for instance, argue that the 2007 constitutional referendum, which took place months after a deadlock between the establishment and the government over Abdullah Gül's presidential bid and allowed the people to elect the president directly, marked a turning point in Turkey's political history. Similarly, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's election victory on August 10 and his subsequent role as the country's first popularly elected president represents the beginning of the construction of the new Turkey.
To be sure, the all-too-familiar claim to be new has surfaced during foundational periods in the nation's history since the Ottoman Empire's Second Constitutional Era between 1876 and 1918. The same concept rose to popularity during the early years of the Republic, the Democratic Party's (DP) decade-long tenure in the 1950s, and Turgut Özal's reform agenda in the mid-1980s. Today, the Erdoğan administration has established a monopoly over the term within the broader context of his 2023 objectives.
The Justice and Development Party (AK Party), it goes without saying, is the most successful political party in Turkey's history, since it has had an opportunity to transform and narrate Turkish politics. Through its use of the new Turkey discourse, the party showed the determination to pioneer Turkey's re-positioning at home and abroad. Following then-Prime Minister Erdoğan's episode with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the 2009 World Economic Forum and the 2010 constitutional referendum, the AK Party developed the ongoing changes into a vision framework to help the masses warm up to change under President Erdoğan's constructive leadership. Today, the people yearn to revive the spirit of 1920 when the National Assembly was formed, relive the Republic's formative years under contemporary circumstances and effectively re-establish the Republic. Considering that any foundational agenda must familiarize the masses and elites with a new language, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's emphasis on "restoration" during last week's AK Party congress signals the rise of the new Turkey discourse as the language of hegemonic politics.
Surely enough, parts of the new Turkey discourse consist of ambiguous concepts and symbols in line with "conservative democracy" and "civilization discourse," two concepts that the AK Party employed in previous years. This element of ambiguity, however, entails serious opportunities instead of hurting the discourse. Currently, the new Turkey simultaneously refers to successfully concluding the Kurdish peace process, fighting the Gülenist shadow state, stimulating a new wave of economic growth and the consolidation of democracy.
In the face of fierce resistance from the establishment, the term helps bridge the gap between the expectations of various social groups.
The AK Party's efforts to familiarize its base with the new Turkey discourse within the context of political construction certainly benefit from the strong rhetoric of its leader, President Erdoğan, who distinguished himself
