The AKP's "Yeni Turkiye": Challenging the Kemalist Narrative?

Abstract:The essay shows how Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) and, most importantly, the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, use the concept of Yeni Turkiye (New Turkey) in attempts to construct a new national state tradition, a counterhegemonic narrative to replace Turkey's traditional one, Kemalism. It is argued that the AKP aims to replace Kemalism to reconstruct the imagined Turkish community anew. It is further argued that collective memory is central to AKP discourses and repertoires in the party's attempt to construct stabilized, sedimented, dominant, and durable features in this renewed process of Turkish national-identity formation and nation building.