| Summary: | Since roughly 2011, the Turkish state and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been going through a process of mutual transformation. Some of the historical apprehensions, biases and frustrations exhibited by Turkey as a middle power been absorbed by the relatively reformist AKP. Conversely, the AKP and its undisputed leader Erdoğan have seen their socio-political fears, power based conflicts and ethno-religious desires become dominant in all areas, including religion. As a consequence of this bilateral transformation, Turkey has become both an inclusionary and a hegemonic-authoritarian state, and at the same time a weak one. Within this new identity and structure of the state, Sunni Islam has become one of the regime’s key focal points, with a new logic. This article seeks to explain the transformation of the relations between the AKP’s Turkish state, religion and religious groups, by scrutinising Karrie Koesel’s logic of state-religion interaction in authoritarian regimes.
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