Soner Çağaptay > Quotes

“Nations that were great empires never forget that fact, and they often have a malleable, exaggerated sense of their glory days and a story about why they are no longer an empire – a combustible blend of pride in an idealized past, grievance over greatness lost or stolen, and readiness to be inspired (less flatteringly, vulnerability to manipulation) by effective politicians.”
― Soner Çağaptay, The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey

“means becoming increasingly marginalized. This has made managing the party a vexing task for Kilicdaroglu, who has demonstrated an imperfect record when it comes to crafting a coherent and constructive message. Ever since the AKP assumed power, analysts had been worried”
― Soner Çağaptay, The Rise of Turkey

“Erdogan’s success has been to divide the groups that oppose him, by extending an olive branch to one while persecuting or prosecuting the other. The fault of Erdogan’s detractors is that they were never unified: when Erdogan cracked down on the secularists, the liberals and the Gulenists helped him. When he beat up the liberals, the Gulenists and the Kurds stood away. When he went after the Gulenists, the Kurds looked the other way, and the secularists basked in Schadenfreude. Once Erdogan came down on the Kurds, allies were either on the run themselves or too cowed to speak up.”
― Soner Çağaptay, The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey