Publications
Publications
- 2022
- Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns
When Fifth Columns Fall: Religious Groups and Loyalty-Signaling in Erdoğan's Turkey
By: Kristin Fabbe and Efe Murat Balıkçıoğlu
Abstract
This chapter investigates the role that fifth-column claims play in authoritarian politics. Specifically, it examines how fifth-column claims against the Gülen Movement have transformed the relationship between the Turkish state and both official (state-sanctioned) and unofficial Islamic actors in Turkey since July 2016. Erdoğan’s government reconfigured collusive claims about the alleged Gülenist fifth-column into subversive ones. In doing so, it expanded the scope of guilt-by-proximity and gave rise to loyalty-signaling dynamics within Turkey’s broader community of political Islamists. Documenting the shift from collusive to subversive fifth-column claims in this case reveals the extreme form of political pragmatism often guiding autocratic rule. Although Erdoğan’s regime has long been viewed through the prisms of de-secularization, Islamic political revival and neo-Ottoman ambition, these analytical frameworks obscure the fact that his political project is first and foremost about eliminating competing sources of domestic authority.
Keywords
Citation
Fabbe, Kristin, and Efe Murat Balıkçıoğlu. "When Fifth Columns Fall: Religious Groups and Loyalty-Signaling in Erdoğan's Turkey." Chap. 10 in Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns, edited by Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.