INTERVIEW: Cihan Tu?al on the rise and fall of the 'Turkish model' and Islamic liberalism

President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an's trip to Washington last month showed just how far the Turkish government's reputation has plunged in the West. Erdo?an's security team stirred outrage by roughing up both protesters and ordinary reporters trying to enter the Brookings Institution think tank, where he spoke on March 31. President Obama was also reluctant to grant Erdo?an any kind of meeting during the visit. While he once described him as among his most trusted friends in politics, Obama now reportedly believes Erdo?an is a "failure and an authoritarian."

It all marks a sharp turnaround. Just a few years ago, the "Turkish model" led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) was eulogized as a successful combination of economic development with Islamic democracy. UC Berkeley sociologist Cihan Tu?al's new book "The Fall of the Turkish Model" (reviewed in HDN here) explores this deterioration from the left. Tu?al argues that the model's collapse was inevitable due to the fragility of the combination of free market economic policies with the AKP's conservative religious base. He spoke to HDN about his book.

The idea of Turkey as a "model" goes back to the start of the Cold War. It has meant different things at different times, but under the AKP government it came to mean a marriage of free market capitalism and moderate Islamic democracy. Why has the collapse of this model happened now?

We should first understand what the model was. The combination of Islam and democracy was most publicly emphasized. But when you read between the lines you see that neoliberalism - an extreme form of free market capitalism - was part of that combination too. But we should even further qualify it, because we're really talking about just one kind of Islam and...