📰 A Third Republic or Merely a Second and a Half?

In 2023, Turkey marked the centenary of its republic, founded under the stern leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The occasion revived a longstanding and unresolved struggle: the contest between secularism and political Islam, modernity and tradition, the founding myth of the republic and the counter-narrative that seeks to replace it. Turkey’s story over the past hundred years has unfolded as a dialogue between two men who never met. One was a soldier of austere discipline, who raised a secular republic from the ruins of a fallen empire. The other, a charismatic politician, strives to reclaim the nation’s Islamic legacy and reshape its political future. This “dialogue of ghosts”, as some turkish/" class="auto-internal-link">turkish writers have termed it, may be uniquely Turkish in character, yet it reflects a broader scene familiar across the Middle East.

In fact, more than one Arab republic stands at a similar crossroads: ageing regimes nearing twilight, emerging troops seeking to claim their legacy; centralised, secular states confronting populist movements rich in religious rhetoric; leaders vowing to turn the page on decades of failure and repression. In fact, nowhere is this tension more vividly illustrated than in syria-faces-highest-concentration-of-needs/" class="smart-internal-link" title="📰 UN spox says NE Syria faces “highest concentration of needs”">syria/" class="auto-internal-link">syria after Assad. leader Ahmad al-sharaa, tasked with rebuilding a nation ravaged by dictatorship, war and foreign occupation, faces the same ideological crossroads that shaped Turkey’s modern century. Two paths lie before him. One draws inspiration from Atatürk’s project of pragmatic, outward-looking modern statehood. The other mirrors Erdoğan’s model, combining religious legitimacy with populist politics and centralised power. Yet Syria is not Turkey.

Sharaa’s moment is more fragile, more precarious. The nation he now leads is weaker, more diverse, with deeper wounds and sharper divisions—though perhaps also with a keener political awareness. The Atatürk–Erdoğan dichotomy cannot simply be transplanted. Syria cannot afford to swing between secular despotism and religious majoritarianism. Indeed, another possibility presents itself: the “narrow corridor” described by economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson—a third path that neither Atatürk nor Erdoğan fully realised. It imagines a state strong enough to enforce order, yet sufficiently constrained to nurture liberty and pluralism.

To grasp the significance of this choice, one must return to the Turkish struggle itself. Two Visions of Turkey: A Century of Contestation Atatürk: The Founder as Revolutionary Leviathan Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stands among the towering figures of the twentieth century. From the ruins of a collapsed empire, he forged a emerging republic through an uncompromising programme of secular modernisation. He abolished the caliphate, replaced…