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has adopted strikingly similar methods.
Ironically, the politician he ¿rst sought
to distance himsel from is the one he
has come to resemble the most.
YOUNG TURK
Erdogan was born in 1954, 16 years after
Ataturk’s death, in Kasimpasa, a rough
Istanbul neighborhood o open sewers
and muddy streets, famed for its ¿re-
¿ghters, pickpockets, and Romani
musicians. The son o a ferry captain,
Erdogan made pocket money by selling
Turkish bagels when he wasn’t studying
at a religious school. On his way home,
as dusk fell in Istanbul, he would use
the deck o a cargo ship anchored in the
Golden Horn to practice reciting the
Koran, earning plaudits for his oratory.
But Erdogan also played soccer, dreamed
o a career in sports, and rebelled against
patriarchy: his fellow Islamists did not
approve o his athletic shorts, and his
father asked him to land a proper job.
Erdogan was 15 years old when, in
1969, the leading Islamist politician in
Turkish history, Necmettin Erbakan,
published the manifesto Millî Görüş
(National Vision). Erbakan called on
Turkey to sever ties with the European
Economic Community (the precursor o
the ¤) and align with pan-Islamist
leaders in Bangladesh and Pakistan and
across the rest o the Muslim world.
From the moment a teenage Erdogan
joined the youth branch o Erbakan’s
National Salvation Party, his political
instincts were shaped by this mindset.
Erbakan’s movement supported the
mujahideen in Afghanistan in their ¿ght
against the Soviets and Ruhollah
Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution in Iran.
At political rallies, party leaders
condemned what they termed “the West’s
crusader mentality” and described the
International Monetary Fund and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development as its modern incar-
nations. Erdogan and his ilk opposed
the absence o Islamic references in the
public domain: in their view, the secular
government did not deserve respect as
long as it did not respect Islam.
In 1985, Erdogan had a chance to
prove his organizational skills to Is-
lamist elders when he arranged a boxing
match occasioned by the visit o
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader o a
¬-backed mujahideen group, who was
in Turkey to celebrate Erbakan’s return
to politics ¿ve years after being ban-
ished from political life. Erdogan also
aligned himsel with the Naqshbandi
Su¿ order in Istanbul, an inÇuential
movement that provided the religious
connections that would aid his rise to
power. In those years, Istanbul’s city
government had hired Erdogan as a
player on its soccer team, but the team’s
ban on Islamic beards forced him to
resign. After completing his mandatory
year o military service, Erdogan
worked as an administrator at a sausage
factory; soon, Islamists invited him to
work full time for Erbakan’s party—now
rebranded as the Welfare Party after
previous incarnations were banned—
and there he raised funds from mem-
bers to pay his wages. As the party’s
provincial head in Istanbul, Erdogan
delivered speeches against “the evil new
world order,” protested the Gul War,
and defended the cause o Islamic rebel
groups in the Algerian civil war.
Erdogan distinguished himsel from
other Islamists through his calculated
pragmatism, ushering in a tectonic shift
in Turkish politics over the 1990s. “We