Men play cards at Yashar Hoca’s Place, in Recep Tayyip Erdogan's old Istanbul neighborhood, Kasimpasha, surrounded by photos of Mr Erdogan and other Justice and Development Party
On the fringes of Kasimpasha, a working-class Istanbul district, and just opposite an old graveyard sits Yashar Hoca’s Place, a cafe and living shrine to the neighbourhood’s most famous son, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“He used to come around all the time,” says Hassan Camurluayak, enjoying an evening tea with his friends beneath rows of pictures, some framed, some glued to the cafe’s white tiles, of Ataturk, Turkey’s founder, of Mr Erdogan, its present-day leader, and of the Ottoman sultans.
“He was both serious and courteous, all prayer and mosque,” Mr Camurluayak, a pensioner, says of the young Mr Erdogan. “Me and the guys, we were religious too, but we sometimes played cards. He’d never join. We drank coffee. He’d never drink with us.”
“He used to come around all the time,” says Hassan Camurluayak, enjoying an evening tea with his friends beneath rows of pictures, some framed, some glued to the cafe’s white tiles, of Ataturk, Turkey’s founder, of Mr Erdogan, its present-day leader, and of the Ottoman sultans.
“He was both serious and courteous, all prayer and mosque,” Mr Camurluayak, a pensioner, says of the young Mr Erdogan. “Me and the guys, we were religious too, but we sometimes played cards. He’d never join. We drank coffee. He’d never drink with us.”
On August 28, Mr Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister since 2003, will move across the capital Ankara to set up camp in the presidential residence. By the time his first term comes to an end, he will have ruled Turkey for nearly 17 years, longer than Ataturk, and will have arguably reshaped the country as much as the revered leader.
Under Ataturk, Turkey crawled out from the debris of the Ottoman Empire, embraced secularism, at least nominally, and tried to forge a new, entirely Western, identity, abandoning all pretensions to being a Muslim power.
Under Mr Erdogan, political Islam, paired with economic liberalism, has made a triumphant comeback.
The newly elected president, who turned 60 this year, was 43 when Turkey’s generals, the self-appointed guardians of Ataturk’s legacy, pressured his Islamist mentor Necmettin Erbakan into resigning as prime minister, the fourth such intervention since 1960.
Mr Erdogan was 45 when he sentenced to jail for four months, convicted of incitement to religious hatred. His offence was to have read a nationalist poem at a political rally. It was 1999.
By the time he came to power at the helm of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) three years later, the former Istanbul mayor had ditched the overtly Islamist rhetoric, embraced ties with the West, and successfully courted Turkish liberals.
In his third and last term as prime minister, many of these alliances crumbled. Mr Erdogan’s once lauded efforts to remove the army from politics increasingly resembled a vendetta. Democratic reforms stalled, prompting liberal allies to jump ship. As the economy took off and as Europe began to turn inward, the dream of EU accession, a one-time strategic goal, faded into irrelevance.
Starting with foreign policy and ending with soap operas centred on the lives of the sultans, Turkey embraced its Ottoman past, albeit with mixed results. Having lent almost unconditional backing to the rebels fighting Bashar Al Assad’s regime in Syria, Mr Erdogan’s government now finds itself bordering not one but two failed states. In Egypt, where it backed deposed president Mohammed Morsi, Turkey is left with precious few friends. Relations with Israel are at rock bottom.
The country is increasingly conservative. After new taxes, alcohol prices are among the highest in Europe. A ban on the Islamic headscarf in public places, including state universities, has been dismantled. Religious school graduates are free to enter the bureaucracy. Among secular Turks, but not only, statements like those made by deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc, who recently argued that women should avoid laughing in public, are met with a mix of ridicule and alarm.
In Kasimpasha, however, the range of superlatives used to describe Mr Erdogan grows with each day.
“They like to say he was a brawler when he was young,” says Eyup Guzel, a former printer. “It’s not true. He was always polite.”
“Now he’s become ever nicer, even more tolerant,” adds Mr Camurluayak.
